It’s always there. That voice inside you, urging you onward and upward. Constantly striving for something more.

It pushes you forward and can be rewarding. It’s how you got to where you are. It got you through the bullying. The doubt. The recriminations and pushed you into a place where you never thought you would land.

But sometimes, it pushes even when you don’t want to be pushed. It’s that little voice telling you that you’ll never be good enough. Never be strong enough. That you’ll never be what you want to be.

It’s echoed in the voices of employees and stakeholders, reminding you that you need to try harder. Be better. Do more.

It’s in the voice of your husband who loves you, you know he does, but he is always reminding you of how much time, reading, drawing, writing takes away from the things you should be doing.

It’s in the voice of the school mums who remind you of all the little events you miss. The memories and moments you give up in your child’s life by having a career.

These voices can be tamed. Can be used and straddled to help you achieve your dreams. But they can also destroy. Can whittle away at your belief and make you doubt everything you know.

It can depend on the day, your mood, the turn of a phrase.

Sometimes they drive you forward. Sometimes they push you back but they are inescapable. Always there. Always waiting.

A small whisper of a voice from which there can be no escape or reprieve.

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

- Mary Oliver

This entry was originally posted at https://mrstotten.dreamwidth.org/230707.html, comments.

Once upon a time…… oh no wait you’ve heard that haven’t you?

How about, a long time ago in a land far far away….. no chances are you know that one too. My grandfather used to start his stories with ‘and so it began’, but he said the editors never thought it sounded right, and so they changed it to Once upon a time but I always liked his beginnings best.

You get used to that, living here, you get used to things not always being exactly what you think they are.

When you live in the land of make believe, where fairy tales come true and happy ever after is the accepted norm, you would think that life would be that little bit easier right? After all in a world where dreams come true, and wishes were horses, what can possibly ever go wrong? Well let me tell you even in the land of happily ever after, there isn’t always a happy ending. My name is Melody Manners, I am a scribe and a story teller as my father and grandfather before me, and this is my story.

And so it began……..

~*~

Melody bit down on a startled cry as her toe hit the end of the bedpost, grimacing she fell down on the bed, rubbing at her toe as she glared at the offending post. She so didn’t need this today, a sore toe meant forgoing her usual Ella ‘Sparkle’ pumps in favour of some flat cinder slippers, meaning she would reach the total of her full five foot three inches, never a good thing when you were trying to impress people with your new authority; the Ella pumps added a good five inches to her height but the glass fit was unforgiving on injured feet, so they were now out.

Sighing she opened her wardrobe pulling out her new suit, Emerald silk, hand tailored by elves it had the exact right cut to flatter her figure without showing it off, pretty but business-like it was the perfect choice for her first day as Assistant Editor, or it would have been it if didn’t have several huge splotches all over the lapel of the brand new jacket.

“Mother,” Melody yelled as she headed down the curved staircase of the small family home.

God she hated this place, she could remember a time when they lived in a beautiful house, full of light and air with a garden full of vegetables and animals that at the drop of a hat would begin a friendly chat or burst into song. But that had been before, before the scandal that had cost them the house, their family, their reputation.

In an instant everything changed and they had moved into one of the shoe apartments on the outskirts of town, a place for people with too little money and too many children.

Melody may have been young, but she had been smart enough to know that their station, their position in society had changed. What Melody didn’t figure out, her classmates were always quick to fill her in on. They were poor, they were trash, their father had been a witch lover, they deserved to live in the slums.

The taunts had only spurred Melody on, without the burden of having friends any more, she had worked harder at school, even with the teachers ardent dislike of anyone from the Grimm family she had excelled, leaving school with handfuls of accolades and grades good enough to take her anywhere, even the palace. But for Melody there had only ever been one choice.

Despite the anger, the recriminations the ‘How dare she’, she had headed straight for The Big Book, the towns newspaper, once owned and ran by her own father, before he had swindled it and ran it into the ground, almost taking the land of Ever After with it.

Melody had been sharp and determined and as luck would have it, Amelda Banks had recently taken over the paper. Sharp ruthless and with very little time for sentiment she had seen the fire in Melody’s eyes and had known she had a talented, capable writer with ambition and something to prove, which meant she would work for far less than the going rate.

Melody hadn’t even had to hand in her writing samples, of which she had plenty.

After all, when all was said and done she was still a Grimm, telling stories was in her blood. To some people that still meant something.

It had taken seven years of hard work, late nights and low pay to get Melody where she was now, and now it was ruined because her bad-tempered, lazy, selfish sister had no concept of leaving other peoples things alone.

Finding her mother in the kitchen washing up whatever mess Lydia had left last night Melody’s anger flowed out like a torrent.

“Mother she ruined my suit,” Melody waved the emerald green material in her mothers face, trying not to let the look of helplessness on her mothers face dampen her anger.

“Today is my first day as Assistant Editor and thanks my brat of a sister I can’t wear my suit.”

“Melody darling,” her mother voice was soft and worn, already working at the tight knots of tension in Melody’s body. “You have a full wardrobe of nice close, your sister needed something to wear.”


“Needed something to wear?” Melody asked, her voice tight. “What for, she doesn’t work so what on earth would she need an Elf tailored suit for?”


“She had an interview,” her mother supplied happily, the smile on her face growing, showing a trace of the once beautiful girl she had been. “Down at Mother Hubboard stacking shelves.”

“She wore a ten ruby suit to an interview to stack shelves?” Melody exclaimed. “Mother do you have any idea how many late nights I worked for this? How many meals I missed just so I could look perfect on my first day?”


“Oh Melody dear, please stop being so selfish, it’s not like anyone at the paper doesn’t already know you. Your sister needed a hand and as you are far better off than her, I think you could show a little kindness to her.”

A million responses flew through Melody’s head. She wanted to scream at her mother, to lash out, to remind her that they only had a roof over their head and food on the table because of how hard Melody worked. That Lydia despite having no job, or money was never in on a weekend, never seemed to suffer from the same hunger pangs that Melody and her mother had become accustomed to. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair, none of this, that it was her mother and fathers fault that she went to work every day with a fire in her belly to prove herself different from her lying cheating father, her flighty sister and her helpless mum.

But of course, she didn’t, one look at her mothers face, her eyes carefully avoiding the stain in Melody’s jacket, her mouth turned down, the wrinkles at her eyes deep and scored and the fight went out of her.

“Just, please mum, tell her not to touch my stuff.”

Taking her mothers quiet sigh as a sign of consent Melody heading back up stairs. Pulling out a flowing white stop she put it on with her emerald skirt. Without the suit jacket and wearing the flat pumps Melody looked all of sixteen years old. Her blonde hair curled in soft waves adding to the look.

Checking the clock she groaned as she registered the time. It was already twenty minutes to nine and it was a forty minutes’ walk to the office, it didn’t take a goblin to work out the maths. She did a quick calculation in her head of her current gold situation as she headed out the door, a hasty good bye shouted in the general direction of where her mother still stood.

If she skipped lunch for the rest of the week she could just about afford a carriage ride.

It took ten of her precious minutes haggling with the horse over the price before it finally headed off with a neigh of discontent, bloody horses were getting greedier by the day. Melody could still remember the days when a horse ride across the city would cost you less than half an apple and some bramley seeds.

Sighing she leaned back against the faux pink leather upholstery grimacing at the tackiness. Every man and his dog wanted to pretend to be Cinderella nowadays.

Reaching the office just before nine, Melody skipped up the steps, running through the schedule of the day.

Pushing down the mixture of nervousness and excitement, she reached for the door handle/


This was it, it all started here, the first day of the rest of her life.

~*~

Have to admit im being selfish in deciding to go with this one as this idea has been living in my head for a long time and I want to get it out and I wanted to know what people thought of it

I noticed them instantly at the school pick up.  A rush of excited eight year olds pouring out the school gates.  The flash of coloured paper clasped in tightly gripped hands.  Another birthday party invitation.

I groaned inwardly, this was the fourth in as many weeks, the joys of having kids.  The smartie parties with bouncy castles, brightly dressed characters whose names you could never remember and enough sugar to ensure that you would be receiving a stern word from the dentist on your childs next visit.

When Robert came out I noticed that he wasn’t holding his.  At first I figured it was in his bag  tossed aside carelessly with everything else.  But when I emptied it once we were home there was nothing.

Now my son is many things, but organised and responsible are not words I would ever attach to him, so I then assumed he had lost it, or left it on his desk which would make my job of RSVPing that much harder, I needed to at least know whose party it was first.

So I asked him, and his reply made my heart sink.

He explained in a voice, a little quieter than usual that it was Brian’s birthday, and no he hadn’t lost the invite.  He didn’t have one.  I asked if Brian had forgotten one for him, he confirmed no, Brian had stated clearly he wasn’t invited.  I then asked who else wasn’t invited, to be told no one.  Every one else had an invite.  Every single member of the class, except him.

I then made the ultimate mistake of voicing my confusion.  It was then my son told me Brian didn’t like him.  In fact a few kids didn’t. Mainly Brian and his friends.  He didn’t know why and he pretended not to care.

But I knew he did.  I knew from the slightly tense set of his shoulders, from the way he refused to meet my eyes, from his quiet insistence that everything was ok.  I also knew he didn’t want to talk about it so I banked down the fury, the pain and the indignance and we changed the subject.

It came out over the next few weeks, that some of the kids found him funny.  Not haha funny, weird funny.  They didn’t like his accent (American), they didn’t like that he fidgeted in class (Sensory disorder), They didn’t like that he was too friendly, that he got in their faces too much. He said he didn’t care, but the droop of his shoulders said otherwise.

On the day of the party we went for ice cream and the cinema.  The Monday following he was quiet after school, we went to feed the ducks and spoke about Pokemon, Mario Bros and  Minecraft.

He insisted on inviting Brian to his own party several months later.  A part of me wanted to be petty, to insist that he couldn’t.  It’s crazy how small and mean you can get when someone hurts your child.  But my son has a heart far bigger than mine.

So he invited everyone and welcomed them all as they came with smiles and excited chatter.

It wasn’t the last hurt or the last petty cruelty, but as the first, it still stands out clear in my mind.  That moment when you realise you can’t save your children from the hurt the world can bring.

All you can do is smile, pretend your heart isn’t breaking and move forward, helping them grow and deal with it.

And if some kids ended up with no cake or toys in their party bag, well I guess thats just one of lifes unfortunate little coincidences.
 

“It’s not right”

Martin sighed as Sarah walked through from the living room.

“What’s wrong with this one?”

The house was the twelfth one they had seen, that week.

Over the last three months there had been more house than he could count.  None were right.  Some were too small, some too large, too close to the station, too far from the station, too new, needs too much work.  To close to a school which would be too loud.  One too far from good schools which their kids might one day want to go to.  They had no kids.

Each house had started to blend into the other, each one with a fault, a flaw.  Each one just not right.

The estate agents smile, so wide when they first met now had a strained quality each time.  He was the fourth, the first three no longer answered their calls.

“It’s a fixer upper I agree,” he said, the strain in his voice passed on from his smile.  “But with some work I think it could be perfect for you.  It ticks all the boxes we discussed.”

Martin braced himself as Sarah turned, a look of contemptuous anger on her face.  He had seen this look a lot of late.  It had surprised him the first time, now all he noted was how the downward turn of her mouth marred her pretty face, how the ice in her voice took her normal melodic tone into something shrill and almost whiny.

Thirty minutes later they found themselves out in the cold, heading back to the car Martin knew they would now need to find another estate agent.  As he climbed into the car he felt the slam of Sarah’s door as she continued her tirade.  They had to raise their budget, she said.  This wasn’t the time to be cheap.  It was the location, the areas they were looking at were too rough, it was all about location.  Happy she had made her point the conversation turned to his trousers ‘too shabby’ and why couldn’t he have shaved.  How could they be taken seriously when they didn’t make an effort.

Sarah had made the effort.  Her new red soled shoes and sharp black skirt looked the part, although Martin didn’t understand how she could afford them but had been unable to add anything to the deposit fund.  Every penny of their deposit was coming from his savings.

Turning into the street, he parked and headed upstairs listening and agreeing with Sarah when needed.  A quiet dinner followed by some work whilst Sarah was on the phone to a friend bemoaning the current state of the property market.

Heading to bed the stray thought came to him that they hadn’t actually spoken to each other at all since they came home. The distance between them at that moment seemed like an ever-growing chasm, too large, too wide, impossible to breach.

Sighing he settled in too sleep, preparing himself to start again in the morning.

They just had to find the right house, after that everything else would fall into place.

~*~

Settling back, Martin lifted his feet onto the foot rest and surveyed the room.

The house was perfect, he had known that the minute they had walked through the door.  It was a ten-minute walk from the train station, set inside a small up and coming area that had an almost village like feel.  There were good schools nearby, but far enough away that noise and parking wouldn’t be an issue.

The house itself was an older building, lots of charm and character but the previous owner had refurbished it to a fantastic standard.  With two bedrooms and a large living space it was perfect and the second room was already a lovely sunny yellow, perfect for a nursery.

He had lasted another six months with Sarah, got through four more estate agents before they had both realised the problems weren’t with the houses.  The houses hadn’t been right, because they hadn’t been right.  After that things had ended quite amicably.  Sarah had kept the flat, he had moved into a room share.  He had met his wife through his room mate.  The spark immediate and explosive.

Within six months they were married, expecting a baby and looking for a home.  He had been almost afraid to contact the estate agents, convinced his name must be on some black list for life.  But things had been different this time.  This had been the first house they had seen and just like when they had met each other, they had just known.

Martin shifted as his wife sat down next to him,  making room, his hand moving over her rounded belly, feeling the tiny soft movements as their baby got comfortable too.  Less than four weeks and their perfect home would become their family home.

“Happy?” she asked, her smile soft and wide.

“Couldn’t be happier,” he replied with a smile.
 

There was £4.65 in the current account.  Some stale bread, milk and half a tin of baked beans in the fridge.  That would do both girls for the evening.

But there was still two days left until she was paid.  Jasmine needed £1.50 for drama class, Courtney needed £3 for the school play and there was less than four pounds in the gas meter.

No matter which way she ran it, the numbers didn’t add up.

She went to bed that night with a light head and a growling stomach.  The girl's laughter had distracted her from the hunger, she had went to bed as soon as they did, knowing that she could wake up in the morning and stretch the toast out.

The next morning, she tries to ignore Jasmine’s whining, the grumbling of her stomach helps. Jasmine doesn't want to go to breakfast club at the school, none of her friends go.  She doesn’t understand why she can't have pop tarts at home like her friends.

The whining drones on, penetrating past the banging in her skull.  Halfway to school she snaps, her voice reedy and strained as she yells at Jasmine to shut up.  Courtney’s hand tightens on her own, a small measure of comfort as her eldest storms on, angry and embarrassed.

She drops them at the school.  Her heart sinking as Jasmine side steps her goodbye kiss, heading into school her head high and proud.  She tries to ignore the smells of toast and bacon as she pops a kiss on Courtney’s cheek sending her on her way.  At least the girls would start the day with full bellies.

She heads into work, ignoring the light headiness as she works her way through the small offices, dusting, polishing.  She knows she isn’t giving it 100%, she is tired and sore.  Her bones ache and she feels at least twenty years older than her current thirty-two.  She never used to be like this.  She was a grafter, a hard worker who took pride in what she did.  Her boss was forever calling her out on her excellent work.  But being tired, being hungry, all the damn time takes its toll.

She is back at the flat just before 2pm.  It's May and the warmer weather had just hit.  The sun had shone and warmed her skin as she headed home.  She had always loved the warmer weather.  A couple of years ago it would have meant trips to the beach with the girls, sticky ice creams and warm sand.  Now it meant she didn’t have to worry about putting on the heating before the girls came home.  It meant saving vital pennies on the gas.  She checks the meter as she heads off to the school.  £2.19 remaining.

Heading home from the school she listens to Jasmine excitedly chatter about the senior disco.  It is her last year, one more term and then she was heading to the high school.  She bustles around the kitchen, listening to the girl's chatter and whistling as she whips up some French toast.  With sugar for Jasmine, with ketchup for her and Courtney.  A quick clean up earlier had helped her locate an extra £2.18 which had meant tea and eggs.

The sense of contentment dies over dinner as Jasmines chatter finally soaks in, the conversation full of dresses, hair, make up, cars, shoes.  It is a cheap dress Jasmine insists.  Only £24.99 in the sale and shoes were cheap.   The throbbing behind her head shifts behind her eyes.  £24.99, it sounds so reasonable to her eleven year old, full of her dreams and ideas.  £24.99, it might as well be £2,499.  She doesn’t know how to explain this.  £25 was a weeks rent, it was food for a fortnight.  It was a months worth of classes and activities they could already ill afford.   It was money they didn’t have.

She falls asleep that night to her daughter's hiccupping sobs.  The silence the next morning is tense and tight.  They walk  to school in silence even Courtney’s excited chatter dimmed.

She goes to work, spends the day invisible as girls, women her age swish through the offices, light, carefree.  She had grown to know their names.  Some were single, party girls with high heels and bright lipstick.  Some were married, settled with children and were a mix of shiny hair and shinier pearls.  They went and lunched together, chattered excitedly together, to them she was all but invisible.

She had been one of those girls once.  She had gotten great marks at school.  Finished a small collage course, she had been working as an accounts assistant when she fell pregnant with Jasmine.  Had went back from maternity leave to good hours and a promotion.  Mike had a solid job in the engineering plant.  When she had fallen pregnant with Courtney, it had felt like all of their dreams had come true.

Then during her second maternity leave, the unimaginable happened.  The recession of 2010 had taken everyone by shock, but she had struggled to see how it would affect them.  Then Mike had started talking about mortgages.  Apparently, the kitchen extension that had once seemed so vital had put them into negative equity.

The house went first.  She had convinced herself it didn’t matter.  They downsized, rented a smaller house in a slightly less nice neighborhood.  But it was all just temporary.  She went back from Maternity leave early to make up the difference.  Then Mike lost his job, then he had lost himself.  It took less than a year for him to leave.  One loud argument, not that much different from the others of late.

She had realised three days later that it was different when he still wasn’t home.  His phone went straight to voicemail and his relatives stopped answering her calls.  It had been five years since she had last seen him.  There was a rumour that he had moved to Newcastle.  Set up shop with an old girlfriend and her three kids.

The next year she had tried to hold it all together, but childcare made her job next to worthless and having no support network made her unreliable.  She had handed her notice in just before being fired.  Took a job cleaning that fitted in with Courtney’s nursery and Jasmines school.

They had moved again, smaller and dimmer but the place was more affordable, it was where they still remained.  Her salary was half what it had once been, even with overtime and they had learned to cope.

Except when they didn’t.  It took a lot to accept how to deal with a life where each paycheck didn’t quite stretch.  Where the holes were filled with high-interest loans and food banks.  Where you learned to accept hunger because your kid had gone and grown a shoe size again.

Closing off the lights she sighs as the last of the girls leaves the office in an exhale of perfume.  Her goodbye call echoes unanswered and she trudges home.  It is pay day tomorrow.  It had been all anyone had spoken of all day, chattering about plans, ideas.  About communions, parties, holidays and the latest shoe sale.

Entering the house she sits down and quickly starts doing the sums.  If she let Jasmine wear her pair of black heels, they were small kitten heels with only a tiny bit of scuffing.  And she could do Jasmine's hair and makeup, make it like a game.  A girls beauty day.

And if she just shifted the rent, missed one week and promised to make it up, she could pick up the dress.  It would mean hiding from the landlord, but she could make it up by week three if she was careful with the food bill.

Making a final decision she heads off to school. feeling a million times lighter.   A smile spreads across her face as she pictures how happy Jasmine is going to be, how important it was to give her daughter these little moments.  The memories that would last.

The rent could wait. 

I get told a lot that sexism is dead.  That racism isn’t the issue it once was.  Homosexuality is no longer seen as something bad and wrong. That the world has changed and the we no longer have ‘isms.

And yet we have a US president who talks about grabbing woman’s pussies.  Black kids being shot on the streets due to nothing more than the colour of their skin and this week a UK politician who equated being gay to her own sexual attraction to gorillas.

I’ve been in fandom for just over eighteen years now and being surrounded by likeminded, progressive people, you forget sometimes that the world isn’t always as it appears in your own safe haven.  Although even fandom has been known to have that darker side that leaks out.  I think I first noticed it with the birth of the anon meme.  An internet phenomenon that showed me a slightly darker side to the world I knew.  Without accountability, hidden behind a screen of anonymity people felt safe to let out their true thoughts.  I know most of them were harmless, but even then, in the small corners, you saw something darker still.

That was the beginning, but nowhere near the end.

Some people blame Facebook, or the rise in mobiles, the ever-growing connectivity or just the fact that we are all so much a part of each other’s lives now.    We have never been more connected, never been more aware, and we have never been more afraid.

The world seems scarier now than it did when we were small.  The threat of nuclear deterrents, world war three, the constant bombardment of fear, terror and war hits us at every angle.  For some that fear is driving them to something, they may have once turned away from.  The rise of the far right over the last few years has been nothing short of mind boggling.  Parties and politicians with racist, bigoted, sexist agendas are no longer booed or ridiculed.  They are now lauded and rewarded as the truth speakers.  The ones keeping it real.

It can sometimes seem insurmountable, I know it did to me.  The end of last year, I truly wondered where we were.  Where we were going.  For the first time in a long time I was truly afraid of what was to come, and I know I wasn’t alone.  The at the beginning of the year something changed. Something shifted.  Something amazing happened.

The woman’s march in Washington.  A single day supported by people all over the world.  It was thunderclap of noise.  A riot of colour.  A day in which it seemed, to me at least that the world stood up and spoke as one.

I am not afraid

You do not speak for me

I do not stand alone.

Although it may have been called the womans march, it stood for everyone.  Regardless of creed, colour, religion, sexuality.  It stood for those who believed in it, and even for those who were against it.

It wasn’t the end, but it was a beginning.  A move away from fear, towards something better.  It was a reminder, a warning to the people who try to rule through fear, to win through oppression.  To those who hold the highest power, that we have a voice and that we aren’t afraid to use it.

It didn’t change the world.  Trump is still president, bigotry still exists.  The world is still full of ‘isms and we still have far to go.   But god damn we have shown them just how loudly we will shout on the way.

I was seven years old the first time I saw a dead body.  My mum’s uncle had died and they were hosting the wake at my Gran’s.  It felt like there were over a hundred people.  The place stank of cigarettes and stale whiskey.  I remember screwing up my nose as I tried to find my way out of the room past a sea of legs.   Knobbly knees and tights wrinkled at the ankle.  Dark grey and black trousers.  I remember my Uncle Tony had mismatched socks.  My gran noticed too, pulled him out by the ear as she shirricked him.

I remember hiding upstairs with my cousins, giggling as we listened to drunk singing.  I also remember listening to silent sobs and my brain trying to work out the sounds of revelry alongside the sadness.  None of it made any sense to me.  From that day on my grans house seemed to hold onto a layer of sadness.  As if grief had permeated the walls the way cigarette smoke coloured the ceiling.  She moved house less than five months later.  A part of me wondered if she felt it too.

~*~

I met Kim in first year.  Eleven years old with knocking knees I slid into a seat desperately hoping no one noticed me.  The girl beside me had long messy black hair and a wicked smile.  I avoided her eyes and her smile for nearly three weeks.  She would always try to talk, being shushed by the teachers repeatedly, but I never replied.  I hated this place, hated the school.  It was too big, too loud.  Full of noise and pushing people and sneers.  On the second day of the third week, she pushed a piece of paper at me, neatly folded lines that opened onto ragged edges and a drawing of one of the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. I smiled before I could stop myself, my brother loved that show.  The ice was broken, she started whispering, told me she could teach me how to draw it, it was all about the symmetry.

We soon became friends, not best friends, she had one of those and I was settling into my own new friendships, but we shared three classes together, Science, Maths, and Music.  We sought each other out in those and spent hours working, and giggling.  In third year I told her I wrote songs.  She begged me to let her read one, I went home that evening, looked at everything I had written, threw them across the room and copied out the words to The Carpenters ‘On Top of the World’.  I figured it would be too old for her to know it.  She was more of a Nirvana girl.  She loved it, told me how talented I was.  She found out the truth three weeks later, she had shown it to someone and they had laughed and told her the truth.  She didn’t get mad or mean, she just told me one day I’d trust her with my songs.  I never did.

In fourth year she met a boy.  We were fifteen and still new and green and the world was so big and small at the same time.  He became everything to her, made her smile wide and her eyes shine.  When they broke up she was devastated.  I never understood it.  Didn’t know how someone you had known for so short a time could hurt you so much.  She stopped smiling, then stopped talking.  Our positions reversed I tried to coax words from her but they never came.  Ever again.

She killed herself less than two weeks later.  An overdose of painkillers.  The dosage she took wasn’t fatal, but she had an underlying kidney condition she hadn’t known about.  Her funeral was the first one I ever attended.  Everyone came, it was like a school dance.  I remember looking at the popular girls, the same ones who had mocked her, mocked everyone.  I watched as they cried prettily into white handkerchiefs and strong shoulders.  I didn’t cry, not once.

The next week Sharon sat next to me in Maths, we started doodling and I showed her how to draw a turtle.

~*~

I spent five years waiting on a positive pregnancy test.  I watched friends fall pregnant, I cooed over babies, I told myself I was in no hurry, but every month, in secret I did test after test.  I got my first positive pregnancy test on the 8^th December 2003.  I was on Clomid, and my friend had fallen pregnant, and my body felt different, and I told my mum and she told me not to get my hopes up but I just knew.  I went to the shops, bought a takeaway and two pregnancy test, went home, dished out the food and sneaked into the bathroom.  When the two lines came up I remember staring at them, mesmerised, no faint lines, no holding it up to the light, squinting.  I went out and asked Robert if he wanted an early Christmas present, tried to tell him and then burst into tears.

For the next five weeks, the world changed.  My friend and I started talking about plans, our babies were due within four weeks of each other.  Christmas came and my mother in law joked about my ‘bump’ showing.  As I was attending a fertility clinic I got a scan at eight weeks and saw my baby and its heartbeat for the first time.  For five weeks, everything was perfect.  Then it came, at first, I told myself I was imagining the pain, short sharp aches in my tummy, then I mentioned them to Robert and he insisted on us visiting the hospital.  I held out hope until they gave me the scan, told me there was no heartbeat.

As we went home silence seemed to fill every inch of the house, or it did until I started breaking things.  My laptop, the mirror, the bathroom. Robert held me as I sobbed, I felt his own tears fall onto my neck, silent as he tried to be strong for me.

I threw the pregnancy test out the next morning, folded up the tiny hat I hadn’t told anyone I was buying, put it in a box with my scan picture and hid it away so well I never found them again.

~*~

On the day of my wedding there was a catalogue of disasters.

My bridesmaid broke her dress, ended up running through my mum's house in her underwear screaming for a dress.  My friends made a last-minute dash to town to get a replacement.  My father wandered about complaining about having to wear a tie, and my ten year old flower girl monopolised the hairdresser and makeup artist.

Half my family wasn't speaking to me as I had decided to have a quiet ceremony, with only immediately family in attendance.

My little brother lost his shoes and couldn’t fix his kilt and my grandfather’s dementia kicked in and he didn’t make the day at all.

I cried when I said my vows, my voice breaking on the words as my baby kicked away merrily inside my tummy.

Yet despite every disaster, I remember just one thing.  My husband.  His smile as I walked down the aisle.  His steady hands that held mine tight.  His laugh as my voice broke and the squeeze of fingers around mine. I remember his whispers as we sat at dinner, his jokes to lighten the mood.  I remember going to sleep with his arms wrapped around me, thinking how on earth did I get to be so lucky.

I remember knowing, that no matter what happened going forward, I would never have to go it alone again.

~*~

It was my thirtieth birthday and it started out like so many others.  Except for the first time, I was a mum.  I woke up, got dressed with the type of peace most mothers of newborns never experience.  I had plenty of time, plenty of space, then I headed up to the hospital to visit my son.  It was hard at times not to feel angry, bitter.  My son was born sixteen weeks early and had spent the first two and a half months of his life in hospital.  When I finally got to the hospital, it was to my first surprise of the day, he was awake, wide awake, large round eyes staring out at me.  The midwife explained that now he was off the ventilator, on oxygen they had cut down his morphine, so he would be less sleepy, more alert.  When she asked me if I wanted to hold his, I thought I misheard.  I had only held him once, when he was 2 weeks old and they thought he was dying and that I deserved a chance.  Since then we had made do with hands touching through portholes.

As I finally settled into a rocking chair, looking down at those wide eyes as his fingers wrapped around mine, I felt peace for the first time in my life.  We sat there for hours, staring at each other, learning each other’s faces, drinking each other in.

That was the day I became a mum.

~*~

For each of our patches, the ones that make up our lives, there is thread weaving through them, holding them together, forming the shape of our heart.  For me that thread is woven up of the people I love, the ones I’ve loved and even ones I’ve yet to meet.  I met some of my best friends in my thirties.  If you had asked me before them I would have said I was set, enough friend now thanks.  But each of them opened up a side to me I didn’t know before them.  There are old threads, worn and faded.  My mother, my grandfathers, Kim and the ones I’ve lost.  But although faded they hold strong.  In the centre of them all are my family, the threads that weave so tightly they are impenetrable.  My husband, always solid, always strong, my father, brother, and my son, his bright stitches interlacing through every square, even the ones that came before him.  Because he was always there, hidden, just waiting to come out and claim my patchwork heart as his own.

So this week.... this happened.  C'est la vie.


Campfire stories.  They are the tales we whisper in the dark.  The heat of the fire warming our toes, the flames licking against small sticks that waft with the smell of sweet, heated sugar.

We watch faces change with delight or fear as the story reaches its conclusion.  Smile as they shiver, laugh as a well timed scare brings screams and giggles.

It is storytelling at its finest, with a captive audience and a readymade atmosphere, quick to soak in the tale.

It’s not always that easy.  Telling a tale.  Some of us are born with a gift for sharing the images in our heads, a talent for weaving words, making them swing and sway to the rhythm of our pen.  I’ve read books where the images dance across the page.  Some of my earliest childhood friends, Lucy, Anne Girl, Katy.  Were brought to me from well worn pages with tiny words that merged together to form whole worlds different from anything I could ever have imagined.  I longed to share their adventures, to disappear into a world that made more sense, seemed more fun.  Where rules were absolutes except when they took you to a world of magic, where it was always tea time and carpets could fly.

We live in a world built on stories.  But what happens when you have no story to tell?

We are a family of storytellers.  We tell each other stories in the car, whiling away stolen minutes in traffic jams.  My husband who lacks imagination is dreading the day my son starts watching mainstream horror and finds out his father’s tales of a deathly fog, or masked Halloween killers didn’t quite originate from inside his head as he has so long been led to believe.

Imagination has never been my problem.  Stories play out in my head frequently.  Characters, ideas, images all playing out their tale, telling me where they want to go.

I don’t thI'mk im devoid of talent.  When I write well, I think I craft a good story.  When I understand my subject, when it speaks to me, the words can flow easily.  Some of the best things I’ve ever written, I don’t even remember writing them, they just flowed, from pen to paper, fingers to the page.

But then come weeks like this week, the wall.  We’ve all hit it.  I knew the story I wanted to write, about a young boy, dealing with peer pressure, trying to live up to the others as he shares his campfire story.  The tale has been rattling around in my head for days. I’ve talked it out, plotted it, built it out around a couple of lines of dialogue (God I suck at dialogue).  I’ve started it, wiped it, started it again.  And now here I am.

It’s ten minutes to deadline, I’m all out of byes and I have a story that refuses to be written, the most frustrating thing imaginable.

I can tell you it by the way, if you are sitting here, with me, around the fire.  I can describe every moment in finite detail.  The boys sweaty palms as he takes his turn at the fire.  The way his tormentors faces glow in the firelight, transforming their sneers into something deeper and darker.  I know how he feels, and I know how he will triumph.  I know the story, and if I could talk to you, I could tell you it, if we were all camped around the campfire with our s’mores and cold hands, I could make you believe it.  Make you feel for this poor boy who doesn’t know quite which story to tell.

But for now, his story and mine will go untold.  It may creep out another day, the words may make sense and flow into shape, or it may remain spoken, a story told to my own eleven year old boy in the car, in the middle of a traffic jam, when he needs a fable to let him know it is ok to be scared, it is ok to be unsure, it is even ok to fail.  Just so long as we never stop telling our stories, never ever silence our voices, always pick up our pens and start again.

There is always another story in there, just waiting to be told.