VALENTINES DAY
The wash is on; the bed sheets changed, the drawers and tables cleaned. Outside the wind is rising while the rain rattles the window. I love times like this when the house is warm and everyone is at peace.
Wendy is downstairs drawing birthday cards with Charlotte. James is yattering to his friends on his Xbox. The rabbits will be sleeping in their hutch and Dash will be sleeping on his green chair or maybe standing at his ‘look out tower’ at the front door; searching for cats to bark at and get over excited about. If he sees one, he will rush all over the house trying to make us humans understand the import of his discovery. He will whimper and bounce frantically from door to door while the cat preens at the bottom of the path.
For old time’s sake I am listening to Joan Armatrading while I type; I like her voice, her love songs.
I have reorganised the table top besides my tiny work desk under the dormer window. There is a large photo of Wendy and me, looking loving. It was taken at the only Wedding we have been to together and almost looks like our own wedding photo if we were to ever have one. Beside it is one of the halves of the massive mussels that my sister found at Innellan and gave to me as a present. Besides that; sea glass, a necklace, photos of the children and finally a picture of me many years ago, with my son. He must be about fourteen in that picture. I look very young and very happy to be cuddling him. Ah! How memories change, become bittersweet...
Earlier today; after our celebratory breakfast of Nutella on toast and our inspection of our Valentine cards. (Wendy said the one I made her looked like an abstract painting, which was kind because it was more like an unfocussed scribble of childish love hearts.) Anyway after that, we set off, for Wendy and her children to spend a locked down, socially distanced hour with her Mum.
They sat in the garage with the door high in the air where they played at cards with rugs wrapped round their knees and ate crisps, while Wendy checked her Mum’s arm which was still painful after her vaccination a couple of weeks ago.
I took Dash the dog for his delayed walk in the park. The grass was covered with puddles but to my surprise, when I walked on it, it was like hard concrete; still frozen underneath from the last few days of snow and frost. The wind was bitingly cold, making me grateful I had taken gloves and a hat. By the time I reached the Clyde a band of sleet swept across the Firth spattering against my jacket. Initially I was delighted to find that this, my present from Wendy, was watertight and then a bit later dismayed that I hadn’t put on my waterproof trousers and yet, some minutes later, in an empty park ; I found myself joyfully shouting nonsense at Dash the dog, as the icy water trickled through my trousers through my pockets into my pants; down my legs into my socks.
At home I changed, got dry, warmed up. Wendy made soup with the parsnips that Jeans Bothy had given to us a few days ago. I washed the bathroom. Charlotte stared at something on her tablet, next to Dash; whose fur had turned into tight curls from the rain that had poured onto us.
We have kissed and cuddled. I think I grumped a bit when Wendy didn’t want me to make her the Valentines tea I had decided upon and then cheered up at the prospect of her making home made pizzas later.
Wendy will have teased me, chattered a lot. I will have sipped at my coffee and, if I remember, put my fingers to my lips because I wanted to listen to Malala on Desert Island Discs while Wendy wanted to talk about the holidays we might have one day, if ever that sort of thing becomes a possibility again.
I had planned to write Wendy a love letter for Valentines Day but remembered how much she prefers me to speak to her rather than make her read words about how I feel.
This will be my delayed letter about my love for my family instead; written while the house is at peace. A love letter that is the opposite of romantic but today, just how I want love to be.
That wonderful feeling that the chance of an argument is as remote as summer from mid-winter as we still haven’t had a proper row in seven years. That knowledge that our house is soft from an uneventful day; warm and peaceful and content.
It won’t always be like that. Only a couple of months ago we were wondering whether I would go back into hospital. Just weeks ago, my continuing compulsory treatment under the mental health act was extended again but just now life is wonderful. Just now life is the dream I would have had when I was a young man; a dream of family and laughter and kisses, of dogs and times to relax or at least that is what I wish my dream had been. I do not need high drama, and wild adventures. I don’t want to beat my breast with the passion of my love. I want to snuggle into my love later tonight on the sofa, while the children slowly gather themselves for sleep, and I want to remember how days like this would once have seemed impossibly extraordinary.
The wind is beginning to rise more. I can hear the crows in the trees; see the tv arial quivering back and forward. The window is covered in wobbly droplets; occasionally the black shape of one of those crows slices across my vision while small gusts thrum in the gap of the window.
I no longer know what I would have felt on Valentine’s with my ex- wife. Time has erased many of my memories. The events of recent years have reshaped the story of those past decades. I hope we also had wonderful days like these but I can’t remember at all anymore. My past is slowly becoming just that; my past; even though somewhere, my son does whatever he does and somewhere else my ex-wife does the stuff she does and our, once mutual friends, do whatever they do; with the only sure thing being that I will never know what their stuff or those things are or will be anymore.
This will always be my ‘new family’; though I have now been with them for ages and ages. I think, earlier this morning, Wendy was talking about Valentine’s days for us when we are old and frail and how, hearing that, my heart glowed. In the car, she asked the children if they would ever want a Valentine. They said they never ever would. I asked them if they wouldn’t want someone to cuddle when they were grown up and they said they preferred cuddling dogs.
It makes me smile how life repeats itself. The only problem being that with this young family I feel like I am in my mid-thirties; not my late fifties.
That life repeating itself thing? Let’s slow it down a bit. Let’s make this day last a few years. Let me be a child where a year is a tenth of my life and seems to last forever and ever.
(Photo, Wendy and Dash the dog on the mudflats at Ardmore in the fog. Jan 2021)
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