340 Comments
User's avatar
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jul 6Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

My son came back for the weekend and it’s so lovely to see him which is rare since he moved away to go to college and then to work ten years ago. He’s a young, fit, good-looking man with a swagger and a dark sense of humour. He’s also a young man who hasn’t recovered from my leaving his father and separating the family when he was a child.

His arrival was a surprise on Friday night and I was alerted by the dog just before he came into the house - a force of highly charged energy although he had driven for 5 hours to get here in his twenty year old, small engine van. Once in, he announced a desire to strim and help me with the overgrown garden.

Too soon I said the wrong thing, and as usual, our harmonious frequency went out of tune. It was too late to buy strimmer cord so he couldn’t start the job he had decided on before he went to the party that he was really back in this neck of the woods for.

I’ve been used to the relative peace of just me and the dog for months now. The relationship with a man who I allowed in to fill up the gaping empty nest soon after my son had gone was over, and I was secretly enjoying the stealth of the undergrowth offering shelter to small birds, as it crept up on this grandmother whenever she turned her back –

I remember Sadie Cashin’s house in London when I was a child, and how when her father got ill and took to his bed, the bushes and trees grew and grew; thick waxy evergreen leaves slowly concealing the house, and how the Virginia creeper covered the walls blocking out the small lead windows, stopping the light. And how after her father died and we went to the wake, the house just looked like an overgrown green shape of house, a mausoleum, dark and deathly quiet inside.

It's not like that here, although the trees are dense and tall and the grass is up to my knees.

Yesterday morning when he got the strimmer working and it sent dirty smoke and shrilling out in the air I felt a sense of panic, of looming destruction, impending death even though the brambles and gorse are anti-social and deserve to be cut back.

Mothers feel the anguish of their offspring in the most animal of frequencies, and I want to protect him from his hurt and sense of abandonment - I resonate and the feelings run deep, the furrows of resentment fully formed offset by attacking thickets, hacking at unruly trees, swearing at the brambles revenge and the horseflies.

Expand full comment
Harriet Mason's avatar

Beautiful piece that really resonates. Two of my three children have left home, one at university, the other has finished uni and is now working. I also know the next two years with my daughter at home will go quickly before Uni beckons. This week I've felt it more intensely than I have in a while with my husband away and the death of our family dog who died last weekend. Thanks for sharing, Hx

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Oh Harriet, thank you for your comment and i’m so sorry to hear about your dog x

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

I love your writing. This paragraph in particular:

“I remember Sadie Cashin’s house in London when I was a child, and how when her father got ill and took to his bed, the bushes and trees grew and grew; thick waxy evergreen leaves slowly concealing the house, and how the Virginia creeper covered the walls blocking out the small lead windows, stopping the light. And how after her father died and we went to the wake, the house just looked like an overgrown green shape of house, a mausoleum, dark and deathly quiet inside.”

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thank you Sarah !

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Really like the final paragraph, so much understanding and care in just a few sentences, as well as the para that Sarah picked out.

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

I love your writing about your relationship with your son and wanting to protect him. You write so well about how fragile and precious visits are.

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thank you Barbara, yes those rare visits are so precious

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

This piece is so powerful in all the quiet scenes. The noise of the machine appearing at the end is just amplifying the tension from before. And it was bittersweet to think about a time my daughter will not live with us anymore. I loved your flashback to your childhood as well. Thank you for sharing.

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thank you Ivett

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

really resonated with this -- the one wrong word, the power of the stimmer as both object and metaphor -- so layered with other memories too which makes it complex and rich.

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thanks Jan, sometimes it’s like walking on eggshells

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

This was very moving, Marika. The part about saying eh wrong thing- made me think about how I say the wrong things to my mother or my brother. One word and it can change the course of the whole conversation. And it made me think of a film called Hope Gap with Annette Benning, Josh O'Connor and Bill Nighy.

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thanks Liza, amazing how one word can change the course…. I’ll look out for the film

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

This is a beautiful piece Marika. It is so rich and evocative. I loved this line - 'I was secretly enjoying the stealth of the undergrowth offering shelter to small birds, as it crept up on this grandmother whenever she turned her back.'

There is such a satisfying interplay between the desire for the wildness of nature and the portrayal of your son in his struggle to impose order and bring control to something. Absolutely loved this!

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thank you Kate. What complicated lives we live

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

So much of the fine balance of family relationships in this piece, Marika, I loved it. The sense that one wrong word can have an impact that ripples on for some time, and also the gorgeous detail where you compare your friend's childhood garden with your own. So excited to see how you respond to Sunday's prompt x

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Thank you Lindsay, I’m really looking forward to Sunday’s session.

Expand full comment
Claire Amritavani Brown's avatar

I read this book last year in the Lake District and loved it. Caro has a way of making you want to see life through a writer's eyes. Even when life is hard, as a writer you can breathe life into your life. That's how I felt about Caro's writing. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Caro Giles's avatar

❤️

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

I am excited for 11am ❤️

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

Yesterday I was invited to perform a set of my own poetry at an event celebrating one hundred and fifty years of the Paisley Trades Council. It took place on Sma Shot Day, a special day in Paisley’s calendar which commemorates the victory of the mill workers over the bosses in demanding the right to a fair wage. Paisley has a radical history of worker activism and a rich heritage of art and music. It is thrilling to be part of the fabric of that and be at a point in my writing journey where I am sought out to share my work. I took the opportunity to walk in the trade union and Palestine section of the Sma Shot Parade, knowing I was being paid to perform to comrades and local worker activists, I felt it was important I participated fully in the activities across the day. It made me reflect on my own history and how I had arrived at that invitation from the Trades Council. I did a business degree undergrad, after graduating I worked in youth and community work, taking on a job that involved running youth provision for asylum seeking and refugee young people in Glasgow’s South-side. I was there for five years before moving to the National Charity Show Racism the Red Card, coordinating and delivering anti-racism education in schools across Scotland for eight years. It was during this time I joined Unite the Union and became involved in the TU movement. Then by way of a part-time masters in Human Rights, during which I grew and birthed my child, I moved to the Teachers Union as a worker organiser for the Educational Institute of Scotland and am now in my ninth year. So that’s the best part of two decades working in education and equality and I feel thrilled that I get to do a job that means something, rather than working for “the man”. I’ve always had a belief in fairness and equality, and recall writing a modern studies personal project in S3, on the work of the commission for racial equality which is now the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a much more toothless quango than its predecessor that helped change UK equality law for the better. Yet, despite this lifetime of personal and professional commitment to equality and fairness, as I walked in the parade and chanted “Viva viva Palestina”, alongside the other activists I felt like an imposter. It’s a gnawing ache that is ever-present and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Perhaps because I don’t go to every gathering and demonstration, have never marched on UK Parliament for a cause that’s angered me, never been kettled by the police or verbally abused by a group of counterdemonstrators, never stood in the rain for weeks on end at every Palestine demo or gathering of people defending the right of migrants and refugees to seek safety. I grew up working class, in a single parent household, affected by parental separation due to my father’s addiction poor mental health. I had a great mum who didn’t descend into victimhood, she pulled herself up by the bootstraps, worked part-time as a youth worker, did an access course and gained a social work degree while looking after three children alone. This changed my life by their being more money around which created a sense of dignity and set me an example that I could achieve a degree and use education as a way to a comfortable life. I think that ‘comfort’ is the crux of it. I am very comfortable with my good job, final salary pension, very comfortable with my lovely home adorned with vintage furniture, fully stocked cupboards, the ability to purchase clothes when I wish, meals out, two holidays a year and don’t feel the panic of the bank balance anymore when an unexpected birthday gift is required. Am I allowed to call myself a working class worker activist when I am self-actualised? I wonder…

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

We do what we can do and contribute how we can and there's no disgrace in being comfortable, if only we all could be, eh? I used to demo regularly and miss that, but physical circumstances make this difficult now, so we do other things. I think the classification of class is always a tricky one: according to my bloke if you work for your living you're working class, but having always been in the sort of jobs you describe I've always felt middle classed, but then with the precariarity of even those jobs it feels like we're all being shoved into working class ... thanks for making me think and remember.

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

My marker is that if I am three pay cheques away from not being able to pay my bills if I was to lose my job, then I am working class. I own no property outright and probably only have four paycheques worth of savings - I am a single parent raising my son alone. I am comfortably working class and privileged with education and therefore opportunity. I think that all working people deserve to feel well-off, yet capitalism drives down wages while the cost of living increases to the demand of growth and profit. There is still work to be done isn't there.

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

thanks for this Donna, it is such a dilemma but I think you are!

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

Thank you, I think so too :-)

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

I puzzle over social class status and markers a lot. It often feels like something you have to be granted or accepted as rather than something you can claim. This has given me more food for thought, thank you.

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

I know many like me - working class kids in middle class spaces.....straddling two worlds.

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

Indeed - it's a subtle and sometimes difficult conflict to describe to other people - look down and you fear being accused of selling-out, look up and you feel like you are not really meant to be there and someone will find you out. Wendy Pratt is very good at writing about this.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

'(when I)...chanted “Viva viva Palestina”, alongside the other activists I felt like an imposter'

Such a thought provoking piece - I loved this line above and your final paragraph. Such interesting themes....

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

"Cloaked in a blanket of privilege, stitched by my accident of birth I am distanced from those born into conflict"

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

As someone who briefly was a climate activist, I can so relate to this imposter feeling!

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

Time to get a bit meta on this and integrate it, shall we? :-)

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

You so are -- it's the identity that has shaped you and no one can take it away.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

What an honest reflection of your privilege and how even if your heart/mind is in the right place, it is not always easy to feel like you're doing the right thing.

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

Something so incredibly powerful in your honest thoughts on protest and class, Donna. What it takes to be able to feel justified in using particular labels, too. A really insightful piece that explores many of the preoccupations we share in these times. Looking forward to seeing how you use Sunday's prompt, and happy holidays!

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

I’m camping out in the box room this morning. It’s normally my husband’s workroom but the house is currently in chaos, piles of books everywhere and mattresses on the floor. We had new carpets put in upstairs earlier this week, finally, after living with the awful brown-beige ones that were here when we moved in eleven years ago. Downstairs I can hear my eldest griping about homework and my husband pottering in the kitchen. The smallest is out at a party, and as soon as this Zoom writing session finishes at noon I need to dash out to pick him up.

Packing everything in our bedrooms up into boxes and moving them downstairs ready for the carpets to be fitted has drawn into sharp focus the fact that our family is in a period of transition. The children are growing up, time stops for nothing and no one and I can no longer pretend that they are even close to being little children anymore. It feels like our family needs to shed a skin like snakes do, or cocoon ourselves caterpillar-like and let everything dissolve into goo before re-emerging in a new form. Maybe it’s more like the slow process by which a river changes course: gradually carving out a new route through the landscape, trial and error, finding new paths and building new rhythms.

I’m not good at thresholds. I’m eager to skip forward in time somehow, jump to the point where we’ve found our new rhythm as a family: parents in their mid to late 40s, children in their teens or almost, all four of us inhabiting separate but interlocking spaces. Independent but supported. I can see a place in our futures where my boundaries won’t have to be so porous anymore, where I can mark out time that is just for me (to rest, to write, to read, to think, to be) and be reasonably confident that I will be able to take it.

But we’re not there yet. The eldest is plunging headfirst into his teenage years - most of the time he’s keen to be independent, to reject my help or advice, but secretly he would quite like me to keep hovering in the background, on hand just in case he might need me after all. The smallest is 9 and I think he can sense that his days of true childhood are numbered, that his tweens are beckoning (if they have not already arrived). At the moment it feels like he’s clinging onto childhood all the tighter, asking me to help him with things he’s perfectly capable of doing himself - getting dressed, pouring milk on his cereal, putting his shoes on.

With the scent of future freedom in the air, I’m feeling irritable and reluctant to help, to be on hand. There’s rage sometimes, elbow deep in the washing up while being asked why a favourite t-shirt isn’t dry yet, or to decide whether Pikachu could defeat Steelix in a Pokemon battle. Part of me is willing time to move faster, to push us through this awkward phase where we’re all still learning how to be in this new version of family life. But the kids keep pulling me back, pinning me down in the present moment. And once I’m pinned down, I’m hit with a wave of longing for previous versions of them both, for family life when they were 5 and 1, or 8 and 4, or 10 and 6. Why am I so desperate for time to pass? Why was I so desperate for time to pass? I know that one day I’ll be longing for this moment right now, for the summer that they were 13 and 9.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

This is so relatable. My two are ten and thirteen. The tension between wanting to freeze time in the 'now' and speed us all through this bit to allow me to carve out a little bit more for myself is very real!

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

Don't wait, take some time for yourself now as you'll just get frustrated / burntout if you don't and it will help all of you. I do knwo it's easier said than done BTW, but just urging you on!

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

I love this, so evocative, and can also relate as a parent of an (almost) 13 year old.

Expand full comment
Harriet Mason's avatar

This is so interesting, I'm in the space you want to be in. One 16 year old left at home, a 20 and 22 year old living their own lives. I remember craving this space I'm in now, and mostly I love it but there are times, like this week (as I wrote about this morning) where I don't know how to be, or who I am in this new space. Each phase of parenting is a chapter in its own right, goes through its own story arc doesn't it. Enjoy the increasing flexibility and elasticity of time, there's more coming your way.

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

I like what Lindsay said earlier about "writing the present". I've spend my whole life anxiously one step ahead..for me it's all been about fear & control. I am at the sweet spot of healing where I can notice when I'm doing this and remind myself to enjoy the moment, even through transitions, house remodel, changes to routines and endings of things. Who doesn't love a new carpet 😍

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

Such good writing, l really enjoyed it. Treasure your time with them as they are, mine are in their 30s and yet l look back fondly to the times when they were younger and all safely strapped into the car and we could all go somewhere together.

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

You make this both detailed and relatable. I do remember that tension between "why don't you just grow up already?" and missing the way things used to be. Like grief, it can strike at unexpected moments. Once, I watched my seven year old daughter climb on her bike and ride away without a backward glance, and the future seemed to telescope right into the present for a moment.

Expand full comment
Gráinne Stark's avatar

This is so relatable. I am torn between this stage and the next with a 12 year old and a 19 year old. On one hand I crave the freedom, and on the other I dread the day the house goes quiet.

Expand full comment
Debbie Horrocks's avatar

I love your images of the snake skin/caterpillar goo/ river carving a new path. They all resonate for those transition spaces.

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

I love the way the simple thing of replacing carpets exposes not just floors, but thresholds and changes and all the emotions that they unleash.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Why were you so desperate for time to pass? I don't have kids, and I can't pretend to understand, but there seems to be something of a need for certainty- though not sure what kind of certainty- that you are hoping to get if they reach a certain age. And you also know, there is never any certainty.

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

I think it’s mostly that saying that “the days are long but the years are short” Liza. Some stages of mothering have felt so intense and overwhelming that part of me has almost longed for them to pass, or kept going by reminding myself that they will pass. But then once they have I find myself missing them (or at least feeling nostalgic for them). I agree with you though - there is never any certainty!

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Oh I can feel all of this so very deeply. I read it yesterday and promised myself I’d come back! This sentence in particular captures that sense of longing to be in a different time and place but having no choice but to be in the here and now.

“Part of me is willing time to move faster, to push us through this awkward phase where we’re all still learning how to be in this new version of family life. But the kids keep pulling me back, pinning me down in the present moment. And once I’m pinned down, I’m hit with a wave of longing for previous versions of them both…”

Expand full comment
Sasha Neal's avatar

I feel this very much, especially the complicated relationship with change and time - thank you for your frankness, it's such a powerful thing to see one's own experiences reflected, and so articulately. Love the image of the skin shedding, that sort of continuous cycle of renewal and change. And relate to the never ending sorting and adapting! Lovely piece

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

It's so interesting returning to this piece nearly a week on and thinking about my own experience of mothering similar-aged children in the context of others' comments in the thread who are further on in the journey! I, too, know I'll look back on the summer they were 13 and 10 and miss it dreadfully, but - oh - the weeks where we don't have much planned... EEEEK! Can't wait to see how you respond to this Sunday's prompt! X

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

We have house guests coming on Tuesday, which focuses the mind and directs my energies, if no one else’s. The friends who are coming will barely be here because they’re in the city for something else and our house is simply a necessary base in a city where affordable family accommodation is thin on the ground. I’m good with that. The request felt to me a sign of our friendship. What else is there to say to the honest question of “We aren’t coming to see you, we know, but could we stay with you anyway?”

Of course.

I read somewhere that one of the tests of a genuine friendship is being at peace with throwing open your doors to invited guests without cleaning and tidying first. Without stuffing the evidence of the messy life you actually lead into cupboards and drawers. Without cooking a special meal, without baking a celebration cake, burning incense or doing all the other silly things we do that convince no one that we live that way all the time.

I remember liking this warm approach to hosting, thinking that it sounded to me like the ultimate generosity. Meet me where I am – unvarnished, unembellished. This is me and I know you’ll accept me for that, as I accept you. It made me think of the sorts of spontaneous hospitality I’ve seen and experienced elsewhere in the world that we, in Britain, do so rarely (and poorly). Times when I’ve been welcomed, fed and watered without ceremony. How such generosity – offered without expectation of reciprocity – has felt hard to accept. People without a lot to go around still sharing what they had.

And yet, I’ve spent much of my weekend cloth, duster or hoover in hand. There are cookies in the fridge ready for the oven at a moment’s notice. There are multiple dining options in my head ready to be deployed depending on the amount of time we have with them between arrival and departure. They’ve managed expectations, telling me they’ll barely be here (which I hear as their way of asserting they want no fuss) but none of it stops me from doing the things I do.

I wonder at what the cleanliness and tidiness, the stage management of it all says about my need, still, to be palatable to others. Whether I’ll ever move beyond it, even in the knowing that the doing of it all will likely be felt more as a pressure by my guests to be a certain type of guest given I’ve gone to evident effort on their behalf.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

OMG this is such a woman thing isn't it, this need to present ourselves in the best way?! And yes the type of friend that can cope with 'take me as you find me' is such a gift.

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

Oh yes, I know that feeling well

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Oof, I recognise this so much. It feels a bit like the versions of ourselves we present on social media - take me as I am, but only this carefully curated version of me that I’m showing you.

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

Love this, Lindsay! I wonder what in Carol's piece prompted you to write on this topic...

Totally agree that the spontaneous approach to hosting is most definitely NOT a thing of these islands, and I know because it's something I've seen my mum, and grandmothers, and aunties, do many, many times, and still to this day.

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

I was thinking about Caro's washing on the line, and the often invisible acts of care we perform for others that we don't want praise for, I think. I hadn't thought this is what I'd write about actually! I'll share a pic with you of the object I had in mind from all the cleaning and tidying which I didn't even mention in the piece since the words went a different way altogether!😂

Expand full comment
Harriet Mason's avatar

It's so interesting. I have two sisters and am staying with one from Tuesday to Friday this coming week. I know she will present me with the spare bedroom of dreams. Perfectly ironed, pristine white bed linen, and her husband will cook feasts. It's how they are, they're feeders and comforters and I don't bother telling her not to bother because to not do so is an anathema to her. My other sister however is very much 'meet me where I am' and I, as ever, am somewhere in between. Enjoy seeing your friends and seeing them relaxed and comfortable in your home.

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

Yes, family is a different story again. I might have to dive in to this topic now, you all have just stirred up something in my mind. :)

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

I'd be right there with you, hoovering skirting boards and making every surface pristine before a guest of any description artives. II accept this as part of who I am and it makes my soul feel in order 😌

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

This reminds me so much of how

I am when friends visit[ frazzled after cleaning and cooking) and how l would like to be, enjoying their visit sharing my house not showing it.Must work harder on not working hard to impress.

I really enjoyed this piece.

Expand full comment
Gráinne Stark's avatar

There is no better cleaning done than just before guests arrive!

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

Love that approach! :) for me, there is no more effective cleaning than that. :D

Expand full comment
Debbie Horrocks's avatar

I love the idea of scrappy hospitality, but totally resonate with what you say here about how difficult it is to actually invite someone into the mess.

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

This resonates so much. I really crave to surrender and just allow people in as things are. But I also dread the judgement. (Which is often in my head but not always.) And I also wish for a time when I am organized enough in the everydays that I feel comfortable before and after someone phones saying they're dropping in.

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

love this. Maybe it's a postmenopausal thing, but I've at some point without realising it relaxed about the cleaning -- the bathroom, yes -- and making a comfortable space -- and any excuse to cook because I love it, but the rest I've stopped seeing and I hadn't even realised this till reading this. Thank you!

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

So nice to have friends who feel like they can ask you this and for you to be able to offer it to them. And also the touch of desire to host them well, cookie dough and all. From what I see of you on Zoom, you like to live in a beautiful space, so it is only natural you want to offer that to your guests aswell

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

This got me! “There are cookies in the fridge ready for the oven at a moment’s notice.” I used to be the same…in fact I would occasionally bake first so the scent of fresh goods was wafting around. Not anymore though…since renting and having the littlest I’ve almost stopped caring 🫣

I wonder if it’s because the place isn’t my own… 🤔

Expand full comment
Mothers@play by Leanne Cosser's avatar

This is me!! hehe

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

I don’t remember how many times I’ve travelled this ferry route, but I know I first came to this island in 1979 and have been returning regularly ever since, with a few breaks of a couple of years when my brother was too young to travel such a distance, after my father died, or when there was war. I’ve travelled here from as far as Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.

Sitting on the inner deck, known as the salon, my bare legs feel sticky against the fake leather chairs. The engine makes my computer tremble with vibrations as the ferry approaches its first stop at another island, before setting off again into the sea for another 3.5 hours to reach the mainland.

As I see the port and the dock, my mind travels back a year, to when I was on this boat with a man I once thought was my soulmate. When we arrived at the first stop, where in the past you had to change ferries, I remember standing on the pier, waiting for the next ferry. I was wearing an old linen dress and straw hat, looking at the sea through an iron fence. Somehow, that fence felt like its sole purpose was preventing me from acting out on the urge to jump into the sea, just to break the tension that had grown between us. As we waited for 45 minutes for the next ferry, I remember asking him whether he had found a pet sitter so we could go on our planned trip to Scotland. There was something off about how he replied, but I didn’t pay attention at the time. He said he was planning to look, and I said, "Time is running out." Three and a half hours later, I found out that he hadn’t planned to look for a pet sitter at all—because he already knew he wasn’t coming with me to Scotland. He had already decided we should break up.

Today, I’m looking through the incredibly dirty windows of the ferry, toward the houses across the bay, boats bobbing in the sea, and the sun reflecting off the water’s surface. It’s lunchtime, which could explain why there are no people out there, and the weather outside is hot and heavy with humidity. But here I am in this air-conditioned space, and the only thing that feels heavy is my heart. A year later, despite having agreed that the breakup was the best and wisest choice—my heart is still heavy, and his ghost still looms large. He was walking around me on the island, calling to me like a siren from the sea. He was there in the sound of the cicadas in the trees, the noise I’ve always loved as part of the summer soundtrack, yet he complained tirelessly about it.

The salon is getting busy. This island is bigger and more populated than "my island," and large numbers of people are boarding here, both tourists and locals. Couples, families, groups of friends. The thought hits me: I am again a middle-aged woman holidaying with her aging mother. The voice in my head says, “You’re a loser.” Am I, though? What is the truth? "The mind hits," says Byron Katie. She’s such a strange woman, and so wise. I need to listen to her on repeat, I guess. The voices are getting loud—both those in my head and the ones in the salon — and the past and present blur into one.

I look out into the bay once more and notice that there seem to be even more houses than last year. But do I actually remember how many there were? Who knows. These days, I don’t trust my memory. That’s one thing a relationship like that will do to you, it undermines your trust in your own experience. Didn’t this happen? Didn’t I just say, see, or do that? Am I going crazy?

I now know I’m not crazy. I was never crazy. But for a while, I was confused. I couldn’t see clearly, as if someone had subtly misadjusted the vision on my binoculars, making everything seem off while pretending the settings were fine.

Here I am now, sitting in the same space, reclaiming my ability to adjust my own settings. Choosing what I want to look at, what I want to remember, and what I want to do next. I don’t know yet. But I know it will be what I want. It will be my choice. I will not be told what to do.

Not by a man who complained about the noise of cicadas.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

"I will not be told what to do.

Not by a man who complained about the noise of cicadas."

Love that and the description, I can feel the heat, see the shummer and hear the voices and cicadas.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you Sue, for reading and commenting, I really appreciate it.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

This feels like such a complete piece already - so well structured. I too love your final line - killer!

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you, Kate. The scenes/story just unfolded in front of my eyes, I tried to stay focused on what was there, as Caro's piece suggested and to my surprise, it all just came to me.

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Love the sense of place you’ve created in this piece Liza, and how you’ve woven the past and present together.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you Ellen, I appreciate you reading and offering this kind reflection.

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

Ooh, this is very good writing 😲

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Oh Donna, thank you so much for that.

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

Really enjoyed this piece. The ending is particularly powerful.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you, I appreciate you reading and commenting. By the end, I feel like I am stronger as a human being,

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

You know exactly which details build an atmosphere, and I love the subtle way you switch between past and present, the inner and outer world. There is also something very satisfying about the rhythm of your sentences and their construction.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you, Miranda, I guess there was something about the place where I was writing, that just invited this text to be born.

Expand full comment
Gráinne Stark's avatar

Oof this resonated! We recently moved back to my parents house where my 'highschool sweetheart' and I spent a year after school, planning our future and saving for college. After one week on campus he left and returned home, ending our relationship, yet his energy still inhabits this space, and memories still linger on the objects within.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thanks Gráinne for reading and commenting- it is hard to erase some of these ghosts, isn't it. Maybe you can do a ritual cleansing- I just need to remember that I had decades on the island without this man, and will probably have decades after him too.

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

Wow. I am out of words for this one. I agree with other comments, that it is a complete piece, well structured, it pulls me in. And I would also love to read what this woman, free again, has decided to do.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you Ivett, I too want to read what this woman has decided to do. Maybe the Chain will be the space for me to explore that.

Expand full comment
Deborah Brazendale's avatar

Yes! Also here for the 'what happened next...'

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

Really powerful and love how the ferry contains all these memories.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you Jan, for reading and commenting.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

I wanted to give this piece more time, Liza, because it’s so rich. “…and the weather outside is hot and heavy with humidity.” Love me a bit of alliteration, especially when it pulls me right into the moment. And after that I was drawn into the whole piece. That last line feels wistful and tragic all at the same time.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

Thank you Sarah!

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

I’m sitting in my front room as I hear the rainfall strengthen again. I’m thinking of the half marathoners pounding the streets of our small (and growing) town and imagine them welcoming the cool wetness after the heat we have just experienced. I grab my iPad to go into the back garden and capture the sight and sound of the rain as it splashes into the bird bowl, pitter patters off the leaves of the lilac tree I shelter under, bounces off the lavender flowers and flattens the browning grass which still lies uncut after no-mow May. I think too of the people who have lost their lives in Texan flash floods and back to the heatwave of the last two weeks, wondering how many more lives will be lost before people change their behaviour and remember to associate what comes out of taps to what falls from the sky?

This week I tried my first ‘please roll down your window, do you know it’s illegal to sit with your engine running’ intervention. My heart pounded while I breathed deeply, to strengthen my resolve and calm myself. A youngish bloke listening to something loudly playing in his car, next to me sitting quietly in mine, in one of the few patches of shade, agitation growing, waiting for a prescription to be filled. And it worked, he sheepishly said ‘I’m just going’ and he did. Relief.

It’s been a tough few weeks as I fight off the infection in my legs, damaged from lymph node dissection. I’ve only just come off antibiotics that I’ve been on since 12th May as the infection abates and then returns with all the violence of a spike in temperature, chattering teeth, an under the skin rash at the top of the legs, and red, hot, tight skin at the bottom, sometimes all the way up. I’m waiting to see what happens next in this ongoing saga. Emergency antibiotics collected and ready, just in case, ones that still work, as the others stopped...

I sit in my chair, a recliner so that I can raise my legs which are encased in compression stockings that look like a thick aran jumper. They’re effective, but if you try to walk around in them you do a passing impression of Norah Batty (for the non-UK based among you i.e. they rouche around your ankles). Getting old really isn’t for sissies! When they do this op that disrupts your system so radically they cagily mention that you might get lymphoedema. Not that it’s likely given how many nodes they’ve removed, and that once it arrives cellulitis will be hard on its heels if the lymph fluid backs up and you don’t have adequate compression. They don’t tell you that you’ll have to educate yourself and your healthcare givers as the cellulitis doesn’t present in the ‘normal’ way.

There are magnitudes of sorrow we feel: for those we hear about on the relentless 24 hour news cycle, for those whose ignorance compounds the problems that cause us all to suffer, and for ourselves as our bodies change, sometimes through circumstances out of our control.

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Really like the way you’ve explored an idea in lots of different contexts - personal, local and global.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

🙏🏼

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Sue I love how you zoom in and out in this piece - from the wide scope of the global to the deeply personal bodily and back out again. It is very deftly handled and something I would like to experiment with in my own writing.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

🙏🏼

Expand full comment
Gráinne Stark's avatar

I love this, and well done on a successful intervention!

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

Loved how brave you were with the intervention as well as fighting on for healing. I hope healing arrives sooner rather than later. I also loved how you showed parallels of sorrow in wider and closer perspectives.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

🙏🏼

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

I could feel and hear the rain and my heart pounded with you in anticipation of the outcome of your intervention. Beautifully evocative.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

🙏🏼

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

The lens shifts in this are so moving -- from self to wider care -- it gives it a lot of impact.

Expand full comment
Sue Morón's avatar

🙏🏼

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

This is so rich in sensory detail, and the mention of the delightful Norah Batty took me back a few years to watching Last of the Summer Wine with my granda. Growing old certainly isn’t for sissies…your piece shows strength in abundance!

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

Sue, you're holding a lot right now and I just wanted to say that it sounds tough. Thinking of you. Also LOVE that you were able to challenge an engine-idler! Brava! Looking forward to how Sunday's prompt lands with you, and wishing you a lovely Friday evening. x

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

I’m sitting on B’s office chair, in the home office. I hate this chair. It’s heavy, wonky and cumbersome, my left butt cheek sitting slightly lower than the right, the back of it reclining all the way back if I lean back too far and haven’t remembered to lock it in a upright position. Something’s rattling as I write, over the white-noise hum of the server.

Phone pings: my friend wants to go for a quick walk and chat before we’re off to France for the summer.

A knock on the door, and my eldest brings in breakfast: two slices of sweet-smelling French toast on a plate that he leaves by my steaming cup of tea, on the corner of the cluttered desktop, to eat as I write. Later, we’ll go swimming, B and I, to try out the newly set-up buoys at the South Beach – one every 250 metres. It’ll be a challenge. Always is. I haven’t swum like this in a long time. I haven’t written like this in a long time.

If I question why it is that I am compelled to record my life on the page, I suppose it is in order to say: I am here.

I am here.

When I swim, the sea on my skin draws the porous, fluid outline of me, in an ever-shifting manner. As I swim, I write myself into existence.

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

I'm marveling at your son bringing you French toast to enjoy. Sounds amazing!

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

He's 19 and he's pretty amazing alright, even if I say so myself 😅

Expand full comment
Deborah Brazendale's avatar

😆

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Yes! Writing to say I am here. Love the final two sentences Annette, the way swimming and writing can be linked.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

“If I question why it is that I am compelled to record my life on the page, I suppose it is in order to say: I am here.

I am here.

When I swim, the sea on my skin draws the porous, fluid outline of me, in an ever-shifting manner. As I swim, I write myself into existence.” This is everything. So beautiful. I will use this as a prompt!

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

Chuffed that you want to use this as a prompt!

Expand full comment
Deborah Brazendale's avatar

The swimming description is gorgeous. As a wild swimmer, this made me purr 😃

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

“As I swim, I write myself into existence.” Beautiful. Also thinking about how I can train my son (currently two) to make me French toast!

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

My son is nearly 19, but start them early!

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

French Toast 😋 tea, writing, swimming, living 😌

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

Very beautiful metaphor closing this off, but I think it works so well because you set the scene perfectly beforehand.

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

Thank you Miranda, this means a lot.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

I often wonder why I am compelled to write like this and feel that you capture this so elegantly - I am here! I have something so say!

'As I swim, I write myself into existence.' This line... this line....

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

"As I swim, I write myself into existence." oh my. This is everything.

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

I love writing yourself into existence, Annette. And that chair -- so vivid, as are the details that follow.

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

That last line has gotten everyone talking, Annette. It's gorgeous and so very "you". I really like the way you meld the writing and the swimming together, too. Can't wait to see how you respond to Sunday's prompt piece! X

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

Thank you Lindsay, I really appreciate your comment. Last Sunday was great, and I can't wait for the next prompt and writing sprint!

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

‘This house is full of dead things,’ I say, with more than just a little calculation as I reach behind my husband’s head to retrieve the vase that has been sitting there for two weeks now. He does not respond, keeps scrolling on his phone, then sighs and stands and says, ‘I’m going down to watch some cricket.’ He knows that I’ll not follow, so perhaps the words have landed after all.

I walk the rest of the rooms, retrieving, five bouquets – the heavy crystal for the lithe-stemmed lilies, the squat blue pot for tulips, the large-lipped water jug for roses, a spray of baby’s breath steeped in an old coffee jar, sunflowers in a tall tin pail. The flowers have long wilted, water dried up into green scum that coats the innards of each vessel. In the kitchen I snap stems once, twice, folding them in upon themselves and note how sharp now the thorns on these dried stalks, how easily crisp petals fall, how redly pollen stains my fingertips.

*

Farooq bowed a little as was his custom at the end of every class, one hand on his chest. Today, the other hand presenting a cellophane-wrapped bunch – a spray, quite lovely, all pinks and yellows. ‘Thank you sir,’ he said. I had never had the heart to correct this error, and would not do so on this, our last day together.

Behind him the rest of the class waited in line with parting gifts, piling flowers on top of flowers on top of flowers into my arms, until I was laden and laughing, a mezzo-soprano leaving her stage; and all I could think was, too much, it’s too much, at what cost have they managed this?

*

I have read that it is bad Feng Shui to keep dead plants, that as soon as they begin to wilt, you must revive them, or throw them away. But what, I wonder, of those blooms that linger on, still full of life while their companions’ heads begin to list and nod?

I go into the green room where my grandmother’s old monstera - cut and split eight times for eight grandchildren - climbs the wall, chlorophytum comosum spills spidery clumps out across my bookshelves, and the ivy tumbles green tendrils along the window sills. In this place surrounded by these roots, I sit and think about what I will say to him when I go downstairs.

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

I love the both the opening and the closing lines Kate, they pack a real punch! And in between all the different stories linked by the flowers and plants.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thank you for reading and responding Ellen. It was hard for me to post something so unfinished without tinkering away for hours on end....

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

Thank you for sharing this in the form you did. To me, it was complete. And raw. It transported me to those rooms, made me feel a lot of things. Switching between impermanence and being so alive pulled me in. 🙏✨

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thank you Ivett. If I have managed to do any of these things in a first draft then I am on the right track at least....

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

You definitely are, Kate. 😊

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

Ooft, what will you say? This is very evocative. I imagine what the character will do and then remember, it's you, living this moment today and I don't want to say what's in my mind, what this piece has made me feel. I'll member this passage. Excellent 🙌

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Oh I am glad that you read it like this! Thank you for reading and responding. I like to write with some ambiguity and to leave things open to interpretation. Yes, it is a version of 'me', but we are all characters at the end of the day...

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

I loved this. It brings back memories of my days as a teacher and the end of term chocolates.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Ferrero Roche (?sp?) are still a favourite... My heart sinks when I see all those plastic boxes stacking up in the staff room!

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

The opening and closing lines suggest that this might be a piece about what happens to a long-standing and not entirely satisfactory marriage after retirement. You use some great details to describe the various fading bouquets.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thank you for reading and responding Miranda. I am interested in writing about how long term relationships endure / stagnate / grow / thrive / survive over the years.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

I read your piece earlier and the tension of the opening and closing lines really spoke to me, and stayed with me. Also…”water dried up into green scum that coats the innards of each vessel”…such a powerful image 💛

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thank you Sarah that's kind of you to comment. The desire now to go back and edit / revise this a day later is overwhelming - I can only see flaws!

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

I am right there with you! But trying to root myself in the spirit of the whole exercise which is to be okay with sharing our first drafts!

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Ha - absolutely! (But I'm glad to hear it's not just me that feels like this. practically wincing as I hit post...)

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

I agree with other comments, the opening and closing lines work as a beautiful frame for this piece. What did you say to him when you got downstairs, I wonder?

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thanks for reading and commenting Liza.... What was said is another, bigger story for another day!

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

Wow -- the gorgeous story of how so many flowers came to you bracketed by the flowers dying and that ending ' I sit and think about what I will say to him when I go downstairs.' -- is wonderful structure and I love that you don't tell us what you would say.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thank you Jan. I am a big fan of the ambiguous, open ended - especially in a genres like memoir / auto-fiction - a little distance between myself as narrator and the reader maybe?

Expand full comment
Deborah Brazendale's avatar

How intriguing, Kate! I read this three times over, to soak it all up. Some delicious writing and a wonderful metaphor for a fading relationship. Recoverable, I hope... (I am a cricket person, so divided loyalties here! 😉)

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Thank you for this Deborah - that was kind of you to read and comment.

Cricket will forever be a mystery to me - I'm sure there's mileage in an extended metaphor on the rules of this particular game....

Expand full comment
Deborah Brazendale's avatar

Ooh, yes! That's got the cogs turning 🙃

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

Kate, I had the shivers reading the first few lines of this piece. The use of that particular dialogue in the opener is so impactful and sets the reader up for the pay-off at the end. The connection you make between you and your grandmother and what we imagine your course of action will be is a lovely, understated moment. Can't wait to see what you make of Sunday's prompt. Excited for your words and loving getting to know you through them like this.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

Oh thank you Lindsay! I have absolutely LOVED reading everyone’s work this week - feeling inspired and motivated to write for the first time in months. Such a buzz. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

It was 1976 and in those days we didn’t have a phone. When the call came, Mrs S came hammering on the front door, which opened directly into the living room. I left my mother there and went into the crowded lounge of Number 34, which was always too hot because Mr S couldn’t move much and felt the cold, and it always smelled of his worn leather armchair and roll-ups.

Of course, he was there and must have heard everything when I picked the clunky receiver up, and a clipped official voice told me that I was being offered a place at Oxford University.

No, this was all wrong. Oxford wasn’t a place for people like me. It had all been a bit of an experiment, something I’d decided to do because it wasn’t ever going to happen. Nobody at school really had a clue how to prepare me. It wasn’t that kind of school. So I just read an awful lot of heavy books and wrote furiously for three hours on my own in a chilly lecture room, and put down every daft thing that came into my head.

There had been an interview, of course. I paid the train fare myself out of my Saturday job money. I didn’t remember what was discussed. I remembered the smell of highly waxed floorboards, charming students sharing rambling Victorian houses, a very long walk along the Banbury Road to get there, and the huge tree in the quad at Balliol College, which wasn’t the college I was applying to, because that was where boys went.

The teachers at school would be over the moon – they’d managed to get one person into the same college last year and now they could call that a connection. They would hug me in the corridor and trill about the lovely, lovely years ahead of me. Well, all except Mr Tracey, who had broken ranks and said Oxford was the wrong choice for me, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Oh, just ignore him, people said. He’s only jealous.

The trouble was he was right. I’d seen the course I really wanted to do, and it wasn’t at Oxford. That was the course I would do if I didn’t have anybody else to please.

The urge to say it was all a mistake and I was applying to York had been placed firmly in the background by the time I was back home.

“How did it go?” asked my mother.

“I got in,” I replied. “I suppose I’d better learn to ride a bike.”

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

I'm so curious to learn more about this - did you end up going to Oxford or York? And how did things turn out? These are questions that are circling my mind (not that I expect an answer).

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

Ah, that would be telling....it's a time of my life I'm looking forward to writing more about.

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Really effective piece of flash memoir Miranda - you drop the reader straight into that moment I. 1976, but then give us all the information we need to navigate the narrative. Like Jude, I want to find out what happened next!

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

Thank you, that was very much what I was aiming at. Bit of a challenge in 500 words or less!

Expand full comment
Angela Dacres-Dixon's avatar

I’m left wondering if you did learn to ride a bike? There’s a lot more here to discover and I would love to know what happened and how you felt. A really interesting and intriguing piece of writing 🙏

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

Thank you, I can answer one of your questions. I never did learn to ride a bike. I'm dyspraxia, though nobody realised it at the time.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

I love the detail in this piece Miranda. Your opening scene is so well drawn.

You do a great job of subtly conveying the narrator's conflicting feelings about her future - the drive to do what she really wants, and the lack of choice in the matter... Would love to read more on this...

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

I want to read more, to know what happened to this girl who 'got in'- you really set the scene and fill the reader with anticipation of future stories.

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

My interest is also piqued Miranda, to find out what happened next.

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

You really do have us hanging by a thread, Ruth! I can't wait to see whether we get another slice of this particular story on Sunday or if we zip off somewhere else entirely. Really enjoying the way you establish and sustain the family dynamics of your childhood home in this.

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

The Urgency to Write

In preparation for this morning’s writing, I got up at 5am and sat outside for a few moments taking in the suburban air. I snapped a picture of what I saw out my back door, which is not much of anything: a tiny patch of browning grass, white fence, a tree. Disappointed by the view, I found myself feeling envious of writers in more inspiring locations, with open fields and rolling hills, perhaps. But good writers can make details sing out of anything. Just like the polyphonic texture of the birdsong I'm hearing now, sophisticated writing is made up of many layers of description and meaning.

As I head towards my last month in this suburb and I'm taking a class on writing that's asking me to think about the importance of place, suddenly I’m filled with the desire to explore my neighborhood, if only to have something to say about it beyond "it's pretty homogenous". This sense of urgency has always come to me at the end of a sojourn. Living in Paris half a lifetime ago, I drifted around aimlessly until it was too late, and then regretted not taking part in the local culture more as I ran around in the last month to libraries, independent cinemas, and cafes chasing a feeling of nostalgia that I was never able to resolve. Then, too, I found it urgent to write: “Will someone please help me decipher what I'm feeling,” I begged in my livejournal, “mood: sad”.

It may be a function of my ADHD – things don't seem important until they're urgent. It's like that piece I wrote while needing to pee. And I'm like that with sex, too: always most turned on when there isn't time to actually do it. But I suspect this experience is more universal than neurodiverse. What is it about a sense of urgency that renders certain acts more appealing? Is it simply that it negates procrastination, or is it that the narrowing window of possibility takes the pressure off creation, so you can blame your failure on lack of time?

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

Oh that feeling of preemptive nostalgia sounds so familiar!

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

I can relate to that feeling of being disappointed by the view and, at times, my space. My writing took me to a place of realising what most important too!

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

There’s nothing like knowing your time in a place is ending to make you suddenly appreciate it more - I like how you’ve examined those feelings of urgency and nostalgia in this piece Jude.

Expand full comment
Donna Matthew's avatar

I use a deadline to motivate, otherwise I can find endless lists of things to do instead of the thing I must do 🙈

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

Deadlines are good for that—but I can’t ever make myself believe in self-imposed ones!

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

I love the idea that a 'narrowing window of possibility' might take the pressure off creation... I too struggle with a self-imposed deadline (- that's why I'm here *-^)

Anyway - what a gorgeous piece of writing. 'the polyphonic texture of birdsong'...

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

Thank you so much! I wrote about 3x more than what I posted, but the rest was really junk…amazed by others who were able to post their entire free-written draft!

Expand full comment
Miranda R Waterton's avatar

That's a very interesting thought, and it reminds me of a line from Big Yellow Taxi "You don't know what you've got till its gone"

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

I can feel the regret of not 'taking advantage' of Paris. And yes, what is it about the sense of urgency that renders certain acts more appealing? Are you any closer to knowing?

I urge you to explore your neighbourhood and be curious about things that seem mundane or homogenous

Expand full comment
Helen Poore's avatar

I too envy people with their lovely writing spaces and beautiful views…I have a desk in the spare bedroom/sewing-room/laundry-drying space and the view of a blank wall or, if I look out of the window, a row of garages!

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

So much resonated from your piece. I recently came to a realization about wanting to intentionally, fully inhabit places, spaces, even it is temporary so I don't forget to live.

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

Jude, the title you've chosen for this piece really speaks to the sense of charge the reader gets. I love, also, the way it seems to mirror the ADHD experience. There's something so poignant about the end of the second paragraph and the reference to deciphering feelings. Thank you for these words and I can't wait to see what you make of Sunday's prompt!

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

Thank you so much for your feedback! I can’t wait for Sunday to read the chosen piece and get writing again in the early morning!

Expand full comment
Harriet Mason's avatar

A wave of melancholy settles through the house, on me. It clings to my clothes, my limbs, makes my breath sludgy, heavy. Pockets of sunlight blink through the clouds, through the canopy of trees in the garden, try breach the brick walls, windows and glass doors. Inside the air is heavy with silence. This family home mostly empty of the family that once filled it. Footsteps that thundered up and down the many stairs, the slamming of doors and my sigh when the water pressure dipped – again – turning the water from the kitchen tap into a too slow trickle filling the kettle for yet more tea -while the washing machine and shower put in yet more long shifts cleansing clothes and bodies of teen hormones and sweat.

I don’t know how to be in these elongated periods of silence in the house, devoid of these young people with their personal scent and sound, wafts of energy. I’m not sure our house does either. I sit on the sofa on Monday afternoon remembering my sister’s ‘Why don't you watch Wimbledon’ from our earlier phone call. My laptop and notebook by my side, stretching the boundaries of my flexible working and switch on the TV, sink into the sofa.

The windows are open and I hear engines running, cars doors slamming and the shrieks of children running through the playground to waiting parents huddled in conversation. I don’t need to but I look at my watch - 3.45pm. The numbers meaningless.

They make no sense in my post-school pick up phase of mothering, in this new elastic time I live in. Longed for after years of school run, meals shopped and bought for, laying the table for family dinners.

It's a silence I’ve craved and yet now I’m here, I’m not sure who I am in it. Who am I if I’m not Harriet, Charlie/Ollie/Saskia’s mum? This isn't new, the boys left home a while ago leaving their sister behind for nowhere to hide family dinners a trois. And some weeks I love it. I do not miss being tethered to the school day, to after school and weekend activities.

And yet I’m not sure, this week at least, how to embrace the freedom that should come with this phase of life. Feeling instead a cord that's pulled me back home, to this house with its memories of conversations, music, laughter, shouts baked into its fabric. Light, sun filled memories fighting back against the melancholy that lingers.

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

This is lovely Harriet. It really speaks to our prompt piece from Caro - the call and response / echoing / mirroring of her scene in a very different phase of life.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

This speaks to the part of me that often craves alone time. When it’s here, I’m sure I’ll crave the opposite 💛

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

Love this piece Harriet- like you said in your comment on mine, this is the silence and elastic time I’m longing for at the moment, but I think future me will feel similarly ambivalent when it arrives. Beautiful final sentences too!

Expand full comment
Angela Dacres-Dixon's avatar

Thank you Harriet for writing this honest piece. My children are well flown now and I often think how life seems too much or not enough. I too ask myself the same questions you ask yourself, though mostly I do enjoy having time to myself.

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

I love the melancholy - you make it palpable. Also: "It's a silence I’ve craved and yet now I’m here, I’m not sure who I am in it." this sentence really struck me. We crave something, but then when we are there, sometimes it take time to figure what it means to us.

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

Beautiful and I love melancholy clinging to your clothes.

Expand full comment
Tracy Presence's avatar

I feel this part - how to embrace the freedom that should come with this phase of life. It crops up on us, these phases when things change and time reorients.

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

So much of this resonates with me. Lovely writing. I live opposite an infants school and watch the drop offs and pick ups with a mixture of regret and relief that I’m no longer tied to that schedule.

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

So beautifully bittersweet, Harriet. It also makes me want to be present even more while my child still wants to be with us.

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

It's been so interesting this evening going back in and reading the other pieces that speak to different phases of motherhood alongside yours, Harriet. If we lined them up in chronological order, how would they feel I wonder. You know I think your descriptions are lush and, in particular, this way you capture the sense of dead time in this - a day that is yours but feels hard to know quite what to do with when the old markers have been taken away - is very powerful. Looking forward to seeing what you do with Sunday's prompt!

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Today is about snatching moments for myself, in between the mothering and the messiness. So believe me when I say turning up at a writing circle on this overcast Sunday morning was nothing short of a miracle.

Sometimes, it pains me, the lack of time that erodes my creativity and, occasionally, my confidence. But I also know that I need to get better at what I call “the ask”: expressing my wants and needs, building the boundaries that hold them.

To mark what feels like an occasion, I make a warming mug of cacao, settle into my seat, and light a candle. 'Passenger', it’s called, and the label reads ‘rosewood/spices/amber’. I can almost feel the notes wrap themselves around me. The soft glow gives my writing spot a feeling of realness. Of readiness. I think to myself, ‘yes, I am a writer,’ as though I need some kind of ritual or practice to prove it.

There is a desire, I notice.

To revisit stories once buried for a future day, or maybe even forever.

I want to unearth them, travel with them, adventure with them. As someone who breathes in every moment. The good times. The bad times. Especially the bad times. Because I never experienced true awe until I experienced true pain.

Loss and grief brought about in me a new kind of awareness. In myself. In nature. How the body of a tree looks up close. How the scent of a flower can carry on the wind. How seeing a tiny human lying in the palm of my hand could fill me, all at once, with fierce love and fragile longing.

On a recent walk, somewhat distracted by the drizzle, the hood of my waxy raincoat sticking to my head, I noticed the air was thick with the scent of roses. The garden ahead was full of butter yellow petals, soft like the paper of old letters, stories told and untold. Honeyed lemon, Turkish delights. If nostalgia had a scent, this would be it.

I don’t know if you believe in magic, but yellow roses feel like they belong to my family. One of the first things I bought after losing my son was a yellow shrub rose. And it’s in moments like this, passing something so full of life, that I’m reminded I want to live in colour.

Yes, I feel weathered by experience, but also softened. Because there’s something about grief that rearranges your senses. The world turns monochrome. But eventually, if you allow yourself, you begin to see in technicolour. Different. Heightened. Saturated.

Small things stop you in your tracks. Like a rose, rain-tipped and even half-wilted, that smells exactly like hope.

In writing today, I am reminded that creativity doesn’t always need a wide window. I can show up in the cracks...between the tug of socks onto tiny feet, the lick of a thumb and gentle pressing down of hair, the packing of snacks for a trip with their daddy while I tend to myself.

It doesn't last long. The littlest is soon clambering on top of me before the writing circle has ended, and my words are cast back into the margins again. But as I come back to them, now, during nap time, I remind myself that what I’m writing here isn’t asking to be a triumph. Just a truth.

Expand full comment
Annette Vaucanson Kelly's avatar

This is beautiful, Sarah, so richly sensory, and that last line, wow!

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Really kind, thank you, Annette. Something I need to work on in my writing is those sensory details so that means a lot. I can get carried away though!

Expand full comment
Jude Jones (they/them)'s avatar

This is stunning, thank you, Sarah!

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Appreciate that, Jude. It was so lovely to gather with you all today!

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

Wow Sarah, that was beautiful to read, I can sense the magic of the butter yellow roses x

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Thanks, Marika. Slightly obsessed with yellow roses so was delighted when one showed up in Caro's piece. I see them everywhere this time of year ✨

Expand full comment
Ellen Chapman's avatar

So much sensory detail in this piece Sarah 😍 and a timely reminder that there’s time to create in the cracks.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

So kind, Ellen, thank you! And yes, we need to take advantage of those cracks 😃

Expand full comment
Kate Anderson's avatar

I thought that this was a staggeringly beautiful piece of writing Sarah. It reminded me of Time Lived Without Its Flow.

This tiny comments box cannot contain all of the things that I would like to say...

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

This piece is new to me, Kate, so thanks for mentioning it. I went in search and found the essay so will read it later!

Really appreciate you taking the time to comment 💛

Expand full comment
Jan Elisabeth's avatar

So beautiful -- this line: 'I don’t know if you believe in magic, but yellow roses feel like they belong to my family' and what came after really caught my breath

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Appreciate that, Jan. Laying our hearts on the “page” can be nervous work but I felt safe to write and share in yesterday’s space. Thanks for reading 🥰

Expand full comment
Liza Debevec's avatar

How you describe the moment when things start to change from monochrome back to technicolour in the process of grief. Amazing. And then the last two sentences- not triumph, just truth. So powerful, especially in the context of today's discovery that the Salt path was not all that truthful.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Oh I have so many feelings about this whole unravelling of The Salt Path and need to arrange them into something coherent to share.

I thought the news might interrupt my flow yesterday — having read all three books I was surprised then saddened — but I think it actually fuelled me to show up and share with my whole heart. Thanks for your lovely words of encouragement 💛

Expand full comment
Tracy Presence's avatar

I really enjoy the cadence here. The lilt of wistfulness amidst the world’s needs spiraling in.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Thanks, Tracy. I loved the prompt and felt it gave me full permission to go for it. I was nervous to share but glad I did!

Expand full comment
Barbara Ratcliffe's avatar

I love this piece. The phrase “weathered by experience “ is very powerful.You write so well about sensory details, it creates a vivid picture of.

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Appreciate that, Barbara. Your encouragement helps as I take these tentative first steps back into a project that I’ve hidden away from for so long!

Expand full comment
Deborah Brazendale's avatar

💛💛💛

Truth is the triumph x

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Thanks, Deborah. It certainly is 💛

Expand full comment
Ivett Gáncs's avatar

This is beautiful, Sarah. The last two senteces will echo in me for a long time. 🌼

Expand full comment
Sarah Robertson's avatar

Appreciate that, Ivett. I have a session with my writing mentor soon and it’s helpful to know what resonates. So hard to tell when we’re creating in isolation 💛

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

Sarah, there is such grace in this piece. A clear sense of reflection on what it means to love and lose in many different family contexts from the mundane to the seismic. Your words evoke such strong sensory memories for me - the Turkish Delight and the way you've taken Caro's mention of the flower and made it yours. Can't wait to see how Sunday's prompt lands. X

Expand full comment
Marika O’S's avatar

I feel this piece Harriet, how hard it is to know what to feel at this transient time 🌱

Expand full comment
Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

Just jumping in here for three reasons: first to say I've copied and pasted all of the brilliant responses so far as best I can without reading them into a word doc so that I can read them at close of day with as little extraneous noise / identifying features as I can (though I know many of you and your work already so 🫠).

I'll be looking for and selecting a piece with two criteria in mind: clear scope for editorial input which is not an easy task since all of you so far are writing SO INCREDIBLY WELL not only under these conditions but IN GENERAL and with an eye on ways to steer us for next week a wee bit if I see a new or a different angle. I cannot therefore come at this task simply from an enjoyment perspective! I want the editorial process to be valuable to the writer, so I'm not judging anyone's work as 'the best' when I make my selection. Hope that's clear. I want to be able to offer valuable, actionable feedback and give all the writers taking part plenty of scope moving from week to week.

Secondly, thank you everyone for entering into this spirit of this endeavour with such bravery, grace and sense of collegiality. It's been absolutely brilliant watching you all respond to one another throughout the day, prompting yet more thoughts and ideas. We are ourselves such fertile ground. It was my hope that I could open this space mostly for you guys to do this for one another across the weeks and you have leapt right in ❤️

Lastly, there have been some Zoom glitches for folk (that I don't have an answer to but others might?!) so if you're coming live at 8pm tonight just check you can get in ok in advance 😃

Expand full comment