Disappearing Me

  The morning Call Picking up the phone with a sigh, I can hear Radio 4 and the bustle of my husband making breakfast downstairs. The same time every morning. The phone call to my mother was a promise I made to my dad shortly before he died. For almost twenty years, the routine has been the same—alarm at six, down to make the tea, then the call just after seven. In the earlier years, if I was a minute or two late, my mother would call me with a sharp inquiry, demanding to know why I hadn't phoned on time. But lately, as she's grown less mobile it takes her longer to reach the phone,   so it’s closer to eight by the time I ring. Ours has always been a difficult relationship. As a child, I feared her. As a teenager, while my friends shared secrets with their mums, I learned to keep mine locked away. It was a shock to discover other girls’ mothers were soft and gentle—people to run toward, not away from. Even now, her disapproval can silence me. Every morning, we have the...

  Their Tree It was   their tree even before they knew they would be together. It stood on a patch of ragged grass on the junction of his road and the road that led to hers. There she would wait,   her heart beating   fast in her chest in anticipation of seeing him. He would always be late, and she would watch   him, satchel beating time on his back as he ran to meet her.   His smile matching hers as they walked to school side by side not touching although she would feel the heat from his body and smell the soap clean scent of him as they walked. It was their tree on not quite dusk evenings when all but a few   had been called to bed and only they and the older boys were still out. In summer, the branches weighed heavy with clover shaped leaves that   formed   a green waterfall behind which they were hidden and alone.   Then, leant against   its trunk oblivious to the roughness of the bark, they would   kiss, eyes closed, l...

  Looking up from the computer, my eyes are drawn to a tiny book. The size of a credit card, bound   in red leather the word   BIRTHDAYS embossed in gold on its cover, it sits beside the address book and parish magazine on the shelf above the desk. It was a gift from a friend. A little book to note birthdays; a useful gift, a spontaneous gift given to me over a cup of tea in Cheltenham. I smile to myself as I reach for it and turn to the date in September where in bold ink she   had marked her own birthday with an exclamation mark as   for many years I would send her card late thinking it   she was born in October.   Now that day is always remembered but no card ever sent as within weeks she succumbed to the illness that robbed her of   movement, her speech and then her life. Opening the book at random in the second week in January, I see the   name of   someone I used to know but whose birthday I no longer bother to celebrate ...

  The first thing I noticed about her was her voice. She spoke softly and although it was clear she came from the North, her accent, unlike my mother’s, was soft and gentle. It was   the accent of someone born and brought up in the lakes where gentle rainfall had washed off the rough harshness of Northern vowels. Her voice reminded me of my grandmother and as such, made feel safe and calm and childlike. It was hard to guess her age; I had the assumption she must have been older than me by virtue of her role. It came as a surprise to discover later she and I shared the year of our birth Such was her aura of authority, and such was my level of nervousness. She had fair, not blonde, not mousey hair, cut sensibly to frame her face. She wore no make up; her skin pale and wrinkle free and reminded   me of a painting by Vermeer   a face belonging to a different time. By contrast, her clothes were an explosion of style and colour. She wore a long, full skirt, a lon...

  A Bedtime Kiss With wings of   chiffon uplifting in the warmth of the   late afternoon sunshine She flutters overhead in a shimmer of iridescent blue Teasing us with   the possibility of her touch And the chance to open ourselves to her delight Hovering above me, I feel the gentle pressure of her mouth as She places   a gentle kiss on my upturned face And drinks in my   nectary need for her Before moving on to the others Equally desirous of her love These moments made more   precious in the knowledge that by tomorrow I will no longer hold the power to attract Nor she the wings to fly

 I carry my happy place in my head. It sits there just behind my eyes and when I stop and breathe in deeply, I have learned I can sometimes make it appear. In the pose of a swan, I rest. Sat back on my haunches, my ears covered by my outstretched arms, all sound around me dulled , other than the percussive beating of my heart, the rhythm gradually slowing as my body rests. I breathe into the tiny cave my body has made. A triangle of darkness in which my only task is to breathe. In this posture, I feel safe and cocooned, the world cut off and unseen. In these brief moments of stillness, where worries can get lost in the darkness, and dreams drift overhead like passing clouds on a late summer afternoon, I am happy. At first my mind takes me on journeys close to home; to the day ahead and like the concerned parent, reminds me of all I need to remember on a merry go round loop of lists and nags. And then like the school bully it drags me back unwillingly to images of stories I have tri...

  The Journey They were silent in the car and the rhythmic swish of the windscreen wipers had become almost hypnotic. Looking at her watch, and imagining the traffic on the road ahead, she was certain they would be late and felt the knot in her stomach tighten in a mix of anxiety and anger. She was sure he took his time on purpose knowing how important this trip was to her. It was not as if today had come as a surprise being something that they did every year, and she often wondered why, despite everything, she still insisted they went.     She looked again at her watch and tutted, willing him to go faster, his determination to stay below the speed limit feeling like a test of her patience. She bit her tongue, knowing better than to annoy him as she knew in the next few hours she would need his support.   Instead, she turned her head to watch the half familiar scenery rush past, her eyes following the rain as it drew diagonal streaks down the car window. She’d ...

  “The world is beautiful, just look around you”. His voice, though full of encouragement holds a hint of frustration just under the surface. “ Why not come out and sit a while” she had been   been sad for some time now. She   allows herself to step outside into the velvet warm sunshine of a late summer’s afternoon abandoning attempts to   explain the blinding   gloom of the sadness in which she is wrapped tight. A sadness, which turns her eyes inwards and away from the   world beyond the door. They sit together, he wrapped up in a fleece for although the sun is shining, the wind is keen and sitting in the shade of the house he feels chilled. He talks to her about the bamboo which last year they   both thought was dying   but this year   has sent out nine new shoots, and she listens with only half an ear as her   mind takes her on a journey through her   unhappiness. He talks about his beloved trees that like miniature forests i...