LESSONS FROM MY HOLIDAYS
My very best moment of my five day holiday, from which I have just returned, was walking along the Cromarty Firth when the tide was out. We had passed the cows lying against the fence and Dash the dog had peered at them curiously. We had crossed the bridge with it’s peat dark water. A few miles upriver it forms the Black Rock Gorge, which we had visited on our first day. Forty metres deep and five meters wide. You hardly see it until you are on it. At the very bottom you can see the river; a thin stream from that distance.
Charlotte wouldn’t even look towards it, while I took a shaky photo while my stomach made an erratic hollow of my heart. Wendy and James leaned over the bridge to send stones tumbling and echoing from side to side of the rocky cliffs and giggled with exhilaration.
Anyway down here by the Firth; the river was slow and broad and very smooth in its darkness. We passed that wide patch of flat ground with its cracked mud flats from winter. We paused at the table and chairs and realised the terns we could see on the notice board were actually flying above us. And here is the thing. I was always about fifteen feet ahead with Dash who was sniffing everything in sight and pulling on his lead. (The family sometimes grumble about this being in front thing, as though I am some separate aged patriarch; they may have a point but I enjoy my slight separation sometimes.) While I was ahead, all I could hear; apart from the birdsong and the wind in the reeds, was Wendy and the children.
It was beautiful, in a sort of ancient black and white movie thing where we live by very defined roles of behaviour. The air was filled with chatter and laughter. One moment Wendy would be making a joke, the next singing a joke, then she could be pointing something rude out, or skipping round a bush. She started singing an everlasting list of tongue twisters, the only ones which I can remember were:
‘She sells sea shells’ and ‘Red lorry yellow lorry.’
The twins darted round her doing their own jokes and impressions; trying to decide which one had greater possession of Wendy.
“My Mummy!”
“No! My Mummy!”
It was a truly cliched moment that happens all the time in our family; those fed up with saccharine scenes should avoid my writing because for me, it makes me shine. Once happy loving families would have made me wince and now, I no longer know why that was so.
When we reached the fishing bothy opposite the castle on the Black Isle; Wendy clambered inside and sat on a stone where she promptly shrieked and stood up claimed she must have sat on some glass or a nail. She refused to let me look at her wound claiming she didn’t want me to see her flabby bottom. Charlotte did instead and decided she had been bitten instead which pleased Wendy for some reason.
We wandered back; the music of the children and Wendy filling the air.
I ambled with Dash; quite ridiculously happy and, as ever, at a loss why this bouncy family would want me; the taciturn Graham, in their life. The one with scars on his wrists that the children can’t quite get their heads around. The one who writes books that they are not allowed to read until they are much, much, older. Probably the one who has made Charlotte decide that when she is an adult that she will never drink alcohol at all. The one obsessed with putting the bins out on the right day; always having enough food in the house, knowing the schedule of every weekend.
And yet, for some reason, I know I am loved here even if I fail to comprehend why.
Why do I write this? Most of you, who read this, do not have the chance of holidays so why mention them? Some people would say that some of you are on one long holiday but that is the cruellest of cruel barbs. I heard that once about myself and raged! When life is about unemployment and not much money, how do you enjoy yourself?
And for me, why do I treasure holidays so much?
As you have seen, the highlight of my holiday is something that happens all the time in my family. So why?
I think for me, when I am working, I live by rules and objectives and goals. I need to get up, to get breakfast for Wendy and later the children, when they get ready for school.
I need to walk the dog, log onto my emails, log on to flexitime. I need to speak to strangers at predicted times. I need to write reports and give speeches. I need to avoid the people who I know do not like me, as much as I can.
At the end of the day I am exhausted; not so much because of what I have done but because of the pressure I put on myself: I am always trying to prove myself; I don’t know who to or in what way but I try to live to some sort of impossible standard that I will never meet.
On holiday, I still look at emails, still walk the dog, still talk about mental illness, still cook the meals, do the driving and the tidying but I am not performing. I am not trying to demonstrate to anyone that I have value and promise. Instead I am listening the laughter that I hear every day and recognising that such a thing is a far more precious gift than the best job or the highest wage.
I have a yearning to learn how to be on holiday when I am working. I think it is possible – imagine if life could be like that one day! That I could really see those things that really matter to me!
(Photo field of thistles - Cromarty Firth Evanton july 2021)
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