Things Said [1]

In today’s episode of ‘Things I Want to Remember my Child Saying’, we have my daughter, newly turned 5, self proclaimed ‘Princess Flower Nice Doctor Giraffe’, not easily embarrassed, with starlight in her eyes and sunshine in her steps..

I was brushing her hair, and happened to mention the voice note she sent to a friend containing a joke she had newly heard was received very well by the friend. Let’s call him Apple.

‘Apple loved your joke’, I said, twirling a curly lock of her hair in my fingers and setting it on her shoulder, before beginning on the next lock.

‘Oh, that’s good!’ said she.

‘Do you remember Apple?’ I asked, because it had been nearly a year since we moved away from the UK, and she hadn’t seen him since May.

‘Yes Mama, of course I do. I always remember people, I am a Remembering Girl.’

Yes indeed. You really are.

[28] Waiting

When something is uncategorised, it is forgotten. She was uncategorised. She was the shelf upon which people put their unwanted things. At home it would be a glove that was missing its partner. A keyring one had collected from a fair. Some vague uncle’s snuffbox. A pair of spectacles left by someone, and nobody knew who they belonged to, so they stayed there, years on end, in the hopes that someone would recognise them and pick them up. She was that. Not the spectacles, the shelf. Well, perhaps the glasses too.

She was the bowl in which people placed their lost buttons, beads, clips, hatpins. Missing things. Miscellaneous things.

She collected stories and feelings, however. Memories of dark puddles of days, illuminated only by that one romantic lamppost. The one that you turn your head to stare at, as the carriage trundles by. The lone station with the arching cherry blossom tree, and she comes to life every spring, a princess, a pink queen draped in velvet finery. Forgotten all year round. Forgotten until one person comes to sit at the bench, and lays out their life story. They leave their sadness at her doorstep, and move on to brighter futures, greener fields, warmer houses. Yet there she stayed.

Waiting.

Waiting for trains, carriages, letters, hope, news, ships docking at the port, stories in the papers, visitors knocking at her door.

1. Castle by Moonlight

I missed my posting on the first of November – I forgot! Here it is a day late.

My four year old boy is at the delightful age where everything he sees is fascinating.

City walls of Chester, for example. Why are they there? Who used to walk on them? Did they used to walk on walls in the olden days, and today we walk on paths? Why did they walk on walls in the olden days? What are enemies?

Mama, said he, as we rushed through the rain past Chester Castle, Mama.

Yes, boy.

I know why people don’t live in that castle anymore.

Why’s that then?

It’s because the roof fell off!

While we meandered through the museum, we came across a painting of the castle. Illuminated by the moon. The moonlight seemed to shine right out of the painting. We stared at it for a long time.

Pether, Henry; Chester Castle by Moonlight; Grosvenor Museum; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/chester-castle-by-moonlight-102956

The Dream Girl

When she looked over the hills, after pounding her way up on her rickety old bike, she dreamed she could fly over the metal mess that was the city, and alight on the greenery in the far distance. The mountains, pale and purple beyond, the hills, rising and falling, awash with green in varying shades. All rising above the scrapyard they like to call the city.

She dreamed she could sail up high and touch the clouds, so vast and fluffy, as they drifted along the vibrantly blue sky.

She dreamed she was a daughter of the wind, with magnificent tresses, her body winding and curving and swirling on the air currents, ducking and diving, so graceful and wild.

She dreamed she was the maiden on the hull of a ship, the front line of the sea path, guiding the crew through mountains of waves, lashings of rain and sea foam, and always wind. Always the wind.

The cold wind on her cheeks, numbing her face. The wind carrying her over the globe, through prairies and mountain ranges, under canopies of birches, vales of violets. Rushing through the furious wall of a waterfall. The hot wind of the desert, filling her eyes with sand, the cold wind come night time, shaking her free of her dust grave, taking her someplace new. Always new. Loud and thunderous, roaring and wailing.

She dreamed of hills and rolling frondescence, and when she grew up she wanted to weld her soul to the raging storm. She wanted to be wild and free, she wanted to bend the trees under her will, she wanted to slam herself into the nature so hard that she became a part of it; wind whipped and ferocious, scraggly and strong, full of vitality and life. She wanted to be the silence on the moors. She wanted to be the sea crashing on the rocks. She wanted to be the stillness of a lake under the twilight sky, stars dotting it’s mirrored surface. She wanted to be the planets as they turned around and around. She wanted to be the sun, and the moon too.

She lay under the skylight, and dreamed the stars were holes in the sky to another, brighter sky, way above.