letter #15
we're all making our own sense of things
Nothing of great significance is happening, but things do happen.
I had coffee with a friend I rarely see these days. She is one of the best friends I've ever had, but the rhythm of our lives are not currently in synch and our message chain is full of 'sorry, sorry, what about next week' and 'no problem, have a great time, see you when you get back'. But we've spent a lot of time in deep discussion in the past--goodness I've just remembered how many hours we used to spend talking on the phone. The phone! Can you imagine?--so we have lots to build on when we do catch up.
We don't really small talk, this friend and I. Not that every word we speak to each other must be one of revelation, but our conversations are substantial. At this coffee (technically tea), we were talking about parenting, about being a parent and about being a child. She asked me a question about my relationship with my mother: what did I think it might have been in this time of my middle age and her growing older? For the first time in I do not know how many years, I couldn't speak. My thoughts and my body and I suppose my heart were so overcome that I knew if I spoke even a word of how I really felt I would start to cry and I would not be able to stop. It was the first time I had ever brushed the conversation away with that friend. It was the first time I changed the conversation turning it back to safer ground.
In that moment, I felt my grief shift. Again. It was entirely unexpected, but I don't suppose it should have been. I think I've told you before that there is one thing I say in every funeral (or if not every, then so close to every that I'm comfortable calling it every), and that is that a funeral marks a change in your relationship with the person who has died. Because the relationship endures. It changes, and its impact changes, and we can shape it in ways we couldn't have done if that person were alive (this is important for people with whom we have difficult relationships). But we still have a relationship with that person. This is true whether you are a person of faith or not.
So I don't suppose I should have been surprised that as I watch my friends' relationships with their parents change with age, I would feel mine with my parents changing too. It was a moment of great power and deep intimacy, and I'm grateful to my friend for helping me to find it, even if I couldn't speak.
____
I watched in horror as our prime minister visited the president of the USA. And then I had to stop watching because ... well, because, really, is this where we are now ... and what actually do we do in times like these? How do we make political change, and how do we stop ourselves from giving in to despair?
What I am doing is to keep on making art which seems simultaneously vital and pathetic. And knitting, I'm doing a lot of knitting. Rows of knit and purl and a bit of moss stitch, nothing too complex, moving back and forth, back and forth along the rows.
____
I'm enjoying the company of the dog more and more all the time. The anti-anxiety meds have made a huge difference to him, and I know I can never understand a dog, but he does seem much happier now that he can concentrate on what he's doing--chasing a ball, having a sleep, chewing on a chew toy filled with porridge--instead of having to be hyper-vigilant and alert to every perception of threat.
____
I spent a bit of time last night listening to the talking clock because today is the day it's being turned off. For good. When I first heard it was being turned off--a couple of months ago--I was vaguely surprised to think it was even still going. But ever since then I've been filled with that sense of nostalgia that comes as another piece of your childhood disappears. I was nearly always the first one home in the afternoons. We kept our house key under the mat, and if someone forgot to put it there in the morning I had to open the kitchen window and crawl through. For reasons I truly cannot explain, I would often--very, very often--go straight to the phone and ring the talking clock. I was an early adopter of addiction to my phone. Last night, it cut off every minute or so, but I don't think it used to do that, did it? Of course my favourite moment was when the talking clock would say, 'At the third tone it will be 4.10 precisely.'
After I'd listened to the talking clock, I would ring a series of numbers, beginning with 11 1111 and working my way around the rotary dial. I've never said these things out loud before, and as I type I'm thinking, 'woah, this is weird', but it was extraordinarily soothing. The clicking sound of the dial, the pressure on the side of my finger as I turned the dial, twisting the cord so that its coils were inside out. Each of the numbers I dialled from 11 1111 to 55 5555 resulted in nothing more than the beep-beep-beep sound of going nowhere. But for some reason 66 666 would ring. Or maybe it was 99 9999. It would ring and ring and ring, but was never answered. I was fascinated by this picture I had in my mind of this phone ringing endlessly somewhere, never answered. The longer it went on, the more that years passed and no-one answered, the more I grew terrified that one day someone would.
Last night, as I listened to the sound of the talking clock, I was nostalgic for a time when technology was so innocent. Although of course it wasn't, and it never has been. Anyway, if you ever need a nostalgic shot, I've got a minute of the talking clock recorded and I guess given enough time I'd be able to work out how to send you the file.
____
If you're in Adelaide, I'm remounting The Forgettory in a couple of weeks. Tickets are on sale here.
Wherever you are, whatever your Tuesday brings, I send you love
Tracy xx