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Looking up

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So they’ve announced they are going to live stream the summer solstice from Stonehenge this year.  If that’s not a COVID silver lining then I don’t know what is.  I’ve lived here for the better part of thirty years but have never managed to venture down to Wiltshire to mingle amongst the faithful pagans to welcome the sun through the upstanding plinths of Stonehenge on the 21st of June and thus summer officially into our midst – so this should be a treat.  Mind you, way back when I was fresh from grad school and newly arrived to England with my English lit degree I did manage a meander around the stones as close to Tess of the D’Ubervilles’ style as English Heritage would allow (without of course the getting arrested for murder part). I sure remember being fully awed by the sheer sizes of the stones – the biggest weighing 36 tonnes and standing 7 metres high dwarfing my 5’7” silhouette against the grey stone. I studied Elizabethan and Victorian literature at uni so I always thought this was a moment that needed to be captured in my personal experience little knowing I’d lead a life from then til now at times a little too akin to a Thomas Hardy novel than I’d rather say.   But that’s a whole other blog…

At any rate, the monument of the circle of stones which according to the BBC podcast You’re Dead To Me is not actually a ‘henge’ (an earthwork enclosure usually in the shape of a circle) per se (although it is the most famous one in the world) is going to be honoured by druids and us mere mortals alike if you decide to tune in for the sunrise streaming through it as Saturday edges into this Sunday.  I am looking forward to seeing this mystical experience for myself (even if it is COVID-19 style via a livecam).  I am curious if the experience will move me – make me appreciate what all the fuss of cheering the ascending sun to mark a new season is about and perhaps show me why people annually gather to celebrate “midsommer” – seeing if it adds to my appreciation of the place. I may have missed the official solstice these last 30 years, but every time I go to drop off or pick up Christy from her university down in Cornwall, my timing to beat the M25/A303 traffic means I pass the site nearly unobscured by any traffic just as the sun crests the horizon behind me.  A powerful moment in my six and half hour journey.  Each time it is a treat.  I am able to quickly glance to my right and marvel at this creation casting its long shadows across the grassy Salisbury plain. I look to the side as I pass yet , more than anything, the experience makes me want to look up.  Every time. I mentally I cast my eyes higher and look towards the heavens to wonder some more . So I think you can see why I’m excited, right?

There are no records as to why Stonehenge is there. Nothing about its purpose although archeologists and regular old punters have made some pretty interesting guesses over the years:  a giant calendar, a gift from aliens, a cemetery or maybe even a healing place.  It is definite the construction is aligned with the midsummer’s sunrise and amazingly scientists have worked out that although the upright plinths are local, the 7-8 tonne blue stones that are jointed and hinged spanned on top, like a bit of Fred Flinstone carpentry, are from western Wales – 250km away.   Seeing them opens your mind to wonder – How did they get there? What possessed people to such an undertaking? Why just why?

The sheer scale of Stonehenge’s size somehow reminds me of the forests of redwoods we visited in California.  Just like in the woods, a sense of a cathedral links to this creation and I am not surprised that Christopher Wren (who designed London’s St Paul’s Catherdral) lived locally to Stonehenge even grafitti-ed his name in two places on the stones.  It had to have made an impression.   That sense of looking up, the architecture of that inorganic forest of stone drawing your sight and thoughts to loftier places.  I don’t have Stonehenge at home but luckily we have a listed redwood sequoia and giant cedar to enthral us.   It’s rumoured our garden was landscaped by Capability Brown (who designed the likes of the gardens of Blenheim Palace, Kew Gardens and Longleat) back in the 1700s.  I’m not trying to name drop but I’m pointing out these trees, the redwood by the house and the cedar holding court at the end of our plot, have seen some history. 

And just like the stones of Stonehenge, you stand next to the trees and you are put into proportion so to speak.  You feel their greatness emanating out into the world.  You touch their bark and feel the solidness of these giants.  You feel equally grounded and drawn skyward with your thoughts and appreciation.  I wonder if Stonehenge isn’t an attempt to make that connection of grounding and the ethereal.  Solid. Stoic. Majestic. Weathered but still standing strong.  I ponder whether the farmers had been toiling and scraping out their nourishment from the earth and wanted to give thanks for Life itself and remind whatever is looking down at us that we want to matter.  We want to count. We want to pay homage and to stand the tests of time.

Speaking of the tests of time, I reckon should include in our “new normal” both dawn-breaking Stonehenge solstice-casts and my new dawn-breaking weekly scavenge to the local supermarket.  During one such “test” last Tuesday morning, having hoicked my stash of jute eco-friendly shopping bags into the back of my Volvo at 530am so I’d only be 10 fully masked and trolley sanitised people back from the entrance of social distancing shopping at Tesco, I was forced to consider what could be done in these trying times.  En route to the store I had on Radio 4 (of course) and Farming Today was on, the subject: arable farming.  Over the discussion of the synergy of farming using fallow fields to graze sheep while other fields flourish, my brain went from fallow to furlough and I thought about the workers “resting” while we await the next time to plant. I don’t mean to get all Biblical on you but you’ve gotta admit these days do sort of demand that filter and vocabulary – I mean there have even been locusts in the forecasts…so how could ‘reap what you sow’ not come to my mind?  Or is it sow what you reap?  I always get mixed up but the message being I wonder what I can do? Really do to make a difference in this situation?  Not sure I am gonna be able to start rolling giant boulders from Wales to Kent to make a lasting mark so I asked myself is there anything else?

Zoning in on the farmers I considered the current fascination with seeds and growing right now.  Many of us, more than usual I would suggest, are turning our hands to the soil to have the satisfaction that something can be coaxed from it.  A blossom or a vegetable – something either way to sustain us.  Sow what you reap- reap what you sow.  There are seeds we can sow right now, prep the soil and tamp it down, water regularly, it’s not too late and not an impossible feat.  Prepare for the future – how?  If not in the garden then online, via post, in person, it dawns on me I can’t just garden – I can sign up to vote.  It is my democratic right to do so and I do not want to waste it. I can vote for creating the world I want to life in.

  There’s mystery in planting a seed in a Styrofoam cup much like Robert Fulgrum mentions in his poem, “All I Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”. It is not just a right but a power in it and choosing your crop well with purpose and with an objective for providing for you and your family.  It is not a popularity contest (lima beans might have been faded out by now if that was the case!).  The choice has to be based off of what is good, most nutritious for you – broccoli and Brussels sprouts have got a bad veggie rap but look what they can do for you.  Fight disease.  Build defences. Beat, some say, cancer.  Reap what you sow, sow what you reap.  In Ecclesiastes we are reminded “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:” With so much at stake we can have no more complacency.  We’re gonna have to weed and water and nurture our “plants”.  It is not enough to stick a plant in the soil (a person in office) and expect them to flourish. We need to be as attentive to them as we want them to attend to us.  Read. Write. Educate ourselves so we can stay connected so what we’ve planted can grow the right way.  Prop it up with a stake, spray it with spray if needs be when the bad bugs descend. To thrive it needs us as much as we need it. 

The substance, the harvest, will come and some years will be good and some not so good.  Pray for rain and sun whichever you need most.  But pray.  Not just by pressing hands together to ensure the plant goes up miraculously towards the light and life.  Do it for yourself.  Do it for your family and friends.  If you don’t like the rhetoric, change it.  You get to decide the dialogue – don’t they say whispering to your plants helps them to thrive?  Whisper and write and communicate. Don’t just bad mouth the thing for exposing its roots and bending in the wind, keep it propped up.  No need for adulation just keep trying to get it to grow well and do its job.  And when a bad one come along, uproot it, lift it out and put it on the mulch pile. Then move on. 

We need to keep growing and providing an environment for all to thrive.  Every colour of the palate celebrated. Each its own sacred fruit with a unique offering for all to reap what they sow.  And finally, when it comes, don’t refrain from sharing the goodness.  When you share everyone wins.  Imagine the cornucopia of goodness you will have produced for your Thanksgiving table.  November is not so far away.  It’s time to get to work. So go get your hands dirty.  God knows we have a surplus of hand wash to clean them.  Wash your hands to get the soil out from your nails and clear your palms of the embedded dirt, just don’t wash your hands of this.  Plant your seeds well. Care for them.  Sign up to vote and then do it.  Make the world the place you want it to be.  Mindful farmers who share the crops to keep us all well fed.

Then after you’ve done the work or even while you are doing it, don’t for get to treat yourself with a look up.  If you are not fancying the solstice then please consider watching The Aeronauts (its free on Amazon Prime!). A beautiful semi-biographic adventure film with a great story to keep you on the end of your seat.  It is based off of a book called Falling Upwards: How We Took To The Air by Richard Holmes.  Personally I loved the whole thing, but especially the final words uttered by another Wren, the fictional balloon pilot, Emilia Wren, 

“We took to the skies in the name of discovery, to find something new, to change the world. But you don’t change the world simply by looking at it. You change it through the way you choose to live in it.

Look up. The sky lies open.”

My six tomato plants growing from the sliced tomato I planted back in April

Rallying Cry

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Smithsonian Magazine, July 5 2012

It’s the 76th Anniversary of D-Day, I am humbled once again by the bravery man can exhibit and, how given a task, teams of likeminded people across cultures and nations can come together and achieve a goal.  Striving for these noble undertakings (in this case releasing the world from Nazi occupation) people can be so selfless and strong putting themselves forward for a bigger, better cause.  People can use communication and intelligence and sheer will of heart to work together to overcome the wrongnesses in the world.  

It is not without cost.  My family lost my Uncle Bill as his flat-bottomed boat struck a mine whilst he cleared a path to Normandy in his minesweeper so that others could follow through the English Channel safely.  I am so grateful that that loss is marked by the cemeteries of Colleville-sur-Mer with fields of white crosses, stars of David and in my uncle’s case, for those lost at sea, a wall of remembrance with each name etched deeply in the marble.  The wall is white so you can fill the name with the wet sand the caretakers give you when you register your loss with them and they walk you to the spot where your family member is forever remembered and given thanks for.  The wet dark sand of Normandy lets the name be seen. The names, there are so many of them from the Utah, Gold, Omaha, Juno and Sword beach landing sites and beyond.  The names so important to be held in honour, to mark the loss but also the life.  The names which last beyond the body and represent what cause they fell for.  The first time I went to the Normandy I was on a semester abroad programme with my university and our teacher had organised a visit to the Musée du Débarquement in Arromanches where you can to this day see among other things the “temporary” landing platforms – the genius of the logistical planners for creating docking areas so once the beaches were won and the invasion begun, the Allies could continue to arrive and reload with reinforcements and support.  The museum display is just a few miles from the famous cemeteries so when we finished our tour only to realise that the cemetery was soon to close, my teacher called ahead to let them know we were on our way, and we were quickly hustled on to our tour bus and driven quickly through the deep brown and Kelly green of the Normandy countryside. All along the way watching the La Manche/English Channel on our right as we wound through the roads trying to fathom, from the overlooking cliffs, how anyone had worked themselves up to land there and fight their way to the top.  You realise how individuals would never have made it.  How, as we’d learned at the museum, it definitely took a united effort to achieve the taking and winning of this territory.  

I remember being sobered as we approached the gates and saw the endless lines of memorials.  I felt a bit disappointed from my spot at the back of the bus when I noticed the gates were actually shut and there were some official looking men standing by the entrance.  The bus stopped and my teacher stepped off and over to the small group and proceeded to have an earnest discussion with the men.  After a few moments, he returned to the bus and waved at me shouting,

“Kelly, can you come here for a moment?”  

I double checked he wanted me placing my hand on my heart and mouthed, 

“You want me?” 

And he said, 

“They do.” 

as he pointed towards the men at the gate. I stood up and weaved my way down the aisle of the bus and I remember it quieted as I stepped past my classmates.  My teacher was waiting at the bottom of the bus stairs and walked with me to the men.  Unsure of what was intended of me I mentally rehearsed what I might need to say in French not being as fluent as I would liked.  A man with a cap, white shirt and braces who looked more like a worker than military personnel was the first to put out his hand.  I glanced to my teacher who nodded.  The gentleman looked me directly in the eyes as he took my hand in both of his, slowly shook it and with a heavy French accent said simply, 

“Merci”.  

I stayed silent not sure what the thanks was for.  He released me and then the next man along, more of a curator type in a suit again, took my hand and squeezed it, studied my face for a moment and with utter seriousness again clearly said, 

“Merci”.  

The last man was in military uniform.  He followed the same grace of, seeing me, treating me with utter respect and he asked in English, 

“So, you lost someone in Normandy?” 

And I responded in English, 

“Yes, my father’s brother, William Parichy, he was on the USS Osprey and died on the 5th of June, 1944.  He was on a minesweeper.  They never found his body.”  

The officer nodded.  Cast his eyes down in reverence and then he, too, took my hand.  

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” he said.  “Please know, the French never forget”. 

And then they proceeded to unlock the gates, just for our bus, to let us through so I could go and honour my Uncle Bill.  I could find his name.  Fill it with the wet sand.  Remember what he fought for.  Give thanks for his life.  And be determined to live up to his sacrifice.  Not take it for granted.  I got to say his name even though he no longer breathed; I got to honour him.

So in the quiet of this morning, as I think about this anniversary I also consider the matters of the world.  The global upheaval we find ourselves in as we battle a pandemic along side looking for justice and wanting the world to live up to my uncle’s sacrifice.  I think about the Pledge of Allegiance Uncle Bill would have said, I learned in my kindergarten class in America and said everyday of elementary school, and I even taught Megan and Christy when they were in school in North Carolina.  The Pledge of Allegiance, an almost Our Father prayer of a pledge.  I consider how much I want the country of my birth to live up to the pledge it taught me to say, that people have fought and died for.  

I pledge of allegiance to the flag and the UNITED States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL.  

When I say the pledge in my head certain words stand out to me.  I consider them a simple mantra which I pray my country finds in its collective soul to remember and live up to…’united’, ‘liberty’, ‘justice’, ‘all’.  

And having lived in England for the better part of thirty years, I also appreciate it’s not just the US I want to do what I know it can do. I want the whole world to move forward with a vaccination, a cure for what kills and pains us, especially the Black members of our societies.  This is not just a movement that one person, one community, one country can fight and win.  This needs to be something we do together.  Something we unite to abolish from our world – like the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920 and Nazism of the 1940s.  I am certain this is not something we can do alone.  This is going to require reinforcements and support and pitié/mercy whatever language you speak.

Now flicking through the bombardment of stories, images, videos flying at me like a military bombardment, I am looking for inspiration to guide me. Us.  Finding it not just in the D-Day landing operation, but also by looking up.  In the past week we’ve been reminded of the spectacular awesomeness of space travel.  It is hard not to marvel at accomplishments when you watch the SpaceX launch and the astronauts arrive at the International Space Station.  It all falls in line with my listening of the BBC World Service Podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon.  A podcast that reviews the final thirteen minutes of the Apollo 11 voyage of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong as they left Michael Collins in the command module Columbia to orbit the moon while they descended to its surface in the Eagle.  If you want to find an example of what people can do and how they can do it listen to this podcast.  You will be astounded by the audacity of the undertaking.  I was only two when they landed and for my generation and afterwards its amazingly almost unremarkable that humans have not only flown to, but landed on, walked on and returned from the moon a quarter of a million miles from our earth.  Over the episodes we are reminded that the thirteen minutes prior to landing encapsulate all that was necessary to come together to make this achievement. All that a team of people, with respect, good communication, intelligence, and bravery, can do when they come together in a common cause.  Especially with a strong leader setting their sites high and pressing them to their limits and beyond.  Again and again you hear the Mission Control, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, designers, computer programmers and astronauts explain how it was possible because it was a successful team effort.  From the moment JFK declared, “We choose to go to the moon” to Neil Armstrong stating “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” you have to use the strength, expertise, insight of each and every soul to make big things happen.  

Michael Collins remarks about the response to the Apollo 11 team on their world tour after their return to Earth seems to reiterate this ”I was flabbergasted. I thought that when we went someplace they’d said, ‘Well congratulations, you Americans finally did it.’ And instead of that, unanimously, the reaction was, ‘We did it. We humans finally left this planet. We did it.’”

It just has to be a “WE” then and now.  The connections we’ve felt and witnessed across different counties and cultures to battle the pandemic, the small acts of kindness we’ve shown to each other to make it better is a start to a better way of living.  To even be moved to live up to the ideals of our forefathers and mothers and strive so the marches of 2020 lead to something new.  Maybe a renaissance of ideals worthy of the Pledge promises of liberty and justice for all.  We need to unify to do this.  Respect and value each and everyone of us.  As Obama encouraged us in his Medium article, How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change, it’s time to get working and maybe along the way you can remember how precious this world and its inhabitants are – no matter what colour pigmentation their skin has.  You can remind yourself of the value of our interconnectness.  You can awe at the power of our unity, respect its fragility and fight for what is right.  

Then, maybe, perhaps, you can rejoice in the words of an astronaut from the Apollo 9 crew Russell Schweikart’s words describing his time in space looking back at our earth:  

“As you pass from sunlight into darkness and back again every hour and a half, you become startlingly aware how artificial are thousands of boundaries we’ve created to separate and define. And for the first time in your life you feel in your gut the precious unity of the Earth and all the living things it supports.”  

I’d argue that refers not only to our global climate especially as being regarded by the likes of Greta Thurnberg and David Attenborough, but it could be applied to its people.  ALL of its people.

Finally, I wonder as we plot our landing, moving out carefully from under lockdown AND racial tyranny, taking small steps and with some luck giant leaps, if we can pledge for our rallying cry to be, not we go to the moon but:

“We go to equality.  We go to good health for ALL!”


Che colore è? What is the colour?

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Luna and Coco
Spring at Heverswood
Tomato seedlings making it outside

I’ve got the words ‘release date’ ringing in my head.  Maybe I’ve been binge watching Orange is the New Black a little too much (okay, who I am kidding? I watched the entire seven seasons on Netflix in like a week in February BEFORE COVID fully hit), but ‘release date’ keeps arriving in my mind’s ear (I reckon if there is a mind’s eye there’s gotta be a mind’s ear).  ‘Release date’ – the day to be released back into the world and I can’t help wondering when that will be and what it will be like. For the women of Litchfield Prison that meant getting sprung from jail, at our house right now, at least for today, it means the day our kittens will go out for the first time into the garden since they arrived in our house back when I was waiting with a poised finger over the TV remote to click the “Skip Intro” of OITNB so I could get back to my show. 

Coco and Luna both were chosen to join us at Heverswood because we thought (like most of the world) we would be seeing in 2020 as we had planned and the kittens would be the perfect anecdote for keeping Skyler de-stressed over the course of his final revision and actual GCSEs examinations.  Instead we’ve found we’ve instead shared not the examination process with these little cuties but the quarantine of 2020.  We’ve bonded with them these last eight weeks watching them race to our doors trying to slip out past our legs – willing their way to freedom.  

It’s wild when you first get kittens at eight weeks they are so timid and have to work themselves up to sneaking out from under the dresser when you walk in to the room – crouching kitten style, keeping low to the floor…maybe more commando style than crouching tiger.  Now they literally fling themselves at speed towards any entrance that smells of the outdoors.  We are not trying to be cruel but keep them as safe as we can whilst they recover from their spaying operation post ‘reaching maturity’ doing our job to keep them from bringing more kittens into the already overladen kitten world.  At any rate, it’s been fun to watch them gain in confidence as they’ve watched, heads in synch with the ball, as we’ve ping ponged on the table outside the room we’ve set up their box and food in, they’ve paced along the width of the back of our house chasing any leaf caught up in a breeze toppling along like tumbleweed, pawing at the glass to try and touch the unobtainable toy. 

The kittens have even shadowed me from indoors as I’ve watered the plants I’m trying to coax from the pots on the back patio.  I do not have the green fingers/thumbs like the rest of my family so I’m literally trying, in the first instance, not to kill the eggplants, basil and geraniums I had delivered.  We were unable to find tomato plants when Boris Johnson announced the lockdown of the UK on the 23rd of March.  Much like everyone else in the nation worrying whether they’d have fresh food for the summer, I panic bought compost and any seedlings I could get my mail-order hands on and slowly over May they’ve been arriving to test their fate under my tutelage.  As I said, I was too slow off the mark and missed out on the tomato plants, so I YouTubed “tomato plants hack” having remembered being mesmerised last summer by people demonstrating the methods in which you can grow fruit and veggies from the wizened near-rotten-rubber-about-ready-for-the-mulch pile carrots, potatoes and dented tomatoes rolling around the produce drawer of our fridges and fruit bowls.  Much to my delight some lady in New Delhi was completely in the know and she had a handy dandy tutorial on how to slice a tomato in half, bury it in an inch of compost and keeping its soil damp at all times coaxing little tomato seedlings out twenty days later.  I reckoned I had nothing to lose and guess what?  She was right.   We’ve now got plants emerging from the pots I put in the sunniest spot I could find.  It’s keeping me entertained to no end and now I’ve got the bug no unfurling blossom around my house is unappreciated.  No alliums have ever been more anxiously anticipated nor peonies tightly origami-ed into perfect balls awaiting their exactly right time to unwrap.  And of course, the foxglove flourish fascinates every stroll to the front bed, stalks high, trumpet heads bowed, spectacular polka dotted pinks popping from within.  I kid you not. When the first rhododendron blossom started to show its fuchsia petals from the pack of green glossy leaves, we celebrated it from the kitchen table making sure to point it out to each other and even grin as we passed a binocular lens over it perched on a high part of the branch just beyond our reach. 

In all of this, I am left desperate struggling to think of the exact name of the green that fresh buds grow in.  “Lime” seems to citrus-y and acidic to describe it.  There seems to need to be another layer of lightness, freshness to capture the green of spring.  Be it grass blades, tulip leaves, hydrangea flowerheads, the greens deepen and match their shape, size and duty of their adult plant, but to begin with, like the eyes of our kittens when they first arrived, the greens come in the lightest and purest of colours.  

Some of the fun in the anticipation of blooms is wondering did something make it from last year?  Has it had enough water?  The right spot to settle?  I love the saying a ‘riot of colour’ as though colours are causing a stir, taking a stand with their bold statements in violet, bubblegum, salmon, morning glory yellow, lilac, even the periwinkle of forget-me-nots.  I love the audacity of the plants to poke out their greenness to begin with, out of the dark earth or on the tip of a branch, before moving on to a more varied display of colour.

Each green bud feels like a blessing. An actual sign of hope. 

And now I wake up and watch my tomato seedlings boldly grow new leaves each day, the basil plants bending towards the warmth of the sun, the geraniums bulk out and glow fluorescent pink.  A little like the Med we are so missing in our confinement.  Even as I miss the sea. The salt. The food.  The real accents we are now all practicing on Duolingo.  I wonder could I take a class this autumn?  Have a home tutor? It’d be even better than the cartoon owl who encourages me every time I get ten in a row correct on this language app.  I love the sound of the words.  Even just stringing the vocabulary I am learning to form sentences of a kind…Non sono forchette (They are not forks) gives me a taste of the world outside of my own.

And yet even with all these happy distractions, I can’t help but feel low at times.  Downtrodden by the state of affairs. Stir crazy with wanting the spontaneity of my life to return. Wanting to know when we will all be allowed out again.  Listening to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day spot had me mesmerised as Rhidian Brook read his poem, Soap, Lemons, Paracetamol.  I experienced a poetic epiphany having the poem speak so deeply to me I felt it expressed my own internal thoughts with perfect articulation.

Soap, Lemons, Paracetamol.

Wake up, breathe, thank your God for breath. 

Clean your teeth (is that a cough?). 

Gargle with salt. 

Take your tea extra hot. 

Keep fear at bay, and write a list. 

Take back control

With soap, lemons, paracetamol.

Check the news but keep it short,

Radio for facts

The birds for true report.

What next? Oh yes. Exercise.

Stand up straight,

Fill your sacs.

Your stocks are low 

Get on your knees

And pray, facing Sainsbury’s.

Butter. Apples. Chocolate. Cheese. 

Nearly noon and so little done,

Feel inessential, feeling numb.

How stuck indoors

Our deeds of love.

Ambition grounded,

Hopes on hold.

Do your taxes, paint the shed.

Don’t think about what all this means,

Keep death at bay with games and memes.

Ignore the pressure to achieve,

Stare out the window,

See that leaf

Watch it blow across the yard.

Syrup. Wine. Sugar. Lard.

Great events are best left

Unexplained when in the fire.

It needs distance to see

The Truth, cooling with time.

Two metres? Make it two years. 

Leave snap judgements 

To the tweets of sages

And Job’s friends. 

Be still. Know we’re not God.

From dust we’re made,

From dust we’re raised.

Bread. Flour. Marmalade.

Late afternoon

The toll comes in

Want to hear the score again?

Worse than China, worse than Spain.

Please. Stop playing 

This awful game. 

Some say it’s war,

But that’s unfair to us and them,

When what we fight 

Has no face, no shame, 

It’s just data doing its thing.

Dad, what did you do during the plague?

I stayed indoors, got little done

And watched the wind

Blow through leaves and lives.

Milk. Pepper. Salad. Limes.

Fail to focus.

Want to cry.

Feel low, feel late.

Please stop saying this is great

When weeks ago the talk was mean.

Now in the night the sirens scream

And the virus sneaks 

Into our dreams.

It’s hot.

Is that the fever? 

Open the latch,

Lift the lever.

Offer thanks and praise

To the ones

Who’ve no time to reminisce.

Or self-improve,

Or say good bye.

A crash course 

In metaphysics for them.

Dusted in days.

They’re done too soon,

Their last question sighs: why?

Wheat. Barley. Corn. Rye. 

So order your affairs and 

Complete that list.

Wash your hands

And call your mum,

That neighbour, friend, your son.

Tell them what you always knew:

This life’s a gift,

That Love is real,

Its touch is true,

It is thing that gets us through

This moment; it will pass.

So take deep breaths

And fill your soul.

The Spirit’s willing

You make that call.

Soap. Lemons. Paracetamol.

With every syllable, I felt Rhidian Brook knew exactly what I was experiencing and I felt compelled to share this with Nick and Megan and Christy as soon as they each made their way to the kitchen.  I felt tearful with desperation wanting them to understand I was sharing the poem but also my own internal musings.  I wanted them to sense the balancing act I was struggling to maintain (as we all are) between worrying and accepting and trying to make sense of it all. I don’t want to begrudge this time however it feels like the red kite family we’ve been watching in the sky above our garden and fields next door. Huge birds of prey whom we’ve marvelled at, halted our conversations to stop and point at as they circle and float on the uplift of the thermals.  Mimicking their names, looking not like the diamond shape of a kite but rather the objects tethered to the earth tugging on the air to push them higher.  The red kites, Megan and I saw teach their young how to literally flap in the empty air outside their nests and then suddenly soar on the invisible updrafts to fly ever higher.  All of this gets tempered with worrying about the release date of the kittens and whether or not they’ll be wise enough in their freedom to escape a hunger family of five. So you see it really is a see-saw with ‘release date’ and increasingly ‘fret’ wringing their hands around my heart such that my lowness of spirit started to tighten a grip around my day, when my eighty-five year old dad called with sheer happiness in his voice.  Giddy as a kid.  He’d had a huge thunderstorm the night before with full on crashes of thunder and lighting rolling through Beaufort, SC.  He’d woken up early to walk his dog at six and felt so thrilled by the clearing out of the storm and humidity he felt the world seemed cleaned and fresh.  He told me he felt utter happiness at being alive.  He struggled for a way to express it, so wanting to share his story with me, so wanting to get it right, to express it exactly as he felt it, “The world”, he said “had dawned…”

I sighed, suggesting, still stuck in my funk, “Anew?”and he said, “Exactly”.  

He then proceeded to tell me how he’d remembered a comment I’d made a week or so ago on our family WhatsApp chat when Patty (like the rest of us) had been watching the birds nest near her lake home and mentioned she thought they might be bluebirds. I had sent everyone the link to the old Song of the South’s ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ and suggested my sister should look for “bluebird on [her] shoulder”.  So full of the vim and vigour of the morning, my dad said he couldn’t help but recall the song on his walk and then actually break out singing it.  He said he literally threw caution to the wind, in the dawn of his Brickyard Lane neighbourhood, fearless as to whom might hear him, and began belting out ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah‘ at the top of his lungs. “It just felt so right,” he noted and then he told me just as he got to the lyric “there’s a bluebird on my shoulder”, wouldn’t you know at that very moment a bluebird descended from behind him, crossed his shoulder and landed a few feet away from him and Lady and preceded to stand there looking at him.  Not moving, daring to be fully seen.  My dad said, “Kel, I’d been thinking about you and your synchronicities and there it was.  Just staring at me.  The bluebird.” 

By which time I was smiling, then cracking up, and delighting in my dad’s utter joy; his young at heart-ness was as contagious as the damn Corona virus.  I told him how I’d been a bit low especially marking the second month of our lockdown and contemplating our release date.  Wanting to know when it will all be over, knowing no one could tell me. But then his phone call came and his literal joie de vivre was irresistible, I mean it was like something out of the original Disney film speaking as much to me as Rhidian Brook’s poem.

It all made me feel so grateful to receive that phone call and for the fact I come from such stock.  So grateful to have a father who at eighty-five years old gets jazzed up enough about seeing a bluebird he seemed to conjure from his own rendition of  ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah‘ he needed to call me as soon as he got home.  He’s not worrying about the release date.  He’s not saying it’s not hard.  But he is remaining ever hopeful and engaged in his life. I hung up with my dad and finally thought of the exact shade of green the spring growth reminds me of.  A colour I will remember in due course neither too rose-coloured or jaded but surely this spring 2020 green, on balance, at least at our house, can be called none other than ‘sublime’.

Bridges

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20170515_160543imagesAfter awhile, it is hard not to take these events personally.  I just keep thinking, amongst other things, this is not what bridges are meant for.  Not my bridges, not the ones I love and use to crisscross the Thames, not the bridges that have come to mean so much to me in the better part of the twenty-seven years I have lived in and around London.  Bridges are meant to span a void. Bridges are meant to connect.  Bridges are meant to keep the flow going smoothly from one side to the other.

I remember growing up in the States and playing with my brother and sisters the “London Bridge” game reaching across to one another, threading our fingers together, pushing our arms over our heads to make an arch for the “boats” to pass and then bringing our entwined hands back to level to let the “cars” and “people” go across. It was all about taking turns, lifting and lowering, a little bit of singing and feeling the strength of our formation as we pretended to be the bridge. The key was never letting go of one another.

I soon found out when I moved here that everyone mistakes Tower Bridge for London Bridge. You know, the iconic masterpiece of the Victorian Era which raises the bridge’s “arms” up with intricate bascule pivots originally with coal and steam energy to help keep the flow going between the north and south sides of the River Thames. It stands right next to the Tower of London with its ‘traitor gates’, Beef Eater Gin guards, and a moat, grassed over now, large enough for concerts and to fill with remembrance poppies.

My niece came for a visit last month and we toured Tower Bridge enjoying the views up and down the river from the crosswalks that tie together the two bridge towers which work with the suspension system to hold it all together. You have to take a lift to get to the crosswalks and reign in, to some degree, any fear of heights you may have to walk across and look out of the windows or even down through the glass floor to take in the views. On the east side, the windows look down towards the 2012 Olympic Stadium Park and in the far distance Greenwich (of GMT fame) and eventually the London Barrier built to protect the city from flooding. Looking west you can pick out the Shard on your left as well as the Walkie Talkie and the Gherkin buildings on your right. I just love the nicknames the English give their distinctive new architectural builds providing such irreverent, humourous and accurate descriptions so that you know exactly which structures they are talking about when you see them on the skyline. Just beyond the Walkie Talkie, nestled in amongst the other more regular civic and office buildings, you can see the flame-topped Monument which is a tower commemorating the very spot in which the Great Fire of London began in 1666 and, of course you can’t miss picking out the dome of the stoic St Paul’s Cathedral miraculously unscathed during the Blitz of WW2. Just about opposite the City there’s the hospital where I had my cancer treatments back in 2012, my favourite Gaucho Grill steak restaurant, and the Design Museum displaying outstanding examples of design ingenuity and ergonomics within. If you know where to look, you can just about see the Globe Theatre which was rebuilt in the 1990s on the exact spot to the exact building designs of the original. To this day, you can stroll along the Thames just beyond where the terrorists struck on Saturday night and walk past restaurants and bars, supposedly one of London’s oldest pubs, the Anchor, to watch Shakespeare’s plays being performed on a stage just as they would have been seen back in the 1600s. For me, London’s got just the perfect mix of old and new living and thriving together.

Standing smack dab in the middle of the crosswalk I couldn’t help but be fascinated by humanity’s ability to conceive of and create such feats of engineering. Tower Bridge particularly impressed considering the nearly 125 year old technology that they used to create and run a bridge which could ensure that daily life could, and can, continue to stay connected unfettered by the interruption of the Thame’s flow through the city.

Just opposite Tower Bridge is London Bridge. It’s nothing pretty to look at but when you cross it you get the best perspective of looking up and down the Thames in my opinion. My husband, Nick, takes the train to London Bridge Station now and has to cross it each work day twice a day to get to his job on the other side. Over the years we have marvelled that even in the drudge of commuting across that bridge, it is impossible not to admire the view at some point going back and forth. There have been days when people pause in their commuting rush to take photos of the stunning sunsets or, if you are up early enough, the sunrises. The cold will whip up at you in the winter, make your eyes tear but the site remains stunning as cityscapes go and I can see why it was a popular crossing place on Saturday night.

I love that bridge. It is the place I had my first proper job in London, in fact, in anywhere. I took a placement at Price Waterhouse, who owned the building there, for the sheer reason they were the people who handed out the envelopes on Oscar’s nights, but the original draw was when my job placement agency told me their address was: No 1 London Bridge. I found it an utterly irresistible place to want to commute to and from. I was fortunate to work on the 9th floor for a boss whose office had aspects looking over both London and Tower Bridge. Southwark Cathedral or “Shakespeare’s Church” sits nearly opposite the building going down Borough High Street and I used to go to Christmas carol services there with my work colleagues back in the 1990s before Borough Market got gentrified and trendy. It was interesting in 2012 when I came to my oncology appointments nearby, I would visit Borough Market to pick up some fresh food or a little gift from one of the artisan stalls for whomever was graciously taking care of my kids that day. Then and now, I like to go to the market just as a pick me up to revel in the glory of the dark, atmospheric bricked Dickensian archways converted to stalls with pyramids of tomatoes or mushrooms or any seasonal fruit or veg you can imagine, stacked in every shape, colour, size and variety being hawked next to sellers of iced seafood so fresh some of it even seems to move. There’s bread, flowers, boutique-y grills of organic burgers, locally sourced sausages and giant cast iron pans of paella right next to stalls selling pistachios, cashews and cubes of the best Turkish delight, in every flavour and colour, perfectly dusted with icing sugar making even Narnia’s White Witch’s supply to Edward seem meager.

Again, I keep thinking – that is not what bridges are for.

Further west the river serpentines under a poetic roll call of bridges: Blackfriars, Millennium, Waterloo, Westminster, Lambeth, Vauxhall and Chelsea amongst others. Eventually you can cross the Thames at Albert Bridge which is another one for particularly fond memories for me. Years ago during our commuting from the City back to Fulham, Nick and I always noticed it during our drive along the Embankment. We never ceased to pause mid-sentence on our post workday debrief to chime out – “ I love that bridge” when we passed into its view, particularly on the evenings when it was lit with the equivalent of fairy lights outlining its elegant form. In 1995, that was where one cold, windy December night Nick pulled over the car and suggested we enjoy diner at a place on the other side of the river to break up the drive home. We started our walk across the bridge and then precisely in the middle Nick stood still, reached into the depth of his dark blue cashmere overcoat and withdrew a hinged, square box the size and shape perfect for nestling a ring within its velvet interior. Nick asked me to marry him that night with the cars flying by, the dark water below and the lay of London shining out beyond. We stood on that bridge fearless about our future. Fearless about forever having to learn how to bridge together our two cultures for a lifetime of marriage and children. Fearless to put love first and to take a leap of faith to agree to forge a life together.

Back at the Tower Bridge tour I remember seeing not just spectacular views of London, but also information about its construction and displays of examples of all types of bridges found around the world: span, arch, beam, suspension and even cantilever bridges. All the examples at the museum and from my research – whether the Akashi Kaikyõ in Japan, Si-o-se Pol in Iran, Alcántara in Spain, the Kapelibrücke in Switzerland, the Viaduct de Millau in France, the Changing Wind and Rain in China, the Golden Gate in the United States or the Ponte dei Sospiri in Italy – all illustrate humanity’s ability to find ways to stay connected. Across the countries, the cultures and time, I believe the bridges show it is undeniably our nature, as humans, to want to connect to each other and find ways to be together. Whether we are raising our arms up to let the ships go through with our fingers intertwined or strolling across London Bridge on a warm summer evening after a happy night out on the town, bridges should be about us staying together. About using our awesome God, Allah or whomever you want to credit given minds to figure out how we can breach the gaps that fall between us and keep our connections strong and sure.

I was twenty-three when I moved from the US to the UK and first fell in love with London and its bridges. The same age that Ariana Grande is now. She led the way on Sunday night spreading the message about staying connected so we can ALL stay strong. So yes, I’m taking this attack on Saturday personally as a rally to remind me to stay inspired, to find ways across a challenge so I can keep my connection with others and to bridge any gaps that might come between me and them because I know, no matter where I am in the world or what may lay in between, WE ARE ALWAYS STRONGER TOGETHER.