I read the last lines of the previous post & i think what is this blogging thing i'm doing ? It's thoughts of a moment caught in time. I think back to when Jon died, or when i was struggling with the MA course i didn't finish, when i threw up on the page all the feelings i couldn't contain. There is a strong case for doing this in private in a notebook that will likely never be read even by me, but, then also, sometimes i'll flip back to look at a post from another time, this blog goes back nearly a decade now, and it acts as witness. 

Yesterday i spoke to my godmother about how my mother had invited her over to have lunch & meet an archbishop from Africa who was a friend of my mother's aunt. She said my mother was late getting the meal ready so my godmother & the archbishop were left sitting in the garden, he peeling potatoes & she shelling peas. It conjures up a gorgeous vignette now, in part because i know the garden & my mother & godmother, but life didn't feel gorgeous when i was growing up because it was my normal & other people's normal seemed to be way more entrancing, now i look back and can see how each one of us lives a life that is a bit like novel we just don't know it at the time. 

My seminal relationship was with Jon, no man had touched me the way he did, the relationship was in a league of its own, but there were men in my life before him, what made him the one i go back to in my mind, what makes him the one i take with me wherever i go. I think its about feeling, perhaps how we started, perhaps the timing of our days together, perhaps it was when i opened my eyes for the first time, perhaps it was when i said "yes" and embraced my own life whole heartedly. God only knows but he changed my life. 

He changed my life but now in hindsight i see that all the time my life has been changing, chapters within it act like stepping stones across a river, friendships & happenings belonging to yesteryear held in a golden light, bike rides around the villages around where i grew up, my babies, & people & places that are part of the picture then no longer, or else constants that i revisit or who stand beside me as i travel this life. 

At the moment my mum is ill in hospital, that's where i began this series of blog posts about myself & my family's history. These past few weeks have drawn a new path in my mind the bus ride from Norwich to Dereham, the walk to the hospital from Dereham market place, the room & the ward that mum has been in, the faces of the nurses, the occupational therapist, the discharge nurse, their faces & also their bearing, the way they interact, and while she was in the ward, the women she was sharing space with. Even the woman i was booking appointments with to see mum gave me a part of herself as we spoke, her dog barking in the background. We leave & collect traces depending on character, some are witness but leave without being seen, others notice nothing but spread themselves all over wherever they've been, most of us fall between these extremes. 

Who we are is political. How long our presence lasts after we've died depends on those who carry us with them. Our children are carriers. Maybe our children's children are carriers. Good friends & lovers may also hold us. Bad friends & lovers may also hold us. Maybe that is why they say don't hold a grudge. I do hold grudges, it is a fault in me, it is a fault in me that causes me suffering because instead of letting go i hold on to a bad feeling. But how do I let go of a blow without losing the knowledge that blow gave me ?

For instance, a mark in my story is finding my oldest sister in the arms of my then partner, the father of our daughter & the child in my womb. It was June, we were staying at my other sister's for her daughter's second birthday, my own daughter had turned two in March. We had pitched a tent in their garden as had others. We had left the cats outside for the night at our home but brought my dog. We must have arrived mid to late afternoon i think & when my daughter, Jessamy, got tired i took her into the tent to lay her down & she and i fell asleep together. Much later i woke in the small hours, i could hear two voices quite close by in the garden, & the sounds of a party ongoing inside my sister's cottage. The voices close by were those of my partner & my oldest sister, he was begging her for sex she was prevaricating, simpering & giggling & saying no but not in a way that felt like no. I unzipped the tent door & got out of our tent. I walked over to where they were lying in each others arms. I stood over their heads for a few minutes listening & watching before saying "i could have stamped on your heads while you've been lying there". Writing that i can see that is a brutish thing to say. My sister leapt up to standing like an a volt of electricity had passed through her body, my partner, rolled over, i think he swore. I walked away, my sister followed saying "you really need to do something about your relationship", i remember giving her a look & saying something like "well you're helping" ... my other sister came out & a row that i can't recall ensued. It was a nightmare night. And unbeknown to us then our little cat Percy at home with his mother & our other cat had been run over & killed, that weekend was a bad weekend. After the row i must have slept, gone back to the tent, but i only remember waking up when no one else was a wake & standing in the garden which was wet with summer dew, the scent of  the honeysuckle that sprawled over everything filled the air, and in the distance sheep called their lambs, in this romantic idyll i was trying to make sense of the night before & piece together my life. Maybe what happened was just a little thing, maybe i could have shaken it off, but the aftermath of an event, great or small, determines the direction of play in the future, and i didn't i grasped it to me. It hurt. 

Correct me if i am wrong after WW1 the germans were forced to pay vast reparations that left them bankrupt which gave passage to the events leading up to WW2. I use that gross example because its easier to see the effect of decisions on a massive scale than it is when their measure is smaller. In personal relationships the dynamics are generally subtler, a failure to apologise, a lack of contrition, how other people respond or react. Once again i bring up a more public furore, the Number 10 Covid lockdown parties for instance, the Number 10 parties shouldn't have happened, when it was discovered they happened those guilty lied & tried to evade justice, those who gave or attended those parties endeavoured to "alright" them, to make them a "nothing to see here" matter, these responses have made them worse. So it is with my sister & I, she has to this date, never said sorry & acts in a manner that implies innate superiority & so the wound festers. 

But what if now i peel the bandages off the wound, give it light, give it air, say this happened it was wrong, but it was a long time ago, my life is not that moment, & tho it changed the course of my life change is part & parcel of life. My older children's father & I were not going to ever make a long happy marriage, we were unsuited partners, maybe it brought our separation to sooner end but an ending was inevitable. I've been thinking recently about how that night felt to my sister. She seemed to me to get off scot free whilst i was punished but maybe that let off has meant the wrong committed is more tightly bound to her than if familial pressure had forced her to meet it head on. Like not cleaning shit off your shoes.  

Anyway maybe my writing out how I met that moment is me letting the light in, giving ancient feelings of shock, betrayal, sadness, anger, pain, license to fly. I wonder what feelings my sister might carry from that night, shame maybe, fear, anger at being caught, desire to deflect, wrong, i can only guess, maybe she has no feelings about it. And who am i today to call foul now, i have got plenty wrong myself, who in the course of a life doesn't. So endeth my sermon.