It feels good to talk

It is my dad’s 60th birthday today. And it is almost five months since I last wrote anything here. The two are unrelated, but as I sat in the garden (I have a garden!) this morning and drank my coffee, thinking about my dad and this milestone and how unlikely it seemed, two years ago, I felt that low burgeoning urge to put pen to paper. First, I pulled out my trusty notebook — the same one I’ve been writing in since dad got Covid-19 in October 2021. I wrote it ferociously at the time. I was in Waterstones, browsing books I did not want to read, and I found myself at the stationery section. This small notebook had a William Morris design on the front—The Strawberry Thief— and an elastic band to slip around the middle to keep it closed, tight. I paid at the counter and brought it home to my parents’ house, where a quiet chaos was beginning to rage. I was preparing, by writing down notes of despair, for ideas that might protect my broken heart.

This morning I wrote a couple of pages and then looked back on past pages at random. The first I opened begun ‘I wonder how I will look back on this time.’ Indeed. I’m still not sure. It was life changing in a very literal sense — dad, though miraculously well still suffers with lingering effects. And we, his family, deal with the leftover anxiety every day. He has a new job as a debt coach and he does a lot of community outreach for the church — they both involve him being out in the community, in other people’s houses, meetings at pubs and coffee shops. I can’t help but picture the coughing stranger at the table next to him, the germs on door handles that he will touch without a second thought. I tell him again and again to take antibacterial hand gel with him wherever he goes. He tells me he will but, even if he does, he’ll forget to use it. He’s living his life. He’s excited about his work. I want that for him, and — like a worried parent sending their child into the world — I can’t protect him.

I think I had the urge to write this morning because I have a tendency to lean towards subjects of grief, illness, death and trauma. (It’s good fun in my head, I’ll tell you.) But perhaps more than that — or more than those subjects in isolation — I am interested in the outcome, the aftermath of life’s hardships. The fact that my mum had a cancer that, statistically speaking, has a very poor prognosis and is now approaching five years free of the disease. That my dad was in a coma twice (!) in as many years. That I can still feel the crushing fear that they will get ill again, whilst I am also the happiest I’ve perhaps ever been. That we have a way of forgetting just enough to keep going, to be happy. It is wild that to witness a blue sky and the sound of bird song in the air is not only not trivial, but that it feels revolutionary — spiritual — like we have everything that we need.

In May, T and I moved from our beloved Edinburgh to a tiny village in Buckinghamshire. We made the move for a few reasons, but the main one was to be nearer to my parents and other people we love. I’d learned from living by the sea that deep in my soul I need space, quiet and access to nature. I also knew I desperately wanted a house that could cater for guests — that we could comfortably seat friends and family around our table and feed them delicious bowls of pasta and always make sure their wine glasses were topped up. We wanted some outdoor space in which to drink coffee in the morning and wine in the evening, to fill it with plants and beautiful flowers that would bring bees and butterflies into our orbit. Writing this now, I can’t quite believe I get to call this my life. I feel truly and exceptionally lucky.

Tonight we will go to my parents house — only 40 mins away! — to eat pizza and birthday cake and do karaoke as that is literally my dad’s favourite thing to do. I will write again soon. It feels good to talk!

I hope you are well.