Wonderful Tanya, the sense of your gran, the sense of yourself ......"to prize routine and everyday objects more than people" so much to reflect on in that sentence. Thank you so much for the prompt. It's so lovely to write in response and to read everyone's different interpretations. Best wishes, Sheila
My Brother Mike
Sheila de Courcy
He was gone within 27 hours. There was no warning. It was a sunny evening, he was playing football, there had been no rain for weeks and the pitch was hard. We hadn’t shared a home for 10 years so there were few mementoes. Just some gifts from over the years but we were so young, I was left with more memories than things. All tinged with sadness. I looked for him in the streets where we met, gazed at the paintings he loved, listened for his voice at my side as I strode the hills or plunged into the Atlantic. Sometimes he visited my dreams and we talked. Often it was that he had survived the accident but his life had changed.
The years passed. I held him close and kept going. I gave birth to my first child at the age at which he had died. My children had reached early adulthood when tragedy began to enter their lives. I started to think carefully about when, at a similar age, my own world had disintegrated and how memories of a wonderful life were shaped by sadness. Now I found his beautiful voice on reel to reel tapes, loving letters in his exquisite script and photos of our childhood that, for three decades, had been too painful to revisit. I recorded interviews with my sisters, my mum, his friends, his son and we talked about how good he made us feel, protected and challenged and joyful, so alive. So alive. Even still. You never forget how someone makes you feel.
That summer a radio documentary I made about memory and Mike was broadcast. Some weeks later I was having a massage, a birthday gift from my kids. As I lay in the silent, still room a slight breeze glided across my bare legs and chimes suspended from the ceiling tinkled in an unexpected way. Afterwards the masseuse told me that we had had a visitor. A man. He had asked her to let me know that he was good and doing well and to say thank you.
Sheila - what an astonishing vivid & loving portrait of your brother and his loss/return you have shared with us here. I will add it to the book site later this month, and link to you as before. I like the thought that some of my growing subscriber community might - like you - respond often, even every month: by the time my book is out in Feb some of you will have your own related bodies of work alongside it - in addition to your own writing/art practice. This cumulative & communal aspect of story-telling feels so important to me - so when a writer of your depth and skill responds: it's a powerful feeling. Thank you.
I've had to change the formatting and add little asterisks between each para to create breaks that will hold. I think it reads better than the original colour blocks though..
As I said to Amy earlier, I hope to have contributions from you any and all month's that interest you to write for! And please do share word online and with your offline friends who you know would like to see some first words published, and who would appreciate a safe first place to try. I like the idea of those of us who are more used to having our work published making a seedbed for new voices to sow and grow!
Thanks so much for your kind comments Tanya. This is the third piece I have had published, the second piece being on your website last month and your encouragement has meant a lot. I'm not the most proficient online but will certainly spread word of this wonderful project in all ways I can . And, in the future, please feel no pressure to publish any responses I might submit. The process you are evolving is one I will do my best to support and its success will be reward enough. Best of luck and again, my thanks, Sheila
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...
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!
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!
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
It was as if she was passing on a baton; a rich purple lidded tube that must one day have been handed to her and was now being handed to me. She ‘thought I might like it’.
My home has always been full of my parents, from the box of his tools Dad put together for me that first Christmas I was married to the king-size patchwork bedspread Mum made by hand when she had retired from teaching. Each patch is a memory from the clothes they wore to furnishing I recognised; a family heirloom. The tools in our house now are always mummy’s tools, though first they were Dads, including the old tobacco tins full of nails and screws.
Most of the items of theirs that I possess are of practical use whether made or passed on but this was different. Inside the tube were a number of papers. Looking at them now, I seem to be looking at another life, separate from mine, yet like a pattern I am following. The first is her Genreal School certificate, dated 1936, from ‘Raine’s Foundation School for Girls’, a Jewish School to which my mother won a scholarship in 1929. Her time as a scholarship ‘gentile’ is well known to me. Coming from a poor East London home, her attendance and success there, despite some of its traumas is impressive. However it was the range of subjects she had passed that struck me. English subjects, yes, but written and oral French and German too. Mathematics I knew she excelled in, but Inorganic Chemistry, Magnetism and Electricity? Art: elements of colour and design, model drawing and freehand. And singing. Suddenly I seemed to recognize threads of belonging, interests shared over years becoming part of me.
When I look at them now, I imagine her going to school in her second-hand uniform; her nights studying in their tiny damp terrace house, practising the violin my grandmother detested, looking after her brother while her mother washed doorsteps for a living. Another paper in the tube has a job application letter drafted on the back: ‘I have wanted to be a teacher since I was eight’. Eight; the age she was when her father died of cancer in a mental asylum. I resisted teaching but it was in my genes and I loved it once I started. I recognize those genes in my own daughter now she too is about to begin that process.
Only one paper is in colour: ‘Moray House College of Education’, Edinburgh, 21st June 1962. She was awarded an education diploma with merit which at last enabled her to pursue the teaching life for which she had longed. I was eight. Despite my resistance to the career I later came to love, I treasure the days I was able to go into school with Mum. The children loved her and flourished under her diligent care. To them, I was ‘Mrs Stewart’s little girl’, although I was twice their age. Sometimes I wonder if there is some kind of mycorrhizal network that ran between us, constantly building connections that fed into my life, nurturing me like Suzanne Simard’s mother trees. I am obsessed with colour, had a challenging school life, belong to a choir, studied maths to A level, became a teacher and create patchwork in a small way.
The papers in my ‘baton’ are a glimpse of a life lived until she had run her course. What has passed into my life is infinitely richer and still nourishes through objects and memoires.
Oh Jean, as I've already said in my direct message on Twitter, but want to say again now: How beautiful this is, and how grateful I am for your contribution. Your parents sound like truly wonderful people, and how you've written of them here is so vivid. I've added your story to the book's main site and here is the link. With thanks once again, as with your contribution to Birds of Firle. Tanya x
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.
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
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.
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:
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...
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...
“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
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.
In the care home, the faint ammonia tang of urine mingled with sharp disinfectant and the heavy sweetness of an air freshener. Grandpa sat in an armchair by the window, gazing out. His sharper edges worn away by age and memory loss, he showed us every card he had been sent with boyish pleasure. Then he patted my pregnant belly and squeezed my fingers tightly in his cool, dry hand.
Eight decades before, his own mother had died in the grip of childbirth, stolen away from him along with a younger sister who was never named. With them his own childhood died too. His father, unable to keep the children at home, sent all three to an orphanage where strange men preyed on the children at night and Christmas brought the heady excitement of a single orange. Grandpa always insisted that his father’s monthly visits had protected him from the worst abuses. He had merely lain in bed and listened to the other boys praying to be spared.
Afterwards, these scars ingrained a deep sense of shame in him. He would apologise for his failures in business, his lack of ambition, although he built a house and supported three children of his own. “I always felt myself to be more of a family man” he would say, by way of explanation. He seemed not to realise what a soaring accomplishment this was, after a childhood so emptied of love. Or how touching his appreciation of small blessings.
Someone had dropped by before our visit, bringing with them a tin of anchovies. Such a sharp, pungent flavour of flesh and salt compared to the bland food offered by the home. Grandpa was overjoyed with them and, as if we might not believe him, insisted on leading us to the kitchen. A carer produced the fish as requested: a half empty Tupperware of small, limp fillets, swimming in a silky brine. He beamed at us, held them out reverently so we could look, then clipped the lid carefully back on and tucked them into the fridge, “for later”.
Every now and then someone in this project writes of a loved person in a way that makes them as real and unforgettable to me as anyone in my own extended family. This is what you've done here, in how you've paid tribute to your grandfather - who survived such devastating loss of love and then personal safety not by becoming abusive in turn, but by loving others and all the small joys life could offer. So moved by him and by how you've written of him.
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
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
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:
Wonderful Tanya, the sense of your gran, the sense of yourself ......"to prize routine and everyday objects more than people" so much to reflect on in that sentence. Thank you so much for the prompt. It's so lovely to write in response and to read everyone's different interpretations. Best wishes, Sheila
My Brother Mike
Sheila de Courcy
He was gone within 27 hours. There was no warning. It was a sunny evening, he was playing football, there had been no rain for weeks and the pitch was hard. We hadn’t shared a home for 10 years so there were few mementoes. Just some gifts from over the years but we were so young, I was left with more memories than things. All tinged with sadness. I looked for him in the streets where we met, gazed at the paintings he loved, listened for his voice at my side as I strode the hills or plunged into the Atlantic. Sometimes he visited my dreams and we talked. Often it was that he had survived the accident but his life had changed.
The years passed. I held him close and kept going. I gave birth to my first child at the age at which he had died. My children had reached early adulthood when tragedy began to enter their lives. I started to think carefully about when, at a similar age, my own world had disintegrated and how memories of a wonderful life were shaped by sadness. Now I found his beautiful voice on reel to reel tapes, loving letters in his exquisite script and photos of our childhood that, for three decades, had been too painful to revisit. I recorded interviews with my sisters, my mum, his friends, his son and we talked about how good he made us feel, protected and challenged and joyful, so alive. So alive. Even still. You never forget how someone makes you feel.
That summer a radio documentary I made about memory and Mike was broadcast. Some weeks later I was having a massage, a birthday gift from my kids. As I lay in the silent, still room a slight breeze glided across my bare legs and chimes suspended from the ceiling tinkled in an unexpected way. Afterwards the masseuse told me that we had had a visitor. A man. He had asked her to let me know that he was good and doing well and to say thank you.
Sheila - what an astonishing vivid & loving portrait of your brother and his loss/return you have shared with us here. I will add it to the book site later this month, and link to you as before. I like the thought that some of my growing subscriber community might - like you - respond often, even every month: by the time my book is out in Feb some of you will have your own related bodies of work alongside it - in addition to your own writing/art practice. This cumulative & communal aspect of story-telling feels so important to me - so when a writer of your depth and skill responds: it's a powerful feeling. Thank you.
Hello again, Sheila. Further to my first reply, I've now already had a chance to add your latest beautiful contribution to the book's website. Here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#sheiladecourcy
I've had to change the formatting and add little asterisks between each para to create breaks that will hold. I think it reads better than the original colour blocks though..
As I said to Amy earlier, I hope to have contributions from you any and all month's that interest you to write for! And please do share word online and with your offline friends who you know would like to see some first words published, and who would appreciate a safe first place to try. I like the idea of those of us who are more used to having our work published making a seedbed for new voices to sow and grow!
Thanks so much for your kind comments Tanya. This is the third piece I have had published, the second piece being on your website last month and your encouragement has meant a lot. I'm not the most proficient online but will certainly spread word of this wonderful project in all ways I can . And, in the future, please feel no pressure to publish any responses I might submit. The process you are evolving is one I will do my best to support and its success will be reward enough. Best of luck and again, my thanks, Sheila
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...
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!
Your writing is stunning too Amy.
Thank you very much, Fleur.
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 🙏
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
It was as if she was passing on a baton; a rich purple lidded tube that must one day have been handed to her and was now being handed to me. She ‘thought I might like it’.
My home has always been full of my parents, from the box of his tools Dad put together for me that first Christmas I was married to the king-size patchwork bedspread Mum made by hand when she had retired from teaching. Each patch is a memory from the clothes they wore to furnishing I recognised; a family heirloom. The tools in our house now are always mummy’s tools, though first they were Dads, including the old tobacco tins full of nails and screws.
Most of the items of theirs that I possess are of practical use whether made or passed on but this was different. Inside the tube were a number of papers. Looking at them now, I seem to be looking at another life, separate from mine, yet like a pattern I am following. The first is her Genreal School certificate, dated 1936, from ‘Raine’s Foundation School for Girls’, a Jewish School to which my mother won a scholarship in 1929. Her time as a scholarship ‘gentile’ is well known to me. Coming from a poor East London home, her attendance and success there, despite some of its traumas is impressive. However it was the range of subjects she had passed that struck me. English subjects, yes, but written and oral French and German too. Mathematics I knew she excelled in, but Inorganic Chemistry, Magnetism and Electricity? Art: elements of colour and design, model drawing and freehand. And singing. Suddenly I seemed to recognize threads of belonging, interests shared over years becoming part of me.
When I look at them now, I imagine her going to school in her second-hand uniform; her nights studying in their tiny damp terrace house, practising the violin my grandmother detested, looking after her brother while her mother washed doorsteps for a living. Another paper in the tube has a job application letter drafted on the back: ‘I have wanted to be a teacher since I was eight’. Eight; the age she was when her father died of cancer in a mental asylum. I resisted teaching but it was in my genes and I loved it once I started. I recognize those genes in my own daughter now she too is about to begin that process.
Only one paper is in colour: ‘Moray House College of Education’, Edinburgh, 21st June 1962. She was awarded an education diploma with merit which at last enabled her to pursue the teaching life for which she had longed. I was eight. Despite my resistance to the career I later came to love, I treasure the days I was able to go into school with Mum. The children loved her and flourished under her diligent care. To them, I was ‘Mrs Stewart’s little girl’, although I was twice their age. Sometimes I wonder if there is some kind of mycorrhizal network that ran between us, constantly building connections that fed into my life, nurturing me like Suzanne Simard’s mother trees. I am obsessed with colour, had a challenging school life, belong to a choir, studied maths to A level, became a teacher and create patchwork in a small way.
The papers in my ‘baton’ are a glimpse of a life lived until she had run her course. What has passed into my life is infinitely richer and still nourishes through objects and memoires.
Oh Jean, as I've already said in my direct message on Twitter, but want to say again now: How beautiful this is, and how grateful I am for your contribution. Your parents sound like truly wonderful people, and how you've written of them here is so vivid. I've added your story to the book's main site and here is the link. With thanks once again, as with your contribution to Birds of Firle. Tanya x
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#JeanWilson
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.
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
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.
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
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...
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 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
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
In the care home, the faint ammonia tang of urine mingled with sharp disinfectant and the heavy sweetness of an air freshener. Grandpa sat in an armchair by the window, gazing out. His sharper edges worn away by age and memory loss, he showed us every card he had been sent with boyish pleasure. Then he patted my pregnant belly and squeezed my fingers tightly in his cool, dry hand.
Eight decades before, his own mother had died in the grip of childbirth, stolen away from him along with a younger sister who was never named. With them his own childhood died too. His father, unable to keep the children at home, sent all three to an orphanage where strange men preyed on the children at night and Christmas brought the heady excitement of a single orange. Grandpa always insisted that his father’s monthly visits had protected him from the worst abuses. He had merely lain in bed and listened to the other boys praying to be spared.
Afterwards, these scars ingrained a deep sense of shame in him. He would apologise for his failures in business, his lack of ambition, although he built a house and supported three children of his own. “I always felt myself to be more of a family man” he would say, by way of explanation. He seemed not to realise what a soaring accomplishment this was, after a childhood so emptied of love. Or how touching his appreciation of small blessings.
Someone had dropped by before our visit, bringing with them a tin of anchovies. Such a sharp, pungent flavour of flesh and salt compared to the bland food offered by the home. Grandpa was overjoyed with them and, as if we might not believe him, insisted on leading us to the kitchen. A carer produced the fish as requested: a half empty Tupperware of small, limp fillets, swimming in a silky brine. He beamed at us, held them out reverently so we could look, then clipped the lid carefully back on and tucked them into the fridge, “for later”.
Every now and then someone in this project writes of a loved person in a way that makes them as real and unforgettable to me as anyone in my own extended family. This is what you've done here, in how you've paid tribute to your grandfather - who survived such devastating loss of love and then personal safety not by becoming abusive in turn, but by loving others and all the small joys life could offer. So moved by him and by how you've written of him.
Thank you for sharing this.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-april/#adelaryle
Txx
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
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
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