As a young child, I wished to be a borrower; a tiny, sentinel-like, brave presence that would pilfer small objects from our family and feast like a Queen on a single gold-wrapped chocolate caramel. I wanted to live with my parents but for them not to know I was still there; I felt that - at full child size - I was often a burden to them, rather than a source of interest and joy. If I were small, I could live cosily in the airing cupboard where I kept my flower press. I could keep a close eye on the big wide world and alert a grown up to trouble, if needs be. I had a route planned out through the house to the kitchen, with a mechanism of pulleys to snaffle food; a path through the rockery in the garden that would make for perfect borrower-sized adventures; a spot next to the robin hole (a hole in the hedge where our resident robin would nip in and out through the day) where I would set up a camp, complete with tiny campfire, where I would lie on my back and watch the stars come out. When I later learned of the hearth faeries - the broonies and ùruisgs of Scotland - I felt instantly drawn to them, as if a fragment of my soul were some kind of hearth spirit, a tiny protector of home and heart.
Larissa! Shivers got reading this – what a (miniature/massive) world you have conjured here. Once my monthly post has been out for a week or so, I will look through any/all stories that have collected here and be back in touch about how we might share this on my book site, if you'd be interested in that. "...as if a fragment of my soul were some kind of hearth spirit..." How beautiful.
I was so drawn in to your own words and story above that I simply had to respond. It is amazing how memory can do that - one little nudge and suddenly there's a waterfall of words and connections that are fresh and new and sparkling. I'd love to think and write more on this.
Well this is why I've risked sharing my own stories, for exactly this hope that it will surprise/encourage others into putting theirs out. I loved my few years as a hospice scribe, but the stories I helped my clients to voice were, of course, coming precisely because they were at end of life. I've wanted ever since to use projects and books to call forth stories from more people and before it is so late. Thank you again for what you've contributed here. It's a risk basing my author newsletter around wanting so openly others to respond!
Larissa - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to a website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
Thank you so much, Tanya! This looks lovely ☺️ My writing group website is best, though we’ve not got around to updating it recently (oops!): twistedcolon.blog
That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#larissareid
It was a ritual that fired up my young, impressionable imagination. Five maternal aunties; a conspiracy of cardplayers were about to plunge into another table top drama. A memory etched in my mind.
Pennies, half pennies, thruppences and tanners were smashed down in the middle of the kitchen table so hard the Babysham bottles clinked and clanked, ringing out the start of the game. Voices cracked the air with expectation. I sucked hard on my sherbet lemon and focused on the players.
White sticks were passed round and set on fire, smoke blown across the table which grew into cumulus congestus cloud enveloping the entire table. I gazed across at them through a smoky haze; mystical figures, faces contorted with frowns, smirks and knowing nods. The local cigarette factory did well on Thursday nights. ( Pay day )
A second sherbet lemon was needed for the next part as cards sliced through the murky air like flying cleavers as shouts of ' bust!' 'twist!' 'deuce!' 'flush!' and 'diamond takes all!' punctured holes through the mist. Glasses were drained, voices clashed, air crackled as cheeks reddened. Cards were slammed down in frustration. Howls and curses marched around the room giving orders.
To a chorus of, ' I'm out! bugger!' Chairs were unceremoniously pushed back and toppled over and fingers jabbed into the air like red hot pokers. The winnings provocatively scraped into an eager pocket. The plunder would eventually end up back in the cigarette factory where my aunties earned it the week before.
Through the smoky haze, my crimson lipped aunties, shining like beacons of hope shuffled the cards to a shout of ' Your deal!' This was unforgettable theatre. They have all now been swallowed up by history, but wait for me in my dreamscapes.
Steve, I love this. It's simply brilliant writing, of course, but I also grew up with a huge clan of great aunties & aunties, all of whom were fiercely dedicated to rounds of Newmarket and Whist whenever they could leave their farms to meet up. I love how much energy and humour there is in your vignette...but then that poignant last line. Oh. Same effect on me as I get from Laurie Lee. Thank you. Your link below. Tan
Thanks Tanya, it was fun writing it remembering the dynasty of Franklins on my mother's side of the family. Thirteen lived from sixteen born. twins at birth and Renee at six didn't make it. All those in a three bedroomed council house. What untold stories lie in between those walls?
My own Grandma was the eldest of 14, from two mothers, her own dying in childbirth, with at least two babied dead as I recall. What amount of anguish and heartbreak they suffered, losing so many. An everyday occurrence I cannot imagine these days.
Hi Sally, Hope you are keeping well. Seems ages ago since we last talked. It was a case of big families at that time all cooped up in a small space. A time for a lot of family parties to let off steam and say how you felt which led to lashings of arguments. I got through a lot of sherbet lemons.
Oh Tanya that is haunting and compelling. I love the image of the bramble thicket of stories that form us. I cannot wait to read more.
I feel fortunate that the stories I was told were very different. On my mother's side, I was told about my great grandmother, a suffragette and fierce teetotaller who thought nothing of snatching alcoholic drinks out of people's hands at parties. Her daughter, my grandmother, was the first in her family to go to university. My paternal grandfather was by all accounts a charismatic but difficult character who demanded worship from the rest of the family. My father and his brother were expected to walk with him to the station every morning . They deeply resented this. Quite how these stories formed me I am not sure but they did not cause me to shrink from life. Rather, they were, in an odd way, something to live up to, strong, eccentric, flawed characters who didn't conform.
Yes! I had a sense from first meeting you - even though we've never talked of our pasts, so just from how you are in the world – that you had been raised on a very different version of what life was and could be. That is the joy of bringing a book like mine into the world - I am searching all through it for alternative versions of how to be, and making 'a patchwork from borrowed and remembered sources.' There are already 120 of us subsdribed to this new venture here in cumulative responses to the themes in the book - and my highest hope was 100. It's not an exercise in selling more books next year for me, this. Rather I want to use the book as a way to deepen and extend conversations I've already been having since being a hospice scribe and then outdoor writer-in-residence. The book - beautiful though the writing of it has been, like a love affair - is not an end in itself. It's all about this for me, what we're doing here. So thank you for being early to add words of your own.
Good morning, dear Sophie. How much I admire your superb writing about Felix in the Observer yesterday. Your book is so important. I've been able to create a March Issue archive on my book's website. Your bit has its own hyperlink. If you'd not like it included in the permanent archive of stories beyond the book, just say & I can remove - but I'd love to have it there. In telling my stories of what constrained me and kept me asleep to possibility so long, I hope to draw forth just as many stories that show other ways of raising children and ourselves are possible! Yours one of those. x That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sophiepierce
Well, you know, children can’t be trusted. They tell stories.
I understood bedtime stories and stories in books, good enjoyable things to be encouraged; I knew about stories the grown-ups told each other at the dinner table or in the living room after, which were rewarded with guffawed laughter; incomprehensible to us, but evidently a good thing. What was wrong with children telling their stories?
But they didn’t mean stories, they meant lies. How confusing to the child that hears things literally.
That didn’t happen, stop telling stories.
My stories, the ones which earned me an early bed, or a red hand-print, weren’t stories, they were truths. Hadn’t we always been told never to tell lies? But now, even as I took the vow, followed the rules, I was disbelieved. Children telling stories was a bad thing, not to be tolerated. Punishable, even when they were the truth.
So I didn’t tell stories, any stories, didn’t tell my stories, didn’t retell those of Bimbo & Tospy, or Marmalade or Pookie. I kept them tight inside the suitcase in my head, until I stopped hearing them at all.
Father Christmas; the Tooth Fairy; God
Perhaps as you get older, the meaning changes. Perhaps never means sometimes. Now lies fit on to a sliding scale of seriousness depending upon the teller and the lie. White lies and fibs, fairy-stories, untruths, falsehoods and fictions, tall-tales, yarns. Justifications for when a lie might be excused, or expected, or, even, kind. Embroidering; embellishing; exaggerating. So only children must not lie, or face the consequences, and adults must do as they please. The lie of the lie.
Sally... it means a lot to have you return to the project, just in time for Season Three, and with this fiercely affecting piece. How I felt for the young you, having to construct (unforgettable image/phrase) the suitcase in your head - with all that is concentrated into that image: lack of safety, preparation to leave, not belonging. And the impact of those phrases at the end. Reminding me all over again why - even in a strictly anonymised application - I chose you for mentoring last year. You write with what feels like a direct line into the truth of things.
Hi Tanya, thank you so much. Seems most of my pieces are angry and grumpy! At the moment you are my muse and well as my mentor, so trying to live up to that.
Webpage format is absolutely fine, except could you put a line break before Father Christmas please, so that that line is alone. thank you.
I think it's me who needs to live up to that! I've not written anything new for the longest time in years: partly that was a planned response to seven years of constant writing - I gave myself nine months from midsummer 22 to spring solstice this year to live in my body and start getting fit, getting strong. But now another nine months period is begun in which I need to try and blend that new physical rhythm with a return to writing - I feel a little fear, a little resistance. But I've learned that this can be got through. But yes, always a little fear that this thing I love doing is a natural spring I somehow tapped in midlife, and that might dry up!
I've changed that line break. As you intended it gives even more shape and impact. As well as reading beautifully, I notice your piece has a beautiful shape on the page...
Thank you, does look fab! And thank you, again, for this wonderful opportunity, it's lovely to see how it has grown.
I love the idea of your planned 'gap', and nine months is a decent while. I hope you can slide back into writing without too much resistance; I'm sure it's not about to dry up. It might even have found a different route.
31 houses is underway, but still quite muddled. I guess I will have to work my way through it. PS, love the new website. xxx
Thank you! After I'd updated all three of them - the book one, my author site and The Selkie Press - a great feeling of peace and 'enough-ness' came over me and is sustaining. I hope to make more work in the coming years of course, but the driving need to do so that fuelled my whole life til now - that has ebbed away. I like the space it has opened up.
Whereas you are coming towards a full expression of something central to your experience...
Thank you, that's interesting. The 'project' has been called No Fixed Abode in my head for the past few years, so now I'm vacillating between the two titles. I think now the emphasis has changed towards the buildings rather than it just being about me, the new title is more fitting. Also simpler, more straightforward. I think it might have been something you said during our mentoring chat that crystallised it, so thank you for that as well as all the other things!!!
(hope you are getting sorted with your mum's pension - DWP can be extremely officious in my experience, not pleasant at all xxx)
Sally, I'm only just reading this now (have only just joined the community), and love this line: "... didn’t retell those of Bimbo & Tospy, or Marmalade or Pookie. I kept them tight inside the suitcase in my head, until I stopped hearing them at all." The sound of the words (Bimbo & Topsy, Marmalade and Pookie) is rhythmic and poetic, and the image of the suitcase in your head is really affecting. I also love the list of types of lies -- another very poetic/rhythmic choice of words: "White lies and fibs, fairy-stories, untruths, falsehoods and fictions, tall-tales, yarns." The end is cleverly written. No explanation is needed as those common stories (or lies) are so familiar. I really liked this piece.
They tried, these three women, my great-grandma, grandma and mom. They made sure I had pretty dresses for dances. They told me to go to college. They told me they loved their kids but not to have babies early, that it is a sacrifice, kids change everything. They told me there is a stuckness to having children. They told me not to marry the first person I had sex with. They told me to keep men guessing and that if I couldn’t be good then to remember the date. They told me my life could be different. They told me to stay thin, that men liked a flat belly. They told me men were the disease and the cure, necessary and ruinous, men cause whispers and startles and that what they don’t know won’t hurt them, fear is not respect but men don’t know that (would that matter?), men as means to an end, men cause the end, men control the end. Men are the dealers, women the gamblers. Women roll the dice and the house always wins. I learned to tuck and roll, to stop, drop and roll, roll with punches, roll with it, roll away, women as tumbling dice.
Birds roll in dirt to clean their feathers. They roll their eggs during incubation. They roll their heads from heavy metal poisoning.
It is hard to write of yourself in this way, where I fit into this, knowing they wanted it different for me, but some days I still feel stuck, the bird still sitting on a dead egg. I fear loss. I retreat. I harden. I go outside and walk but every walk is some sort of loop, a migratory return. Site attachment.
Even used to the power of your writing as I'm now privileged to be... this one arrived with me like a gut punch. Absolutely true and yet made stunning to me all over again - the weight of what we women inherit, the rigged nature of the game. Sheila, you have a book to write, I feel sure of it with every piece you send me.
And I've worked hard this morning to refresh and make more impactful all of the webpages in the project to showcase you and others' work still better. I'd love it if you took a look, starting with the new landing page:
First off, I love the changes you made, much cleaner and I think it will be easier for the new people to navigate as they join in this amazing project! And secondly, I once again am so grateful for you, for your encouragement. It still blows me away that you share so much of your time with all of us. I would love to get something published, I always struggle with the form. I have good memory for the felt sense of my past and the women in my life, but I am horrible with actual memories of specific events, if that makes sense. I don't know if you have ever read any Abigail Thomas. Two of her memoirs (What Comes Next and How to Like It and Safekeeping) were written in vignettes. (Three Dog Life is also amazing, she reminds me of you, really able to get to the heart of it, so honest, fearless, all of her humanity shines through.) I think if I did attempt if would have to be something on the order of that because I really don't think I have a storyline so move through. But who knows, writing begets writing, maybe memories will arise. Is your publisher doing much to get a bigger audience in the US? Your book seems like something Elizabeth Gilbert or Cheryl Strayed or Oprah would really grab onto. It deserves a bigger audience, it is that life changing and magically written. Many thanks!
Thank you for taking a look and kind words. I will redesign the website more fully in the new year with a new template, once I know what the paperback is going to look like - but I feel already now I'm doing better by your and others' work over there!
Abigail Thomas is new to me but I will absolutely read her on your recommendation. Thank you.
My UK publisher doesn't have the US or foreign language rights - only UK/Aus/NZ and English language in commonwealth countries. When the book was acquired in Dec 19 there was lots of interest from other countries... but pandemic absolutely put paid to that! I like that those rights are almost now like Jack's magic beans: nothing of worth has come from them - and it saddens me US Hagitude people are having to pay more to import it - and yet there's also the delicious outside possibility that one day it might get published in translation or in US/Canada.
I do have a secret hope that one day someone will put it in the path of Brene Brown, Oprah or Krista Tippett... but it's in the realm of pleasant daydream not real possibility!
The readers I already have mean a great great deal to me: the quality of conversations I have with you all... xx
Tanya, Please let me know what you think of Abigail. I read Fierce Attachments on your recommendation and absolutely loved it, so much juice in mother/daughter relationships. I hadn't heard of her before. I don't know if this would help US readers, but I find the book on bookdepository.com for around $18 and free shipping. I have bought and recommended it for several of my friends and the appeal is universal. Fingers crossed.
Sheila, I've only just joined the community and am reading through the archives, and am really struck by this piece you wrote. I love the rhythm of many of your words ("Men are the dealers, women the gamblers. Women roll the dice and the house always wins. I learned to tuck and roll, to stop, drop and roll, roll with punches, roll with it, roll away...") which are akin to poetry and make it delightful to read, while at the same time it is a powerful piece expressing painful emotions and experiences. The image of birds with heavy metal poisoning is especially moving and evocative, as is the image of the dead egg. I found it a really powerful, lyrical piece of writing.
Wendy, Thank you so much for responding. I saw you were from Ohio, I live in Pennsylvania. I hope to explore your writing and see how you made the leap across the pond. I am fascinated by people more adventurous that I am. It's a great community here that Tanya created, full of creativity and kindness. xx
Hi Sheila, Nice to 'meet' someone from the same neck of the woods. I hope to write a bit about my wanderlust, which might include how I ended up in the UK (hint: there was a man involved;) I love this community and look forward to continuing to contribute through writing and commenting on others' pieces. Cheers:)
I am Cinderella's granddaughter. That was her story, she held it in her bones. My grandmother was illegitimate, born dirt poor. Her mother married a widower who had his own children, and they had more between them, but she was always "different". She didn't understand why until she was getting married and discovered she had a different surname on her birth certificate.
My grandfather spotted her on a factory holiday. She looked like a film star, and he looked like Errol Flynn. She was awestruck by his family house. I know that house, and it's a three bedroomed detached house that held two parents and nine children - but to my Granny it was a palace.
My granddad rescued her, but she rescued herself first. I don't know if she saw that. She worked in a jelly factory, she dressed as well as she could, she embraced life. She told me once that a friend had asked her if she and her husband should buy a house or a car? A car, my granny said immediately. You'll have a lot more fun with a car. That was her. She was always up for a coach trip, a day out, a laugh. She worked hard, but she enjoyed herself. Once lockdown's over, I will put her diamond ring back on and remember her sparkle.
Sarah - what an incredible piece of writing/life you have shared with us here. You had me from the first sentence. What incredible people your grandmother and grandfather were, and what a rare inheritance they've give you from their example. Next week, I will think how best to showcase your and others' responses on the book's website: once I've come up with the best approach, I will check if you're happy to have your words reproduced there, and how you would like to be named/credited. It is so good to have my own words call forth responses like yours. Thank you.
I love the idea that some of these monthly posts might move people not only to respond on here, but also to continue then thinking/working on memories that have been brought forth. Thank you again for taking part in what is such a new and experimental venture!
Sarah - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to a website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
How lovely! Of course you can use my name. I'm Sarah Connor, and I blog at fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com (if that counts as a website). I love this initiative of yours.
That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sarahconnor
There were prayers before bed. Three of us slept in the small bedroom, little girls. Each evening we knelt down, side by side, at the bed, and gave thanks to God for the day that had passed and our parents, brother and sisters, and the wonders of the world, in words that we didn't understand. Heaven, hallowed, kingdom, fruit of thy womb, sinners, death all spoken rapidly so we could get to the end, to story time. The lights were turned out and in the blackness D, my father, told us stories about other worlds. Arabian nights, Hannibal crossing the alps, families of donkeys, leprechauns in the mountains, some he read but most he made up. Together we went on adventures that were not possible in real life, to places that only existed in the stories.
Sometimes a story took several nights to tell, so the prayers the following night would be even quicker. He rarely talked about the past and, as there were six children in the house and we were so busy living, we didn't reflect too much on the present. Instead I learned to value each and every moment, be it spent managing the ordinary or absorbing new experiences.
Lovely, poignant words Tanya, what a world you create. I look forward to reading more. Thank you!
Sheila, I feel a strange longing to experience your childhood from this moving (& beautifully-written) glimpse of it you have shared with us here. That combination of faith and fantasy and the distant past: what a gift to you and your siblings. As I've just said to another contributor here, next week, I will think how best to showcase your and others' responses on the book's website: once I've come up with the best approach, I will check if you're happy to have your words reproduced there, and how you would like to be named/credited. Thank you so much for sharing your story - I felt quite frightened to set this monthly endeavour up, wanting so frankly to hear from others rather than simply broadcast my own stories. But you and others have already made the risk more than worth it. Much appreciated.
Sheila - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to your website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
Sounds great Tanya. My full name is Sheila de Courcy and I don't have a website but I am on instagram @sheiladecourcy , if relevant. I so admire your way of working. Thank you.
That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sheiladecourcy
Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023Liked by Tanya Shadrick
Children should be seen and not heard, someone said. So I tried to be quiet but sometimes, well sometimes I just couldn’t keep the words inside of me. Especially when nobody else said anything and I knew, I just knew that there was something that had to be said. Those words just had to come out. Well, there was a price to pay when you dared to be heard. When you dared to release words that once spoken out loud somehow made you feel better. I knew the price but still words would find their way out time and time again when everything felt wrong and I thought I could make it feel right again. Right again for me, but mostly right again for the others. It made me feel angry when those others were being quiet and I just knew that they had something to say, something that could explain things and that could maybe prevent them from feeling even worse. They were choosing to be seen only it seemed and I couldn’t bear it and I couldn’t understand why. So many feelings, so confusing.
Then one day someone said that I had too much of what the others didn’t have enough of. Did I? I remember feeling pleased that I had something even though I didn’t know what the something was. I didn’t think to ask. It felt rather special in a way, and if the others didn’t have it, well, it was extra special then wasn’t it? I wasn’t just a girl, I was a girl with something special, and the others didn’t have it!
Then someone said that a lady was only a lady until she opened her mouth...
I love the voice that you've created for this piece: it has the rhythms of your younger self, while also making an adult observation. And that line at the end carries so much impact, coming almost as a blow when the rest of the sentences are building towards a wonderful celebration of self... Yes, you've captured exactly what happened to you as to so many of us. A particular cultural phrase said at us or overheard which sends an important part of ourselves into hiding...
Which is why it's a special thrill to have you join us here, saying your piece(s)!
My mother and I have a new game that has us rushing gleefully upstairs to see a little bird fluttering mid-air, asking for food. We are flattered and delighted, over and over again. I’m fourteen. My sister has left home at seventeen; I’ve inherited her ID style-mag subscription. My brother’s a weekly boarder; I have to wash up after Sunday roast, and I’ve never done my homework beforehand.
Half my lifetime earlier, my mother returned from work with a story. “I was standing at the bus stop and a bird on top of the lamppost dropped dead at my feet. A chaffinch. So beautiful!” Thinking of brown sparrows, I’m unconvinced. A bit boring. Then she describes the pink, slate blue, chestnut and green feathers of the tiny bird in her palm, and maybe this is what sparks my love of wildlife.
It’s a chaffinch that draws us into the game that we know is wrong, unnatural. For a while we can’t resist the gratification, then we pull ourselves together and just stop. Hidden in the hedge is the secret nest. Last time we peeped there were five warm eggs in its perfect mossy cup. Now there are five horrifying, pathetic corpses. We feel guilty. Is it our fault?
In my twenties, I lived in the West End of London. Dismayed at the sirens my end, my mother held the telephone out for me to hear birdsong. The large pond my parents excavated attracted kingfishers. They planted lots of trees. My mother regaled me with a story of how a cock chaffinch had been tap tap tapping at the windowpane. Loud as a hammer, waking her EVERY dawn. Annoyed her so much she blasted it out of the yew tree with an air rifle.
Firstly, my apologies for the delay in reaching this fine piece by you. I’ve been supporting a small family with no nearby relatives who suffered a sudden loss last week, and so I’ve been away from my computer.
I’m always glad when a piece from you comes through: always these strong and surprising turns, of which there were several in this piece - and so true to how I also experienced nature in my country growing. The alternating of close attention and enjoyment with the sudden deaths.
Here is your link, and I’d love to know by reply or a DM what other writing you’ve been doing and publishing in the last few seasons. Would enjoy reading more and longer by you…
Thank you for finding the time to read my piece, and I'm so glad it has piqued your interest. This space has definitely inspired me to do more creative writing, so I've been submitting pieces for opportunties such as the Nature Chronicles essay competition. Not memoir particularly. The 300 wordcount here has also encouraged me to write 'flash fiction'. Still defying the English teacher who scoffed at parents' evening that I wrote about animals too much.
I’m glad to know you are entering that, and I’m VERY glad you are defying that teacher (why oh why do teachers ever feel the need to offer limiting observations of this kind?!)
I was born into the post war world, to a family still grieving and living in austerity. Like so much in our family, war and grief were never spoken about, but hung like an unseen fog seeping into my early childhood and beyond. Only child and only grandchild. I grieved for the unborn children who would never become my cousins and for the uncles I never knew. I was their substitute, created to bring back joy and hope.
I smiled a lot and tried to bring happiness to the many adults who surrounded me. That was my job. A heavy burden for a small child.
My escape from trying to be happy even when I was sad or afraid was to be found in the books, stories and films that fed my imagination.
Sunday mornings, cuddled up to my father, I listened to exciting and magical stories from a new page in our invisible magic book, creating a story together.
I rowed across the landing in an upturned card table complete with kitchen towel flag. Swallows and Amazons.
I hid from the Nazis behind musty clothes in my parents’ wardrobe. The Silver Sword.
Endlessly singing Nick Nack Paddy Wack I frequently dived into bushes to escape bullets and bombs. The Inn of The Sixth Happiness.
Left to my own devices I squeezed through the park railings and perched high in my favourite tree daydreaming.
I dragged brown paper carrier bags filled with my mother’s cast-off skirts to a
den under the rhododendron bushes, crawled through the hayfield creating
pathways and tunnels, and one snowy winter I rolled the largest snowball in the world around the putting green until it became too heavy to push any further.
Hello again Rosemary. I'm back in Sussex now and it has been my pleasure now to read your first piece for our communal project here. I was moved by how your piece began in shadow, with all those losses your birth and young life was to offset, and then moved into the light of all your ways of finding joy.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive over on the cure for sleep book site:
Thank you Tanya. I look forward to responding to more of your interesting prompts. I have been trying to pluck up the courage to send the first one and am so very glad that I did.
It always moves me anew when a person first makes that step from being a reader here to a writer. It is truly good to have you join us and I hope this piece will indeed be the first of many! xx
Rosemary - thank you for joining us here as a writer! Just a quick note for note from me for now to say I'm teaching an intensive residential in Yorkshire this week and I'm without my laptop. But I wanted you to know your piece has been received by me and I will read it and respond properly when I'm home after the 4 December. Tanya x
I can’t think of a full story I was told as a child. Only snippets, like these.
My great-grandfather on my dad’s side was Nicolai Roman. When my Grandma was five years old, something fell on him at the Willy’s Jeep car factory and he died. That was 1938, and companies didn’t give money to families when there was an accident. So my great-grandmother Eva, who spoke Polish and no English, had her eldest daughter translate for her in negotiations with the car factory. Because of the money they were awarded, at Christmas and Easter, there were at least three meats on the table.
My mom’s devoutly Catholic mom, Anne, had to get married because she was pregnant with my Uncle Andy. She sternly warned her four daughters never to mess around with boys. None of the girls knew about the out-of-wedlock conception until they were grown up and did the maths.
At age 13, my mom was chosen to be May Queen at Sacred Heart Catholic School. She wore one of her teacher’s wedding dresses, a blue satin shawl and a tiara in her chestnut hair. She looked 25 years old.
My parents met on a blind date when my mom was 15 and my dad was 19. According to my mom, they messed around.
Six months after my parents got married, my dad threw my mom’s clothes out the window of their first floor flat and went back to live with his mother. My mom got a job and learned to scuba dive while my dad was gone. Eventually he moved back. My dad then also learned to scuba dive. One time the scuba equipment my mom bought for him failed and he ended up in hospital for three weeks with ‘the bends’. They joke that she was trying to get rid of him.
I love how you've done this, Wendy - it captures so vividly not only stories from your family, but *the way* stories are told in so many families. Certain scenes, or facts, told over and over again so we know them almost word for word... whereas large parts of life remain in an unvoiced hinterland. Wonderful. Here is your link:
I mustn’t sit in the smoke. I mustn’t breathe in the smoke. I mustn’t smoke.
I sit in the ground floor room, as it fills with marijuana smoke. It is bigger than the others, with a double bed, a metal clothes rail, and a scratched chest of drawers under a window which looks out onto the hotel car park.
I mustn’t sit in the smoke. But I must.
The shift finishes between 10:00 and 11:30 each night. We stand in groups at the pass, every table cleared, every piece of cutlery polished, lingering in our black and white as the last couple push silver forks into their mouths, oblivious that their dessert is keeping us from our beds.
When we are finally able to leave, I linger too, for the chefs to finish. The room on the ground floor belongs to one of them, and near to him I am safe and I can forget.
I have a baby inside my womb. It is small still, and not a bother. The baby likes the bedtime story and so do I. The chefs call it banter.
Inhales and exhales of smoke pass lungs slowly, intensifying the effect. Laughter and shouted words are exchanged, the lyrics of Oasis filling the gaps. I giggle with my eyes shut, curled in the foetal position. We lie together like this, the baby and me. We don’t smoke, but we do listen.
There is no father to read bedtime stories to my expanding tummy. No house to return to, no discussion about which colour we should paint the nursery or the right pram to buy.
But there is the chef, the spliff between his lips, the smell of the unchanged bed, the voices around my head.
This bedtime story is the best one we can listen to right now.
Jennifer... thank you so very much for joining the project, and with such a stunning piece of work. You've done so much in so few words - and it speaks to me very directly, given that I also lived in hotel accommodation for a year during a precarious time in my life; my first pregnancy just a year later also happened without any of the traditional supporting cast of family. You capture so powerfully how we can sometimes - in our times of greatest need - improvise ways to get just enough of what we must to survive and keep going.
I will be so interested to see what you do with other themes in the project archive - and the next new one which will be out at the end of this month (I had to take an unplanned break in June due to a caring emergency, and missed the wave of good stories that each monthly prompt usually brings).
Here is your link, and I've also added you to the A to Z of contributors on the book site and on my Substack's By Readers tab...
Hi Tanya, thanks so much for such a lovely welcome, and I am so pleased you enjoyed the piece, especially as you can relate to the experience. I am working on some of the other prompts and look forward to posting them soon, it’s such a great incentive to keep writing.
Of course - I will do this now. And really this is something many contributors to the project have needed to do - and it’s part of what this project can offer that is of value I think: a place to test out what an emerging writer is and isn’t comfortable sharing. For me - and many of my debut memoir peers - there was such a huge untested risk in going almost straight to book publication…
Please do keep writing for the project - will be a pleasure to continue curating your work.
Thank you for that, too. And for your kindness and generosity in giving us a place to test our boundaries, set them, then (gently) push against them. We are so lucky to have this place, and you. :) I *will* continue writing—this bump in the road was a very valuable lesson.
It’s a pleasure - and thank you for moving messages here to Substack (the only messages I’m managing to keep up with this season - just!).
I don’t see it as a bump in the road at all - more as a jump off & up: it’s only by testing our stories in public in safe ways that we can learn what we do and don’t want to share, and how we feel excited and right telling what we do! Xx
In the beginning there were people. Neighbours in the courtyard, family across the street, neighbours queuing at the bakery, family across town, out of town guests staying with neighbours, out of town family the city folk plagued each time we 'escaped the concrete jungle'. There were games, visits, jokes, parties, funerals, weddings, epic rows, epic meals, kids crawling under tables and running between the legs of giant dancers.
Around one year old my parents went to a New Year's Eve party and left me behind with grandma. Fists hitting freezing panes, tears searing my cheeks, I watched through the condensed window in disbelief as my parents melted into the gooey darkness. The first betrayal.
Around two years old, a boy twice my age with sun bleached curls, of a place so far I couldn't picture it, casually joined my games some torrid afternoons. He asked my hand in marriage soon--that is, he asked my parents! Neither him, so serious, nor them, so amused, cared what I thought. I thought I was, and indeed I was, ignored.
Around three years old, I was made to sit under my parents' gaze, under the arch of the gate, under a cardboard hanging from my neck: "I've been a bad girl again and my parents would like to swap me for a nice boy." I wasn't sorry, I was fuming: if they didn't want me, why should I want them?! A chap stopped by eventually, offering his boring son. I took his hand and started walking. The first step.
As all the people slipped away, so did all the laughter, all the veil. Betrayals filled the space. I bent and bent and bent and walked a touch farther away most days. I'm still not far enough; my back still aches.
How very moved I was by this late but very powerful contribution to the March issue. I've added it now to the book's permanent story archive and only wish I could learn more about you, its writer. I respect your wish to remain anonymous, so can only say how beautifully I think you write of such hard things. Thank you. Here is your link:
It was sitting in the chair of my grandmother's beauty shoppe that I learned how her world worked and what was expected of me. I was nine years old. At times I still hear the sound of the scissors slicing off my hair; I can see her. I'm watching her in the big square mirror all over again. She starts out slow, snipping away my long, thick, black hair. The pair of scissors are relatively small and slender, but when she begins to snip faster and faster, the sound of metal slicing through hair filling the air, that slender pair of scissors might just as well be shears, one of those silver pairs with blades twice as wide and thick.
Snipping turns into shearing so quickly. I cringe every time I hear it, my shoulders hunching up towards my ears. I don't want her to cut off my hair, and she doesn't answer me when I ask why. She and my mother made the decision, talking in German as they always do when they don't want me to know what they are speaking of.
I am used to her cutting my hair, but it is how she is cutting this time that makes me uneasy. Scared. She isn't physically harming me; it's her detachment, as if she is somewhere else, angry, like she is trying to get rid of something, something very bad. And I sit watching the long black ribbons of my hair fall to the floor, the tie of the vinyl apron wrapped around me scratching my neck.
It's been over 30 years since the day I lost my hair, and I now know why my grandmother did it: it reminded her of my grandfather, the man my mother never knew, whose face she never saw, whose name she did not know up until four years ago. I don't think my grandmother ever imagined that my mom would find him: my Sinti grandfather Georg, dark hair and sparkling eyes, from a family of musicians.
Amy - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to a website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
Thank you for your very kind words on Twitter about what I'm trying to do here. It's all updated now with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#amymillios
There is such power in this moment, Amy, and how you have written it. It is cinematic - I can see it happening - but then there is this huge internal movement inside you: how much you, as child, understood in that moment about the forces that moved the adults around you. This is something I have a long passage about in the book - stories of cause and effect. This happened, and so this happened, and so this.
I had an original idea that only one person might respond as you have each month, and so I'd invite that one person to have their work more formally set in place on the book website. But I'm going to think over next few days about a way to create a proper gallery of responses over there. Maybe a photo from each of you who have written this way, that then links through to your memory. Once I've figured out the technical side of all that, I will be back in touch to ask if you'd like to be part of that.
What I'm trying to do with the book is demonstrate those cathedrals of experience that are held within each of our bodies. The near-death gave me a glimpse of what it felt to be released from my body and merge with something communal. I think everything I've done since - hospice scribing, the outdoor writing, Birds of Firle, mentoring, this - is to find ways to create a little of that feeling in this earthbound life (as I think of it). And it only works if the stories I tell encourage others to respond in kind. As you have. Thank you.
Amy, I've only just joined the community so am late responding to this wonderful piece you wrote way back in 2021. I loved this (not least because my Hungarian grandmother was also a hairdresser). But your experience is so vivid, I could feel you in that chair, the dread and confusion. And to only find out decades later why it happened is such a revelation to read. I love the description of your grandfather, "...dark hair and sparkling eyes, from a family of musicians." Lovely and powerful writing.
Hi Wendy! Thank you so much for reading and responding...and welcome! Tanya has created a most amazing space for gathering and sharing, and how wonderful that you have found your way here. I am thrilled that we share a connection of hairdressing grandmothers--this is the first time that’s happened! I’d love to hear any memories you might have of your grandmother in this regard.
Two dads; I was different and I liked that, two lots of presents, right? Watchful, shy but with a fire in my belly, I longed for my daddy and remember crying on Sunday nights when he’d have dropped me home. Weekends with him were within the ‘sureness’ of my Nan’s house; bacon and sausages and endless bossing of my dad to play with my dollies and there’d be treats! It was wonderfully predictable and ‘safe’ is the word that springs to mind. Home with mum and daddy number two is more blurry, younger brothers and that growing awareness of the ‘adult world’ -what’s really going on? What are you talking about? This from 5/6 years onwards is the dominant feeling I had as a child, a watchfulness that I have carried through my life and has almost certainly contributed to the risk averse part of my core. But what of “The Girl Within”? Emily Hancock’s book, read in adulthood, stirred a cloudiness surrounding that child. She never went; she’s absolutely there in the adventure craving gobby drunken teenager, the protesting for animal rights, the searching for just cause to shout truth to power, and this survivors instinct, the refusal to lie down and be silent, a beautiful inheritance from my mother’s survival. The safety seeking I’ve craved has brought me wonderful gifts, I am able to give and receive love and I am hugely grateful. But to live, I must stir the pot and connect with that girl inside, where will she take me? I wonder...
Faye - thank you so much for this vivid glimpse of your becoming as a girl. I'd love to add it to the story archive over on the book's main website. Do you have a website or medium account/similar you'd like me to use as a link on your name?
Faye! I'm so so sorry! I see I never sent you a link to your lovely contribution over on the book main website... here it is, with thanks once again for taking part...
As a young child, I wished to be a borrower; a tiny, sentinel-like, brave presence that would pilfer small objects from our family and feast like a Queen on a single gold-wrapped chocolate caramel. I wanted to live with my parents but for them not to know I was still there; I felt that - at full child size - I was often a burden to them, rather than a source of interest and joy. If I were small, I could live cosily in the airing cupboard where I kept my flower press. I could keep a close eye on the big wide world and alert a grown up to trouble, if needs be. I had a route planned out through the house to the kitchen, with a mechanism of pulleys to snaffle food; a path through the rockery in the garden that would make for perfect borrower-sized adventures; a spot next to the robin hole (a hole in the hedge where our resident robin would nip in and out through the day) where I would set up a camp, complete with tiny campfire, where I would lie on my back and watch the stars come out. When I later learned of the hearth faeries - the broonies and ùruisgs of Scotland - I felt instantly drawn to them, as if a fragment of my soul were some kind of hearth spirit, a tiny protector of home and heart.
Larissa! Shivers got reading this – what a (miniature/massive) world you have conjured here. Once my monthly post has been out for a week or so, I will look through any/all stories that have collected here and be back in touch about how we might share this on my book site, if you'd be interested in that. "...as if a fragment of my soul were some kind of hearth spirit..." How beautiful.
I was so drawn in to your own words and story above that I simply had to respond. It is amazing how memory can do that - one little nudge and suddenly there's a waterfall of words and connections that are fresh and new and sparkling. I'd love to think and write more on this.
Well this is why I've risked sharing my own stories, for exactly this hope that it will surprise/encourage others into putting theirs out. I loved my few years as a hospice scribe, but the stories I helped my clients to voice were, of course, coming precisely because they were at end of life. I've wanted ever since to use projects and books to call forth stories from more people and before it is so late. Thank you again for what you've contributed here. It's a risk basing my author newsletter around wanting so openly others to respond!
Larissa - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to a website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
Thank you so much, Tanya! This looks lovely ☺️ My writing group website is best, though we’ve not got around to updating it recently (oops!): twistedcolon.blog
That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#larissareid
Lasting Impressions
Steve Harrison.
It was a ritual that fired up my young, impressionable imagination. Five maternal aunties; a conspiracy of cardplayers were about to plunge into another table top drama. A memory etched in my mind.
Pennies, half pennies, thruppences and tanners were smashed down in the middle of the kitchen table so hard the Babysham bottles clinked and clanked, ringing out the start of the game. Voices cracked the air with expectation. I sucked hard on my sherbet lemon and focused on the players.
White sticks were passed round and set on fire, smoke blown across the table which grew into cumulus congestus cloud enveloping the entire table. I gazed across at them through a smoky haze; mystical figures, faces contorted with frowns, smirks and knowing nods. The local cigarette factory did well on Thursday nights. ( Pay day )
A second sherbet lemon was needed for the next part as cards sliced through the murky air like flying cleavers as shouts of ' bust!' 'twist!' 'deuce!' 'flush!' and 'diamond takes all!' punctured holes through the mist. Glasses were drained, voices clashed, air crackled as cheeks reddened. Cards were slammed down in frustration. Howls and curses marched around the room giving orders.
To a chorus of, ' I'm out! bugger!' Chairs were unceremoniously pushed back and toppled over and fingers jabbed into the air like red hot pokers. The winnings provocatively scraped into an eager pocket. The plunder would eventually end up back in the cigarette factory where my aunties earned it the week before.
Through the smoky haze, my crimson lipped aunties, shining like beacons of hope shuffled the cards to a shout of ' Your deal!' This was unforgettable theatre. They have all now been swallowed up by history, but wait for me in my dreamscapes.
Steve, I love this. It's simply brilliant writing, of course, but I also grew up with a huge clan of great aunties & aunties, all of whom were fiercely dedicated to rounds of Newmarket and Whist whenever they could leave their farms to meet up. I love how much energy and humour there is in your vignette...but then that poignant last line. Oh. Same effect on me as I get from Laurie Lee. Thank you. Your link below. Tan
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#steveharrison
Thanks Tanya, it was fun writing it remembering the dynasty of Franklins on my mother's side of the family. Thirteen lived from sixteen born. twins at birth and Renee at six didn't make it. All those in a three bedroomed council house. What untold stories lie in between those walls?
Steve.
Hi Steve, beautiful piece, what a hoot!
My own Grandma was the eldest of 14, from two mothers, her own dying in childbirth, with at least two babied dead as I recall. What amount of anguish and heartbreak they suffered, losing so many. An everyday occurrence I cannot imagine these days.
Hi Sally, Hope you are keeping well. Seems ages ago since we last talked. It was a case of big families at that time all cooped up in a small space. A time for a lot of family parties to let off steam and say how you felt which led to lashings of arguments. I got through a lot of sherbet lemons.
Glad this piece made you smile.
Oh Tanya that is haunting and compelling. I love the image of the bramble thicket of stories that form us. I cannot wait to read more.
I feel fortunate that the stories I was told were very different. On my mother's side, I was told about my great grandmother, a suffragette and fierce teetotaller who thought nothing of snatching alcoholic drinks out of people's hands at parties. Her daughter, my grandmother, was the first in her family to go to university. My paternal grandfather was by all accounts a charismatic but difficult character who demanded worship from the rest of the family. My father and his brother were expected to walk with him to the station every morning . They deeply resented this. Quite how these stories formed me I am not sure but they did not cause me to shrink from life. Rather, they were, in an odd way, something to live up to, strong, eccentric, flawed characters who didn't conform.
Yes! I had a sense from first meeting you - even though we've never talked of our pasts, so just from how you are in the world – that you had been raised on a very different version of what life was and could be. That is the joy of bringing a book like mine into the world - I am searching all through it for alternative versions of how to be, and making 'a patchwork from borrowed and remembered sources.' There are already 120 of us subsdribed to this new venture here in cumulative responses to the themes in the book - and my highest hope was 100. It's not an exercise in selling more books next year for me, this. Rather I want to use the book as a way to deepen and extend conversations I've already been having since being a hospice scribe and then outdoor writer-in-residence. The book - beautiful though the writing of it has been, like a love affair - is not an end in itself. It's all about this for me, what we're doing here. So thank you for being early to add words of your own.
Good morning, dear Sophie. How much I admire your superb writing about Felix in the Observer yesterday. Your book is so important. I've been able to create a March Issue archive on my book's website. Your bit has its own hyperlink. If you'd not like it included in the permanent archive of stories beyond the book, just say & I can remove - but I'd love to have it there. In telling my stories of what constrained me and kept me asleep to possibility so long, I hope to draw forth just as many stories that show other ways of raising children and ourselves are possible! Yours one of those. x That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sophiepierce
Ah that's wonderful thank you Tanya x
Well, you know, children can’t be trusted. They tell stories.
I understood bedtime stories and stories in books, good enjoyable things to be encouraged; I knew about stories the grown-ups told each other at the dinner table or in the living room after, which were rewarded with guffawed laughter; incomprehensible to us, but evidently a good thing. What was wrong with children telling their stories?
But they didn’t mean stories, they meant lies. How confusing to the child that hears things literally.
That didn’t happen, stop telling stories.
My stories, the ones which earned me an early bed, or a red hand-print, weren’t stories, they were truths. Hadn’t we always been told never to tell lies? But now, even as I took the vow, followed the rules, I was disbelieved. Children telling stories was a bad thing, not to be tolerated. Punishable, even when they were the truth.
So I didn’t tell stories, any stories, didn’t tell my stories, didn’t retell those of Bimbo & Tospy, or Marmalade or Pookie. I kept them tight inside the suitcase in my head, until I stopped hearing them at all.
Father Christmas; the Tooth Fairy; God
Perhaps as you get older, the meaning changes. Perhaps never means sometimes. Now lies fit on to a sliding scale of seriousness depending upon the teller and the lie. White lies and fibs, fairy-stories, untruths, falsehoods and fictions, tall-tales, yarns. Justifications for when a lie might be excused, or expected, or, even, kind. Embroidering; embellishing; exaggerating. So only children must not lie, or face the consequences, and adults must do as they please. The lie of the lie.
Everything will be alright
You can trust me
She’s just a friend
You just need to work harder
I’ll look after you
Just be yourself
It won’t hurt
I love you
Sally... it means a lot to have you return to the project, just in time for Season Three, and with this fiercely affecting piece. How I felt for the young you, having to construct (unforgettable image/phrase) the suitcase in your head - with all that is concentrated into that image: lack of safety, preparation to leave, not belonging. And the impact of those phrases at the end. Reminding me all over again why - even in a strictly anonymised application - I chose you for mentoring last year. You write with what feels like a direct line into the truth of things.
Here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sallyharrop
I'm constrained by the format on my webpage, but see if the way I've broken the text up works with your meaning. Let me know if you'd like changes.
Txxx
Hi Tanya, thank you so much. Seems most of my pieces are angry and grumpy! At the moment you are my muse and well as my mentor, so trying to live up to that.
Webpage format is absolutely fine, except could you put a line break before Father Christmas please, so that that line is alone. thank you.
All best to you and yours, as ever.x
I think it's me who needs to live up to that! I've not written anything new for the longest time in years: partly that was a planned response to seven years of constant writing - I gave myself nine months from midsummer 22 to spring solstice this year to live in my body and start getting fit, getting strong. But now another nine months period is begun in which I need to try and blend that new physical rhythm with a return to writing - I feel a little fear, a little resistance. But I've learned that this can be got through. But yes, always a little fear that this thing I love doing is a natural spring I somehow tapped in midlife, and that might dry up!
I've changed that line break. As you intended it gives even more shape and impact. As well as reading beautifully, I notice your piece has a beautiful shape on the page...
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sallyharrop
Thank you, does look fab! And thank you, again, for this wonderful opportunity, it's lovely to see how it has grown.
I love the idea of your planned 'gap', and nine months is a decent while. I hope you can slide back into writing without too much resistance; I'm sure it's not about to dry up. It might even have found a different route.
31 houses is underway, but still quite muddled. I guess I will have to work my way through it. PS, love the new website. xxx
Thank you! After I'd updated all three of them - the book one, my author site and The Selkie Press - a great feeling of peace and 'enough-ness' came over me and is sustaining. I hope to make more work in the coming years of course, but the driving need to do so that fuelled my whole life til now - that has ebbed away. I like the space it has opened up.
Whereas you are coming towards a full expression of something central to your experience...
Thirty-One Houses
How good and right that looks and sounds...
xxx
Thank you, that's interesting. The 'project' has been called No Fixed Abode in my head for the past few years, so now I'm vacillating between the two titles. I think now the emphasis has changed towards the buildings rather than it just being about me, the new title is more fitting. Also simpler, more straightforward. I think it might have been something you said during our mentoring chat that crystallised it, so thank you for that as well as all the other things!!!
(hope you are getting sorted with your mum's pension - DWP can be extremely officious in my experience, not pleasant at all xxx)
Sally, I'm only just reading this now (have only just joined the community), and love this line: "... didn’t retell those of Bimbo & Tospy, or Marmalade or Pookie. I kept them tight inside the suitcase in my head, until I stopped hearing them at all." The sound of the words (Bimbo & Topsy, Marmalade and Pookie) is rhythmic and poetic, and the image of the suitcase in your head is really affecting. I also love the list of types of lies -- another very poetic/rhythmic choice of words: "White lies and fibs, fairy-stories, untruths, falsehoods and fictions, tall-tales, yarns." The end is cleverly written. No explanation is needed as those common stories (or lies) are so familiar. I really liked this piece.
Hi Wendy. Once more your kind words have lifted me. Thank you for taking the time to comment, it really is so good to hear! Thank you so much.
They tried, these three women, my great-grandma, grandma and mom. They made sure I had pretty dresses for dances. They told me to go to college. They told me they loved their kids but not to have babies early, that it is a sacrifice, kids change everything. They told me there is a stuckness to having children. They told me not to marry the first person I had sex with. They told me to keep men guessing and that if I couldn’t be good then to remember the date. They told me my life could be different. They told me to stay thin, that men liked a flat belly. They told me men were the disease and the cure, necessary and ruinous, men cause whispers and startles and that what they don’t know won’t hurt them, fear is not respect but men don’t know that (would that matter?), men as means to an end, men cause the end, men control the end. Men are the dealers, women the gamblers. Women roll the dice and the house always wins. I learned to tuck and roll, to stop, drop and roll, roll with punches, roll with it, roll away, women as tumbling dice.
Birds roll in dirt to clean their feathers. They roll their eggs during incubation. They roll their heads from heavy metal poisoning.
It is hard to write of yourself in this way, where I fit into this, knowing they wanted it different for me, but some days I still feel stuck, the bird still sitting on a dead egg. I fear loss. I retreat. I harden. I go outside and walk but every walk is some sort of loop, a migratory return. Site attachment.
Even used to the power of your writing as I'm now privileged to be... this one arrived with me like a gut punch. Absolutely true and yet made stunning to me all over again - the weight of what we women inherit, the rigged nature of the game. Sheila, you have a book to write, I feel sure of it with every piece you send me.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sheilaknell
And I've worked hard this morning to refresh and make more impactful all of the webpages in the project to showcase you and others' work still better. I'd love it if you took a look, starting with the new landing page:
https://thecureforsleep.com/beyond-the-book/
First off, I love the changes you made, much cleaner and I think it will be easier for the new people to navigate as they join in this amazing project! And secondly, I once again am so grateful for you, for your encouragement. It still blows me away that you share so much of your time with all of us. I would love to get something published, I always struggle with the form. I have good memory for the felt sense of my past and the women in my life, but I am horrible with actual memories of specific events, if that makes sense. I don't know if you have ever read any Abigail Thomas. Two of her memoirs (What Comes Next and How to Like It and Safekeeping) were written in vignettes. (Three Dog Life is also amazing, she reminds me of you, really able to get to the heart of it, so honest, fearless, all of her humanity shines through.) I think if I did attempt if would have to be something on the order of that because I really don't think I have a storyline so move through. But who knows, writing begets writing, maybe memories will arise. Is your publisher doing much to get a bigger audience in the US? Your book seems like something Elizabeth Gilbert or Cheryl Strayed or Oprah would really grab onto. It deserves a bigger audience, it is that life changing and magically written. Many thanks!
Thank you for taking a look and kind words. I will redesign the website more fully in the new year with a new template, once I know what the paperback is going to look like - but I feel already now I'm doing better by your and others' work over there!
Abigail Thomas is new to me but I will absolutely read her on your recommendation. Thank you.
My UK publisher doesn't have the US or foreign language rights - only UK/Aus/NZ and English language in commonwealth countries. When the book was acquired in Dec 19 there was lots of interest from other countries... but pandemic absolutely put paid to that! I like that those rights are almost now like Jack's magic beans: nothing of worth has come from them - and it saddens me US Hagitude people are having to pay more to import it - and yet there's also the delicious outside possibility that one day it might get published in translation or in US/Canada.
I do have a secret hope that one day someone will put it in the path of Brene Brown, Oprah or Krista Tippett... but it's in the realm of pleasant daydream not real possibility!
The readers I already have mean a great great deal to me: the quality of conversations I have with you all... xx
Tanya, Please let me know what you think of Abigail. I read Fierce Attachments on your recommendation and absolutely loved it, so much juice in mother/daughter relationships. I hadn't heard of her before. I don't know if this would help US readers, but I find the book on bookdepository.com for around $18 and free shipping. I have bought and recommended it for several of my friends and the appeal is universal. Fingers crossed.
I really will, and so glad you enjoyed Gornick as I hoped you might!
And thank you too for this tip off on how to get the book in the US at a reasonable cost!
Sheila, I've only just joined the community and am reading through the archives, and am really struck by this piece you wrote. I love the rhythm of many of your words ("Men are the dealers, women the gamblers. Women roll the dice and the house always wins. I learned to tuck and roll, to stop, drop and roll, roll with punches, roll with it, roll away...") which are akin to poetry and make it delightful to read, while at the same time it is a powerful piece expressing painful emotions and experiences. The image of birds with heavy metal poisoning is especially moving and evocative, as is the image of the dead egg. I found it a really powerful, lyrical piece of writing.
Wendy, Thank you so much for responding. I saw you were from Ohio, I live in Pennsylvania. I hope to explore your writing and see how you made the leap across the pond. I am fascinated by people more adventurous that I am. It's a great community here that Tanya created, full of creativity and kindness. xx
Hi Sheila, Nice to 'meet' someone from the same neck of the woods. I hope to write a bit about my wanderlust, which might include how I ended up in the UK (hint: there was a man involved;) I love this community and look forward to continuing to contribute through writing and commenting on others' pieces. Cheers:)
I am Cinderella's granddaughter. That was her story, she held it in her bones. My grandmother was illegitimate, born dirt poor. Her mother married a widower who had his own children, and they had more between them, but she was always "different". She didn't understand why until she was getting married and discovered she had a different surname on her birth certificate.
My grandfather spotted her on a factory holiday. She looked like a film star, and he looked like Errol Flynn. She was awestruck by his family house. I know that house, and it's a three bedroomed detached house that held two parents and nine children - but to my Granny it was a palace.
My granddad rescued her, but she rescued herself first. I don't know if she saw that. She worked in a jelly factory, she dressed as well as she could, she embraced life. She told me once that a friend had asked her if she and her husband should buy a house or a car? A car, my granny said immediately. You'll have a lot more fun with a car. That was her. She was always up for a coach trip, a day out, a laugh. She worked hard, but she enjoyed herself. Once lockdown's over, I will put her diamond ring back on and remember her sparkle.
Sarah - what an incredible piece of writing/life you have shared with us here. You had me from the first sentence. What incredible people your grandmother and grandfather were, and what a rare inheritance they've give you from their example. Next week, I will think how best to showcase your and others' responses on the book's website: once I've come up with the best approach, I will check if you're happy to have your words reproduced there, and how you would like to be named/credited. It is so good to have my own words call forth responses like yours. Thank you.
Thank you for inspiring this. It was lovely to think about Granny again.
I love the idea that some of these monthly posts might move people not only to respond on here, but also to continue then thinking/working on memories that have been brought forth. Thank you again for taking part in what is such a new and experimental venture!
Sarah - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to a website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
How lovely! Of course you can use my name. I'm Sarah Connor, and I blog at fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com (if that counts as a website). I love this initiative of yours.
That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sarahconnor
There were prayers before bed. Three of us slept in the small bedroom, little girls. Each evening we knelt down, side by side, at the bed, and gave thanks to God for the day that had passed and our parents, brother and sisters, and the wonders of the world, in words that we didn't understand. Heaven, hallowed, kingdom, fruit of thy womb, sinners, death all spoken rapidly so we could get to the end, to story time. The lights were turned out and in the blackness D, my father, told us stories about other worlds. Arabian nights, Hannibal crossing the alps, families of donkeys, leprechauns in the mountains, some he read but most he made up. Together we went on adventures that were not possible in real life, to places that only existed in the stories.
Sometimes a story took several nights to tell, so the prayers the following night would be even quicker. He rarely talked about the past and, as there were six children in the house and we were so busy living, we didn't reflect too much on the present. Instead I learned to value each and every moment, be it spent managing the ordinary or absorbing new experiences.
Lovely, poignant words Tanya, what a world you create. I look forward to reading more. Thank you!
Sheila, I feel a strange longing to experience your childhood from this moving (& beautifully-written) glimpse of it you have shared with us here. That combination of faith and fantasy and the distant past: what a gift to you and your siblings. As I've just said to another contributor here, next week, I will think how best to showcase your and others' responses on the book's website: once I've come up with the best approach, I will check if you're happy to have your words reproduced there, and how you would like to be named/credited. Thank you so much for sharing your story - I felt quite frightened to set this monthly endeavour up, wanting so frankly to hear from others rather than simply broadcast my own stories. But you and others have already made the risk more than worth it. Much appreciated.
Sheila - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to your website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
Sounds great Tanya. My full name is Sheila de Courcy and I don't have a website but I am on instagram @sheiladecourcy , if relevant. I so admire your way of working. Thank you.
That's all updated with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#sheiladecourcy
Oh how I love this Shelia! What a beautiful memory that you have written so evocatively!
Thank you for sharing.
Tracey x
Thank you so much Tracey, Sheila
Children should be seen and not heard, someone said. So I tried to be quiet but sometimes, well sometimes I just couldn’t keep the words inside of me. Especially when nobody else said anything and I knew, I just knew that there was something that had to be said. Those words just had to come out. Well, there was a price to pay when you dared to be heard. When you dared to release words that once spoken out loud somehow made you feel better. I knew the price but still words would find their way out time and time again when everything felt wrong and I thought I could make it feel right again. Right again for me, but mostly right again for the others. It made me feel angry when those others were being quiet and I just knew that they had something to say, something that could explain things and that could maybe prevent them from feeling even worse. They were choosing to be seen only it seemed and I couldn’t bear it and I couldn’t understand why. So many feelings, so confusing.
Then one day someone said that I had too much of what the others didn’t have enough of. Did I? I remember feeling pleased that I had something even though I didn’t know what the something was. I didn’t think to ask. It felt rather special in a way, and if the others didn’t have it, well, it was extra special then wasn’t it? I wasn’t just a girl, I was a girl with something special, and the others didn’t have it!
Then someone said that a lady was only a lady until she opened her mouth...
I love the voice that you've created for this piece: it has the rhythms of your younger self, while also making an adult observation. And that line at the end carries so much impact, coming almost as a blow when the rest of the sentences are building towards a wonderful celebration of self... Yes, you've captured exactly what happened to you as to so many of us. A particular cultural phrase said at us or overheard which sends an important part of ourselves into hiding...
Which is why it's a special thrill to have you join us here, saying your piece(s)!
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#traceymayor
Txx
Thank you Tanya! I always look forward to reading your comments, your feedback is very much appreciated.
I am enjoying having this space to write and most especially the encouragement.
I feel so very blessed,
Thank you again.
Tracey xx
My mother and I have a new game that has us rushing gleefully upstairs to see a little bird fluttering mid-air, asking for food. We are flattered and delighted, over and over again. I’m fourteen. My sister has left home at seventeen; I’ve inherited her ID style-mag subscription. My brother’s a weekly boarder; I have to wash up after Sunday roast, and I’ve never done my homework beforehand.
Half my lifetime earlier, my mother returned from work with a story. “I was standing at the bus stop and a bird on top of the lamppost dropped dead at my feet. A chaffinch. So beautiful!” Thinking of brown sparrows, I’m unconvinced. A bit boring. Then she describes the pink, slate blue, chestnut and green feathers of the tiny bird in her palm, and maybe this is what sparks my love of wildlife.
It’s a chaffinch that draws us into the game that we know is wrong, unnatural. For a while we can’t resist the gratification, then we pull ourselves together and just stop. Hidden in the hedge is the secret nest. Last time we peeped there were five warm eggs in its perfect mossy cup. Now there are five horrifying, pathetic corpses. We feel guilty. Is it our fault?
In my twenties, I lived in the West End of London. Dismayed at the sirens my end, my mother held the telephone out for me to hear birdsong. The large pond my parents excavated attracted kingfishers. They planted lots of trees. My mother regaled me with a story of how a cock chaffinch had been tap tap tapping at the windowpane. Loud as a hammer, waking her EVERY dawn. Annoyed her so much she blasted it out of the yew tree with an air rifle.
Firstly, my apologies for the delay in reaching this fine piece by you. I’ve been supporting a small family with no nearby relatives who suffered a sudden loss last week, and so I’ve been away from my computer.
I’m always glad when a piece from you comes through: always these strong and surprising turns, of which there were several in this piece - and so true to how I also experienced nature in my country growing. The alternating of close attention and enjoyment with the sudden deaths.
Here is your link, and I’d love to know by reply or a DM what other writing you’ve been doing and publishing in the last few seasons. Would enjoy reading more and longer by you…
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#jsinclair
Txx
Thank you for finding the time to read my piece, and I'm so glad it has piqued your interest. This space has definitely inspired me to do more creative writing, so I've been submitting pieces for opportunties such as the Nature Chronicles essay competition. Not memoir particularly. The 300 wordcount here has also encouraged me to write 'flash fiction'. Still defying the English teacher who scoffed at parents' evening that I wrote about animals too much.
I’m glad to know you are entering that, and I’m VERY glad you are defying that teacher (why oh why do teachers ever feel the need to offer limiting observations of this kind?!)
Glad to say my mother defended me!
Rosemary Kirkus
Bedtime Stories
I was born into the post war world, to a family still grieving and living in austerity. Like so much in our family, war and grief were never spoken about, but hung like an unseen fog seeping into my early childhood and beyond. Only child and only grandchild. I grieved for the unborn children who would never become my cousins and for the uncles I never knew. I was their substitute, created to bring back joy and hope.
I smiled a lot and tried to bring happiness to the many adults who surrounded me. That was my job. A heavy burden for a small child.
My escape from trying to be happy even when I was sad or afraid was to be found in the books, stories and films that fed my imagination.
Sunday mornings, cuddled up to my father, I listened to exciting and magical stories from a new page in our invisible magic book, creating a story together.
I rowed across the landing in an upturned card table complete with kitchen towel flag. Swallows and Amazons.
I hid from the Nazis behind musty clothes in my parents’ wardrobe. The Silver Sword.
Endlessly singing Nick Nack Paddy Wack I frequently dived into bushes to escape bullets and bombs. The Inn of The Sixth Happiness.
Left to my own devices I squeezed through the park railings and perched high in my favourite tree daydreaming.
I dragged brown paper carrier bags filled with my mother’s cast-off skirts to a
den under the rhododendron bushes, crawled through the hayfield creating
pathways and tunnels, and one snowy winter I rolled the largest snowball in the world around the putting green until it became too heavy to push any further.
Occasionally I even stopped smiling.
Hello again Rosemary. I'm back in Sussex now and it has been my pleasure now to read your first piece for our communal project here. I was moved by how your piece began in shadow, with all those losses your birth and young life was to offset, and then moved into the light of all your ways of finding joy.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive over on the cure for sleep book site:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#rosemarykirkus
And I do hope you will consider writing for more of the themes within the three-season archive: all stay open for submissions.
Very best, Tanya xx
Thank you Tanya. I look forward to responding to more of your interesting prompts. I have been trying to pluck up the courage to send the first one and am so very glad that I did.
Warmest Wishes
Rosie xx
It always moves me anew when a person first makes that step from being a reader here to a writer. It is truly good to have you join us and I hope this piece will indeed be the first of many! xx
Rosemary - thank you for joining us here as a writer! Just a quick note for note from me for now to say I'm teaching an intensive residential in Yorkshire this week and I'm without my laptop. But I wanted you to know your piece has been received by me and I will read it and respond properly when I'm home after the 4 December. Tanya x
I can’t think of a full story I was told as a child. Only snippets, like these.
My great-grandfather on my dad’s side was Nicolai Roman. When my Grandma was five years old, something fell on him at the Willy’s Jeep car factory and he died. That was 1938, and companies didn’t give money to families when there was an accident. So my great-grandmother Eva, who spoke Polish and no English, had her eldest daughter translate for her in negotiations with the car factory. Because of the money they were awarded, at Christmas and Easter, there were at least three meats on the table.
My mom’s devoutly Catholic mom, Anne, had to get married because she was pregnant with my Uncle Andy. She sternly warned her four daughters never to mess around with boys. None of the girls knew about the out-of-wedlock conception until they were grown up and did the maths.
At age 13, my mom was chosen to be May Queen at Sacred Heart Catholic School. She wore one of her teacher’s wedding dresses, a blue satin shawl and a tiara in her chestnut hair. She looked 25 years old.
My parents met on a blind date when my mom was 15 and my dad was 19. According to my mom, they messed around.
Six months after my parents got married, my dad threw my mom’s clothes out the window of their first floor flat and went back to live with his mother. My mom got a job and learned to scuba dive while my dad was gone. Eventually he moved back. My dad then also learned to scuba dive. One time the scuba equipment my mom bought for him failed and he ended up in hospital for three weeks with ‘the bends’. They joke that she was trying to get rid of him.
I love how you've done this, Wendy - it captures so vividly not only stories from your family, but *the way* stories are told in so many families. Certain scenes, or facts, told over and over again so we know them almost word for word... whereas large parts of life remain in an unvoiced hinterland. Wonderful. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#wendyknerr
Txx
I mustn’t sit in the smoke. I mustn’t breathe in the smoke. I mustn’t smoke.
I sit in the ground floor room, as it fills with marijuana smoke. It is bigger than the others, with a double bed, a metal clothes rail, and a scratched chest of drawers under a window which looks out onto the hotel car park.
I mustn’t sit in the smoke. But I must.
The shift finishes between 10:00 and 11:30 each night. We stand in groups at the pass, every table cleared, every piece of cutlery polished, lingering in our black and white as the last couple push silver forks into their mouths, oblivious that their dessert is keeping us from our beds.
When we are finally able to leave, I linger too, for the chefs to finish. The room on the ground floor belongs to one of them, and near to him I am safe and I can forget.
I have a baby inside my womb. It is small still, and not a bother. The baby likes the bedtime story and so do I. The chefs call it banter.
Inhales and exhales of smoke pass lungs slowly, intensifying the effect. Laughter and shouted words are exchanged, the lyrics of Oasis filling the gaps. I giggle with my eyes shut, curled in the foetal position. We lie together like this, the baby and me. We don’t smoke, but we do listen.
There is no father to read bedtime stories to my expanding tummy. No house to return to, no discussion about which colour we should paint the nursery or the right pram to buy.
But there is the chef, the spliff between his lips, the smell of the unchanged bed, the voices around my head.
This bedtime story is the best one we can listen to right now.
Jennifer... thank you so very much for joining the project, and with such a stunning piece of work. You've done so much in so few words - and it speaks to me very directly, given that I also lived in hotel accommodation for a year during a precarious time in my life; my first pregnancy just a year later also happened without any of the traditional supporting cast of family. You capture so powerfully how we can sometimes - in our times of greatest need - improvise ways to get just enough of what we must to survive and keep going.
I will be so interested to see what you do with other themes in the project archive - and the next new one which will be out at the end of this month (I had to take an unplanned break in June due to a caring emergency, and missed the wave of good stories that each monthly prompt usually brings).
Here is your link, and I've also added you to the A to Z of contributors on the book site and on my Substack's By Readers tab...
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#jennifercarter
Very best, Tanya x
Hi Tanya, thanks so much for such a lovely welcome, and I am so pleased you enjoyed the piece, especially as you can relate to the experience. I am working on some of the other prompts and look forward to posting them soon, it’s such a great incentive to keep writing.
Thanks for the link too :)
Jennifer x
Thank you Tanya, and yes please to the archive removal for this piece, too.
Of course - I will do this now. And really this is something many contributors to the project have needed to do - and it’s part of what this project can offer that is of value I think: a place to test out what an emerging writer is and isn’t comfortable sharing. For me - and many of my debut memoir peers - there was such a huge untested risk in going almost straight to book publication…
Please do keep writing for the project - will be a pleasure to continue curating your work.
Thank you for that, too. And for your kindness and generosity in giving us a place to test our boundaries, set them, then (gently) push against them. We are so lucky to have this place, and you. :) I *will* continue writing—this bump in the road was a very valuable lesson.
It’s a pleasure - and thank you for moving messages here to Substack (the only messages I’m managing to keep up with this season - just!).
I don’t see it as a bump in the road at all - more as a jump off & up: it’s only by testing our stories in public in safe ways that we can learn what we do and don’t want to share, and how we feel excited and right telling what we do! Xx
In the beginning there were people. Neighbours in the courtyard, family across the street, neighbours queuing at the bakery, family across town, out of town guests staying with neighbours, out of town family the city folk plagued each time we 'escaped the concrete jungle'. There were games, visits, jokes, parties, funerals, weddings, epic rows, epic meals, kids crawling under tables and running between the legs of giant dancers.
Around one year old my parents went to a New Year's Eve party and left me behind with grandma. Fists hitting freezing panes, tears searing my cheeks, I watched through the condensed window in disbelief as my parents melted into the gooey darkness. The first betrayal.
Around two years old, a boy twice my age with sun bleached curls, of a place so far I couldn't picture it, casually joined my games some torrid afternoons. He asked my hand in marriage soon--that is, he asked my parents! Neither him, so serious, nor them, so amused, cared what I thought. I thought I was, and indeed I was, ignored.
Around three years old, I was made to sit under my parents' gaze, under the arch of the gate, under a cardboard hanging from my neck: "I've been a bad girl again and my parents would like to swap me for a nice boy." I wasn't sorry, I was fuming: if they didn't want me, why should I want them?! A chap stopped by eventually, offering his boring son. I took his hand and started walking. The first step.
As all the people slipped away, so did all the laughter, all the veil. Betrayals filled the space. I bent and bent and bent and walked a touch farther away most days. I'm still not far enough; my back still aches.
How very moved I was by this late but very powerful contribution to the March issue. I've added it now to the book's permanent story archive and only wish I could learn more about you, its writer. I respect your wish to remain anonymous, so can only say how beautifully I think you write of such hard things. Thank you. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#Anonymous
It was sitting in the chair of my grandmother's beauty shoppe that I learned how her world worked and what was expected of me. I was nine years old. At times I still hear the sound of the scissors slicing off my hair; I can see her. I'm watching her in the big square mirror all over again. She starts out slow, snipping away my long, thick, black hair. The pair of scissors are relatively small and slender, but when she begins to snip faster and faster, the sound of metal slicing through hair filling the air, that slender pair of scissors might just as well be shears, one of those silver pairs with blades twice as wide and thick.
Snipping turns into shearing so quickly. I cringe every time I hear it, my shoulders hunching up towards my ears. I don't want her to cut off my hair, and she doesn't answer me when I ask why. She and my mother made the decision, talking in German as they always do when they don't want me to know what they are speaking of.
I am used to her cutting my hair, but it is how she is cutting this time that makes me uneasy. Scared. She isn't physically harming me; it's her detachment, as if she is somewhere else, angry, like she is trying to get rid of something, something very bad. And I sit watching the long black ribbons of my hair fall to the floor, the tie of the vinyl apron wrapped around me scratching my neck.
It's been over 30 years since the day I lost my hair, and I now know why my grandmother did it: it reminded her of my grandfather, the man my mother never knew, whose face she never saw, whose name she did not know up until four years ago. I don't think my grandmother ever imagined that my mom would find him: my Sinti grandfather Georg, dark hair and sparkling eyes, from a family of musicians.
Amy - I've been able to set up a webpage for your and others' stories for this first Issue of Stories Beyond The Book. I'd love to use your full name and can link to a website if you have one, and would like to share it? The page is at https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/
Yes, of course you can use my full name Amy Millios; and my site amymillios.blog
Thank you for this wonderful sharing, for your words...
Thank you for your very kind words on Twitter about what I'm trying to do here. It's all updated now with a link to you and your section has its own html if you want to link ever straight to 'your' bit. Thank you again for helping me figure out the way I can do this for the rest of the year leading up to publication. I'm hopeful now that a real treasure trove will develop! https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#amymillios
There is such power in this moment, Amy, and how you have written it. It is cinematic - I can see it happening - but then there is this huge internal movement inside you: how much you, as child, understood in that moment about the forces that moved the adults around you. This is something I have a long passage about in the book - stories of cause and effect. This happened, and so this happened, and so this.
I had an original idea that only one person might respond as you have each month, and so I'd invite that one person to have their work more formally set in place on the book website. But I'm going to think over next few days about a way to create a proper gallery of responses over there. Maybe a photo from each of you who have written this way, that then links through to your memory. Once I've figured out the technical side of all that, I will be back in touch to ask if you'd like to be part of that.
What I'm trying to do with the book is demonstrate those cathedrals of experience that are held within each of our bodies. The near-death gave me a glimpse of what it felt to be released from my body and merge with something communal. I think everything I've done since - hospice scribing, the outdoor writing, Birds of Firle, mentoring, this - is to find ways to create a little of that feeling in this earthbound life (as I think of it). And it only works if the stories I tell encourage others to respond in kind. As you have. Thank you.
Amy, I've only just joined the community so am late responding to this wonderful piece you wrote way back in 2021. I loved this (not least because my Hungarian grandmother was also a hairdresser). But your experience is so vivid, I could feel you in that chair, the dread and confusion. And to only find out decades later why it happened is such a revelation to read. I love the description of your grandfather, "...dark hair and sparkling eyes, from a family of musicians." Lovely and powerful writing.
Hi Wendy! Thank you so much for reading and responding...and welcome! Tanya has created a most amazing space for gathering and sharing, and how wonderful that you have found your way here. I am thrilled that we share a connection of hairdressing grandmothers--this is the first time that’s happened! I’d love to hear any memories you might have of your grandmother in this regard.
Another moving memory from you Amy! This piece has stirred up some old hair cutting memories of my own actually.
Thank you once again for sharing.
Tracey x
Thank you, Tracey. I think this memory is with me forever.
Two dads; I was different and I liked that, two lots of presents, right? Watchful, shy but with a fire in my belly, I longed for my daddy and remember crying on Sunday nights when he’d have dropped me home. Weekends with him were within the ‘sureness’ of my Nan’s house; bacon and sausages and endless bossing of my dad to play with my dollies and there’d be treats! It was wonderfully predictable and ‘safe’ is the word that springs to mind. Home with mum and daddy number two is more blurry, younger brothers and that growing awareness of the ‘adult world’ -what’s really going on? What are you talking about? This from 5/6 years onwards is the dominant feeling I had as a child, a watchfulness that I have carried through my life and has almost certainly contributed to the risk averse part of my core. But what of “The Girl Within”? Emily Hancock’s book, read in adulthood, stirred a cloudiness surrounding that child. She never went; she’s absolutely there in the adventure craving gobby drunken teenager, the protesting for animal rights, the searching for just cause to shout truth to power, and this survivors instinct, the refusal to lie down and be silent, a beautiful inheritance from my mother’s survival. The safety seeking I’ve craved has brought me wonderful gifts, I am able to give and receive love and I am hugely grateful. But to live, I must stir the pot and connect with that girl inside, where will she take me? I wonder...
Faye - thank you so much for this vivid glimpse of your becoming as a girl. I'd love to add it to the story archive over on the book's main website. Do you have a website or medium account/similar you'd like me to use as a link on your name?
Thanks Tanya no link to add, as yet!
Faye! I'm so so sorry! I see I never sent you a link to your lovely contribution over on the book main website... here it is, with thanks once again for taking part...
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-march/#FayeDavidson