Calmly the day begins and humankind open their eyes and resolve to do well
To start anew and respond not react
Then the first gust of derision, division, drivel and dirt sweeps us up
Sucks us into the whirlpool
And our better selves are lost, faint wisps still linger in our pyjamas
Like boys on a night out who only wanted to have fun
We start brawling, throwing punches, slipping and falling
Until…
It begins again in the morning
The calm is after and before
And we never learn.
All the stories I thought I might write, now seem insignificant
All the things that broke my heart, wrenched it apart, now are forgotten
All the moments I thought I would never forget, now are a blur
Even the future that stretched ahead, now contracts
A tiny window of time
I cannot see the horizon
But I know I am looking towards the west
Where the sun sets.
thoughts swim
tadpoles
wiggling up
flashing
the light catches a few
I scrutinise one
but it
slips away.
I am lying in bed staring out the window, images swirling in my head, my brain hopping around with a vague goal of getting up but no impetus. Two birds fly past the window, over the patio, heading for the sliding doors. One darts left at the last minute and the other flies straight into the glass door. Thud as it hits the door, another thud as it hits the ground. Silence. Then a whimper. Silence.
In the split second that they attracted my attention, I had noted they were Red-winged Starlings. I do this every time I see a bird; name it in my head. I am four floors up so I live in the birds’ space. Hawks and doves fly past at eye-level. Mousebirds nest in the creeper and mannikins munch my grass. My heart jumps at the thought of a starling killing itself. I don’t understand it as they are always around and this hasn’t happened before, not with a starling.
Questions whirl; is it a young bird? is it dead? why did this have to happen? It is horrible. Much as I love birds I prefer them alive to dead, (unless they are chickens). Now I have to go out there and inspect the situation. I don’t want to. If I didn’t feel like dragging myself out of bed earlier, I’m even less inclined to now.
After berating myself for ages, still staring out of the window into the middle distance, I jump up and go to the kitchen to make coffee, avoiding the sliding door. I dread opening the door and seeing the stiff little body lying there. I dread having to dispose of it. I don’t even know what to use or how I should dispose of it. Surely I can’t just chuck it in to the dustbin?
I peer through the glass. There it lies. Little black body with wings folded hiding the red flashes. Though they aren’t really red, more rusty-coloured. Big breath in and I open the door slowly. Next thing the bird twitches, rolls over and flies away.
My jaw drops and my heart lifts. I feel lighter. I sit down, not only relieved that I don’t have to deal with a dead bird but also happy that its alive. I am amazed because it was lying there for at least an hour. Probably stunned not dead. My opening of the door triggered its action.
I think of all the times in my life when I have been knocked down, stunned, bombarded with life events that seemed insurmountable.
Yet I am here still. I realise that I have never been defeated. Only stunned.
#IamRedwingedStarling
When the father of the de Vries triplets turned 34, I said we would never forget his 34th birthday.
Now they are turning 34. The concertina of time tricks my mind.
I wrote this anecdote a few years later.
Lucky I’m such a hoarder. This little gem transports me straight back to that moment and I can have a good laugh at how upsetting it seemed at the time. I can also remember the 29 year old me trying to keep her head above water with no clue of what the future might hold. That future, now elapsed, has been both better and worse than I could have imagined. At that stage, we had not even discovered that Julia (Trip A in hospital) was cerebral palsied.
This is them at around the time of the tipsy tot incident. Michael was not even 3 then; he looks like a giant next to them.
I used to try all sort of things for their birthdays. I had read about triplets when I was pregnant and many said that they had hated the fact that in all birthday pictures, they were all photographed together, that they always had the same cakes and that they were treated as a homogenous lump. I took this to heart and every birthday, I made sure that as well as the group photo, photos were taken of them individually. The joint birthday party was quite hectic so one year, I tried staggering their parties; one from 10 to12, one from 12.30 to 2.30 and one from 3 to 5. What a stupid idea.
The next year, I went for different days; that was also exhausting. In hindsight, I’m not sure any of this mattered. Here’s one of the early ones; notice all the different cakes. That was thanks to my friend, Shelagh who was a whiz at cake making.
Birthdays became easier once they hit their teens; we sometimes did outings instead of parties. This was a picnic at Tala Game reserve.
This was a harbour boat trip.
And this was about a year ago at big brother, Michael’s wedding. They are all big now and grown-up.
It’s a rare occurrence for them to be together on a birthday now, has been rare since they left school. So weddings are when we have the opportunity for group photos.
Despite ups and downs, trials and tribulations, I’ve enjoyed these 34 years more than I ever imagined I would.
Searching and seeking and wanting, wanting so much, yet not wanting; hiding and creeping and wanting nothing. Sunny but sad, passionately passionless yet hating, hating. Sunny but sinking, swimming and winding, wailing, wishing for what, what, what? Oblivion, release and peace at last. Having fun, being lazy, lazy lurking alone behind the rock; not being the rock. Yet reaching from the fathoms up to the sun. Without effort, without guile, guiltless, groping. No blindness just calm and peace, perfect peace.
Tentacles or tendrils, the fine line between
caressing and crushing
squeezing and strangling
Lurk, lurch, stumble, trip
hide in the corner, off-balance
examine
is this heart true?
is it stuffed with pearls or are those pips
spat out after the flesh is sucked off
is this a heart of gold?
a bleeding heart that argues and breaks but is not broken
is in one piece
but somehow intact
Squash it down
Push it away
and slap a smile on your silly face
Let it all gather
that gravelly grief
and form one hard stone in your silly heart
Net all those butterflies
Flitting around, beating their wings
and banish them permanently from your silly gut
Ignore the blood flowing,
pulsing and pumping
It won’t burst from your silly veins
Become a lake
No ripples
Awkward in my own skin
I walk self-consciously into the room
No-one notices me, do they?
Or do they see that I know not how
to walk
I put one foot in front of the other
Like so
But it feels not
easy
Should my hips sway?
or be thrust forward…
why can these hips not
decide on their own
I get there
Slide into a seat
We look at slides
Who is that person on the left?
It is me…can you not see me?
perhaps I don’t look like myself
…an indiscriminate generic person who is on the left in a photograph
She is the one that hurts – the little girl
Look at this:
Bold confident woman striding through life
knocking obstacles
to the left
to the right
What could touch her?
Framed in the past
little girl in the party frock
sucking her thumb
bewildered
She is the one that hurts
stuck in her frame
She is confined there by wooden lies
screams of dissent
tearing of warmth
surrounded by artefacts that comfort
She is the one that cries
Not me
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