Chin Up, Chest Out, Best Foot Forward, Smiles All Round

I am fine.  I am wearing pink.  I am glowing with a gentle tan applied a few days ago and still here, I have not taken a bath in case I go all white again.  My studio feels like home once more, and yesterday I had the birthday meal to end all birthday meals .  I had chips, crisps, sweets and a white bap with processed cheese and overfried onions. I drank diet coke and sweet tea from a polystyrene mug.

My hair it shineth.  My kids, they joketh.  My house, it is clean forsooth. And my garden, it noddeth (with flowers) and all is peaceful in the August sun.  

Yesterday I was 51. I had the most wonderful birthday, I had so much attention and kindness from everyone that somehow the tension from the last few months feels as if it is evaporating.  There was a certain Oh what the heck! in my heart as I woke this morning, and a very slight bubble of excitement in my tummy as I thought - I am going to make a list!  This list was a sensible list.  It was a real Can Do list of small and effective actions that I could do today that would, possibly, make tomorrow easier.  It was six items long.  It involved lists of people to email with teeny requests and reassuring statements.  It involved phoning a certain lady who I want to speak to about training to be companion for the dying. And it started with a very sensible item, "Ask for help". 

Two wee miracles happened in the space of two days that enabled this recovery.  The first wee miracle -

 

I have been longing to go away on my own to paint and write.  Just a week, I reasoned, one week of utter silence.  In a small cottage, by the sea, in a thriving little village, where I can be solitary amongst other people, and use the silence to create.  St Ives!  I said to myself, is the answer.  Well, the cost of getting there, the cost of staying there and the difficulty finding a nice place that would suit me was too difficult.  "Woe," I said finally.  "I live by the sea in Bognor Regis, I have my studio here and a constant food source.  I will stay here and create my St Ives holiday here.  Woe."  The next day, a busy travelling and seeing people day, I received an email which was titled "St Ives Invitation".  I was just getting out of the car at the time I received it, and managed to say "What the," before falling out of the door.  I sent it on to Alan and asked him to read it because I thought it was a joke.  A while later the email came back via Alan saying It is true!  Go!  St Ives awaits!  

An old school friend that I have not seen since about 1976 had seen me on facebook, had read a few blogs, had looked at the work, and had had an inkling that I should be there, in St Ives, in her renovated cottage while it was waiting to be sold, in order to lift my heart and spirits.  She had intended to write and offer a wee holiday there before, but had not got round to it.  But the day she did send the invite, was the day I most needed it, and the day after I had thought that it would not be possible. And she lives in St Ives!  Blimming heck that is spooky but welcome.  So I am going.  I will work out when, and I will go.  

The next wee miracle -

I have been doleful and morose of late.  It is true.  I have not been able to work, I have felt empty of inspiration and heavy of heart.  I have been fatigued right to my very soul.  "Wassit all about?" I asked myself morning noon and night, as I trudged around the house eating bread and butter and feeling fat.  Yes, lots of worrying things were happening with my boys, my Youf of Bognor, and still are - but - the effect on me was to put me into a state of Shut Down.  Why, I would mumble, when I could bring myself to remember all my painting enagagements and deadlines, am I watching my artistic life slide away from me?  And I cannot for the life of me, give a jot?  And then there would follow a terrible feeling of panic and helplessness.  Haven't I done enough?  I would say with sad eyes, to the wall, to have made some difference in the world out there, without always having to push myself and work so hard?

On Friday, the Sunday Times contacted me about an interview for A Graceful Death.  

Enough said.  Even if nothing comes of it, someone out there, who writes about The World beyond Bognor, was interested enough to want to talk to me about my work.  That contact from an established newspaper has woken me up.  "I am fine now!" I said to myself.  "Time to wake up." 

And today, because of the two miracles and the lovely birthday, I have made my list of six things.  I have already done four of them.  I have stepped out of the coccoon I have been in and am emerging slightly crumpled, as an Artist again.  Next week I go to France with Alan to join a house party.  Until a few days ago I had planned to run away and hide there.  Only Alan would be able to see me, I would be the Recluse that Must Not Be Disturbed.  Now, thanks to the St Ives and the Sunday Times email, thanks to my lovely birthday, I am taking my painting things to Cherbourg with me, in Alan's lovely posh car, and spending the week painting the portrait of Nush Khan Levy that I should have painted ages ago, for A Graceful Death.  And I am excited about it.  

"Ahhh," says the Dalai Lama reading this.  "All things have ebb and flow.  All things are cyclical.  You have just finished your ebb and are starting your flow." Thanks Dalai.

How Can I Not Work?

This may look like the cry of a workaholic who is seeing the light. 

It may look like someone who is snowed under and longs for Batman to come and take it all away.

What I am actually saying is No, really, what can I do to not work?

Today is my first day back in the studio for ages.  Today I am not only doing all the washing and getting some food in, I am dealing with my desk and all the backlog of papers piled up there.  I am going into the painting part of the studio and saying Pah!  Chicken Feed!  I can do this.  Bring it on.  I am saying to myself - Now what is it I am avoiding most, and then saying That is the thing I will start with.  The phone is with me, the computer is on, my teapot is full and my diary is open.  The paintings that need to be done have been set up a while ago and I will joyfully remove the cobwebs from them and blow clouds of dust from the paints and brushes.  I have lit a scented candle and opened the windows, and have practiced smiling while doing all this to get myself into the mood, to tell my subconscious to tell me that it is all so much fun.  Look what you can do today! I want my subconscious to say to me, what a lark!  So much painting, so much creativity, you know you love it and Lo!  There is tons of it to do! Piling up!   (Easy, easy.  Deep breaths and Smile.  Do, as my dear cousin Maddy says, Loveliness.  Do Loveliness)

But what is really happening is that I am afraid.  I am afraid that I am not able to do it any more.  I dread the idea of starting because it feels like a mountain to climb, and I am only wearing flip flops.  At the top of the mountain are my Goals.  I am at the bottom feeling weary and fat, empty and boring, and having to put my sunglasses on to glimpse at the golden shining Stuff at the top of the mountain.  Which, if they are my goals, I have put there.  How did this happen?  How did my goals get so distant and so dazzling?  If I put them there, where was I on this metaphorical mountain when I did so?  And then how did I get to the bottom of the mountain and feel I can't look up to these goals without shading my eyes?

I don't really know how it happened, but it did.  There have been Family Issues, yes.  We all get them.  Decisions to make - big ones, yes.  We all get them.  There have been personal issues too, like getting older and being different to how I was a year ago.  There have been health issues which have come to nothing and as far as we know, I am as tickety boo as I have always been except - except - I have become terribly terribly tired.  I am coming up for 51 and am menopausal.  I am well but changing.  My family are changing too, the children are getting older and are trying to prove that they are invincible, that they are always right and that I should blinking well get a life, but after I have proved I love them by getting in their favourite ice cream.  My parents are getting older and are saying what they really think very loudly in public, and my friends - ah. My friends are changing like me.  They are often terribly tired, and they have, from time to time, ground to a halt too. It is reassuring to try to explain to a friend how blobby and unexceptional and miserable you feel, to hear them say, I hear you.  I too am a Dowdy Frump. 

 I have been to Ireland again.  This time I went for my annual stay with Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, The Nicest Man In Ireland and their family in the cottage they have by the sea in Arklow.  I have been going there with them from before I had my second and third child, and they had their two.  There is history there, tons of history, and it is full of happiness and memories.  My history there is only that I go every year from just after my daughter was born, then bringing each of the boys with me as they arrived in my world. The deeper Irish memories and histories of this cottage are generational, full of the myths and stories of all those that have been there over the years. My visit to Arklow, with my two sons in tow, was to mark a turning point for me.  I had decided this before I went.  While at Arlkow, I told myself, my introspection will have reached its limits.  I will make a plan for a sensible and practical return to the studio and my life therein.  I will, I said to myself before I went, prioritise.  And if I come first on my list, well blow me down, lordy luvaduck, it's not such a bad thing.  So now, having spent that time in the silence of the cottage in Arklow, where there is no telly, no radio, no music, no distractions but the gentle and uplifting conversations with those around me;  no distractions but the very cold sea to swim in and the sand dunes to lie in; no distractions but the books to read, the board games to play and the mammoth meals to cook and eat, and having spent that time in silence, I am ready to come back to the studio and just Start.  Theoretically.

So here I am.  Not, as it happens, tired at all.  Onto my second pot of tea, and some phone calls out of the way.  The washing is done and is drying nicely on the trampline. The shopping is done, so Furiously Independent Son, who is upstairs at the moment, will have ice cream and green tea when he wants it, and daughter is unexpectedly collected from the train station.  The mess of papers on my desk has been marked, sorted, stapled, hole puched, and thrown away.  I am wearing a very fetching summer dress, I am wearing perfume, I am challenging my inner blob. Tomorrow I will paint, tomorrow will be different.  Tomorrow I will wear my painting boiler suit, and that means Business.  Can't back out of it then.  I will arrive early, and say matter of factly to my studio -  Morning.  Just going to do some masterpieces, don't mind me, just doing my job, thanks very much, and so on.  There will be a little pouff of dust as I sit on my painting seat, a brief intake of breath as I select a brush, and the day will begin.  I will bear in mind that even the most accomplished of artists have spent a day gazing at their work, and just before sundown, tweaked a single tiny detail with the smallest brush they own.  That will give me scope to do quite a lot, if doing the single late-in-the-day-tweak is still acceptable.  Even is I do two tweaks, that is progress.

In the meantime, I have begun the steady trudge back up the mountain in my flip flops.  I have been thinking, that you do have to stop and think about things.  You do have to spend time not being effective and not being productive.  You do have to  give up and give in and crumple like a slow motion video of a tower block coming down, and you do have to allow youself to be vacant.  It is good to sit in your blobbiness and try and remember what you are here on this earth for, and eat white bread sandwiches with Nutella.  But there is no other way out of it, I think, than eventually saying to yourself (as if speaking to a very old dog that needs to come in out of the rain and keeps sitting down in the mud with exhaustion, tail wagging, and still trying her best) - Come on old thing, time to shuffle back into the day to day out there.  Can't be that bad, can it?  Start at the beginning, don't expect too much, and just do what you can.  There now.  (Dog falls nobly but pathetically over the threshold and tears all round from the assembled kitchen staff).Watch this space.

"Bear Up," Spake The Voice From On High, "It's Not Over Yet"

Bear Up, Ye Of Many Small Heart Attacks, Thou Shalt Be OK 

If I were to write in Biblical terms of a conversation with God, with a bit of Hollywood, this is how it would go.

And Lo, the Heavens parted and there unto my eyes were Angels of Light and in the midst was a Light more bright than any I have seen.  "Thou," said the Light in a thundering voice that rattled my teapots on their shelves, "thou art in a proper mess."

"Oh tell me who you are, Light that is too bright for my eyes," I said in a whisper, quaking with fear.  "Are you God?"

" I am."  Said the voice. "And I have words of comfort and wisdom that wilt be of enormous benefit to thee.  Hast had enough?  Thought so.  Make thyself comfortable, oh my daughter, it is not just thee that hast loads to cope with, thou joinest an enormous throng of parents that despaireth that their offspring will ever be normal."  And with that, each of the multitude of Heavenly Angels lifted up their instruments and played a fanfare of terrific joy and then - and then - was that a piano?  Was one of the Angels playing a piano? "As a token of my personal attention," said God from the midst of what was now a wonderful virtuoso display of music, "I have commanded that we conduct this interview to music that you adore.  My seraphim and cherubim will play Scott Joplin for you." And it was true.  We were speaking to the gentle but syncopated rhythms of Fig Tree Rag played in harmony by a thousand Heavenly Hosts.

"Now," said God.  "I knowest that one of thy offspring is off tripping the light fantastic.  He will return. It is written that he will do this thing.  I have made him with love and free will, and I will be beside him even at the crummiest of night clubs; I will be with him.  His soul is never lost, I have it in my hand, but his way may be dark and dangerous.  Fear not, oh Artist Lady, for though his path is many forked, and there are many choices he could make, at no point is he alone as I am there with my hand on his head waiting for him to work it all out."

There was a pause and the angels started to play Maple Leaf Rag.  "Feeling better, oh thou of huge need of a lucky break?" said God.

"I think so," I replied. 

I gazed with wonder around me.  I had been standing in my kitchen which was transformed into a place of wonder and light and love and Scott Joplin;  I was enveloped in the light that was pouring into the room from the vision of glory that filled my entire line of vision.  I was in awe, I was both afraid and unafraid, I was longing to hear more.

"Thou art longing to hear more," said God from the centre of the joyful throng of Angels and pianos.  "And now I say unto thee, listen up and thou wilt have peace.  Thy son who is 14, he who they call Boxing Boy, he who is of a golden heart but mighty of fist, he who is now in a pickle and mighty are the consequences.  Courage!" the voice boomed.  I jumped and spilt my tea.  "Courage!  He has only the semblence of a mountain troll, in truth, thy son is nice fellow.  I have given him the ability to do many things, many wonderful things, and as yet, he cannot see them.  Thou hast found a piano teacher for him?  Good.  And he will, I say unto thee, go back to rugby and boxing and all will be well, he will pulverise others in a controlled and legal manner.  And lo.  These children are yours, remember that, they have quite a few of your genes and thus may become nicer as time goes by.  Thou hast a daughter too.  I have shown that all will be well, thy daughter has an ISA and a pension and has pulled herself back from the abyss.  She is training to be a nurse and is a jolly good one too."

A pause.  We both remained silent.  The Angels broke into Magnetic Rag.  The light beamed and filled the room and I heard God shifting and clearing his throat.  He was right. Beautiful Daughter, she who fell as a teenager headlong into a hell of chavviness and drink, is now a force to be reackoned with.  She is now working and studying at the same time, and is living with Dolly Parton as a role model in Brighton. 

"It has been tough," said God quietly, " and it is not over yet.  But Hey!  I am with you and I hold all of you deep in my heart."

"But everything is so goddam hard," I said from the kitchen.  "I don't know what to do next and nothing is being done and I can't think clearly."

"Oh My Lovely Artist Lady!" said God with a chuckle.  The Angels broke into the Entertainer.  "All things are possible!  Much is being done, much is being achieved, you cannot see it and you do not expect it, but all is good and all is being done that needs to be done, and Lo!  There is time!  Why not trust me, love your ghastly offspring, and get an Indian Takeaway.  Take thee to London and see a show!  Thy painting work is ongoing and a whole different kettle of fish, trust me that thou art a good painter but right now, it  is not the priority.  Get thy lads sorted and take it from me, I have you all in my sights and know well what you feel, and somehow, it will all sort itself out."

And with that the Angels upped the volume of Heavenly Rag Time, and a hand came from the sky and wrote in the white board I have for notes in my kitchen -

Bear Up, Ye Of Many Small Heart Attacks, Thou Shalt Be OK.

 

The vision cleared, and silence fell.  My heart felt light and the room looked brighter and cleaner.  Wow, I thought.  I have been given  a thumbs up from On High.  I am not alone, it is not all a wasteland of gloom and dreadfulness, though I have to say it feels like it.  I looked up to where the glory of God had been, in the centre of such a wonderful light, up in the ceiling of my kitchen.  And as I looked, the faint chords of Scott Joplin could be heard echoing in the distance and fluttering down to my feet was a piece of paper.  "Special Offers At Your Local Indian Takeaway" it said.  Thank you God.  A sign indeed.

 

 

Madam, Your Children Are Unruly And You Are A Disgrace. And Did You Enjoy Ireland?

Madam, You And Your Children Are Unruly.  How Was Ireland?

Madam, Fate says this morning, Your Children Are Unruly.  Yes, I say, I think you are right. 

I wonder how many mothers live like this.  We have our selection of children, we have one, or two, or three or more, and we do our best.  We get on with raising them and hope that they are all still there and breathing at the end of each day, that they will go to bed and sleep like the cherubs we hope they are, somewhere deep inside their subconcious.  We need to keep tabs on each child as they grow, because they know that they know best.  We were born, they think, fully formed as adults and know nothing about life and are really stupid. The older they get, our little babies, the taller they get.  And in my case,  I ended up with tall, glorious and powerful children, one of which is tall enough to use me as an elbow rest.  For that child in question today, with the height comes power, and with this sense of power comes the lust for battle and with the lust for battle comes regular punch ups.  It is as if I am looking after a toddler who is the size of Godzilla.  But Godzilla, King Kong, The Terminator, Thor the Thunder God didn't understand that they didn't have to thwack things and flatten whole cities when they were annoyed.  No one was there to tell them not to.  A chat with an understanding adult may have helped.  A game of rugby, a round of boxing in a gym, a bit of time spent on a survival course in the North Sea, anything but Incidents Outside School where there are no sensible adults (or kids) to say Go Home You Fool.

Madam, said the school this morning, your son has not turned up for class.  Are you aware of the Incident Outside School yesterday?  And having got one furious, resentful and disgusted offspring off to London yesterday from where I am to be disowned as a punishment for being alive and wrong, I wake up this morning to the next furious resentful child thinking My Turn Now!  Watch This! 

Yes, I say to the school, I know about the Incident Outside School.  I feel that waves and waves of consequences are coming.  Gird Your Loins, I say to myself in the mirror, Life Has Its Ups And Downs, And This Is Another Down.  By implication, an Up will follow, so I paint my toenails red and say Bring It On.  We Have Done All This Before, We Will Do It Again.  And I think, this is my youngest child that is on this rocky path, and when he is grown up, I don't have any other younger Visigoths In Waiting.  It will then be time to hire a camper van with my old school pals Caroline, Sarah, Sharon and Vicky and go in a convoy to the ends of the earth where everyone is sensible and fun and before anyone hits anyone else, they have a jolly good chat and a cup of tea, tell each other some really funny jokes, and sort it out.

When my kids play up, I feel as if I were to blame.  I feel the unspoken words at the end of every phone call about them is And You Madam, Are A Disgrace.  I feel that I missed important signals that they needed help.  I feel that they must have been trying to tell me that things were not right and that I merrily ignored them.  I was too busy chatting to friends about the meaning of life and what constitutes a great blueberry muffin while my darlings were agonising over whether to bash so and so or not, or whether to furiously disown me until they needed more money, to teach me a lesson for being so embarrassing.  Maybe my dear Boxing Boy, my youngest son who is trying out Thuggery as a bargaining tool, longs for something I am not giving him.  Maybe I should allow him to do Junior Cage Fighting.  Maybe not.  I feel the frustration of those who have to deal with the misdemeanours of my kiddies, and long to say I Am A Disgrace.  I Am Sorry.  We Are All A Disgrace.  

Ireland was not a disgrace.  Ireland was absolutely wonderful.  Briefly, I took my Furiously Independent Son to Dublin for his birthday, and stayed with Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, The Nicest Man In Ireland.  We joined the Husband and about 28 other Dubliners and their children, and went up a mountain in Co. Wicklow, where we camped for a magical midge infested night.  The next morning, we woke (those of us who slept) and having packed up, left the stream by which we had become a Midge Banquet, and walked down as a tired, happy and very dishevelled bunch of campers to end up at one of the camper's homes where his wife had made us all a special gourmet breakfast.  I will never taste better food.  There were over 100 pancakes, which the kids finished before us adults could say Guinness Loaf. The lady in question is a trained chef, and is probably the best cook in the world.  To me.  Now.

I was too, the only Mum to go on this camping holiday.  I put my name down with huge excitement and asked no questions at all.  It turns out that all the Dads went with their kids, and all the Mums stayed behind with a view to visiting each other for an almighty knees up before helping out with the mammoth breakfast the next day. It should have been obvious.  What Irish Mum would choose to go up a mountain for a night with midges and dirt and their husbands while the kids go quietly ferral, when they don't have to?  

The Dads had fab tents, equipment and know-how.  Darling Dublin Friend lent me her tent and when I unpacked it, I was not only the only Mum, I was the only one with a cow tent.

Madam, you are not a disgrace, you have slept on a mountain in Wicklow in a Cow Tent.  And your children are not a disgrace either.  They just need time, a padded cell and to join the army.  Fear not, Lady Artist, all this shall pass and one day you will be in a camper van far far away telling jokes and drinking tea with the Bedouin with all your friends in camper vans of their own.  Cow camper vans. 

It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now

It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now

It has been interesting, it has been difficult and not much of the past week has been lovely, and sometimes I do want to scream but here we are.  I am as ever, at home.  Furiously Independent Son is here too and is in the garden, lying on the trampoline smoking and sunbathing with all his black clothes on.  Daughter is sunbathing on the hammock next to him in her undies, shining with well applied suncream and being grimly determined to stay there despite the cigarette smoke.  These two are not talking to each other.  It goes back a long way, and it is a shame.  Both would be very good for each other but both think the other is a ghastly mistake and should be exterminated.  They both came from me and I am very nice, but  I expect I am only very nice now that I am 50.  And exhausted.  When I was that age I was a pain in the bum.  So patience, Lady Artist, patience.  Here is the story of your youth and all its mistakes being played out before you, twice, in your two oldest children.  This, says a voice from the sky, is your next learning curve.  This, continues the voice from the heavens, is how I feel.  Up here, knowing it all and not being listened to. 

I am sitting here in the studio watching them from my window, and thinking that they are really very similar.  And that they could be so happy together once the power struggles, status stuff  and sibling rivalry has been sorted out.  

I have the Furious Son home again.  His aura is not dissimilar to broken glass.  He is avoiding any talk and avoiding any resolutions.  He is full of pain and misunderstanding.  My wider family watch us with concern, him and me.  I watch him with concern, and think that he is living two lives and that he doesn't need to.  I know what he does and where, and I am still here with my heart bigger than ever for him.  He probably does need to live divided.  Maybe this is all part of the process.  I know about living with two identities, but I only know about it because now I don't do it any more.  He is older now and things will change for him outside, but inside there is no change.  No sudden shaft of light from above that illuminates the secrets of life for him.  I know a lot but my job is to keep quiet and say as little as possible while watching like a hawk.  

I thought of many things this past week.  I thought of the madness of youth, I thought about way my mother is getting old.  I thought about people who are coming to the end of their lives and still feeling young inside.  I thought about what it is to have your life ahead of you and to be ignorant of your place in it.  I thought about myself and how I always felt an outsider.  How I had no idea of my worth when younger.  I look at my Furiously Independent Son and think that he is full of the wisdom of the planets and  stuck with the confusion and vulnerability of a small child.  

Today then.  Back to the day ahead.  I go to the Hospice to do a volunteering stint over lunch time.  I go shopping to buy food and I have a fancy to buy some clocks.  I have an Arsenal Angel to do, and then with luck, tomorrow will come and I go to London to a fancy dinner with Alan.  Over the weekend I go back to Dublin, with  Furiously Independent Son, back into the arms of Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, the Nicest Man In Ireland.  This is my  birthday present to my newly grown up son.  The Nicest Man In Ireland is taking him and me, and lots of other small kiddies and parents, camping on Saturday.  I am going for the fun of it, FIS is going for some reason I can't fathom.  A few days in Dublin will be great fun, and time spent with FIS alone is always great fun.  Even though I am embarrassing and forget to bring my caravan.

Thanks you to all of you who contacted me with kindness and love over the past week.  It means a lot to me and I am grateful for your care.  And now, if any of you want to

1. Adopt FIS
2. Take me away on a holiday to the sunshine
3. Buy all my art
4. Give FIS a job in Alaska or South Pole or The Moon

let me know.  

In the meantime

It has to be the answer.

I Can't Find My Safe Place.

I Can't Find My Safe Place

When Steve was in his hospice bed once, he became very restless and agitated and I took his face in my hands.  "I can't find my safe place," he said with his eyes closed.  "I want to go home now."  "This is your safe place," I said, "this is your safe place.  And you can't go home."

I don't remember if it made him stop bunching up his sheets and trying to find a way to be comfortable, I think he was calmer and I think I sat for ages watching him and wondering about safe places.  I don't really remember.  It was as if the safe place he was looking for was in one of the corners of his bed, it was a physical space that was mislaid.  At hand, nearby and temporarily out of reach.  He thought perhaps, that someone would say, "Ah.  Here it is, this little square of sheet here at the top left of the bed, remember?  This and this alone is your safe place.  This is where you must try and fit yourself because here, you cannot be unsafe.  Let me help you get back to it."  He wanted to go home too, and I don't blame him.  But home was no longer a safe place, it was once where he was able to rest and relax but now those days were gone forever.  He needed a new safe place while dying, and this safe place had to be found within his bed.

I never consider my safe place until I feel unsafe.  Until then, I continue making plans and writing lists.  I think that I will contact this venue and ask if I can exhibit, and I will send an email to that person to say that I am an artist and that they may love my work.  While I am doing that, I think, I will do the washing and go to Tescos.  I say Yes to a new commission and I say Of Course to a party invitation; I make a press release and I say to Eileen, "Let's ask Clarissa if we can have another fund raising event in her big Wimbledon house" and I know what I am doing.  Antonia gets tired but she is well able to cope.  How do you do it?  is music to her ears.  Shucks, she says looking bashful, you know.  I just, do.  And then something I don't expect shakes the ground under me, and I didn't see it coming, I didn't plan for it and I didn't practice to deal with it.  All my coping strategies aren't about coping with this.  I feel I am only eight years old and have been asked to cope with a mighty grown up problem.  At times like these, I can no longer find time to sit and read.  No time ever to have a relaxing bath, no time to go to bed, and no point in sleeping.  No time for anything that used to make me feel comfortable and peaceful, no safe places. 

 

Last week Furiously Independent Son went missing.  He really went missing and I called the police.  While he was unfound, I discovered things about his life and lifestyle that made me afraid that I would never see him again.  I contacted people last with him at night clubs from his Facebook page, but no one had seen him at all.   Gone.  Other people started to ask where he was, and one or two even emailed me to ask.  Furiously Independent Son keeps his home life and his outside life separate from each other.  He is pathologically secretive about every step he takes once out of this front door, I don't know the names of any of his friends nor do I know where any of them live.  While on the quest to find him, I discovered he had told everyone that I was a Traveller, a Catholic one, living in a caravan.  Irish. An Irish Catholic Traveller in a caravan.  And that his grandparents owned Rolls Royce.  Ah.  That is why we are kept so far apart, his friends and me.  I wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.  I am not Irish, I have quite a posh accent, I have a house in Bognor Regis, a bike and a VW car.  No caravans.  No horses and no big gypsy weddings.  Though my name is Rolls, my parents don't own Rolls Royce, though because my lovely old Dad has had a few strokes and doesn't always remember clearly, he would probably agree that he did, after all, own Rolls Royce.  

I could not sleep.  I could not find him.  I didn't like what his friends told me and I wanted the police to find him.  Trawl the hospitals, I told them.  I know something has happened to him.  I saw him in my imagination, unconscious and vulnerable, forgotten and dying in the boot of someone's car and his phone lying just out reach ringing, ringing, ringing.  I saw him in my nightmares cold, confused and crying silently and I feared that I would never find my way through this.  

And then I got a call from a train guard in Orpington.  Your son, he says, has been found avoiding paying his fare by locking himself and his friend in the toilet.  Oh I said.  Ask the name of the friend.  My first instinct was to put a name to someone that my son knew and because the guard asked, he would have to say.  Why, I asked the guard, is he in Orpington?  As if the guard could say Well Madam, it's like this, see.  Here is a run down of your son's actions since last week, bear with me, it is going to be a long one.  In fact the guard said he didn't know and who was going to pay for the ticket.  So I put the guard onto the police that were looking for son and said They will deal with this.  

And, I said to the guard, will you tell him to come home?

And then I thought, with a ticket.

Furiously Independent Son did eventually come home, the next day.  Incandescent with rage that I had spoilt his life.  Full of scorn for my worry, full of the dreadful arrogance of someone who has never had to feel much for anyone else. He filled the house with a subversive fury and I thought, is this me?  Do I take the credit for making this 17 Year Old Son so very unrecognizable?  At what point, I began to think, did I begin to get it so wrong that this is the result?  What is this thing called Love that mothers feel for their children, and is it this Love that is preventing me from smacking him on the bum with a breadboard and cutting holes in his best tee shirts?  Much talking was done.  Not much listening, but that is what youngsters do.  Not listen.  They don't like it, it threatens their sense of self.  If they do listen, they may hear things that contradict their conviction that they are immune to harm, able to control drugs, dead cool and the law doesn't apply to them.  So there was not much progress there, and I felt that this never ending ocean of parental love we hear so much about may have been a little exaggerated. 

So now, there has been a resolution of sorts.  He is still up to no good doing whatever it was that made him go missing last week, no lessons learnt and no interest in anyone else.  However, he did become quite calm and had the grace to look a little nervous about going back to London.  I have had gentle words with him and we are going to change the rules a bit from next week.  He will be 18 and I will no longer support him.  He can get a job and I will no longer fund his lifestyle.  And it turns out that I was right to be worried last week.  He did experience something that could have been very dangerous, and it was on the very day that I called the police and tried to find him.  He got away with it this time, but if it happens again he may well be glad that I go all out to find him and bring him home.  Safe.

I am full of sorrow today.  I have no place to rest, I have no space in my body to find comfort.  I can't find consolation in the things that console me when I am otherwise so busy, so full of plans and ideas.  I have no safe place to go.  I have no place where the worry and the shock of the last few days can't magnify in my brain and make me long for sleep to forget it all.  And Furiously Independent Son?  He is back seeking what he thinks of as his safe places.  They are very unsafe places though, they will not give him happiness and strength.  They are dangerous and shallow and he will have to find it out for himself.  He will have to find out that he is not invincible, that he is no different from all the other young men who think they can do what they want without consequence nor harm.  He will find out that just because he denies responsibility, doesn't mean that it will go away.

I am lying on my bed.  The house is quiet and the FIS is safe in that he is alive.  I wonder what was the point of all that determination to find him last week.  I did as any good mother would do, and I guess he did as any foul clubbing raving 17 year old son would do.  My safe place, like Steves, has dwindled to a space in my bed where I am going to curl up and sleep. 

What Will You Say Of Me When I'm Gone?

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image and idea
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com  for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

What Will You Say Of Me When I Am Gone?

14 Year Old Son, he of the let's-settle-this-with-some-loving-fisticuffs philosophy of life, turned to me in the car recently.  He looked as if he was wanting to tell me something important.  "Mum." He said.  Small powerful silence.  I waited.  "You may not be good at counting, or maths or anything."  Yes?  I said with my eyes, "you are not academic or anything and you don't understand things, but you are very nice."  I smiled.  "And?" my face tried to say - "and," he continued, "you cook well."  

When I am gone, you can all say that I was very nice and that I cooked well.  It made me think, what will I be remembered for?  What will you be remembered for?  14 Year Old Son distilled all his love and passion for me into this declaration, and for him it meant a lot.  "There," his dewy eyes seemed to say when he had finished, "beat that."

In my life story, the one that I write for myself often, the one that Desert Island Discs will use for when I go on and choose my eight discs, I am remembered for unbelievable brilliance, in all areas.  "She was," say the historians of later years, "really something."  Under the chapter headings of Academic-ness they will find my 14 Year Old Son, now in his seventies and living as a benign mobster in Amberly.  "Who?" he will say, and then "Oh yes, she was very nice, and not terribly clever.  Cooked well though.  Wonderful woman."  Under the chapter Cooking Well, they will contact my daughter, in her eighties and living in a pink apartment in Brighton designed to look like the inside of a cake.  "Mother?" Daughter will bellow.  "Fabulous scrambled eggs."  And under the the chapter Understanding Things, they will call Furiously Independent Son's Agent to talk to Furiously Independent Son, both of whom are in their late seventies and living in a night club in Cairo.  "My Mother," FIS will say slowly, "was slightly retarded but very well meaning."  There will be a small pause before he continues sagely,  "but she was very nice".

What will I be remembered for really?  I don't know.  I may be remembered for all sorts of things by those who met me, or knew me, and it may be For Wearing Red All The Goddam Time.  It may be for not understanding mobile phones.  It may be for not really knowing what I was doing while raising my children - and I really did not know what I was doing, any success they have is because they are fabulous themselves, not because of me.  I may be remembered for doing an Anti Strip Tease in Aberdeen in the early 1980s where I started on the stage in my undies and people threw clothes strategically placed in the audience, at me, and I put them all on so that I fell over with the weight of them. And all to the manic sounds of a 45 record I found called Roger's Magic Bumblebee, a whacky interpretation of the Flight of the Bumblebee.  I may be remembered for all the squatting I did in the eighties in London, and how I lost my way completely until my first child was born.  My children were the making of me, they are the most wonderful gift I could ever have been allowed to have.

Back to the future then folks!  I want, in my bio that I write in my head, that I mentioned earlier, to be remembered for Oh!  Such exquisite Art!  Lordy lordy, what a painter!  And so witty too, it just isn't fair how clever and fabulous her work is!  And that A Graceful Death.  Oh.  That exhibition changed my life.  Oh.  And did you see her Religious stuff?  Oh what a Thinker!   So profound, and yet so simple.  How did she do it?

But let us not get carried away.  Enough, I say.  The reality is, that none of my art comes easily to me.  None of the paintings just Happen.  I work very hard to do all that I do, though I would love for you all to think that it was just tiddly pooh and done.  Most of my time is spent on admin, marketing, PR, proposals, bill paying.  When I do get into the studio, I often have to remember what to do.  

So, in the end, perhaps it isn't really so bad for my tomb stone to say,  "Mother.  She was very Nice."  And in teeny writing underneath it, "fabulous scrambled eggs and not very bright". Meanwhile, despite all,  in London, my latest retrospective opens to a brass band playing Roger's Magic Bumblebee at Tate Modern and the latest reprint of Antonia Rolls's Mystic Mumblings is reviewed with passion in the Spectator.