Holiday romance

They wake early – before anyone else. He goes into the shower. She follows him. They make love, briefly, wetly.

They all share a breakfast which he prepares as she reads with the girl. The youngster goes out to play with a friend nearby. They talk about the day ahead, he goes to exercise, she phones some of her friends. She checks on the child, who is busy and happy. They make love quickly, using the kitchen table.

The family goes to the beach; walks, plays, suns, laughs. Sand everywhere. They swim together, though the water is still quite cool. He admires her figure. She admires his bum, but doesn’t say so. No point in making him big-headed. They stay on the beach into the evening, a barbecue, some wine, music, more laughter. She gets a bit frisky, teases him, gets a little heated.

Back at the house they all shower in turn and change; girl in pyjamas, him in shorts and t-shirt, her in a long light dress/nightdress. Nobody bothers with underwear.

At last girl goes to bed. Reluctant at first, she falls into a deep sleep fairly quickly, tired out by the day. They sit together on the veranda looking out to the sea, listening to the subdued sound of the waves, feeling the evening breeze.  She exposes herself to him; he responds in a suitable manner.

They sit in companionable quiet conversation, frequently interrupted by moments of comfortable silence. At last, feeling the day catch up with them, too, they retire to bed. Somehow he still has the energy and the means, so they make love again, slowly, gently, no urgency.

It occurs to her as she drifts off, his head nestled into her hair, arm draped across her; yes, this is romance.

Healing

She tells him about her bad dreams. The ones which wake her in the early hours filled with apprehension and genuine fear. Her daughter taken. Her daughter gone. Such powerful fear that she must go again and check, look into her  room, see the small, vulnerable form sleeping with her toys, hot and clammy and in her own dreams. But this only stills the conscious mind. Underneath is the subconscious dread which all mothers face at some time and all mothers bear in silence.

Here is a true altruism at work. The fear is not for the self, is not about guilt or abandonment  or loss; it is fear for the safety of the other, for the being of the other. Such unselfconscious love is common enough but little spoken of. Perhaps it is a taboo; to speak the fear is to name it. To name it is to give it power.

He holds her tight, silent. This is not to be explained or reasoned; it is from the deep inner self, which is not touched by reason. Sometimes, the only healing is simply being. To give strength when it is needed, to be present when the land of Dreams is beset by darkness.

But he has known such monsters, too. In conscious unconsciousness he has faced the slavering beast and stood before it, not unafraid, but knowing that to stand is at first enough. To stand then to strike. For the beasts must be defeated. And the means of victory is not power, but courage. It is the better kind of strength.

The weapon which beats such darkness back is determination, pig-headedness, the certainty that it must be done; there must be a stand. And the turning point, the healing, begins when the state of mind which engenders the dark is faced in real time. That is to say, we change our mind. We reach a decision. We take a stand, then take a step.

He decides to tell her about his fear. To be condemned to be forever the orphan. That his story might always be the same; of being left alone and never to have been beloved.

                “But you are beloved,” she tells him as she grips him fiercely to her, “by me.”

“I know, my love,” he replies, “which is why I don’t have those dreams any more. And the meaning of your love for her is that she will never have to have those dreams, or if she has them, she will have the strength to overcome them.”

She lies still, thinking, for a while.

“So, I have the dreams, which make me want to show her how much I love her, so that she doesn’t need to have them.”

He smiles, kisses her.

“She will have her own dreams, her own nightmares, but she will learn from us that she can have them and still be strong, still go on. These dark moments are a reminder that it is important to love, but it is also important to let the other know they are beloved. Let her know you love her. Then perhaps the dreams will recede.”

She does not answer. She has drifted back to sleep. He smiles. It is a small healing.

Explanation

A diversion from the narrative today, some explanation instead. A friend said;

‘I do not know how to write my future history. So much comes out which is dark. So much of what would be good seems too much like fantasy.’

So, for my friend, and for you, who may be curious to understand the way of the word, some observations; not instructions, we all find our own path, but thoughts for thinking.

Futuristory is not future fantasy – friend understands this well enough. Fantasy is the dreaming, the wishing, the often vain hope of an abstract happy ongoing produced by some nameless force majeure, a deus ex machina – fate, destiny, otherness. There is a tendency in many of us to escape from the frustrations of now by imagining a future where such problems as we have now – normally money, relationships, self-esteem – are overcome by a stroke of fortune, an unclear but defining event which sweeps all before it to leave us somehow whole after the event.

Future fantasy is not a realism, it is a way of conscious dreaming, to see, perhaps a little hazily, perhaps with some clarity, another way of being which is not this way of being. What distinguishes it from Futuristory is that the mechanism is not self-delivered but gifted. When we try to write our future as we might become, we are seeking to make concrete, to build in a realistic way, a timeline which is grounded in the achievable, the possible, the self- made, the intentional.

One of the reasons to make the future into a narrative is that by doing so we should be analysing what steps we have to take to achieve this end, this future moment. In other words, the telling of the story provides a map, a satnav into the desired place. So the desired place is a real place, a real option in our lives, which depends on us taking certain actions, making decisions, about ourselves and our lives.

Imagine you have gone to a fortune teller. What do they tell you? They give you a narrative of possibility which, if they are observant and clever, is grounded on an agreed back-story which you have provided in answer to semi-abstract questions. This narrative deals not just with your hopes and fears, but the shared hopes and fears of many of us who are living in this sort of place, at this time. Your willingness to accept their narrative will depend on many things, not least your capacity for superstition, but in the end, it is in part a compact between the teller and the told about the possible.

When you write a Futuristory, the back-story is already written; your past is there, has a place, and that place is then and gone. This can have an effect on your imagining of the future, especially the fear of darkness which comes from our past losses, disappointments, failures. And this takes us to the next distinction of the narrative of the future; though it can contain darkness and fear and realistic negative feelings and reactions, the events, actions, situations, are by definition and in conclusion always positive; they are about the realisably good outcomes to which we aspire.

So, if you choose, or wish, to write an episode of your Futuristory and present it for us, remember you are making something positive which can become real, and craft your thoughts with care. It is surprising how much is possible when we really make a decision to act instead of simply dream.

Reprise

‘…This City now doth like a garment wear/ The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,..’

He has been here before:  on ‘Westminster Bridge’ – actually, Waterloo Bridge – in the tiny hours of the morning in early summer, revelling in the silence of the city, the emptiness of the metropolis.

Then, nearly thirty years earlier, he hadn’t known Wordsworth’s poem. Nor had Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later exploited the same isolation, in a different mood. He had simply been there, in the moment, at that time, and felt the feelings; first the horror, then the wonder.

Then, in his early manhood, his life involved friends but not love – not satisfyingly, at least – that special kind of emptiness which is self-centred longing to be significant. His life had richness though he was, at his core, responding to a shallow sentimentality. A familiar theme, of sexual frustration overlain by a vast capacity for both passion and emotion, of being close to resolution but knowing its impossibility at the same time.

He reflects upon the contradictions which have run, still run, through his life. It is a Heraclitean moment, watching the passing of the water beneath him, immersed in the similarity and difference of the moment he is now experiencing. Life runs back to the same places, he recalls, we live in the recurrence that Nietzsche imagined. But this is not a condemnation, not a sentence, but a reminder of promise.

Now he stands, contemplating the scene with that once-known awe subsumed beneath the sense of recollection, the feeling of the weight of years of living, growing, changing, being the same, holding in check the purity of the original emotion.

We modify ourselves, he considers, to adjust to circumstance, chance and fortune, ups and downs. And though I am the same person, I am not the same person. Some things cannot remain. He still has friends, but now, too, he has known the glory of love, the pleasure of passion, the ecstasy for which his heart had once longed. Today there is no shallow sentimentality, instead, something close to wisdom, an understanding of the importance of context, of timing, to the living of a life. Having been loses its power to being here and now, at this place, at this time, with these people.

And so he can stand, here and how, no longer alone, his beloved beside him, silent, and remember, reflect, rejoice, reprise.

He feels an ache at his core as a sudden fierce joy threatens to overwhelm him. Tears begin to form around his eyes, blurring the edges of view. He feels as if he is about to burst, overflowing with being.

Not the same, he thinks. She has made me more, granted me the gift of significance, completed the circle. She has chosen to love me and I, we, are alive again. I love her beyond the simple expression of the words. She has returned me to myself. And of her, not the view, not the moment, just the person, as he turns to gaze upon her contemplative restfulness; earth has not anything to show more fair.

Reprise.

Up Down Wet day

The Volvo pulls of the road at last onto hardcore which would be a car park for walkers and gliders, if it weren’t for the rain. It is empty; just the four of them in the protective cocoon of the car. He slowly drives as far as he can on the northern side of the space before turning and parking. The windscreen wipers gently beat the rhythm of a rainy day as they sit in silence for a fraction of a moment.

To their north is laid out the rich farmland of the Weald, like a map or Google Earth, brought to life, but misted and vague with the showers which slide across the sky above them. It is, in spite of the wetness, stunningly beautiful, and all the better for being, at this moment, just theirs, not shared with anyone.

They are on the Downs, trees and gorse, heather and sandy chalky rich grass-covered land, dotted with sheep, bereft of people. It is the ideal place for a picnic – just not the ideal time, right now.

In the back, child and dog are restless. The door is opened, dog stumbles out in a hurry to realise the smells which come into to the car all at once, wet bracken, sheep, rabbits, warm, wet grass, wet world. He is in canine heaven, almost tumbling over himself, unbalancing his movements with the force of his tail wagging, not knowing which way to turn right now; so much to smell, so many choices.

They all get out, for a moment, into the light rain. Earlier it had been a torrent, flooding the roads on the way, standing in corners of fields and hedgerows, bubbling raindrops and splashing everywhere. Not many people on the roads; only a fool would go out weather like this. Only a lunatic would go out on a picnic on a day like this day.

They watch small snails squeezing their way up tall grass stems, large spotted slugs struggling without their wet weather gear to make their way to food. They don’t need shelter. Child is running around in the rain, happy to be freed from the journey’s imprisonment. Dog appears and disappears in the undergrowth, lost in his own world.

She stands and simply takes in the view, the place, the moment. He comes to stand beside her, their Barbour jackets squishing together, waxed cotton aroma released as he puts his arm in hers. She looks at him as he turns to her and smiles. The moment catches her and lifts her spirit beyond the scudding clouds. He kisses her gently on the mouth. “I’m hungry,” he says, inappropriately, “are we going to have this picnic, then?” The counterpoint of the ordinary and the crazy makes her smile. He smiles back.

She gets into the spirit. “Ready for a hot drink then?” Reaches into the back of the car for the thermos flask, feels his arms around her hips from behind as she bends, his hips pressed against hers. His capacity for affection momentarily overwhelms her. She basks in the pleasure for a second.

They stand in companionable silence then, watching wild child, wild dog, who care nothing for the weather, celebrating life in their own ways. And at that perfect moment, the rain suddenly stops. The clouds above them racing away eastwards to the distant sea, the underlying warmth of the day suddenly switched on and radiating all around them. And everything is beautiful.

The mother in her kicks in. She calls the child and dog back; time for a picnic. She laughs inside. This life, this man, this child, this world; all is as it should be, right now. Rain, she thinks. It comes, it goes. Good times, bad times; all in the great cycle of life. But right here, right now, things are starting to look quite promising. They share one small kiss before the others interrupt and life, their life, goes on, up, down, up on the Downs on a once wet day which is now – perfect.

Gap Year

Summer 2024

Standing in the shower after an evening, night, morning of leisurely lovemaking, she feels the water rolling down her scarred spine and remembers her own youthful travels. Worried in the abstract she wonders how her daughter will look, that gawky, gamine balletic big-eyed child who is no longer just a child, after three short months apart.

She recalls her own coming of age, the journeys taken alone, young, blonde, vulnerable, around the globe as she went out in search of something beyond the ordinary life; the chance encounters, friends and lovers, good times and bad. She hadn’t felt in danger, but maybe times were more innocent then, maybe she was more innocent then. Still, she can’t help but worry about her little girl.

Perhaps it was the water, bringing back a memory of a beach where, topless, she sat in the sea and gorged on a watermelon, unselfconscious as only the young can be, the water on her skin which brought thoughts of possible danger. Had she really been so naïve? Sharing an isolated beach with two men and not even thinking about consequences. Would her baby do such a thing? Probably not. Perhaps.  The girl is so…grown up in so many ways. She has always had a wordly air, a way of seeing and responding to life which is so mature. And yet there is that wild element which perhaps comes from her mother. The joy of life.

The thought makes her smile, stepping out into a bathrobe, wrapping a towel round her hair. Her partner is already up, making rich-smelling coffee which makes her tummy rumble. Happily middle-aged, slightly overweight and crumpled in his t-shirt, her tummy still clenches slightly when she looks at him, the wonder of him, the man who came to love her after all those sad years alone.

As always, he reads the back of her mind. “The bus from Naples gets in at ten,” he reminds her, “we have plenty of time.” They both move towards the window which overlooks the hillside sloping down from Ravello to the sea, past the bustling villages to the deep azure water which seems to have been a theme of her life, in her memories. She nestles her head into his shoulder as he puts his arm around her. She thinks for a moment about how lucky she has been, in the end, then corrects herself; not lucky, we made this life ourselves, out of hardship and pain and isolation, we found each other and made it happen.

How will her daughter be? Familiar, yet perhaps a little strange, a little stranger at first. Wild around the edges yet carrying that air of sophistication with which she has been blessed. Happy and grown-up, innocent and experienced. Her daughter will be a little like she was, but different enough. At last, she relaxes for a moment. However she is, she is living her own life, which is the destiny of every child of every mother; to become themselves.

Not bothering to turn, she squeezes him gently and talks quietly; “You were right,” she says, “we were right.” He kisses the top of her face. “We were?” he asks. “Yes. Love is the answer, in the end.”

A warmth floods through her as he turns and enfolds his strong arms around her, his scent enveloping her with comfort. “Yes,” he replies, “in the beginning and the end, life is about love.”

They share the pleasure of togetherness a few moments longer before she turns to shrug aside the bathrobe and begin to dress. “Okay,” she affirms, “let’s go and see my baby.” A single tear escapes. Happiness overflowing. She smiles.

Eleven Eleven Eleven again

22.12.22

Eleven years, eleven months, eleven days, eleven hours.

Of you. Me. Us (more or less), since we first met, on the eleventh of the first in the year eleven.

(Is it a coincidence that our combined lives began on a binary?)

What years we have enjoyed! After all the toil and tears that preceded, that we induced (truth – which mainly I induced), to have reached this far and now we can see with clear eyes the truth of our love, our being, having become, together.

Thank you. So nearly it didn’t come to pass; I was slow, dilatory, procrastinated, couldn’t do the things that had to be done. And you hung in there. Not always together, not often in those early months, but you refused to give up the best chance of happiness that either of us had seen. So it was your strength and determination which made now possible.

But most of all, I thank you for the wonderful life we have lived together, you, me, the girl, the dogs, our home, our good times and bad (thankfully few and far between, those bad days). It’s strange to think that she was such a little thing, so young and full of life, happy in spite of her hardships and always such a beautiful child – like her mother – you too are still a beauty, as I see you now in my mind’s eye, head on the pillow, golden hair spread out as a halo and lit by the glory of your loving smile. And now she is a woman in her own right – athletic, graceful, still happy, still full of energy and love, wanting love. We all three have that.

Highlights? Every day has been a highlight in itself, a moment to cherish at least once a day, whether it was waking up next to each other (though that would be harder for you than for me), the dog jumping on the bed, the girl jumping on the bed, the organised chaos of breakfast and getting ready and cars and kisses and walks and always love, or falling finally asleep, passion spent but always to be reborn, touch and smell and senses colliding as and when we could, wanted to, deserved.

As we come up to one more joyful family Christmas, I want to tell you how much I still love you, how happy you have made me, how lucky I feel to have received the greatest gift of all – my own life – how humble I still feel beside the magnificent, glorious joyous being that is you, my own green fairy.

Which doesn’t mean I won’t be slipping you a little something on Christmas Eve, late at night…

Merry Christmas, my love.