Jigsaw

I am a lover of puzzles. I like problem solving - most of the time. I have a new jigsaw. But it is one of those new, modern, tricksy jigsaws. There is no picture on the lid and you cannot be quite sure that all the pieces in the box belong to this jigsaw. There may be some that do not belong.

 

This may take some time to solve - even for me. There was once an old jigsaw, where all the pieces fitted into a neat, ordered space and the result was pretty good. We lived in that jigsaw for nearly seven years and then we decided to move on and try a new one. It took us a long time to arrange the pieces of the old one, just how we liked them. It took a long time to keep it clean and tidy. Sometimes we added new pieces. We rearranged a few things and made them fit. Occasionally we threw away old ones. But not often. We ended up with a lot of pieces in our jigsaw. After nearly seven years we decided to pack up the pieces in a lot of boxes - it took more than 150 boxes. It was a very big jigsaw!

 

Now we have a new place for our jigsaw and a new picture to make but what will it look like? We have downsized. So I have a new puzzle to tease me. I think it may tease me for quite a while and I will have to try to learn to think in new ways and do things a bit differently in order to complete this new puzzle. Next week the new jigsaw arrives from the store where I have been keeping it. I have found a new place for it. But this is a new start. I must rearrange the pieces. Now I know where the puzzle must live I have to create a new one. The old one will not do. Some of the pieces will not do either - the question is: which ones? It is a guessing game of trial and error. When it is finished I know it will be beautiful, unique and just the right size. When the last piece is finally placed in the last gap I know it will fit. There will be just enough pieces and just enough space. It will be a new creation - a thing of beauty. Won't it?

 

Someone out there please tell me I'm right! Has anyone else ever moved house?

Forward Planning

Today I am schizophrenic. It is almost too much. The present... the future... which shall I choose? I am bombarded by sensations. A pleasant cooing draws my attention. My new grandson is gurgling at me. He is learning to reproduce some of the sounds he has been hearing around him for so long. He 'chats' to me - at least I like to think so. I talk to him, just a sentence and then he coos in reply. I smile exaggeratedly and he giggles. His mother loves his giggles so much that she is tempted, against her better judgment, to continue the game until his giggles are overtaken by a hiccup, and then another one. Suddenly he is overcome by a succession of loud hiccuping, his little frame shuddering with the force of those unsolicited little eruptions in his tiny body. It is a shame to make him hiccup, but such fun to hear him giggle!

 

My grandson clutces at my finger. He has a tenacious grip. I gently rub bunny's ears against his soft skin and he responds, leaving go of my finger and reaching for bunny's ears, enjoyin the sensation of softness, much nicer than grandma's crinkly fingers.

 

He is a treasure - a very present treasure. But, all at once, I am fast forwarded, my attention slipping from baby's grasp, my thoughts wandering down country lanes, my ears catching the birdsong and my nose scenting the sea breezes. My new home! Suddenly it is present with me. Only ten days to go until we are catapaulted into the new life we have chosen. My inner eyes rove around my new home, planning colour schemes, placing furniture, mentally unpacking boxes of forgotten things from the store and stowing them neatly in cupboards.

 

Our pictures will be the fnishing touch - the icing on the cake - remining us of former dwelling places, documenting the passage of our lives. Now a third dimension enters - that of the past. We will choose carefully from the boxes, gently unwrapping and matching each one to its own surroundings, its colour scheme and mood. Past, present and future. Multi-tasking. Life is a schizophrenic kaleidoscope - so many memories, sensations, hopes and dreams. It is a rich, heady mix that takes a lifetime to process. I am a wealthy woman - I have a past, a present and a future and the capacity to enjoy them all at once.

The Memory Keeper's Sister

We were discussing the passing of time: growing old and how young or old we felt. “It depends on who is still alive” said my sister. What did she mean? She was talking about seniority – position within the family and the responsibilities with which it endowed its holder.  When our mother died our status as orphans was complete and the upper stratum of the family was empty. No aunts, no uncles, no parents – only us and those who had issued from our loins, to use an old-fashioned phrase.

 

It felt a bit naked. We felt vulnerable and no-one more so than my sister: the eldest sibling – ‘matriarchal sis’. In her matriarchal position, reluctantly but doggedly assumed, my sister takes her responsibilities seriously. She is there for us all. She is the voice on the other end of the telephone (even when we ring at mealtimes). She is the provider of Christmas dinner. She is the bestower of meaningful family gifts. Immersed in her almost lifelong, absorbing passion – sewing – she sits at her table, creating masterpieces of family heirlooms. My sister creates tapestries, wall hangings, quilts and mementoes out of countless fabrics, buttons, beads, ribbons and braids, wadding, words, pictures and a lot of love. She takes the fabric of our lives and weaves them into quilts. She celebrates births, birthdays, weddings, dedications and other momentous occasions of our lives with her gift.

 

My sister’s house is elastic-sided. It contains the family heritage. Cupboards, shelves, display units contain mementoes of all the generations of our family: vases, milk jugs, photos, candlesticks, ghastly elves under toadstools (a lasting reminder of a childhood poem our mother used to recite: ‘under a toadstool sat a wee elf, out of the rain to shelter himself’), and books. A framed black and white photograph of our maternal grandmother has pride of place. She was a beautiful woman. I have the same photograph myself but our childhood remains intact through the much greater, careful hoarding of my matriarchal sis. A volume of ‘Magic London’, complete with pictures, still sits on the shelf. It brings back such memories. The Magic Faraway tree does the same. The complete set of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories sits side by side with its more modern counterpart: the Roald Dahl stories and Harry Potter’s exploits. Our childhoods and that of the next generation are equally enshrined for posterity. The cupboards are stuffed full of photos, commemorating every birthday, visit to relatives, family holiday that can be recalled – and a lot that cannot. The garage contains spare bicycle parts belonging to various members of the family. My sister is the Memory Keeper.

 

In the throes of an international move, we have become temporarily homeless. My sister and brother in law have offered up their home to us too. It has been our temporary home for us and a lot of our clutter these past few months. Now we are moving on. But our small country cottage is no place for family heritage. Just enough for ourselves and a few occasional guests, it is not the place for such memories. Matriarchal sis has stepped in before the downsizing goes too far and memories are lost forever. We can have a place on the family shelves. We can store our surplus in the matriarchal home. Her home will continue to be elastic for all the growing generations. I am the memory keeper’s sister – I have a place here.

Nostalgia Tour

“Daddy, ple...ase don’t mow the daisies!” As a child I loved flowers. I loved nature. I loved anything beautiful. I would get myself up on summer nights after I had been put to bed and climb up on the windowsill, staring out, spellbound at the fiery, crimson and yellow, pollution-induced colours of the sunset above the local reservoir at the bottom of our road. I loved the bright, tall gladioli that grew against the wall in our garden and the tall wigwams of runner beans with their scarlet flowers that my father grew. Looking back, beauty of all kinds was of paramount importance to me, and especially colour.

 

Yesterday we went on a nostalgia tour: on a trip back in time to the country town where my husband was born. He pointed out the stream where he had played as a child, repeated stories of the hop fields through which he had walked on his way to school, pointed out the road where his junior school was and showed me, with a mix of pride and regret, the prestigious school whose entrance examination he had failed years ago. We walked together past black and white half-timbered buildings, a relic of the past still present in the busy modern-day shopping centre, past little rows of Georgian houses, tucked away down side turnings, past the old green, the castle and the river, recalling his childhood. The town nestled amongst green fields, country houses and picturesque oast houses. It was a very different childhood to mine. “You can see why I grew up the way I did, can’t you?” he said. It explained his abiding love for the countryside.

 

It didn’t explain mine. Brought up in a fairly ordinary London suburb, the most beautiful thing I remember in my past was the sunsets and they were probably the product of the dirty smoke belched from factory chimneys, the fumes from the already growing traffic problem and the coal fires that were lit every night by thousands of Londoners, in the days before smokeless fuel. But looking back, I remember the daisies on the lawn and my sorrow each time my father got the lawnmower out of the garage and brought their short, beautiful lives to a premature end. I remember the vivid pink cherry blossom in the front garden and my horror when the tree had to be cut down because its roots were undermining the garden wall. I remember the huge clump of brown daisies growing beside the garage door, permanently surrounded by a cloud of buzzing bees. I remember the tall green poplars that grew on the other side of the railings around the tarmacked playground of our junior school.

 

Despite my urban upbringing, I was an admirer of beauty and a lover of nature. Where did these longings come from? I have no idea. But they are as strong in me today as in my husband. I never played beside a stream as a child. I never walked through hop fields. My early environment was full of city streets, shops, gasometers and blocks of flats. Nowadays I shun most of this and head for countryside and the sea. My mother was a country girl, from a rural Somerset village. Maybe these family memories are buried deep in my genes and I am simply a product of my inheritance, not my upbringing. How do these things work? I don’t know. But I seem to have a peculiar, nostalgic connection with a past existence that never happened to me.

‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’

It isn’t only John Lennon who has this experience. My sweet little bungalow beside the sea was what I was planning for. We had a price agreed. We went window shopping for carpets, wardrobes, kitchen appliances and the rest. It was fun. We planned the rooms, measured up for the furniture, thought about central heating, bathroom fitments and a wood-burning fire for the cosy little sitting room and planned our colour schemes...

 

Then came the survey. Of course we knew there were some issues. We had noticed a number of things that needed refurbishment and improvement. We had budgeted for them and achieved a good price settlement with the vendors. But then came the surveyor’s report: that was what happened to us while we were busy with our plans! Suddenly the price we had agreed seemed like less of a bargain. But we refused to give up. We fought tooth and nail to keep our bungalow. We drove up there, three hours up the motorway, three hours across less easy terrain. We booked into a holiday cottage. We organised tradesmen: builders, central heating engineers, woodworm specialists and electricians and we got estimates. We added up the figures. We spoke to the estate agent. We sent messages back and forth to the vendor. We reached deadlock. Life happened to us and we didn’t like it. No price agreement. No bungalow.

 

And then life happened to us again. It was a roller coaster of a week! Just when we thought it was all over and we had wasted our journey another house appeared on the property market. We lurched from deep depression to euphoria and back again. It was a long shot. We had looked at dozens of houses and most of them turned out to be unsuitable. But the little house seemed to be waiting for us. The owner had just reduced the price because he was desperate to sell. Now the cottage was in our price bracket. We went to look at the outside and were pleasantly surprised: only three miles from the sea and with glorious countryside all round. We rang the agent. Could we visit sometime in the next couple of days? She rang us back. Mr. _____ was in and keen to see us. We could visit right now. So he showed us around the property. It was a bit small – cottages in our price range are. It was on a main road. But the cottage was in good order. He had most of the space we needed. He had a fully fitted kitchen. He had heating. He had good quality fitted carpets in a neutral colour. He had kitchen appliances that we needed which he wanted to sell us – and even a wardrobe of the type we were looking for! Suddenly the plans we had been busy making began to change. We wouldn’t need all those plans here. We wouldn’t need to disrupt our lives for the next six months with building projects, woodworm treatment and starting from scratch. Life seemed to have happened to us and, as it often does, negated all those frantic plans we had been making.

 

Now we’re on target for another house purchase. We’ve had the survey. It’s OK. We’re just hoping that this turns out to be the course life takes for us. Over the years we’ve become pretty pro-active. We like to do our best to make things happen. (‘God helps those who help themselves’, as they used to say). But sometimes, when you’ve done all you can do, it becomes impossible to make life happen and it just takes it into its head to happen to you. I’m hoping this cottage is going to happen to us now because I’m a little tired of making plans!

Red House Encounter

A few years back I was sitting having a drink in a Sussex pub and across the gangway I noticed a group of young women, laughing and chattering. I’m an incurable people-watcher and continued to watch them surreptitiously for a while until it occurred to me that a rather vivacious, dark-haired young lady looked rather familiar. The more I watched the more her face, hairstyle and general manner reminded me strongly of someone I had enjoyed sharing a literature course with whilst studying at Sussex University a few years previously.  Should I continue to sit here and wonder in case she failed to remember who I was or should I approach Rosie and remind her of our shared past? At last my curiosity got the better of me, after all I wanted to know what she had been doing these last few years and whether she had achieved what she had set out to do following her degree. I got up and walked confidently up to her, banishing doubts and embarrassment. I explained who I was to Rosie and then waited. The group chatter subsided and there was a moment of silence. It wasn’t Rosie and she had never been to Sussex University.

 

Yesterday, unbelievably the same thing happened to me. This time I was sitting in a National Trust cafe, drinking tea and eating the inevitable piece of iced sponge. I was on my first visit to the Red House, where William Morris, along with a bunch of friends, had conducted some experiments in interior design. Halfway through our tour of the house another couple came in and examined the icy cold rooms with us, chatting in quiet voices as they went. I scarcely looked at them. Then they joined us in the tea shop and again I embarked on my rather impolite hobby of people watching. The lady had red hair and a manner that reminded me of someone I had once known, a long, long time ago. As she chatted to the man with her I watched and gradually it came to me – Nicola – I had been at school with someone like that. Strangely, at first, it never occurred to me that it could really be the same person. Although I guessed she was around my age and we were both visiting this National Trust property not ten miles from the school, I never entertained the idea that it could be her. No. That would be too much of a coincidence. I sat for a long while, trying to remember Nicola’s surname.

 

Finally, I recalled an incident which still makes me laugh even now when I occasionally think of it and the name resurfaced along with the memory. I was in a coach with a school party on an educational visit to the open air theatre in Regent’s Park, London. I was about 14. We were on our way back to school at the end of the day. Suddenly, someone said “Where’s Nicola?” A minute later, someone else shouted “And where’s Ann?” Ann and Nicola – firm friends all the way through school – they were sure to be together. Unfortunately the coach had left without them. Panic ensued. A teacher’s worst nightmare! The unfortunate teacher eventually stopped the coach, got out and went back in search of the two missing children. We continued on our journey back to school, concocting stories of their probable demise. The next morning we learned the news that our English teacher had discovered them back in the park, standing forlornly by the entrance from which the coach had left, holding hands and telling each other staunchly “Don’t panic!”

 

Now I had a name. I looked again at my companion in the tea room. The more I looked the more I seemed to discern the old Nicola within this rather more mature version in front of me. It would have been more than forty years ago! You would think I had learned my lesson from Rosie – or rather, from the woman who wasn’t Rosie – but not a bit of it! Eventually, my curiosity again getting the better of me, I said boldly “I’ve been looking at you...” (she gave me a curious glance) “...and you really remind me of someone I was at school with...” No response. (Oh dear, had I done it again?) “Are you... or were you...” I said, looking at her possible husband next to her, “Nicola _____?” This time the answer was yes. I was so relieved!

 

A rather stilted conversation followed. Where do you start with someone you lost touch with 40 years ago? We exchanged family histories, careers and children and introduced our husbands. We asked after mutual friends. She had done far better than me at keeping up with them. She still lived in the same area. I did not. I traced some of my various travels since leaving the school. Then the conversation faltered a bit. We sat there, marvelling at the coincidence that had brought us together. It began to sink in. This chance encounter was indeed something of a miracle. What if my sister and brother-in-law had not decided to give us a joint birthday gift of membership to the National Trust this year? What if we had decided to go to Ightam Mote instead of the Red House as our first outing? What if we had chosen Tuesday instead of Wednesday? We would never have met up. Better than that, what if we had decided to move from our old home in the Netherlands, where we had been for the last fifteen years or so, a couple of months later? What if we had stayed somewhere else whilst searching for our new home in the UK? What if my sister had said “no, we can’t put you up”? What if we had found our new home a little quicker? We would no longer be here in my old stamping ground. We were just passing through. What if? Isn’t life strange?

 

Best of all was the joy with which we discovered each other after all this time. Amazement and joy characterised the encounter. We left school 40 years ago, without giving each other too much thought. 40 years later friendships somehow have more value and it is so good to be given a second chance to get acquainted. We will no longer stand side by side on the station platform each afternoon, waiting for the train home from school. We will no longer even live in the same vicinity. But maybe, in these days of internet, better travel links and an enhanced understanding of the value of relationships, we can make something of our second chance.

How far have we travelled?

Just this last week I received an unexpected short course in essential life skills. Who would have thought a tiny baby could teach me so much? How did that tiny scrap of humanity, barely three weeks old, arrive in the world with so much understanding, sensitivity and wisdom to share? Just one week in the presence of purity, simplicity and baby know-how transported me into another world – his world. The world of baby Oscar is a world of delightful innocence, breathtaking naivety and, at the same time,  an awe-inspiring realism. Oscar’s world is about essentials: sleep, feed, bath, love – possibly not in that order. Oscar’s world is alternately full of the most amazing peacefulness and the most heart-rending screams. But a contented baby is one of the most heart-warming sights in this world; the sight of little Oscar, fast asleep, cheek resting on his tiny hand and breathing with deep little sighs of contentment is a wonder to behold. Tiptoe softly around him in case you awaken this blissful repose.

 

Oscar’s needs and wants are simple: the sound of a familiar voice, the smell of his mother’s skin, the ever-ready milk bar, the long awaited touch of Daddy, home at last from work and caressing him with eager fingers...

 

Pure as the driven snow – a cliché in most circumstances but a mysterious truth when applied to babies. Oscar is a January baby and pushing his pram through the piles of freshly swept, pure white snow seems oddly appropriate – a crisp, pristine snowy vista, under skies of perfect blue, as a fitting backdrop for this most perfect new life, soft, white and baby-new. A new, unblemished life, a blank canvas awaiting whatever life may bring, unsullied by the ugliness of life’s disappointments, hardships and imperfections, but sparkling in the sunshine, full of promise. This image will be fixed in my mind forever. In Oscar’s world the closest attention is paid to the tiniest details: a small fleck of yellow sleep is gently brushed from Oscar’s eye; the tiniest of milk spots detected on his little forehead is brooded over anxiously. Pure as the driven snow.

 

Where did we go wrong? How did life get so complicated? How did we stray so far from the basics? We have lost our inner peace. In our adult worlds of street-cred and worldly wisdom we have strayed so far from the contentment we once knew at the touch of a hand, the sense of belonging and being loved, through the simple awareness of the nearness of family and friends and the joy of unashamed eye to eye contact. Oscar gazes into my eyes, unblinking, soaking up the warmth and admiration I give him and returning it willingly, without a hint of distrust or suspicion. This last week has been a week of de-tox, a health farm retreat, whilst a crash course has been delivered in the basic joys and essentials of life itself. Thank you Oscar.