It's strange that you should write about the bargains we make. Ten years ago, newly diagnosed with metastases, I remember saying "10 years. 10 years would be amazing". And here we are, as if some greater force had heard me and kept me to that bargain.
Now I'm bargaining again. Two-thirds of a life? Yes, I'll take that. A week of pain and fatigue for 2 weeks of relative normality. That seems fair.
Half a life? Yes, I'd take that. A third, a quarter...
How small would I go? What sliver of life would I hold on to? A finger-nail, like the smallest imaginable crescent moon? Would that be enough? A pinprick of life?
Hi Tanya, thank you for sharing and giving us the space to risk it in!!!
As I lay here looking out at the swaying bamboo outside my window I am trying to remember promisers made and bargains struck. It is like looking through muslin in the sun. I am waiting for the memories to take shape the colours to deepen, the stories to come. Bargains, stones and jewellery come to mind. A long time ago whilst paddling in the lower lake in Glendalough I saw a shiny object winking in the sun lit water. I picked it up and beheld a small brooch. A hand made pin clasp faced up and when I turned it around the most delicate inlay of flowers made from Mother of Pearl lay in the palm of my hand. An object of real beauty and days gone by. I later learned it was from the Victorian era and I have always felt a connection with some lady who paddled with her full skirts hiked high who bent to pick a stone and dropped her brooch for me to find. It has been one of my most precious possessions more valuable to me than any eye popping jewels. Many moons later when my dear friend Isabel was moving to live in Trieste I felt the significance of the distance that was going to come between us and how life can fade the consistency of friendship. As I had a fear of flying I knew it would be a very long time until we would sit drink coffee, share our thoughts, ideas, creativity and hugs so I made a bargain with Isabel when I loaned her my brooch! To be brought back in her own time. A few years later Isabel, my brooch and our bond were reunited. This beautiful simple little object has been our bargaining touchstone.
Another achingly beautiful extract from you, Tanya. I'm continuing to process it, read it. I tried to recall a promise or promises I've made to someone else or others, and I came up blank rather oddly...which makes me think I've been trying to hard. So I wrote about promises to myself, but I am now thinking of the difference between making promises to oneself vs another and how they each have their own specific gravity, different than the other.
**********************************
The Secret to Survival
Eventually I make promises to myself because there’s certainly no bargaining as she tells me, nor after. I’ve been sick for double digit years and fought so hard to know what in the first place. Asking the Universe for a fairy tale healing via celibacy or turning towards God and church every Sunday is pointless. I am sick; a fact as immutable as the white walls in this exam room. And she tells me IT is here to stay.
IT is
autoimmune fire in the spine with bum hip shoulder elbow finger knee and toe joints tin man mornings sleepless nights a battery too low to talk or eat or dress a heart’s dance that needs watching ribs that become a wall without flex as achilles burn and eyes turn red and go blind without hourly drops it is all my days however long or short they stretch because there’s no magic pill just band aids
Over the years we apply and remove one band aid after another, sometimes modulating the peaks and valleys of fatigue and pain and sometimes not. Eventually I learn the secret to survival. Eventually I realize, decide: I must come first.
I promise me:
No more people who demand, dismiss, or tie me in knots. Sadly, this goes for family, too.
It’s okay to say no, to balance the ratio of shoulds to wants, to revel in slowness without guilt. The world can rush around me like a stream around a stone as I sit look hear and feel; sleep.
I’ll find different ways of loving old loves like trail and water, with compression sleeves and trekking poles and flotation devices; and I’ll adjust time, loving more or less depending on the energy I’ve got for the day because sick time is different than healthy time. In Chronic World 24 usable energy hours do not exist, nor 12; sometimes not even 2.
“I, Jean, take you M., for my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this time forward, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”
We had an insurance policy that we always laughed about. It ended ‘or prior death’.
‘Don’t you dare die,’ I used to say.
That December, for some obscure reason, I decided that the Christmas present would be seven small gifts, one to be opened each month until his birthday on June 10th. It was great fun choosing them, from a mug from Barter Books, the huge second hand bookshop in Alnwick, with a promise of coffee by their roaring fire, to theatre tickets and a pre-performance dinner.
Christmas day was a bit strange. The excitement of seeing someone’s face as they open their gifts was on hold. ‘Hmm. Got that wrong,’ I thought. But he loved the first one and as Christmas was tidied away, six more gifts sat on the table in the bedroom unopened. 10th of January and the first surprise was revealed and appreciated.
However, there is no good way to reveal unwelcome news. Random blood test. Prostrate. Cancer. Aggressive. So followed rounds of appointments, tests, scans, more appointments. We were the fortunate recipients of a company health care scheme that speeded up the processes, the prognosis for prostate cancer was optimistic and we had a promise – ‘in sickness and in health’.
I asked our children the other day, how they had felt.
‘It was great timing. I was walking down Kentish Road on the way to work. Fortunately, my colleague was an ex-nurse and could reassure me!’
‘I overheard you talking.’
Surgery came and went. The insurance policy matured and we benefitted. There were secondary’s that responded to treatment. It did not spread. ‘Prior death’ had to wait. Other consequences were manageable. When we were sad, I always said, ‘I’d rather you were alive.’ And there were the presents to open.
Would prior knowledge have made any difference to the promise? I was not always full of compassion – there was fear, frustration, annoyance even… Sickness does not send a calling card asking if it is convenient to call, or ring ahead to say it is on the way. And for some, a promise may be better withdrawn. But here we are. ‘‘Til death us do part.’
Dear Tanya,The image of you 2 sitting there, the space between you, the subtleties of your exchange over such an emotive subject, is so clear. I felt a chill of fear, of a promise made that would then hold you. (So, so happy to hear that this was years ago and you have 2 beautiful kids now.) Loved the interview yesterday. It prompted me to write this, Tamsin
..............
I took it as a promise of love.
It was my first day’s walking in the hot, dry autumn of Navarre. The way wound round a field of full-throated sweetcorn taller than me. They rustled sweet whispers as I went past, but of course it was in Spanish and my ear hadn’t acclimatised yet. As I rounded the corner I saw a solitary figure, standing still, leaning on a stick. I checked behind me to see who he was waiting for and the road was empty. It was me.
He seduced with Mozart and oysters. He kissed with tongued passion, and the lovemaking left me trembling. I texted my friend, ‘Oh that’s what they mean when they say French men are the best lovers!’ As we trekked, he told me about his wife leaving him and I said my husband had done the same. He listed his girlfriends, and I confessed mine. We spoke the language of lovers.
As the days became months, he took photos of graffiti which said je t’aime, he became increasingly jealous when I smiled at other men, sang to me while we walked, and dragged our hostel mattresses onto the floor so we could sleep side-by-side. I once made the mistake of mentioning amour and his reaction should have been a warning, but still we were inseparable.
As winter came on, we arrived, hand-in-hand, at Santiago de Compostella. We eeked it out a little longer, went to Finisterre together, the end of the earth and back. He bought me presents. Then he got the plane home to his girlfriend.
I had thought it was a pledge, but it wasn’t. It was an interlude.
The smoke from her cigarette dispersed to reveal the stars, scattered everywhere in a background of spilled ink, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground. She took in another puff and released it as cold wind pierced on her face, and she closed her eyes.
She wished she had someone to share this moment with.
She thought of her husband, so far away physically, and that even if he was here, he would still be so far away, emotionally. She thought of her daughter, too young still to consciously appreciate intangible things, and she wondered if maybe, for right now at least, that that was a good thing.
She pulled her jacket in and gave herself a hug.
The remnants of the smoke from the cigarette she had stubbed out with the heel of her black boots lingered as she stood there, looking up.
She saw the stars again, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt, Gemini, or maybe Leo. What would they say to her if they could talk? What would she say back to them if she could listen?
The brightest one blinked, and she knew.
That night, as the stars scattered in the spilled ink sky, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground, she heard herself make a vow to find this moment again, to be part of something so big and celestial again, some day, alone.
A lone dog howled and for the first time, she realised that she didn’t feel scared anymore.
Even the first time, still innocent, I bargain with the future. With each step on my morning walk to work I silently implore the universe to make good on its promise.
I tell myself that this will be my talent, delivering babies will finally be the sport I excel at. But there is a niggling doubt. I read the complications sections of the pregnancy books with avid attention – this problem is rare, that complication is vanishingly unlikely. Yet somehow I feel an affinity. This seems like a portent when the baby is inexplicably lost on the cusp of the second trimester.
The next time my expectations are more modest. The positive test no longer feels like a commitment, more like a tentative direction of travel. I aim squarely for 24 weeks, the point of viability. I am successful in the loosest sense. My baby girls, a matching pair, are born at 24 weeks and 3 days. One of them destined to spend a tumultuous five months in neonatal care, the other will not make it that far.
When I fall pregnant again I am unexpectedly buoyant. I have experienced the very worst of this before. Whatever comes, I know I am more than equal to it. I do not consider that this time the risk will be to me and my life will hang in the balance alongside my baby’s.
Now I am raising two beautiful children but their blond curls and smiles belie everything that was lost along the way.
The Japanese have 72 microseasons to describe a year: bush warblers start singing in the mountains, mist starts to linger, caterpillars become butterflies, distant thunder, frogs start singing, rotten grass becomes fireflies, self-heal withers, great rains sometimes fall, cool winds blow, thick fog descends, heat starts to die down, dew glistens white on grass, swallows leave, thunder ceases, light rains sometimes fall, north wind blows the leaves from the trees, hens start laying eggs.
A long marriage might be easier if we knew that five days after the land starts to freeze that daffodils will bloom, that there are times of lesser cold and greater cold, times of lesser heat and greater heat and manageable heat, times of lesser ripening and then grain beards and seeds. Many days marriage doesn’t feel beautiful or poetic, often feels like the life cycle of rock, lost in the squeeze of time, buried, pressured, explosive, burning, resurfacing, melting, flowing out of control. But maybe it is a poem, long, difficult to understand, even to the author, open to interpretation. Marriages thicken and thin just like ice, times of glistening and withering, ceasing and thundering, times when sun reflects and blinds, then sparkles.
On my seventh birthday I was given a grey school bag with a small red flowery print, a watercolour set, a miniature frying pan, a book called “Lenin and children” and lots of promises of bright future. They said a big girl like me shouldn’t play with toys anymore. I will be going to school soon. They said it’s the beginning of my life and I must take it seriously.
At first, I was excited. My life would change. I thought I would feel different… good…better… for being grown-up, but nothing has changed. I felt the same little girl.
“You need to learn letters and numbers like a big girl.”
“Get off that tree! You are a big girl now!”
“Big girls don’t have dirty nails.”
“Big girls don’t waste their time.”
“How old are you? Oh, you are a big girl now, you’ll have to look after your parents soon.”
If I’m so big, why am I still going to bed early? Why am I not allowed to go outside on my own? Why do I have to do what I’m told? Why can I never argue? They do it all the time. They think I don’t notice that, but I do. I watch and I listen, and I spy on them whenever I can. I try to understand. They say I’m the lucky one. All the wars and revolutions have ended now. But at night when I pretend to be asleep, they talk about dangerous times, uncertainties, threats, and other scary words I don’t understand.
Mama says that “there is always the right time for everything”, but nobody wants to tell me when this “right time” comes. How would I know when it’s here? Mama promises that I would.
A question posed by a person that, until that night, I’d never met. A blind date. The pair of us squeezed into a corner of Le Bateau in Ashley Cross. Too many drinks. Balancing on tiny stools. Hemmed in by the chink of glasses, laughter, and bodies in going-out clothes. A normal Friday night. Except it wasn’t. Was it?
Looking back, you had no reason to ask. Not then. You were well. Had been well for years. The ghosts of cancer were a distant memory that only returned, I came to learn, in your screaming nightmares. But you knew it would be back. And you wanted to know that I’d be there. I said “Yes” without a thought. Because no thought was needed.
Five years on, when the diagnosis came, you held my hand and told me that I didn’t need to stay, could walk away. You wouldn’t blame me. You’d understand.
Treatment was brutal. Life changing. When you couldn’t talk I tried to be your words. When speech returned, I dressed, fed and bathed you. On excursions to get food, I’d sit in my car and rage, red-faced and snotty-nosed, against the unfairness of it all. But you survived.
People think you’re unlucky. But they don’t know. They only see the multi-coloured pills you need to take. The telltale symptoms that have us scuttling to the hospital for tests. The endless wait for results. They don’t see the joy that each day brings, or hear the farts that still make us laugh like kids.
Twenty years ago. Doesn’t time fly? I made you a promise in a sticky-floored bar, then you walked me to my car and kissed my cheek.
But its not fair. Whoever told you life was fair? Mrs. George tried to teach us fairness in reception class, 1972, Y-Bont-Faen Primary School. You must wait your turn to pour imaginary tea, to make pretend cakes, to snuggle into the corner of the Wendy house with your best friend, just the two of you. It’s fair to let others take turns, to bargain,5 minutes for me, then it’s all yours. How about you have the bike and I have that doll? And when you’ve run out of promises and it’s all too hard, I’ll take that unfair cuddle with Mrs. George, just me on her lap, held tight, legs dangling and arms all warm and soft.
Who ever said life was fair?
Make friends break friends
I can’t make it, not today, sorry
Bloody black dog of depression moving in again
Let things be, just as they are, in this moment
This is where stillness comes from
But it’s not fair
Expectations
What life promises to be
What the day holds what a lifetime holds
Like a marriage with two wives
Like waking up to blue sky in your tent only for a raging storm to hit later
Like that Christmas morning when you’re so sure you have that new bike
Like the quiet house you were certain would be filled with kids, animals, family, friends, life
Like a life that isn’t the one you bargained for
Stillness comes not when the world is quiet but when we accept things just as they are for now, in this moment.
So here’s the stillness, the acceptance of the self and of my life. The life that’s so different to the one I thought was promised, I imagined as a little girl. The life that’s given me times I thought I couldn’t bear ,but also riches I could never have dreamed up.
It's strange that you should write about the bargains we make. Ten years ago, newly diagnosed with metastases, I remember saying "10 years. 10 years would be amazing". And here we are, as if some greater force had heard me and kept me to that bargain.
Now I'm bargaining again. Two-thirds of a life? Yes, I'll take that. A week of pain and fatigue for 2 weeks of relative normality. That seems fair.
Half a life? Yes, I'd take that. A third, a quarter...
How small would I go? What sliver of life would I hold on to? A finger-nail, like the smallest imaginable crescent moon? Would that be enough? A pinprick of life?
We'll see.
Hi Tanya, thank you for sharing and giving us the space to risk it in!!!
As I lay here looking out at the swaying bamboo outside my window I am trying to remember promisers made and bargains struck. It is like looking through muslin in the sun. I am waiting for the memories to take shape the colours to deepen, the stories to come. Bargains, stones and jewellery come to mind. A long time ago whilst paddling in the lower lake in Glendalough I saw a shiny object winking in the sun lit water. I picked it up and beheld a small brooch. A hand made pin clasp faced up and when I turned it around the most delicate inlay of flowers made from Mother of Pearl lay in the palm of my hand. An object of real beauty and days gone by. I later learned it was from the Victorian era and I have always felt a connection with some lady who paddled with her full skirts hiked high who bent to pick a stone and dropped her brooch for me to find. It has been one of my most precious possessions more valuable to me than any eye popping jewels. Many moons later when my dear friend Isabel was moving to live in Trieste I felt the significance of the distance that was going to come between us and how life can fade the consistency of friendship. As I had a fear of flying I knew it would be a very long time until we would sit drink coffee, share our thoughts, ideas, creativity and hugs so I made a bargain with Isabel when I loaned her my brooch! To be brought back in her own time. A few years later Isabel, my brooch and our bond were reunited. This beautiful simple little object has been our bargaining touchstone.
Another achingly beautiful extract from you, Tanya. I'm continuing to process it, read it. I tried to recall a promise or promises I've made to someone else or others, and I came up blank rather oddly...which makes me think I've been trying to hard. So I wrote about promises to myself, but I am now thinking of the difference between making promises to oneself vs another and how they each have their own specific gravity, different than the other.
**********************************
The Secret to Survival
Eventually I make promises to myself because there’s certainly no bargaining as she tells me, nor after. I’ve been sick for double digit years and fought so hard to know what in the first place. Asking the Universe for a fairy tale healing via celibacy or turning towards God and church every Sunday is pointless. I am sick; a fact as immutable as the white walls in this exam room. And she tells me IT is here to stay.
IT is
autoimmune fire in the spine with bum hip shoulder elbow finger knee and toe joints tin man mornings sleepless nights a battery too low to talk or eat or dress a heart’s dance that needs watching ribs that become a wall without flex as achilles burn and eyes turn red and go blind without hourly drops it is all my days however long or short they stretch because there’s no magic pill just band aids
Over the years we apply and remove one band aid after another, sometimes modulating the peaks and valleys of fatigue and pain and sometimes not. Eventually I learn the secret to survival. Eventually I realize, decide: I must come first.
I promise me:
No more people who demand, dismiss, or tie me in knots. Sadly, this goes for family, too.
It’s okay to say no, to balance the ratio of shoulds to wants, to revel in slowness without guilt. The world can rush around me like a stream around a stone as I sit look hear and feel; sleep.
I’ll find different ways of loving old loves like trail and water, with compression sleeves and trekking poles and flotation devices; and I’ll adjust time, loving more or less depending on the energy I’ve got for the day because sick time is different than healthy time. In Chronic World 24 usable energy hours do not exist, nor 12; sometimes not even 2.
Note: pledges subject to modification
Don't you let all that love inside you go to waste
Don't you do that .
Don't let it go down in the ground never to have it reach its final destination,
your are too good .
Your job now is to find all the people
all the trees and the animals to love beyond yourself,
And I know ,you will do that .
You will light them like candles around a bath ,till the darkness only can only be seen
at the edges .
“I, Jean, take you M., for my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this time forward, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”
We had an insurance policy that we always laughed about. It ended ‘or prior death’.
‘Don’t you dare die,’ I used to say.
That December, for some obscure reason, I decided that the Christmas present would be seven small gifts, one to be opened each month until his birthday on June 10th. It was great fun choosing them, from a mug from Barter Books, the huge second hand bookshop in Alnwick, with a promise of coffee by their roaring fire, to theatre tickets and a pre-performance dinner.
Christmas day was a bit strange. The excitement of seeing someone’s face as they open their gifts was on hold. ‘Hmm. Got that wrong,’ I thought. But he loved the first one and as Christmas was tidied away, six more gifts sat on the table in the bedroom unopened. 10th of January and the first surprise was revealed and appreciated.
However, there is no good way to reveal unwelcome news. Random blood test. Prostrate. Cancer. Aggressive. So followed rounds of appointments, tests, scans, more appointments. We were the fortunate recipients of a company health care scheme that speeded up the processes, the prognosis for prostate cancer was optimistic and we had a promise – ‘in sickness and in health’.
I asked our children the other day, how they had felt.
‘It was great timing. I was walking down Kentish Road on the way to work. Fortunately, my colleague was an ex-nurse and could reassure me!’
‘I overheard you talking.’
Surgery came and went. The insurance policy matured and we benefitted. There were secondary’s that responded to treatment. It did not spread. ‘Prior death’ had to wait. Other consequences were manageable. When we were sad, I always said, ‘I’d rather you were alive.’ And there were the presents to open.
Would prior knowledge have made any difference to the promise? I was not always full of compassion – there was fear, frustration, annoyance even… Sickness does not send a calling card asking if it is convenient to call, or ring ahead to say it is on the way. And for some, a promise may be better withdrawn. But here we are. ‘‘Til death us do part.’
Jean
Dear Tanya,The image of you 2 sitting there, the space between you, the subtleties of your exchange over such an emotive subject, is so clear. I felt a chill of fear, of a promise made that would then hold you. (So, so happy to hear that this was years ago and you have 2 beautiful kids now.) Loved the interview yesterday. It prompted me to write this, Tamsin
..............
I took it as a promise of love.
It was my first day’s walking in the hot, dry autumn of Navarre. The way wound round a field of full-throated sweetcorn taller than me. They rustled sweet whispers as I went past, but of course it was in Spanish and my ear hadn’t acclimatised yet. As I rounded the corner I saw a solitary figure, standing still, leaning on a stick. I checked behind me to see who he was waiting for and the road was empty. It was me.
He seduced with Mozart and oysters. He kissed with tongued passion, and the lovemaking left me trembling. I texted my friend, ‘Oh that’s what they mean when they say French men are the best lovers!’ As we trekked, he told me about his wife leaving him and I said my husband had done the same. He listed his girlfriends, and I confessed mine. We spoke the language of lovers.
As the days became months, he took photos of graffiti which said je t’aime, he became increasingly jealous when I smiled at other men, sang to me while we walked, and dragged our hostel mattresses onto the floor so we could sleep side-by-side. I once made the mistake of mentioning amour and his reaction should have been a warning, but still we were inseparable.
As winter came on, we arrived, hand-in-hand, at Santiago de Compostella. We eeked it out a little longer, went to Finisterre together, the end of the earth and back. He bought me presents. Then he got the plane home to his girlfriend.
I had thought it was a pledge, but it wasn’t. It was an interlude.
What a thought provoking piece Tanya! On so many levels. I am still absorbing your last sentence. Wonderful
The smoke from her cigarette dispersed to reveal the stars, scattered everywhere in a background of spilled ink, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground. She took in another puff and released it as cold wind pierced on her face, and she closed her eyes.
She wished she had someone to share this moment with.
She thought of her husband, so far away physically, and that even if he was here, he would still be so far away, emotionally. She thought of her daughter, too young still to consciously appreciate intangible things, and she wondered if maybe, for right now at least, that that was a good thing.
She pulled her jacket in and gave herself a hug.
The remnants of the smoke from the cigarette she had stubbed out with the heel of her black boots lingered as she stood there, looking up.
She saw the stars again, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt, Gemini, or maybe Leo. What would they say to her if they could talk? What would she say back to them if she could listen?
The brightest one blinked, and she knew.
That night, as the stars scattered in the spilled ink sky, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground, she heard herself make a vow to find this moment again, to be part of something so big and celestial again, some day, alone.
A lone dog howled and for the first time, she realised that she didn’t feel scared anymore.
Even the first time, still innocent, I bargain with the future. With each step on my morning walk to work I silently implore the universe to make good on its promise.
I tell myself that this will be my talent, delivering babies will finally be the sport I excel at. But there is a niggling doubt. I read the complications sections of the pregnancy books with avid attention – this problem is rare, that complication is vanishingly unlikely. Yet somehow I feel an affinity. This seems like a portent when the baby is inexplicably lost on the cusp of the second trimester.
The next time my expectations are more modest. The positive test no longer feels like a commitment, more like a tentative direction of travel. I aim squarely for 24 weeks, the point of viability. I am successful in the loosest sense. My baby girls, a matching pair, are born at 24 weeks and 3 days. One of them destined to spend a tumultuous five months in neonatal care, the other will not make it that far.
When I fall pregnant again I am unexpectedly buoyant. I have experienced the very worst of this before. Whatever comes, I know I am more than equal to it. I do not consider that this time the risk will be to me and my life will hang in the balance alongside my baby’s.
Now I am raising two beautiful children but their blond curls and smiles belie everything that was lost along the way.
The Japanese have 72 microseasons to describe a year: bush warblers start singing in the mountains, mist starts to linger, caterpillars become butterflies, distant thunder, frogs start singing, rotten grass becomes fireflies, self-heal withers, great rains sometimes fall, cool winds blow, thick fog descends, heat starts to die down, dew glistens white on grass, swallows leave, thunder ceases, light rains sometimes fall, north wind blows the leaves from the trees, hens start laying eggs.
A long marriage might be easier if we knew that five days after the land starts to freeze that daffodils will bloom, that there are times of lesser cold and greater cold, times of lesser heat and greater heat and manageable heat, times of lesser ripening and then grain beards and seeds. Many days marriage doesn’t feel beautiful or poetic, often feels like the life cycle of rock, lost in the squeeze of time, buried, pressured, explosive, burning, resurfacing, melting, flowing out of control. But maybe it is a poem, long, difficult to understand, even to the author, open to interpretation. Marriages thicken and thin just like ice, times of glistening and withering, ceasing and thundering, times when sun reflects and blinds, then sparkles.
On my seventh birthday I was given a grey school bag with a small red flowery print, a watercolour set, a miniature frying pan, a book called “Lenin and children” and lots of promises of bright future. They said a big girl like me shouldn’t play with toys anymore. I will be going to school soon. They said it’s the beginning of my life and I must take it seriously.
At first, I was excited. My life would change. I thought I would feel different… good…better… for being grown-up, but nothing has changed. I felt the same little girl.
“You need to learn letters and numbers like a big girl.”
“Get off that tree! You are a big girl now!”
“Big girls don’t have dirty nails.”
“Big girls don’t waste their time.”
“How old are you? Oh, you are a big girl now, you’ll have to look after your parents soon.”
If I’m so big, why am I still going to bed early? Why am I not allowed to go outside on my own? Why do I have to do what I’m told? Why can I never argue? They do it all the time. They think I don’t notice that, but I do. I watch and I listen, and I spy on them whenever I can. I try to understand. They say I’m the lucky one. All the wars and revolutions have ended now. But at night when I pretend to be asleep, they talk about dangerous times, uncertainties, threats, and other scary words I don’t understand.
Mama says that “there is always the right time for everything”, but nobody wants to tell me when this “right time” comes. How would I know when it’s here? Mama promises that I would.
“Will you look after me when I get ill?”
A question posed by a person that, until that night, I’d never met. A blind date. The pair of us squeezed into a corner of Le Bateau in Ashley Cross. Too many drinks. Balancing on tiny stools. Hemmed in by the chink of glasses, laughter, and bodies in going-out clothes. A normal Friday night. Except it wasn’t. Was it?
Looking back, you had no reason to ask. Not then. You were well. Had been well for years. The ghosts of cancer were a distant memory that only returned, I came to learn, in your screaming nightmares. But you knew it would be back. And you wanted to know that I’d be there. I said “Yes” without a thought. Because no thought was needed.
Five years on, when the diagnosis came, you held my hand and told me that I didn’t need to stay, could walk away. You wouldn’t blame me. You’d understand.
Treatment was brutal. Life changing. When you couldn’t talk I tried to be your words. When speech returned, I dressed, fed and bathed you. On excursions to get food, I’d sit in my car and rage, red-faced and snotty-nosed, against the unfairness of it all. But you survived.
People think you’re unlucky. But they don’t know. They only see the multi-coloured pills you need to take. The telltale symptoms that have us scuttling to the hospital for tests. The endless wait for results. They don’t see the joy that each day brings, or hear the farts that still make us laugh like kids.
Twenty years ago. Doesn’t time fly? I made you a promise in a sticky-floored bar, then you walked me to my car and kissed my cheek.
Bargains
But its not fair. Whoever told you life was fair? Mrs. George tried to teach us fairness in reception class, 1972, Y-Bont-Faen Primary School. You must wait your turn to pour imaginary tea, to make pretend cakes, to snuggle into the corner of the Wendy house with your best friend, just the two of you. It’s fair to let others take turns, to bargain,5 minutes for me, then it’s all yours. How about you have the bike and I have that doll? And when you’ve run out of promises and it’s all too hard, I’ll take that unfair cuddle with Mrs. George, just me on her lap, held tight, legs dangling and arms all warm and soft.
Who ever said life was fair?
Make friends break friends
I can’t make it, not today, sorry
Bloody black dog of depression moving in again
Let things be, just as they are, in this moment
This is where stillness comes from
But it’s not fair
Expectations
What life promises to be
What the day holds what a lifetime holds
Like a marriage with two wives
Like waking up to blue sky in your tent only for a raging storm to hit later
Like that Christmas morning when you’re so sure you have that new bike
Like the quiet house you were certain would be filled with kids, animals, family, friends, life
Like a life that isn’t the one you bargained for
Stillness comes not when the world is quiet but when we accept things just as they are for now, in this moment.
So here’s the stillness, the acceptance of the self and of my life. The life that’s so different to the one I thought was promised, I imagined as a little girl. The life that’s given me times I thought I couldn’t bear ,but also riches I could never have dreamed up.
Oh, Tanya. And now you have the results of that promise. What painful joy.