The messiest corner of our study contains several piles of my Russian family photos. Some hold happy memories, others – just memories or the absence of them.
There is a photo in that pile that unsettles me. It is black and white and slightly yellowed from age. There is a brief handwritten note on the back: Moscow, 22 August 1970. The day of my parents’ wedding.
It shows eleven people standing in a haphazard line against a lightly coloured and totally blank wall. You don’t need to understand much about photography to see that it was taken by an amateur and with little care for future memories. There is a certain awkwardness about this photo - in fact every detail of it reveals clumsiness and unease. Most people in the photograph are staring into space with a frozen expression of indifference. Only my mum looks radiantly happy and beautiful in the photo, as beautiful as she always looked in all her photographs taken before that day… but never after.
To the right of my mum is dad. Their arms barely touching. He is dressed in a suit and tie, probably the same one he wears to work every day. He is gazing across the room and straight through the camera.
For reasons I can only guess, my grandmother is not in the picture but what I do know for sure is that I’m in that photo. Yet invisible to anyone, I can see myself in my mum’s shining happiness that looks so out of place on that fading grey background.
How moving. And written with what I'm now coming to see as your gift for unsparing clear sightedness. You, even from earliest childhood, as a person really looking and listening, however hard that was.
And this line in particular. Oh my: Only my mum looks radiantly happy and beautiful in the photo, as beautiful as she always looked in all her photographs taken before that day… but never after.
Thank you, Tanya! Yes, it was a bit like that, spending most of my time watching others to find the answers to all my questions and to keep myself safe xx
I'm always struck wondering how many women have looked back on pictures of mothers/grandmothers and have seen that hope and happiness but know that it ended soon after. You, able to see that your grandma not being there as well as your dad's posture was a foretelling, but so often women in the mix of it are able to convince themselves that it will all work out. I could just feel your mom's happiness and your sadness at looking back with the knowledge of how it ended up.
When my Grandma died, I was given two of her cookbooks. One is the 1950 Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook. On the page with Filled Bar Cookies, she’d written ‘delicious’ in her distinctive joined-up writing. For Thumbprint Cookies, she wrote: “Added ½ cup nuts + 4 chocolate chips in each thumbprint. Delicious! X mas ‘80.”
In the other cookbook, Grandma made corrections – for instance, for Homemade American-Style Noodles, she noted that the tablespoon of salt should be a teaspoon. When I flip through the book now, I spot other pen markings and realise that these were made by me. It’s where I converted cup measures to weight, which I did after moving from the US to the UK. When I see my own marks, I feel a catch in my throat – am I ruining Grandma’s cookbook? Should I be keeping it as she had it, to remind me of her?
“Oh honey,” I think she would say, “it’s not The Bible. It’s just a cookbook.” (Also, it’s important to use a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon of salt in that noodle recipe!). But I want to hold on to what was hers – what was of her. On the one hand, I don’t want her things to sit in a box and not be appreciated; but as I use them, I change them. I’m wearing out the leather band of her delicate watch. I’ve torn and then mended her apron. And I’m marking up her cookbooks. As I use her things, it can feel like she’s slipping away. But maybe, instead, this is even better than just having a box of heirlooms, of things that never change. Maybe we merge, a little bit of her and a little of me, when I make use of her things.
What a beautiful piece, Wendy. So full of love and texture and rich detail... but also with this gentle enquiry running through it. It made me think of a line in the Cat Stevens song Oh Very Young that always brings a lump to my throat, tears to my eyes:
Oh very young, what will you leave us this time
You're only dancin' on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your dads best jeans
Denim blue, faded up to the sky
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will
You know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still
It's so good to have you join us here, and thank you again for your generous reading of other contributors' work. Lovely to see conversations happening between you all. Here is your link:
Hi Tanya. You have shared such incredible writing and encouraged so many others to do the same. It has been a battle to overcome imposter syndrome and write some words to join them. As you know from your kind mentoring session earlier this year, I found it incredibly difficult to start to write about the loss of my Dad and the grief I feel, even now. This short thought came to me today, just a couple of weeks ahead of what would have been his 80th birthday. Thank you for your encouragement, as always.
In Sepia
The 3D you is a sepia photograph now. Colours faded. I squeeze my eyes tight in a bid to bring you back to life, channelling Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. The edges are fuzzy, and I can just about make out the crinkles around your eyes. I can’t see your hands or the shape of your body in your red jumper anymore. But it is smell and sound that sharpen the lens a little.
That red jumper now sits amongst my own in the wardrobe. I inhale it, but your scent has dissipated and mingled with mine long ago. There is just one drawer I can open, though. Your old bedside table sits in the hallway, which I filled with Dad things: a hammer, spirit level, screwdrivers and alum keys. And it is here where the last molecules remain of a life once lived: a faint whiff of tobacco and the sweet woody mustiness of you.
The catchy piano chords, the snap of drumbeats and the line, “put a pony in me pocket, I’ll get the suitcase from the van” take me back to the sound of you laughing. An uncontrollable belly laugh that I otherwise rarely saw. I see you slapping your thigh with tears running down your face saying, “Bleedin’ wrap up” or “Sod my old boots”. Never mind the Only Fools and Horses catchphrases; you had your own.
Oh Vanessa. What a beautiful tribute to your father, and your love for him this piece is. And just beautifully written, too. I love it all, but this line in particular I've read aloud several times over: "And it is here where the last molecules remain of a life once lived: a faint whiff of tobacco and the sweet woody mustiness of you." Wow. Hand on heart reading this. How good to have you join this story project. All the themes are staying open til the new year. Here is your link to it on the book site:
Oh wow - thank you for such lovely comments, Tan. I was so nervous posting this. I have yet to create a website or a blog, but I do have my Twitter which is @elgeeko1506. Thank you again for all of your encouragement and support xx
You write so beautifully of him. It's a pleasure to have this in the story archive. I will link to your twitter account now. Please do write for some of the others themes if time and inclination is with you! x
Vanessa, apologies for being very late to this party -- I've only just joined the community and am reading back through the archives -- but I have to say how wonderful this piece is. This line is magic: "And it is here where the last molecules remain of a life once lived: a faint whiff of tobacco and the sweet woody mustiness of you." I also love how you cleverly paint a picture of your father in the final paragraph, especially the catchphrases he would say. I look forward to reading more of your pieces as a make my way through the archives.
Thank you Wendy - that's so kind of you to take the time and write. It would have been my Dad's birthday next week so I am thinking about him a lot. Sending you warmest wishes xx
Tanya, your wonderful story has both broken and lifted my heart. I can’t wait for the book to come out! I recognise parts of my own story within yours, and you have unleashed so many memories and feelings, in this piece in particular about my great grandmother, Amy.
The story we grew up with, passed on to me by my father, strangely, not my mother, her grand daughter, was that she had been in service, fell prey to the attentions of the master, or his son, or someone, anyone, and had become pregnant. Because of this, she had been locked away in the crazy house until she died, nameless and forgotten. It’s what happened to unmarried women then, just one of those Victorian things.
Thirty years later, my work on our family tree uncovered a different story. My great grandmother was feeble-minded, deaf and dumb, and also a scholar, depending on which census you read. She had worked at the local mill with everyone else, lodged with various family members in a succession of tiny tied-cottages, swapping about here and there, weavers all the way down. The birth certificate named a father I could not trace, a name made up to save face no doubt, but she looked after her only child until he went to fight in the French trenches.
It wasn’t until she was forty-one that they took her away, just as they had taken her mother and her sister to a different asylum, the reasons unknown or concealed. She died inside that place after 46 winters, in the spring following the birth of my sister; they could have met, but my mother didn’t know about her grandmother then, and realised only years later that she must have been ‘the old lady’ that her parents went to visit ‘in hospital’ on occasion.
Sally - how very moved I am by your response. What you've said about my story and its effect on you, but even more so by what you've shared in turn. Would you be happy for me to move your words to the the book's website thecureforsleep.com? And if so, is there a Medium account, a Twitter account or a personal website you'd like me to use as a hyperlink on your name? Let me know, and if you'd like me to go ahead I will reply on here with a link to your piece on the site... very best, Tanya x
Thank you Tanya, how special this all is. I discovered you by serendipity (!) on your Ilkely LitFest talk with Natasha Carthew. I've been looking at your website, and find your stories inspirational and hugely uplifting - thank you for sharing so vividly and deeply. I can't wait for the next instalment, and the book - so far away! I would be honoured for you to add my words to your website, thank you. My twitter thingy is @MoonAntlers. I haven't written my blog for years, and have lost a lot of confidence; perhaps I can ride the wave of excitement you've given me, and get writing again. Thank you so much. (And it's lovely to be able to thank someone directly.)
Hello again, Sally. With thanks for your beautiful contribution, here is a link to where it appears in The Cure For Sleep story archive. Very best, Tanya
Thank you Tanya, so lovely to see my story sitting side by side these these other wonders. It's like a great big hug, much needed right now! (is it too mean to point out a typo in my name in the # should be -op at the end not -ap)
Sally, I've only just joined the community here and am reading back through the archives, and found this piece so haunting, about women's lives, the secrets our families keep, and madness (or genius -- I love this: "My great grandmother was feeble-minded, deaf and dumb, and also a scholar, depending on which census you read."). And the way you say, "She died inside that place after 46 winters" -- what a creative way of expressing that. I look forward to reading more from you.
Hi Wendy, welcome to this lovely, generous place. Thank you so much for your kind words. It's hard to know how one's words fall upon others, so it's really nice to know my great-grandmother's story has had a small impact on you, and that you were kind enough to comment. I look forward to reading some of your own work too. All best, and thank you.
As I write, my fingers pause, tracing the blackened carving around the edge of this solid oak table; darkened by years of smoky coal dust and the residue from our foul-smelling oil heater. My young hands once fingered the same curves as my elderly hands do now, the same way Grandpa’s did.
Here he presided over Sunday lunch with a formality belonging to the Victorian age into which he was born. The sharpened, polished silver carving knife poised to slice the Sunday joint.
Few photographs remain. Grandpa was a photographer in a world before selfies, an automobile engineer in a world before motorways.
Bathrooms had to be white and music, classical.
A kindly, honest man who loved dogs, running over fells and swimming in mountain pools. He also loved Tony Hancock and chuckled heartily for half an hour every week.
By the time I knew him, he spent most of his time sitting quietly by the fire, tinkering with his old crystal wireless set.
I can feel the tickle of his moustache as I kissed him goodnight, the touch of his bony fingers holding me as we posed for a photograph.
“Little Rainbow Girl” he called me in a rare moment of affection.
We didn’t talk much, my grandpa and me.
He was locked into his deafness as I was locked into my shyness.
This quiet old man had lost a brother, three sons, his money and his business. He held his grief tightly inside.
One day Grandpa disappeared upstairs to his bedroom, a few weeks later he disappeared into hospital and shortly after that he disappeared from the world completely.
“Don’t worry darling, nothing has changed,” said my mother. Strange epitaph.
My grandpa had gone but still my fingers stroke his table with love.
How close and present your gone-grandfather is in this piece, Rosie. I’m moved to think of you using the 300-word limit to condense and select how you would present him - and your love for him - to us. Such a tangible sense you’ve produced of his gestures, the things around him, but also his quiet way of being. Beautiful writing, a gorgeous tribute.
Thank you Tanya. I wanted to get the essence of who my grandfather was and the word limit really helped me to do this. I felt very close to him whilst I was writing and his table is a tangible everyday reminder of him all these years later. I really appreciate your comments and am glad that you liked it
Dec 18, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by Tanya Shadrick
I’ve came to visit grandfather straight from work. In the small damp room we ate a dry lemon cake.
He asked how am I doing in school.
I’m coming to you straight from the office, they pay me good. I’m grown up now. I’ve recently bought a nice phone, you could use one too, we could talk more often maybe. I’ve passed to him shiny-metal Nokia cellphone, evidence of present (or the future) he forgot. He grasped it clumsily, and held. Upside down, nodding. Nice, nice. And this camera of yours, I’ve had similar. He changed the topic, pointing to black Pentacon BC1 I’ve brought about everywhere.
Yes, it’s a nice one, automatic. I’ve bragged. We should take a picture of ourselves, now, there is a timer. I’ve put it on the mantle, set the timer and sat next to him.
Silent; nice, nice. I’ve made pictures as well back then. Bring this photo next time. I will take out my old photos from the basement. He pushed small change into my hand, forgetting I was not a child anymore.
We see each other soon.
I never did. What’s the point in embarrassing myself. Going in circles. That’s cruel, redundant, weak. He will forget anyway.
He is not there any more. Straight from work I’ve came to the small damp room. On a dusty mantle, old photo of a child and man, us, basking in the sun.
Victor, a second and equally exciting piece from you. You said in your introduction post that English is your second language and that you are very early on in your writing practice… and yet there is a quality to your work that truly, yes, excites and moves me.
I hope that you will keep and go deeper into this way you have of writing so that I and other readers can sense your deep cultural hinterland while not knowing exactly when and where you’re from - that’s a very compelling quality in work. Hemingway spoke of this (as you might know): that the writer needs to know everything, but that it doesn’t all need to be on the page - the reader responds to the depth without needing all the detail. In fact it is the gaps that somehow create the authenticity.
I’m also thinking about how Haruki Murakami came to have the style for which he is now famous. Do you know this story? He tells it in several places but I think I encountered it in first in the short Hear The Wind Sing. I won’t tell it all here but it’s about how he was overwhelmed by weight of Japanese literary tradition each time he sat down to try and write, so began to tell stories in English then translate them back into Japanese as a way to get past his sense of an impossible gap.
Back to you, your piece. Those last three lines: so simply stated and yet quietly devastating.
Technically I’ve written some corporate letters. But they had nothing in common with reality.
I can’t find a way to state it correctly (now), but while I detest lie, this here is the first time I feel to write honestly.
And it’s painful. Very much so. This must be the marker of quality that you find to reach you. I will certainly continue to seek other ways in which that flame can be conveyed.
**NB! I wrote down a list of all the cure for sleep prompts and began to respond to them. I am very aware though that this piece really only responds to the theme ‘memory games’ and not to the specific theme of trying to hold a person in mind. So I understand if it doesn’t really fit the theme…but thought I would like to share it anyway. I hope that this is ok**
—
I had already forgotten Claire’s advice. She had explained to me what I’d need to say across a crisp white tablecloth that she’d just whipped onto Table 34, and as I followed her round the restaurant with the cruets, she guided me through the questions they would ask, the answers I should give. They would try to trip me up. They didn’t have the resources to help everyone, and had to filter out those who truly had nowhere to live.
When you have to memorise your own story for fear of getting it wrong, it begins to feel like a lie. As I walked through the city centre, glancing down at my phone screen for directions to the council buildings, the panic begun. Don’t slip up.
In a dark and claustrophobic room, I tried to breathe as I answered questions from a woman whose straight face remained locked to the computer screen in front of her, and whose eyes rarely met mine through the reinforced glass screen which guarded her from me.
Does the father live locally?
Yes.
Could you stay with him?
No.
Do you have family or friends you could stay with?
No.
Simple questions, simple answers. Except they weren’t. They had long, complex answers, if I really thought about it. I learnt a long time ago that to ask for help you had to first defend why you needed it, and I never quite fit the criteria. Never quite good enough. Never quite bad enough. Never Enough.
The interview was over in less than half an hour. I had remembered the simple versions of the answers to these questions, the ones they needed to hear. Not lies, but truths which would get me the help I needed, the help we needed. The help which one day, I would remember I deserved.
Jennifer... how good to have you return to the project after your Bedtime piece back in July, which made such a deep impression on me. It's a privilege to learn about another stage of that journey you undertook. As a piece of short form writing there is skill here too, as well as insight into how the world works when you are in need: I admire how you began at work, with the table, and your friend telling you how it was going to go. It is a skillfull way of establishing the stakes before you begin being questioned.
I've curated it in the Terrible Questions theme from Season Three as I feel it fits best there, and here is your link to it there:
As with your previous piece, you've brought a time in my own younger life back so sharply. I left home just before I was 16, and stayed with my gran, but then I needed to be away at some distance at a tertiary college. I took a bus to that big town (I never used public transport, living in deep country) and made my way to the huge and imposing council offices. Found the long corridor where the student funding team were. Explained - as you had to - that I had no one to live with, that there was domestic abuse at home, and I needed to be safe and in lodgings near to the college - the long travelling to and from from my grandmother's was too hard as I also had to earn my own money around my studies...
No. There was no funding for that kind of situation the woman said. Sorry.
I stumbled out and away in tears and panic. No idea what to do next.
A man's voice called out for me to wait. He'd been listening and came out in an unofficial capacity to tell me in confidence about a loophole I could use. If I got a doctor's note saying I suffered severe travel sickness they would have to give me an automatic full two-year grant to stay in lodgings near the A-Level college.
I got the doctor's note, and went back the next week. Got the grant. A huge sum to me back then. I assumed I'd see the man when I was there, and be able to thank him (I'm good with faces). But he wasn't there, or I didn't see him. Never asked his name so can never thank the person who bothered to help me get fully free of my childhood town and circumstances forever.
I think about it often though. How we can - like him, like your friend Claire - pass on a bit of system knowledge that helps someone get out, get on, get up.
Thank you for adding this story to our collection. I think it will affect others as it did me.
Nov 3, 2023·edited Nov 3, 2023Liked by Tanya Shadrick
Thank you so much Tanya for creating such a welcoming space and for providing such beautiful prompts.... I'm very late to the party but am trying slowly and tentatively to dip my toes and find my way back to writing so that you so much for the invitations... I realise as I read back through my response to this particular prompt that it doesn't quite fit.... But I thought I would try and silence my inner critic a little and just share it anyway. Thank you again so much for creating such a beautiful little corner online.
Her outline is baggy.
Where the edges were once sharp, they are now finely frayed. Her gait is wider—looser, softer, fluid.
She is unconsciously shapeshifting. Her form that was once rounded by the swell of pregnancy, has now been softened by the postnatal bulge and sag. Her eyes, which were once bright and sparkling, are smudged bruise-blue by the lack of sleep. Her hands are lined and dry, hardened by the constant washing, holding and folding.
She moves with less certainty, somewhat tentatively. Where once her stride was purposeful and confident, she’s cautious, carrying with her the new weight of responsibility and a precious bundle that is now strapped to her front.
Her voice is softer, quieter.
From afar, if you knew her already, you would still recognise her and you would smile at the beautiful bonny new addition that she carries so gently. You would watch her as she sways, soothing and singing to the little one. You would smile at the ease with which she seems to have moved into this new role.
But she can’t see her old self anymore. She’s lost her.
She can’t find that confident, strident one who knew her mind, the one who knew what she wanted and what she was doing. The one who trusted her instinct and wasn’t shy to speak her mind. She thinks that her old self has disappeared into the folds of her new form, she thinks that this new body has made her invisible. But you watch her from afar, knowing that this will change, that she will shapeshift again. You know that as she steps more into this new form, her old self will reveal itself again, that the new folds that line her outline will only add to her beautiful shape.
Oh Lucy... how lovely that you've joined us as a writer here. Thank you. And with such a tender and hopeful piece - those shapeshifting of young motherhood can feel so violent even while we look to others looking on the very picture of maternal ease. I love how much of that immense experience you convey here in so few words. And it's moving for me being now almost two decades on from that time, in menopause, having the time to build muscles for the first time in my life. I felt so sure I would only ever be the soft, aching being I was in those first ten years of young mothering. But as you, wiser, can already see, it just needed time!
I've put this piece from you into the Size & Shape collection from Season One rather than Memory Games if you don't mind as I think it's better showcased there. And I'm adding you now to the A to Z of contributors. I hope you will try other themes in the project - I will enjoy seeing what you make of them!
Oh my goodness, thank you so very much Tanya! And I am so sorry it's taken me so long to say thank you. Life is equal parts wild, windy and wonky, yet these beautiful prompts have been such a tonic recently for me as I slowly find my way back to the page. I can't begin to thank you so much for your kind words, I really appreciate them and you for holding and creating such a beautiful space xxx
Lucy, I'm even later to the party than you! I've only just joined and am reading back through the archives. Your descriptions here are so evocative. I immediately can picture this woman, her shape, her softness, "Her gait is wider—looser, softer, fluid." I like how you allow the reader to zoom out to the woman's gait, and zoom in to the dry skin on her hands, the circles under her eyes. And I like how you say, "From afar, if you knew her already, you would still recognise her..." to describe this subtle shape shifting that has happened, that happens to women in particular. Lovely and skilful writing.
Thank you so much Wendy and I am so sorry it's taken me so long to reply! Thank you so much for such kind and encouraging words. I'm really looking forward to discovering more of your words on these threads. Sending all the best from wild and windy Cornwall xxx
I never knew him - how could I? He died in 1927, my great-grandfather - his daughter, my grandmother, was just 9 years old. And yet. I ‘know’ him a little, through one photograph, a couple of stories - my grandmother as a tiny child out in India, bounced on his knee, taught a song about a bunny rabbit. His role as an army band master, conductor, bugle-player; instrument swapped for bayonet when it came to war. My grandmother, born in Peshawar, now Pakistan, 1917. My great-grandfather, Alexander Uriah - or Uri, as he was known - died of stomach cancer in 1927, back home in southern England. He was handsome, he stands proud in his photograph in my study now, army uniform, hint of a smile, hint of a wicked sense of humour. A tough life: his own mother died when he was a youngster, not even 10 years old. Landed in a poor house with several of his many siblings. Disappears from the records and reappears in the army years later, his birthdate wrong and I have a sneaking suspicion that he lied to get in there… all this, I know as fact. Anything more, I create. His love of music, the way his world moved in time to rhythm and pace and the way he closed his eyes to listen. The long, long boat journeys to India and back again, repeatedly. His eldest son following in his footsteps, his little girl jiggled on his knee whenever he had the time. She remembered his twinkling eyes, his warm smile, his fingers beating time as he sang. This is what I hold in his photograph, while his Edwardian-era eyes gaze back at me.
Larissa! How lovely of you to return with a new piece!
And what an exquisite piece it is: fits together so beautifully like an old pocket-watch... the way the loving gesture of a child on a knee keeps time across the generations. Just beautiful. And then the surprise and pleasure of lines like this: '...all this, I know as fact. Anything more, I create.'
Thank you, Tanya! I’ve made a little pact with myself to work through more of your beautiful prompts in the coming months 🌟 So, hopefully more of these little stories to come xx
I’m sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by bright worms of yarn. Squiggles of orange, blue and green hang from my pyjamas, as I stare out the window-agitation spooling tightly around my limbs.
Such a waste.
I brush the lazy dangles from my legs, force myself up and go and admire my latest creation. It hangs perfectly on the antique wooden frame. Its Knots of finality and precision chopped ends fill me with satisfaction, yet the yarn on the carpet fills me with indecision and apprehension.
I google yarn scraps and find patterns to use them up on.
Happy that they will have their use at a future date, I grab a bag and start scooping up the rainbow worms and stuffing them into the bag.
When the floor is clear I take the bag and store it neatly in a drawer. The agitation starts to unspool.
I open the drawer above and pull out the neatly stacked piles of papers. I take them to the kitchen counter, lick my fingers and flick through. Water bills, work rotas, and rogue birthday cards that should be with the others, in the box under the bed. I pile them together, knocking the sturdy bottoms on the counter, to make them as uniform as I can. A small shower of synthetic glitter speckle the counter top. I sigh and tear off a kitchen roll square to wipe it clean.
I’m about to store the papers away again when I spot the shopping list.
Milk
Bread
Potatoes
Tobacco
yeast.
A short list, written in her small, precise handwriting.
I feel the memory in my stomach, a churn, then a tightening, like a fisted hand gripping tight. I recall the day. Being at work and seeing the dozens of missed calls. The hazy disbelief in my mums eyes.
A couple of days later, going to her house to sort, I remember her routines, through the remnants left. Piecing together the very last of her days with the evidence of activity about the house.
The pan on the hob, filled with thick brown stew and sagging dumplings-tupperware boxes layed out, waiting to be filled.
Her bag and scarf stationed near the front door, ready to adorn her for her trip on the bus.
I look in the freezer and gulp down tears as I see the homemade bread rolls, frozen solid in cellophane bags. I see her rough hands kneading with fervour, a floury cloud dusting the kitchen, as she pulls, pushes and shapes her doughy creation into a smooth, supple ball, ready to be placed on top of the fireplace.
The living room table holds a coffee stained cup, a biro pen, and underneath it, the handwritten shopping list.
I take the shopping list and the frozen bread rolls home with me.
Sitting here now, I drop the cards into a messy pile in the drawer, forget about the yarn scraps, grab my bag and scarf and escape out the door.
Maybe I’ll use up the scraps, maybe I won’t.
Either way, their purpose will be woven eventually.
Lauren, what a quietly devastating piece this is. It takes skill - and courage - to return to a moment like this, and through the moment and the artefact, to the person much missed. I remember how much it took from me to write about being alone in my grandmother's home after being the one to have to send her away from it. To really reinhabit those beloved rooms in the last time I would be in them, and for them to be without her... yes, it took a lot from me. But it's part of the book that speaks to so many. As this piece by you will to those who find it here (and so many subscribers spend time exploring the archive).
Here is your link, and I will now add you to the A to Z of contributors on the book site and on the By Readers tab here within my Substack.
“My job was to paint their eyes blue,” Pop once told me when I was a child. I imagined him going from house to house, crouching down in front of television screens and delicately painting the irises on the faces as they appeared. I thought that made him a hero. But of course, he’d become a hero long before then.
He was blown off three ships in the war and branded a jinx, even after rescuing his captain. When they washed up on the shores of Italy with no idea whose flag waved beyond the beach, my pop waved down a military vehicle only to find it was being driven by a chap he’d known from school. I think his luck took a turn from there.
Of course, I didn’t hear these stories from him, they were shared after he was gone. He wasn’t much of a storyteller, in fact, he rarely spoke to me at all. But it wasn’t his words that mattered to me as a child. It was his presence. The feeling of safety when he pulled me onto his lap as he did a crossword, and the smell of humbugs and pipe smoke that emanated from his scratchy woollen jumpers. Those gentle long fingers. Fingers that painted and gardened and crafted and mended. We used to call him Jim’lll fix it. Although you can’t say that anymore.
That minty tobacco smell has followed me across the world, appearing only in my darkest moments. Always a reminder of the best love I’ve ever known. A love that was unconditional and uncomplicated. I think I’ve spent my whole life searching for that same tenderness because feelings don’t fade like faces do.
Oh Corinne... this second contribution from you is so beautiful, so poignant. I got the same pleasure-tinged-with-missing that I get when reading Tove Jansson: both her Moomin books - where the characters are so based on those she loved, their habits - and her exquisite Summer Book. You seem to have a similar gift for bringing a loved one to the page. 'A love that was unconditional and uncomplicated' - what a treasure to have had that as a child.
Thank you Tanya. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to remember and find the words for a very special man. I have never read Tove Jansson but I'll definitely seek her out now.
I'd love to know what you think if you do. If you haven't read her at all before now, I'd suggest starting with The Summer Book rather than the Moomin stories... xx
Flick over one image, then the pair. Flick another, no, not a match. Try again, come on, get on with it. Remember, for goodness sake, there’s only a few pairs.
Only a few pairs, only a few photos, only a few years, then five years, ten years, twenty, thirty. I flicked over his image. It was faded. It’s match would also be torn and ragged, if I had one. His face smiled out at me, his youthful magic was an inward breath that never came out. It was any ordinary day. With some of our breaths we’d laughed at normal things, silly things, things that are importantly not important and then we’d said goodbye. The next caller to speak his name asked I sit down. The primal wail escaped my body and frightened my soul. No, it isn’t true. It couldn’t be true. I didn’t want it true. But, then it came, an explosion deep in my heart. My chest clamped a lock, but sparked a fire that melted rock which flowed deeply beneath, buried as lava set. If I hung up instantly I could make it not true. I knew I could. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t turn back time. For days, then weeks then months I sobbed the loss of never again. I screamed the ache of fragile memories. Tears tore at my throat, my eyes bulged to peer into the mist of fading light, with his fading face. My heart carried on, my breath it steadied. My feet dragged through the daily grind of a thick black quagmire. Seasons cycled, stars winked the moon and the sun parched us all. New love was tendered, bells rang and golden rings exchanged with promises. Children came and learnt the game. Match the pairs, count them all.
Fascinated by this one which is very different in style to your first two. You retain the privacy of your experience (we, the readers, don't know who you've lost or how) but it still works as a shared piece I think because you're showing how these losses are huge geological internal events that are often barely noticed to those around us. Have you read the prose-poem novella By Grand Central Station, I Lay Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart? If you haven't, I have an instinct it will speak deeply to you...
Thanks. Ahh yes, I did do that deliberately but is that bad writing? I didn’t want to detail the cause as I hoped to capture the impact of loss and grief as I felt it happen without the additional impact of how, particularly in so few words. My writing needs lots of practice and I tend to lean to my angst, which I’m unsure about expressing publicly. That’s for the book suggestion, I’ll seek it out.
"Is that bad writing?" - sorry if my comments made you doubt what you'd submitted! I mean to say that you've done something difficult and well - to show the impact of a very private experience in a public piece of work, while maintaining necessary privacy for your and others' sakes. That was a core and ongoing challenge and standard I had to meet during the writing of The Cure for Sleep and I'm proud of how I managed it: at every stage I was asking how I might show the emotional truth in a way that would be useful to readers in respect to their own situations, without revealing too many tender details from the lives of those involved in mine. I think you're showing good and sure instinct here, and this is one of the reasons I'm committed to offering this space - it's a safe place to test out how one can approach stories from life...
She was born in 1929 in Liverpool and said her name, Mavis, came from a singing bird. She won the All-England medal for dancing at Albert Hall at age 7. She sang and danced to You Are My Lucky Star. Hitler invaded Poland and Prime Minister Chamberlain finally recognized appeasement would not work, declared war on Germany, resigned and died shortly after. Liverpool was bombed for the first time on August 17, 1940. She spent nights alone in a brick house with a slate roof and blackout curtains. Over 4000 people died, second only to London. She practiced wearing her gas mask at school. She remembers weekly rations of two ounces of tea, two ounces of butter and one egg, but typically only powdered eggs were available. She married an American GI in 1945 and the marriage certificate listed her as a spinster at age 16. Her husband was 8 years older than her and brought his war bride to the states in 1946 and unleashed years of cruelty. She gave birth to a baby who died 7 months later and then to my mom in 1949. Her divorce was finalized in 1955. She remarried in 1956 and had a son. When she found her brother again after forty-four years he was still mad at her for not coming back home. She never acknowledged that this could have saved a lot of pain in our family. He never acknowledged that it would have been hard for her to come home. She never changed her citizenship. In 1988 Father O’Connor was informed by the bishop that the first marriage annulment was approved, “was null from the beginning,” in fact, and charged her $150 and she and her husband could take communion. Her embroidery was nearly as good on the back as the front, neat, tight stitches. I once gave her a list of questions. She said the happiest day of her life was when her mom left England to come to the states to be with her. The other answers were all about the regret of giving up her dancing career to come to America. These are the questions she skipped: what people don’t know about you, what’s most important, advice for other women in the family, describe a perfect day, worst piece of advice you ever gave, dream vacation, something you are sorry for. She would have denied being depressed, at most admitting to being melancholy at Christmas. She kept a tight grip. She said her heart was like a hotel, there was room for everyone, but that was a past life. Her best years were over by age 16.
Sheila - this is just stunning. Not only your grandmother's life, but your telling of it. And, yet again, I am convinced that I am reading the early works of a writer who is going to be read far more widely in book form one year soon. You are incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence!
I want to email soon a number of you who are frequent contributors to start planning monthly features on each of you from Season 3 starting in March or April. Do you have an email I can use or should I direct message you on Hagitude?
Thank you so much, your response all the more meaningful after getting a rejection yesterday! I did these short sketches of my mom and my great-grandma as well...always on that never ending search to figure a life out. My email is: sheilaknell@yahoo.com
My daughter found an oral history book for me for my birthday titled: Liverpool Women at War, that I plan to try digging into a bit today. She also read Fierce Attachments over the holiday break and is now also a huge fan of Gornick.
Your encouragement always lets me breath with a bit more ease...
My hair hangs heavy like wet rope as I sit in the faded green bath always run too shallow so that my toes become hierarchical islands in a sea without a tide as an Imperial Leather boat bobs by. My teeth chatter not because I'm cold but because its part of the game and I like how it makes her care. 'Hair, face, feet and peach?' She asks and I giggle as I clamber over the side rewarding her with a toothy grin as my answer. A large terracotta towel quickly shrouds my squirming body and as she feeds my joy with requests of 'quick, quick, quick' the towels are always rough and I jump like a fish on the line. I escape to streak down the stairs leaving tiny wet toes on the carpet. I round the corner into the living room like a whippet. 'Cor blimey maid, you only just made it away from that towel this time' and he pats to the chair but he doesn't need to. I place myself neatly between him and the arm whilst he wrestles an old blanket from behind him and around my naked body. 'Can I have some?' I ask pointing to a big bottle of cider stashed next to him. His scuffed red cheeks swell with naughtiness 'You bugger! You'm just like ya ol'grandad' and he begins to sing drink up the cider whilst I'm thrown around on his knee, laughing from my belly. The creak of my nans footsteps sound and he puts his fingers to his lips which I copy whilst he gestures upstairs with his eyes. After a while the fire begins to speak 'weeeeeee pop' and it sets off a small ember that lands on the cats ear she hisses and glowers but remains sitting feet curled under bib. I don't like it and look to my grandad but he's laughing at the tv, he can't always be there I suppose and I don't like that either. The fire speaks again 'weeeeeee' but no pop, just suspense and I'm even more anxious waiting for the moment to break, waiting for the spark and the hiss but nothing comes.
I fiddle with a familiar loose thread on the seam of the chair running it through my fingers as it catches on the edges of my bitten nails. Tomorrow I will have to go home and I think about that as without any effort at all the thread gives way into my hand and I'm scared its all going to come undone.
Oh Lucy... I'm am so so glad you've joined the project. What a gorgeous piece of writing - and life - you've shared with us here. What I love in Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie and some of D H Lawrence's best work: it's so rarely done, this kind of loving recollection, so physical, and these lovely sound portraits, too, of how an older generation talk.
I've added this to the story archive with pleasure, and here is your link direct to your piece:
Such a great piece... you convey a tangible sense of the layers of emotion in those moments, and also reveal so much of your grandmother herself, through the things in her life... now to be hastily collected in an attempt to scoop up a little of the familiar, as she sets off for the hospital. Certain objects seem to embody a part of us, and those we love... My own Mum passed in 2017, and I am still immersed in many of her things. Some are photos, or a small painting, family or other recipes written in her handwriting, furniture, bric-a-brac, bits of yarn, wooden thread spools, old paperbacks and so much more... the ephemera of not only her life, but her parents... a long line of People Who Collect Things : ) I can really relate to this passage: "Rifled every drawer and wardrobe as if I could steal and keep safe how I loved her: Cotton reels; shoe polish; jars of homemade jam and pickles; hat for Chapel; fifty-year old crêpe-paper Christmas decorations; smelling salts. Even heavy things I could never use, I wanted to take away in my arms:..."
It's a bequest as well as a burden of sorts that we take on when a parent or grandparent passes... and negotiating the memories/ambivalences and determining what those objects actually represent, is a complicated, emotional process. Ultimately the relationship transcends any material element, but these objects can trigger so many memories... It is challenging to tease out the meaning they had for one's parent, vs one's own feeling of not wanting to dishonor something they loved... Still working through it... Your grandmother sounds like a warm, wise woman.. no doubt she would be pleased she is still recalled with such eloquence and feeling,
Thank you, Jo, for how you’ve responded to this. And your own list here is compelling to my imagination in turn: ‘ recipes written in her handwriting, furniture, bric-a-brac, bits of yarn, wooden thread spools, old paperbacks and so much more... the ephemera of not only her life, but her parents... a long line of People Who Collect Things’. Each month’s theme stays open for contributions, so if you’d like to return here with a longer response any time -any where between 50 words to 250, say, I’d love to add your memories to the main story archive over on the book’s website... Txx
I've read this several times out loud now--reveling in both the sound of the words in my ears and the way my mouth is possessed by the need to chew them and tumble them around and deliver them into the air. Your writing, so lyrical....it's tangible in such a way that all the senses can feel it. As I sit here thinking about my own experiences of losing someone beloved to me, I'm struck by how little I have physically—no sand timer, no binoculars, no beads. But I remember…
Blips and beeps and bells from the other side of the ICU curtain mixed with feet scuffling and squeaking across the floor. He was gone really the moment the aneurism broke free, but his heart was still beating at an incredible clip; strong; a steady green line on the monitor, here and gone all at once. I wiped a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth, and as the sun rose and my grandfather Stanley lay dying I held his hand. I noted its squareness, thick knuckles, traced the gold band he’d worn for over 50 years, and I saw it for the first time: his hands were mine. Hands that held four children and grandchildren, and one great grandchild. That roasted lemon-stuffed chickens basted with olive oil and oregano over campfires. Fingers that tied flies before palms cast out over the water. Hands that planted two gardens of vegetables every growing season, watered, pruned, picked shiny green peppers. Other than photos I do not possess any objects treasured by him. He was buried with the compass he used to navigate forests, and I’ve no idea what became of his walking stick. But do I have his hands. My hands are the objects. My hands are the treasure.
"But do I have his hands. My hands are the objects. My hands are the treasure." - Amy, everything you say you find and feel in my writing is exactly how I hoped it would be read and felt. Thank you. I read every line out over and again until all unnecessary words are gone and only the sound and sense/s are left. And what you say about how I write, how I feel about yours too. I even have a line in mine that answers yours ('my hands held generations, and knew what to do'). I will add this with pleasure to the archive on the book site, and hope you will continue to contribute each month until publication - after that I may chance what the monthly prompt derives from, but then too I'd hope to have you with me. Please do spread the word to those you know online and in your daily life who you feel would like a safe space for sharing first stories. You are such a confident writer - or you read that way to me - but I know how many struggle to share their stories. I think me and some of you here together could help many people into their first publications this year!
Thank you so much for your kind words, Tanya. They mean so much. I suppose I am a confident writer in the sense that I know I have something to say, that begs to be told, but confidence in skill is something else entirely. I’ve only had a few poems published in the literary journal associated with the master’s program I graduated from, and a short personal essay on a medical humanities website—getting up the courage to submit something elsewhere is a struggle.Right now I’m working to try and fashion my MA manuscript into something that might verge on the publishable, as well as trying to figure out a regular writing practice that will assist me in building up a body of work and take into account all that my illness presents me with. Finding you and your work has been of immeasurable help to me in this regard . Many, many thanks!!
Well once my third & last book draft is away and line edits done too - July time - I will open up some more free one-hour times for those who'd like a safe space to talk about their creative practice - how to grow & sustain it - and to ask me any questions about what I've learned in last five years from first online unpaid essay to the residencies and now the book deal. I've had some lovely calls with writers overseas: would love to hear your voice if zoom or just a voice call would work for you...
This piece is stunning Amy! You have a way with your words that to me, create a vivid sketch or painting! Saying so much with so few words, such a skill indeed!
Dear Amy, as I said earlier today, your contributions mean a great deal to me. I've already been able to add your latest one to the book's website. Here is your link to it:
I've had to change the formatting, placing an asterisk between each para break to ensure formatting holds. But I think it is more readable than the colour blocks I tried in month one!
The messiest corner of our study contains several piles of my Russian family photos. Some hold happy memories, others – just memories or the absence of them.
There is a photo in that pile that unsettles me. It is black and white and slightly yellowed from age. There is a brief handwritten note on the back: Moscow, 22 August 1970. The day of my parents’ wedding.
It shows eleven people standing in a haphazard line against a lightly coloured and totally blank wall. You don’t need to understand much about photography to see that it was taken by an amateur and with little care for future memories. There is a certain awkwardness about this photo - in fact every detail of it reveals clumsiness and unease. Most people in the photograph are staring into space with a frozen expression of indifference. Only my mum looks radiantly happy and beautiful in the photo, as beautiful as she always looked in all her photographs taken before that day… but never after.
To the right of my mum is dad. Their arms barely touching. He is dressed in a suit and tie, probably the same one he wears to work every day. He is gazing across the room and straight through the camera.
For reasons I can only guess, my grandmother is not in the picture but what I do know for sure is that I’m in that photo. Yet invisible to anyone, I can see myself in my mum’s shining happiness that looks so out of place on that fading grey background.
How moving. And written with what I'm now coming to see as your gift for unsparing clear sightedness. You, even from earliest childhood, as a person really looking and listening, however hard that was.
And this line in particular. Oh my: Only my mum looks radiantly happy and beautiful in the photo, as beautiful as she always looked in all her photographs taken before that day… but never after.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#elena
Thank you, Tanya! Yes, it was a bit like that, spending most of my time watching others to find the answers to all my questions and to keep myself safe xx
I'm always struck wondering how many women have looked back on pictures of mothers/grandmothers and have seen that hope and happiness but know that it ended soon after. You, able to see that your grandma not being there as well as your dad's posture was a foretelling, but so often women in the mix of it are able to convince themselves that it will all work out. I could just feel your mom's happiness and your sadness at looking back with the knowledge of how it ended up.
Thank you, Sheila. Yes, some things become much clearer from a distance, sadly.
When my Grandma died, I was given two of her cookbooks. One is the 1950 Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook. On the page with Filled Bar Cookies, she’d written ‘delicious’ in her distinctive joined-up writing. For Thumbprint Cookies, she wrote: “Added ½ cup nuts + 4 chocolate chips in each thumbprint. Delicious! X mas ‘80.”
In the other cookbook, Grandma made corrections – for instance, for Homemade American-Style Noodles, she noted that the tablespoon of salt should be a teaspoon. When I flip through the book now, I spot other pen markings and realise that these were made by me. It’s where I converted cup measures to weight, which I did after moving from the US to the UK. When I see my own marks, I feel a catch in my throat – am I ruining Grandma’s cookbook? Should I be keeping it as she had it, to remind me of her?
“Oh honey,” I think she would say, “it’s not The Bible. It’s just a cookbook.” (Also, it’s important to use a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon of salt in that noodle recipe!). But I want to hold on to what was hers – what was of her. On the one hand, I don’t want her things to sit in a box and not be appreciated; but as I use them, I change them. I’m wearing out the leather band of her delicate watch. I’ve torn and then mended her apron. And I’m marking up her cookbooks. As I use her things, it can feel like she’s slipping away. But maybe, instead, this is even better than just having a box of heirlooms, of things that never change. Maybe we merge, a little bit of her and a little of me, when I make use of her things.
What a beautiful piece, Wendy. So full of love and texture and rich detail... but also with this gentle enquiry running through it. It made me think of a line in the Cat Stevens song Oh Very Young that always brings a lump to my throat, tears to my eyes:
Oh very young, what will you leave us this time
You're only dancin' on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your dads best jeans
Denim blue, faded up to the sky
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will
You know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still
It's so good to have you join us here, and thank you again for your generous reading of other contributors' work. Lovely to see conversations happening between you all. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#wendyknerr
Tanya xx
Hi Tanya. You have shared such incredible writing and encouraged so many others to do the same. It has been a battle to overcome imposter syndrome and write some words to join them. As you know from your kind mentoring session earlier this year, I found it incredibly difficult to start to write about the loss of my Dad and the grief I feel, even now. This short thought came to me today, just a couple of weeks ahead of what would have been his 80th birthday. Thank you for your encouragement, as always.
In Sepia
The 3D you is a sepia photograph now. Colours faded. I squeeze my eyes tight in a bid to bring you back to life, channelling Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. The edges are fuzzy, and I can just about make out the crinkles around your eyes. I can’t see your hands or the shape of your body in your red jumper anymore. But it is smell and sound that sharpen the lens a little.
That red jumper now sits amongst my own in the wardrobe. I inhale it, but your scent has dissipated and mingled with mine long ago. There is just one drawer I can open, though. Your old bedside table sits in the hallway, which I filled with Dad things: a hammer, spirit level, screwdrivers and alum keys. And it is here where the last molecules remain of a life once lived: a faint whiff of tobacco and the sweet woody mustiness of you.
The catchy piano chords, the snap of drumbeats and the line, “put a pony in me pocket, I’ll get the suitcase from the van” take me back to the sound of you laughing. An uncontrollable belly laugh that I otherwise rarely saw. I see you slapping your thigh with tears running down your face saying, “Bleedin’ wrap up” or “Sod my old boots”. Never mind the Only Fools and Horses catchphrases; you had your own.
Oh Vanessa. What a beautiful tribute to your father, and your love for him this piece is. And just beautifully written, too. I love it all, but this line in particular I've read aloud several times over: "And it is here where the last molecules remain of a life once lived: a faint whiff of tobacco and the sweet woody mustiness of you." Wow. Hand on heart reading this. How good to have you join this story project. All the themes are staying open til the new year. Here is your link to it on the book site:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#vanessawright
If you have a personal website or a social media account you'd like me to link your name to, just let me know and I will update it asap.
Many thanks, Tan xx
Oh wow - thank you for such lovely comments, Tan. I was so nervous posting this. I have yet to create a website or a blog, but I do have my Twitter which is @elgeeko1506. Thank you again for all of your encouragement and support xx
You write so beautifully of him. It's a pleasure to have this in the story archive. I will link to your twitter account now. Please do write for some of the others themes if time and inclination is with you! x
Vanessa, apologies for being very late to this party -- I've only just joined the community and am reading back through the archives -- but I have to say how wonderful this piece is. This line is magic: "And it is here where the last molecules remain of a life once lived: a faint whiff of tobacco and the sweet woody mustiness of you." I also love how you cleverly paint a picture of your father in the final paragraph, especially the catchphrases he would say. I look forward to reading more of your pieces as a make my way through the archives.
Thank you Wendy - that's so kind of you to take the time and write. It would have been my Dad's birthday next week so I am thinking about him a lot. Sending you warmest wishes xx
Tanya, your wonderful story has both broken and lifted my heart. I can’t wait for the book to come out! I recognise parts of my own story within yours, and you have unleashed so many memories and feelings, in this piece in particular about my great grandmother, Amy.
The story we grew up with, passed on to me by my father, strangely, not my mother, her grand daughter, was that she had been in service, fell prey to the attentions of the master, or his son, or someone, anyone, and had become pregnant. Because of this, she had been locked away in the crazy house until she died, nameless and forgotten. It’s what happened to unmarried women then, just one of those Victorian things.
Thirty years later, my work on our family tree uncovered a different story. My great grandmother was feeble-minded, deaf and dumb, and also a scholar, depending on which census you read. She had worked at the local mill with everyone else, lodged with various family members in a succession of tiny tied-cottages, swapping about here and there, weavers all the way down. The birth certificate named a father I could not trace, a name made up to save face no doubt, but she looked after her only child until he went to fight in the French trenches.
It wasn’t until she was forty-one that they took her away, just as they had taken her mother and her sister to a different asylum, the reasons unknown or concealed. She died inside that place after 46 winters, in the spring following the birth of my sister; they could have met, but my mother didn’t know about her grandmother then, and realised only years later that she must have been ‘the old lady’ that her parents went to visit ‘in hospital’ on occasion.
My sister’s own daughter bears her name.
Sally - how very moved I am by your response. What you've said about my story and its effect on you, but even more so by what you've shared in turn. Would you be happy for me to move your words to the the book's website thecureforsleep.com? And if so, is there a Medium account, a Twitter account or a personal website you'd like me to use as a hyperlink on your name? Let me know, and if you'd like me to go ahead I will reply on here with a link to your piece on the site... very best, Tanya x
Thank you Tanya, how special this all is. I discovered you by serendipity (!) on your Ilkely LitFest talk with Natasha Carthew. I've been looking at your website, and find your stories inspirational and hugely uplifting - thank you for sharing so vividly and deeply. I can't wait for the next instalment, and the book - so far away! I would be honoured for you to add my words to your website, thank you. My twitter thingy is @MoonAntlers. I haven't written my blog for years, and have lost a lot of confidence; perhaps I can ride the wave of excitement you've given me, and get writing again. Thank you so much. (And it's lovely to be able to thank someone directly.)
Hello again, Sally. With thanks for your beautiful contribution, here is a link to where it appears in The Cure For Sleep story archive. Very best, Tanya
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#SallyHarrap
Thank you Tanya, so lovely to see my story sitting side by side these these other wonders. It's like a great big hug, much needed right now! (is it too mean to point out a typo in my name in the # should be -op at the end not -ap)
Very best to you too, and thank you again. x
Sally, I've only just joined the community here and am reading back through the archives, and found this piece so haunting, about women's lives, the secrets our families keep, and madness (or genius -- I love this: "My great grandmother was feeble-minded, deaf and dumb, and also a scholar, depending on which census you read."). And the way you say, "She died inside that place after 46 winters" -- what a creative way of expressing that. I look forward to reading more from you.
Hi Wendy, welcome to this lovely, generous place. Thank you so much for your kind words. It's hard to know how one's words fall upon others, so it's really nice to know my great-grandmother's story has had a small impact on you, and that you were kind enough to comment. I look forward to reading some of your own work too. All best, and thank you.
Grandpa’s table
As I write, my fingers pause, tracing the blackened carving around the edge of this solid oak table; darkened by years of smoky coal dust and the residue from our foul-smelling oil heater. My young hands once fingered the same curves as my elderly hands do now, the same way Grandpa’s did.
Here he presided over Sunday lunch with a formality belonging to the Victorian age into which he was born. The sharpened, polished silver carving knife poised to slice the Sunday joint.
Few photographs remain. Grandpa was a photographer in a world before selfies, an automobile engineer in a world before motorways.
Bathrooms had to be white and music, classical.
A kindly, honest man who loved dogs, running over fells and swimming in mountain pools. He also loved Tony Hancock and chuckled heartily for half an hour every week.
By the time I knew him, he spent most of his time sitting quietly by the fire, tinkering with his old crystal wireless set.
I can feel the tickle of his moustache as I kissed him goodnight, the touch of his bony fingers holding me as we posed for a photograph.
“Little Rainbow Girl” he called me in a rare moment of affection.
We didn’t talk much, my grandpa and me.
He was locked into his deafness as I was locked into my shyness.
This quiet old man had lost a brother, three sons, his money and his business. He held his grief tightly inside.
One day Grandpa disappeared upstairs to his bedroom, a few weeks later he disappeared into hospital and shortly after that he disappeared from the world completely.
“Don’t worry darling, nothing has changed,” said my mother. Strange epitaph.
My grandpa had gone but still my fingers stroke his table with love.
How close and present your gone-grandfather is in this piece, Rosie. I’m moved to think of you using the 300-word limit to condense and select how you would present him - and your love for him - to us. Such a tangible sense you’ve produced of his gestures, the things around him, but also his quiet way of being. Beautiful writing, a gorgeous tribute.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#rosemarykirkus
Txx
Thank you Tanya. I wanted to get the essence of who my grandfather was and the word limit really helped me to do this. I felt very close to him whilst I was writing and his table is a tangible everyday reminder of him all these years later. I really appreciate your comments and am glad that you liked it
I’ve came to visit grandfather straight from work. In the small damp room we ate a dry lemon cake.
He asked how am I doing in school.
I’m coming to you straight from the office, they pay me good. I’m grown up now. I’ve recently bought a nice phone, you could use one too, we could talk more often maybe. I’ve passed to him shiny-metal Nokia cellphone, evidence of present (or the future) he forgot. He grasped it clumsily, and held. Upside down, nodding. Nice, nice. And this camera of yours, I’ve had similar. He changed the topic, pointing to black Pentacon BC1 I’ve brought about everywhere.
Yes, it’s a nice one, automatic. I’ve bragged. We should take a picture of ourselves, now, there is a timer. I’ve put it on the mantle, set the timer and sat next to him.
Silent; nice, nice. I’ve made pictures as well back then. Bring this photo next time. I will take out my old photos from the basement. He pushed small change into my hand, forgetting I was not a child anymore.
We see each other soon.
I never did. What’s the point in embarrassing myself. Going in circles. That’s cruel, redundant, weak. He will forget anyway.
He is not there any more. Straight from work I’ve came to the small damp room. On a dusty mantle, old photo of a child and man, us, basking in the sun.
Victor, a second and equally exciting piece from you. You said in your introduction post that English is your second language and that you are very early on in your writing practice… and yet there is a quality to your work that truly, yes, excites and moves me.
I hope that you will keep and go deeper into this way you have of writing so that I and other readers can sense your deep cultural hinterland while not knowing exactly when and where you’re from - that’s a very compelling quality in work. Hemingway spoke of this (as you might know): that the writer needs to know everything, but that it doesn’t all need to be on the page - the reader responds to the depth without needing all the detail. In fact it is the gaps that somehow create the authenticity.
I’m also thinking about how Haruki Murakami came to have the style for which he is now famous. Do you know this story? He tells it in several places but I think I encountered it in first in the short Hear The Wind Sing. I won’t tell it all here but it’s about how he was overwhelmed by weight of Japanese literary tradition each time he sat down to try and write, so began to tell stories in English then translate them back into Japanese as a way to get past his sense of an impossible gap.
Back to you, your piece. Those last three lines: so simply stated and yet quietly devastating.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#victormilesan
Technically I’ve written some corporate letters. But they had nothing in common with reality.
I can’t find a way to state it correctly (now), but while I detest lie, this here is the first time I feel to write honestly.
And it’s painful. Very much so. This must be the marker of quality that you find to reach you. I will certainly continue to seek other ways in which that flame can be conveyed.
Thank you for this opportunity. It means much.
**NB! I wrote down a list of all the cure for sleep prompts and began to respond to them. I am very aware though that this piece really only responds to the theme ‘memory games’ and not to the specific theme of trying to hold a person in mind. So I understand if it doesn’t really fit the theme…but thought I would like to share it anyway. I hope that this is ok**
—
I had already forgotten Claire’s advice. She had explained to me what I’d need to say across a crisp white tablecloth that she’d just whipped onto Table 34, and as I followed her round the restaurant with the cruets, she guided me through the questions they would ask, the answers I should give. They would try to trip me up. They didn’t have the resources to help everyone, and had to filter out those who truly had nowhere to live.
When you have to memorise your own story for fear of getting it wrong, it begins to feel like a lie. As I walked through the city centre, glancing down at my phone screen for directions to the council buildings, the panic begun. Don’t slip up.
In a dark and claustrophobic room, I tried to breathe as I answered questions from a woman whose straight face remained locked to the computer screen in front of her, and whose eyes rarely met mine through the reinforced glass screen which guarded her from me.
Does the father live locally?
Yes.
Could you stay with him?
No.
Do you have family or friends you could stay with?
No.
Simple questions, simple answers. Except they weren’t. They had long, complex answers, if I really thought about it. I learnt a long time ago that to ask for help you had to first defend why you needed it, and I never quite fit the criteria. Never quite good enough. Never quite bad enough. Never Enough.
The interview was over in less than half an hour. I had remembered the simple versions of the answers to these questions, the ones they needed to hear. Not lies, but truths which would get me the help I needed, the help we needed. The help which one day, I would remember I deserved.
Jennifer... how good to have you return to the project after your Bedtime piece back in July, which made such a deep impression on me. It's a privilege to learn about another stage of that journey you undertook. As a piece of short form writing there is skill here too, as well as insight into how the world works when you are in need: I admire how you began at work, with the table, and your friend telling you how it was going to go. It is a skillfull way of establishing the stakes before you begin being questioned.
I've curated it in the Terrible Questions theme from Season Three as I feel it fits best there, and here is your link to it there:
https://thecureforsleep.com/terrible-questions/#jennifercarter
As with your previous piece, you've brought a time in my own younger life back so sharply. I left home just before I was 16, and stayed with my gran, but then I needed to be away at some distance at a tertiary college. I took a bus to that big town (I never used public transport, living in deep country) and made my way to the huge and imposing council offices. Found the long corridor where the student funding team were. Explained - as you had to - that I had no one to live with, that there was domestic abuse at home, and I needed to be safe and in lodgings near to the college - the long travelling to and from from my grandmother's was too hard as I also had to earn my own money around my studies...
No. There was no funding for that kind of situation the woman said. Sorry.
I stumbled out and away in tears and panic. No idea what to do next.
A man's voice called out for me to wait. He'd been listening and came out in an unofficial capacity to tell me in confidence about a loophole I could use. If I got a doctor's note saying I suffered severe travel sickness they would have to give me an automatic full two-year grant to stay in lodgings near the A-Level college.
I got the doctor's note, and went back the next week. Got the grant. A huge sum to me back then. I assumed I'd see the man when I was there, and be able to thank him (I'm good with faces). But he wasn't there, or I didn't see him. Never asked his name so can never thank the person who bothered to help me get fully free of my childhood town and circumstances forever.
I think about it often though. How we can - like him, like your friend Claire - pass on a bit of system knowledge that helps someone get out, get on, get up.
Thank you for adding this story to our collection. I think it will affect others as it did me.
Txx
Thank you so much Tanya for creating such a welcoming space and for providing such beautiful prompts.... I'm very late to the party but am trying slowly and tentatively to dip my toes and find my way back to writing so that you so much for the invitations... I realise as I read back through my response to this particular prompt that it doesn't quite fit.... But I thought I would try and silence my inner critic a little and just share it anyway. Thank you again so much for creating such a beautiful little corner online.
Her outline is baggy.
Where the edges were once sharp, they are now finely frayed. Her gait is wider—looser, softer, fluid.
She is unconsciously shapeshifting. Her form that was once rounded by the swell of pregnancy, has now been softened by the postnatal bulge and sag. Her eyes, which were once bright and sparkling, are smudged bruise-blue by the lack of sleep. Her hands are lined and dry, hardened by the constant washing, holding and folding.
She moves with less certainty, somewhat tentatively. Where once her stride was purposeful and confident, she’s cautious, carrying with her the new weight of responsibility and a precious bundle that is now strapped to her front.
Her voice is softer, quieter.
From afar, if you knew her already, you would still recognise her and you would smile at the beautiful bonny new addition that she carries so gently. You would watch her as she sways, soothing and singing to the little one. You would smile at the ease with which she seems to have moved into this new role.
But she can’t see her old self anymore. She’s lost her.
She can’t find that confident, strident one who knew her mind, the one who knew what she wanted and what she was doing. The one who trusted her instinct and wasn’t shy to speak her mind. She thinks that her old self has disappeared into the folds of her new form, she thinks that this new body has made her invisible. But you watch her from afar, knowing that this will change, that she will shapeshift again. You know that as she steps more into this new form, her old self will reveal itself again, that the new folds that line her outline will only add to her beautiful shape.
She just needs time.
Oh Lucy... how lovely that you've joined us as a writer here. Thank you. And with such a tender and hopeful piece - those shapeshifting of young motherhood can feel so violent even while we look to others looking on the very picture of maternal ease. I love how much of that immense experience you convey here in so few words. And it's moving for me being now almost two decades on from that time, in menopause, having the time to build muscles for the first time in my life. I felt so sure I would only ever be the soft, aching being I was in those first ten years of young mothering. But as you, wiser, can already see, it just needed time!
I've put this piece from you into the Size & Shape collection from Season One rather than Memory Games if you don't mind as I think it's better showcased there. And I'm adding you now to the A to Z of contributors. I hope you will try other themes in the project - I will enjoy seeing what you make of them!
https://thecureforsleep.com/august-issue-sizeshape/#lucybeckley
Txx
Oh my goodness, thank you so very much Tanya! And I am so sorry it's taken me so long to say thank you. Life is equal parts wild, windy and wonky, yet these beautiful prompts have been such a tonic recently for me as I slowly find my way back to the page. I can't begin to thank you so much for your kind words, I really appreciate them and you for holding and creating such a beautiful space xxx
Lucy, I'm even later to the party than you! I've only just joined and am reading back through the archives. Your descriptions here are so evocative. I immediately can picture this woman, her shape, her softness, "Her gait is wider—looser, softer, fluid." I like how you allow the reader to zoom out to the woman's gait, and zoom in to the dry skin on her hands, the circles under her eyes. And I like how you say, "From afar, if you knew her already, you would still recognise her..." to describe this subtle shape shifting that has happened, that happens to women in particular. Lovely and skilful writing.
Thank you so much Wendy and I am so sorry it's taken me so long to reply! Thank you so much for such kind and encouraging words. I'm really looking forward to discovering more of your words on these threads. Sending all the best from wild and windy Cornwall xxx
I never knew him - how could I? He died in 1927, my great-grandfather - his daughter, my grandmother, was just 9 years old. And yet. I ‘know’ him a little, through one photograph, a couple of stories - my grandmother as a tiny child out in India, bounced on his knee, taught a song about a bunny rabbit. His role as an army band master, conductor, bugle-player; instrument swapped for bayonet when it came to war. My grandmother, born in Peshawar, now Pakistan, 1917. My great-grandfather, Alexander Uriah - or Uri, as he was known - died of stomach cancer in 1927, back home in southern England. He was handsome, he stands proud in his photograph in my study now, army uniform, hint of a smile, hint of a wicked sense of humour. A tough life: his own mother died when he was a youngster, not even 10 years old. Landed in a poor house with several of his many siblings. Disappears from the records and reappears in the army years later, his birthdate wrong and I have a sneaking suspicion that he lied to get in there… all this, I know as fact. Anything more, I create. His love of music, the way his world moved in time to rhythm and pace and the way he closed his eyes to listen. The long, long boat journeys to India and back again, repeatedly. His eldest son following in his footsteps, his little girl jiggled on his knee whenever he had the time. She remembered his twinkling eyes, his warm smile, his fingers beating time as he sang. This is what I hold in his photograph, while his Edwardian-era eyes gaze back at me.
Larissa! How lovely of you to return with a new piece!
And what an exquisite piece it is: fits together so beautifully like an old pocket-watch... the way the loving gesture of a child on a knee keeps time across the generations. Just beautiful. And then the surprise and pleasure of lines like this: '...all this, I know as fact. Anything more, I create.'
Then that last sentence...
Beautiful. Thank you. Your link below. Txx
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#larissareid
Thank you, Tanya! I’ve made a little pact with myself to work through more of your beautiful prompts in the coming months 🌟 So, hopefully more of these little stories to come xx
Wonderful prospect! Xx
I’m sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by bright worms of yarn. Squiggles of orange, blue and green hang from my pyjamas, as I stare out the window-agitation spooling tightly around my limbs.
Such a waste.
I brush the lazy dangles from my legs, force myself up and go and admire my latest creation. It hangs perfectly on the antique wooden frame. Its Knots of finality and precision chopped ends fill me with satisfaction, yet the yarn on the carpet fills me with indecision and apprehension.
I google yarn scraps and find patterns to use them up on.
Happy that they will have their use at a future date, I grab a bag and start scooping up the rainbow worms and stuffing them into the bag.
When the floor is clear I take the bag and store it neatly in a drawer. The agitation starts to unspool.
I open the drawer above and pull out the neatly stacked piles of papers. I take them to the kitchen counter, lick my fingers and flick through. Water bills, work rotas, and rogue birthday cards that should be with the others, in the box under the bed. I pile them together, knocking the sturdy bottoms on the counter, to make them as uniform as I can. A small shower of synthetic glitter speckle the counter top. I sigh and tear off a kitchen roll square to wipe it clean.
I’m about to store the papers away again when I spot the shopping list.
Milk
Bread
Potatoes
Tobacco
yeast.
A short list, written in her small, precise handwriting.
I feel the memory in my stomach, a churn, then a tightening, like a fisted hand gripping tight. I recall the day. Being at work and seeing the dozens of missed calls. The hazy disbelief in my mums eyes.
A couple of days later, going to her house to sort, I remember her routines, through the remnants left. Piecing together the very last of her days with the evidence of activity about the house.
The pan on the hob, filled with thick brown stew and sagging dumplings-tupperware boxes layed out, waiting to be filled.
Her bag and scarf stationed near the front door, ready to adorn her for her trip on the bus.
I look in the freezer and gulp down tears as I see the homemade bread rolls, frozen solid in cellophane bags. I see her rough hands kneading with fervour, a floury cloud dusting the kitchen, as she pulls, pushes and shapes her doughy creation into a smooth, supple ball, ready to be placed on top of the fireplace.
The living room table holds a coffee stained cup, a biro pen, and underneath it, the handwritten shopping list.
I take the shopping list and the frozen bread rolls home with me.
Sitting here now, I drop the cards into a messy pile in the drawer, forget about the yarn scraps, grab my bag and scarf and escape out the door.
Maybe I’ll use up the scraps, maybe I won’t.
Either way, their purpose will be woven eventually.
Lauren, what a quietly devastating piece this is. It takes skill - and courage - to return to a moment like this, and through the moment and the artefact, to the person much missed. I remember how much it took from me to write about being alone in my grandmother's home after being the one to have to send her away from it. To really reinhabit those beloved rooms in the last time I would be in them, and for them to be without her... yes, it took a lot from me. But it's part of the book that speaks to so many. As this piece by you will to those who find it here (and so many subscribers spend time exploring the archive).
Here is your link, and I will now add you to the A to Z of contributors on the book site and on the By Readers tab here within my Substack.
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#laurenlongshaw
Thank you so much for joining the project.
Tanya xxx
“My job was to paint their eyes blue,” Pop once told me when I was a child. I imagined him going from house to house, crouching down in front of television screens and delicately painting the irises on the faces as they appeared. I thought that made him a hero. But of course, he’d become a hero long before then.
He was blown off three ships in the war and branded a jinx, even after rescuing his captain. When they washed up on the shores of Italy with no idea whose flag waved beyond the beach, my pop waved down a military vehicle only to find it was being driven by a chap he’d known from school. I think his luck took a turn from there.
Of course, I didn’t hear these stories from him, they were shared after he was gone. He wasn’t much of a storyteller, in fact, he rarely spoke to me at all. But it wasn’t his words that mattered to me as a child. It was his presence. The feeling of safety when he pulled me onto his lap as he did a crossword, and the smell of humbugs and pipe smoke that emanated from his scratchy woollen jumpers. Those gentle long fingers. Fingers that painted and gardened and crafted and mended. We used to call him Jim’lll fix it. Although you can’t say that anymore.
That minty tobacco smell has followed me across the world, appearing only in my darkest moments. Always a reminder of the best love I’ve ever known. A love that was unconditional and uncomplicated. I think I’ve spent my whole life searching for that same tenderness because feelings don’t fade like faces do.
Oh Corinne... this second contribution from you is so beautiful, so poignant. I got the same pleasure-tinged-with-missing that I get when reading Tove Jansson: both her Moomin books - where the characters are so based on those she loved, their habits - and her exquisite Summer Book. You seem to have a similar gift for bringing a loved one to the page. 'A love that was unconditional and uncomplicated' - what a treasure to have had that as a child.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#corinnekagan
Txxx
Thank you Tanya. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to remember and find the words for a very special man. I have never read Tove Jansson but I'll definitely seek her out now.
x
I'd love to know what you think if you do. If you haven't read her at all before now, I'd suggest starting with The Summer Book rather than the Moomin stories... xx
Memory Game
Flick over one image, then the pair. Flick another, no, not a match. Try again, come on, get on with it. Remember, for goodness sake, there’s only a few pairs.
Only a few pairs, only a few photos, only a few years, then five years, ten years, twenty, thirty. I flicked over his image. It was faded. It’s match would also be torn and ragged, if I had one. His face smiled out at me, his youthful magic was an inward breath that never came out. It was any ordinary day. With some of our breaths we’d laughed at normal things, silly things, things that are importantly not important and then we’d said goodbye. The next caller to speak his name asked I sit down. The primal wail escaped my body and frightened my soul. No, it isn’t true. It couldn’t be true. I didn’t want it true. But, then it came, an explosion deep in my heart. My chest clamped a lock, but sparked a fire that melted rock which flowed deeply beneath, buried as lava set. If I hung up instantly I could make it not true. I knew I could. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t turn back time. For days, then weeks then months I sobbed the loss of never again. I screamed the ache of fragile memories. Tears tore at my throat, my eyes bulged to peer into the mist of fading light, with his fading face. My heart carried on, my breath it steadied. My feet dragged through the daily grind of a thick black quagmire. Seasons cycled, stars winked the moon and the sun parched us all. New love was tendered, bells rang and golden rings exchanged with promises. Children came and learnt the game. Match the pairs, count them all.
Fascinated by this one which is very different in style to your first two. You retain the privacy of your experience (we, the readers, don't know who you've lost or how) but it still works as a shared piece I think because you're showing how these losses are huge geological internal events that are often barely noticed to those around us. Have you read the prose-poem novella By Grand Central Station, I Lay Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart? If you haven't, I have an instinct it will speak deeply to you...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#andreaday
Txx
Thanks. Ahh yes, I did do that deliberately but is that bad writing? I didn’t want to detail the cause as I hoped to capture the impact of loss and grief as I felt it happen without the additional impact of how, particularly in so few words. My writing needs lots of practice and I tend to lean to my angst, which I’m unsure about expressing publicly. That’s for the book suggestion, I’ll seek it out.
"Is that bad writing?" - sorry if my comments made you doubt what you'd submitted! I mean to say that you've done something difficult and well - to show the impact of a very private experience in a public piece of work, while maintaining necessary privacy for your and others' sakes. That was a core and ongoing challenge and standard I had to meet during the writing of The Cure for Sleep and I'm proud of how I managed it: at every stage I was asking how I might show the emotional truth in a way that would be useful to readers in respect to their own situations, without revealing too many tender details from the lives of those involved in mine. I think you're showing good and sure instinct here, and this is one of the reasons I'm committed to offering this space - it's a safe place to test out how one can approach stories from life...
My grandma
She was born in 1929 in Liverpool and said her name, Mavis, came from a singing bird. She won the All-England medal for dancing at Albert Hall at age 7. She sang and danced to You Are My Lucky Star. Hitler invaded Poland and Prime Minister Chamberlain finally recognized appeasement would not work, declared war on Germany, resigned and died shortly after. Liverpool was bombed for the first time on August 17, 1940. She spent nights alone in a brick house with a slate roof and blackout curtains. Over 4000 people died, second only to London. She practiced wearing her gas mask at school. She remembers weekly rations of two ounces of tea, two ounces of butter and one egg, but typically only powdered eggs were available. She married an American GI in 1945 and the marriage certificate listed her as a spinster at age 16. Her husband was 8 years older than her and brought his war bride to the states in 1946 and unleashed years of cruelty. She gave birth to a baby who died 7 months later and then to my mom in 1949. Her divorce was finalized in 1955. She remarried in 1956 and had a son. When she found her brother again after forty-four years he was still mad at her for not coming back home. She never acknowledged that this could have saved a lot of pain in our family. He never acknowledged that it would have been hard for her to come home. She never changed her citizenship. In 1988 Father O’Connor was informed by the bishop that the first marriage annulment was approved, “was null from the beginning,” in fact, and charged her $150 and she and her husband could take communion. Her embroidery was nearly as good on the back as the front, neat, tight stitches. I once gave her a list of questions. She said the happiest day of her life was when her mom left England to come to the states to be with her. The other answers were all about the regret of giving up her dancing career to come to America. These are the questions she skipped: what people don’t know about you, what’s most important, advice for other women in the family, describe a perfect day, worst piece of advice you ever gave, dream vacation, something you are sorry for. She would have denied being depressed, at most admitting to being melancholy at Christmas. She kept a tight grip. She said her heart was like a hotel, there was room for everyone, but that was a past life. Her best years were over by age 16.
Sheila - this is just stunning. Not only your grandmother's life, but your telling of it. And, yet again, I am convinced that I am reading the early works of a writer who is going to be read far more widely in book form one year soon. You are incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence!
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#sheilaknell
I want to email soon a number of you who are frequent contributors to start planning monthly features on each of you from Season 3 starting in March or April. Do you have an email I can use or should I direct message you on Hagitude?
Tanya xx
Thank you so much, your response all the more meaningful after getting a rejection yesterday! I did these short sketches of my mom and my great-grandma as well...always on that never ending search to figure a life out. My email is: sheilaknell@yahoo.com
My daughter found an oral history book for me for my birthday titled: Liverpool Women at War, that I plan to try digging into a bit today. She also read Fierce Attachments over the holiday break and is now also a huge fan of Gornick.
Your encouragement always lets me breath with a bit more ease...
My hair hangs heavy like wet rope as I sit in the faded green bath always run too shallow so that my toes become hierarchical islands in a sea without a tide as an Imperial Leather boat bobs by. My teeth chatter not because I'm cold but because its part of the game and I like how it makes her care. 'Hair, face, feet and peach?' She asks and I giggle as I clamber over the side rewarding her with a toothy grin as my answer. A large terracotta towel quickly shrouds my squirming body and as she feeds my joy with requests of 'quick, quick, quick' the towels are always rough and I jump like a fish on the line. I escape to streak down the stairs leaving tiny wet toes on the carpet. I round the corner into the living room like a whippet. 'Cor blimey maid, you only just made it away from that towel this time' and he pats to the chair but he doesn't need to. I place myself neatly between him and the arm whilst he wrestles an old blanket from behind him and around my naked body. 'Can I have some?' I ask pointing to a big bottle of cider stashed next to him. His scuffed red cheeks swell with naughtiness 'You bugger! You'm just like ya ol'grandad' and he begins to sing drink up the cider whilst I'm thrown around on his knee, laughing from my belly. The creak of my nans footsteps sound and he puts his fingers to his lips which I copy whilst he gestures upstairs with his eyes. After a while the fire begins to speak 'weeeeeee pop' and it sets off a small ember that lands on the cats ear she hisses and glowers but remains sitting feet curled under bib. I don't like it and look to my grandad but he's laughing at the tv, he can't always be there I suppose and I don't like that either. The fire speaks again 'weeeeeee' but no pop, just suspense and I'm even more anxious waiting for the moment to break, waiting for the spark and the hiss but nothing comes.
I fiddle with a familiar loose thread on the seam of the chair running it through my fingers as it catches on the edges of my bitten nails. Tomorrow I will have to go home and I think about that as without any effort at all the thread gives way into my hand and I'm scared its all going to come undone.
Oh Lucy... I'm am so so glad you've joined the project. What a gorgeous piece of writing - and life - you've shared with us here. What I love in Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie and some of D H Lawrence's best work: it's so rarely done, this kind of loving recollection, so physical, and these lovely sound portraits, too, of how an older generation talk.
I've added this to the story archive with pleasure, and here is your link direct to your piece:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#lucylichen
I do hope other themes tempt you to try...
Tanya xx
Such a great piece... you convey a tangible sense of the layers of emotion in those moments, and also reveal so much of your grandmother herself, through the things in her life... now to be hastily collected in an attempt to scoop up a little of the familiar, as she sets off for the hospital. Certain objects seem to embody a part of us, and those we love... My own Mum passed in 2017, and I am still immersed in many of her things. Some are photos, or a small painting, family or other recipes written in her handwriting, furniture, bric-a-brac, bits of yarn, wooden thread spools, old paperbacks and so much more... the ephemera of not only her life, but her parents... a long line of People Who Collect Things : ) I can really relate to this passage: "Rifled every drawer and wardrobe as if I could steal and keep safe how I loved her: Cotton reels; shoe polish; jars of homemade jam and pickles; hat for Chapel; fifty-year old crêpe-paper Christmas decorations; smelling salts. Even heavy things I could never use, I wanted to take away in my arms:..."
It's a bequest as well as a burden of sorts that we take on when a parent or grandparent passes... and negotiating the memories/ambivalences and determining what those objects actually represent, is a complicated, emotional process. Ultimately the relationship transcends any material element, but these objects can trigger so many memories... It is challenging to tease out the meaning they had for one's parent, vs one's own feeling of not wanting to dishonor something they loved... Still working through it... Your grandmother sounds like a warm, wise woman.. no doubt she would be pleased she is still recalled with such eloquence and feeling,
Thank you, Jo, for how you’ve responded to this. And your own list here is compelling to my imagination in turn: ‘ recipes written in her handwriting, furniture, bric-a-brac, bits of yarn, wooden thread spools, old paperbacks and so much more... the ephemera of not only her life, but her parents... a long line of People Who Collect Things’. Each month’s theme stays open for contributions, so if you’d like to return here with a longer response any time -any where between 50 words to 250, say, I’d love to add your memories to the main story archive over on the book’s website... Txx
I've read this several times out loud now--reveling in both the sound of the words in my ears and the way my mouth is possessed by the need to chew them and tumble them around and deliver them into the air. Your writing, so lyrical....it's tangible in such a way that all the senses can feel it. As I sit here thinking about my own experiences of losing someone beloved to me, I'm struck by how little I have physically—no sand timer, no binoculars, no beads. But I remember…
Blips and beeps and bells from the other side of the ICU curtain mixed with feet scuffling and squeaking across the floor. He was gone really the moment the aneurism broke free, but his heart was still beating at an incredible clip; strong; a steady green line on the monitor, here and gone all at once. I wiped a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth, and as the sun rose and my grandfather Stanley lay dying I held his hand. I noted its squareness, thick knuckles, traced the gold band he’d worn for over 50 years, and I saw it for the first time: his hands were mine. Hands that held four children and grandchildren, and one great grandchild. That roasted lemon-stuffed chickens basted with olive oil and oregano over campfires. Fingers that tied flies before palms cast out over the water. Hands that planted two gardens of vegetables every growing season, watered, pruned, picked shiny green peppers. Other than photos I do not possess any objects treasured by him. He was buried with the compass he used to navigate forests, and I’ve no idea what became of his walking stick. But do I have his hands. My hands are the objects. My hands are the treasure.
"But do I have his hands. My hands are the objects. My hands are the treasure." - Amy, everything you say you find and feel in my writing is exactly how I hoped it would be read and felt. Thank you. I read every line out over and again until all unnecessary words are gone and only the sound and sense/s are left. And what you say about how I write, how I feel about yours too. I even have a line in mine that answers yours ('my hands held generations, and knew what to do'). I will add this with pleasure to the archive on the book site, and hope you will continue to contribute each month until publication - after that I may chance what the monthly prompt derives from, but then too I'd hope to have you with me. Please do spread the word to those you know online and in your daily life who you feel would like a safe space for sharing first stories. You are such a confident writer - or you read that way to me - but I know how many struggle to share their stories. I think me and some of you here together could help many people into their first publications this year!
Thank you so much for your kind words, Tanya. They mean so much. I suppose I am a confident writer in the sense that I know I have something to say, that begs to be told, but confidence in skill is something else entirely. I’ve only had a few poems published in the literary journal associated with the master’s program I graduated from, and a short personal essay on a medical humanities website—getting up the courage to submit something elsewhere is a struggle.Right now I’m working to try and fashion my MA manuscript into something that might verge on the publishable, as well as trying to figure out a regular writing practice that will assist me in building up a body of work and take into account all that my illness presents me with. Finding you and your work has been of immeasurable help to me in this regard . Many, many thanks!!
Well once my third & last book draft is away and line edits done too - July time - I will open up some more free one-hour times for those who'd like a safe space to talk about their creative practice - how to grow & sustain it - and to ask me any questions about what I've learned in last five years from first online unpaid essay to the residencies and now the book deal. I've had some lovely calls with writers overseas: would love to hear your voice if zoom or just a voice call would work for you...
This piece is stunning Amy! You have a way with your words that to me, create a vivid sketch or painting! Saying so much with so few words, such a skill indeed!
Thank you for the lovely comment, Tracey, and for taking the time to read 🙏
Your writing is stunning too Amy.
Thank you very much, Fleur.
Dear Amy, as I said earlier today, your contributions mean a great deal to me. I've already been able to add your latest one to the book's website. Here is your link to it:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#amymillios
I've had to change the formatting, placing an asterisk between each para break to ensure formatting holds. But I think it is more readable than the colour blocks I tried in month one!