Hello — this is my first submission. Many thanks to you Tanya for your unwavering encouragement!
I sat hunched and small, a fizzing bundle of self-hatred and yearning, a 22-year old woman in the front passenger seat of a small muddy Peugeot. Dusk spring skies darkened quickly. A sole blackbird chanted dutifully, highlighting the yawning silences between our words.
He spoke softly.
“But — do you not love me anymore?”
It had taken me months to get to this point. A slow process of noticing, feeling, knowing. Wishing otherwise.
It would be years before I would experience my own trust, my own heart, broken. But somehow I sensed it: that this was the worse side of the deal. That doing the breaking is worse.
My heartbeat was doing strange things. Speeding and slowing. My neck ached from cowed posture. I gazed up at the empty terrace in front of the car, felt my thumb rubbing against the fabric of the seat, searching for familiarity, reassurance.
I inhaled slowly, silently, and considered his question.
And considered what was beneath it. What was really being asked, by both of us, was not of love but: where do we go from here? Is this the end? Can we carry on, even if we want to?
I loved him, but that was beside the point, and I didn’t understand why. All I knew was the tight itch in the centre of my chest was whispering leave, go, stretch. This isn’t for you anymore.
So much about my life depended on what I said next. Oh, the vertiginous height of a binary decision. And right before I spoke I felt the weight of all that I knew I would eventually be brave enough to give up: the supportive family, the home to escape to, the friendship group. First love’s gentle adoration and sharp fierceness. Its history powerful, but not quite enough.
Rebecca - it means so very much to me that you've joined this project. And what a moving piece this is. So many lines that had me catch my breath with how fully you've conveyed the pain of separating... 'I loved him, but that was beside the point, and I didn't understand why'; 'the tight itch in the centre of my chest', 'the vertiginous height of a binary decision'.
You also had me feel a sudden and new compassion for my Other Love, got from this surprising line: 'Doing the breaking is worse.' I'm humbled by that perspective. Yes, the difficulty of pushing away a person who cares for you.
Here is your link, and I hope this will be the first of many, as I will value learning more of your story, but also seeing how you respond as a writer to the different prompts:
I've added you to the A to Z of contributors on the Community page of the book's site and to the same list here on my Substack within the By Readers tab.
Thank you so much, Tanya! I've not had someone read and digest a piece of my writing since... well, I can't quite remember. And to know it helped you feel something! Is there any better compliment?!
I look forward to the next prompt (and probably to perusing past prompts, too).
May 30, 2023·edited May 30, 2023Liked by Tanya Shadrick
I love the "Oh.." I soared up to you with that little sound, and teetered alongside you as you decided whether or not to leap. I thought the delicate pacing of the piece was also very good. Something I need to learn to do, too.
Anoushka, thank you so much for this comment! I can't tell you how encouraging it feels to have someone focus on specific words, specific aspects of my writing. Until sharing this here I'm not sure I'd experienced that properly before. It feels so affirming. I look forward to reading your pieces.
We're huddled under a blanket, by a fire. I am drunk. My friend hugs me, strokes my hair.
"You always ask me that when you're drunk", she says. "Of course I will. Of course".
My friend is a hairdresser. The thing I always ask her when I'm drunk is "Will you do my daughter's hair for her wedding?". My daughter is 8, is 12, is 15...I've been asking this for years.
Sometimes we have cried when I ask this question. Sometimes we've laughed as well. We cry because we don't think I'll make it to that wedding. We cry because what I'm really asking is "Will you be there for her? Will you have tissues in your bag in case she needs them? Will you hug her and tell her she looks beautiful? That she is beautiful? That she is loved?".
I am lucky. I've been here longer than anybody expected. My health rollercoasts a little, but my body never gets back to where it was. The cancer is slow - so slow - but implacable.
I'm about to restart chemotherapy, so this is raw. It's hard to write.
Of course, I'm not just asking about a wedding, I'm asking about mothering. Who will mother my children? I recruit friends, relatives. Now they're old enough I try to help them mother themselves, and each other. Sometimes I think they're better at it than I am.
Yes... and yet (as with your poems) there is always this determination coming through that gives strength and shape to what you are experiencing.
These questions you ask of your friend: I read them aloud in my quiet kitchen, even though my voice caught on them. Only small way I could find to do something with the wish to be in walking distance of you, your home, so I could come tell you straight away of how it felt to read you, and know you're heading into treatment once again.
That's such a lovely image, Tanya. You are so good at these small rituals. When I read this, I thought of you telling Nye how to take care of your boy before they wheeled you into theatre. I've just reread it and teared up. There's an amazing piece by Wendy Pratt about how parents care for their children's graves. We try so hard to be good parents, despite everything.
Thank you. And even though you are about to start treatment again - because you are - I want so much finally to send Birds of Firle to you: even if you only send it straight back with no note. I want it to reach you. And I'd like - very much - if you and Anja would be happy to select one or more poems from your collection to be used on the Birds of Firle website so I can share word of your collection with an order link? Might that be possible? xxx
Oh, yes! That would be wonderful! Anja is pretty busy this week (submission period for her next anthology and eating her own weight in patisserie). I'll have a chat with her. The Birds of Firle is such an inspiring project. 🪶xxx
Like some others this is my first submission so adding my thanks for the support and encouragement. I feel quite nervous and exposed. I'm new to Substack too so haven't read many other contributions yet - I wanted to stop myself from going to comparison and judgement before I'd written anything so I'm really looking forward to doing some reading now....
That autumn everything changed. The summer had been strange, foreboding somehow. We’d been to Bournemouth to visit my grandparents – my mother, my sister and me. Mum was strange, unpredictable, her tongue lashed, her skin was grey, eyes dull. I didn’t think too much about any of this at the time. I was 14 and my teenage angst had little to do with Mum and her mood.
September came. Back to boarding school - the usual gut wrenching, punch of homesickness; existence made bearable by twice weekly letters from home. But now her writing sloped, words falling off the page, thoughts and pen dropping to the floor.
“I’m having a little trouble with my arm and leg – nothing to worry about.”
And for a while I believed her. My mind was full of dreams, of plans, of boys and books.
I’m lying in my bed, in my dormitory. January 1972 – the miners are on strike, power cuts, gloom, and a growing chill – sensations of aloneness and foreboding I’m coming to know well. There’s frost on the windows. Christmas has been and gone. I’d been home for the holidays. Mum is wearing a caliper now and a wig. She can’t drive or walk more than a few steps. Her head hurts and nothing is said.
Her letters have stopped. I’m scared and full of dread. I write a letter to Dad. He’s coming to see me. “At last I’ll know”, I say at first, but inwardly my body trembles.
I’m cold, freezing cold and my tummy churns. Dad is here now. His eyes fill with tears, and I know the answer. I squeeze my nails into my palms until it hurts. I must be brave. I must not cry. I must be good.
Carolyn, I'm so glad you've joined the project. And what a moving first piece this is - conveying with such poignant force how you were kept apart from knowledge of your mother's condition several times over: by the reticence of that time/place to discuss health, by your physical separateness at boarding school. Also the difficult of us as children to ask for what we need - and also fear - to know.
This project, this community, is one where we are all committed to the opposite of the unsaid and unexamined. It's a gentle place where so many are entrusting - often for the first time - their most important memories and reflections.
I also saw your comment on the hello thread about your faith - a worry that you will be judged for that. Again, there is a theme specifically about faith and I would love you to contribute to that:
Hi Tanya I can't tell you how encouraging it is to be read and responded too. I feel like I'm inhaling support and being inspired to keep going, showing up and being vulnerable. That vulnerability about exposing myself is something I'm really tapping into in this process. I love your comment about his being a gentle place....this is my experience.
I was intrigued by your comment about my faith as I don't think I did mention that in my hello comment - I went back to check so maybe that was someone else. I'm going to look at that thread and have a read around the other themes you suggest. I'd love to contribute again. My faith would be such a rich topic to explore - animism, my growing up in a Quaker environment - lots to reflect on.
I'm sorry I confused you with another Carolyn! But how much I'd love to hear about your Quaker upbringing if a theme here feels like a right fit for that... xx
People will ask me this question even before they ask me my name. Without any warning and without giving me the chance to avoid the subject. I brace myself for it almost every day, although the grief is settling into that familiar feeling I know will become part of me and I will just have to learn to live with. But I can still feel my heart tightening, my body tensing up, the mask setting and my face contorting into disarming ugliness (I caught sight of myself in a mirror once and I was shocked) because I am still smiling. Most people do not seem to notice or, if they do, it’s too late, we will have to run through the awkward motions and see the conversation through. I have considered making up answers and making it easier for me and the other person, and I am becoming bolder so maybe I will: ‘yes, a little boy’, ‘yes, yes, I do – five-year-old twin girls’, ‘yes, three teenagers currently living with their father in Vietnam’. Instead, I wish I could tell them how not having children has heightened my fear of death for example. I do not want anyone’s pity or sympathy though, and I most certainly do not want my childness to define me. But I would prefer to continue to be honest and I do reserve myself the right to make it clear that, no, it has not been a choice I have been given the chance to make. Think twice before you ask the question next time, I always want to say. Give it time. Because the answer may very well be the same as mine:
‘No. Sadly not. And I find it heartbreaking to talk about it.’
Such fierce anger I felt on your part reading this. The outrageous, unnecessary, lazy curiosity of people. A version of which I endured too during my years of fertility treatment when it was assumed by everyone that it 'was me' not my husband. Some of the things said to me then went in like splinters and - in reading your piece - I see are still there in me, painful, pointed.
And there is a breathtaking courage and dignity to your last line.
In one of the comments below, I see you've said that you're trying to strengthen your voice. I already found your work powerful, which is why you were an immediate choice for mentoring last year. But this latest piece is, yes, stronger still. You have said something irrefutable, unarguable. You make a case for yourself - and many others too.
Thank you so much, Tanya. I went through a period of fertility treatments too and it’s one of those things that only those who’ve been through it seem to really get. I am sorry you’ve also had to experience it. And that should have read ‘childlessness’! Every single time I submit I then spot something wrong! 😅 I suppose that’s why editors are so crucial. xx
I saw the 'childness' and chose not to raise it with you - it seemed like a deliberate choice of word by you rather than a typo. So I italicised it and kept it! I quite like its impact - a redefining of your position at the level of language, in keeping with what you're doing in the second half of the piece when you are considering and rejecting ways to deal with what you shouldn't have to...
But let me know if you'd like to have it read 'childlessness' and I will change!
Such a powerful, emotional piece. Your description of the physical impact of this unthinking question (which I’ve also heard many times) is so well written - although I’m very sorry you have to endure it each time.
Thank you, Tanya, for encouraging me to contribute, and for writing such a phenomenal book in The Cure for Sleep! This is my first submission.
That deepest unspoken fear of mine: a seizure during sleep, and being found in the morning, dead in bed, haunted me. I have been scared to think wild thoughts in case it tipped my mind into riotous colour. Seeing sounds, chewing lips. I’d known for years before I had a diagnosis that there was something unusual.
I asked my neurologist gingerly, unable to keep the wobble from my voice: ‘When it feels like I am dying, am I really dying?’
Voicing the question that had privately troubled me for 15 years.
He was young-ish, probably about my own age, and he looked at my notes instead of at me. He paused, put down his pen and swallowed awkwardly in that magnolia-coloured box of a room we were in together.
‘No,’ he said carefully. ‘You’re not dying. Your brain just thinks you are.’
I breathed out for the first time in years and nodded, unspeaking.
He might have been feeding me a comforting lie.
But it he was, it worked.
Anxiety, which had been grabbing me and twisting me into hunched forms, lessened.
I took my fears and began weaving them into the tapestry of my life. Fear lifted for a couple of days or so at first, but then for weeks, until I realised it had been months.
No longer stuffed into a tightly closed box, my epilepsy became something I could speak about.
I let my wild mind untangle and stretch itself out, to create new things.
Ideas, long stifled – if I gave them room to breathe, I worried they would drag me in and damage my brain – were freed.
Alice, I'm thrilled you've joined the project. Thank you.
This first piece from you hit me hard because my mother has a terminal diagnosis and asked me a question similar to yours the other night, 'catching my heart off guard' (in Heaney's phrase). It was this: 'I've been holding my breath as long as I can to practice being dead. Is that what it will feel like?'
That's my personal reason for being so affected by your piece, but then there's my editorial pleasure in it. The way you've used language all to do with contorting, containing, hunching before the question and its answer... and then that expansion into weaving, tapestry, creation, coherence. Even though your condition can't be cured, you have a new and more expansive relationship to it... and so this piece being here in the story archive feels like a privilege, and also a proof of that.
I will be so interested to read what you do with other prompts in the project!
Here is your link and I've added you to the A to Z of contributors, with pleasure.
Thank you so so much, and for gracefully correcting my typo! (That serves me right for fiddling around!). I’m really excited to see my words join the project and am so grateful. I’ve spent my adult life feeling shy and it feels very revealing to put my words out into the world, and so to have a warm reception is marvellous.
I’m sorry your mum is ill. When the parent-child relationship reverses I think it’s even more complicated when it wasn’t straightforward to begin with. I hope her good days outweigh the bad overall xx
The question was lost in the statement, and found later in the pleading explanation. “I want to die”. The missing conjunction: and will you let me? The parts of this unfinished sentence as broken as she was, as separate as we were. Forced apart by this illness, our communications, emotionally easy but physically impossible, had taken the form of long, intimate, soothing text messages. Today’s had simply said: “Can you speak?”
“When?”
“Now?”
Well enough to speak, for the first time in two years, this was progress. My heart started going. I didn’t know then that it wouldn’t stop until hers did. I had no time to figure out this feeling. Here was her voice, finally.
“I want to die”
All of a sudden, here we were, so close and so far apart.
I gave her the response that no one else would give. The response her body refused, locked as they were in their daily conflict. The response that went against the instinct and responsibility of any parent or doctor. The response that kept me close to her. I couldn’t have her rally against me as she did with all those hell-bent on keeping her alive. I couldn’t lose her before I had no say in the matter.
In giving her the permission to go, I hoped she might grasp to life. Having her pain and knowing acknowledged might be an act of empowerment, propelling her toward life, instead of away from it. I knew it was a gamble and I had more to lose.
I wonder now if the unsaid question was “Do you know me?” or perhaps “Are you my friend?” On the day she died, I felt special. We’d colluded to this end.
I wish I was living just a few doors away from you, so I could knock on your door and ask you how it felt to write this? And how you feel about your writing now this season? For me, as its reader, there was a surge of certainty: this has the sort of certainty - of style and thought both - that there is in Cusk, in Levy. I want to keep reading you. I want to know if you're working yet on longer pieces, and where you are planning to show or send them... so much to ask and listen if you're wanting another walk any time soon.
I would love that, but I hope none of your family would be expecting you back for a few hours! And you would have found me in tears. I've held back from writing this story, not knowing if I could get outside myself enough to see clearly, as it is so deeply embedded within every part of me. I've just finished reading Amy Key's book and that spurred me on as she writes so honestly. I knew I could easily tell this story with me as the selfless heroine. Instead I wanted to capture the reality, that in someone's darkest moment, I was still capable of selfishness. I wrote a bad first version, and then this one which I was happy enough with but I feel there is a longer piece in this - certainly some areas need more explanation if you aren't in my head! It seems I need the luxury of a bank holiday to write anything so no longer work yet. I would love to walk with you soon while we have this glorious weather. And first name only for now please if that's ok (so I can write without worrying too much who reads). Thank you so much for the wonderful encouragement xx
I really can't stop thinking about this latest piece from you. Such power. Is the last weekend in June free for you for a walk on either the Saturday or Sunday? I need to get through G's GCSEs and immediate aftermath but by end of month I will be properly free if you are...
Terrible questions. How terrible a question might ever be? It’s the intention and intensity that matters; that sweet spot between a medicine and a poison.
For me the gaps that are left by the unasked ones are much worse. The silence that loaded with mistrust and misunderstanding. Some of them are as big as crevasses high in the mountains and far too uncomfortable to stay around. Others are like sinkholes in a pretty manicured garden with uniformed lawns and perfectly shaped hedges. Dig a tad deeper and you are at risk of unearthing long forgotten lead mine from two centuries ago.
Terrible unasked questions will sentence you to a life of loneliness as deep as those unseen old mines. Small talk and polite manners keep one in one’s place. The place one doesn’t want to belong...
How are you?
I’m fine; kids are Fine; husband’s FIne; we are FINe! FINE! WE ARE ALL FINE…..
This is fierce writing, and this line in particular has such authority: 'It’s the intention and intensity that matters; that sweet spot between a medicine and a poison.'
Thank you as ever for contributing, Elena, and for how you read others' work here. Here is your link:
Thank you, Tanya! It wasn’t meant to be fierce but you probably right. I’ve read it again and can see how easily it could be misinterpreted. I’ve always been the one asking “terrible” questions and being told off by my parents. That habit still gets me in trouble. I’d never ask anything that I wouldn’t have wanted to be asked and I guess that’s an issue in itself, but so tricky to put oneself in other’s shoes. I don’t mind at all if you’d rather not put it on your website 🤗xxx
I meant it in an admiring way - but I realise that several times this has happened with us now: that the words I choose when responding to your work don’t convey to you what I meant. I wonder if there is a different way I can receive your work that avoids you feeling this discomfort (which is of course not intended on my part as I value your contributions). Perhaps I could simply say thank you when you submit work? I won’t try to explain further here what I meant (positively) by ‘fierce’ in case it only amplifies your concerns… Instead, I will only say thank you & assure you it has been curated already, with pleasure.
Oh,no! I value your comments so much! Please, please keep them coming. I have a lot of blind spots, especially coming from another culture, so it’s all so so important for me. And you are so perceptive.
Not sure what other times you were referring to. Maybe the two pieces in Hagitude you didn’t comment? I assumed it was accidental though 🤗xxx
I would never not comment on something so with Hagitude (as here) it would only be accidental - the volume of messages I get on both channels is truly huge and although I’m very organised with how I flag them incoming some may get missed. Will you DM me on Hagitude with links to those pieces when you can?
Several of the closest people to me in my home life - my husband, my daughter - use language, use words, in a very different way to me. We sometimes have to go a few times each to each til our intent is received as meant. I value this effort - as I do with you here. But today I felt I should check what was best for you. Please do always assume positive feedback on my part though! In the rare times I need to check something with a contributor here (usually to do with privacy of a person they’re describing) I always approach that in a gentle but direct way. Any non-replied are due to volume of messages!
No problem at all, and don’t worry about it. I know that you’ve got so much on your plate at the moment. I signed up for mentoring with Katy Aalto and had two sessions already. It’s been really good, albeit a bit overwhelming xx
Oh yes that safe response that many of us give in to! Down here in Australia the response offered is 'good', everything is good from the weather to the day to our health and so on. It is interesting. I, like you ask the terrible questions, in my personal life and professional too (though here I get away with it:-) and always like you also say, I only ask questions that I would answer myself, if I were to be asked. It is lovely to find a kindred spirit!
Elena, You had incredible metaphors here, so visual. So true, our response is often fine if there is no safe spot for the truth to land. Also, I read in a reply to Tanya that you are working with Katy Aalto. Me too! I am in the nature and place based writing class. Such a shift from writing these short pieces. My brain hurts sometimes. If you like, keep me posted on how it goes. Here's my email address: sheilaknell@yahoo.com No pressure though if you don't want to, life gets busy. xx
Another newbie here. I've just finished Tanya's book (a timely and much-needed read) and decided to get involved. This is my first submission.
"In the small hours of the night with my willpower expended and the animal heat of my son bundled safely in my arms, I petition Google with incoherent strings of keywords, "poor eye contact ceiling fan hates clapping". The words, which feel like a betrayal, form a kind of spell or instruction sending the search engine’s spiders off crawling the web for the gossamer threads which link the terms. As I scroll through the results (returned too soon as if there was no doubt or reason to hesitate), my heart thumps towards a crescendo and then fades out leaving me feeling transparent; edgeless, "Classic sign of autism in early infancy", "'Red Flags' That Warrant a Referral", "Worried about Autism at early age".
Autism? That word and its question mark echoed through my first year of motherhood. There were signs and I saw them. Undeniable and unequivocal. At first the question was silent. Trapped entirely in the black box of my mind. It felt dangerous to speak the word out loud, as if voicing it might create something where there was nothing.
In the light of day, as I folded my son’s small clothes or offered him spoonfuls of sweet potato purée, this superstitious thinking embarrassed me. Perhaps it was more helpful, more reasonable, to view the status of my son’s neurotype as less of a black cat and more of a Schrödinger’s cat. By keeping the question in mind, unvoiced, I was keeping the lid on the box. My son was both autistic and not. But that too felt like a delusion. Surely cats and brains are either one thing or another? I see now that I was buying myself time. Time to mother in the present, without having to invite in the outside world and its questions."
Anoushka, I'm so glad you've joined the project. You've given voice here to something so many parents go through in private, painfully, feeling so isolated. The beginning of that process of knowing something in a loved one needs to be investigated, supported...
It's a generous offering to the community therefore. Thank you.
And as a piece of prose, I admire how you've shown the contrast between your solitary nights of online searching with the different kind of more tactile care-taking/giving that belongs to daytime: the laundry, the food.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive, and I hope you will respond to other themes in the archive as and when you can...
Ah I hope you didn't mind me making those. If it's substantive changes I think need to be made for the meaning to be clear I always check in advance. With formatting - due to the volume of stories I'm receiving! - I make changes that I think will work with the way stories look online but am always happy to change once a contributor has checked...
Hello and welcome to this beautiful space! I enjoyed reading your piece so very much. I am grateful for not having the internet to turn to when I first became a mother because I am sure it would have been tempting to seek answers to the oh so many things that we are just not sure about in those early days.
I love the line...It felt dangerous to speak the word out loud..." because it resonates so much. So many times, over the years I have felt this way about all sorts of thoughts.
A text message at 6.30am. ‘You need to come now’. A stomach lurching awakening. 4 hours to think about 49 years. To reflect on the unsaid, the hurt, the pain, the disappointment. A life. Foot to the floor, a reel of words and memories flashing by. How can I choose? ‘Don’t leave anything unsaid’ they told me. It’s all fucking unsaid. There’s no time now for any of this.
Where will they go, these unspoken words? I don’t want them anymore. I want them to leave with him, for him to own them in his skin but that seems cruel, unnecessary now. I’m driving too fast through a life long tunnel of duty and doing the right thing. It haunts me but it won’t stop the clock. We just aren’t that kind of family.
Death looks uncomfortable. Weird, out of sync. Chaotic sentences, arms twitching. Morphine soothes him but it doesn’t help us witness. His hands are freezing and his finger tips white. I hold his hand as I haven’t done in 40 years. Sliding away. Where does it go, this force, this energy, all these words. Gone in one last long groaning breath then waxy yellow silence.
‘Why are you so quiet Helen?’ was the last question he asked me. It has all stayed inside me until I can find a place to leave it behind.
This is such a powerful piece on its own - with lines that do so much in so few words to compress the off-kilter and painful aspects of death approaching in a person with whom there is unfinished/unstarted emotional work: 'driving too fast through a lifelong tunnel of duty and the doing the right thing', 'waxy yellow silence'.
And it sent me back to your Voices piece - that eloquent and full last paragraph where you show how hard you work with your own children to understand their inner lives. The two pieces read together are more than doubly moving.
Thanks so much as always Tanya- I think I am definitely processing the loss of my father in more ways than I anticipated and it’s definitely coming through in these pieces! Thanks for giving me the chance to write about it through your wonderful project xx
It's moving to see you using the project in this way. Several others in the community have been doing this too - exploring from different angles through the themes a single monumental aspect of their life story/history. xx
Amazingly, this is my second submission. Thank you, Tanya, for encouraging me to keep writing!
'Did I say goodbye to you?'
I don’t know, can’t remember. An unsaid moment, a memory unmade.
And yet something precious that I needed to cling to and reassure myself of afterwards. Both as a child and now, fully grown with a daughter the same age as I was. Or perhaps not fully grown…still rootlessly stuck in the past.
I can picture getting up and getting ready for school. Brushing my teeth in the icy bathroom, sharp light filtering through the translucent glass. Stroking our sleepy cat, hastily throwing books into my bag, slurping my breakfast of soggy cereal. All the other ordinary, routine things that morning I remember in detail. But I can’t recall the one thing that really mattered, still matters. It’s haunted me for years.
Friends and family tried to help. You’d have said it automatically, they say, you probably wouldn’t have remembered because it’s something people almost always say without thinking.
But somehow I needed to know that I said it. Such a small word, but with so much significance. I wish I’d given some thought to it just that once. Because it was the last time I would ever see you.
You were standing back to hold the front door open, letting the sunlight in, letting me out. Still in your nightie and dressing gown, tired and careworn because you’d been up all night again. Keeping him company, talking calmly because he couldn’t sleep and the pills still weren’t working. You’d have had to get dressed and head to work soon after I left, ironically leaving him deep asleep on the settee.
I remember reaching the end of the path, stopping and waving back to you. You were smiling at me. I’ve held on to that smile for years.
I curated this while blinking away tears. For your loss, but also because of how you've described so well what is also an experience shared by so many of us: the way the details of a room, a day, when everything changed haunt us in memory - every detail fixed, even when we wish we could go back and change something. 'Sharp light filtering through the translucent glass' - this line had me catch my breath. That's how it is, exactly.
So very glad you've joined the project. Write for as many prompts as you like - I love seeing community members build a whole body of work through the themes...
Thank you for your kind words, Tanya. I can’t tell you how much these mean. Although I struggled to get these thoughts outside of my head after so long, it was a relief & comfort to put them here in a safe space & have them so warmly received by yourself and others. Very grateful for this community. Thank you also for the link, plus the renewed encouragement to keep going. Davina xx
This is such a powerful piece. Full of yearning. Those short sentences and phrases piling up on each other, drawing us in. I'd love to read more of this.
Thank you, Anoushka. It was difficult & I swithered about submitting, so I’m very grateful for your feedback. I hadn’t realised, but ‘yearning’ exactly captures how I felt when writing it. Heartened to know that the feeling came through and connected with you.
Tanya, Maybe not the most difficult, but as soon as I heard her on her podcast ask this, this just poured out of me. Even though my kids are young adults and independent and strong, I still get sad thinking I won't be here to cook for them one day. Also, this is work that has come from the octopus writing on longing...so thanks! xx
Sharon Blackie asks: If death came now, what would it look like? Death would be a woman, kind, firm, ethereal, persistent in her longing to take me from the kitchen I longed to remain in. I would ask her for another day, time to cook another meal, load the fridge and freezer, the canning shelves, the crock pot and oven, cupboards stocked full. I would want a lifetime of food cooked for the kids, one more dish to let them know they are loved, soup for comfort, pies for joy, jams for the bread I won’t be there to bake. Death would be both gentle and fierce, this woman in white with full control, reminding me I had my time, it is over, perhaps placing her hand on my heart, telling me I did enough. I long to know I did enough.
Sheila! I don't know how I missed this from you! I can't anymore read all the subcomments on posts as the volume (especially in this year of Hagitude too!) is now too great. But I thought my system for seeing all new stories was absolutely on point (as my son would say).
I love how much you've give here in so few words. This line went straight in for me, as my darling gone Granny Shadrick was a bit jam (and pickle) maker: 'jams for the bread I won't be there to bake...' Oh my.
And then that last line. To know we've done enough - yes, yes.
Tanya, I have been wondering lately how you keep up with it all, especially with the time you take to offer such beautiful responses! Thank you for this lovely reply and so happy it brought a memory of your Granny Shadrick. xxx
Ah... I do it by that Elves and the Shoemaker principle that I invoke throughout the book (as in my life): as with transcribing into type the scrolls after each long day in public writing them, I manage this mainly in the very early morning or late nights when paid work and family life leaves me a little time. As the community grows it's getting harder so I'm needing to be clearer on word limits and other community guidelines! The next newsletter will be asking everyone to read them (again). But it remains joy-giving for all the logistical challenges! xx
Chills once again Shelia! Your writings have a way of conveying so much more than the words on the page. So much is right there between the lines and all of it so thought provoking, moving and touching.
Thank you! I get so much joy from this space and sincerely appreciate that you take the time to respond. I haven’t had as much time lately to read responses from others but hope to get back soon. Xx
How to push through the ache of fear that bridles my tongue? How to piece and police the tumble of raw emotions that shunt into my head at every, waking moment? How to know that if spoken, the darkness in my mouth won’t pool, thick like tar and engulf everything I love with the same sticky filth that lives in me now? How to believe that the words aren’t a spell of becoming? How do I say that I am sacrificing myself to save them from what I know and worse, what I don’t know but fear is true? How to trust that this person will know how to save me?
I don’t believe him. I don’t believe in him. He is just a ghost on the margins, while the things in my head are real, glossy and slick with fear, growing fat in the dark of my mouth. There is too much risk. Too much to lose.
My mouth is stitched shut. My teeth bite down on flesh. Blood wells.
Katy you're doing such strong work here and over on your own Substack, which I'm reading with admiration. There's a fierceness to your honesty and a visceral force to it too. Then there are lines that do so much at all once... 'How to piece and police the tumble of raw emotions.'
I met you first through your generous and vividly-written reviewing of my book and other people's (your Ragged Grace one today is wonderful - I hope you've made Olivia aware of it); it's very exciting to see now your own voice and story taking up space.
At 41, had no ancestors, no ethnic background, no medical histories. I was my oldest living relative. I had no stories of Salem witches, no ink-stained signers of the Declaration of Independence, no
blacksmiths, pirates, whores, or suffragettes. My only blood relatives were my three little children.
Couch adoption in all the legalese, call it chosen/saved/rescued, the truth is that the mother who bore me signed a legal contract in which she gave away her firstborn daughter because… it is the because and the why that came to haunt me. As the third-party in this legal transaction, I had no choice of the parents who bought me. adoption has the flavor of slavery, life bought and sold, and whether the adoption is good or bad it does not change the fact that it genetically disconnects the child.
I was born with the femoral anteversion. My left leg was twisted backwards, and I wore braces and slept in shoes that were nailed to the end of my bed. I was strapped into them every night to keep that leg straight and every night I escaped, but the shoes had a second affect. They kept me connected to my original self, the way I was born. To this day I sleep with my right leg over my left, which is pointed back to the original position, back to my beginnings.
I was slow to speak, rejected shoes, hid in trees, slept blanketless in moon lit rooms.
In the Dreamtime a woman reached across and spoke my other name.
I’m not courageous, but I am curious. The time between the decisions and the implementation can take months or even years. Finally I took the first tenuous toddler steps and asked the mother who raised me, what she knew of the woman who bore me.
Susan... this is such an...authoritative statement on how it was to be brought up without that kind of voice, of clear cultural belonging. And this is why writing, and life-writing at its best (as here) matters to me so much, why this project does. I love that here is one of the places you're stepping forward with your story of be/longing.
And then there's the art of the piece too: how the real but also mythic-feeling fact of your foot brings such a powerful dimension to the story.
(I worked once on a series of projects with a female stone carver who was adopted. Her first published work around that experience so central to her world view and art-making also featured a shoe, albeit of a different kind. You might be interested to read that essay here: https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/artefact-a-footnote-by-jo-sweeting/)
I'm so glad you've joined this project, and here is your link to your piece in the story archive:
What do you want? I've been pondering this question in this season and here's my contribution. Thanks Tanya for creating this space - I love the reciprocity of writing together in this way. This is my first contribution.
"What do you want?" Olivia asked me over a spontaneous FaceTime catchup.
We talked about our dreams. About how we could cultivate a life we wanted to live.
It was beautiful. We are kindreds, but not by blood.
We spoke about contentment and how we’re still searching for it.
We talked about success and how we're reframing it.
Something was waking up inside each of us. Sparks of electricity flowing between us.
She told me about her idea, Olive Edit - a wardrobe edit for people.
She was tentative. “Friends first and see how it goes.”
I talked about failure and reasoned that maybe I hadn’t failed at all but that I was trying to meet other people’s expectations?
When we spoke, we were fully alive. Her eyes sparkled, mine did too.
"I would love that! I said. "My 7 year old niece, not so quietly, mentioned to me that I wear the same light brown dungaree dress and striped back long sleeve top everyday!"
And it was true.
"I could use a little help. And this is important work.” I said.
“This is about clothes but it’s also about our lives.”
She asked me to begin with 3 words that reflect my values and we would go from there. I know the first one – “Simple,” I said.
By the end of the process she said I would have a wardrobe and I would be happy with every item I have in there. She was confident and I believed her.
“But my husband said that people wouldn't pay for that kind of thing.” I could feel her mood dampening.
“I would pay for that! You’re coming over for a weekend this Summer!”
You have something beautiful to offer. That’s worth pursuing.
This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s about an awakening. Her awakening.
Ellie! Welcome to the project, and thank you for this first (of what I hope will be many) contributions. Having women friends has been the joy and surprise of my life since my mid-thirties (my 20s being friendless apart from work colleagues) - I love how you capture the energy, the joy, of the conversations that happen when like-minded, large-hearted women talk their dreams into reality. Just beautiful.
Thank you so much Tanya! I’m excited to be here and yes the first of many contributions! Thank you for this offering for emerging writers, it’s exactly right for me at this time!
Thank you for the encouragement to revisit this moment. Tiny and momentous, it seemed to be the only real option to take. I still wonder what if though ....
It was a hot summer that year.
From May to August Marie Peters and I walked the canal in Tommy K’s that chafed our ankles, sometimes in Scholls, soon abandoned after too many times of hurt insteps and cramped toes from clinging to their unforgiving support. The pathways turned dusty and brown, the canal, lower than I’d ever seen it forged slowly onward. Choked in weed at parts, host to predatory pike in the bends, and cheerfully inappropriate fishermen on the banks.
Marie and I, friends from junior school but separated by the 11+, somehow found each other during those weeks of limbo, all our previous routine displaced by O’Levels and CSEs, we met to journey together through free falling days. United by the AEB timetables, and a sense of something ending, something beginning.
We laughed about me being woken up by the Deputy Head and taken, in her powder blue jag to sit my Physical Geography exam, a journey that both humiliated and exhilarated me. About Marie’s hatred of the Games Teacher, talented runner that she was, and her pleasure in infuriating them by her refusal to perform to the school’s glory.
We circled, orbiting planets in a moment of conjunction, results day.
Failure of 6 O’Levels for me; I discounted the CSEs they were of no consequence; reasonable results for her, but our mutual disaffection with school, with education, was already set.
We would not return. Marie had a job already as a telephonist receptionist, found for her by her father the caretaker at the local Catholic secondary school. I had been beguiled by an advert for GPO telephonist training,
I would have skill! My parents celebrated, unaware of my abject failure.
Wendy... thank you so much for joining the project. This piece is so affecting to me: you've captured so powerfully that post-school summer for so many working-class young adults - in your time, mine, and still now I think. The lassitude, the heavy element feeling of it.
And it's also stylistically powerful: the way you don't refer to a question at all because there was none. Apart from the drive in the blue jag that your Deputy Head took you on, there was no alternative direction or view, no question of alternative futures. And this is what gives your piece such unsettling power.
It's also what makes you writing for the project now, all these years later, so exciting. You are doing something so very different than your time and place could have imagined...
Here is your link and I've added you with pleasure to the A to Z of contributors.
May 26, 2023·edited May 26, 2023Liked by Tanya Shadrick
Rhododendron walks
Under the rhodies, sound and light dark-damped. Fusty soil and rot and chlorophyll and—in May—flowers (but those were on the outside of the tunnels and we were within). Do you remember the tunnels, Daddy? Do you remember the smells?
Duckboards wrapped with non-slip chicken-wire. Their song so familiar: ti-clunk ti-clunk ti-clunk. Wellington boots on twisted metal on wood on boggy ground. Do you remember the sound of them, Daddy?
Out. Blinking onto the swan-guarded bank. Lakeside swan-avoidance smells emanate from the glaucous spikes. Minty, but not mint… but… rushes! A smell all of their own. Do you remember the rush-crush, Daddy?
Sweet chestnut stands beyond for prickly lime-green Yule-tide forages. Do you remember those, Daddy?
Furthest point: best bit. Magic sand. Particles of finest silt and clay. Alum Bay colours though it would be years before I’d bring back a bottle from there. Grief-stricken and homesick. Do you remember the sand, Daddy? Do you remember the feel of it under a scribing stick?
Do you remember the old weeping willow watching our lake walks from the far bank, Daddy?
Do you remember the snow on Christmas Day, Daddy? The fern by your desk?
Do you remember Mummy was out, my brother asleep, and I felt poorly so you lifted me.
h into your arms, Daddy? I think this is the only time.
g
i
High h
Do you remember any of those moments, Daddy?
I remember them for us, Daddy. For you.
Kid xx
PS I can’t remember if you held my hand, Daddy? Did you?
How full of sensory memory this is... an absolute concentrate of a child's love and longing for a usually out-of-reach father. I'm sure there will be others here who read it and share my bereftness at not even having had a single moment like this with a male parent. You've conveyed so well the yearning for touch and closeness.
I've put your piece up under Anonymous but I realise I need not to do that now there are so many contributors. I will be contacting the other person who had that for the pieces too to ask them to provide a pseudonym or two initials. If you could choose something and let me know as soon as you can I'd be glad - especially as I'm hoping you will be offering more stories for the collection!
May 27, 2023·edited May 27, 2023Liked by Tanya Shadrick
Hi Tanya,
This came, fully formed, a tumble of words not jostling to have themselves heard in any order, but almost as you see it here (bar that pesky bit of formatting! ;) I’ve added a pseudonym to my profile, thank you for that suggestion, and I do intend to offer more stories. The short format is both constraining and freeing.
Hello — this is my first submission. Many thanks to you Tanya for your unwavering encouragement!
I sat hunched and small, a fizzing bundle of self-hatred and yearning, a 22-year old woman in the front passenger seat of a small muddy Peugeot. Dusk spring skies darkened quickly. A sole blackbird chanted dutifully, highlighting the yawning silences between our words.
He spoke softly.
“But — do you not love me anymore?”
It had taken me months to get to this point. A slow process of noticing, feeling, knowing. Wishing otherwise.
It would be years before I would experience my own trust, my own heart, broken. But somehow I sensed it: that this was the worse side of the deal. That doing the breaking is worse.
My heartbeat was doing strange things. Speeding and slowing. My neck ached from cowed posture. I gazed up at the empty terrace in front of the car, felt my thumb rubbing against the fabric of the seat, searching for familiarity, reassurance.
I inhaled slowly, silently, and considered his question.
And considered what was beneath it. What was really being asked, by both of us, was not of love but: where do we go from here? Is this the end? Can we carry on, even if we want to?
I loved him, but that was beside the point, and I didn’t understand why. All I knew was the tight itch in the centre of my chest was whispering leave, go, stretch. This isn’t for you anymore.
So much about my life depended on what I said next. Oh, the vertiginous height of a binary decision. And right before I spoke I felt the weight of all that I knew I would eventually be brave enough to give up: the supportive family, the home to escape to, the friendship group. First love’s gentle adoration and sharp fierceness. Its history powerful, but not quite enough.
Rebecca - it means so very much to me that you've joined this project. And what a moving piece this is. So many lines that had me catch my breath with how fully you've conveyed the pain of separating... 'I loved him, but that was beside the point, and I didn't understand why'; 'the tight itch in the centre of my chest', 'the vertiginous height of a binary decision'.
You also had me feel a sudden and new compassion for my Other Love, got from this surprising line: 'Doing the breaking is worse.' I'm humbled by that perspective. Yes, the difficulty of pushing away a person who cares for you.
Here is your link, and I hope this will be the first of many, as I will value learning more of your story, but also seeing how you respond as a writer to the different prompts:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#rebeccabroad
I've added you to the A to Z of contributors on the Community page of the book's site and to the same list here on my Substack within the By Readers tab.
Txxx
Thank you so much, Tanya! I've not had someone read and digest a piece of my writing since... well, I can't quite remember. And to know it helped you feel something! Is there any better compliment?!
I look forward to the next prompt (and probably to perusing past prompts, too).
I love the "Oh.." I soared up to you with that little sound, and teetered alongside you as you decided whether or not to leap. I thought the delicate pacing of the piece was also very good. Something I need to learn to do, too.
Anoushka, thank you so much for this comment! I can't tell you how encouraging it feels to have someone focus on specific words, specific aspects of my writing. Until sharing this here I'm not sure I'd experienced that properly before. It feels so affirming. I look forward to reading your pieces.
I love this for all the reasons Tanya gives. It resonates so strongly, and your writing is simply beautiful.
Thank you so much, Laura – your response and Tanya's mean a lot to me!
We're huddled under a blanket, by a fire. I am drunk. My friend hugs me, strokes my hair.
"You always ask me that when you're drunk", she says. "Of course I will. Of course".
My friend is a hairdresser. The thing I always ask her when I'm drunk is "Will you do my daughter's hair for her wedding?". My daughter is 8, is 12, is 15...I've been asking this for years.
Sometimes we have cried when I ask this question. Sometimes we've laughed as well. We cry because we don't think I'll make it to that wedding. We cry because what I'm really asking is "Will you be there for her? Will you have tissues in your bag in case she needs them? Will you hug her and tell her she looks beautiful? That she is beautiful? That she is loved?".
I am lucky. I've been here longer than anybody expected. My health rollercoasts a little, but my body never gets back to where it was. The cancer is slow - so slow - but implacable.
I'm about to restart chemotherapy, so this is raw. It's hard to write.
Of course, I'm not just asking about a wedding, I'm asking about mothering. Who will mother my children? I recruit friends, relatives. Now they're old enough I try to help them mother themselves, and each other. Sometimes I think they're better at it than I am.
'So this is raw. It's hard to write.'
Yes... and yet (as with your poems) there is always this determination coming through that gives strength and shape to what you are experiencing.
These questions you ask of your friend: I read them aloud in my quiet kitchen, even though my voice caught on them. Only small way I could find to do something with the wish to be in walking distance of you, your home, so I could come tell you straight away of how it felt to read you, and know you're heading into treatment once again.
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#sarahconnor
xxx
That's such a lovely image, Tanya. You are so good at these small rituals. When I read this, I thought of you telling Nye how to take care of your boy before they wheeled you into theatre. I've just reread it and teared up. There's an amazing piece by Wendy Pratt about how parents care for their children's graves. We try so hard to be good parents, despite everything.
Thank you. And even though you are about to start treatment again - because you are - I want so much finally to send Birds of Firle to you: even if you only send it straight back with no note. I want it to reach you. And I'd like - very much - if you and Anja would be happy to select one or more poems from your collection to be used on the Birds of Firle website so I can share word of your collection with an order link? Might that be possible? xxx
Oh, yes! That would be wonderful! Anja is pretty busy this week (submission period for her next anthology and eating her own weight in patisserie). I'll have a chat with her. The Birds of Firle is such an inspiring project. 🪶xxx
Hi Tanya
Like some others this is my first submission so adding my thanks for the support and encouragement. I feel quite nervous and exposed. I'm new to Substack too so haven't read many other contributions yet - I wanted to stop myself from going to comparison and judgement before I'd written anything so I'm really looking forward to doing some reading now....
That autumn everything changed. The summer had been strange, foreboding somehow. We’d been to Bournemouth to visit my grandparents – my mother, my sister and me. Mum was strange, unpredictable, her tongue lashed, her skin was grey, eyes dull. I didn’t think too much about any of this at the time. I was 14 and my teenage angst had little to do with Mum and her mood.
September came. Back to boarding school - the usual gut wrenching, punch of homesickness; existence made bearable by twice weekly letters from home. But now her writing sloped, words falling off the page, thoughts and pen dropping to the floor.
“I’m having a little trouble with my arm and leg – nothing to worry about.”
And for a while I believed her. My mind was full of dreams, of plans, of boys and books.
I’m lying in my bed, in my dormitory. January 1972 – the miners are on strike, power cuts, gloom, and a growing chill – sensations of aloneness and foreboding I’m coming to know well. There’s frost on the windows. Christmas has been and gone. I’d been home for the holidays. Mum is wearing a caliper now and a wig. She can’t drive or walk more than a few steps. Her head hurts and nothing is said.
Her letters have stopped. I’m scared and full of dread. I write a letter to Dad. He’s coming to see me. “At last I’ll know”, I say at first, but inwardly my body trembles.
I’m cold, freezing cold and my tummy churns. Dad is here now. His eyes fill with tears, and I know the answer. I squeeze my nails into my palms until it hurts. I must be brave. I must not cry. I must be good.
“What’s the matter with Mum?”
Carolyn, I'm so glad you've joined the project. And what a moving first piece this is - conveying with such poignant force how you were kept apart from knowledge of your mother's condition several times over: by the reticence of that time/place to discuss health, by your physical separateness at boarding school. Also the difficult of us as children to ask for what we need - and also fear - to know.
Here is your link to your piece in the archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#carolyndew
This project, this community, is one where we are all committed to the opposite of the unsaid and unexamined. It's a gentle place where so many are entrusting - often for the first time - their most important memories and reflections.
I also saw your comment on the hello thread about your faith - a worry that you will be judged for that. Again, there is a theme specifically about faith and I would love you to contribute to that:
https://open.substack.com/pub/tanyashadrick/p/the-cure-for-sleep-december-issue?r=1fj7x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
But your faith might also be part of other themes you respond to!
Tanya xx
Hi Tanya I can't tell you how encouraging it is to be read and responded too. I feel like I'm inhaling support and being inspired to keep going, showing up and being vulnerable. That vulnerability about exposing myself is something I'm really tapping into in this process. I love your comment about his being a gentle place....this is my experience.
I was intrigued by your comment about my faith as I don't think I did mention that in my hello comment - I went back to check so maybe that was someone else. I'm going to look at that thread and have a read around the other themes you suggest. I'd love to contribute again. My faith would be such a rich topic to explore - animism, my growing up in a Quaker environment - lots to reflect on.
Blessings x
I'm sorry I confused you with another Carolyn! But how much I'd love to hear about your Quaker upbringing if a theme here feels like a right fit for that... xx
‘Do you have children?’
Just like that. Anywhere and everywhere.
People will ask me this question even before they ask me my name. Without any warning and without giving me the chance to avoid the subject. I brace myself for it almost every day, although the grief is settling into that familiar feeling I know will become part of me and I will just have to learn to live with. But I can still feel my heart tightening, my body tensing up, the mask setting and my face contorting into disarming ugliness (I caught sight of myself in a mirror once and I was shocked) because I am still smiling. Most people do not seem to notice or, if they do, it’s too late, we will have to run through the awkward motions and see the conversation through. I have considered making up answers and making it easier for me and the other person, and I am becoming bolder so maybe I will: ‘yes, a little boy’, ‘yes, yes, I do – five-year-old twin girls’, ‘yes, three teenagers currently living with their father in Vietnam’. Instead, I wish I could tell them how not having children has heightened my fear of death for example. I do not want anyone’s pity or sympathy though, and I most certainly do not want my childness to define me. But I would prefer to continue to be honest and I do reserve myself the right to make it clear that, no, it has not been a choice I have been given the chance to make. Think twice before you ask the question next time, I always want to say. Give it time. Because the answer may very well be the same as mine:
‘No. Sadly not. And I find it heartbreaking to talk about it.’
Such fierce anger I felt on your part reading this. The outrageous, unnecessary, lazy curiosity of people. A version of which I endured too during my years of fertility treatment when it was assumed by everyone that it 'was me' not my husband. Some of the things said to me then went in like splinters and - in reading your piece - I see are still there in me, painful, pointed.
And there is a breathtaking courage and dignity to your last line.
In one of the comments below, I see you've said that you're trying to strengthen your voice. I already found your work powerful, which is why you were an immediate choice for mentoring last year. But this latest piece is, yes, stronger still. You have said something irrefutable, unarguable. You make a case for yourself - and many others too.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#mariasimoes
Txxx
Thank you so much, Tanya. I went through a period of fertility treatments too and it’s one of those things that only those who’ve been through it seem to really get. I am sorry you’ve also had to experience it. And that should have read ‘childlessness’! Every single time I submit I then spot something wrong! 😅 I suppose that’s why editors are so crucial. xx
I saw the 'childness' and chose not to raise it with you - it seemed like a deliberate choice of word by you rather than a typo. So I italicised it and kept it! I quite like its impact - a redefining of your position at the level of language, in keeping with what you're doing in the second half of the piece when you are considering and rejecting ways to deal with what you shouldn't have to...
But let me know if you'd like to have it read 'childlessness' and I will change!
Txx
Ah, that’s really interesting - let’s leave it as it is then! x
Such a powerful, emotional piece. Your description of the physical impact of this unthinking question (which I’ve also heard many times) is so well written - although I’m very sorry you have to endure it each time.
Thank you, Davina!
This is very powerful Maria - beautiful writing xx
Thank you so much, Helen. I’m trying to strengthen my voice. Your piece is beautiful too - I couldn’t stop reading it. xx
Thank you, Tanya, for encouraging me to contribute, and for writing such a phenomenal book in The Cure for Sleep! This is my first submission.
That deepest unspoken fear of mine: a seizure during sleep, and being found in the morning, dead in bed, haunted me. I have been scared to think wild thoughts in case it tipped my mind into riotous colour. Seeing sounds, chewing lips. I’d known for years before I had a diagnosis that there was something unusual.
I asked my neurologist gingerly, unable to keep the wobble from my voice: ‘When it feels like I am dying, am I really dying?’
Voicing the question that had privately troubled me for 15 years.
He was young-ish, probably about my own age, and he looked at my notes instead of at me. He paused, put down his pen and swallowed awkwardly in that magnolia-coloured box of a room we were in together.
‘No,’ he said carefully. ‘You’re not dying. Your brain just thinks you are.’
I breathed out for the first time in years and nodded, unspeaking.
He might have been feeding me a comforting lie.
But it he was, it worked.
Anxiety, which had been grabbing me and twisting me into hunched forms, lessened.
I took my fears and began weaving them into the tapestry of my life. Fear lifted for a couple of days or so at first, but then for weeks, until I realised it had been months.
No longer stuffed into a tightly closed box, my epilepsy became something I could speak about.
I let my wild mind untangle and stretch itself out, to create new things.
Ideas, long stifled – if I gave them room to breathe, I worried they would drag me in and damage my brain – were freed.
It left room.
And I grew into that space.
Alice, I'm thrilled you've joined the project. Thank you.
This first piece from you hit me hard because my mother has a terminal diagnosis and asked me a question similar to yours the other night, 'catching my heart off guard' (in Heaney's phrase). It was this: 'I've been holding my breath as long as I can to practice being dead. Is that what it will feel like?'
That's my personal reason for being so affected by your piece, but then there's my editorial pleasure in it. The way you've used language all to do with contorting, containing, hunching before the question and its answer... and then that expansion into weaving, tapestry, creation, coherence. Even though your condition can't be cured, you have a new and more expansive relationship to it... and so this piece being here in the story archive feels like a privilege, and also a proof of that.
I will be so interested to read what you do with other prompts in the project!
Here is your link and I've added you to the A to Z of contributors, with pleasure.
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#alicemurphypyle
Txxx
Thank you so so much, and for gracefully correcting my typo! (That serves me right for fiddling around!). I’m really excited to see my words join the project and am so grateful. I’ve spent my adult life feeling shy and it feels very revealing to put my words out into the world, and so to have a warm reception is marvellous.
I’m sorry your mum is ill. When the parent-child relationship reverses I think it’s even more complicated when it wasn’t straightforward to begin with. I hope her good days outweigh the bad overall xx
The question was lost in the statement, and found later in the pleading explanation. “I want to die”. The missing conjunction: and will you let me? The parts of this unfinished sentence as broken as she was, as separate as we were. Forced apart by this illness, our communications, emotionally easy but physically impossible, had taken the form of long, intimate, soothing text messages. Today’s had simply said: “Can you speak?”
“When?”
“Now?”
Well enough to speak, for the first time in two years, this was progress. My heart started going. I didn’t know then that it wouldn’t stop until hers did. I had no time to figure out this feeling. Here was her voice, finally.
“I want to die”
All of a sudden, here we were, so close and so far apart.
I gave her the response that no one else would give. The response her body refused, locked as they were in their daily conflict. The response that went against the instinct and responsibility of any parent or doctor. The response that kept me close to her. I couldn’t have her rally against me as she did with all those hell-bent on keeping her alive. I couldn’t lose her before I had no say in the matter.
In giving her the permission to go, I hoped she might grasp to life. Having her pain and knowing acknowledged might be an act of empowerment, propelling her toward life, instead of away from it. I knew it was a gamble and I had more to lose.
I wonder now if the unsaid question was “Do you know me?” or perhaps “Are you my friend?” On the day she died, I felt special. We’d colluded to this end.
I wish I was living just a few doors away from you, so I could knock on your door and ask you how it felt to write this? And how you feel about your writing now this season? For me, as its reader, there was a surge of certainty: this has the sort of certainty - of style and thought both - that there is in Cusk, in Levy. I want to keep reading you. I want to know if you're working yet on longer pieces, and where you are planning to show or send them... so much to ask and listen if you're wanting another walk any time soon.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#laura
And are you still wanting to remain as a first name only within the story archive, or should I be adding your last name?
Txxx
I would love that, but I hope none of your family would be expecting you back for a few hours! And you would have found me in tears. I've held back from writing this story, not knowing if I could get outside myself enough to see clearly, as it is so deeply embedded within every part of me. I've just finished reading Amy Key's book and that spurred me on as she writes so honestly. I knew I could easily tell this story with me as the selfless heroine. Instead I wanted to capture the reality, that in someone's darkest moment, I was still capable of selfishness. I wrote a bad first version, and then this one which I was happy enough with but I feel there is a longer piece in this - certainly some areas need more explanation if you aren't in my head! It seems I need the luxury of a bank holiday to write anything so no longer work yet. I would love to walk with you soon while we have this glorious weather. And first name only for now please if that's ok (so I can write without worrying too much who reads). Thank you so much for the wonderful encouragement xx
I really can't stop thinking about this latest piece from you. Such power. Is the last weekend in June free for you for a walk on either the Saturday or Sunday? I need to get through G's GCSEs and immediate aftermath but by end of month I will be properly free if you are...
Terrible questions. How terrible a question might ever be? It’s the intention and intensity that matters; that sweet spot between a medicine and a poison.
For me the gaps that are left by the unasked ones are much worse. The silence that loaded with mistrust and misunderstanding. Some of them are as big as crevasses high in the mountains and far too uncomfortable to stay around. Others are like sinkholes in a pretty manicured garden with uniformed lawns and perfectly shaped hedges. Dig a tad deeper and you are at risk of unearthing long forgotten lead mine from two centuries ago.
Terrible unasked questions will sentence you to a life of loneliness as deep as those unseen old mines. Small talk and polite manners keep one in one’s place. The place one doesn’t want to belong...
How are you?
I’m fine; kids are Fine; husband’s FIne; we are FINe! FINE! WE ARE ALL FINE…..
This is fierce writing, and this line in particular has such authority: 'It’s the intention and intensity that matters; that sweet spot between a medicine and a poison.'
Thank you as ever for contributing, Elena, and for how you read others' work here. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#elenayates
Txx
Thank you, Tanya! It wasn’t meant to be fierce but you probably right. I’ve read it again and can see how easily it could be misinterpreted. I’ve always been the one asking “terrible” questions and being told off by my parents. That habit still gets me in trouble. I’d never ask anything that I wouldn’t have wanted to be asked and I guess that’s an issue in itself, but so tricky to put oneself in other’s shoes. I don’t mind at all if you’d rather not put it on your website 🤗xxx
I meant it in an admiring way - but I realise that several times this has happened with us now: that the words I choose when responding to your work don’t convey to you what I meant. I wonder if there is a different way I can receive your work that avoids you feeling this discomfort (which is of course not intended on my part as I value your contributions). Perhaps I could simply say thank you when you submit work? I won’t try to explain further here what I meant (positively) by ‘fierce’ in case it only amplifies your concerns… Instead, I will only say thank you & assure you it has been curated already, with pleasure.
Oh,no! I value your comments so much! Please, please keep them coming. I have a lot of blind spots, especially coming from another culture, so it’s all so so important for me. And you are so perceptive.
Not sure what other times you were referring to. Maybe the two pieces in Hagitude you didn’t comment? I assumed it was accidental though 🤗xxx
I would never not comment on something so with Hagitude (as here) it would only be accidental - the volume of messages I get on both channels is truly huge and although I’m very organised with how I flag them incoming some may get missed. Will you DM me on Hagitude with links to those pieces when you can?
Several of the closest people to me in my home life - my husband, my daughter - use language, use words, in a very different way to me. We sometimes have to go a few times each to each til our intent is received as meant. I value this effort - as I do with you here. But today I felt I should check what was best for you. Please do always assume positive feedback on my part though! In the rare times I need to check something with a contributor here (usually to do with privacy of a person they’re describing) I always approach that in a gentle but direct way. Any non-replied are due to volume of messages!
No problem at all, and don’t worry about it. I know that you’ve got so much on your plate at the moment. I signed up for mentoring with Katy Aalto and had two sessions already. It’s been really good, albeit a bit overwhelming xx
Oh yes that safe response that many of us give in to! Down here in Australia the response offered is 'good', everything is good from the weather to the day to our health and so on. It is interesting. I, like you ask the terrible questions, in my personal life and professional too (though here I get away with it:-) and always like you also say, I only ask questions that I would answer myself, if I were to be asked. It is lovely to find a kindred spirit!
I really enjoyed reading this, thank you Elena.
Tracey x
Thank you so much, Tracey! Such a lovely response. Really made my evening xx
Elena, You had incredible metaphors here, so visual. So true, our response is often fine if there is no safe spot for the truth to land. Also, I read in a reply to Tanya that you are working with Katy Aalto. Me too! I am in the nature and place based writing class. Such a shift from writing these short pieces. My brain hurts sometimes. If you like, keep me posted on how it goes. Here's my email address: sheilaknell@yahoo.com No pressure though if you don't want to, life gets busy. xx
Thank you, Sheila! Great idea. Will write to you now 🙂💕
Another newbie here. I've just finished Tanya's book (a timely and much-needed read) and decided to get involved. This is my first submission.
"In the small hours of the night with my willpower expended and the animal heat of my son bundled safely in my arms, I petition Google with incoherent strings of keywords, "poor eye contact ceiling fan hates clapping". The words, which feel like a betrayal, form a kind of spell or instruction sending the search engine’s spiders off crawling the web for the gossamer threads which link the terms. As I scroll through the results (returned too soon as if there was no doubt or reason to hesitate), my heart thumps towards a crescendo and then fades out leaving me feeling transparent; edgeless, "Classic sign of autism in early infancy", "'Red Flags' That Warrant a Referral", "Worried about Autism at early age".
Autism? That word and its question mark echoed through my first year of motherhood. There were signs and I saw them. Undeniable and unequivocal. At first the question was silent. Trapped entirely in the black box of my mind. It felt dangerous to speak the word out loud, as if voicing it might create something where there was nothing.
In the light of day, as I folded my son’s small clothes or offered him spoonfuls of sweet potato purée, this superstitious thinking embarrassed me. Perhaps it was more helpful, more reasonable, to view the status of my son’s neurotype as less of a black cat and more of a Schrödinger’s cat. By keeping the question in mind, unvoiced, I was keeping the lid on the box. My son was both autistic and not. But that too felt like a delusion. Surely cats and brains are either one thing or another? I see now that I was buying myself time. Time to mother in the present, without having to invite in the outside world and its questions."
Anoushka, I'm so glad you've joined the project. You've given voice here to something so many parents go through in private, painfully, feeling so isolated. The beginning of that process of knowing something in a loved one needs to be investigated, supported...
It's a generous offering to the community therefore. Thank you.
And as a piece of prose, I admire how you've shown the contrast between your solitary nights of online searching with the different kind of more tactile care-taking/giving that belongs to daytime: the laundry, the food.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive, and I hope you will respond to other themes in the archive as and when you can...
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#anoushkayeoh
Txx
Thank you for your comment, Tanya - and for your marvellously subtle and effective edits in the linked version.
Ah I hope you didn't mind me making those. If it's substantive changes I think need to be made for the meaning to be clear I always check in advance. With formatting - due to the volume of stories I'm receiving! - I make changes that I think will work with the way stories look online but am always happy to change once a contributor has checked...
xx
Not at all! They were definite improvements. Thank you!
Hello and welcome to this beautiful space! I enjoyed reading your piece so very much. I am grateful for not having the internet to turn to when I first became a mother because I am sure it would have been tempting to seek answers to the oh so many things that we are just not sure about in those early days.
I love the line...It felt dangerous to speak the word out loud..." because it resonates so much. So many times, over the years I have felt this way about all sorts of thoughts.
Thank you.
Tracey x
Last words
‘Why are you so quiet Helen?’
A text message at 6.30am. ‘You need to come now’. A stomach lurching awakening. 4 hours to think about 49 years. To reflect on the unsaid, the hurt, the pain, the disappointment. A life. Foot to the floor, a reel of words and memories flashing by. How can I choose? ‘Don’t leave anything unsaid’ they told me. It’s all fucking unsaid. There’s no time now for any of this.
Where will they go, these unspoken words? I don’t want them anymore. I want them to leave with him, for him to own them in his skin but that seems cruel, unnecessary now. I’m driving too fast through a life long tunnel of duty and doing the right thing. It haunts me but it won’t stop the clock. We just aren’t that kind of family.
Death looks uncomfortable. Weird, out of sync. Chaotic sentences, arms twitching. Morphine soothes him but it doesn’t help us witness. His hands are freezing and his finger tips white. I hold his hand as I haven’t done in 40 years. Sliding away. Where does it go, this force, this energy, all these words. Gone in one last long groaning breath then waxy yellow silence.
‘Why are you so quiet Helen?’ was the last question he asked me. It has all stayed inside me until I can find a place to leave it behind.
This is such a powerful piece on its own - with lines that do so much in so few words to compress the off-kilter and painful aspects of death approaching in a person with whom there is unfinished/unstarted emotional work: 'driving too fast through a lifelong tunnel of duty and the doing the right thing', 'waxy yellow silence'.
And it sent me back to your Voices piece - that eloquent and full last paragraph where you show how hard you work with your own children to understand their inner lives. The two pieces read together are more than doubly moving.
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#helenlouise
Txxx
Thanks so much as always Tanya- I think I am definitely processing the loss of my father in more ways than I anticipated and it’s definitely coming through in these pieces! Thanks for giving me the chance to write about it through your wonderful project xx
It's moving to see you using the project in this way. Several others in the community have been doing this too - exploring from different angles through the themes a single monumental aspect of their life story/history. xx
Helen Louise this is a moving piece indeed! You have conveyed so much emotion and there are many magickal lines that conjure up so very much!
There is so much here.
Tracey xx
Amazingly, this is my second submission. Thank you, Tanya, for encouraging me to keep writing!
'Did I say goodbye to you?'
I don’t know, can’t remember. An unsaid moment, a memory unmade.
And yet something precious that I needed to cling to and reassure myself of afterwards. Both as a child and now, fully grown with a daughter the same age as I was. Or perhaps not fully grown…still rootlessly stuck in the past.
I can picture getting up and getting ready for school. Brushing my teeth in the icy bathroom, sharp light filtering through the translucent glass. Stroking our sleepy cat, hastily throwing books into my bag, slurping my breakfast of soggy cereal. All the other ordinary, routine things that morning I remember in detail. But I can’t recall the one thing that really mattered, still matters. It’s haunted me for years.
Friends and family tried to help. You’d have said it automatically, they say, you probably wouldn’t have remembered because it’s something people almost always say without thinking.
But somehow I needed to know that I said it. Such a small word, but with so much significance. I wish I’d given some thought to it just that once. Because it was the last time I would ever see you.
You were standing back to hold the front door open, letting the sunlight in, letting me out. Still in your nightie and dressing gown, tired and careworn because you’d been up all night again. Keeping him company, talking calmly because he couldn’t sleep and the pills still weren’t working. You’d have had to get dressed and head to work soon after I left, ironically leaving him deep asleep on the settee.
I remember reaching the end of the path, stopping and waving back to you. You were smiling at me. I’ve held on to that smile for years.
'Goodbye Mum.'
I curated this while blinking away tears. For your loss, but also because of how you've described so well what is also an experience shared by so many of us: the way the details of a room, a day, when everything changed haunt us in memory - every detail fixed, even when we wish we could go back and change something. 'Sharp light filtering through the translucent glass' - this line had me catch my breath. That's how it is, exactly.
So very glad you've joined the project. Write for as many prompts as you like - I love seeing community members build a whole body of work through the themes...
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#davinaadamson
Txx
Thank you for your kind words, Tanya. I can’t tell you how much these mean. Although I struggled to get these thoughts outside of my head after so long, it was a relief & comfort to put them here in a safe space & have them so warmly received by yourself and others. Very grateful for this community. Thank you also for the link, plus the renewed encouragement to keep going. Davina xx
Heart strings pulling and tears and more tears. So moving.
Tracey x
Thank you so much for letting me know my piece reached out and moved you, Tracey. x
This is such a powerful piece. Full of yearning. Those short sentences and phrases piling up on each other, drawing us in. I'd love to read more of this.
Thank you, Anoushka. It was difficult & I swithered about submitting, so I’m very grateful for your feedback. I hadn’t realised, but ‘yearning’ exactly captures how I felt when writing it. Heartened to know that the feeling came through and connected with you.
Tanya, Maybe not the most difficult, but as soon as I heard her on her podcast ask this, this just poured out of me. Even though my kids are young adults and independent and strong, I still get sad thinking I won't be here to cook for them one day. Also, this is work that has come from the octopus writing on longing...so thanks! xx
Sharon Blackie asks: If death came now, what would it look like? Death would be a woman, kind, firm, ethereal, persistent in her longing to take me from the kitchen I longed to remain in. I would ask her for another day, time to cook another meal, load the fridge and freezer, the canning shelves, the crock pot and oven, cupboards stocked full. I would want a lifetime of food cooked for the kids, one more dish to let them know they are loved, soup for comfort, pies for joy, jams for the bread I won’t be there to bake. Death would be both gentle and fierce, this woman in white with full control, reminding me I had my time, it is over, perhaps placing her hand on my heart, telling me I did enough. I long to know I did enough.
Sheila! I don't know how I missed this from you! I can't anymore read all the subcomments on posts as the volume (especially in this year of Hagitude too!) is now too great. But I thought my system for seeing all new stories was absolutely on point (as my son would say).
I love how much you've give here in so few words. This line went straight in for me, as my darling gone Granny Shadrick was a bit jam (and pickle) maker: 'jams for the bread I won't be there to bake...' Oh my.
And then that last line. To know we've done enough - yes, yes.
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#sheilaknell
Tx
Tanya, I have been wondering lately how you keep up with it all, especially with the time you take to offer such beautiful responses! Thank you for this lovely reply and so happy it brought a memory of your Granny Shadrick. xxx
Ah... I do it by that Elves and the Shoemaker principle that I invoke throughout the book (as in my life): as with transcribing into type the scrolls after each long day in public writing them, I manage this mainly in the very early morning or late nights when paid work and family life leaves me a little time. As the community grows it's getting harder so I'm needing to be clearer on word limits and other community guidelines! The next newsletter will be asking everyone to read them (again). But it remains joy-giving for all the logistical challenges! xx
Chills once again Shelia! Your writings have a way of conveying so much more than the words on the page. So much is right there between the lines and all of it so thought provoking, moving and touching.
Thank you,
Tracey x
Thank you! I get so much joy from this space and sincerely appreciate that you take the time to respond. I haven’t had as much time lately to read responses from others but hope to get back soon. Xx
Looking forward to your next piece Shelia and meanwhile slowly finding your other offerings on here. This is such a wonderful space isn't it! 🙏
“I long to know I did enough”. So beautiful and so universal. Made me teary. I’m sending you a big hug 🤗
Thank you and a big hug right back!
Tell me what you’re afraid of.
How to push through the ache of fear that bridles my tongue? How to piece and police the tumble of raw emotions that shunt into my head at every, waking moment? How to know that if spoken, the darkness in my mouth won’t pool, thick like tar and engulf everything I love with the same sticky filth that lives in me now? How to believe that the words aren’t a spell of becoming? How do I say that I am sacrificing myself to save them from what I know and worse, what I don’t know but fear is true? How to trust that this person will know how to save me?
I don’t believe him. I don’t believe in him. He is just a ghost on the margins, while the things in my head are real, glossy and slick with fear, growing fat in the dark of my mouth. There is too much risk. Too much to lose.
My mouth is stitched shut. My teeth bite down on flesh. Blood wells.
I can’t say.
Katy you're doing such strong work here and over on your own Substack, which I'm reading with admiration. There's a fierceness to your honesty and a visceral force to it too. Then there are lines that do so much at all once... 'How to piece and police the tumble of raw emotions.'
I met you first through your generous and vividly-written reviewing of my book and other people's (your Ragged Grace one today is wonderful - I hope you've made Olivia aware of it); it's very exciting to see now your own voice and story taking up space.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#katywheatley
Txxx
Thank you. Kxxxx
Oh what wonderful writing Katy! So powerful!
Tracey x
Thank you, Tracey. x
MOTHER, I HAVE SOMETHING TO ASK
I am adopted.
At 41, had no ancestors, no ethnic background, no medical histories. I was my oldest living relative. I had no stories of Salem witches, no ink-stained signers of the Declaration of Independence, no
blacksmiths, pirates, whores, or suffragettes. My only blood relatives were my three little children.
Couch adoption in all the legalese, call it chosen/saved/rescued, the truth is that the mother who bore me signed a legal contract in which she gave away her firstborn daughter because… it is the because and the why that came to haunt me. As the third-party in this legal transaction, I had no choice of the parents who bought me. adoption has the flavor of slavery, life bought and sold, and whether the adoption is good or bad it does not change the fact that it genetically disconnects the child.
I was born with the femoral anteversion. My left leg was twisted backwards, and I wore braces and slept in shoes that were nailed to the end of my bed. I was strapped into them every night to keep that leg straight and every night I escaped, but the shoes had a second affect. They kept me connected to my original self, the way I was born. To this day I sleep with my right leg over my left, which is pointed back to the original position, back to my beginnings.
I was slow to speak, rejected shoes, hid in trees, slept blanketless in moon lit rooms.
In the Dreamtime a woman reached across and spoke my other name.
I’m not courageous, but I am curious. The time between the decisions and the implementation can take months or even years. Finally I took the first tenuous toddler steps and asked the mother who raised me, what she knew of the woman who bore me.
Susan... this is such an...authoritative statement on how it was to be brought up without that kind of voice, of clear cultural belonging. And this is why writing, and life-writing at its best (as here) matters to me so much, why this project does. I love that here is one of the places you're stepping forward with your story of be/longing.
And then there's the art of the piece too: how the real but also mythic-feeling fact of your foot brings such a powerful dimension to the story.
(I worked once on a series of projects with a female stone carver who was adopted. Her first published work around that experience so central to her world view and art-making also featured a shoe, albeit of a different kind. You might be interested to read that essay here: https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/artefact-a-footnote-by-jo-sweeting/)
I'm so glad you've joined this project, and here is your link to your piece in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#susanwuorinen
Txx
What do you want? I've been pondering this question in this season and here's my contribution. Thanks Tanya for creating this space - I love the reciprocity of writing together in this way. This is my first contribution.
"What do you want?" Olivia asked me over a spontaneous FaceTime catchup.
We talked about our dreams. About how we could cultivate a life we wanted to live.
It was beautiful. We are kindreds, but not by blood.
We spoke about contentment and how we’re still searching for it.
We talked about success and how we're reframing it.
Something was waking up inside each of us. Sparks of electricity flowing between us.
She told me about her idea, Olive Edit - a wardrobe edit for people.
She was tentative. “Friends first and see how it goes.”
I talked about failure and reasoned that maybe I hadn’t failed at all but that I was trying to meet other people’s expectations?
When we spoke, we were fully alive. Her eyes sparkled, mine did too.
"I would love that! I said. "My 7 year old niece, not so quietly, mentioned to me that I wear the same light brown dungaree dress and striped back long sleeve top everyday!"
And it was true.
"I could use a little help. And this is important work.” I said.
“This is about clothes but it’s also about our lives.”
She asked me to begin with 3 words that reflect my values and we would go from there. I know the first one – “Simple,” I said.
By the end of the process she said I would have a wardrobe and I would be happy with every item I have in there. She was confident and I believed her.
“But my husband said that people wouldn't pay for that kind of thing.” I could feel her mood dampening.
“I would pay for that! You’re coming over for a weekend this Summer!”
You have something beautiful to offer. That’s worth pursuing.
This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s about an awakening. Her awakening.
Kindreds.
I wish I could bottle it up.
Ellie! Welcome to the project, and thank you for this first (of what I hope will be many) contributions. Having women friends has been the joy and surprise of my life since my mid-thirties (my 20s being friendless apart from work colleagues) - I love how you capture the energy, the joy, of the conversations that happen when like-minded, large-hearted women talk their dreams into reality. Just beautiful.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#elliehobson
Tanya xx
Thank you so much Tanya! I’m excited to be here and yes the first of many contributions! Thank you for this offering for emerging writers, it’s exactly right for me at this time!
The power of women! I really enjoyed reading this Ellie, thank you for sharing.
Tracey x
Thank you so much Tracey x
Hi all, hi Tanya
Thank you for the encouragement to revisit this moment. Tiny and momentous, it seemed to be the only real option to take. I still wonder what if though ....
It was a hot summer that year.
From May to August Marie Peters and I walked the canal in Tommy K’s that chafed our ankles, sometimes in Scholls, soon abandoned after too many times of hurt insteps and cramped toes from clinging to their unforgiving support. The pathways turned dusty and brown, the canal, lower than I’d ever seen it forged slowly onward. Choked in weed at parts, host to predatory pike in the bends, and cheerfully inappropriate fishermen on the banks.
Marie and I, friends from junior school but separated by the 11+, somehow found each other during those weeks of limbo, all our previous routine displaced by O’Levels and CSEs, we met to journey together through free falling days. United by the AEB timetables, and a sense of something ending, something beginning.
We laughed about me being woken up by the Deputy Head and taken, in her powder blue jag to sit my Physical Geography exam, a journey that both humiliated and exhilarated me. About Marie’s hatred of the Games Teacher, talented runner that she was, and her pleasure in infuriating them by her refusal to perform to the school’s glory.
We circled, orbiting planets in a moment of conjunction, results day.
Failure of 6 O’Levels for me; I discounted the CSEs they were of no consequence; reasonable results for her, but our mutual disaffection with school, with education, was already set.
We would not return. Marie had a job already as a telephonist receptionist, found for her by her father the caretaker at the local Catholic secondary school. I had been beguiled by an advert for GPO telephonist training,
I would have skill! My parents celebrated, unaware of my abject failure.
Our destinies set, we parted.
Complicit in small horizons and limited choices.
Wendy... thank you so much for joining the project. This piece is so affecting to me: you've captured so powerfully that post-school summer for so many working-class young adults - in your time, mine, and still now I think. The lassitude, the heavy element feeling of it.
And it's also stylistically powerful: the way you don't refer to a question at all because there was none. Apart from the drive in the blue jag that your Deputy Head took you on, there was no alternative direction or view, no question of alternative futures. And this is what gives your piece such unsettling power.
It's also what makes you writing for the project now, all these years later, so exciting. You are doing something so very different than your time and place could have imagined...
Here is your link and I've added you with pleasure to the A to Z of contributors.
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#wendyclifford
Txxx
Dear Tanya, I feel seen, acknowledged, and valued. Thank you so much 💓
My pleasure, truly. It's a very powerful and skilled piece of writing you've given us.
Rhododendron walks
Under the rhodies, sound and light dark-damped. Fusty soil and rot and chlorophyll and—in May—flowers (but those were on the outside of the tunnels and we were within). Do you remember the tunnels, Daddy? Do you remember the smells?
Duckboards wrapped with non-slip chicken-wire. Their song so familiar: ti-clunk ti-clunk ti-clunk. Wellington boots on twisted metal on wood on boggy ground. Do you remember the sound of them, Daddy?
Out. Blinking onto the swan-guarded bank. Lakeside swan-avoidance smells emanate from the glaucous spikes. Minty, but not mint… but… rushes! A smell all of their own. Do you remember the rush-crush, Daddy?
Sweet chestnut stands beyond for prickly lime-green Yule-tide forages. Do you remember those, Daddy?
Furthest point: best bit. Magic sand. Particles of finest silt and clay. Alum Bay colours though it would be years before I’d bring back a bottle from there. Grief-stricken and homesick. Do you remember the sand, Daddy? Do you remember the feel of it under a scribing stick?
Do you remember the old weeping willow watching our lake walks from the far bank, Daddy?
Do you remember the snow on Christmas Day, Daddy? The fern by your desk?
Do you remember Mummy was out, my brother asleep, and I felt poorly so you lifted me.
h into your arms, Daddy? I think this is the only time.
g
i
High h
Do you remember any of those moments, Daddy?
I remember them for us, Daddy. For you.
Kid xx
PS I can’t remember if you held my hand, Daddy? Did you?
How full of sensory memory this is... an absolute concentrate of a child's love and longing for a usually out-of-reach father. I'm sure there will be others here who read it and share my bereftness at not even having had a single moment like this with a male parent. You've conveyed so well the yearning for touch and closeness.
I've put your piece up under Anonymous but I realise I need not to do that now there are so many contributors. I will be contacting the other person who had that for the pieces too to ask them to provide a pseudonym or two initials. If you could choose something and let me know as soon as you can I'd be glad - especially as I'm hoping you will be offering more stories for the collection!
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#anonymous
Tanya xx
Hi Tanya,
This came, fully formed, a tumble of words not jostling to have themselves heard in any order, but almost as you see it here (bar that pesky bit of formatting! ;) I’ve added a pseudonym to my profile, thank you for that suggestion, and I do intend to offer more stories. The short format is both constraining and freeing.
M.N.
You're now in the A to Z as M Nivalis. Thank you for that x