Photographs and memories

Thinking about early memories, I realize how photographs have a big impact on what I remember. There are some photographs of me, about 1 year old, stout in a (duffel?) coat, a coat with those oblong buttons that go through loops on the outside. My hair is still soft and short. I am holding the big teddy I got for my first birthday or Christmas. A black and white photo. I am outside, in the snow, going to Granny’s house in Daddy’s car, with a teddy nearly as big as I am. But I am holding it very seriously. That is my task at the moment. Move through the snow with the teddy.  

Do I remember this happening? I feel like I do. How do I know where I was going? I suppose Mum probably told me when I saw the photo. Anyway, where else would I have been going? It was a big occasion, though. The newness of the bear, all fluffy and soft. I feel like I can smell that new furriness.  He is still in my cupboard now, that bear, here in
Darwin. I don’t think I have anything else from that time, but he is there. Flat. Stitched up at the back with red thread. A yellowish grey colour, he folds in the middle. Probably smells a bit mouldy right now, with all the rain we’ve been having – but that’ll wear off in the Dry Season. 

He is still important, now, as he was then, when I was making a big trip. Going in the car. During the week, Mum and I went to Granny’s – and everywhere else – on the buses.  

Although now I remember – when I was very little, we lived with Granny, in

Tates Avenue

. I wonder when we moved to

Moyard
Park? I’ll have to ask. It was a big step. I will write about that, too. Where you live in
Belfast is seen as a significant identifier. But my parents didn’t fit in with the crowd. As always, they lived and did things in their own way.

To face reality or to look away?

How much is it necessary, right now (or next week), to face up to exactly what is happening in my body? I would rather wait. I would rather nothing was changing too, but it is…but is it changing urgently enough that I need to find out now? Couldn’t I wait and see, seeing as it all still bearable, and I can still live with it? I could just see if it stays bearable for next week, and the week of family, without having major new information from the extensive CT scan booked for next Tuesday. I can put it off. It is up to me.  

But then again, perhaps we’d all be better off with new information? Would it be better if we all knew exactly how everything is now? What is better? What way will we all be happier together? What way will we all have ‘better quality of life’? What is that, ‘quality of life’? Maybe sometimes quality of life is not looking at what it is still possible to ignore while it is still possible to hide from it… 

One thing I don’t accept is that the new information should decide whether or not I continue on Herceptin. I don’t think we’ve given it enough time.   

I did get to the pool this morning, and walked in the water. That was wonderful.

Letting go of little things

Today was about letting small changes flow naturally into my time, letting go of the resistance. It wasn’t easy, but it did evolve, with degrees of acceptance. It increased my awareness of how letting go of little things on a moment to moment basis makes a big difference to enjoying and being in the present. 

I didn’t sleep all that well. I kept thinking about waking up, because someone was calling at 8.30am, and coming around at 9am. Now, there is no need to wake up through the night to reflect on that, is there? But I did. Then I struggled to wake up. Then I got cranky waiting to eat – it was a short time, but I got cranky anyway, because I was tired, and because I thought ‘I would run out of time’ before the arrival. I ate. I got ready. No call yet. And I realised it didn’t matter. It was okay.  

The call and visit did come, later, and were very good and enriching. But the challenge was the initial letting go.  

In the afternoon, the physio adds new exercises to my program, and suggests I go walking in the public pool. I am delighted with this, but again – my mind sees problems. I want to go now! I have to hurry up! But today we have someone coming to fix things at home. Tomorrow I have a visitor at 10.30am, I have doctors’ appointments at 1pm, the kids need Mike to take them places in the afternoon. So when I come back from the physio, I spend most of my meditation time reflecting on when I can get to the pool. Try to change today? Cancel tomorrow morning? What shall I do, what shall I do? It goes round and round my head, I feel teary. All I want to do is go to the pool, why should it be so hard? Then again, why do I need to hurry? Oh, but I do, I do, I need my legs to get better… 

So the thoughts and feelings go round and round. But gradually, I feel the still centre is there. I can go there, even though the other thoughts still flit and jump. I can watch them come and go, the worry, the attachment to doing now, to fitting in, to trying to do everything – because that is there too – if I go to the pool, I mightn’t have time to write my blog, write my stories, do the other neck exercises I planned to do…perhaps also I am not sitting in the right way to meditate, perhaps I am doing it wrong, not maximising my healing, trying to do too many things at once…and then it all lets go…it doesn’t matter…it’s all right…what I am doing is all right, it is what I am doing…it is what I am… 

So the afternoon was peaceful. Listening to my son practise his trumpet (perhaps not everyone’s idea of peaceful…). Talking to my daughter and doing the leg (but not yet the neck) exercises.  

When I check on the receding gum in my mouth, I feel a chalky space/texture under the gum line. It reminds me. I must enjoy now. I have enjoyed today. It would have been hard to enjoy if that tooth had broken. But it hasn’t broken, it doesn’t hurt. I didn’t go to the pool, but my leg is better. I let go of resistance. I keep enjoying today.

A bird of chaos

I remember being in the kitchen of our flat in
Moyard
Park in
Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I was born. I am sitting at the table, my feet dangling down from the chair. Suddenly there is something noisy and unusual happening. Beating swirls through the air, sudden movement in front, behind, all around. What is it?  

“Oh, a bird!” my mother says.  

A bird.  But birds are quiet things. I see them outside. They fly silently, they hop, they peck, they fit smoothly into the nature of things.  

Now here is a bird of chaos, all wrong, just because it is in the wrong place. I wonder at it. I am delighted and a little bit afraid. The random dashing movement through the air is hard to see. It is hard to understand. A bird? This is not what that word means!  

My mother runs around the kitchen as the bird swoops and dives and bumps. Why is she doing that? It is exciting and puzzling.  

And then it’s quiet again.  

“It’s gone,” says my mother.  The kitchen is just a kitchen. 

This is what I ‘remember’ as being my earliest memory.  It’s hard to know what is an early memory: sequence and order not being that significant in the mind of a child. How old was I? In what I see, I feel small, everything else is big. Part of why I identify it as being so early is the sense of wonder and surprise that something I had definite associations with was ‘being’ something else, it was a world view re-making.

So my earliest memory is of surprise, curiosity, wonder at the world and how it changes.

 

Better than yesterday

Everything is much better this morning. Not physically, I guess it’s similar, although my face is a bit more relaxed, but nose is not right. But I feel bright and my head feels clear. I slept well and didn’t wake up until 8.30. The past few mornings, I’ve been waking up early and still tired and it’s most frustrating – why not sleep? 

This morning I’ve put on my 70s video hits CD and I’m doing some of my sitting and lying down dancing physio and writing. I feel like just having fun. I have no appointments today. Maybe we’ll go out for lunch. Or maybe not.  

Note: I do so want to cling to this lightness again! Already I’m afraid of it fading, of it being tentative – I don’t want to look at it too hard, I don’t want to disturb it, in case it vanishes away again. That’s how it is. But also I am enjoying it.

Loss

It’s been hard this afternoon. The feeling in my nose chased away as it has off and on, and hasn’t really come back over the past few hours. The left side of my face won’t move properly, and my left back molar feels loose, the gum has receded. Air feels cold in my numb nostrils, a strange curling sensation. When I lie flat, I don’t breathe comfortably, there is a wheeze and a tightness in my chest.   

I try to accept it all, that this is how it is. But I am still sad and I feel the loss. I do so want to keep at least this well for longer. The doctors told me last week not to walk much since the other leg was hurting. That has helped with that pain, although I was disappointed to not be increasing mobility. But still, the left leg has been getting better, more flexible, stronger, every day.  

No matter how much I philosophize, meditate, think, let go – there is no doubt about it – if things get better, everything is easier, and if they get worse, it is harder. I know it will change, one way or another. Even if things get worse, once I accept, it will get easier again. But the change itself, the thoughts, the feelings…they are still intense.  

Intensity. That is a part of being alive.   Mike and I will have a gin and tonic and watch Miss Marple on TV.  I played Scrabble with the kids this afternoon. That was fun. All part of being alive. Today.

Purpose and peace

So many of us want so much to be helping, to be making a contribution to our world, other people, other living creatures, the planet. We are driven by this, always judging ourselves, the way we spend our time, on how useful it is to some wider purpose, social or creative.  

There is nothing wrong with helping, with working for the greater good, with creating the new and wonderful. Except often I see it leading people into dissatisfaction with themselves, with who they are, because they are always wanting to do more, to have done more.  

I’ve been re-reading some of my old journals, and so often I was dissatisfied with what was a vibrant, happy, exciting and fulfilling life. I was being all that I could be, but I didn’t realise it. I was choosing and being authentically, in and of myself, but I was making judgements then about my life that had to do with the outcomes that I had no control over.  I see others do this all the time too. It is what I am still trying to let go of now.  

I feel now deeply that if we relax into who we truly are, then our being, our existence, is a blessing to others. This is the way it is. Each of us is a vibrant thread of life, inspiringly linked to the next in its very essence. That is our purpose, to be what we are, today. Everything else flows from there, everything else is extra. 

The incredible lightness of being

I love that phrase, ‘the incredible lightness of being’. There is a book and movie called ‘the unbearable lightness of being’. That always fascinated me, too, although I haven’t read or seen it.  

‘The incredible lightness of being’ perfectly describes a feeling of freedom and harmony with everything, in the present. It can happen during meditation, often if I’m lucky, and sometimes, blessedly, it just happens. It is a feeling of light as opposed to darkness, and also a feeling of light as opposed to weight. 

Other times are heavy and dark and weighty and full of a sense of catastrophe. And then the darkness and weight peel away and float off, and the incredible lightness of being is still there. Thank God.  

So next time I feel the incredible heavy darkness of being, perhaps I will drop everything and meditate. It isn’t easy, of course, to start meditating from such a state. But then nothing is easy from such a state. And also, it’s fine to just lie here and observe sadness and thoughts and see if the letting go might happen, and if it does it does, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. And accepting that seems to help it happen. Accepting it is part of the divinity of everything, of what is right now, and that it changes, instead of fighting to overcome.  

Any time we are fully present, we are meditating, always healing, always alive.

Right attitude

The right attitude is to accept the divinity of what is, now. To live and be in the present, with what is, appreciating as much of it as possible.Feeling the life that is there. Letting go of the rest.
Letting go of the future.Including the immediate future. Letting go of responsibility for experience, mine and others. Paradoxically, this makes the experience easier for everyone. Instead of each of us suffering for the other’s suffering, we can be who we are together.

Creating a story

When I’m writing, I’m creating my own story. Quite often I discover what I think as I write it. The current (temporary) truth becomes evident as I put it in written words. Written words don’t go round in my head in the same way that thoughts do. They may not come out perfectly linearly or logically, but they have to be in one layer, in one sequence. Like time, fixing the words and thoughts in time, locking them in for at least that moment. Writing has always been that way for me, especially journal writing. But even fiction writing, even humorous kids’ stories, were always capturing some aspect of myself. Perhaps this self-creation is part of the upliftingness of writing. That, and the sharing and communication, the feeling of linking with others, which is always important.