To Her Adjusting Husband

Hearth-father has been backwards and forwards to work from time to time, when he hasn't been able to work from home, but mostly he has been here, self-isolating with the rest of us.

It's me who's been getting out to walk the dog daily, visit the chemist for prescriptions, get the essentials from the little supermarket at the end of the road. Me, therefore, who has seen ordinary things daily metamorphose since this 'not-lockdown lockdown' began two and half weeks ago, and accepted them without question.

It, was, therefore, something of a surprise when Hearth-father decided to come with me to walk Hearth-dog, and seemed unaware of how some of the basic 'rules' had changed.

So this comes with enormous apology to Andrew Marvell.

To Her Adjusting Husband

In this new world of ours, no time

to learn, husband, etiquette crime.

We must work out, and think which way 

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

To walk though, is complicated.

Our destination located

by public Station Road Gardens

Where people are; begging pardons.

Why is that gate left wide open,

you complain.  I sigh. You slope in.

(You haven't been out in ten days

- folk have already changed their ways.)

Because people are hoping not 

to touch I say, and dance gavotte

around the offending handle

trying not to be a vandal.

Let’s walk this way you enthuse

and are surprised when I refuse.

A one way system operates

while round this path we circulate

in wide two metre interval

giving good berth in principal

that we not pass by our neighbours,

make inadvertent germ transfers.

I see, you say. Is there a sign?

(How big a sign would you design?

I think, but do not out loud say.)

And we pass further on our way.

What's up with her? Her face so long, 

vaster than empires and more wrong.

Well, you should have moved out and slowed.

She had to step out in the road.

How can I tell it should be me?

She's older than you. So you see,

It’s your responsibility.

On age at least we can agree.

      But at my back I always hear 

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

For one short hour is all allowed

that public space not overcrowd.

Process of self isolation 

not be taken like vacation.

At home, first task is wash our hands.

Still he argues, not understands.

We haven't touched a single thing.

But that's the world we’re living in.

The grave’s a fine and private place, 

But none, I think, do there embrace.

     Now therefore, while we can't meet

with family just up the street,

we FaceTime to communicate.

here, husband’s in his element.

And while his willing soul transpires, 

it isn't what my heart requires.

Conversations with no concerns

to play by the rules and take turns,

all talking at once right over 

each other so that thoughts devour.

A tiny screen split into four: 

three heads in each, and maybe more.

It clefts my skull. I cannot take 

the demands on me that it make.

But that's the world we’re living in;

somehow I rise above the din.

I see I am learning to hew

a new type of etiquette too.

    Thus, though coronavirus stun

our lives, yet we will make it run.


I'm very much struggling with the compulsion for everyone to 'Zoom' and 'HouseParty' the whole time, as the final part makes clear. But we all have our crosses to bear.


Currently reading: Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift.

Lockdown

I wrote a poem called 'Lockdown'.  Apparently the poet laureate did, too, so that's not very original. He published his last week, though; so much quicker off the mark than me. But then he's poet laureate. 

Lockdown

The thermometer thrives in the fruit bowl. 

It has moved from the anonymity

of the bathroom cupboard and has new status.

There’s daily disorder while the new world 

order works itself out. What is essential?

Narrowing of horizons on all sides;

as the requisite distance further widens.

We find new fulcrums on which to pivot.

Lines are marked out for us to stand behind,

that were not there before. Along the line 

much is online and that line must be toed.

Solidarity gestures remotely 

jostle with unhealthy suspicion of 

strangers given wide berths. WhatsApp, on tap, 

alerts to the communal carers’ clap.

The pace of change has infected us all.

A nation’s febricity rises into

unsettling peace. I reach for an apple.

Ted Gooda

March 2020

Currently reading: Reading Poetry by Tom Furniss and Michael Bath

(Which is what has prompted today's burst of creativity.)

Literacy and Tulips

Eddie and I went for a walk this morning.  I'd like to say that it was a meandering purposeless walk; walking for the sake of it, but no - we were in a hurry to get to his holy communion class and steaming down the road at a hundred miles an hour running slightly late, but not late enough to take the car for the short distance.

To make up for the relentlessness of the pace, (and in an attempt at 'good' parenting) I tried to point out a few things along the way. 'Look at those budding tulips,' I urged.

At which point we made an interesting discovery.

'Tulip is one of my favourite words,' he enthused. 'You can really taste it.'

Really, I thought. And what exactly does it taste of? Masticated flesh, perhaps? But of course I didn't say that.

'It tastes of air,' he explained. 'But air in a tube.'

Oh, right.

Turns out that we may have a little synesthete on our hands. Later on we were talking about whether he preferred Maths or Literacy at school.

He physically shuddered at the word 'Literacy' - though it is one of his favourite things.

'I am probably better at literacy,' he explained, but I hear and sort of feel the whoosh of the paper-cutting thing when you say it.'

'The guillotine?' (Not to brag, but I have quite an impressive one in the study: it was one of my favourite Christmas presents last year.)

'Yes, that.'

At bedtime I did another little check. What colour is 'A', I wanted to know.

'Orange,' came the reply. Without any hesitation. C is blue, and S is red, apparently.

OK. So my friend Google tells me that apparently four percent of the population experience this phenomenon of experiencing a cognitive intertwining of sensory perception. But common amongst writers and artists.

Ergo, he'll probably grow up to be a poet or a novelist. Obvs.  Except that 'literacy' and a guillotine is a slightly unfortunate association...



Currently reading: Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

Another Budding Literary Career

Following in the footsteps of Great-Hearth-Aunt, Eddie's literary exploits continue to exceed expectation. Next week his riddle poem is published in Young Writers - Little Riddlers South East Poets. Today, his classmates helped performed a song about a penguin that he had written. Given Eddie's already well-developed propensity for self-promotion, these latest achievements make him nearly unbearable. In fact, he was most put-out that the class were only going to sing one verse during the assembly when he had gone to the trouble of writing a whole two more. Didn't they know who he was?

It was a treat to watch this assembly as all three of them were actually recognised. Gilby as a maths champion and Gertie for last weekend's swimathon where the team of six swam 117 lengths in an hour. Proud mummy moments.

Vowels Rise Like Balloons

Gertie turned ten earlier this week. TEN. I have a decade's worth of experience of parenting under my belt and I'm still none the wiser. The whole thing was, frankly, bewildering.

Her chosen method of celebration was a disco, for twenty eight of her closest friends. At home.

This took some strategic preparation: The borrowing of lighting systems to rival Blackpool; the sourcing of a playlist where not only did I not know many of the artists, but I couldn't actually distinguish between singers and song titles; the downloading of 'mixing software' in order to negate the requirement for a DJ; (Hearth-father secretly fancied the job, I reckon, but his lack of knowledge of contemporary pop rivals mine) the rearranging of every piece of furniture in the house to make way for a 'dance floor'; the purchase of more than fifty sausages, baps, and burgers for the accompanying barbecue. And so on. I feel that my new bookcases were enhanced no end by the sympathetic illumination. A 'bibliotheque', no less:

The allotted time came. I don't know what the collective noun for ten-year-olds is, but they arrived in their hordes. Initially there was a stand off: Girls in the sitting room (cunningly disguised as a nightclub), boys upstairs. There was a collective squeal everytime somebody new arrived. Then some ice was broken, after which they screamed, they sweated, they took selfies and slid down the staircase. They raided Eddie's toy box and had mock sword fights and gun battles. (Am I delighted to say that gender differences didn't seem to count? Not sure.) They charged around the house after the one person who has a mobile phone.

They did everything, in fact, but dance. Still, that's a disco for you.

After a while their noise seemed to float joyously, somehow, in a constant cacophonous chorus (the wine may have helped), clear vowels rising like balloons. Which rather reminded me of Plath's poem, copied below.

Ten years on from the 'birth day', I think I still feel similarly.



Morning Song 
BY SYLVIA PLATH

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons





Currently reading: The Husband's Secret by Lianne Moriarty

Dancing Shoes

Gertie has just taken part in her second Irish-dancing class. She loves dancing, and aged four, has already been doing ballet for more than two years. As a child I loved Irish-dancing, and carried on taking part in competitions until I was thirty, (albeit with a long break through my late teens and early twenties!) I loved the excitement of the feis and all the dressing-up that went with it. But at twenty-eight weeks pregnant with baby number three, my dancing days are well and truly over. So the item that has inspired this blog-post in response to Jodie's writing prompts this week are my tired and worn-out shoes, next to Gertie's shiny new and very, very tiny ones.

It is a personality cat-walk as I revist old loves: nostalgic, but memories faded at the edges, a little tarnished on reflection. And watch history repeating itself!

DANCING SHOES

A restless night: my hair in lumpy rags.
For this six-year-old white-dreadlocked dreamer
The unroutine 5am start
Prevents sleep more than the tight wound curls.
In the morning the ritual unwinding,
A mess of ribboned ringlets scooped to top-knot.
Not really a look for London, circa 1980.
Then soft leather shoes lattice-laced
Like twisted liquorice around poodle socks
Thickening my ankles. A racing greyhound,
Hungry for the hare. But my chase was for a trophy
In the jig; a shiny medal in the reel;
Highly commended in the horn-pipe,
And my mother: glowing, proud and smiling.

Now I see the glitz under glare of bare Whitechapel bulb;
Fuss and pomp and empty Gaelic line.
McEvoy by name: a tired cultural link,
Forcing Irishness under lure of dress and gloss.
As I enrol my daughter in her Irish dancing class.

High Five!

I am delighted to have been tagged by Mum With Carrot in Her Hair for the High Five meme. Beginning my blog has been a major highlight, but so many people have offered that so I won't include it. Here are five other highlights of my 2009:

1. On the 3rd March at our twenty week scan finding out that 'Minibunks', as we had christened my bump, was not only healthy and growing perfectly but was a boy! Now we would have a little brother for Gertie, which I knew, despite my husband's protestations, was what he really wanted. Gilby arrived safely (though not quite in the manner planned) on 27th July.

2. My husband getting through to the televised stage of Masterchef. Strictly speaking this should be his highlight, not mine, but I was thrilled.

3. Getting my bicycle for my birthday. I probably shouldn't include a material thing, but it really was a highlight as I had wanted one for ages and my husband managed to select the perfect model. The timing wasn't brilliant as I was seven months pregnant and I have had periods in my life where I have had a slightly better centre of gravity than that, but it has had plenty more use since the birth.

4. Having my poem, Apgar Score, published. Since this post is all about me(!), I will reproduce it here:

APGAR SCORE

There was a final tearing wrench
before we went from one to two.
They held you up in alien air
And took you for a minute.
Then they placed you on my skin.
I smiled, uncertainly, for the camera;
You turn your squashed-up face away
And in to me, as though to tunnel back in.
I didn’t know what to do
So I cried, I think;
And you cried, I think.
But somehow we muddled through.
Soon they took you from me again,
And did some things to that tiny you:
Weighed and measured and judged.

On display in that glass box
You passed your first tests.

5. This one might also seem a little odd, but it was going to the NATE (National Association of English Teachers) conference back in April. It was a whole weekend away with the chance to think about my teaching in a very focused way with no distractions. I had also been trying to get to the conference for five years and this was the first time my school had agreed to let me have the time and pay for the trip. I went with a good friend and had an amazing time - and these 'solo' experiences are so rare now.

So I know that lots of people have already been tagged with this, but I would like to pass it on to:

Hungry but Happy Mummy

It's A Mummy's Life

And anyone else who hasn't already been tagged but would like to share 2009 high points!