The Nub of Things

It was early in the morning.  We'd had a little skirmish over her new karate suit, onto which I was trying to sew in a bleary-eyed fashion three cloth badges.  Apparently I sewed the one on the sleeve the wrong way round. As it was in Chinese, it was hard to tell, but Anna-mouse was up in arms.  She had a good shout, flung herself off the bed where I was sewing, and hurtled into her bedroom.

A few moments later she re-appeared with some magnetic words from a poetry kit and began to stick them to the radiator.

The first wonky line of words read:

mum     dad     and     me     now

Then she went back to the bedroom to find more words, and when she came back took the 'dad' from the above and placed it in the second line:

I     see    you     but     no    dad

And then she went into the bedroom, found two more words and returned with these and a photograph of the Bim and his son, her greatly missed half-brother who lives in Ireland.  She pointed at the photograph, and then stuck up her final two words:

him     too

I have left it there all day, her short, eloquent expression of the nub of things.

Dominoes

I love playing dominoes.  I love everything about them.  I love the sleek, cool pieces. Tiles, they call them.  I love turning them in my hand.  I love the way our set of tiles comes in an old-fashioned metal tin.  I love that once you have chosen your initial tiles and placed them in a strategically defensive line before you, backs to the other players, the superfluous ivory oblongs are put into a pile called the Bone Yard.

I was reminded of all this when Anna-mouse announced that I had to play a game with her while the bath was running tonight.  We played on the floor, hugging the heater, because true to form with this house my heating isn't working.  It was quite cosy on the carpet round the corner of the bed, which acted as a kind of draught-shield.

Immediately I fell into contemplation mode, which is another reason I like playing dominoes: it calms me.  It calms Anna-mouse, too, something we discovered with surprise the summer she first played the game, at the time of her fifth birthday.

It was, in fact, the most difficult summer of all - the first after the Bim left the family home.  In one of the many bizarre acts of love and ridiculousness which this separation of ours has engendered, we felt duty bound to honour a longstanding, pre-split booking to take Anna-m to see a performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in its live stage show incarnation, which was touring the UK at the time.  Given that we live in Kent, readers will understand that it was no small commitment to honour, given that the nearest performance to us was in Devon.

So we booked two rooms in a Bed & Breakfast - a room for Anna-m and me, and one for the Bim - in a strange coastal village across the border in Cornwall.

It was there that our weekend, which was understandably fraught with tension, was considerably mollified by the gift to Anna-m by the owners of the B&B of a small wooden box of dominoes.  Suddenly we discovered something which could unite us, something which brought all of us to a state of calm - one might even say grace.  I remember sitting round a little fold-up table in the Bim's room, munching snacks and taking long, weighty moments to consider the placing of my next tile.

It was a revelation to us that for the first time our feisty just-five year old chose to abide by the rules of a game with no fuss; indeed took the thing entirely to heart. The July rain slapped the salted windows of the B&B as we played on, oblivious, and we emerged from those games purged, somehow, of our many and various sins.

I was reminded of this tonight.  I was reminded how much I love playing dominoes.

Keeping it Simple

When the Bim escaped Kent Town with his new love Mary a few weeks ago, it was to a little village about seven miles away.  A different world.  A good move.  And after comforting Anna-mouse through several anxious pre-move nights, it was thankfully a move that has proved popular with her, too.

One of the things the Bim and I tried to do after we separated was to give Anna-mouse the odd day out, when he she and I did something together as the family that we used to be.  These occasions were often bitter-sweet, usually pretty successful, and only once or twice too painful for words.

Since Mary and the Bim have made a life together, these occasions have tailed off, but yesterday, with Mary out of town, the three of us found ourselves together almost by accident, attending the village hall's fifty year anniversary fete.

It was a sweet, gentle affair straight out of the 1940s, in a traditional little hall with wooden rafters.  Tables manned by locals lined the  walls offering raffles, tombolas and craftsy activities for the children.  My favourite was a free stall manned by a local gardener, fingernails black with compost, who was showing any child who would listen how to plant up daffodil bulbs for the spring.

The Bim and I were almost superfluous to the wealth of opportunities for kids, and found ourselves  standing about chatting as Anna-mouse decorated a CD turned candle holder with glitter, and strung up a necklace.  This last activity was run by the local vicar, a compact young man with prematurely greying hair and fraying dog collar.  He got talking to the Bim, who told him how 'we' had just moved into the village, and because appearances deceive and with no reason to believe otherwise, the young man assumed of course that I was part of the 'we'.

How strange this is, I thought.  Everything apparently the way it was, and yet actually not at all.

I don't mind, I just don't know what to feel when people mistake us for the happy family we are not, which, to our credit, happens more often than not.  We have flummoxed teachers at Anna-m's school by our united front, and mothers of Anna-mouse's friends have been astounded when I say no, we're not together.  We haven't been together for years.

As we were leaving the fete, the three of us laden with Anna-mouse's spoils and laughing at her dalmatian face painting, a woman caught up in our happy atmosphere stopped to ask us if we were attending the evening's concert.  There were two tickets left, she said, but then I suppose you'd have to get a baby sitter, and it is short notice...  And then she invited us to attend the family prayer meetings, designed especially for families with children like us and run by the nice young man with the dog collar, on a Wednesday evening.  Without even glancing at each other to corroborate our stories, the Bim and I played the part to save her feelings and went on our way.  Welcome to the village!  she called after us.

Well, what could we have said?

No, sorry, you've got it wrong - this is my husband, this is my child, but I did not move into the village last week.  My husband moved here with his new love.  My daughter stays here at weekends.  This weekend my husband's new love has gone back to see her children.  Yes, quite complicated!  We are still married, but we're going to get divorced.  Quite soon now, actually.  No, that's all right, I know what it looks like.  We just decided, for our daughter, that we'd be friends.  At all costs.  Yes.  

Bus stop, revisited

The Bim and I met eight years ago today.  It may be a little tarnished, but the story is still a good one.


All day it niggles away at me.  What's wrong with me?  What's wrong with me? I ask.  My heart is heavy, my thoughts are sad.  And then, blinking back tears at traffic lights on my way to pick up Anna-mouse from school, I remember.


The Bim sends me a text:  8 yr ago 2day.  If I knew then what I know now, I'd still go 2 that bus stop.


Would I still go? I ask myself.


I listen to his good-humoured ramblings as he stays for a cup of tea while Anna-mouse and I eat supper.  Later, after he has gone, I gather her pyjama-ed body up to mine for a last cuddle before bed.  Would I? 


Yes.  Yes, I would.