You were certain that was the dress you must have.
Pristine white geese with yellow and blue bows tied around their slender necks danced around a skirt of scarlet red, and a white pique collar impractically topped rows of delicate smocking. I had visions of red bleeding into white on the first wash. You spun around, a full circle of anserine waltzing filling the dance floor of the tiny shop and knew this was your Christmas dress. I know how important dreams are, and watched, my fears unspoken, as the assistant folded leaves of tissue paper and handed a glossy carrier bag to my lignite-eyed, smiling girl.
I wish that I could say we feasted better on the day that you left us, but I can’t. Amidst the jobs that must be done, I hurriedly scored crosses on scrubbed and oiled potatoes and set them to bake. Even the sauce was from a jar. Your father burst through the front door, bringing a blast of freezing air and shaking the snow from his boots. At least we were together.
I had reached the half landing with a basket of laundry when your brother screamed for me to come. The Christmas tree lights sparkling, amidst the abandoned Lego and half-completed buildings, you struggled to breathe, your concerned brother, your protective angel, arcing over you.
Lifted into the crook of your daddy’s arm, the waltzing stopped, and a gaggle of crumpled geese fell still.
I never did wash your dress. When Christmas lights sparkle, I lift it from its wrappings and inhale the captured fragrance of a child who chose the perfect garment to celebrate the twirling, whirling, joy- giggling excitement of pantomimes, presents, and parties, and then, to slip ever so quietly away before the red could bleed into the white.
Dear Elizabeth, this is so devastating, powerful and vast and so brave and generous of you to share it here. I can see your daughter's beautiful dress and her twirling with joy, thank you for entrusting the memory of her with us, it will stay with me xxxx
This says so much about your family is so few words, the busy mom who takes time to hear her daughter, allow her the impractical dress because it makes her smile, feel pretty, so much love there. And then the devastation, such a heartwarming and heartbreaking writing. Agree with Monique, thank you for trusting us enough to share this. One of those writings that will stick with me, pares life down to its essence.
Thank you Susan; that's so encouraging and kind of you. I love the way HP sauce prompts memories of your brother. I often think of grief as a bit like carrying a loaded tray of glasses though a crowded party room; for the most part, we do the job wonderfully, laughing, smiling, handing out drinks and nibbles, and being the perfect host, then someone unthinkingly stretches out a leg or accidently knocks our elbow, the tray goes crashing down, and there's glass and spillage everywhere. It's easily mopped up and the tray replenished, life goes on, but it happens, and in many ways, the fact that it does is a comfort and continuum of our love and care.
Dear Elizabeth, thank you - with all my heart - for entrusting me and other members of our community here with this devastating and yet also deeply beautiful tribute to your daughter - your lignite-eyed, smiling girl. It is always a privilege to receive stories, but never more so than here, now. I can see already that other members of this community are responding to you, to her, as I did...
Here is your link to your words in the story archive:
Thank you so much Tanya. I'm very new to writing, and am only just beginning to understand the rawness and vulnerability of where words can take us, but I've been so blessed by everyone's kindness and encouragement. Thank you to all.
This is exactly why I created this space: so that there was a safe space for you and others to explore with me who it feels to dare showing and sharing our true selves, our most important moments. Thank you again for joining us here. xx
This is so powerful Elizabeth and how moving this piece of writing is. You would never know you are new to writing. This piece will stay with me for a long time. Sending you much love xx
My great-uncle Carleton always greeted us with a handshake, even when I was very young. I am certain he was the very first person to shake my hand, taking it upon himself to teach us children the proper technique, to say “How do you do” and to ensure the correct pressure, gently correcting us if our grip were too tentative or too powerful. Carleton always expected this formal gesture, a handshake delivered with just the right balance of confidence and respect. He also was likely the first to call me “Miss”, another dose of formality that was foreign to my world but essential to his.
I don’t ever remember seeing Carleton without suit and tie and hat, but I do remember seeing him sitting in our den with a handkerchief on his bald pate. He had gotten chilly and had taken out his starched white gentleman’s handkerchief, tied a knot carefully in each of the four corners, and then placed it upon his head as if that was the most ordinary and proper thing for a chilly gentleman to do.
I was never entirely sure how seriously he took his proper gentleman-self. There was always a glint in his eye that suggested humor, a warm affection in his way with children, even while calling us “Master” or “Miss” and insisting on just the right handshake. Years later, when anyone reaches a hand out to me, my arm becomes a conduit for carrying on Carleton’s education, and somewhere inside me, formality and amusement waltz together.
One evening, I surprised myself by reaching into the cupboard and picking a bottle off the highest shelf. HP Sauce. Brown and spicy and now in a plastic bottle, rather than the glass one we used as kids. That thump thump on the end, trying to get some brown sauce to plop pleasingly on our plates, beside the sausages and bacon and soda bread. And the inevitable shout of frustration when nothing came for ages and then a massive slop. Ah, it’s all over my soda bread! It makes it all soggy!
Maybe plastic is better these days, I think, as I squeeze out a perfectly sized drop on the edge of my plate. It’s an Ulster Fry (of course) and it never tastes right without HP Sauce. This was a surprise tonight, though. I’ve told myself, over and over again, that I don’t actually like this sauce with a fry; I prefer some fancy chutney, I say with a middle-class sniff.
But here I am, dipping the sausage and enjoying the taste immensely. My brother was right. Stephen slathered the stuff on every single meal (except breakfast, but I wonder if, given the chance, his cornflakes would also swirl around in brown milk). As kids, we would pass the bottle round, watch intently as each person tried to control the amount coming out, and laugh and laugh when it went everywhere. I didn’t know that my big brother, with his freckles and wonky fringe and odd tastes, was wise and funny too. He was just annoying. And then illness arrived and, too late, pointed it all out: he was wise and funny.
And so here I am, missing him and licking the brown sauce that tastes now of spice and warmth and tears.
What a moving piece you've given us here, Susan. I'm sorry it has been a few days between you submitting it and my reply now - I try always to respond within a day to all submissions, from knowing how tender it is to give ones' words out into the world. But I promised myself and my family a proper online break after this last full year of getting the book into the world.
But then to return to here and see this from you: it reminded me all over again why I risked sharing my stories of my places and people and our ways of living. Because in so doing, now I receive other peoples' memories in turn.
I know I won't be the only reader who finds a whole powerful stream of memory let loose by your own memory of you gone brother and his way of eating. That's the beauty of good, generous, loving writing like this - particular to you, but also a helping hand back into memory for those who read it.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive:
Thanks so much Tanya, and yes a proper break is very wise! I’m so grateful to you for sharing your beautiful writing and offering space to others. Wonderful x
I Can hear the bangs on the bottle bottom as I read and the image of you all waiting for the plop ,I can taste the spicy sauce mixed with the salty tears
Dear Susan, this is so gorgeous and rich and I am taken with a strong urge to taste HP sauce again despite not having any for years. Your brother sounded like a wise and funny soul indeed.
I love this. Makes me think of my own siblings and how shared experiences bind us together. So glad you had such a great brother with such great taste)
Such a poignant piece on the power of food to take us back in time. I could really see the kids waiting to see how much would come out, could hear the giggles, such innocence before the illness. A beautiful tribute to your brother.
This is so moving Susan. Thank you for sharing this story of your brother. I find it really interesting that food can play such a part in remembering others. Sending you much love xx
8pm. Thursday 3rd May 2012. My 7 week old daughter was breast feeding when the phone rang. My sister, in a wailing voice I had never heard before or since “oh god it’s awful. Auntie Lynn is dead”. I felt a cold, white emptiness radiate from within and I wanted to faint. She was 49, the same age I am now. She literally dropped dead at home while watching TV of a cerebral haemorrhage. Bam. Dead. On an average Thursday in May.
We were close. She was my Auntie, my mothers sister but also my godmother. 11 years apart. Both my sister and I spoke to her most weeks. She had texted me that very morning to tell me she was popping to the shops. Then bam. Dead. She never even got to meet her great niece, my daughter.
I read a poem at the funeral about the transient nature of life. About footsteps in the sand being washed away. I needed a brandy to do it. I was 7 weeks into breast feeding. I could barely get the words out. Absolute white cold shock.
The world span for months after. My maternity leave was a mix of the warm joy of my second child and the ice cold panic of loss. The jigsaw of my life had been thrown in the air and it took a year for the pieces to fall back again.
A decade on and I honour her often. She taught me to cook. The other vegetarian in the family, I think of her when crumbling veggie stock cubes into my cooking. That was one of her tricks. I play her Talking Heads vinyl and toast her on French holidays when drinking ‘pouilly fume’ her favourite wine. My daughter, now 10, wears her scarves and has a photo in a locket of a woman she never met. I sometimes speak to her. “Auntie Lynn would have loved that”
How well you have conveyed here the pain and shock and spinning caused by the sudden loss of a loved one. I felt the physical nature of what you went through so clearly.
And then you show us in such a poignant way how your everyday life remembers here all these years later.
It reminds me that the worst grief in the years after I lost my beloved Granny Shadrick were when the loss was so painful that my mind glanced off and away from any thought or mention of her. So the loss was double - she was gone, but also my memory. I remember when I was able to begin honouring her in my daily life, as you do with the stock cubes, the wine, her scarves.
We'd rather of course have these people with us, always, but this way of incorporating the best of our best people into our own lives, and those that come after us, this passing on of values...well that's a fine thing.
I'm so glad that you've given us this piece for the story archive. Thank you.
Ah thank you! I do workshops for festivals every now and then but don't offer any online courses so far. I try to make most of what I do in this respect free - this platform, and the one to one mentoring I do is also free to recipients and funded for me to offer by third parties.
That said, I'm going to spend some time in the coming year thinking of what I could offer in terms of small group creative confidence mentoring to those within this community who'd like to do more extended work than the 300-word format allows. And to have zoom conversations as well as longer set exercises. I'd enjoy doing deeper work with those of you here who'd like to try it. But I need to feel I'm only accepting money for something that truly is offering real value. It's lovely to think you might be interested.
Such a touching piece on how quickly life changes, as you say, "bam," and then it is something new, how hard it is as a mom to hold tragedy and joy at the same time, continue to caretake in the "white cold shock." Loved the imagery of the jigsaw thrown into the air, smiled thinking of you crumbling the veggie stock cubes.
Drumming like soldiers marching along his head, the table, the chair. My Father-in-law. Derek could not control them.
A few months later his walking pattern changed. He used to sway from side to side attempting to negotiate an open door. Easy actions became difficult. Everything took longer now.
Walking downstairs turned into a chore. Step by step, clinging onto the wooden rails with clammy palms.
“I mustn’t fall.” He used to say to himself silently.
“Don’t fall. Take it slowly.”
The inner voice grew louder.
Shaving presented another challenge: Derek avoided the door frame and stood in front of the sink and the mirror. He had always performed a wet shave, but co-ordinating soap, shaving brush had become risky.
Derek researched his symptoms and visited the G.P.
“You’ve got a type of Parkinson’s.” The G.P. told him.
Derek found it hard to process at first, but he adapted: easy-to-hold knives, forks and spoons filled the kitchen drawer, an extra railing was attached to the stair wall and grab rails added in the bathroom.
Following a spell in hospital Derek pestered to return home. His house was his children’s inheritance so he must avoid going into a home.
Carers, social workers and occupational therapists invaded the house.
After several falls Derek waved goodbye to upstairs.
This independent streak persisted to the end – that fateful fall in the kitchen sustained between carers’ visits at the peak of the pandemic.
What made him get up that day? A knock at the door, a telephone call or simply a toilet urge?
All we know is that the bleeding was too extensive to consider surgery so he slowly slipped away.
I love how this began and ended with short, choppy sentences and then the short paragraphs throughout, felt like the pace of his condition, almost like a list of what happened to him, but so much feeling contained, I felt like I was hearing what he was thinking. You were able to tell so much about his character in so few words that I felt myself carried along, caring about this man.
Joanne, I'm so glad the Bath Spa MA brought you and I into contact so that you've joined our project here. This is such a moving piece, and I share Sheila's admiration for the way the form/language mirrors Derek's embodied experience.
And then there's that deep, painful recognition I - and I'm sure others reading you - will get at that last line. How many of this older generation (my mother included; my paternal grandmother before her) have tried so hard to avoid receiving residential care so they might leave some money or a property to their family. It's an achievement, a legacy, they leave us, but at such a cost to themselves.
I do hope you will write for more of the prompts: I'd love to see what you do with them.
(I took a bit of liberty with this prompt. It is about my son who I am grateful to say is still very much alive. I think the prompt still works because, in my experience, there is a grief and a joy to all stages of parenting. He's 22 now and I look fondly on these days as I celebrate the life he lives now.)
What is missing? Well, the boy is missing, the boy who wanted to quit school in second grade to be a farmer, the boy who had his own egg business, made his own labels for the egg cartons, kept track of who he sold to. The boy who never forgot the guy who didn’t pay. The boy who set up a desk in his dad’s woodworking shop, complete with pictures of his dog and one of our favorite hens along with a book of agriculture facts from the 1970s and an aluminum bean can decorated with construction paper for pens and pencils. The boy who wore International Harvester t-shirts and hats, who stood, hand on hip, leaned like he had spent hours on a tractor.
What is missing? The boy who already had around 30 chickens and his mum and dad weren’t paying enough attention to the number of eggs he was giving to his uncle to incubate and when his mum finally asked he said around 70, but don’t worry, they won’t all hatch and nearly every one of them did hatch. The boy who had chickens everywhere.
What is missing? The boy who would hang out in the kitchen with his mum as they washed all of the eggs and discussed the idiosyncrasies, how some eggs looked like they hurt and some had surprising speckles. The boy who would clean the nest boxes and reline them with fresh hay. The boy who made sure their water dispenser was clean and full. The boy who would go down in the evening after the ladies were back in the barn and made sure the door was shut tight and learned that sometimes the raccoons get in anyway.
What is missing? The boy who had an old John Deere riding lawn mower that he did not weigh enough to keep running so he added a cement block to the seat and chains on the back tires so he could spin the mud in our yard. The boy who stuck a bumper sticker on the back of his seat that read: I Farm So You Can Eat.
What is missing? The boy who would sit on the board fence and stare out into the pasture, lost in those thoughts that a young boy has that no one ever gets to know. The boy who had time to watch the grass grow.
So glad the boy is here and thriving like his chickens I really loved the drive and determination your son has it must be beautiful to watch and how I laughed and smiled at the thought of 70 chicken's hatching it could only be a wonderful dream for me and your son had made it his reality ! So much to admire in his story 🙏
I also understand the bitter sweetness of the stages of childhood leaving and morphing into something new these feelings always remind of the song Lanslide the lyrics
"Can I handle the seasons of my life ?
I Don't know ?"
Lovely to get to know your Son through this piece ,thank you xxx
Oh that song. It came on the radio the day, aged 30, when I drove back to Sussex from Devon, after that last week with Granny Shadrick when I had to be the one to send her away from her home. I'd never heard it before and I began to cry so hard I had to park on the motorway hard shoulder. Only now, almost twenty years later can I hear it or sing it. And it's the only tune I've learnt to pluck out on a guitar... xx
Heartbreaking, so much love there. I think there could be a whole book on women writing essays on what that song means to them, her voice just breaks right through. Also, just the poignancy of you and the guitar...
Thank you for that, I have been a lucky mum, he was and remains a fun person to be around, glad I could share him. Landslides, love that song, tear up every time it comes on. So funny you mentioned it, he's in the air force and the last time he was home we went fishing and that song came on the radio. Handling the seasons of our lives, what we all try to do, I am always amazed at human resilience.
Oh my. How strong and clear your son's boyhood has been transmitted to us all here through your words. How utterly himself he is, not like anyone I've ever met or read about.
I read this on a day of heavy rain here in Sussex with both of my teenagers away from the house for the first time in a while. Acutely aware of how fast they are growing and going now. And that they, like your son, had quite particular interests when young that have receded now.
You've also made me want to rewatch two films not seen in a long while: Linklater's Boyhood and Malik's Tree of Life...
It's definitely a strange time in parenting, so full of mixed emotions, the pure joy of seeing who our kids are becoming, the ache of change....sometimes all in the same moment. Quite a ride. I will check out those films and thank you, as always. Wonderful to see how this space has grown, such a nurturing space.
My father-in-law, Gennady Vasilyevich Ivanov, made the best pies I ever tasted.
In summer, he made large rectangular sheet pies. The bilberries, painstakingly picked in the forest by my mother-in-law, spilled over the edges of the thick bouncy pie bottom, and were sprinkled with sugar and topped with golden pastry greetings: ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘1st Day of School’.
For our wedding party, he baked small, individual pies filled with cabbage and hard-boiled eggs, mushroom and dill, minced meat, apple and cinnamon.
Sometimes, he would pop over with a box of warm pies, just because, and we would wolf them down greedily, never managing to save any for later, handing him back the empty box.
I can picture him now in his tiny kitchen on the 7th floor, his firm white hands, always wearing his wedding band, kneading the yeasty dough and covering it with a tea towel to leave to rise. He loved sharing his pies and we all loved eating them: oven-warm, crispy on the outside, thick, soft and bready on the inside with the generous fillings bursting out.
I once asked him for the recipe and my mother-in-law wrote it down for me, but the pies didn’t work out. My endeavours produced a thin-crusted pie, with no evidence that I had followed the Russian recipe, and I wondered if the secret was in his hands and not the ingredients and method.
After my mother-in-law died, he would spend Wednesday afternoons at our flat, sharing his baking secrets with his teenage grandson: mixing, kneading, covering, rolling, glazing. This Boxing Day, my son baked pies for us all. It took him six hours, but he did it all alone. My father-in-law may no longer be with us, but his pies are still being baked.
Heidi! Thank you so very much for joining our project, and with such a beautiful tribute to a man who feels like a whole book needs to be built around him. (Do you know Robert Seethaler's novella A Whole Life? I felt your father-in-law's life would make a similarly beautiful story).
The whole piece is so rich in detail, so generous, so tactile - I really get a sense of how so much of your life was infused and enriched by his baking. I love this line here: "He loved sharing his pies and we all loved eating them: oven-warm, crispy on the outside, thick, soft and bready on the inside with the generous fillings bursting out." A sense - which I'm sure you intended - of his pies as themselves but also a symbol of him and his generosity spreading outwards. And such a different perspective on widowhood than one commonly hears. My grandfather spent most of his few free hours all through his children and grandchildren's lives in his woodworking shed. Making things for us, yes, but also separating himself. But when my grandmother died, he gave away all his tools and simply watched tele and spent money on readymade furniture. All very strange and somehow selfish/self-denying. How different your father-in-law - and how moving now that it has passed on to another male generation in your sons.
By strange coincidence, I read your piece just as I wait for pastry to chill before making potato and clotted cream plate pasties in the Devon style, as taught me by my grandmother...
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive, and I do so hope you will write for as many of the other themes as you like. I'd love to see what you do with them...
Thank you Tanya! I came to see you at Ilkley festival and promised myself I would join your wonderful project. No, I don't know Seethaler's book, will check it out! So exciting to get some feedback, and so happy to join your community. Enjoy your pies! X
That Ilkley event was so full of meaning for me: that you and so many other people came to meet me when I'm not one of those well-known writers who draw a crowd wherever they go. It was the perfect way to end the 'public' side of having the book in the world. And I'm so glad you've kept your promise to yourself about joining our writing community here! xxx
A little shake of the box and a mischievous smile. ‘But they’re yours!’ I’d say, in mock hesitance. She’d shake it again, and proffer it towards me. No words were needed because she knew I’d take one. So I would rummage around in the box, even though they were all the same, before finally selecting one, taking it out carefully as if it was a jewel. I’d slowly unwrap its gaudy red wrapper, postponing the delight, to reveal the smooth chocolate inside, and it would be the most delicious thing, because I knew they were her favourites.
Mum kept a stash of the boxes under her chair. ‘I only have one a day’, she used to say with pride as we munched, after that brief sweet moment of shared silence. None of us knew what else to buy her, especially towards the end. The boxes were an unusual shape, so it was hard to disguise the contents. A quick shake of the gift and the secret would be out, anyway. She’d grin, peel off the wrapping paper and pop the box under her chair to join the others.
The unspoken knowledge of something terribly wrong grew and grew. But she didn’t want to know. ‘She won’t eat!’ Dad’s voice betrayed the worry that must have nagged at him like an open sore. ‘All she has is those chocolates’. Each time I hugged her goodbye there was less of her, until she felt like a baby bird in my arms.
Now, I can’t look at those distinctive red boxes. I turn my eyes away from window displays, I hurry down another aisle. I haven’t tasted one of those chocolates since she slipped away.
Maybe, when the pain subsides, I’ll give a box a little shake.
So tenderly written, Cathy. Absolutely conveying to us all the fun of the ritual in all the healthy years, and why it has become painful now. I remember a friend being devastated when - so soon after her mother's sudden and very shocking death - her father brought round some of her mother's frozen mincepies, defrosted. If they'd stayed in the freezer, they might have been kept for years. Not seen or touched - too painful - but there. Instead she had to confront them, handed her on a plate. Your own loss and how it is linked to these chocolates gives me new and sharp understanding of what she went through back then.
Here is your link, with thanks as always for your part in our community here:
This is so beautiful and poignant, Cathy. I am so sorry for your loss as well. I remember my Dad left a welcome home gift for my Mum the day before he died - M&S Raspberry pastries. My Mum still can't eat them five years later. This has bought that little memory back again so thank you for so bravely sharing yours xx
Arthritic knees, vigorously rubbed before standing. Failing eyesight, the tugged hem of her jacket two-piece when entering a room, the imperious lift of the chin. Her reaction to unpleasant news – a vocal octave descent, accompanied by Bob Fosse jazz hands that would dance past her ear lobes, effectively repelling the delivery of such missives for most of her later life. And an incongruous sentimentality for such a stoic and proper soul that had stared down two world wars – there were always foxes welcomed into her garden – every season in every year, a vixen and her cubs given sanctuary under her shed, a saucer of milk put out every night under the kitchen window to tempt that primal creature ever closer – anarchy and rebellion just beyond the glass.
Her son. Large soulful hands, fat veined with wisdom and love, and tanned from summer drives. A passion for old comedy, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, and the Muppets – leaning forward, forearms on thighs, face rapt for mimicry and storytelling. Afternoon rehearsals for evening performances, DJ, dickie bow and viola case, returning in the small hours with always two cigarettes to unwind, stubs discarded in the fireplace. A shirt and tie, even on the beach, a penchant for banana ice-cream, steam trains, hardback books. And in the flyleaf of those books – are still his sums, ‘workings out’ scratched in pencil, lead chiselled and sharpened by a knife. Monies in and monies out, the worries of a gentle, profound, and wise man whose simple needs and happy life were weighed against an ever-hastening, modern and mercurial world.
My Nan and my Dad. Enlightened and contradictory old souls both. Their intonations still whisper and give my heart a peace.
Louise, this is such exciting writing. I could read stories and stories by you written like this. There's so much love in what you've shared with us, but it's also full of skill. It reminds me of some of the American authors I most admire for this ability to celebrate family - Paul Auster in his non-fiction, Updike and Cheever in their stories. Marilyn Robinson too in her novels Housekeeping and Gilead. Are you working on any longer pieces of non-fiction at the moment? I'd love to know...
Dec 31, 2022·edited Dec 31, 2022Liked by Tanya Shadrick
Tanya, thank you so much for your support and encouragement, I'm so thrilled you enjoyed my story and very humbled! I'm not working on anything longer as I haven't written before now really. I started thinking I might like to last summer and dabbled a bit with ideas for stories but struggled to produce anything without a 'reason'. This community has been great to give me a focus and a distilled task and for support and inspiration in a safe place. I think I saw someone ask if you were planning on holding any workshops or mentor sessions, I would certainly be really interested in anything like that if you had plans for the future. In the meantime, you've given me the inspiration and push to try writing something longer - not sure about what, but they say write what you know so maybe I should take the pressure off and do just that!....thank you so much xxx
I'm thinking hard about how I might be able to offer an affordable small-group mentoring program to you and others already involved in this free community here. It likely won't be until autumn, if I do, but I will make sure that any message about that reaches you all. It would be lovely to do some even deeper and more sustained work together with a group from here!
Perfect as stand alone pieces, but also left me wanting to know more about your nan with surviving two wars and her kindness to the foxes and then your dad with the tanned hands, love of comedy, but wearing the shirt and tie on the beach. We can all only hope we are remembered so fondly.
What lovely stories have been posted for this prompt. They are beautiful and poignant. And happy new year to you.
Here is my contribution on this theme:
A Recipe
I have no idea how it got there. But there it was; a piece of photocopied paper with instructions for a cake containing Dad’s favourite tipple. For every birthday, Christmas and Easter celebration, it would grace the table at our family gatherings.
We found it clearing out his flat after he died. His handwriting etched out amendments and additions in the margins. Glacé cherries replaced candied peel. Scrap the marmalade.
Other unwritten directions were discovered through trial and error when my sister vowed to pick up this baking baton. Less black treacle, more golden syrup. With a modern oven, lower the temperature and shorten the cooking time. And add at least double the amount of Guinness stated to feed the sponge. No doubt Dad would have had an extra bottle on the side, too.
There is, of course, an ingredient that was never written down. But intrinsically kneaded and stirred into every ounce of that cake mix.
Love.
Dad’s way of showing how much we all meant to him. My sister’s love for Dad to honour the gesture, and her love for us, by continuing this tradition. There is always a lot of cake.
Beautifully written, Vanessa. And I'm moved all over again by how this project is becoming one of the ways in which you can - similarly to your sister with her cake-making and its adjustments - try out ways of paying tribute to him. I feel sure that parts of what you've shared here will be at in the longer story I think you are going to find yourself writing...
I feel some way from being able to achieve that, but I still remember you saying 7 years. It is almost 5 now. Certainly writing this one was a little easier than some of the others. This is a really helpful way to write small scenes that maybe will expand in time. Thanks, as always for your genorisity and kindness xx
Vanessa, thank you for this beautiful story! This past year, after the death of my aunt, I hunted down a well-stained recipe she had written out for me nearly fifty years ago and sent it to my cousins. There is something so intimate about these slips of paper from the past!
Lovely so special to see a person's handwriting after they are gone and jarring also ,I hope the recipe evolves just the way you want it ,under your sisters keeping and you always enjoy your dad's cake 🙏
Vanessa, what a wonderful recipe to have; in every loop of handwriting, every stir of the batter and exchange of ingredient, a special moment and memory of your dad to be evoked. xx
You lay unconscious between us as we shared our memories of you across the bed; could you hear us? Every now and then you raised your left arm in the air, gently and slowly, almost balletic, leading from your elbow, your hand nearly reaching your brow before you gently and slowly, and with such quiet, lowered it back to your side. This graceful, silent movement stopped us in our tracks each time. We wondered if you were in pain or responding to our words, but we couldn’t tell.
This gesture reminded us of your love of dance, and we reminisced, retelling the stories you shared from your childhood - of meeting Margot Fonteyn whilst your mum cleaned her friends flat. We both held vividly in our minds the beautiful photo of you in your early teens in your ballet outfit, a simple white tunic, with a wide pale pink satin ribbon tied round your waist, your feet elegantly crossed over each other, wrapped in soft pale pink ballet shoes. We remembered you taking us to buy our own ballet shoes and the delicious smell of them in the tiny little ballet shop down a side street somewhere in busy central London.
Sometimes, when I feel your loss most, I move my arm this same way, gently, slowly up in the air. There’s a tenderness in it that somehow connects me to your love and to stories and memories that are so detailed and vivid.
Kaz - thank you so much for joining our story-sharing project...and especially with this poignant and very loving tribute. Your writing is as beautiful and elegant as the woman you are honouring.
I so hope you will be interested to try other themes in the archive. All themes stay open without deadline.
For now, here is a link to your words in the story archive:
My great-uncle Carleton always greeted us with a handshake, even when I was very young. I am certain he was the very first person to shake my hand, taking it upon himself to teach us children the proper technique, to say “How do you do” and to ensure the correct pressure, gently correcting us if our grip were too tentative or too powerful. Carleton always expected this formal gesture, a handshake delivered with just the right balance of confidence and respect. He also was likely the first to call me “Miss”, another dose of formality that was foreign to my world but essential to his.
I don’t ever remember seeing Carleton without suit and tie and hat, but I do remember seeing him sitting in our den with a handkerchief on his bald pate. He had gotten chilly and had taken out his starched white gentleman’s handkerchief, tied a knot carefully in each of the four corners, and then placed it upon his head as if that was the most ordinary and proper thing for a chilly gentleman to do.
I was never entirely sure how seriously he took his proper gentleman-self. There was always a glint in his eye that suggested humor, a warm affection in his way with children, even while calling us “Master” or “Miss” and insisting on just the right handshake. Years later, when anyone reaches a hand out to me, my arm becomes a conduit for carrying on Carleton’s education, and somewhere inside me, formality and amusement waltz together.
Amy! I loved this piece so much. You've conveyed with such light and sure touch the formality and fun of your great-uncle. What a rare combination that is: for it to be a gift of courteousness not an imposition of values. Instead, a transmission, an infusion. Which is why your last line is so gorgeous. And it's just beautiful writing too.
Here is your link to the piece in the story archive:
And it's strange timing receiving this from you now, as the single edition Birds of Firle has only just returned to me after being lost (thought forever) for over four months in the Scottish postal system. Back just in time to start Year 4 of its intended decade-long flight plan. Your piece for it and the mobile you made: both precious to me.
Now my book is fully out in the world and all my public events for it behind me, I'm spending January on redesigning the Birds of Firle project online and boosting word of it on instagram and twitter. Likewise this Substack story archive. It's a lovely feeling to have time now to do even more to showcase and celebrate the work of you and others!
What a sweet profile of your great-uncle. I had such a vivid image of the handkerchief on his head, sounds like someone who loves kids and also knows what they are capable of in terms of manners, healthy expectations with a twinkle.
Aunty Lilly was my great grandmother on my father’s side. Ageless with slenderness and grace maintained by a daily walk to the shops down and up the steep hill where we lived accompanied by Pantheon her tiny white dog on his thin red lead.
In the mornings Lilly would sit at her dressing table and brush her long grey hair and then roll it around a black velvet band so it looked like a halo when the sun shone through the silver. She wore beautiful clothes, silk dresses with matching buttons dating from the 1930’s and I loved to watch her fasten the tiny buttons with her long clever fingers and polished almond nails.
Every evening after supper Lilly would go into the study, sit on her low velvet armchair by the fire, pour a tiny glass of sherry and flip open her gold cigarette case of un-tipped Carrolls cigarettes. She would then deftly move the band that held the ciggies, pull one out, put it inside her ebony and malachite holder whilst simultaneously closing the case. After dropping it into her handbag she would fish out the leather clad lighter, push up the hood, press her thumb down the spark wheel and with the flame light the tip of her ritual after dinner treat.
When Lilly exhaled after her first deep draw, the smoke would idle towards the ceiling. Sometimes she would indulge me by blowing a slow white ring that widened like a magic cloud or neat circles within circles. Then satisfied that we were comfortable, Pantheon on her lap and me curled up on a beaded footstool, she would start to speak in her soft lilt. Stories of Kerry, of farm life and fishing, of her wild sister and her wilder brothers, then sometimes stories of England.
Marika… wow! Thank you so much for joining the project as a writer, and this piece is simply delicious. Every single line is vivid and elegant and surprising as the wonderful woman you are honouring.
I’ve had to read it aloud to my husband who is sitting across from me at the table. (He and I share a love of close descriptive detail when it comes to the creation/conveying of character - and it’s less and less done by writers I find. You do it with that lovely lightness of touch that I adore in Roald Dahl and Laurie Lee - do you know that gorgeous chapter in Cider With Rosie where he’s describing the two ‘grannies’ who live next door, one up, one below? Very different kind of elders to your Lilly, but your writing and his share a love of these particular gestures).
I love every line, and this one especially:
She wore beautiful clothes, silk dresses with matching buttons dating from the 1930’s and I loved to watch her fasten the tiny buttons with her long clever fingers and polished almond nails.
And then that wonderful final paragraph which broadens out and back into a whole time/place/culture.
You’ve arrived here as more beautiful proof of what can be done with 300 words!
We listened to the clink of metal shackles tapping irregular rhythms on the masts in the small harbour. I have no idea what we ate for those last days together, but I remember huddling in the cottage around a too-small wooden table. Peals of laughter swirled and danced, particularly precious because he had never expressed joy so freely.
Grandad was smaller than his formidable wife, who threw shards of bitterness at him whenever she could. But, bent over his daily paper, the world would expand beyond their walls and his imagination was free. And as he read, he would slice the top off his boiled egg, slipping it to the snuffling Pekingese by his feet.
He was a man of routine, held firm by propriety. Every morning after he retired from his reliable job at the bank, he would walk to the shops, recognisable for his baggy trousers and jacket which stopped neatly at his waist. Tucked under one arm would be his ridiculous dog, who shared his passion for fresh air.
He had a love of plants, of their roots in a gentler existence. Working together in a communal rock garden, I pulled out a plant I didn’t recognise. “That is not,” he said crossly, “a weed.’ His rebuke hurt. Unable to frame his apology in words, emotion swirled unspoken between us as we ate our sandwiches.
Once home, he pulled open a stiff wooden drawer filled with brown paper bags. They cradled a sugary world: humbugs, chocolate limes and bulls eyes; flavour bombs that made your eyes water. Normally, I was allowed to reach in for just one, but his apology took the form of several sweets. Their crackling wrappers shaped the sounds he couldn’t: Sorry. I love you. You are my universe too.
How absolutely alive your grandad is in this piece, Emma. It's a rare thing you've done here: using so few words to give a such a deep sense of a man, a marriage, & then also your own relationship to him. I loved every line, each detail.
Here is your link direct to your piece in the story archive:
Thank you so very much for joining the project, and I hope now that other themes in the archive will tempt you to try them! There are no deadlines - you can respond to as many as you have interest and time for. Doing as you have done here - using their comments fields to submit your words.
I made that short walk several times as a child. Across the highway, down the street named after my mother, and in through my grandparents’ door.
Each time I arrived, I’d find Grampa sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, while watching the bird feeder outside the window. He knew all the birds by name – Blue Jay, Robin, Chickadee, Crow, Starling... He taught me their names too - Cardinal, Red-Winged Blackbird, Dove, Pigeon, Baltimore Oriole…
Grampa’s side of the table was on the right. Gramma sat knitting on the left side. Gramma’s ‘princess’ sat at the end of the table with my milk and cookies.
Grampa was a kind, loving man. As we sat together, he would show me a picture book of Norway, his childhood home, and translate the captions into English. It was a magical land full of snowy mountains, fiords, and chalets. Somehow that picture book was lost, perhaps in the move after he died. One time when I sat with him, I tried to draw a nearby chair as he sipped his coffee. Gently, he took the pencil from my hand and transformed my stick chair from two to three dimensions.
As I see him now, through the haze of imperfect memory, he is still sitting at that table, watching his visitors at the bird feeder. His coffee is served in a cup and saucer. He raises his hand to pour the hot coffee into the saucer to cool before he raises it to his lips before placing it back down on the table.
One hot summer’s day Grampa came by to inspect our newly installed pool. Mum served coffee in mugs, without saucers, but he didn’t complain. The last photo we have of him was taken on that day, Grampa with his coffee.
Marilyn - how good it is to have you join this story-sharing community here after I've come to admire you over on the Hagitude forum where we've met. And just as your writing there moves me, this piece now also. So much love - them for you, you for them, all of you for the natural world around you - rendered in such beautiful sentences. I've just read it aloud to my husband (who was also blessed with good grandparents) and we have both spent good long minutes enjoying memories of our own that your writing has brought back to mind. Thank you so much.
I do hope you will write for other themes in the project. All the ones in the archive stay open without deadline - you just add your piece in the comments of the one you are responding to, as you've done here.
Thank you, Tanya! I'm very excited to join this lovely community of writers (and to get more of you!). And it's a great bonus to link the stories to Facebook! xx
Dec 23, 2022·edited Dec 23, 2022Liked by Tanya Shadrick
The whistle
My dad departed nearly 30 years now had this funny whistle, he was Mauritian came to this country to nurse and met my Mother who is Irish and was nursing , small island people meeting on this island of the UK
Along came me and my siblings and I will always hink of myself as an gal for sure !
My dad had been born with a spinal complaint and lost mobility after a huge operation when my brother was a new born
it was a gradual loss and he fought well to keep as much movement as possible
Long rehabilitation stays in hospital ,exercise bike in the kitchen after dinner and an adapted Gold Ford Granada he would use to drive us gaggle of kids to sweet shops ,zoos and to care homes to pick my mum up after her shifts at work .
It was unusual maybe but not for us and I felt the happiest I've ever felt being part of this whole unit .
My dad mobility worsened and soon it was a walking stick from the car proped up by the wall round the garage that would get him back inside the house after an adventure
and on those tentative walks back this whistle would come ,a kind of I don't know maybe thinking back a kind of cheerfulness ans defiance but also I remember a kind of cuckoo noise it was a birds call a family noise a heart song that was ours and imprint within me without me ever realising
and when at my lowest in my late 30s questioning and in pain from life itself
I found that whistle calling me back to myself and a song passed my way a very old one Cucurrucucú Paloma
the lyrics of the song made so much sense of my pain I was in and the Cuckoo sound within the song was I know my dad calling back to my home ,myself like he had done all those years ago .
This line: and on those tentative walks back this whistle would come ,a kind of I don't know maybe thinking back a kind of cheerfulness ans defiance but also I remember a kind of cuckoo noise it was a birds call a family noise a heart song that was ours and imprint within me without me ever realising....so touching, so beautiful how even when we lose people we loved we can carry them with us, they can carry us through. This piece is your heart song back to your dad.
I really can't fully convey what a beautiful piece of writing you've shared with us, Monique. Not only the subject matter - your wonderful father - but how you've written it: it really is a song, a tune.
I've chosen a link to a version of the song to link to in the curated version on my book website. Will you check it and let me know if it's suitable? If not, let me have a link to the closest version there is on youtube and I will replace it. The one I've just listened to is beautiful but may not be your song at all!
Monique... oh my. Your words came through as I'm sitting here late in the bed next to my husband. We were talking about this project and what it means to us both, and just as I asked if he wouldn't mind me spending a half hour getting the latest contributions curated...in came your words, or rather your song, singing of your father, your mother, your family. I began to read it aloud in my own family home, but then tears came. I had to pause a while til I could read to the end. Your spirit shines through every piece you write, and never brighter than here. Even as you are describing your father's decline of movement and your own struggles, the love and the language just soars. I am making the new page in the archive next, and will come back here soon with your link, but I wanted to let you know in real time that your words have already moved us here. Txxx
You were certain that was the dress you must have.
Pristine white geese with yellow and blue bows tied around their slender necks danced around a skirt of scarlet red, and a white pique collar impractically topped rows of delicate smocking. I had visions of red bleeding into white on the first wash. You spun around, a full circle of anserine waltzing filling the dance floor of the tiny shop and knew this was your Christmas dress. I know how important dreams are, and watched, my fears unspoken, as the assistant folded leaves of tissue paper and handed a glossy carrier bag to my lignite-eyed, smiling girl.
I wish that I could say we feasted better on the day that you left us, but I can’t. Amidst the jobs that must be done, I hurriedly scored crosses on scrubbed and oiled potatoes and set them to bake. Even the sauce was from a jar. Your father burst through the front door, bringing a blast of freezing air and shaking the snow from his boots. At least we were together.
I had reached the half landing with a basket of laundry when your brother screamed for me to come. The Christmas tree lights sparkling, amidst the abandoned Lego and half-completed buildings, you struggled to breathe, your concerned brother, your protective angel, arcing over you.
Lifted into the crook of your daddy’s arm, the waltzing stopped, and a gaggle of crumpled geese fell still.
I never did wash your dress. When Christmas lights sparkle, I lift it from its wrappings and inhale the captured fragrance of a child who chose the perfect garment to celebrate the twirling, whirling, joy- giggling excitement of pantomimes, presents, and parties, and then, to slip ever so quietly away before the red could bleed into the white.
Dear Elizabeth, this is so devastating, powerful and vast and so brave and generous of you to share it here. I can see your daughter's beautiful dress and her twirling with joy, thank you for entrusting the memory of her with us, it will stay with me xxxx
Thank you, Louise.
This says so much about your family is so few words, the busy mom who takes time to hear her daughter, allow her the impractical dress because it makes her smile, feel pretty, so much love there. And then the devastation, such a heartwarming and heartbreaking writing. Agree with Monique, thank you for trusting us enough to share this. One of those writings that will stick with me, pares life down to its essence.
Sheila, thank you so much for such enouraging words.
So beautiful and absolutely devastating. Written with such love and care. Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing your story with us.
Thank you, Amy. You're very kind.
This is so special and devastating the moment you watch and know how important dreams are ,i can't say how that makes me feel.
Thank you for writing this and trusting to leave it here to read .
Thank you
I am so sorry .
Thank you Monique. Ah, yes, the dreams of little ones are so...o...o important.
Oh Elizabeth this is incredibly beautiful and so, so sad. Thank you for telling your story with such courage and love.
Thank you Susan; that's so encouraging and kind of you. I love the way HP sauce prompts memories of your brother. I often think of grief as a bit like carrying a loaded tray of glasses though a crowded party room; for the most part, we do the job wonderfully, laughing, smiling, handing out drinks and nibbles, and being the perfect host, then someone unthinkingly stretches out a leg or accidently knocks our elbow, the tray goes crashing down, and there's glass and spillage everywhere. It's easily mopped up and the tray replenished, life goes on, but it happens, and in many ways, the fact that it does is a comfort and continuum of our love and care.
Dear Elizabeth, thank you - with all my heart - for entrusting me and other members of our community here with this devastating and yet also deeply beautiful tribute to your daughter - your lignite-eyed, smiling girl. It is always a privilege to receive stories, but never more so than here, now. I can see already that other members of this community are responding to you, to her, as I did...
Here is your link to your words in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#elizabeth
Tanya xx
Thank you so much Tanya. I'm very new to writing, and am only just beginning to understand the rawness and vulnerability of where words can take us, but I've been so blessed by everyone's kindness and encouragement. Thank you to all.
This is exactly why I created this space: so that there was a safe space for you and others to explore with me who it feels to dare showing and sharing our true selves, our most important moments. Thank you again for joining us here. xx
This is so powerful Elizabeth and how moving this piece of writing is. You would never know you are new to writing. This piece will stay with me for a long time. Sending you much love xx
Thank you so much, Vanessa. Even though we haven't yet met, I've found your words such an encouragement over the last few months. xx
My great-uncle Carleton always greeted us with a handshake, even when I was very young. I am certain he was the very first person to shake my hand, taking it upon himself to teach us children the proper technique, to say “How do you do” and to ensure the correct pressure, gently correcting us if our grip were too tentative or too powerful. Carleton always expected this formal gesture, a handshake delivered with just the right balance of confidence and respect. He also was likely the first to call me “Miss”, another dose of formality that was foreign to my world but essential to his.
I don’t ever remember seeing Carleton without suit and tie and hat, but I do remember seeing him sitting in our den with a handkerchief on his bald pate. He had gotten chilly and had taken out his starched white gentleman’s handkerchief, tied a knot carefully in each of the four corners, and then placed it upon his head as if that was the most ordinary and proper thing for a chilly gentleman to do.
I was never entirely sure how seriously he took his proper gentleman-self. There was always a glint in his eye that suggested humor, a warm affection in his way with children, even while calling us “Master” or “Miss” and insisting on just the right handshake. Years later, when anyone reaches a hand out to me, my arm becomes a conduit for carrying on Carleton’s education, and somewhere inside me, formality and amusement waltz together.
So sorry this got accidentally submitted twice, Tanya! Not sure how that happened.
I love this last line, Amy. It is beautiful. Your have really brought your great uncle to life x
Gestures, Remembered
by Susan Bennett www.shedwriting.com @shed_writing
One evening, I surprised myself by reaching into the cupboard and picking a bottle off the highest shelf. HP Sauce. Brown and spicy and now in a plastic bottle, rather than the glass one we used as kids. That thump thump on the end, trying to get some brown sauce to plop pleasingly on our plates, beside the sausages and bacon and soda bread. And the inevitable shout of frustration when nothing came for ages and then a massive slop. Ah, it’s all over my soda bread! It makes it all soggy!
Maybe plastic is better these days, I think, as I squeeze out a perfectly sized drop on the edge of my plate. It’s an Ulster Fry (of course) and it never tastes right without HP Sauce. This was a surprise tonight, though. I’ve told myself, over and over again, that I don’t actually like this sauce with a fry; I prefer some fancy chutney, I say with a middle-class sniff.
But here I am, dipping the sausage and enjoying the taste immensely. My brother was right. Stephen slathered the stuff on every single meal (except breakfast, but I wonder if, given the chance, his cornflakes would also swirl around in brown milk). As kids, we would pass the bottle round, watch intently as each person tried to control the amount coming out, and laugh and laugh when it went everywhere. I didn’t know that my big brother, with his freckles and wonky fringe and odd tastes, was wise and funny too. He was just annoying. And then illness arrived and, too late, pointed it all out: he was wise and funny.
And so here I am, missing him and licking the brown sauce that tastes now of spice and warmth and tears.
Here I am. Missing him.
What a moving piece you've given us here, Susan. I'm sorry it has been a few days between you submitting it and my reply now - I try always to respond within a day to all submissions, from knowing how tender it is to give ones' words out into the world. But I promised myself and my family a proper online break after this last full year of getting the book into the world.
But then to return to here and see this from you: it reminded me all over again why I risked sharing my stories of my places and people and our ways of living. Because in so doing, now I receive other peoples' memories in turn.
I know I won't be the only reader who finds a whole powerful stream of memory let loose by your own memory of you gone brother and his way of eating. That's the beauty of good, generous, loving writing like this - particular to you, but also a helping hand back into memory for those who read it.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#susanbennett
Tanya xx
Thanks so much Tanya, and yes a proper break is very wise! I’m so grateful to you for sharing your beautiful writing and offering space to others. Wonderful x
Powerful .
I Can hear the bangs on the bottle bottom as I read and the image of you all waiting for the plop ,I can taste the spicy sauce mixed with the salty tears
Beautiful images and beautiful writting
I'm so sorry for you loss X
Wow Monique thank you. So grateful to read this x
Dear Susan, this is so gorgeous and rich and I am taken with a strong urge to taste HP sauce again despite not having any for years. Your brother sounded like a wise and funny soul indeed.
Oh thank you Louise x
I love this. Makes me think of my own siblings and how shared experiences bind us together. So glad you had such a great brother with such great taste)
Such a poignant piece on the power of food to take us back in time. I could really see the kids waiting to see how much would come out, could hear the giggles, such innocence before the illness. A beautiful tribute to your brother.
Thanks so much Sheila this means a lot x
This is so moving Susan. Thank you for sharing this story of your brother. I find it really interesting that food can play such a part in remembering others. Sending you much love xx
8pm. Thursday 3rd May 2012. My 7 week old daughter was breast feeding when the phone rang. My sister, in a wailing voice I had never heard before or since “oh god it’s awful. Auntie Lynn is dead”. I felt a cold, white emptiness radiate from within and I wanted to faint. She was 49, the same age I am now. She literally dropped dead at home while watching TV of a cerebral haemorrhage. Bam. Dead. On an average Thursday in May.
We were close. She was my Auntie, my mothers sister but also my godmother. 11 years apart. Both my sister and I spoke to her most weeks. She had texted me that very morning to tell me she was popping to the shops. Then bam. Dead. She never even got to meet her great niece, my daughter.
I read a poem at the funeral about the transient nature of life. About footsteps in the sand being washed away. I needed a brandy to do it. I was 7 weeks into breast feeding. I could barely get the words out. Absolute white cold shock.
The world span for months after. My maternity leave was a mix of the warm joy of my second child and the ice cold panic of loss. The jigsaw of my life had been thrown in the air and it took a year for the pieces to fall back again.
A decade on and I honour her often. She taught me to cook. The other vegetarian in the family, I think of her when crumbling veggie stock cubes into my cooking. That was one of her tricks. I play her Talking Heads vinyl and toast her on French holidays when drinking ‘pouilly fume’ her favourite wine. My daughter, now 10, wears her scarves and has a photo in a locket of a woman she never met. I sometimes speak to her. “Auntie Lynn would have loved that”
How well you have conveyed here the pain and shock and spinning caused by the sudden loss of a loved one. I felt the physical nature of what you went through so clearly.
And then you show us in such a poignant way how your everyday life remembers here all these years later.
It reminds me that the worst grief in the years after I lost my beloved Granny Shadrick were when the loss was so painful that my mind glanced off and away from any thought or mention of her. So the loss was double - she was gone, but also my memory. I remember when I was able to begin honouring her in my daily life, as you do with the stock cubes, the wine, her scarves.
We'd rather of course have these people with us, always, but this way of incorporating the best of our best people into our own lives, and those that come after us, this passing on of values...well that's a fine thing.
I'm so glad that you've given us this piece for the story archive. Thank you.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#helen
Tanya xx
Thanks Tanya - happy Christmas to you & your family! Do you think you would ever do a writing course? I’d definitely come xx
Ah thank you! I do workshops for festivals every now and then but don't offer any online courses so far. I try to make most of what I do in this respect free - this platform, and the one to one mentoring I do is also free to recipients and funded for me to offer by third parties.
That said, I'm going to spend some time in the coming year thinking of what I could offer in terms of small group creative confidence mentoring to those within this community who'd like to do more extended work than the 300-word format allows. And to have zoom conversations as well as longer set exercises. I'd enjoy doing deeper work with those of you here who'd like to try it. But I need to feel I'm only accepting money for something that truly is offering real value. It's lovely to think you might be interested.
Txx
I hope this comes true. Already excited!😊
Such a touching piece on how quickly life changes, as you say, "bam," and then it is something new, how hard it is as a mom to hold tragedy and joy at the same time, continue to caretake in the "white cold shock." Loved the imagery of the jigsaw thrown into the air, smiled thinking of you crumbling the veggie stock cubes.
Beautiful, your daughter in scarves is such a precious moment for you 💗beautiful to read thank you. X
Gestures:
Tapping
Restless fingers.
Drumming like soldiers marching along his head, the table, the chair. My Father-in-law. Derek could not control them.
A few months later his walking pattern changed. He used to sway from side to side attempting to negotiate an open door. Easy actions became difficult. Everything took longer now.
Walking downstairs turned into a chore. Step by step, clinging onto the wooden rails with clammy palms.
“I mustn’t fall.” He used to say to himself silently.
“Don’t fall. Take it slowly.”
The inner voice grew louder.
Shaving presented another challenge: Derek avoided the door frame and stood in front of the sink and the mirror. He had always performed a wet shave, but co-ordinating soap, shaving brush had become risky.
Derek researched his symptoms and visited the G.P.
“You’ve got a type of Parkinson’s.” The G.P. told him.
Derek found it hard to process at first, but he adapted: easy-to-hold knives, forks and spoons filled the kitchen drawer, an extra railing was attached to the stair wall and grab rails added in the bathroom.
Following a spell in hospital Derek pestered to return home. His house was his children’s inheritance so he must avoid going into a home.
Carers, social workers and occupational therapists invaded the house.
After several falls Derek waved goodbye to upstairs.
This independent streak persisted to the end – that fateful fall in the kitchen sustained between carers’ visits at the peak of the pandemic.
What made him get up that day? A knock at the door, a telephone call or simply a toilet urge?
All we know is that the bleeding was too extensive to consider surgery so he slowly slipped away.
No more tapping, thudding.
or swaying.
No more supportive chats.
But his legacy, his house will live on.
I love how this began and ended with short, choppy sentences and then the short paragraphs throughout, felt like the pace of his condition, almost like a list of what happened to him, but so much feeling contained, I felt like I was hearing what he was thinking. You were able to tell so much about his character in so few words that I felt myself carried along, caring about this man.
This is really beautiful Joanne- I found it really evokes the strangeness of loved ones getting ill and how much life changes at these times. Lovely!
Joanne, I'm so glad the Bath Spa MA brought you and I into contact so that you've joined our project here. This is such a moving piece, and I share Sheila's admiration for the way the form/language mirrors Derek's embodied experience.
And then there's that deep, painful recognition I - and I'm sure others reading you - will get at that last line. How many of this older generation (my mother included; my paternal grandmother before her) have tried so hard to avoid receiving residential care so they might leave some money or a property to their family. It's an achievement, a legacy, they leave us, but at such a cost to themselves.
I do hope you will write for more of the prompts: I'd love to see what you do with them.
Here is a link to your piece in the book's story archive:https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#joannebaker
Tanya xx
(I took a bit of liberty with this prompt. It is about my son who I am grateful to say is still very much alive. I think the prompt still works because, in my experience, there is a grief and a joy to all stages of parenting. He's 22 now and I look fondly on these days as I celebrate the life he lives now.)
What is missing? Well, the boy is missing, the boy who wanted to quit school in second grade to be a farmer, the boy who had his own egg business, made his own labels for the egg cartons, kept track of who he sold to. The boy who never forgot the guy who didn’t pay. The boy who set up a desk in his dad’s woodworking shop, complete with pictures of his dog and one of our favorite hens along with a book of agriculture facts from the 1970s and an aluminum bean can decorated with construction paper for pens and pencils. The boy who wore International Harvester t-shirts and hats, who stood, hand on hip, leaned like he had spent hours on a tractor.
What is missing? The boy who already had around 30 chickens and his mum and dad weren’t paying enough attention to the number of eggs he was giving to his uncle to incubate and when his mum finally asked he said around 70, but don’t worry, they won’t all hatch and nearly every one of them did hatch. The boy who had chickens everywhere.
What is missing? The boy who would hang out in the kitchen with his mum as they washed all of the eggs and discussed the idiosyncrasies, how some eggs looked like they hurt and some had surprising speckles. The boy who would clean the nest boxes and reline them with fresh hay. The boy who made sure their water dispenser was clean and full. The boy who would go down in the evening after the ladies were back in the barn and made sure the door was shut tight and learned that sometimes the raccoons get in anyway.
What is missing? The boy who had an old John Deere riding lawn mower that he did not weigh enough to keep running so he added a cement block to the seat and chains on the back tires so he could spin the mud in our yard. The boy who stuck a bumper sticker on the back of his seat that read: I Farm So You Can Eat.
What is missing? The boy who would sit on the board fence and stare out into the pasture, lost in those thoughts that a young boy has that no one ever gets to know. The boy who had time to watch the grass grow.
So glad the boy is here and thriving like his chickens I really loved the drive and determination your son has it must be beautiful to watch and how I laughed and smiled at the thought of 70 chicken's hatching it could only be a wonderful dream for me and your son had made it his reality ! So much to admire in his story 🙏
I also understand the bitter sweetness of the stages of childhood leaving and morphing into something new these feelings always remind of the song Lanslide the lyrics
"Can I handle the seasons of my life ?
I Don't know ?"
Lovely to get to know your Son through this piece ,thank you xxx
Oh that song. It came on the radio the day, aged 30, when I drove back to Sussex from Devon, after that last week with Granny Shadrick when I had to be the one to send her away from her home. I'd never heard it before and I began to cry so hard I had to park on the motorway hard shoulder. Only now, almost twenty years later can I hear it or sing it. And it's the only tune I've learnt to pluck out on a guitar... xx
Heartbreaking, so much love there. I think there could be a whole book on women writing essays on what that song means to them, her voice just breaks right through. Also, just the poignancy of you and the guitar...
Thank you for that, I have been a lucky mum, he was and remains a fun person to be around, glad I could share him. Landslides, love that song, tear up every time it comes on. So funny you mentioned it, he's in the air force and the last time he was home we went fishing and that song came on the radio. Handling the seasons of our lives, what we all try to do, I am always amazed at human resilience.
Ah thats lovely and love the sound of you both fishing what a lovely thing to do together ❤️
Oh my. How strong and clear your son's boyhood has been transmitted to us all here through your words. How utterly himself he is, not like anyone I've ever met or read about.
I read this on a day of heavy rain here in Sussex with both of my teenagers away from the house for the first time in a while. Acutely aware of how fast they are growing and going now. And that they, like your son, had quite particular interests when young that have receded now.
You've also made me want to rewatch two films not seen in a long while: Linklater's Boyhood and Malik's Tree of Life...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#sheilaknell
Txxx
It's definitely a strange time in parenting, so full of mixed emotions, the pure joy of seeing who our kids are becoming, the ache of change....sometimes all in the same moment. Quite a ride. I will check out those films and thank you, as always. Wonderful to see how this space has grown, such a nurturing space.
Pies
My father-in-law, Gennady Vasilyevich Ivanov, made the best pies I ever tasted.
In summer, he made large rectangular sheet pies. The bilberries, painstakingly picked in the forest by my mother-in-law, spilled over the edges of the thick bouncy pie bottom, and were sprinkled with sugar and topped with golden pastry greetings: ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘1st Day of School’.
For our wedding party, he baked small, individual pies filled with cabbage and hard-boiled eggs, mushroom and dill, minced meat, apple and cinnamon.
Sometimes, he would pop over with a box of warm pies, just because, and we would wolf them down greedily, never managing to save any for later, handing him back the empty box.
I can picture him now in his tiny kitchen on the 7th floor, his firm white hands, always wearing his wedding band, kneading the yeasty dough and covering it with a tea towel to leave to rise. He loved sharing his pies and we all loved eating them: oven-warm, crispy on the outside, thick, soft and bready on the inside with the generous fillings bursting out.
I once asked him for the recipe and my mother-in-law wrote it down for me, but the pies didn’t work out. My endeavours produced a thin-crusted pie, with no evidence that I had followed the Russian recipe, and I wondered if the secret was in his hands and not the ingredients and method.
After my mother-in-law died, he would spend Wednesday afternoons at our flat, sharing his baking secrets with his teenage grandson: mixing, kneading, covering, rolling, glazing. This Boxing Day, my son baked pies for us all. It took him six hours, but he did it all alone. My father-in-law may no longer be with us, but his pies are still being baked.
Heidi! Thank you so very much for joining our project, and with such a beautiful tribute to a man who feels like a whole book needs to be built around him. (Do you know Robert Seethaler's novella A Whole Life? I felt your father-in-law's life would make a similarly beautiful story).
The whole piece is so rich in detail, so generous, so tactile - I really get a sense of how so much of your life was infused and enriched by his baking. I love this line here: "He loved sharing his pies and we all loved eating them: oven-warm, crispy on the outside, thick, soft and bready on the inside with the generous fillings bursting out." A sense - which I'm sure you intended - of his pies as themselves but also a symbol of him and his generosity spreading outwards. And such a different perspective on widowhood than one commonly hears. My grandfather spent most of his few free hours all through his children and grandchildren's lives in his woodworking shed. Making things for us, yes, but also separating himself. But when my grandmother died, he gave away all his tools and simply watched tele and spent money on readymade furniture. All very strange and somehow selfish/self-denying. How different your father-in-law - and how moving now that it has passed on to another male generation in your sons.
By strange coincidence, I read your piece just as I wait for pastry to chill before making potato and clotted cream plate pasties in the Devon style, as taught me by my grandmother...
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive, and I do so hope you will write for as many of the other themes as you like. I'd love to see what you do with them...
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#heidireinsch
Tanya xx
Thank you Tanya! I came to see you at Ilkley festival and promised myself I would join your wonderful project. No, I don't know Seethaler's book, will check it out! So exciting to get some feedback, and so happy to join your community. Enjoy your pies! X
That Ilkley event was so full of meaning for me: that you and so many other people came to meet me when I'm not one of those well-known writers who draw a crowd wherever they go. It was the perfect way to end the 'public' side of having the book in the world. And I'm so glad you've kept your promise to yourself about joining our writing community here! xxx
So beautiful your son making his grandfather's pies just himself made my heart swell , the magic in both their hands now ❤️
A little shake of the box and a mischievous smile. ‘But they’re yours!’ I’d say, in mock hesitance. She’d shake it again, and proffer it towards me. No words were needed because she knew I’d take one. So I would rummage around in the box, even though they were all the same, before finally selecting one, taking it out carefully as if it was a jewel. I’d slowly unwrap its gaudy red wrapper, postponing the delight, to reveal the smooth chocolate inside, and it would be the most delicious thing, because I knew they were her favourites.
Mum kept a stash of the boxes under her chair. ‘I only have one a day’, she used to say with pride as we munched, after that brief sweet moment of shared silence. None of us knew what else to buy her, especially towards the end. The boxes were an unusual shape, so it was hard to disguise the contents. A quick shake of the gift and the secret would be out, anyway. She’d grin, peel off the wrapping paper and pop the box under her chair to join the others.
The unspoken knowledge of something terribly wrong grew and grew. But she didn’t want to know. ‘She won’t eat!’ Dad’s voice betrayed the worry that must have nagged at him like an open sore. ‘All she has is those chocolates’. Each time I hugged her goodbye there was less of her, until she felt like a baby bird in my arms.
Now, I can’t look at those distinctive red boxes. I turn my eyes away from window displays, I hurry down another aisle. I haven’t tasted one of those chocolates since she slipped away.
Maybe, when the pain subsides, I’ll give a box a little shake.
So tenderly written, Cathy. Absolutely conveying to us all the fun of the ritual in all the healthy years, and why it has become painful now. I remember a friend being devastated when - so soon after her mother's sudden and very shocking death - her father brought round some of her mother's frozen mincepies, defrosted. If they'd stayed in the freezer, they might have been kept for years. Not seen or touched - too painful - but there. Instead she had to confront them, handed her on a plate. Your own loss and how it is linked to these chocolates gives me new and sharp understanding of what she went through back then.
Here is your link, with thanks as always for your part in our community here:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#cathyrobinson
Txx
This is so beautiful and poignant, Cathy. I am so sorry for your loss as well. I remember my Dad left a welcome home gift for my Mum the day before he died - M&S Raspberry pastries. My Mum still can't eat them five years later. This has bought that little memory back again so thank you for so bravely sharing yours xx
Beautiful ,I'm so sorry for your loss
Lovely memories of your mum I admire her restraint at having just one ,I will try and follow her great example !
love to you in your sadness 🙏
Thank you so much for your lovely comments and for sharing your memories too xx
Arthritic knees, vigorously rubbed before standing. Failing eyesight, the tugged hem of her jacket two-piece when entering a room, the imperious lift of the chin. Her reaction to unpleasant news – a vocal octave descent, accompanied by Bob Fosse jazz hands that would dance past her ear lobes, effectively repelling the delivery of such missives for most of her later life. And an incongruous sentimentality for such a stoic and proper soul that had stared down two world wars – there were always foxes welcomed into her garden – every season in every year, a vixen and her cubs given sanctuary under her shed, a saucer of milk put out every night under the kitchen window to tempt that primal creature ever closer – anarchy and rebellion just beyond the glass.
Her son. Large soulful hands, fat veined with wisdom and love, and tanned from summer drives. A passion for old comedy, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, and the Muppets – leaning forward, forearms on thighs, face rapt for mimicry and storytelling. Afternoon rehearsals for evening performances, DJ, dickie bow and viola case, returning in the small hours with always two cigarettes to unwind, stubs discarded in the fireplace. A shirt and tie, even on the beach, a penchant for banana ice-cream, steam trains, hardback books. And in the flyleaf of those books – are still his sums, ‘workings out’ scratched in pencil, lead chiselled and sharpened by a knife. Monies in and monies out, the worries of a gentle, profound, and wise man whose simple needs and happy life were weighed against an ever-hastening, modern and mercurial world.
My Nan and my Dad. Enlightened and contradictory old souls both. Their intonations still whisper and give my heart a peace.
Louise, this is such exciting writing. I could read stories and stories by you written like this. There's so much love in what you've shared with us, but it's also full of skill. It reminds me of some of the American authors I most admire for this ability to celebrate family - Paul Auster in his non-fiction, Updike and Cheever in their stories. Marilyn Robinson too in her novels Housekeeping and Gilead. Are you working on any longer pieces of non-fiction at the moment? I'd love to know...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#louiseratcliffe
Tanya xxx
Tanya, thank you so much for your support and encouragement, I'm so thrilled you enjoyed my story and very humbled! I'm not working on anything longer as I haven't written before now really. I started thinking I might like to last summer and dabbled a bit with ideas for stories but struggled to produce anything without a 'reason'. This community has been great to give me a focus and a distilled task and for support and inspiration in a safe place. I think I saw someone ask if you were planning on holding any workshops or mentor sessions, I would certainly be really interested in anything like that if you had plans for the future. In the meantime, you've given me the inspiration and push to try writing something longer - not sure about what, but they say write what you know so maybe I should take the pressure off and do just that!....thank you so much xxx
I'm thinking hard about how I might be able to offer an affordable small-group mentoring program to you and others already involved in this free community here. It likely won't be until autumn, if I do, but I will make sure that any message about that reaches you all. It would be lovely to do some even deeper and more sustained work together with a group from here!
Perfect as stand alone pieces, but also left me wanting to know more about your nan with surviving two wars and her kindness to the foxes and then your dad with the tanned hands, love of comedy, but wearing the shirt and tie on the beach. We can all only hope we are remembered so fondly.
Thank you so much Sheila, so pleased to know you were drawn into wanting to know more of them xxx
Epic
such care and observation love the Bob Fozze jazz hands ,the foxes and banana ice cream .
Love your writing and love to read more hopefully 🙏
Monique xxx
Oh thank you Monique xx
Hi Tanya.
What lovely stories have been posted for this prompt. They are beautiful and poignant. And happy new year to you.
Here is my contribution on this theme:
A Recipe
I have no idea how it got there. But there it was; a piece of photocopied paper with instructions for a cake containing Dad’s favourite tipple. For every birthday, Christmas and Easter celebration, it would grace the table at our family gatherings.
We found it clearing out his flat after he died. His handwriting etched out amendments and additions in the margins. Glacé cherries replaced candied peel. Scrap the marmalade.
Other unwritten directions were discovered through trial and error when my sister vowed to pick up this baking baton. Less black treacle, more golden syrup. With a modern oven, lower the temperature and shorten the cooking time. And add at least double the amount of Guinness stated to feed the sponge. No doubt Dad would have had an extra bottle on the side, too.
There is, of course, an ingredient that was never written down. But intrinsically kneaded and stirred into every ounce of that cake mix.
Love.
Dad’s way of showing how much we all meant to him. My sister’s love for Dad to honour the gesture, and her love for us, by continuing this tradition. There is always a lot of cake.
Beautifully written, Vanessa. And I'm moved all over again by how this project is becoming one of the ways in which you can - similarly to your sister with her cake-making and its adjustments - try out ways of paying tribute to him. I feel sure that parts of what you've shared here will be at in the longer story I think you are going to find yourself writing...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#vanessawright
Txx
Thank you Tanya :-)
I feel some way from being able to achieve that, but I still remember you saying 7 years. It is almost 5 now. Certainly writing this one was a little easier than some of the others. This is a really helpful way to write small scenes that maybe will expand in time. Thanks, as always for your genorisity and kindness xx
Vanessa, thank you for this beautiful story! This past year, after the death of my aunt, I hunted down a well-stained recipe she had written out for me nearly fifty years ago and sent it to my cousins. There is something so intimate about these slips of paper from the past!
Thank you Marilyn - I hope you are enjoying your aunt's recipe and it is bringing back some happy memories for you and your cousins x
Lovely so special to see a person's handwriting after they are gone and jarring also ,I hope the recipe evolves just the way you want it ,under your sisters keeping and you always enjoy your dad's cake 🙏
Thank you Monique x
Vanessa, what a wonderful recipe to have; in every loop of handwriting, every stir of the batter and exchange of ingredient, a special moment and memory of your dad to be evoked. xx
You lay unconscious between us as we shared our memories of you across the bed; could you hear us? Every now and then you raised your left arm in the air, gently and slowly, almost balletic, leading from your elbow, your hand nearly reaching your brow before you gently and slowly, and with such quiet, lowered it back to your side. This graceful, silent movement stopped us in our tracks each time. We wondered if you were in pain or responding to our words, but we couldn’t tell.
This gesture reminded us of your love of dance, and we reminisced, retelling the stories you shared from your childhood - of meeting Margot Fonteyn whilst your mum cleaned her friends flat. We both held vividly in our minds the beautiful photo of you in your early teens in your ballet outfit, a simple white tunic, with a wide pale pink satin ribbon tied round your waist, your feet elegantly crossed over each other, wrapped in soft pale pink ballet shoes. We remembered you taking us to buy our own ballet shoes and the delicious smell of them in the tiny little ballet shop down a side street somewhere in busy central London.
Sometimes, when I feel your loss most, I move my arm this same way, gently, slowly up in the air. There’s a tenderness in it that somehow connects me to your love and to stories and memories that are so detailed and vivid.
Kaz - thank you so much for joining our story-sharing project...and especially with this poignant and very loving tribute. Your writing is as beautiful and elegant as the woman you are honouring.
I so hope you will be interested to try other themes in the archive. All themes stay open without deadline.
For now, here is a link to your words in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#kazfield
Tanya xx
Thank you Tanya. It felt good to get that our of my system a bit! Kaz
I love all the different pieces that people have written - good to be in this space.
My great-uncle Carleton always greeted us with a handshake, even when I was very young. I am certain he was the very first person to shake my hand, taking it upon himself to teach us children the proper technique, to say “How do you do” and to ensure the correct pressure, gently correcting us if our grip were too tentative or too powerful. Carleton always expected this formal gesture, a handshake delivered with just the right balance of confidence and respect. He also was likely the first to call me “Miss”, another dose of formality that was foreign to my world but essential to his.
I don’t ever remember seeing Carleton without suit and tie and hat, but I do remember seeing him sitting in our den with a handkerchief on his bald pate. He had gotten chilly and had taken out his starched white gentleman’s handkerchief, tied a knot carefully in each of the four corners, and then placed it upon his head as if that was the most ordinary and proper thing for a chilly gentleman to do.
I was never entirely sure how seriously he took his proper gentleman-self. There was always a glint in his eye that suggested humor, a warm affection in his way with children, even while calling us “Master” or “Miss” and insisting on just the right handshake. Years later, when anyone reaches a hand out to me, my arm becomes a conduit for carrying on Carleton’s education, and somewhere inside me, formality and amusement waltz together.
Amy! I loved this piece so much. You've conveyed with such light and sure touch the formality and fun of your great-uncle. What a rare combination that is: for it to be a gift of courteousness not an imposition of values. Instead, a transmission, an infusion. Which is why your last line is so gorgeous. And it's just beautiful writing too.
Here is your link to the piece in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#amyboyd
And it's strange timing receiving this from you now, as the single edition Birds of Firle has only just returned to me after being lost (thought forever) for over four months in the Scottish postal system. Back just in time to start Year 4 of its intended decade-long flight plan. Your piece for it and the mobile you made: both precious to me.
Now my book is fully out in the world and all my public events for it behind me, I'm spending January on redesigning the Birds of Firle project online and boosting word of it on instagram and twitter. Likewise this Substack story archive. It's a lovely feeling to have time now to do even more to showcase and celebrate the work of you and others!
Txxx
What a sweet profile of your great-uncle. I had such a vivid image of the handkerchief on his head, sounds like someone who loves kids and also knows what they are capable of in terms of manners, healthy expectations with a twinkle.
Formality and amusement waltz together I love this !
Carleton sounds like someone truly wonderful , completely himself
what a person to have close X
Aunty Lilly was my great grandmother on my father’s side. Ageless with slenderness and grace maintained by a daily walk to the shops down and up the steep hill where we lived accompanied by Pantheon her tiny white dog on his thin red lead.
In the mornings Lilly would sit at her dressing table and brush her long grey hair and then roll it around a black velvet band so it looked like a halo when the sun shone through the silver. She wore beautiful clothes, silk dresses with matching buttons dating from the 1930’s and I loved to watch her fasten the tiny buttons with her long clever fingers and polished almond nails.
Every evening after supper Lilly would go into the study, sit on her low velvet armchair by the fire, pour a tiny glass of sherry and flip open her gold cigarette case of un-tipped Carrolls cigarettes. She would then deftly move the band that held the ciggies, pull one out, put it inside her ebony and malachite holder whilst simultaneously closing the case. After dropping it into her handbag she would fish out the leather clad lighter, push up the hood, press her thumb down the spark wheel and with the flame light the tip of her ritual after dinner treat.
When Lilly exhaled after her first deep draw, the smoke would idle towards the ceiling. Sometimes she would indulge me by blowing a slow white ring that widened like a magic cloud or neat circles within circles. Then satisfied that we were comfortable, Pantheon on her lap and me curled up on a beaded footstool, she would start to speak in her soft lilt. Stories of Kerry, of farm life and fishing, of her wild sister and her wilder brothers, then sometimes stories of England.
Marika… wow! Thank you so much for joining the project as a writer, and this piece is simply delicious. Every single line is vivid and elegant and surprising as the wonderful woman you are honouring.
I’ve had to read it aloud to my husband who is sitting across from me at the table. (He and I share a love of close descriptive detail when it comes to the creation/conveying of character - and it’s less and less done by writers I find. You do it with that lovely lightness of touch that I adore in Roald Dahl and Laurie Lee - do you know that gorgeous chapter in Cider With Rosie where he’s describing the two ‘grannies’ who live next door, one up, one below? Very different kind of elders to your Lilly, but your writing and his share a love of these particular gestures).
I love every line, and this one especially:
She wore beautiful clothes, silk dresses with matching buttons dating from the 1930’s and I loved to watch her fasten the tiny buttons with her long clever fingers and polished almond nails.
And then that wonderful final paragraph which broadens out and back into a whole time/place/culture.
You’ve arrived here as more beautiful proof of what can be done with 300 words!
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#marikaos
Txxx
We listened to the clink of metal shackles tapping irregular rhythms on the masts in the small harbour. I have no idea what we ate for those last days together, but I remember huddling in the cottage around a too-small wooden table. Peals of laughter swirled and danced, particularly precious because he had never expressed joy so freely.
Grandad was smaller than his formidable wife, who threw shards of bitterness at him whenever she could. But, bent over his daily paper, the world would expand beyond their walls and his imagination was free. And as he read, he would slice the top off his boiled egg, slipping it to the snuffling Pekingese by his feet.
He was a man of routine, held firm by propriety. Every morning after he retired from his reliable job at the bank, he would walk to the shops, recognisable for his baggy trousers and jacket which stopped neatly at his waist. Tucked under one arm would be his ridiculous dog, who shared his passion for fresh air.
He had a love of plants, of their roots in a gentler existence. Working together in a communal rock garden, I pulled out a plant I didn’t recognise. “That is not,” he said crossly, “a weed.’ His rebuke hurt. Unable to frame his apology in words, emotion swirled unspoken between us as we ate our sandwiches.
Once home, he pulled open a stiff wooden drawer filled with brown paper bags. They cradled a sugary world: humbugs, chocolate limes and bulls eyes; flavour bombs that made your eyes water. Normally, I was allowed to reach in for just one, but his apology took the form of several sweets. Their crackling wrappers shaped the sounds he couldn’t: Sorry. I love you. You are my universe too.
How absolutely alive your grandad is in this piece, Emma. It's a rare thing you've done here: using so few words to give a such a deep sense of a man, a marriage, & then also your own relationship to him. I loved every line, each detail.
Here is your link direct to your piece in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#emmawillsteed
Thank you so very much for joining the project, and I hope now that other themes in the archive will tempt you to try them! There are no deadlines - you can respond to as many as you have interest and time for. Doing as you have done here - using their comments fields to submit your words.
I'm now going to read your piece again!
Very best, Tanya xx
I made that short walk several times as a child. Across the highway, down the street named after my mother, and in through my grandparents’ door.
Each time I arrived, I’d find Grampa sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, while watching the bird feeder outside the window. He knew all the birds by name – Blue Jay, Robin, Chickadee, Crow, Starling... He taught me their names too - Cardinal, Red-Winged Blackbird, Dove, Pigeon, Baltimore Oriole…
Grampa’s side of the table was on the right. Gramma sat knitting on the left side. Gramma’s ‘princess’ sat at the end of the table with my milk and cookies.
Grampa was a kind, loving man. As we sat together, he would show me a picture book of Norway, his childhood home, and translate the captions into English. It was a magical land full of snowy mountains, fiords, and chalets. Somehow that picture book was lost, perhaps in the move after he died. One time when I sat with him, I tried to draw a nearby chair as he sipped his coffee. Gently, he took the pencil from my hand and transformed my stick chair from two to three dimensions.
As I see him now, through the haze of imperfect memory, he is still sitting at that table, watching his visitors at the bird feeder. His coffee is served in a cup and saucer. He raises his hand to pour the hot coffee into the saucer to cool before he raises it to his lips before placing it back down on the table.
One hot summer’s day Grampa came by to inspect our newly installed pool. Mum served coffee in mugs, without saucers, but he didn’t complain. The last photo we have of him was taken on that day, Grampa with his coffee.
Marilyn - how good it is to have you join this story-sharing community here after I've come to admire you over on the Hagitude forum where we've met. And just as your writing there moves me, this piece now also. So much love - them for you, you for them, all of you for the natural world around you - rendered in such beautiful sentences. I've just read it aloud to my husband (who was also blessed with good grandparents) and we have both spent good long minutes enjoying memories of our own that your writing has brought back to mind. Thank you so much.
I do hope you will write for other themes in the project. All the ones in the archive stay open without deadline - you just add your piece in the comments of the one you are responding to, as you've done here.
Here is your link to your piece:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#marilyndaniels
Tanya xx
Thank you, Tanya! I'm very excited to join this lovely community of writers (and to get more of you!). And it's a great bonus to link the stories to Facebook! xx
The whistle
My dad departed nearly 30 years now had this funny whistle, he was Mauritian came to this country to nurse and met my Mother who is Irish and was nursing , small island people meeting on this island of the UK
Along came me and my siblings and I will always hink of myself as an gal for sure !
My dad had been born with a spinal complaint and lost mobility after a huge operation when my brother was a new born
it was a gradual loss and he fought well to keep as much movement as possible
Long rehabilitation stays in hospital ,exercise bike in the kitchen after dinner and an adapted Gold Ford Granada he would use to drive us gaggle of kids to sweet shops ,zoos and to care homes to pick my mum up after her shifts at work .
It was unusual maybe but not for us and I felt the happiest I've ever felt being part of this whole unit .
My dad mobility worsened and soon it was a walking stick from the car proped up by the wall round the garage that would get him back inside the house after an adventure
and on those tentative walks back this whistle would come ,a kind of I don't know maybe thinking back a kind of cheerfulness ans defiance but also I remember a kind of cuckoo noise it was a birds call a family noise a heart song that was ours and imprint within me without me ever realising
and when at my lowest in my late 30s questioning and in pain from life itself
I found that whistle calling me back to myself and a song passed my way a very old one Cucurrucucú Paloma
the lyrics of the song made so much sense of my pain I was in and the Cuckoo sound within the song was I know my dad calling back to my home ,myself like he had done all those years ago .
This line: and on those tentative walks back this whistle would come ,a kind of I don't know maybe thinking back a kind of cheerfulness ans defiance but also I remember a kind of cuckoo noise it was a birds call a family noise a heart song that was ours and imprint within me without me ever realising....so touching, so beautiful how even when we lose people we loved we can carry them with us, they can carry us through. This piece is your heart song back to your dad.
Thank you so much Sheila for reading and such kind words
Thank you so much 😘
I really can't fully convey what a beautiful piece of writing you've shared with us, Monique. Not only the subject matter - your wonderful father - but how you've written it: it really is a song, a tune.
I've chosen a link to a version of the song to link to in the curated version on my book website. Will you check it and let me know if it's suitable? If not, let me have a link to the closest version there is on youtube and I will replace it. The one I've just listened to is beautiful but may not be your song at all!
Here is your link to the piece:
https://thecureforsleep.com/gestures/#moniquekennedy
Thank you for everything you've brought to our community this year.
Txxx
Monique... oh my. Your words came through as I'm sitting here late in the bed next to my husband. We were talking about this project and what it means to us both, and just as I asked if he wouldn't mind me spending a half hour getting the latest contributions curated...in came your words, or rather your song, singing of your father, your mother, your family. I began to read it aloud in my own family home, but then tears came. I had to pause a while til I could read to the end. Your spirit shines through every piece you write, and never brighter than here. Even as you are describing your father's decline of movement and your own struggles, the love and the language just soars. I am making the new page in the archive next, and will come back here soon with your link, but I wanted to let you know in real time that your words have already moved us here. Txxx