Tag Archives family

Writing

Writing time

Posted on - 2min
Huilo Huilo, May 2022
[I found this in the drafts – written in Valdivia, Chile]

It’s just a Tuesday afternoon and I’m sitting here in front of a blank page knowing that I’m going to write something but not quite knowing what. Carving out time for writing like this is something that really matters to me. I don’t understand why I have the compulsion to write, but I know that writing brings to me a peace. I feel settled when I have written, calm. It’s like by putting words into sentences I construct an order in my mind which diminishes any undercurrents of nervous anticipation. And as I’m always changing locations, changing living environments, there is always some nervous anticipation lying around to be swept up onto the page.

Soon I’m going to head out to the supermarket to pick up some eggs and some cheese. There’s a simplicity to this that I quite enjoy. Overcomplicate life and you lose track of what’s important. You miss out on the afternoons dedicated to doing the thing you love.

When I switched from working for someone else’s goals to working for my own, I promised myself that I would spend more time with my family. It sounds odd perhaps that my way of spending more time with my family involves living the other side of the world. I travel slowly and try not to live in a rush, although sometimes my instincts run contrary to this. Paulatinamente, step-by-step. There’s no need for constant haste. What happens though is that when I go home, I put my family first. Having a drink with my parents or grandparents becomes the purpose of the day, or the week, or the month. It’s okay to just stop and be with them.

The kitchen fills with smoky spices and shouts and music and the fire alarm sounds and someone swings the door shut and the father makes a joke about my cooking skills and the mother is throwing things in the sink.

From this Latin American world I live in, there is nothing so strange about spending periods of time living in your parents’ house. And having travelled so much, I’ve discovered that my parents are actually quite easy to live with. They’re accommodating and the fridge is always full of food. We never run out of toilet paper or AA batteries or sticky plasters. The father might get enthusiastic about saving the universe and the mother has a distinctly different pace of action to me, but they have grown used to their itinerant daughter appearing and disappearing.

Writing settles me. It helps me understand what matters to me, what I care about and unsurprisingly I credit it with a lot of my current contentment. If I didn’t write, I don’t know how I would know myself.

Living-abroadTravel

This is not a bauble.

Posted on - 2min
This is not a bauble. Photo Sicily, December 2016.

I was tidying up Christmas decorations in my grandparents house when I reached into a large plastic box, the sort my grandparents store baubles in eleven months of the year, up in the roof. And ouch. My finger hurt. Sharp pricks in my skin. A brush with something sharp.

I peered inside the box for a better look, and discovered, to my astonishment, a cactus.

Round, pale green and spiky, I carefully picked it up and showed it to the Grandmother

She wasn’t at all surprised. She knew there was a cactus in the box. She had already stuck her hand in and pricked herself that morning. And then she’d done nothing about it. She was mildly amused that the cactus had survived what she assumed was a full twelve months in the box, but otherwise unperturbed by the situation.

Personally I think she should have been more bothered, bothered enough not to leave it in the box with the baubles waiting for the next poor soul to reach inside.

“Put it in the bin,” the Grandmother said.

So, as a dutiful granddaughter, I placed the cactus by the compost bin.

A short while later I heard a commotion in the kitchen as the Grandfather discovered the cactus and decided to investigate. It was, he claimed, very much alive. Just in need of replanting.

The Grandmother insisted that the cactus be binned.

A short while later the Grandfather was seen trying to find a home on one of the overcrowded windowsills in the back bedroom of my grandparents’ house, a room filled with more plastic boxes, bags, cardboard and evidence of Christmas. The Grandmother, well, she was heard to be rather disparaging about his efforts.

Tensions were rising.

Which is when, as the dutiful granddaughter, I stepped in and volunteered to rehome the cactus. Now obviously, you can’t take a cactus in your hand luggage to Spain… so I wonder how it’s going to appreciate the care of its new warden… the Mother.

Education

Lessons from a not-so-little mermaid (why being a teenager sucks)

Posted on - 3min

The Little Mermaid and I walk to the library to collect some pre-ordered books on the history of fashion. It’s bright sunshine, and I’m happy in my skirt and strap top, but she’s wishing that she’d worn something other than jeans. One of us has been lounging out in the garden and knows what the weather is doing today.

We pass the tennis court, where younger children are batting balls across the net, and flying paper planes. We talk, or rather she tells and I prompt and somehow despite working around the age gap and that weird sense of being family so knowing each other (and in odd ways being rather similar) whilst knowing nothing of each other we manage to get along.

She’s surviving the summer holiday; I’m having an education.

It strikes me that I assume all teenagers are teenagers like I remember from school. In my mind, they’re bigger. Furthermore, I assume schools are pretty much all the same – they’re not. The Little Mermaid has a locker and is encouraged to take a photograph of her homework assignments with her smartphone. I try and explain to her a Nokia 3310. She’s amazed at the idea of a phone without colour. It appears I’ve become one of those old people who grew up without modern technology.

I try and explain that we could do more than text. We had MSN messenger (the easiest way to put a virus on the computer). Surprisingly, she’s heard of MSN. It makes an amusing line in a very old French textbook. I learn a new word – télécharger (to download) – is how French textbook characters acquire music. The Little Mermaid is worried about the character’s ethics.

She’s also worried about me walking out in front of a car. She’s got that whole ‘stop, look, listen, live’ thing memorised whereas I’m still trying to shake of the influence of Cairo. That said, when she moves, she strides with purpose. I’m the one having to speed up to keep up.

Yesterday we visited an art gallery and saw some Wedgewood pots, some pre-Raphaelite paintings and some Japanese prints. She liked the painting of a goat and another in which a young woman was begging a soldier not to go to war. I liked one where an almond tree turns into a woman vexed with the inattention of her beloved. The young man looks quite taken aback by the ordeal.

I learn that being a teenager is hard work. Wearing the right clothes matters. As does having the right (read bountifully liked) social media. The most important thing is not to be trying too hard to be someone else. You must be authentically you AND on trend. There’s peer pressure, but also pressure from an abundance of very young celebrities. These are people achieving stuff right now. Or at least, having their picture taken lots.

My mind thinks of Einstein’s achievements at my age, and I say nothing.

Light-hearted tales

“She doesn’t binge.”

Posted on - 1min

I step into the living room where the Blacksmith and the Midget are watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m red faced, you can probably hear my breathing from the sofa, and I’m wearing running shorts and a top I was kindly given after running 10km a few years ago.

“How far did you get?” the Blacksmith asks.

“5.8.”

There’s a moment of thought, and then he beams and starts excitedly saying how I’m getting to a good bit. I’m thinking 5.8km isn’t that impressive, especially since he knows how long I’ve been out since he passed me in the car as I was running up the hill. I look at the Midget.

My sister, always the chemist, corrects my absent units by clarifying that the Blacksmith is talking about seasons and episodes and I’m talking about kilometres.

“Oh, Buffy? I’m still on the second season.”

The Blacksmith looks surprised, confused and disappointed.

Despondently, the Midget explains: “She doesn’t binge.”

It comes across in a tone that suggests that there’s something alien about me, something terribly dysfunctional about me. The Blacksmith looks at me and back at the Midget as if wondering if the two of us are related.

“No, I don’t,” I say, contemplating that there was that one time when the Midget and I watched four episodes of Star Trek back to back…