WILD THING

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him WILD THING and Max said, I'LL EAT YOU UP so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

That very night in Max's room a forest grew and grew and grew until the ceiling hung with vines... and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to the place where the wild things are...

I bought this book for my nephew Rafael long before he was ready and when he arrived this autumn, I still wasn't sure, but almost the first words he spoke to any of us were, "I'm goin' EAT You All Up!" And Max was already in Raf and Raf was Max.

But Max is in me too. The place of the Wild Things is the place I entered the night after my eye operation. It took over three hours and when I woke, my body was doing something very strange.

'And now', cried Max, 'let the Wild Rumpus start!'

I have a theory about why I reacted so wildly post waking from anaesthesia. Our brain doesn't completely shut down during anaesthesia, even if the CNS is paralysed, and it felt as though I was simply continuing my rumpus through those hours of desperately trying to get away from the pain. I was almost jack knifing off the bed, spasming every few seconds, then minutes, then longer passages. When my speech was less slurred I requested the lovely Irish nurse minding me to keep me in the recovery room so Mum wouldn't have to worry about this as well. Karen made me laugh by teasing me and calling me Nemo, because I was flapping about so.

Pain is an animal and I became Queen of the Wild Things that night. With nothing to numb the localised site of surgery, I was facing down something with sharp and terrible claws minute after minute for almost a year until it was morning and I saw the surgeon again and he numbed my eye for a brief, beautiful few seconds.

'Now stop!' Max said, and sent the Wild Things off to bed without their supper and Max, the King of all the Wild Things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all. Then from all around from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat. So he gave up being King of Where The Wild Things Are...

I am still sailing in the boat of pain, but feeling grateful for every day spent with the people who love me best of all and keep my supper hot and make me cups of tea and most of all, for the memory of a small figure with curly hair and a wild look in his eye as he commands or cajoles, 'Aunty Shai, tell me 'tory!' and then when I begin with 'Once upon a time', tucking himself neatly into my lap with a sigh and the occasional tap tap of his fingers against my skin keeping time to the rhythm of a tale spun just for him.

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.

A BUTTERFLY TRAVELS

On the 24th of August, a few days after my birthday, my grandmother passed away. I haven't felt much like blogging or tweeting but Vera, my grandmother, loved my blog and used to sit with my ipad and 'catch up' on a year's worth of missed posts when she came to stay. She lived in Vancouver and spent her summers in England. Which meant we almost always spent our birthdays together, unless she was on the razzle in London, as opposed to her quieter, gentler, oh let's face it, more boring days in Cambridge. But she would have approved this birthday of mine...

There was a picnic by a pond, there were loved ones who brought food and drink and a very chocolatey cake... there was a beautiful spaniel - my grandmother loved dogs...

The twins visited briefly, incognito, but highly fashionable in their Aunty Shai's hot pink and neon green pashminas (there were marauding wasps hovering nearby)...

And my mother sent flowers despite being thousands of miles away at her own mother's bedside...

I was taken out for drinks and dinner by dear cousins and at night, under unseen stars and a cool rain, I slept in the gypsy caravan on the farm...

Vera had visited the farm a few years ago and would have thoroughly approved my temporary living arrangements. A kettle, albeit decorative, a cosy bed, and thundering rain all around...

In the morning, with a hot cup of tea, bread and cheese, I opened my beloved friend Mary's gift (I like saving birthday presents to leak into the next day) only to discover the same book I had taken the night before to read in the caravan! Mary often knows my mind before I do. Luckily mine was a library book, so I now have my own copy of Barbara Pym's 'Jane and Prudence'...

 

The day of my grandmother's passing I met two ladies on the farm, who through a very rapid exchange of conversation, asked if I would teach their Creative Writing class, their usual teacher having just left. I think my grandmother was trying to get me a job! Happy travels darling Vera. Know you will continue to be loved.

PERSEIDS SHOWER

Photographer: Jonathan S. McElvery

It is well past midnight and the show has begun. But it is not what I expected. I imagined a dramatic, turbulent sky. A violent burst. A shooting, I suppose - they call them 'shooting stars'.
But it is an unhurried ballet. A gentle arc flung now and then, across a small portion of the southern pocket of sky above the farm.
I come and go, with hot cups of tea and chocolate biscuits and my thick plaid sofa shawl. I sit on the bench and don't mind the sensor switching on when moths flutter by.
I crunch across the gravel and stand head tilted back, making my wishes, praying for the well being of those I love and wrap the blanket tighter as I think in turn of other eyes watching such nights of diamond stars. Other eyes in war time, from deep within trenches, or watching the Titanic sinking into glacial waters... do you ever find yourself imagining you are a soldier or a survivor? And then catch yourself in the thankful realisation that you are quietly safe, and yet it's all so close, isn't it? We brush up against each other's lives, in fiction, in memoir, in poems, in accidental stories shared on planes, buses, in hospitals.

Photography: National Geographic.com

And I feel neither small nor insignificant with a world of stars looking down on me. They are the most benevolent of spirits because they allow us to see them from time to time, and there is so much we cannot see, or choose not to see. When I see stars, I think of myself at five in the crook of my father's arms, wondering, questioning, and discovering faith.

'You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.' - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince 

A LADYBIRD AMONG BUTTERFLIES AND SNAILS

A recent visitor to the farm was a 4 year old boy, a Noo Yawker, whose finer appreciation for the life of snails and ants was charming. Something nipped at him while he was pond dipping but once the sting had passed, he enlightened me on mosquito larvae and water boatmen - the characters in our collection. August is here, and so there is still time for Being Outside. I was sitting under a tree the other day (on my beautiful purple meditation cushion that once belonged to Sister Chan Khong from Plum Village), eating cherries, writing my beloved friend Mary a letter...

when a ladybird crawled up my arm and settled on to me for the afternoon and evening.
Before nightfall, I thought I better put her somewhere less peculiar than the crook of my elbow and the nape of my neck (she was a tireless traveller!) but I had already fallen in love. If I were a 4 year old Noo Yawker I would never have parted with her!

I have not been having an easy time of it this year. Nothing earth shatteringly original - simply the dull ache of a life with illness and the sadness that comes with the knowledge that I am not in the swim of things once more. The last time I felt so painfully out of the loop of my contemporaries was when my life with lupus first began... but I am a writer and where there are words there is a place for me. Where there are trees and the natural order of things, there is a place for me. So I breathe, pay attention and write!

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT AND DAWN

Darling Eva and Elyssa,
The day you were born, I sat inside a little room beside a rose garden, reading Virginia Woolf, and this passage struck me particularly...
'Here then was I, sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought... such a wash and tumult  of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me... His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.'

Woolf decides to cross the quadrangle and visit one of the famous Oxbridge libraries, when...

'there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.'

How things have changed and changed and though some things remain the same, you have arrived at the time of Malala Yousafzai taking on the Taliban single handedly at 15, and although America may not yet have a woman President, plenty of other countries do from Liberia and South Korea to Kosovo, Costa Rica, Argentina and Malawi.  While I was writing this, I noticed a butterfly trapped behind the glass door... she flew out the instant she heard the sound of wind and freedom that come with an open door...

For a while, I have moved onto a quiet farm to create more space for your two grannies, grandpa, other aunty and all the other friends and relations who will flock to visit you in abundance. You are both loved.

You are both celebrated. Although, would you mind if we celebrated your cousin Isabella's one month birthday today too? She is very far away but hopefully you will meet her soon.

The first meal I made on the farm for your parents, who that very night were detained by your imminent arrival, so your grandparents enjoyed instead, and together we waited for news.

And now you are both here!

Love forever and ever, your Aunty Shai-Shai xxxx

FATHER, ON YOUR BIRTHDAY...

who would have thought you would be a grandfather twice over? That your glorious, mischievous son would be a father twice over? I feel sure Rafael knows how lucky he is to have baby Isabella or Sissybella as he likes to call her... someone to play with and tease and employ in mild acts of destruction, someone to point the finger at knowing she will never hold a grudge, no matter what.

And who would have thought you would have the other beloved son, the First Born as you like to call him, waiting to add to your cricket team?

Once, it was just the five of us, with no plans other than to enjoy each other, invent new games, and look forward to sharing hours of reading in silence... Once, we even fit in the same cot, all three of us...

Darling Popsy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways... Infinity to infinity, and all the days beyond... here's to the ever unfolding of the beautiful family you keep helping to create and recreate...

THE YELLOW WORLD

I don't normally do book reviews because I've always trusted that books find us and even a passionate book recommendation cannot save it from poor timing. So this isn't a review, just an About A Book I Liked. It's called The Yellow World and it is a very neat, concise memoir by a man who once was a boy who had cancer. I know. I'm really selling this to you :)

I felt quite jealous reading it because in the book, Albert Espinosa recounts how the cancer kids (the Eggheads) were part of a tight, intimate clique. They shared their lives, experiences, journeys, losses and banded together against and with the different shades of the disease. I've never had anything like this. Mine has been a desperately lonely road in the hospital, especially when I was a teenager and even in my twenties. My friendships have always been with the staff, especially house cleaning and nurses.

On Thursday, during my infusion, I met a young man who could easily have been Albert Espinosa in disguise. He was freshly graduated and didn't mind letting everyone know he was now part of The First Class With Honours brigade. 'Me too, me too!' I wanted to boast. He was very cool in a Cool Patienty sort of way - showing off the expensive diabetes contraption attached to his flesh. We discussed the possibility of subcutaneous infusions which might be in my near future (the prospect of self injecting does not appeal), and he had some good advice about it. He talked a mile a dozen, but what I envied was his life in his usual hospital, on his usual ward. 'Everyone knows each other. We've all been coming there for years. We have the same three nurses. It's brilliant!' And then he dropped the real gem - they're allowed to manage their Own Drips! That's unheard of. I've never been allowed to manage my own medication on the infusion bay. How green I felt, how green with envy... I doubt we will see each other again. As the record stands, I don't think I've ever met the same patient twice and I've been at this gig for almost seventeen years now. I did meet a lady, once, for a second time - she recognised me because the last time we'd met, I'd inflicted a leaf on her with a poem inscribed on it...

So I was scrabbling around trying to find a nice yellow image to go with my yellow post when I came across this bench... derived from the concept of Random Acts of Kindness, the purpose of the yellow bench is to invite strangers to share a moment, a chat. The business concept, of yellow benches everywhere, struggled to survive red tape and city councils, but one day a woman volunteered to carry the mission forward and put a Yellow Bench in Dublin. Isn't my love of Ireland justified again and again? (I can imagine some of my Irish friends thinking less than salubrious thoughts about the TYPE of person that might want to 'chat', but then again, you never know... you might meet someone extraordinary...)

Images of The Yellow Bench taken from All About Ideas