DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

A photo diary of sorts for you … because Aunty Shai is rather fatigued and even the arrangement of words seems beyond me…it’s rain and sun and Sammy the cockapoo and Buddy the Akita, and six weeks (out of three months) with the little mousicles from KL. Two years of catching up with Grandma and Papa and Shai and a house in Cambridge with stairs and attics and books aplenty to get lost in. Imagination is running wild down the corridors and time is now, circular and fleeting all at once. The Jubilee weekend is almost upon us, and an Italian corgi by the name of Queen Nikie may be on the borrowing cards... I may also be travelling very soon, somewhere special. More about that anon... but first, the diary...

Au revoir May, en avant June. May the sun be merciful and the roses aplenty... and may we be well. Be well. 

VIEW FROM BED

A week ago was an IVIg day. For a year, protocol has required me to have a covid test on the Thursday before the Sunday infusion, but rolling out across most lands today are ‘the end of covid restrictions’. These are words that do not inspire feelings of delight and freedom in the immuno suppressed person. For us, once again, the personal negotiations, with each situation, begin. 

And yet… something has changed, I think. Some deep understanding of fatigue, of the way an invisible source can derail your forward movement, has entered human consciousness. It hasn’t affected man’s desire for war, oil and nuclear arms. But between the two, I think a dialogue has begun. Or, at least, space has been created for dialogue. That’s progress. 

IVIg this month was sandwiched between two Rituximab doses. In the interim, I walk my bundle of cuddly fur and attempt to be fully in the present moment. Aware of wisteria and magnolia at their plumpest. Aware of sunshine and friendly dog related conversations. 

Two pairs of not so tiny hands have arrived from Malaysia and Papa has company shouting and screaming and jumping all over him. Games are being invented fast and furiously and bath time is once again a special English delight…

At the hospital, in between joys of dogs and nieces, I managed to catch up with my friend Daisy, who had a little cry when we wrapped our arms and masked cheeks around each other, and then proceeded to coolly sketch this masterpiece of Zadie Smith. Next commission: Ocean Vuong.

View from the bed, the faux blue chair… cloudy with a chance of sunshine. (How about your view?)

THE TIME MACHINE

 

I wish I could go back,

into the future,

and meet my Dad

when he was little, says Raf.

 

You can, I say, when you’re older.

Meaning transcendental meditation.

 

Oh, somebody made a time machine?

Excited now. Hopeful.

No, but you can do it

with your mind. You can do

 

anything with your mind, I say, 

having learned this the slow way.

 

Not like Raf, who is learning

gifts with speed – 

his seven-year-old self

unrecognizable from mine.

 

And my brother, meeting him –

a father, in a different time. 

Shaista Tayabali, 2018

I wrote this poem when Raf was seven, and we were milling about the tiny Indonesian eco island of Nikoi, thinking about big things like time travel. I haven't travelled since that summer, and most of us haven't travelled for two years now... so as we embark upon Year Three of The Pandemic, I thought this would be a hopeful poem to share. The photograph below is in 'Lupus, You Odd Unnatural Thing', in black and white. I asked Raf's permission to use it in my book. 'Of course,' he said. 'Why are you even asking me?' But I was trying to be respectful - after all, a baby then, a ten year old now, will one day be a grown man... maybe even 'a father, in a different time.'

photographs taken by I. Tayabali

poem participating in DVerse Poets community Open Link Night...

TREASURE HUNT

It circles round just as fast

and soon you find yourself 

at the end (the seeming end,

really, just another beginning:

another airport, another birthday,

Easter, Christmas, New Year).

And still the feeling 

of leaving something behind,

but tripping ahead anyway;

each day, each month 

a further clue, on this 

treasure hunt we call life.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2019

Arts and Crafts Corners brought me great joy over Christmas... this one a very reminding spot in the house, even after two of my nieces have tripped across the oceans back to school and friends. The children of my life come and go, I visit and leave... but small creations remain as memory).  

Artist Credits: Various Tayabali-Edwards

Poetry Prompt... Dverse
(P.s. what does the Inside Of Your Brain look like?) 

MULAN OF THE NIKOI NIGHT

‘Beauty doesn’t last forever,’ the young one said.
Wise heart, serious head.

Time passes, changes everything.
The recording poet remembers everything.

The curve of this tree, mottled with green,
the conch of this shell I may wear as a ring,
the slats of this chair I wrote a wedding poem in,
the sound of the rain pitter pattering -
even my hair curling,
sharp sting of insect biting,
wish I had done something different thinking -
years thundering along.

‘How does it feel to be forty? Tell me!’
The Dutchman says he is dreading it.
‘Wonderful!’ I say, ‘when you’re happy.’
But maybe I mean free, as maybe he is not.

There are types and types of freedom;
we rein ourselves in, and gallop fiercely on.

At night my bed is a pirate ship
loosened from its moorings.
I fight off shadows of Komodo dragons
and bodies of armoured beetles.
Mulan of the Nikoi night, I tamp down
on fear, and hungry midnight yearnings.

If Frida could, I can -
a motto for all time.

Some beauty never fades.
Some women never age.
Power grows smaller,
cupped in their hand.

©Shaista Tayabali, 2018

(participating in DVerse Poets Open Link Night)

This poem was inspired by my niece Isabella, who provided me with the first line after seeing my postcard of Frida Kahlo and learning a little of her life.

DVerse Poets Open Link Night)

STINGING NETTLE

My 7 year old nephew and I sit together to write a poem about his summer holidays in England - it’s all very well to assume a holiday is only about ice cream and laughter, but what about the unexpected? Maybe even the unpleasant?

STINGING NETTLE
by Rafael Tayabali (with some help from his Aunty Shai)

It hurt. It really hurt,
That stinging nettle I found.

It was only yesterday,
In a place far, far away

Where the pigs and cows live,
And English shire horses roam.

I thought the pain would last forever,
But before I knew it, it was gone.

‘Scruffles! We have no paper left!’
Says my Aunty Shai. So goodbye.

(A poem for dverse poets Open Link Night) 

HAPPY (?) WORLD LUPUS DAY 🦋

I never quite know what I’m supposed to do on a day ‘celebrating’ such a dastardly disease - or perhaps it’s just for enlightenment, for awareness... not that I ever remember. When I told Mum it was World Lupus Day, she asked me, ‘So what are you doing for today?’ And I replied, ‘I am enjoying my life today.’

Which I am. I wore enjoyment in the form of colours, bright lime green nails and shoes, and a rope of beads around my neck, a craft present from my beloved Mary Haybittle - for rainy days with the twins - can't remember which twin made this particular one - and the nurses were very complimentary. Colour has that effect in hospital.

I pretended my NHS coffee was Real Cawfee and later, when I was free of the cannula, I took myself off to the Jubilee Garden for a few sunshiny moments.

When I rang Mum to ask if she’d fetch me home, she said the iron had packed up and could we go to Sainsbury? 'Mais oui,' said I, placing the beads more prominently to better enjoy the freedom of being me on this day, May 10, 2018.

Did I wear the beads, headdress style, at Sainsbury? Bien sur!

Here is a little video wave I made in the hospital garden, just to say hello 👋🏽

AUNTY SHAI AND THE SLEEPING MYSTERY

There is a mystery that lies at the heart of Aunty Shai. It baffles and befuddles. Why, oh why, does Aunty Shai of the non-stop games and stories, stay awake at night and sleep for hours in the day? What a waste! What a shame! Think of the lost games! The nonsensical rhymes...

Last December, in Singapore, my niece Bella could be heard puzzling this out, just beyond my bedroom door, 'Why Aunty Shai always sleeping, sleeping?' And this Christmas, my niece Eva: 'Shy-star, why do you wake up in the night and sleep in the day? Why wake up at night and sleep in the morning? Why Granma, Papa, Mummy, Daddy, Ellie and Eva wake up in the morning and sleep in the night but Shy-star doesn't?'

This is what I cannot tell my nieces, but what I hope they will read one day when they pick up their aunt's memoir:

What does it mean, having lupus? It means spending more of your life in bed than out of it, not asleep, or even resting, but engaged in invisible battle with the monster under your bed who slimed up over the covers, ate part of you very quickly and then paused, mid gorge, panting, contemplating where to devour next. His paws are resting on your belly while he uses your ribs to pick his upper incisors clean.

What does it feel like? It feels like fiction.

The only one of the children who doesn't ask these questions is Raf, because he had the mystery solved for him a long time ago. The answer was no less of a head scratcher. Apparently there was a wolf out to get his aunt. A wolf called lupus. Very odd business, but this part he comprehends: Aunty Shai is sick, and he needs to take care of her, watch over her. At four, he was encouraging me up steep hills ('You can do it, Aunty Shai! Just believe you can do it') and holding my hand in the dark, or on steps slippery with swimming pool puddles.

Of course he'd much rather that the lupus would simply take a hike up those steep Portuguese hills and  leave us all alone for good, but so far the only way I truly let him down is by not being ever-present. If only I could reside in a small cosy hut outside his house. We could walk to school together. We could catch Pokémon together - he could finally bring my paltry level 11 up to a respectable 22. 

It is January of the new year. I am more wolf-bound than ever. But like Peter Pan or Tinker Bell, determined to believe that something intangibly permanent will persist. Hope, I think we call it, on a good day. Meanwhile, since it is Chinese New Year...

Gong xi fa cai!

And here is a beautiful little tale by artist Jeanne-ming...

'On the Threshold of Something New' by Jeanne-ming Brantingham Hayes

Beautiful Grace sat in the doorway of the Door of Hope Girl's Home waiting for something to happen. She had made a careful list of all the wonderful small blessings that might follow her to this threshold. By night fall, when she was called to come in for dinner, Mei En was convinced that none of her dreams would hatch, at least not tonight. But tomorrow was a new day.

AUNT ALICE AND THE MARSHMALLOW FLOWERS

Dear Aunt Alice,

Somewhere, in other worldly places, you must surely know that I have inherited your perfect signet ring. Initials AJ carved in pretty curving script. I have been wearing your ring from the moment I received it from your niece Mary, because she thinks I am an aunt worthy enough to be in your mould. I thought of taking it off before a jaunt into London to keep it safe, but decided I wanted to take you with me since I suspect the last time you tripped around London as a young woman was, perhaps, a hundred years ago.

Liverpool Station was freezing cold, but once we were in London proper - Oxford Street proper - I warmed up. No snow to offer you this Christmas, but the lights! An assortment of charities paid towards these giant leaping angel figures. Beautiful for the crush of humans below to behold.

Shopping commenced. I'm not sure you would have approved of my purchases, but they were safe enough - a cosy camel turtle neck sweater, a leather bag and a pair of sunglasses. All on sale! Mind you, the prices, even on sale, would probably shock you. To ease the shock, my sister Angelina ordered cronuts and hot chocolate from a famous bakery called Dominique Ansel. Now this would have impressed you - a marshmallow cut like a crown was dropped into steaming hot chocolate, instantly blooming into a flower...

Later, on Great Marlborough Street, we stood outside Liberty and admired the Tudor Revival frontage. Did you know the timber was built from the ship HMS Hindustan? Or that in 1885, Liberty brought forty two villagers from India to stage a living village of Indian artisans? These handy facts are available from an extraordinary web of information us global villagers dive in and out of 'online'. I wonder what you would have made of Wikipedia? Here is something Wikipedia doesn't know: my father had three of his watercolours exhibited and sold by Liberty in the 1970s. Wikipedia you may have been on the fence about, but my father you would have loved.

I did feel a trifle faint in Liberty - so many people! - so was glad first to plop onto an inviting bed in Anthropologie, and then to mesh our way from Carnaby and Kingly Streets towards a Japanese restaurant, which also served my favourite Korean dishes, and to my delight, a delicious plum wine. For a nineteenth century Englishwoman, I suspect your gastronomic tastes possibly didn't stretch to the Orient, but maybe Mary will surprise me and tell me you loved experimenting with the new!

I got muttered at by a stranger for temporarily blocking the entrance to the tube - did I mention this was the day of the human crush? At these moments I am very much the hokey local from a tiny Cambridge village. By the time our train was hurrying us home, we were shattered and ready to slide, submerge and otherwise disappear into sleep. I hope you enjoyed the day out. Today is the last day of the year 2016. Soon 2017 will be upon us. 2016 has been a truly difficult year, for most of us, not least your beloved Mary. If you possess any magic, wield away. We need some magic. I can only be sure of one thing in the new year - I will continue to be the most loving and creative aunt it is possible to be. Keep your spirit beside me!

With love,
Your new friend-in-auntyhood across the century,
Shaista

Photos courtesy Debra Edward