And a Happy New Year to you too

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

5th January
I've had a cheerful start to 2012. Despite massive over indulgence over the Christmas period.  But here I am facing the first of my 'Sad Days', the anniversary of the Absent Father leaving, 4 years ago today. 

The period of sadness tried to descend last night, when memories of that last time when he returned home from the train as usual with that otherness about him. I didn't even need to ask, I just knew he was off.  I remember getting horribly, horribly drunk with mindless grief, and then trying to be normal.  I so regret that last response, my memories of the AF looking fed up, glad he was at last getting rid of the trouble.

But all this was a long, long time ago.  Am I a different person now?  I really hope so.  So much time and pain has passed my way, it would be sad to think this last four years have meant nothing.  However the one thing that really, really irritates me is being told it is time I should move on.

 

Time is defined by the people who live it.  And sadly we seem to be in a world that accepts consensus as the truth to grasp.  Maybe for most things that is fine. But for grief and abandonment time turns on a different axis.  I do love the work of the psychologist Bruner who talked about spirals of learning and revisiting things learned with a different view.  When do you really know anything?  One of the irritating things about losing the firmness of your skin and accepting wrinkles is the truth that you have been there even if felt oddly different.  Would we all behave as we did at 15? I honestly hope not.  For most of you this is a topic for that slightly racier bit of the dinner party conversation when everyone has evaluated the best school/housemaster/tennis coach/college on the Bailey (although Durham University parents seem to be a tad more cool than most, maybe it's the cobbles and impossible parking) But at some point when the Macon Villages starts to hit, things become slightly less earnest.  I would like say flirtier, but in all honesty my memory of those sort of dinner parties is that the women plonked down next to the Absent Father and promptly rammed their elbows into cleavages, whilst their unimpressive but monied partners shuffled slowly to their places and after a small show of politeness, sagged visibly and spent as much time as possible talking the wrong way at courses, or most toe curling of all, ignored me completely and talked mano-a-mano whilst I tried to become as invisible as possible.

Ok, so I'm not a great beauty, but I'm ok.  Some men even stone cold sober are not actually revolted by standing next to me.  Girlfriends tell me I'm lovely, some of whom I think are properly altruistic. I went home after such evenings convinced I was unacceptable and the AF didn't seem to argue the case.  Was he tired of it, or did he believe my publicity?  What was the truth of my life then, and how should I let it inform or effect the person I am now, for good or ill?

It's a tricky one, because strong emotion does have a habit of revisiting, sneaking in unbidden until you find yourself furious or tearful in Tescos, or possibly both.  Do you embrace it, and throw yourself into the experience hoping for cathartic relief, or do you bat it away, refusing to deny the existence of inconvenient affects that have no relevance in the present?  Those two extreme views are also paired with the need to get blinding drunk to numb the soul into acceptance.  All of which is foolish and unnecessary.  To some extent we never move on, we are just us, in our space.  Sometimes there is a need to refer backwards, sometimes a gleeful skip forwards, but equally the future can look grim, and the past a welcome haze of times past.

So I don't move on, I live my life.  My way.  There are times when I am profoundly grateful for what the last four years has shown me.  DN1 and I were trudging the horses in one night this week, in the dark, wind blowing a hooley and wellies nearly getting stuck in the mud in the gates.  We both had head torches to light our way so we could see the horses plodding in, heads tucked in against the gale.  It was utterly miserable, but it had to be done.  As I walked I thought of how it would have been at Shamrock on a night like that.  The back door would be opened and the heat would rush out, somehow mud and straw would find their way in, despite standing on the mat and putting wellies back on the rack outside, so they'd be good and cold for next morning.  The cupboard with the coats would be stacked to overflowing and probably not close properly so the whole house would smell of drying horse coats.  The gloves wouldn't all fit in the box by the table because we all had so many.  The sink would never be quite empty, the draining board, soggy and wooden and in need of replacing.  There would, inevitably, be dead flies on the windsills, and laundry on the dolly maid over the freezer.  The dog would block the door, and the rain would beat upon the skylights in the hall, and they would leak, being specifically for listed buildings and despite frequent interventions, not of a high functional quality even if they looked vaguely appropriate.  We would huddle by the woodburner in the sitting room at the centre of the house to get away from the storm that rendered all the other rooms almost uninhabitable. 

Back to the present time, once we had snuggled the horses in their rugs and left them with a pile of hay each, we drove home and walked in through the back door.  In that back hall we put our horse coats on the hooks I bought for the job, and wellies went on the rack I had made for them.  The radiator next the hooks purred gently heating and drying any damp kit.  The glove box is a beautiful carved thing from my parents house, closes firmly and sits next to geraniums on the sill next to the worktop I had built so we had a space to put things down on our way in and out of the house.  It's also there for shoe cleaning, and for laundry baskets for the tumble dryer plumbed in underneath the cream tiled surface, which shines and reflects light back into the brick and terracotta painted space.  The dog has his own quarters too, next to the tumble dryer, and a bed that fits.  We took our horse things off and left them there, opening the door to the kitchen, warm and clean, and through to our front room, where not a blade of straw was to be seen, as ever, and the scent was of candles and furniture wax.  I've recently hung a curtain over the front door, we have no hall, my home used to be a shop, and with the closing of the curtain the world was pushed further away.  I had door curtains at Shamrock and I did love the cosiness once we were shut away for the night.  But the dog had to go to his kennel on the yard, and the wind whipped your face even emptying the bin,  going for logs or filling the coal buckets.  It was all such hard work, just keeping going at this time of year.  And saturday mornings when you should be greeting the weekend with a smile, the list of jobs went on and on, and the mud glistened from the paddock.

7th January
It's now the day after the anniversary of the Absent Father leaving, and actually I'm glad I left our home.  Angry that he didn't think to ask me, didn't consider me of relevance in a future he wanted, perplexed as to why I wasn't worth the effort. Have I moved on?  Or perhaps I'm just revealing the person I always was, or could be, if you didn't believe the publicity.

I have some resolutions though, things to work towards:

1. Getting fit(ter)
2. Drinking less
3. Losing weight
4. Not working too hard
5. Finding some worthy sort of a hobby that can occupy me
6. Writing better poetry and prose
7. Having some guilt-free fun

I know if I'd been at Shamrock I would have only considered the first three as worthy.  How silly.  Life is for living.

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it

Happy New Year