Jessie

If I had 10 more hours in the day I would…

probably do a very good impression of the 16 or so hours I currently have. It sounds so dreary to say, but having lived the years that I’ve lived and wanted the things that I’ve wanted, my experience has taught me that the things you wish for or think you need are often a red herring.

“I just need more hours in the day!” …the clocks go back an hour every year and you sleep through it. Not that sleep isn’t a precious and very sacred thing; but it’s not quite the swirl of thoughts, dreams and ‘to-dos’ you had when you exclaimed “I just need…!”

So, truly I think an extra 10 hours would be filled with a bit more of what’s already there. An extra load of washing, an extra game of I Spy, an extra meal to cook, eat and clean up. Some extra smiles too but they’re elusive and harder to track.

I’m happy with the 24. 8 sleeping (ha!) and the rest making, completing and ignoring the ‘to-dos’.

What I really think I need, and if my earlier hypothesis is to be believed this is utterly misguided, is a day off. A regular day where I can choose where I go, what I listen to, what I read or watch. Once a week, fortnight or month; just regular time away from all the spinning plates. Time to remember me, live as me and dream up a future me.

If I had 10 free hours a week, free from the plates, I would live.

I love…

to think of her. Alive and plump and overflowing with laughter. The image of her stern face singing along to Joni Mitchell. The glimpse I get of her hardened hands with the square palms I inherited.

It is such a shame that I can’t think of these pieces of her without wading through my brain’s collection of still, black-and-white, lifeless images. The moment the embers stopped glowing; when her light went out and darkness fell on us.

The darkness lives with me still; but it lives as a shadowy neighbour to the bright, shining love I inherited from my Mother. 

If my body could talk…

it wouldn’t. Well, it wouldn’t at first. Instead it would groan and moan and creak like the tallest of trees in a wet wind. Swaying so wide it threatened to free its roots and lay itself right there on the forest floor. My body’s inaudible commotion would be a clearing of its throat, a signal for all sound in its vicinity to become mute.

My body wouldn’t demand attention because it’s an arrogant body that likes to be heard. My body would command attention because it’s sick of being ignored, desperately willing for someone to listen.

Once all else was quiet, my body would sing. It would sing a sorrowful song of being despised and rejected by the soul it kept safe.

In time though the song would rise and rise until it became a battlecry of determination and movement, expanding and contracting.

The battlecry would break in to a triumphant chorus of detail. Every cell renewed would hum, every nerve-ending would sing. My breath would be the melody and my heart would carry the beat.

“I survived. I grew. I renew. I keep going.”

And then a cerebral crash of cymbals and shame as the last words get lost in the crescendo

“Please love me”.