Excerpt from
Unravelling - A Tale of Strength, Love and
Dementia.
Chapter 1
Just the ticket
Lucy brushed a tear from her
cheek and allowed her gaze to focus through the blur onto the well-thumbed
slice of the past that she was holding. Just a simple bus ticket. Insignificant
at first glance and easy to discard as so many of its kind would have been in
days gone by. Casually thrown away at the end of a mundane journey but this one
was different, well it was to Doris.
A half-grin
formed as Lucy recalled the day she had retrieved this. The vultures had
already picked over the china and trinkets but you cannot put a price on all
that is precious. Crouched in a corner of her Gran’s dusty attic, Lucy had
discovered the tin of random oddments, protected all these years by nostalgia
and sentiment. It would have been so easy for this to have been scooped up with
all the other scattered memories due to be cast aside during the house
clearance. But Lucy sensed its significance.
Most people
had stopped listening to Doris once she had been confined to the nursing home
as her conversation lost its thread and her thoughts fox-trotted around. Not
Lucy. She loved her Gran’s stories and amongst their confused dance there was
the sparkle of an odd gem of truth. At those moments the gentle pools of her
gran’s greying, blue eyes invited Lucy in. Just as a spool of old movie footage
reveals a scene clicking frame by frame, she caught glimpses of the girl her
gran used to be. Doris in her dancing days, in whirling petticoats with
tumbling sandy brown locks catching the light as her feet marked the beat.
The rush of
young love with a gaze exchanged across the dance floor may have become a faded
memory for Doris but the tale of how they met, dodged the raindrops and held
hands to take the bus ride home together, was her favourite to recall. In her
rocking chair, crocheted blanket upon her knee and Lucy’s wondrous ‘treasure
box find’ placed beside a tray of tea, Doris was now content. The broken
connections of life’s confusion that usually frustrated Doris were strangely
calm this afternoon. Lucy saw this peace reflected in the window pane’s
rivulets of rain.
With a
determined effort Doris pressed the ticket into Lucy’s palm, clasped her hand
tight and returned her focus to the rain.
“Goodnight,
sweetheart…”
***
An excerpt from
Click and Connect
This
collection was written during times of lockdown and concern about the effects
of the pandemic. The excerpt below highlights one poem that I am particularly
proud of.
There have been many nights this
past year when it has been hard to fall asleep. Once I switched from teacher to
writer in 2018, I feel as though the writing switch in my brain has been stuck
permanently on – phrases percolate within my mind, often disconnected from what
I am doing. It is perhaps hardly surprising that instead of drifting off to
sleep, the quiet of a dark bedroom beckons such phrases to dance about with
more excitement. Some nights these phrases take quite a while to calm down and
those are the nights when I usually get my best writing ideas.
This poem began on one of those
nights. It contains many nostalgic references to my grandparents, for it
started with a sudden vivid picture in my mind of their flat and our childhood
visits to it.
Billy is a fiction, a flight of
poetic fancy. But he represents all those who are struggling to make sense of
this altered life we are all having to live now. He is the embodiment of my
relief that my father is not still struggling with his dementia during this
pandemic. He too lived in the flat the poem describes, on the top floor with
his brothers – a family of five, in four small rooms and London stretching out
beneath their feet.
***
Counting
Buttons
Billy saw
his grandparents
Every
Thursday afternoon,
Running
past the churchyard
Keen to
arrive there soon.
He counted
all the stone steps
On the
climb to their top flat,
Always
pausing half-way up,
To
straighten his school hat.
He grabbed
Nan’s box of buttons,
Slung his
satchel on the floor,
Paused to
smell his Nan’s meat pie
As he
watched the teapot pour.
His Grandad
chose a record
Of his
favourite marching band,
And Billy
held the buttons,
Turned them
over in his hand.
Nan spoke
about the weather
From her
raindrop window seat,
Looking out
across the rooftops
And the
puddles on the street.
The box had
many buttons,
With all
sizes big and small,
Different
colours, shapes and textures,
But Billy
loved them all
.
His Nan
cleaned the tall houses
On the
other side of town,
Worked long
hours and kept the home too,
Without
complaint or frown.
His Grandad
was a carpenter,
Told him
all about the wood,
And Billy
counted buttons,
And it made
his world feel good.
For at
school, he felt unhappy,
Counted
bruises more than friends,
Didn’t
understand his lessons,
Felt
relieved as each day ends.
“Billy
Braithwaite” said his teacher,
Though
Billy never knew why,
As Billy’s
mind was counting,
Counting
birds fly in the sky.
***
Now Billy
counts his buttons,
Though he
only has a few,
He lines
them up across his bed,
Does not
have much else to do.
No-one
comes to visit now,
Which he
doesn’t understand,
So Billy
counts his buttons
And holds
them in his hand.
***
There are two poems that I
mention in the questionnaire responses, so I have included them here too. ‘The
Measure of a Man’ was part of my first collection Diary of a Dizzy Peri.
‘The Girl with the Candy Striped Hair’ was originally included in my last
collection Just Take Five although I have put it here with the addition
of a sequel part which will appear in my new book, An Imposter Whispers, to be published in 2025, so in that regard, I guess this is an exclusive - a look at what is yet to
come.
***
The Measure of a Man
How do you start and where do you look
To find the measure of a man?
Not his height or weight
But the mark he made in his lifespan?
The figures in his bank account,
The steps of a career,
The hours of time invested,
His hopes, his dreams, his fears?
Is it the races that he ran?
The wit of jokes he made,
The years of marriage that he shared,
The sacrifices paid?
The wisdom of experience,
The views that he has seen,
The games played with his children,
The places he has been?
How do you hope to catch it all?
Hold the details if you can,
For all of them together,
Give the measure of a man.
***
THE GIRL WITH THE CANDY-STRIPED
HAIR
She retreats to her room, to paint pictures -
the girl with the candy-striped hair,
to enter the worlds of her brushstrokes,
worlds she is too shy to share.
Surrounded by brushes and pencils,
her comfort from struggles unseen,
the layers of care on the canvas,
cover up where she has been.
She feels she has little to offer
to the world of confusion outside,
and she doesn’t believe she could blossom,
such thoughts she keeps close and denied.
For outside her window, there’s danger,
with just a few steps, she could fall,
instead, she makes beautiful pictures
to hang, out of sight, on her wall.
The sunflowers and smiles that she puts on,
like character costumes to wear,
disguise her true warmth, and real beauty -
the girl with the candy-striped hair.
***
The poem above was written a few years ago and included
in my collection Just Take Five. Time has moved on and I now feel that a
sequel to this poem is needed, an update on my ‘Candy Girl.’
***
CANDY GIRL
My ‘Candy Girl’ has blossomed,
her wings have taken flight,
she can ride her waves of doubt
and sparkle in the night.
The rain can still be pouring
but she can make a splash,
or listen, as the raindrops soothe,
know when to dart or dash.
She’s now part of her paintings
a bold colour in the scene,
and though she may still falter,
she draws strength from where she’s been.
It seems she’s found a soulmate
to join her on life’s ride,
when troubles lay upon the track,
he’s firmly by her side.
With new directions waiting -
Which way? They soon will know,
My Candy Girl could touch the moon
if she should choose to go.
I marvel at the blossom
and watch her wings at flight,
I know she’ll spread her sparkle
like stardust through the night.
***
There is one more poem that I
include here, from Just Take Five, for a few reasons. Not all my poetry rhymes, something that
seems to be contentious for some. My husband has discussed with me what it is
that makes a poem into a poem if it doesn’t rhyme - in fact my blog post ‘Is it
a crime to rhyme?’ explains this a little further:
https://www.karenhonnor.com/post/is-it-a-crime-to-rhyme
For others, the mere fact that a
poem rhymes perhaps means that it slots into a category that may be seen as
less worthy, somehow. There’s probably a whole thesis to be written in that
regard, but just for good measure - here’s a non-rhyming poem of mine:
***
The Last Time
We seldom note the passing of our lives -
the ‘last times’
The moments that, for so long mundane, pass by,
Shifted unseen to nostalgia - dipped memories
that sit just out of reach,
The ordinary items that we never knew the value of
until we realise we have had them for the last
time.
The bad joke shared on a walk with Dad,
whilst humour still stood within his grasp,
No longer here to raise his pint as I roll my eyes,
or hurry along to the next part of my day.
The Sunday lunch around the table
when the kids were small,
the struggle over vegetables,
the chatter with grandparents,
replaced with shifts in the kitchen,
empty place mats,
snatched calls and fleeting texts.
The last family holiday with the four of us
bickering here and there about what to do next
but together, all the same, to watch the sunset,
to laugh about the skimming stones and sea spray,
not knowing that such simple moments
would become elusive,
not repeated by us all again,
one or more of us missing in the future.
If we knew, would we try a little harder?
Be a little kinder?
Smile?
Listen more intently for a while?
Press pause on that ‘last time,’ just to hold it
close,
let our senses register it all?
But the ‘last time’ doesn’t ring a warning bell,
it slips quietly through our fingers
’til we stand quite still…
Wonder how it happened and what is to be next,
what each turning page of time has planned,
which will carry on and which will fade,
and what will become our next
‘last time.
