Listening

My daughters are in the bath. I listen to them counting, splashing, giggling, fighting over plastic toys. Today, I've redrafted pages of my book, picked up toys, dipped chips in ketchup and looked in Thesaurus to find synonyms for 'orange', I found words such as apricot and flame. I've read articles about strikes and talked about petrol shortage with friends and passersby. I've watched videos of almost riots and wondered at the French capacity to say 'No'. I've heard about cuts in the UK, about losing jobs and I've made cheese and marmite on toast. I've carried a trombone and comforted a tired man and listened to tales of survival. I've been tired, chirpy, giddy, silly, inspired and now I'm at the end of my day. I can hear my daughters talking about farts and tickling in the bath. That is the end of my day.

Sorting

Today, I sorted through their clothes: pink T-shirts, odd white socks and third-hand cotton dresses decorated with green umbrellas. I unrolled blue plastic bags and put things aside for one child and packed another for a friend. We found new second-hand dresses. Treasures put aside for a rainy day; despite the fact that it was sunny. I folded a tiny floral blouse, bedecked with little red roses, into a neat square and wondered whether I would hold another baby in my arms, need miniature trousers and 1 month old tights. I sighed with my seven year old as we tried to hold on to all of our favourite things, our arms too small for the weight of everything. " But, I want to keep it Mummy" my seven year-old said. I explained that we couldn't keep all our old clothes because there wasn't enough space on the earth. We had to learn to share and to say 'goodbye'. I was understanding, harsh, slow and fast; the odd mixture of the mother that I am.

the hand - la main

The hand is the extremity of the arm below the wrist, the forefoot of a quadruped and the division of a bunch of bananas. Since I awoke, three hours ago, my hands have made Chung Mee green tea, wiped poo from bottoms, typed on a keyboard, spread blackberry jam on fresh baguette, clutched cereal packets, pulled up trousers, held hairbrushes, removed knots, closed zips, opened doors, pushed in keys and cupped tenderly a fist full of tiny fingers. This morning my hands have touched money, bread, cup handles, autumn leaves, canteen electronic cards, paper, books, keyboards, skin and water. I washed my hands with Neem soap, in a soft, lavish white lather. I plunged them in warm liquid to rinse off the froth. My hands come from my paternal grandmother, they are small, supple and like to gesticulate, to tell a story. In my hospital work, I often touch clients and staff, meeting people through my hands. Today, the tips of my fingers will be feeling keys all day, perhaps caress a pumpkin and flick a thousand paper pages. My twenty-six bones will be co-ordinating with my brain to make fiction, to forge a metaphor. My hands will finish the day under my duvet, clenched in fists, thumbs hidden inside my four fingers, sleeping tight. Where are your hands going today? Our bodies are the reflection of our lives.

La main by Lasuza, 1999

weekend

Today I cleared books, changed where things lived, tidied places, looked at grey-haired cobwebs, chucked out decrepit objects. I am a keeper of physical things. I collect old magazines, buttons, other people's shopping lists, hats, shoes, bits of paper, books, newspapers, 1960's magazines, vintage fabric, worn clothes and second-hand china. I like things people have lived in, objects shaped, metamorphosized through their relationship to us. Stuff which is touched by time. These articles have been smelt, held, sweated on and in, hated, loved, believed in, ignored, chosen and discarded.
I have problems throwing these things away; I imagine that these objects will become a costume, a prop, a collage, a sculpture, refashioned and given, photographed, inspire a story, carry a novel inside their crumpled and stained outer shell. I am attached to their singular identity. Yet, when I clear a space there is a sense of carthasis, of a cleansing, of a purging.
Everything needs to change.

what we do with time

Time. Bend it, stretch it, eat it up by glancing at watches, slow it down by observing fireside flames. Count time in stitches, laps, cooking minutes, sun and moon cycles, growing wrinkles. Time is what makes us know that we once began, that we are in the middle, that there is an end. Days and moments can feel like eternity and then children change overnight. You look around and they are no longer babes. You can make art from time and make time into art. You can be scared of time, like in a waiting room, or relish every moment, like a good slow breakfast involving people, newspapers, eggs, cheese, apricot jam, pretty napkins, green tea and then coffee. Time is repetitive, cyclical and then sometimes things happen which leave marks in time which makes a time start that never happened before. A new time. Childhood time is endless, flexible as a strawberry jelly fom a Spanish supermarket, especially before kids learn about death. My daughters say, " I will be like that when I am younger". Time, I want to make it last forever.

coming home

We are home. On the journey back from the South to the North, we leave dry Aragon and the deep Spanish lakes; an arid red land patched with blue. We drive up and through the Pyrennes, with black smoke steaming from the back of our van. We slip into the tunnel that goes under the mountains. We stop in France, eat melon, cheese and chips, sat on a wall in the sun. We fall down the slopes into rolling countryside. The Gers makes us think of soft English landscapes. A man drives a silver rolls Royce in the summer sun. We stop in a town and buy blue sandals for two euros and a toy parrot, which my daughter calls Sky. We sleep that night in a municipal campsite near a man travelling with a tent the size of his body. He has walker's calf muscles and a sturdy face. Yesterday, tired in the white stone of the Charentes region, we find ourselves stuck in a leisure park with country-dancing, giant barbecues and far too many people. Too many people.

Today, we are home, sucking up the bits of the voyage. There is the washing, the answerphone, the emails, the post and the smiles of the courtyard neighbours. The emptying of bags. Crumbs of the holidays falling on our floor. Packets of tortes are arranged on a shelf. The flat feels big after the space of the van. There are the seagulls and the iodine smell of the sea. The small, quiet sadness that a trip is over. The happiness of the return.

here in aragon

Here in Aragon, Spain, we are steeped in the shadows of spindly pine trees whose shadows shelter us from the blinding heat. The tiny campsite is almost crushed by cliffs of red rock, which surround us on all sides. I write on paper, we swim in another lake daily and drink beer in the waterside cafe. The temperatures sear, the landscape is arid, frighteningly bare. We all melt at some point in the day, recovering as night falls, after a six o'clock dip in the turquoise blue water. We have just eaten a meal of squid, red juice seeped in bread, drunk local wine, finished with sweet white melon. The light is fading, the insects are singing. We've being visiting hillside towns, watched priests chanting in beautiful byzatine cathedrals, drunk cafe con leche, searched for unfound cheap sandals. Got to go now, dark is coming.