FACES IN PLACES
The fisherman greeted me on the path while Dash the dog shrank out of the way of him, as he does with strangely dressed people. He said
“The first day of summer; in the drink that is!”
I have no idea what that meant or if it was what he had actually said. But I knew it was February and it was sunny so I think I grinned and said
“I am sure it is.”
At which he looked a bit glum as though I had given the wrong answer. He passed and we continued on our way.
My face rarely fits the place I am in. Either I hear wrongly because I am anxious about my encounter with a stranger, or I just don’t get what someone has said and feel out of place with my vague grin in reply. Still at least I grin.
I may not fit in anywhere very much at all and am more inclined to go to a party with a book than to have a dance and talk but I quite like the thought of parties and people. Still they are strange and I must seem even stranger back. On the rare occasions I speak to strangers when out and about they tend to look puzzled mainly because I can speak out of turn or inappropriately.
Listening me to talking in my posh voice to a couple of strangers about how nice it would have been to have been at the parties in a ruined castle we were passing had my partner Wendy giggling uncontrollably. With a loud voice and gestures I can I beam at people and they look back at me, baffled and confused and sometimes awkwardly uncertain what to do with me.
Banter, the sort we have on the West coast is an alien concept; a relaxed natural conversation even more foreign to me. I am not entirely sure how my friends and family do put up with me. I tend to sit in silence or absent myself with a book or facebook and on occasion launch into a babble that makes very little sense as I litter it with made up words that have no connection to any apparent meaning.
But I am good at grinning and at turning my head from person to person as they speak away and I think my pleasure at the people in my life shines through so that though they think of me as odd and eccentric they tend to regard me with some affection.
For me that is so important, I don’t know why but to be looked on with kindness is wonderful when I believe it happens. More generally I look at strangers passing besides me with a fear that they can read my thoughts or worry that they hate me or see all the dark aspects of me. I look at many of the people in my life with the assumption that they accept me but only as the rather faulty package that has to accompany the vibrant family that I am a part of; a sort of good deed gesture to make sure I am included !
I have a hankering of a dream where I could dare to begin to dream and maybe even believe that people really do love me and treasure me and value me. I can see it in Wendy and Charlotte and even more with Dash the dog but I would like that hankering to breach my reserve so that I could learn to witter and be silly, to caper about and interrupt and tell stories that I never knew I had. I have a very vague memory of such times; I would love them to return. I do, I think have this with my family who somehow seem to accept me with all me numerous faults, love me despite my silence and my reticence but how I yearn to act in a way in which those I love could listen to me and giggle both at my ridiculousness and also at my confidence in my ridiculousness.
Being a work in progress when nearing sixty seems a bit absurd; you would have thought I would have done much of my development by now! But maybe I should celebrate the optimism that progress implies!!
(photos: table tennis face Fingask Feb 2022 me and Wendy Lake of Mentieth Jan 2022)
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