suffolk writer Archives

Swallows and snow globes

It is okay to recognise that some things are hard and sad and difficult.

The other day, I both stood on my own in a field giggling and also had a bit of a cry. The cry wasn’t in the field but back at home and was because, quite frankly, cancer treatment is flipping hard work, and I think we all know what I really mean by, flipping. Most days I am pretty okay and just get on with it all, but overwhelm can sometimes creep through the cracks.

I am now half way through radiotherapy and the worst so far is feeling very, very tired and generally a bit sick. The latter is probably that my poor little liver might be getting a bit of a poke from the laser beam. (I know, I know, it’s not a laser beam, but it’s more fun to think of it that way. I can pretend I am in a James Bond film and will at any moment cunningly escape with excellent martial arts moves and then nip off to the bar for a swift martini.)

My ability to concentrate, think or focus on anything appears to be dreadful on more days than not. This will be a heady mix of chemo fog, tiredness from radiotherapy and the underlying continuous emotional and physical weight of six months of treatment in one form or another and with more to come – all in a pandemic. Well, if you’re going to do something, you may as well go the whole hog.

This is why I took myself out for a walk. Physically sluggish, emotionally a little messy and mentally unable to concentrate on anything, I had to get outside. My legs may have moved like lead and as if I were walking through treacle, but my heart instantly felt lighter especially when only a few minutes later I saw a swallow perched on a telephone wire in the bright sunshine after a rain shower.

I stood in a snow globe for a while. No, I haven’t completely lost it. A tree* was shedding soft motes of pollen which were being swirled in the breeze, barely perceptible in the sun but a blizzard against the backdrop of stormy clouds; I stopped to watch. The other snow storm at this time of year is the absolute froth of the umbelliferous cow parsley (also known as Queen Anne’s Lace and related to the carrot, don’t you know). Much to the horror of many gardeners I’m sure, I am letting this wildflower grow quite prolifically in our borders.

*I am leaning towards it possibly being a goat/pussy willow but I stand ready to be corrected because my tree identification game is bad!

Almost home and with the clouds gathering overhead, I stood for a while as swallows swooped above me. It was a magical moment of watching and listening to these birds as well as others singing further afield. All around me was the buzz of insects enjoying wild honeysuckle wrapped around the limbs of trees and the air was generating that exciting electric feeling that comes before a storm – and then a horse gave an almighty neigh, and this is what set me off giggling.

I went home and had my little cry. My walk broke the spell of me just pushing everything to the back of my brain where it sat growing and growling for attention. Sometimes you can work so hard at getting on and through things, you can forget to stop and feel what you need to feel. It is okay to recognise that some things are hard and sad and difficult and I am advocating allowing yourself a little cry sometimes if you need it.

Pockets of gems

I have found, that with the new depths of grief, sadness and fear which sometimes can feel too much to take, I have also experienced higher highs of love and joy.

One of the most horrible things about having cancer, is having to give people bad news. Having to tell those you love something you know will cause them pain is dreadful. Then there is having to tell everyone else; repeating the facts over and over is like hammering your own pain and grief wide open at a time when you would rather hide from it. But, it is not something you can’t speak about forever.

To this end, here is my update. My treatment has not gone fully to plan. Three weeks ago I had my surgery to have affected lymph nodes removed. All went well albeit taking a little longer to heal than would be hoped. However, a week ago I got my results and well, they weren’t quite the good news we had been hoping for. The cancer had spread further than had been thought and had reached the third layer of lymph nodes under my arm, which are in essence, the last bastion before things go heading off elsewhere around the body. I am waiting for scans to try and see if it has spread anywhere else.

In the meantime we have to deal with what is known and so as soon as my surgery has healed I will have three weeks of daily radiotherapy and then be put on another chemotherapy for three to four months.

This has been an absolute blow and I have to admit, very hard to take. Instead of my treatment being nearly at an end, I find I am pretty much back at the beginning. The unknowns are too much for me to think about.

I am sorry to deliver this news to you but it wouldn’t feel right to say nothing and carry on interacting with people pretending all was going okay.

A strange thing has happened. I have completely lost my creativity. For the whole thirty-nine years of my life I have always had more creative things on the go than I could possibly actually do; songs, poems, stories, crafts knitting, crochet (this last quite badly done). It disappeared about a week before my surgery, I just assumed it was nerves and would return, but as yet, it hasn’t. Instead I have done a lot of thinking, over-thinking and deliberately trying not to think and it seems there is a very thin line that divides these things and too much time spent in any is not a good idea.

I think, when you have truly felt the truth of your mortality, it is something that can’t be un-felt. So many difficult things happen to all of us in our lives but we often fall back on, ‘But, at least it won’t kill me.’ When something happens and you can no longer say that, it tends to stop you in your tracks a bit.

I have found, that with the new depths of grief, sadness and fear which sometimes can feel too much to take, I have also experienced higher highs of love and joy. The silly pettiness of every-day worries has gone, they seem too small to give precious time to. The places I found happiness before, can bring almost unbearable joy now; you are as likely to find me crying from joy as you are of sadness, these days.

I honestly don’t know what lies ahead. I am trying to live by perhaps the most used maxim; one day at a time. I, as most of us, have said this phrase so many times, but it is only now I can see how important it is. Without wishing to sound like an intolerable hippy, there is so much beauty, love and joy out there, that even on your worst days, if you look for it, it can be found in the pockets between harder times. I intend to fill my pockets with these gems and I hope you do too.

I am sitting writing this not looking at all how I want to, with just the tiniest fuzz of hair. I have a medical drain going into my side, which is doing its best to ruin all my clothes by leaking all the time and I have a barrage of hospital appointments ahead. But I have just been out for a walk in the most glorious sunshine. The birds are singing their hearts out and spring flowers are polka-dotted everywhere in purples, yellows and whites – and all I can see is beauty.

Winter, Act 2: The Jewelled Dual

A courteous bow

Strut, abreast they walk

With puffed, pumped chest, they talk

All with manners at this early part

While waiting for a sign to start

Full starch, back and forth they pace

Feigning manners and grace, until

With a gentle sloping arch of golden tail on icy ground

The rapier black and brown soft trails to demarcate and bound

Grand stand and boast

In jewelled and shiny coats

Puff and ruffle, intent and show

And it begins – crouch low

Jump high

Feet and legs to opponent’s chest extend

Push and serve a blow, then land to defend

Another turn around the ring

Cock heads bobbed, out-stretched wing

Beady eyes, take size the foe

Scrape low and here we go

A feathered flap, lift hard and haul

A clash of claw

A civilised brawl

A pant and puff of breath from beak

Hangs clouds in frozen air, it speaks

Of old ways, rites and honour

Of settling scores with brutal glamour

But, gentlemen of landed gentry know rules that we do not

For just as soon as battle starts, then it is stopped

The ritual has been played

A settlement now made

Who victorious stands, I do not know

But I watch as side-by-side, they go.

Overlapping starts and ends

We have all had to cope with an unwanted ending…of a casual carelessness that the loss of has been heart-breaking.

I have a strange relationship with endings, in that, I don’t feel them. Or rather, I think that either, by the time things end I have already felt them to know then that they are going to or, as in today’s case, I am already too focused on the next thing.

I had my last chemotherapy today; number 12. Three months of weekly treatment. I should be feeling giddy and excited and super happy (and of course, I am very happy) but, yesterday I had an appointment with the surgeon and so now, I think my head is already focusing on getting ready for surgery and that recovery. After that, there will be radiotherapy. And I know, from past experience that the mental and emotional dealing with having had cancer, doesn’t come until a year or two later. It’s as if you have the resource to get through the physical side but have to put the mental stuff on hold. When your body has recovered enough, the balance is tipped and it is the mind and heart that then needs to process and heal. So, that is why, when I finished treatment today I didn’t really feel any different.

MOTH and I were talking about this to my sister the other day about getting to the point where you know when something has ended, even before it actually has. When I was in sixth form, I remember a teacher saying to me one day, “You’re already done with this, aren’t you? You’re ready to go.” And I was, although I did see my A-levels out. Similarly, in a previous life, when I had worked for a publishing house for ten years, on my last day I walked out of the office just as normal – and it was okay. By that point I had long felt like I had already left, I had had the knowledge that it was done long before my resignation was handed in. There are a few people I will always hold dearly in my heart from that time, I hope you know who you are, but I never felt it was really a complete goodbye to them, perhaps a hiatus.

Some endings are ok. Some are not. I think the ones that happen naturally and hand you the innate knowing that they are there and it is their time, are the okay ones. It doesn’t always make them easy, but I think it can make them easier. It is the ones that come abruptly, unbidden, leaving unfinished business that are not okay. I have a few of these to work through one day.

There is nothing more to these musings other than a recognition of a gentle end to the chemotherapy part of my treatment. Perhaps the juxtaposition with Spring finally feeling like we can actually say it is here with all its beginnings has made me notice the rhythm of overlapping endings and beginnings.

We had a lovely video chat with friends at the weekend who we haven’t been able to see since a fleeting doorstop visit at Christmas to pass presents over at a distance. We talked about Spring and I mentioned that it has, in the past, always been one of my least favourite seasons. I have always found it fidgety and fractious which somehow made me feel almost tense, but this year I am enjoying it more. I wonder if we all are after a year of restrictions. Thinking back to a year ago, we were a global nation just setting out to start understanding what was happening and what was to come. Now, we are all a year wiser and more knowledgeable and weary. Our own restless beings are full of a desire to get going, get on and continue. Just like the bulbs poking sleepy heads above soil, just like small buds appearing on fruit trees that will, in not too much time, burst with blossom, just like the first spring flowers bravely daring to unfurl themselves, we want to be living, to be doing.

We have all had to cope with an unwanted ending of the way we could just live without thought, taking for rite, daily life, hugs, little touches, crowds. A casual carelessness that the loss of has been heart-breaking. But we have all come a long way. We all feel the desire for this way of things to end. But we must all see this through. It will come and the ending will be more than okay.

Nothing but food

Mealtimes have become the main event rather than the punctuation. But here is a danger; the comfort or boredom snacking.

There is nothing to talk about but food. Oh, and – when is bins? I don’t know about you, but between the amount of time we have been in lockdown and the weather being so bad that even the allowed daily exercise has been put largely on hold, it feels that there is very little to say about what anyone has done each week. Living rurally, we were completely snowed in and so I didn’t even get to my blood or chemo appointments this week. They may not exactly be highlights but at least they mean I get to leave the house.

I love having catch ups with my closest ones on various on-line platforms but they, as well as phone calls can end up a little like this: “Anyone done anything this week?” “Not really.” “Pretty much the same as last week.” “Yep.” “Yep, me too.”

At least before the snow we were able to start talking about what was coming out in the garden and the things we were thinking of getting planted, but even that has been thwarted until things improve. The snow itself, did of course, provide a new topic of conversation for a while especially when wondering just who had left trails up and down our garden when I wasn’t looking – turns out, it was pheasants.

But it’s not as if there is nothing to do, it’s just that somehow, in our long confinements, everything just feels a bit samey. If it weren’t for all my hospital appointments the calendar would be redundant; even weekends have no meaning anymore as, because MOTH and I have been working from home, work is an any day, every day, any time thing.

And so food seems to be the thing that is keeping us all going – literally and figuratively. The highlight of most days is the coming meal. It is a marker of time passing and something nice (hopefully) to look forward to, something that is different to the previous day. Mealtimes have become the main event rather than the punctuation. But here is a danger; the comfort or boredom snacking, accompany this with not being out and active and you can understand why a rotation of jogging bottoms are becoming my staple wardrobe. I’ve not helped myself by coming up with a dangerously easy, tasty quick bake, the recipe for which is below. The cats appear to be in on it too and I couldn’t count the number of times a day I refill their biscuit bowls. They, however do not have jogging bottoms. And the birds are no better.

On an unrelated food note, do you ever feel like you have the same things over and over again? After feeling like this a while back, I started keeping a list of the different meals I cook and it’s now in the seventies. And yes, I realise this is a very nerdy thing to do. But trust me, when you have the mind-blank of writing the shopping list for the week – it helps to be a nerd.

For a life writer, this lack of doing anything makes it very hard to write about, well, doing anything. Before you know it I’ll be telling you about the ironing or how I’ve re-labelled all my wallet files (and just how is it that in a supposedly going paper-less world there is still just so much blinking life-admin paperwork?) or even tidying the stationery drawer, which is on my radar to do. Perhaps we will all end up with a new level of tolerance of the mundane where every-day activities are the height of excitement. On a serious note, we might all be learning to find a new joy in smaller less exuberant activities, which actually, I think could be a good thing in a way.

Whatever you are all not-doing this week, I hope it is punctuated by some lovely food. I for one am off to have supper after posting this and to think about what we need to get out of the freezer to cook tomorrow.

And, just when is bins?

For my easy soft-bake flapjack recipe, click here