Barren Mare

The darling buds

When I went out at lunchtime, I noticed the trees are now bearing fresh, new green leaves.  It seems that Spring is here at last- funny how it seems to happen overnight. I love this time of year; the light is lengthening and it seems like we are tipping into something brighter. Coming out of the inexpressibly dark winter into summer always feels like a great burden lifting.

We went to a big out-of-town garden centre over the weekend, and I bought a few new plants. Actually, I find garden centres like this one a bit overwhelming.  So many green things, so little time. I walk around with my eyes bugging and my tongue hanging out with greed. And I always want to buy hugely impractical items- look, a magnolia tree!  A gigantic box shrub! A couple of evergreens!  But then I look at the price tags, shuddering; or else E. talks me out of it.  Quite sensible really, since I have now basically run out of space in my tiny alloted garden area, and besides, I don't think the magnolias would like it here.

When we moved to this flat a couple of years ago, one of the first plants I bought was a little standard bay tree. That green lollipop head cost a fair bit of money and I was fairly sure I would manage to kill it quickly, but it was just so cute and shapely that I felt I had to have it. It suggested an established garden, permanence, security. Long term love and patience. Even though really, the garden people had honed it into that shape, and were now gouging my pocketbook as penance for my topiary aspirations.

In any event, I took great pleasure in it, and it did well for a season.  Then in a fit of stupidity, I brought the bay inside into an overheated room during a fierce cold snap. In a short of space of time, it picked up some sort of horrible leaf cooties, and slowly, slowly, it began to wither. The leaves turned brown and curled up. No new buds would bloom. I bought fungus spray, I fretted over it, googled for solutions, talked to it, cajoled it all last summer.  Live, little bay tree, live.  It was unresponsive. 

When the IVF failed last summer, I went out and sullenly kicked the base of the large earthen pot in which the bay tree resides. Everything dies on me, I thought. I looked at the bay tree, and it looked back, and I could see was withering, inside and out.

It was my intention last weekend to uproot what I thought was the dead tree, give it a proper burial and at last use the very nice pot for something else.  But when I bent down to look at it, I noticed something interesting.  Buds. Little buds, lots of buds.  It's early days, of course, and it may still succumb to whatever nasty thing that has killed all the other leaves.  But for the first time in a long time, my heart surged with something like...hope.      

During moments like that, I suddenly believe I am going to be OK.  On days like that; when the light comes surging over the water and dazzling into my eyes, when I hold up the watering can, dig my hands into the soil, catch the bit of a new season in my mouth- I believe that I might be over the worst. It suddenly seems like I have broken the back of this pain, at least while the sun shines.

And I think that maybe there is still something left to hope for after all; and that being able to feel that small tendril of hope is a sign that finally, I am on my way.

Behold the randomness

So, it appears I've been tagged by Karen. I usually miss out on these games, either because nobody tags me or because I somehow miss the post that designates me as "it". But when the Ovary comes a-taggin', ya gotta play. 

Therefore, I bring you six random/weird things about me, such as they are. 

1. I have deformed toenails on my pinkie toes. Instead of a normal, smooth toenail, I have little gnarled husks, which tend to grow into a lethally pointy formation, unless monitored and regularly pruned.  It's always been this way- it appears I inherited this charming physical feature from my mother; who in turn inherited it from her father.  I used to be slightly freaked out about wearing open-toed shoes, in case the sight of my shriveled toenails repulsed people.  But then I came across a really cute, covetable pair of sandals and decided the world would cope.  With nail polish, it's just about bearable. Only just.

2.  I really like ironing.  I find it soothing.  My mother used to do the family ironing in front of the TV, watching the soaps.  I remember how when I would be home from school with a bad cold, there was nothing more comforting than lying on the sofa, watching her iron, with the smell of freshly ironed shirts and the opening bars of All My Children in the background.

3.  I am related to a rather well-known film director.  Well, not like Spielberg-league famous, but in the sense of the big budget and the mainstream. Chances are you'll have seen one of his films.  I've tried to work out the exact term to define the extent of our consanguinity but the simplest way to sum it up is that his grandfather and my grandfather were first cousins.  Which makes us...uh, dunno. In any event, his parents were very kind to me when I lived in Los Angeles and invited me around to the set a couple of times to see things. Until I moved away, that is, and I don't think the old "our grandfathers were cousins" wheeze is going to get me invited to any premieres. 

4.  Prior to IVF, I had only been in the hospital twice in my life. The first time was when I was eight years old. I was swinging like a monkey between the sinks in the girls' bathroom in my elementary/primary school, treating the basins like paralell bars. Budding gymnast and all that.  Somehow or other another girl (whose name I do remember- how could I not after this?) thought it would be funny to grab my feet as I swung them up. And she did, and she stumbled backwards. My hands slipped right out from under me, off the sink; the next thing I remember was lying on my back on the tiled bathroom floor.  I may or may not have hit my head on the basin on the way down.

I was actually sent me back to math class, until it became apparent from my vomiting and passing out at my desk that I had, in fact, concussed myself.  My mother drove me to the hospital chanting, "Stay awake, stay awake" as I drifted off in the back seat.  The hospital kept me in overnight, and because I was such a good girl when they took blood, my mother let me get my ears pierced.  Hurrah!  A happy ending.

The second time in the hospital was the bee sting thing, but I've already told that story.

5.  Speaking of piercing, my belly button is.  Pierced, that is. I did it about ten years ago, and even though I never wear earrings any more, I still have a belly bar.

6. I am allergic to horses.

The Prufrock Question

Well, I'm back from my trip. It was both remarkably delightful and slightly unsettling. Delightful in the sense that it was one of those trips where things seem to coalesce in a wonderful combination of delicious perfection – great weather, an ideal pace, fantastic food, lovely lodging, and best of all, truly fantastic company. We spent a few days visiting dear friends who have just bought a farmhouse in the country. And it was one of those weekends that becomes the most glorious sort of memory- roasting marshmallows on a campfire, sides aching from laughing so hard, staying up until 2.30 in the morning, playing guitars, drinking whisky and talking, talking, talking.

The unsettling part was the hard thump of realisation that in fact, I really want my life to look less like the one I am leading, and more like that of my friends. I was filled with a renewed yearning to be in a place where I could do the kinds of things they are doing- writing, creating, building a future that enables a happy balancing of worlds. The barn behind the farmhouse will hopefully become a small recording studio, the outbuildings will become offices and writing spaces. And I found myself longing for an existence comprised more of that and less of this. Wishing I had the means, time and the space to turn some of what I think and feel into a more tangible art.

These questions felt all the more potent to me having listened to my friend's recently completed album, a stunning work based on the experience of losing a beloved sister whose untimely death still resonates deep through the lives of those who knew her. And in creating this piece, my friend has formed both a lasting memorial to her sister as well as to her own self during that time, the two becoming intertwined in a beautiful, unforgettable legacy.

If there are to be no children for me, it seems that maybe there ought to be something else like this, to shimmer in the space I once occupied. Something to leave a lasting trace, however slight, of who I am. To import some meaning as to what my life was about, what I wanted it to be. To take the place of that piece of me that would have looked out through my son or daughter's eyes.

I've thought these things before. At times I wonder if it's really just hubris and vanity talking- that ultimately, I just have to accept that perhaps I'm not meant to be remembered always. That perhaps the mermaids will not only not sing to me, they won't sing of me. That things fade away, or are lost forever.

Of course, that too can be freeing- not to worry, to let it all go. But what this trip, this recent experience reminded me once again is that to face a life without children is to confront, even in a small way, one's own ultimate mortality. To accept the finality that it's not just the gene pool that ends with me, but seemingly everything else too.

And to question- really question- exactly what, if anything, I can leave behind.

The pause that refreshes

I'm off tomorrow on my trip, so in my absence I will leave you with some visual floral entertainment. I hope it's not the equivalent of blog Muzak, but better than nothing, right? It's meant to be a reminder that Spring is springing; a time of blossoming, abundance, and most importantly, chocolate Easter eggs.

See you soon.

To arrive hopefully is better than to travel

Once upon a time, I used to try to post something every other day, or at least every three days. Now, it seems I am lucky if the muse descends once a week. Probably because the most exciting thing to happen to me in recent days was re-arranging the living room. I have to say, it does look an awful lot nicer now!

Next week, I am due to get on a plane to go on our holiday/trip. E. is already away on business, and in thinking about how I would get myself to the airport, I remembered a little story I had meant to relate in January when I returned from Florida. It's one of these "apropos of nothing" tales, so doesn't fit in neatly anywhere, except perhaps as padding in my current museless state.

I was sitting in the Stateside airport on a very long layover. I had finally slumped into a chair after hours and hours of padding around the terminal in a feverishly bored state. At the gate, a fellow passenger was talking on her cell phone.

Now, I should state from the outset that I was not trying to eavesdrop on her conversation- but nor was she making any special attempt to lower her tone, and she could clearly see I was sitting there within earshot. There was something in the way she was speaking; slightly tense, slightly awkward that caught my notice. Also, she closely resembled someone I used to share a house many years ago, so I was surrepetitiously observing her, in the way you do when you think it might just be possible that it actually is that person.

Suddenly I heard her changing her tone, as if speaking to a small child. She was explaining that "the lady from the church" was coming to take care of him. Yes, tonight. No, she didn't know the lady's name. No, ask your father, he'll tell you. Yes, she would try to phone later. Be good. Bye bye.

There was something about this that gave me a bit of pause- she was flying overseas, and didn't know the name of the person coming to take care of her child in her absence? Then I remembered it was none of my goddamn business and gave myself a sharp mental jostle, putting myself back in my place. The woman closed her phone with a sharp snap before wandering off in the direction of the food hall.

But as it happened, she ended up sitting one row opposite and behind me. The flight was half empty and both of us had an entire row to ourselves. I took the opportunity to move to the window seat, whereupon I tried to contort myself into a supine position while still complying with the Fasten SeatBelt sign. Rather unsuccessfully, I might add- a bit too constraining around the midriff for comfort. The woman, on the hand, remained in her aisle seat, her coat wrapped tightly around her, staring blankly into the distance. She did not read, she did not eat. She barely moved the entire flight.

When we landed, there was the usual kerfuffle of disembarking, collecting bags, shuffling through immigration. I like to move briskly when I arrive- gets the blood moving, you know- and the woman kept pace with me. At customs, I lost sight of her as she dashed on ahead. But as I rolled my cart into the arrival hall, there she was, right at the entrance, in a passionate clinch with a tall man. Kissing, kissing, kissing as if the world was coming to an end.

I moved on, of course; it was not polite to stare. However, in the days that followed, I found myself continuing to wonder about her. Who was that man? Why was she flying to meet him in Scotland? Did her (ex?) husband know? Who was the lady from the church and why didn't she know her name? And why doesn't anybody snog me like that when I arrive, apart from the obvious dangers of plane breath?

I suppose her story will always remain a small mystery, just one of those passing moments which so frequently occur on journeys. But it cheered me a little to realise that at times, it may not always be better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

Because sometimes, the arrival can be pretty damn great, too.