The Small Things in Life.
My best small thing is just now; just now lying or, rather, sitting on the bed, propped up against the headboard. I have had a shower and that is by far the best of all things: when you are clean and you are soft and smooth and neither warm nor cool just that thing; smooth.
Outside the window I can hear someone mowing the lawn. I can hear the rooks in the trees doing their thing. Dash the dog is curled up at the bottom of the bed; he has just finished licking my toes. The radio is on; a love story of sorts playing from it. I have had half a can of cold, cold, cider and a cheese sandwich with lime pickle on it. The house is empty apart from me. I have no need to do anything and no pressing tasks facing me.
Another best small thing is waking up in the morning when you do not need to get up; dozing, half listening to the radio, half listening to your dreams, stretching out into all the corners of the bed, curling up, doing even more dozing.
Or it could be this morning when I was down at Ardmore, taking photos with my phone: that moment when a blurred Forget me not suddenly switched into bright focus, finding bluebells posing besides a tree with twisted creepers or smelling the sweet may blossom, the elder and rowan blossom in their blowsy maze of wedding whiteness. The bees, the terns and the awkward herons.
It was maybe when I had the coffee on, in the late morning, and a bleary Wendy stumbled into the kitchen for a good morning kiss and marmalade on toast and lots of silliness.
A tiny, small thing is that I just got the motivation to cut my toenails so that they no longer snag when I pull my socks up. A not so good small thing is that I am now more often, tempted to sit down to put my socks on, rather than hopping on one leg waving the empty sock in the direction of my foot.
It is definitely the view from the sofa bed of the bird feeder; the tits and robins darting up to feed from it, to fly away when the raucous starlings arrive, only for them to rush off when the magpie with its long beak and faint sense of menace lands on the fence post above them; that is so much better than telly.
It is my hope that, instead of going to work on Monday, I will get the day off to visit my niece after many, many, months of not seeing her and it is the thought that maybe we will buy bathroom paint for the shower tomorrow and visit the café that accepts dogs into its garden at Bowling and somehow have a third birthday party with Dash the dog when the children come back home from their Dad’s. It is the kindness with which their Dad said he would gladly join me for a whisky on one of the evenings he comes round to pick them up.
A small thing is that when I read the four volumes of my dad’s memoir, he devoted only about ten sentences to me and not many more to the rest of the family and a rather large thing is that I find that upsetting. I have now found that my dreams, where I was getting to know him better in my imagination than I did in life, have left me and I know I really want them back again, even if they become nightmares.
A tiny thing was when Wendy cut my hair in the kitchen the other night while I grumbled and shrieked not so quietly and not much like an adult at all. I thought it looked wonderful afterwards and Wendy declared that she is now my lifetime hairdresser and even tidied up my shorn hair from the floor while I calmed my haircut trauma with a drink.
A very large thing is that Wendy has gone for a BBQ with her friends today; tiny for most people but such a liberation after these months of isolation. Another large thing will be how much I look forward to what will probably be slightly tipsy laughter when she returns.
An even larger thing is that my brother will have arrived at my Mum’s in Sussex by now, before taking her up to Lancashire, before I go to pick her up from his to ours, before I take her to Oban and my sister picks her back up and takes her back south to my brother. I don’t know if I will be brave enough to hug her when she gets to my house.
This is a day of small things. I do some things that some people would think are big things, but compared to the small things they are minute indeed. My small things have combined so well, that I no longer dread falling asleep and no longer dread waking up. I now wonder how much I really want to die. Sometimes I even think I might one day die naturally, of old age, knowing I am surrounded by people who love me. A slight step too far just now to really believe that but for me a large step indeed.
For the moment I will listen to the radio, watch that tiny fly walking on the glass of the velux window and listen to the call of the rooks on one side of the house and the magpies on the other side.
Tomorrow I will see the children again. James will mainly ignore me but Charlotte is likely to give me a hug and say she loves me. It delights me yet often makes me pause because I think my own son, now well grown, definitely doesn’t love me but from what I know, which is very, very, little, he has a good life. And in the scheme of the world that is tiny but in my world, that is immense and wonderful.
(First published in Bothy Blethers (July 2021)
(Photo: cyanotype photo from a session at Jean’s Bothy. July 2021)
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