TAKING FLIGHT.
It is evening, the rooks are just dying down from their busyness and settling in the trees. Dash the dog has stopped being amorous; there is a golden light in my room from the lamp with the huge bulb on top of a piece of wood that Wendy bought me some years ago. My bedsheets and my downie cover, my pillow covers are all clean; indeed the downie cover and pillows are new.
Down at Ardmore, in between the torrential showers that have been arriving throughout the day, I walked with Dash. I looked at the high water lapping on the grass and heard rows and rows of geese flying overhead to end up gathered among gulls and ducks at the top of the bay. I stopped every so often to take photos of reflections as that is the project I have for Jeans Bothy just now.
I left Wendy in the house in her dressing gown with Charlotte, James was away on a sleepover. We had all got up late; me the latest of all. Drinking my coffee, I fell into musing, partly about how fresh life might be if I could stop drinking but partly astonished. Astonished that yesterday when Wendy and Charlotte were cuddled up in bed, and Wendy was teasing me about dumping me; that Charlotte said to her mum that she could never ever leave me. A point blank, finger pointing;
“Graham is here to stay!”
I think Wendy was pleased and I was delighted.
Increasingly I wonder at my astonishment that I am loved; that despite my whisky breath I share wonderful kisses with Wendy at night and that Charlotte is always wanting to give me a cuddle and a
“I love you.”
Admittedly James did fantasise about burning my head to shreds with a flamethrower earlier in the day but I choose to think that if a wee child can threaten such things and then giggle happily, that all is probably sort of ok!
I had a dream the other day that Wendy in her indignation at something or other changed appearance and began to look like my ex-wife. I pointed it out to her and she was aghast! Even in my sleep I can see the difference or think I can see the difference in how we treat each other.
I feel like I have arrived all ragged edged, for whatever reason, all trembling limbs like a frightened dog, for whatever reason, and that now I am really beginning to believe that I have found my home. I can no longer see the past at all clearly. I do not know how to make sense of it or how to interpret it but I do not walk into the house on edge. I do not start a conversation worried about how it will be heard. I do not feel like some terrible embarrassment. I wander downstairs and I know that no one will hit me; no one will shout at me or express contempt for me. No one will throw my possessions into the bushes or take my mobile from me; instead I will be greeted with laughter and pleas for us get another dog or go on holiday to Japan for which decisions I seem to be the final arbiter!
I will put the coffee on; make the breakfast and we will eat it in front of the telly with not a shadow of guilt that the telly is on or that we are all in our dressing gowns or we have no intention of doing something worthy or productive.
I am fifty eight and I still do not know why, I have no understanding but my heart is beginning to breath. I am slowly and ever so tentatively beginning to really believe I am loved and treasured. I have not got as far as recognising that I merit love or even recognise that love is not something that I need to earn and qualify for but I am leaning into the possibility that I might look forward to life and that now I will wince when I plead, when I am alone, to die; that I am desperately frightened that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy that I really, really, don’t want to happen anymore.
There was a brisk wind at Ardmore; the waves were even breaking on the beach. The air was warm, the seaweed smell was in a strange way, wonderful. The scattered squally showers in the distance were thrilling and the patches of blue among the clouds, beautiful. I had my welly boots on and stood in puddles to capture their reflection on my phone. The leaves on the ground were brown and ragged but in glimpses of sunshine the grass on the hills or in the fields glowed like the ecstasy I imagine is religion and I realised that slowly I am lighting up.
I might remain silent, odd, with weird thoughts but I would like to shine to the people in my life like they shine to me.
(Photo: Charlotte and Dash at home. October 2021)
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