The balm of Fairy Trails and run away dogs

Charlotte has started texting; she sent me loads of smiley faces and said “I love you.” It made me feel wonderful. Earlier Wendy had come to cuddle me in bed, while the coffee was on the stove getting ready to bubble.

Charlotte and Wendy were due to go and watch the Lion King at the children’s cinema and I was due to take Dash the Dog out for a walk but when we walked out of the house, we found a driech, drizzly day. Dash looked at the wet concrete with disdain. Wendy said that he had more sense than to want to go for a walk and yet I insisted he needed one.

By the time we were approaching Clydebank the rain had gone; there were patches of blue in the sky and I was still talking about my Dad and how I feel about his death. Until last night I didn’t want to; was monosyllabic, full of ‘fine’ when Wendy asked me how I was feeling; stating the bare:

“I feel empty” “I feel nothing” “I am not upset” “I slept fine, but probably because I drank so much whisky” “I didn’t sleep at all.”

And Wendy kept on asking, kept on looking at me sideways; checking how I might be doing and somehow I just did not want to talk at all; didn’t want a hug, didn’t want anything.

And then last night I wrote about Boarding School Syndrome and started talking. I don’t know where it came from. I missed my favorite programs on television so busy was I with our conversation. Today I found posts about dead parents on facebook, read some of the research. Carried on talking with Wendy.

It feels so good to have cast aside that barrier to conversation; to have found Wendy and the children again.

And it is doing the small things that make the difference.

Yesterday, we took the children swimming. James grumbled and whined all the way there, saying it was too frightening; saying

“Why do I need to learn to swim” “I will never swim when I grow up”

He has this particular teary whiney protest that does the opposite it is intended to do; it grates so much!

During the journey we stopped for Wendy to go to the chemist. He immediately cheered up when she left the car and then went back into full on whine mode when she returned.

Reassured that his worries were maybe not as bad as he was making out, we carried on over the hill to the Vale.

I loved the times when Wendy and me went swimming while the children were at their lesson before we had Dash and I had to look after him instead.

There is something about half an hours swimming and then playing in the big pool with the children. That smooth, smooth, feeling. Feeling fresh and supple and clean. One of the best feelings ever.

Nowadays I go the antique shop in the old ‘torpedo factory’; leaving Dash in the car; while I imagine having a bigger house and enough money to put old oak bookcases in it, brass coal scuttles, weird ornaments. I rarely buy things but this time I got a small something for Christmas for Wendy and it only cost me five pounds!

Later in Christy Park with Dash the dog; I found myself photographing the autumn leaves on the path. The green sycamore ones, in contrast to their older browner neighbors; the copper scatter of leaves from beech trees. I loved it.

When Dash did his poo I suddenly remembered that Wendy had the poo bags with her; tried to pretend I didn’t notice what he was doing and then found a spare bag in my pocket; hoped people noticed me going back to pick up his pooh, and later on hoped that they didn’t notice when he did a second one and I definitely had no bags left to use.

I worried that there might be secret cameras recording my not picking up the poo, that, when I come back in two weeks time, there will be photo’s on the railings and walls saying;

“Have you seen this man?”

I arrived back early at the pool and sat on a wet bit of concrete. It was lovely. Dash the dog sat besides me and occasionally rested his head on my knee.

Children coming out with wet hair and bags full of damp towels paused to stroke Dash. Mothers said anxiously; “Leave the dog alone.”

And I looked at the colour of the autumn leaves; felt the breeze on my face, felt happy and alert even though I had only slept for a couple of hours the night before.

Dash was almost as excited as the children when they came out and saw him. He stood on his back legs to cuddle Wendy, who looked very happy and said that after a number of meltdowns the children did really well and had a great time.

In the car James tried to have another meltdown when we said we were going to the Halloween Fairy trail in Luss but by then he was in too good a mood to sustain his pleas to go home instead.

Walking up over the bridge on our way to the woods, we saw all the traffic was stationary; that there were police cars and ambulances all flashing with blue lights a hundred yards away on the A82. Wendy said it was probably just a bump and I said;

“Did you not see the ambulance that rushed past us on the way here?”

Wendy glanced at Charlotte and her brother James, and I realized it was all to stop a panicky reaction to someone else’s tragedy. That, for Charlotte, the spectacle of an accident in which nothing much happened was far, far, preferable to knowing some people were presently in some sort of agony.

We walked through the kissing gate and had all our kisses. Well, I kissed Wendy and Wendy kissed the kids. I said next time we could go up the hill to our right, that it would be lovely with the brown bracken, the green grass, the sights over to the islands on Loch Lomond. The children immediately agreed, almost started off up the hill and then saw how steep it was and said that they would never go up it; never ever.

The woods were lovely. Still. A bright kaleidoscope of browns, yellows, reds and greens in the trees. The sound of birdsong. The smell of the woods; how do you describe it? At one point a sort of mulchy smell, at another the cleanness of a bright autumn day and later on the pungency of mushrooms.

The children put their hands on the worry remover carved into the wood; stopped at all the boards, felt the artificial cobwebs, placed coins at the fairy doors where the fairy dust was, looked for dummies in the tub by the stream and teeth at the tooth fairy place. Were delighted that they found graffiti from their school friends there.

They carried a huge lump of slate with them for ages, which James said would protect the whole family and which delighted me because, this time, he included me in the definition of family.

James threw leaves and twigs into the river from the bridge that went over it. Dash really wanted to play with an excited golden retriever which looked at him with confusion and continued to play with its huge branch.

We passed the weir and Wendy said I would explain to the children what a weir was for, when we got home, which alarmed me because I suddenly realized that I have no idea why people build weirs on Highland Rivers.

We encountered a collie dog that Wendy was frightened wanted to fight Dash, as it crouched near him, staring, with his teeth bared. In the end we watched him in the clear river, dipping his head in the cold water until we moved on.

Days like that are wonderful, they take your thoughts far, far, away from you, fill you with happiness.

And this morning I grumbled that our family were clarty, untidy, reprobates when we got in the car and it was full of rubbish and smelled of rotting cabbage.

Wendy laughed, agreed that I was the tidiest in the house and she the worst but asked who was the grumpiest for which I admitted responsibility; asked what we would prefer? A tidy house or one in which people laughed all the time and I said she wasn’t funny, while laughing at all her teasing.

A good journey.

After dropping them off in Clydebank I went to Bowling, where the car park was almost full. I nearly had to get out into a puddle.

Dash was delighted to be out in the fresh air and the smells of the world, had to wee on almost everything he saw.

I like Bowling. I loved that time ages ago when we crossed over a fence and walked to the old harbor where there are the rusting hulks of all the old ships that I see partially covered at high tide or resting on the mud at low tide when I go past on the train. That time I remember we took lots of pictures, had lots of kisses, laughed a lot.

This time I went the other side of the canal down to the muddy beach type bit with the old, old, stakes of wood sticking up out of the side of the Clyde.

I trudged in my welly boots with Dash on the lead. The last time I was here, he had fallen in love with another dog and dashed off after it when I let him off the lead only returning half and hour later attached to the very kind other dog owners own lead.

This time he had seen another dog and I knew would rush up to it whatever I did so I kept him on the lead. That dog and its owner left quickly and after twenty minutes of looking at the Clyde, the seaweed, the crows and the gulls I thought it safe the let Dash off the lead to play.

Like a rocket, he went in the direction the other dog had taken. My increasingly loud and frantic shouts of Dash and STAY! had no effect whatsoever. I found him later wandering among the trees obviously unsure which path the dog had gone along.

Back on the lead, I berated Dash the dog, made him walk to heel. Told him about all the snuffling about he could do if he hadn’t rushed off; looked at the Clyde sparkling through the trees, said; “We could have been walking along that beach!”

Looked at the yellow leaves outlined by the sun, said “I could have been photographing them.”

I cheered up by the time I rejoined the canal path, wondered what it would be like to live on one of the barges; whether I would really love that or not, watched the seagulls squabbling over bread; a moorhen almost running along the surface of the water as it flew away from a rival.

We encountered the disappearing dog, its anxious owner holding it as far away as possible when it reared up wanting to attack Dash. “See you would have only been bitten if you had found him!”

I told Dash and since then I have come home, made soup, written this.

Dash has lain at my feet on the bed but I think is now at his lookout tower trying to see if the neighborhood cat is lurking anywhere nearby to be barked at.

Wendy is due home soon.

She will go out to her mum in the evening and then we will cuddle in front of the tele to watch Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café. I am really looking forward to that.

I don’t know whether I will drink too much again, I expect I will.

I do not know how I will sleep or how I will feel. I finish my compassionate leave next week. I will have had three weeks off. I already know I am going back to work too early and do not know why I am doing it. It feels totally irrelevant; work that is. I cannot see the point of it or the need for it.

It is funny this feeling; living in a sort of void or a space where normal meaning doesn’t apply. I am glad Dad died without the terrible suffering that was facing him, glad I made up to him for all those terrible years of hating him. Glad he made up to me for some of his mistakes. Glad that I gave him some pleasure in his later years. It should all be ok. And yet I feel odd, just odd, just disconnected.

I am so lucky I have my family here; my walks, my music, Dash the dog, fresh air on my face, a warm house, a warm house with laughter and drama, a warm house with laughter and drama, mini-adventures and lots and lots of love.

It would all be so different if I didn’t have Wendy, If I didn’t have her to point out just how amazing my Dad was and how lovely he was to her. That makes all the difference.

I need to follow Wendy’s resolution not to try to be perfect, not to beat myself up for things I have and haven’t done and I need to remember how much joy occurs when you do your very best to look for the positive in the people around you. Ah this is good!

Time to find Dash again; taste that soup; read my book.