LESSONS; SO LATE.

LESSONS; SO LATE.

Yesterday after school, while I was making tea, Wendy took wee Charlotte down into the forest walk where the bramble bushes are. Despite having an unopened jar of store bought bramble jam they both wanted to pick enough brambles to make their own jam.

Just as I was about to put the potatoes into the oven, the door opened and a wailing Charlotte tumbled in and rushed upstairs to the shower.

While she was picking the berries, she stood on a wasps nest and the furious insects poured out and flew up the inside of her trousers stinging her. The stung her mum too when she tried to rescue her. The shower was to get them off and out of her clothes.

They spent the evening taking antihistamines with creams and cold packs pressed against their numerous stings.

This morning I came downstairs and put the coffee on and started making the children’s lunch while Wendy clamped the downie over her head to get more sleep and Charlotte snuggled in, also grabbing the last remnants of the night.

While Wendy was drinking her coffee, I asked Charlotte what she wanted for breakfast but she only buried herself further under the downie. Wendy put her school clothes on the sofa bed and she curled even further under the downie and shouted from underneath that she wasn’t going to school because of the wasps of last night.

After threats to phone her Dad, threats to phone the school and say she was refusing to go to school and a very teary Charlotte huddled in the sitting room; Wendy came to me in the kitchen and said she had changed her mind, that even Charlotte’s brother, James, thought she should stay at home and what did I think?

For a brief moment a flash of irritation crossed my mind, that flicker of she shouldn’t get away with it; to be followed by; it was horrible for her to be chased by the angry wasps and a relieved;

“Yes of course.”

Her Dad was kind when he heard of our drama about school but threatened to send homework through which made Charlotte smile. The Headteacher, had no problem with it either.

These events make me pause. I tend to cast back to my childhood for glimpses of what is right and wrong and know that as a child the idea of my will overcoming an adult’s would never ever have been an option. I reach for that knowledge and find it battles my own life now. I would never ever have dared to challenge my parents or my teachers. I always felt their power was absolute. That memory hangs throughout my life now.

When the children are out of order I tend to think they should not be allowed to get away with their behaviour; tend to think they should be sent to their room or punished or at least say sorry.

Wendy has opened my eyes to the realisation that if they are out of order, outrageous even, in their behaviour that there is probably a good reason for it. She has shown me that gentleness, laughter, hugs and giggles may tease from them their worries, because there always are worries at these times, bursting to get out and find some little place of peace.

While Charlotte ate her honey loops in front of the telly next door I emptied the dish washer; tidied away the sofa bed and noticed the statement about something that happened to me at school over forty five years ago that I am meant to be signing and scanning and sending back to the police in the next couple of days.

I paused at that and remembered my shattered dreams from last night where I could not get comfortable and felt full of anxiety about how to live my life, approach my work, my family. It made me remember the last few weeks where I have had to fundamentally re-evaluate my character and how I think people see me; that shocked realisation that how I see myself may be totally flawed and the void in perception this is causing.

And with that I remembered the theme for tonight’s readings around suicide prevention. There is a book in my bookcase all about that and maybe one day I will read it but just for the moment I think of Charlotte downstairs; probably drawing while vaguely watching ‘I Carly’; feeling safe and looked after.

I do not have the wit or the skill to know how to be an ideal parent and I have no idea what I would have needed in my growing up or even if it would have made any difference in stopping my constant desire as an adult to cease to exist but I am fairly sure that what I learnt as a child caused some of the insecurity that is such a part of my life.

For me, knowing the children feel safe enough at home to be rude and to swear and to challenge us; feel safe enough with their mum to cuddle up with her at night and talk about what has gone wrong at school. Happy enough and secure enough to make fun of me and, in the case of one, to give me great big ‘I love you hugs’ and, in the other, to pretend to be mortally afraid that I will get too close to him while giggling all the time, paints a very different picture to the one I remember of my childhood.

I am sure that love and kindness and warmth are far, far, better than thinking I had to do everything my parents ever told me to do; much better than worrying about that teacher whose idea of tenderness was anything but tender. Those crowded dormitories where it was better to keep private and silent; hide emotion far, far, away. Where it was important to seal the idea that you are loved deep away from your consciousness because what you are experiencing feels anything other than love.

It feels strange that now that I am approaching or maybe already in the middle of old age that the ten year old twins are already more mature than I have ever been; that I could learn from Charlotte how to dare to give her a cuddle back or from James how to risk rejection with some silly trivial action that I am too frightened to do just now.

To have found this family is wonderful. When there is no one in the house I still wander around it saying “I want to die” but more and more I wish I were twenty, maybe thirty years younger; ready to find out just how wonderful life can be.

(First performed at Ubelong Glasgow, September 2021)

(Photo : sculpture on the Clyde at Bowling -Sept 2021)