INTENTIONAL BIRTHDAY JOY

In the weeks leading up to my birthday, I try to be intentional about my gratitude. Here I still am, loved. 

I tend to myself in the ways that will fill me up for the unknown times ahead. I took the bus into town, crossed Parker's Piece and stepped into a cosy salon for a massage with baobab oil - seed oil from the tree of life (they say). I tried to infuse colour with my nieces' tenth birthday balloons in the conservatory (slightly deflated, but with original illustrations), birthday nails the colour of birthday balloons… flowers everywhere… 

Mum made a roast chicken with sweetcorn, mushrooms and potatoes on the side… And our beloved friend Joan Church whisked up the legendary chocolate cake she knows I have loved since my first bite in hospital in 2009 while I was still being weaned off a feeding tube… she learnt it was my birthday at 5pm and by 7:30 she was at the door, a cake with still warm icing, fresh from the oven, in the boot of her car!

Over the next few days, other friends stopped by. Dr Kumar with plums and then tomatoes, Dr Ly with walnuts from Vietnam, Sammy stayed the weekend while there was a wedding in the family... and a week after my birthday, I fulfilled a literary challenge set down by my friend Firdaus - to pick up the threads of my novel again! 

I sit in the conservatory and place a few sentences, a few words... like a few daubs of paint onto a canvas. A slow slow writer I am when it comes to fiction. Memoir and poetry come fast like trains and wind. A novel is slow pressure cooking for me. But if I don't keep at the cooking, a piece of my heart's desire continues to remain unfulfilled. So en avant! The poet warrior has work to do. A work of love, she hopes...

A TIKTOK BARBIE SUMMER

I thought I hadn’t posted a thing since Christmas, but I have a couple of posts this year to redeem me. It gets  harder and harder to persist as long form creator when the young ‘uns are buzzing about us with TikTok reels, and YouTube shorts and everything is clipped and fleeting. My niece Bella made a first TikTok for me, and it’s fun, lively, catchy. My nephew Raf has an anime channel, and he checks the views and subscribers like a hawk. My nieces Eva and Ellie whip up comic series as an afterthought at breakfast, and the walls of Shaista land continue to be drawn and painted on, some done, some undone.

Yesterday at the infusion centre, I wore my ‘Je Suis Très Fatigué’ sweatshirt, and June (of the gold heels and immaculate fashion) advised me to never give up hope, keep the negative thoughts away, and surround myself with colour. Mostly I want to badger into the earth, and stay duvet-ed until… until when? It’s summer, and Barbie is in town.

What did I think of the movie? It was indeed berry pink, had a great soundtrack, Ryan Gosling and Kate McKinnon have fabulous comedic roles… but I stayed detached. Barbie and I were never particularly close - I preferred the softer touch of my grey worn teddy bear, my little cotton pillow, my dreams of authorship. There was something very hard and plastic about Barbie. A synthetic opacity. I did love America Ferrera’s speech about the expectations on women resulting in us never being or feeling enough. I love Greta Gerwig as writer and director… I liked being in the cinema with not only my niece, but also my brother and nephew (with him I discussed the film in great detail later that night on a doggy walk around the village). It’s ‘Both, And’ for me, to quote the extraordinary therapist, Esther Perel.

I am phenomenally tired after our family summertime together. Mentally and physically. And the beat goes on… What next? What lies undone? The desire to create, while knowing there are operations to come, an underlying infection that has not released its hold on me… and a birthday. I try to do something special, something memorable on my birthdays when there are few family and friends around… while knowing that staving off a hospital admission is really the focus of the next two weeks. Meanwhile, here's to watching the rain fall with best friends, through a looking glass... 

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. 

FROM POMPEII TO POSITANO

Theresa and Irfan have taken me on many holidays over the years.

Extraordinary trips I never even bucket listed - the Gold Coast in Australia, where I flirted with skippy kangaroos, Nikoi Island in Indonesia where they got married and I adorned my hair with hibiscus and recited wedding poetry, Bali, twice - twice!! Rice fields, ancient carvings, fresh mango salads, gentle harmonious people. So I decided I wanted to take Theresa somewhere she hadn't been before. Irfan had to mind Rafi and Bella, so it could only be half a gift. But girls' trips are fun in a very special way. 

I tussled between Greece (too scorchingly hot?), Dubrovnik (a walled city, enclosed), and of course, Italia. Florence was my first choice but there were no direct flights from Stansted, and knowing Theresa had already navigated Heathrow coming from Singapore, I plumped for Napoli. 

Naples gets a raw deal by tourists who compare it unfavourably to the Amalfi Coast, and I, being perfectly suggestible, believed the critics and planned accordingly to spend as little time as possible in Naples.

We left home at 4:30am. Salvatore, our guide, picked us up at Naples Airport. He was jacketed in the sweltering heat and fancied himself the perfect gentleman. He swarmed with compliments for Theresa, 'Bellissima! Bellissima! You are gorgeous woman! Macedonia! (translation: mixed fruit salad). It was amusing to begin with, and we giggled at the back, but hours of it left both of us uncomfortable and ready to leap from the vehicle dragging our suitcases away from Sal's seductions (and endless Bocelli renditions of 'Dancing in the Dark'...) 

But first Pompeii. Salvatore deposited us in the arms of Gianni, of the bright blue shirt, tight white trousers and heavy perfume. Guideless, Pompeii would have defeated us, even though I suppose one could simply follow other tourists and other guides, but I was glad for Gianni and his oft-repeated 'And don't forget one thing...' Pompeii is tourism central, but there was something moving about us modern day folk walking on the same stones as the ghosts of ash consumed Pompeiians. Some tourists walk barefoot to feel that same memoried ground. Others weep before the bodies of people and animals exhumed in mid flight, mid hopeless flight, from their choking home.

   
What surprised me about Pompeii was the green. What didn't surprise me was the heat. Surely Athens could not have been hotter?

So that when we finally returned to the car (and Sal's charm offensive) it was cool glory to feast our eyes on the Bay of Naples. Even Mt Vesuvius, destroyer of a city, looked less threatening... we wound past Sorrento, and down down down to Hotel Buca di Bacco in Positano. Theresa swam almost immediately upon our arrival, on Spiaggia Beach, hoping for warm waters but alas... and then we cooled our heels in the waters on Fornillo Beach. 

Are we really here?!!

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) 

MAYDAY

I like painting my lips.
Nothing wild like purple,
or unexpected like green;

just your standard, average,
ordinary orange,
herald of summer dreams -

or a plump, pale pink
promise of innocence,
candy floss at Strawberry Fair

when school was out
and love
was ever in the air.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2016

Poetry prompt from dverse Poets Pub...

AUNTY SHAI!

From far away, the call went up. 'To the hill! It's Aunty Shai!' Mind you, I am on the verge of becoming plain Shaista because my niece Eva is getting suspicious that 'Aunty Shai' is not necessarily my grown-up name…. she does not know that I am not necessarily Grown Up.

It's summer. The bees are out. Honeysuckle balms the air. And in Wandlebury, five siblings reunite in dappled English light…

A WALKING LOVESONG FOR MY NIECES

Birdsong.
Rain song.
A dog's song.

I am in a hurry to reach my nieces
before bed songs.

Paw prints on my Gap white t-shirt:
Grace, next door, wanted to play;

the shortest journey stretches the longest
as I count my way
home.

Dandelions tempt me
and I denude one, shamelessly;
I bury my nose in lilac and think
everything is lavender this day.

I pass immaculate glass conservatories
and somewhere a tractor disturbs
the evening chorus.

Eva, can you hear my
sandals treading swiftly?

Ellie, will you decipher lavender
when you brush against my thigh,
when you use my limbs as props
for whims?

When you gesture imperiously,
I arrive.

© Shaista, 2014

I love all of my nieces and my nephew equally, of course, but can only walk to two of them. I write as I walk, carving words in rhythm to my steps, gathering flowers, which they might like to eat when I arrive…

SUMMER SOLSTICE

The clematis are dying in purple paper clusters,
a pretty, dusty, crepuscular fading
of old lace, doilies,
beside the newly hatched delphinium -

only the daisies seem invincible.


© Shaista Tayabali, 2014
image: Sweet Summer, 1912, John William Waterhouse from Magpie Tales

BEFORE AUTUMN

Hasn't this been the most unexpected summer? A full summer for me, filled with new experiences, most of them wonderful, some sad. I went to the beach with my cousins and 'crabbed' for the first time - humane crabbing - we put 'em all back...

The seagulls were out in force, and the beach huts delectable...

No, I did not leap into the bracing (c-c-c-c-cold) sea, but watched others bravely attempt the waves as I read Plath on the pebbles and chose a few jewel like blue shells. And on another day, when the weather was warmer I toasted my first marshmallows and was offered a quail's egg by my five year old cousin Oli, who also spent the day teaching me about the ways and practises of hornets, dragonflies, and various birds whose names I shamefully cannot remember now (good thing he doesn't read my blog...)

The summer has been full of animals enjoying the heat and the rain too, at Shepreth Wildlife park - a place I'd never been to until the arrival of my nephew...

The days of this precious visit from the Singaporeans has meant a rare reunion of the brothers and myself with babies everywhere and a LOT of 'tories. Most of my nephew's 'tories require someone eating someone else up, but I try to work in some vegetarian tales too - of tigers and leopards eating potatoes and 'trawberries... I have also tried to lightly warn Rafael that I might have to go away to see the doctor, but how can you prepare a two year old for the return of his Aunty Shai with a pirate patch covering one bloody eye? Maybe I could ask the blue eyed surgeon for a friendly Gruffalo patch? Children live entirely in the moment so Rafa will simply have to work it out when he sees me although am not sure how long the operation will take. Wish me luck today, me hearties.