I began this month feeling hopeful; we had just emerged from a particularly warm October. Indian summer. Evenings shorter but not quite cold enough to realise the inevitability of the hibernation season. Then as November progressed, I succumbed to the misery of short evenings and lack of vitamin D. It was mostly due to not getting out as often as I would like. It’s being too cold, my worry over bundling children up, a myriad of things. But we have reached the end of November, and are hurtling towards the middle of winter, and I find myself resigned to the season. Not just resigned, but gathering some hope in it. Seeing the beauty in the darkness.
Like how the stars glitter in the black sky.
Like how bright the moon is on clear nights.
Like how beautiful the icy crystals of frost as they decorate everything the sun does not touch.
How the water has frozen in the watering can, and what a beautiful pattern icicles make on the shed windows. How the leaves crunch when they’re frozen as opposed to when they’re dry. How the birds still find a way to chirp when the very air feels laden with cold.
How the mornings are hazy, clouds of mist billowing over the grass, ice in the atmosphere, in our very breath. The landscape is magical when the sun chooses to reveal herself.
But even when it is cloudy, the scenery revealed by the lack of dense foliage on trees can be breathtaking.
November has been kind to me this year. Patient with my tantrums. Holding space for my impatience. Much kinder than I have been to her – to winter in general – heck, even to my family.
I leave November a little sombre. Deep in reflection. Hoping to be more kind of spirit as December knocks a cold fist at the door.
It’s cold and it’s cold and it’s cold. I have the blues and it’s cold. It’s the time of year where darkness comes suddenly, overpoweringly, menacingly. Days are grey and they blend into nights and you just want to hibernate but you can’t.
You’re solely responsible, you see. For others. Their education. Their morals. Their diets. Their exercise. Their mental health. All on your shoulders. So you pick it up, whatever it is that you are supposed to be shouldering, and you drape it over your shoulders and carry on.
Even as the peircing air drives blades into your nose and prickles at your eyes. And the grey days highlight the dirtiness this modern world has become, and reminds you of horrible teenage days driven down and beaten by depression and manipulative psychopaths.
Sunday blues, but it’s Monday.
Traversing the earth no longer seems appealing, as you dip another biscuit into a hot cup of tea, and your eyelids grow heavy with the inactivity of your brain.
It’s depressing, winter is.
What did people do to stave off the dreariness of these sombre months, in the days of yore?
I like to fancy that they did not suffer the moroseness this dank, grey weather carries with it. I like to think lives and lifestyles were acquainted with the seasons and greeted each like an old friend. Perhaps they had customs in the winter months which, when adhered to, enabled them to carry on with their lives with as much cheer and joy as what would come easy to one in the summer months.
Perhaps.
What is the secret to getting through winter in one happy, non-dreary piece? For I fear pieces of me are scattered everywhere this season much like the dead and rotting leaves I have let settle around my garden.
Today my son asked me if I would have some tea with him.
Of course my boy, I will certainly have tea with you.
He asked me repeatedly if he could have caramel in it.
Caramel?Since when do you know about caramel?
Turns out he was asking for camomile.
He had a temperature of 40 degrees C. Lying on the sofa with bright red ears and scarlet cheeks, lethargic and still, cold hands and feet. Not the boy that runs around all day talking nineteen to the dozen.
So in the evening when he was supposed to be in bed, and couldn’t sleep, and asked instead if he could have tea with me…
I said yes.
Mama, he said, I am too old now.
Are you?
Yes but I am four now, not three. Means I am old. Means I am a big boy. I’m just too old, Mama.
Too old for what?
I am an old boy. I am too old to sit on your lap anymore.
I will miss when you’re too old to sit on my lap anymore.
If I were to write a diary here, I would say. I would say, dear diary, I am in love. With what, well I could not begin to tell you. I do not know for myself.
The solitude in the hour before dawn, perhaps. Listening to the wind whistle through the hole under the radiator. That coffee I have at 5:30am before the gym when my family is fast asleep in their beds and I have a few moments to just ..be.
I don’t ever ‘be’ though because my mind is elsewhere, planning for other ‘be’s which are never ‘be’s because my mind during those ‘be’s is in yet another ‘be’. What does it mean to just ‘be’?
If I were to write a diary here I would say I almost married a doctor, except I did not almost marry him, I did not entertain the thought of marrying him at all, and the man I did end up marrying, was the one I had wanted to marry since I was eleven years old. The world is old and ancient and spinning on its axis, but once every so often it catches your eye with its own rheumy ones, sighs a dreary, earthy sigh, and there. You have one of your moments to just ‘be’. It was always meant to be. The trees knew it, the mountains knew it, the tempests which curled their fingers around the waving grasses knew it.
If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that Eliza’s child gave me the most adorable hug, and kissed my cheek upon leaving my home. In the same breath she told me she was very happy to be going home as she did not want to be in my house anymore. I laughed and Eliza laughed because at three years old, the world is so very simple, and two juxtapositions can dance merrily together.
If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that I am starting to get SAD, not ‘sad’, but SAD, as the nights draw drearily closer to the mornings, as the icy winds whip and bite even though the sun shines, as the days become bitter, harsh, and turn a cold shoulder to the adventurous spirit. I would say that I don’t have enough social interaction to fill my cup, I would say that I need my house bursting with the warmth of PEOPLE, I would say that winter is a time to make warm soups and hot drinks and share food, share light bulbs, share laughter, share plants, share soil, share beds.
If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that on the 25th of November, as Midwinter hurtles towards us with terrifying speed, as the creatures of the night roam ever closer to our periphery, as the moon looms large through the spindly ebony branches of undressed trees, I would say that I am in love with the beauty of this earth, and in the same token pained severely by the morbidity of life, and content, so so content, with the fact that we all have fates and they are all scheduled for us, and that fates are not set in stone, and so one must always gather one’s scruples, tie one’s horses, speculate on one’s plan, and get up, and carry on.
Folks, I am drained. I have very little left to give. I don’t know whether I am coming or going. The weeks are slipping away from me like my pearls did when my son found them and ripped them apart. Spattered all over the floor. Shining, satiny balls rolling in every direction.
I am just so drained. Empty. Blood pooling away from my face. Eyes wide. Hair in the fashion of Einstein. I am irritated, tired, overwhelmed, overworked, trying to juggle fifteen hundred balls and every single day I drop them.
Like those pearls.
Satiny, silky pale cream balls, rolling into cracks and nestling into nooks. Sleeping in crannies. Rolling away away away into the nothing ether where Lost Things go.
I am just so empty, and I don’t know what to pour into myself to make me whole again. I don’t know.
Do I go up, or down. Left, or right. Am I creating the rhythm I want to repeat? Am I beating to my own drum? Am I singing the tune that rises and dies in my head? Am I holding on to the right rope?
My mother used to make scones for visitors if they arrived without notice.
It was easy, all you have to do is take flour out of the cupboard, make breadcrumbs by rubbing cold pieces of butter through it – add some warm, milk, salt, baking powder and make a quick dough. Roll it out, cut it into rounds using a glass – or a round cookie cutter if you have one – we didn’t!. Then bake while you put the kettle on and have a laughing chat with your guests, kids running between your legs, teen children chatting in their rooms with their friends.
Then it’s all ready, and the parents, the teens, the young children gather around the living room for scones with jam and butter and mugs of hot sweet tea. The young and old they talk together, jokes are shared across the generation barrier. They all know each other, and the home is alight and the warmth of the scones nestle in the hearts and minds.
Because it was not just about the scones, it was about the shared reality of our existence together, getting comfort from each other.
We were in a hot country, burning kitchen, sweaty situation. You could see the heat radiating off the pavement, and isolation could be rife because of lack of transportation and distance between oneself and one’s family – who all lived in the home country. Such is the nature of being an expat abroad.
So now, as an adult, I see my mum’s scone-making in a desert country as something more. More than just feeding her guests when she had nothing else in the house. More than just cosy comfort for her children. It was more like tendrils of her home reaching through the lands, serving scones in the middle east, was a reminder to her of something she brought with her when she traversed the earth, something grounding.
what is home, really though?
we are children of nowhere.
we take what feels like home and pad ourselves with it as we walk the globe. comfort blankets.
we are strangers really on earth.
something familiar to take with us as we are forever entering into the unknown.
What is something that brings you the comfort of home, when you don’t know where that might be?
I thought about writing about two different things for today’s post. I couldn’t choose between the two.
Do I go for something mundane. Little. A passing thought. Twittering leaf. Sparrow in the bush.
Or do I go for something … else.
I think about writing about both, twining them around each other, like a ribbon and a gnarled twig from an ancient oak tree.
It’s the fifth of November, which means in the United Kingdom – most people take part in a tradition whereby they pretend they are burning a man alive on a bonfire. They pile logs and wood and pallets to make a mountain, and set a chair on the top of it. Some put a stuffed fella on it, but most these days don’t. Then they proceed to set it ablaze, and stand before its vicious, fiery heat, and watch him burn.
Remember remember, the fifth of November….
Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament, and parliament will never let anybody forget it – the bonfire is a reminder and a warning.
Barbaric, no?
You want some benefit of doubt? It’s been an old tradition to throw straw humans on bonfires – to ward off evil spirits, so I expect that is why there is a tradition of burning a Guy on the bonfire. But it still reeks of something barbaric.
Barbaric because we are a nation who loves to point our CIVILISED fingers at the world we colonised and devastated, accusing everybody else of barbarism and terrorism, dividing lands we never owned, conquering places and causing chaos and destruction wherever our great empire reigned.
We fire fireworks on Bonfire Night and cheer and whoop to the music, we burn guys and eat our fish and chips, while babies cower under the sounds of relentless bombs. We sigh and lean back in our velvet chairs, and lament the chaotic situation of savages – never mind we caused all this pain in the first place.
Ah.
England.
Great nation of non barbaric, civilised peoples.
Watching the world burn on our thrones of self satisfaction.
Money in our pockets.
Money on ethnically cleansed lands.
Our great nation has managed to to dehumanise the men whose lands they colonised entirely, painting them as barbaric terrorists, yet it is these same men who are pulling their children, over five thousand of them, out of the rubble with bare hands, and comforting them with devastatingly beautiful language.
I watched the fireworks, along with my great fellow countrymen.
And I thought, who gave us the right to pillage lands that did not belong to us, paint its people as uncivilised, and sit on their treasures. Who is uncivilised, really?
The other thing I wanted to post about was that I got free sofas on an instagram giveaway.
A candid evening. Why candid? I don’t know. Candles around the drawing room. Laura in her peach dress, flowing gently from her shoulders. Golden curls pinned up; it was the evening, she would unpin them soon. Aunt Abigail had rung the bell for supper. She would join Laura after seeing to the roses in the conservatory.
Laura gently arranged the pillows, setting the tables straight. She was purposeful in every movement, as though she wanted time to tick by slowly.
They had left in a hurry; John had a patient to see to and Mary wanted to go in the carriage so she could bundle the little puddings into their own beds. Hugs and kisses, sloppy ones from the darling angels, a sweet one from Mary, a squeeze on the arm, a murmur that she would see her soon. A hug for her brother, tall and grim, lips taut. He had a patient to get to.
Laura straightened up, sighed. There was a soft knock on the drawing room door. Supper.
‘Come in,’ she said, turning to the window to pull the drapes against the darkness outside.
She heard the door open so she turned around with a smile on her face – which then froze, lips halfway there, dimples just beginning to form. A painful drop in her heart. A throb in her chest. Tightening so she caught her breath. Then she composed herself quickly, one hand on her hair, the other to her neck. Her eyes didn’t meet his, they rested somewhere on his collar.
‘Hello, Tom.’ She smiled properly, moving towards the settee. Something else to look at.
‘Miss Smith.’
Another painful throb. She could die. In fact she would. Right there. That would show him.
‘Miss Smith? Come now!’ she smiled again, ‘How could you?’ a teasing lilt in her voice. She kept her smile, dimples dancing, and sat down, arranging her skirts around her as she did so.
‘Laura, then. I.. how are you?’
‘Oh, very well thank you. John and Mary left only moments ago. Did you not see them?’
‘I did. John was in a hurry to get to old Mrs Pettiforte.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘And my sister frazzled, as always.’
She heard, rather than saw, the smile on his face.
‘As is Mary’s way,’ Laura agreed. ‘We were not expecting you for another year,’ she said then, abruptly. Her eyes lifted to his face. He was looking directly at her, into her soul, even. Piercing, green. His face, so familiar, so different. Older, more tired. Drawn. Something in his look compelled her to look away again.
‘I know.’ He opened his mouth to say more. She saw him swallow, hard, search her face until she flushed. She waited for him to give her more information. She didn’t know what to ask. How to ask. She could not ask. So she looked at her sleeve and picked at it.
‘Aunt Abigail and I will have a light supper here by the fire,’ she said, after a short pause. ‘Please join us.’
‘With pleasure,’ he said. She felt the settee bend as he sat down next to her.
Supper arrived, as did Aunt Abigail. Larger than life, sailing into the room and immediately taking command. Fawning over Tom as though he were her own nephew, she took control of the conversation. She enquired after his studies and his work abroad. She lamented on the Medical profession, in turns berating it for taking Tom away from them all for such a long time, and praising him for his medical feats, saving lives and relieving discomfort. She mentioned Rosaline. Once. Twice. Thrice. Each time prodding further and further, and appearing nonchalant when Tom was not so forthcoming about his fiancé. Laura was quiet through supper. She kept her eyes on the bread; thick slices with a beautiful golden crust. The butter spread generously on top. Beautifully cut slices of cheese, rich and deliciously fresh tomatoes from the vegetable garden. Her tea was milky and sweet. A nice meal.
It tasted like cardboard in her mouth though. There was a pain in her chest, a lump in her throat. Her eyes glittered brightly in the firelight, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the flames. She took her tea in gulps, but the lump in her throat would not budge. It grew larger as the evening lengthened, as she watched Tom become more comfortable, as she felt his eyes look her way a few times, questioning her silence.
Finally he stood up to leave.
‘A wonderful meal,’ he said, as he bid them goodnight.
‘Laura, see the boy out,’ her aunt said.
She dragged her feet. Smiled at him, followed him out the room and down the hall. He opened the front door and stepped out into the moonlight. A gust of cold air around her, and she shivered.
‘You’d best close that door,’ he warned, ‘no use getting a chill.’
‘It was good of you to come by,’ she told him. She still did not know what he was doing home a year early.
He didn’t say anything, forcing her to look up at him. Tall, dark with the light of the moon behind him. Crisp wintry air, stars alight in the heavens. She couldn’t see his eyes, nor the expression on his face. Yet she knew he was about to say something, for there was dread in his stance. His shoulders sank with heaviness, the joy he had displayed that evening around Aunt Abigail had left him completely.
‘Laura I…’ he began.
He cleared his throat. Then, abrupt, ‘Goodnight. Be warm.’
He turned and walked down the path. She felt as though a pack of wolves ought to have been chasing him, he should race away from her, she should throw her fury at him and shock the calmness out of him. Oh she could scream! His walk was a meander. He even paused to look at the sky, then back at her. Then he raised an arm in salute.
Fingers trembling, she shut the door upon his wave and stalked upstairs to bed. Not a word to her aunt, who Laura heard humming to herself as she marched past the drawing room.
Ocean Bream 