Tenuous Threads

One of the kiddies in the family is ‘special’ – he was born 10 years ago with what the doctors thought one year later was Cerebral Palsy.  The news was devastating.  They put him on a waiting list for speech therapy.  A year later they took him off because they changed their diagnosis to ‘brain damaged’ and there are very few support groups for that.

Last month Ethan had botox injected into his legs to help him walk without falling over.  He can talk, but his conversation is limited.  He heard about a car crash last year, for instance, and he asks about it every day.  His favourite book is the Argus catalogue which he ‘reads’ for hours, turning the pages in fascination.  He goes to a special school and made his 1st Communion in May this year.  His daddy and mammy love him very much and bring him everywhere.  (He is the second-eldest of four kids).

Yesterday Ethan had a ‘grand mal’ seizure and was taken to hospital.  They don’t know for sure what the cause was and are keeping him in for observation before having an MRI scan done.

It makes me realise what a tenuous thread holds us in life.  How quickly a little soul could be snuffed out, almost without any warning.  How terrifying it must be for his parents, knowing how lucky they were to be with their little boy when this seizure happened, and quick witted enough to call an ambulance even before the terrible shaking began.  They will be so afraid it might happen again, maybe when he is alone.

We take so much for granted.  We don’t appreciate each day as a gift to be treasured until something dreadful happens to make us realise it.

Don’t waste a single moment!

Promises

I promised myself I wouldn’t waste the day blogging when I could be getting dressed, or painting a picture, or improving my mind with a good book, or trying to make up a good story in 600 words or so.  But who ever kept a promise – especially one made to oneself?

God, I’m exhausted at that list of things I might be doing.  I think I’ll go back to bed!

Respite

At the risk of annoying all you sun-worshippers, it was a relief to wake up this morning to a sun-less sky and feeling rather more like a human being that recently.  Maybe now my legs will shrink to the size of a baby elephant and I’ll be able to take a deep breath now and again instead of lying, listless, on the couch watching sky.

Maybe a few days of good old Thunder & Lightening would electrify us.

An incessant supply of ‘Murder She Wrote, Law & Order, the bloody SCI, The Practice and that awful oily M Poirot has my brain turned to jelly.  Jim Bergerac has merged into Midsummer Bloody Murders and Have I Got News for you is from so far back that even I can’t remember the political innuendos.

Someone made a fortune from churning out all those lousy scripts you know – that’s the market we should be aiming for -maybe!  To hell with literature, let’s steep ourselves in soaps, full of (b)lather and froth.  We could do a ‘round the table’ murder story some morning.  Hammer out a plot and see who can fill in the best dialogue.  Our characters could include menacing poets, sexual perverts and pub performers.  And of course a few clever-clogs that know all the answers (I bags being one of those, age bringing wisdom and all that jazz).  I think we could do it.

No?  Just a thought.

The urbane John Bowman bowed out from Q & A (he must have a Dorian Grey-like picture in the attic – he hasn’t aged at all over the years) but Vincent Browne rants on interminably.  Ministers head to the hills for holidays leaving us afraid to make plans in case our jobs disappear, wages shrink further, the price of petrol soars  and lawns are turned into allotments to feed the starving –us!  So there’s no sun shining on our economic fortunes either.

Welcome lovely dull July 09.

Just My Luck

I slaved and slaved for hours and hours to finish my latest story and guess what?  Having completed this definite prize-winner I find there are no suitable competitions looking for entries.  The season is over.

By a ‘suitable competition’ I mean a modest little affair, not one with huge cash prizes.  Being a ‘kept woman’ of modest desires, I seek not fortune but fame.  Once again it has eluded me.

I so wanted to join my group-members in the Hall of Fame.  One after another they flourish their successful stories and poems and always I have been lazy and  just too late (or uninspired) to compete.  I raise a toast, join in the applause, and celebrate with them, but inside I bleed with humiliation.  I know how Cinderella felt when they all went off to the Ball.  I empathise with  John Gormley’s discomfort  when he realised that nobody voted for his party. I understand the pain of the Westmeath footballers when Dublin walloped them in Croke Park on Sunday last.

The last ‘prize-winning’ story I wrote seems to have gone astray somewhere because it didn’t feature in the short-list of the comp I had selected.  Maybe I didn’t put enough stamps on the envelope? I know it deserved to win but how could the judges discover that if they never saw it’s magnificence.

One offering was honoured by a short-list in Malahide, but since I can’t remember what story it was and have no way of finding out, I can neither read it over and over again with satisfaction, nor can I boast about it.

So my file of unsung stories grows and grows.

I am my only admirer.  I’ve just begun a new folder (the first, well thumbed, is bursting at the seams) which I keep on a shelf in my room so that I can read the exciting sagas over and over.  They get lonely, poor things, and languish sadly.  I know you’ll think a folder on a shelf is a sad thing anyway in these days of technology but I want to make sure that some day, long after the computer has crashed and distributed my precious words into cyber-space (I know I should have them on back-up discs, but how to file them, where to keep them, who would see them) there is still a chance that someone will find these treasures and I will, at last, be discovered.

Variously Challenged

Challenged by Various, I can’t think of 7 things from the last 24 but the week had a few highlights.

1. Drove through the Wicklow mountains to Glendalough.  Wicklow is tame towards Connemara but has a certain charm of its own, and I do love the Blessington Lakes in the sunshine.

2. Saw ‘The Gandhi’s play the blues on Miriam O’Callaghan.  Young band from Lucan, they did very well. 

3. Sorry the Lions didn’t win the test – but I knew O’Gara shouldn’t have kept his hands in his pockets when the queen came to call.  These things come back to bite you.

4. Got a chance to see some of Jacko’s performances again and feel the excitement.  Great showman but troubled soul – he leaves quite a mess behind him.

5. Started to write again – it’s been ages since inspiration came to call.  I grabbed it and have it locked in the wardrobe.

6. Great banter at coffee after Writers Group. Good company always leaves me on a high.

7. Delighted when Kildare got through to Leinster Final by beating Laois – then watched the Dubs give a real drubbing to Westmeath.  Not feeling so confident now for the Lily Whites.  I think I won’t watch that one.

Surprise part 2

I know I shouldn’t have run away but the sound of her shrill voice berating him was too much for me at that hour of the day. My head still throbbed with the after effects of last night’s binge and my tongue was as dry as a sponge that had been left too long on the bathroom window sill. The brother-in-law had meant well inviting me out for a couple of jars. He knew better than most what it’s like to be out of work with your life in a mess. He had been there himself and climbed back from the black hole he was sinking into by a lot of hard work and a couple of well-placed friends. Ursula had more or less insisted that he pull himself together. I can kind of understand why she didn’t want him slipping back into that situation just because her kid brother couldn’t get his act together and his wife, in her opinion, was a loser anyway.

So when, after discovering me on the sofa in the sitting-room as she got the kids off for their last day in school before the holidays, it was not entirely a surprise to hear her charge upstairs to their bedroom screaming like a virago and calling me names that even the lads on the building site wouldn’t dare use to me. I thought it best to scarper. What inspired me to something so infantile as to go out the back way and hop over the wall into a neighbours garden I can’t imagine. Stupidity and alcohol I suppose.

I slid down into the gap between the rough concrete and a garden shed. You could tell there hadn’t been much traffic here – the rotted branches of exhausted shrubs snapped quietly under my weight. No kids in this house so. They would surely have made a den or buried a pet or lost a ball…there would have been signs. That was a bit of luck for a start. Pulling back a coarse bramble, which repaid me by drawing blood from elbow to fingertip, I edged around the side of the wooden building. Another bit of luck. There were some trees that gave a bit of cover while I sussed out whether the house was occupied and what were my chances of making it to the side gate before I was spotted. It was only then that it dawned on me that discovery could mean screams and alarms followed by police cars sirening their way up the street outside and manhandling me into the back of a cop car, carefully putting their hands on my head to make sure I didn’t damage the body-work. They only do that after they have kicked the daylights out of you – or so it seems from TV.

All clear, no sign of life. Easy-peasy. They’d all be gone to work in this area. No dole-queuing for the smart asses like the brother-in-law – well not yet anyway. Wait till the recession got round to them! Then they’d know all about it. Then they’d be imprisoned in their comfortable residences trying to feed kids on dole money and screaming at one another from morning till night.

I edged through the trees and caught the sleeve of my shirt on a wizened branch that hadn’t even the strength to tear the surface of the shiny material when I pulled it away. Jaysus! There was a dame lying dead in a chair about fifteen feet away! A navy & white sheet was thrown over her – and there were white flowers all around like a bleeding funeral parlour. That’s why I hadn’t noticed her. Her hair shone in the sun as if she had already turned into a saint or something – you know the glow they have in holy pictures? Christ, what will I do? They’ll think I murdered her! My legs went weak and I had to hold on to the tree to keep me upright. Should I go back and face the screamers in the house I’d left or take my chances of slipping past the body and out the side gate?

I decided to face the music and head back the way I came and as I forced my feet to carry me, there was a tiny movement from the body and a white, be-ringed hand reached towards a glass that stood on the ground beside her and lazily twirled a cocktail umbrella …..

Summertime Surprise

I slipped out of the shower and wrapped a light Spanish wrap, bought on an almost forgotten holiday abroad,  around me, tucking it firmly into place.  My hair streamed droplets onto my shoulders when I dragged a wide comb through it and as I massaged moisture cream around my face and down my neck, I  stood at the window looking down on the garden. 

It was another scorcher!  Blue sky, not a wisp of a cloud in sight.  The garden chairs were arranged somewhat haphazardly under the mock-orange tree which glowed translucently,  white petals completely still.  I padded down stairs in bare feet and poured a glass of icy juice, adding, just for fun, an orange cocktail umbrella, a souvenir of another occasion that had been sitting in the press preserving its memories.

Down the two shallow steps to the patio – well, it was a patio once, now the gaps between the concrete slabs were bulging with wild flowers and tufts of grass, but it still retained a rather shabby elegance.  Heat from the plastic seat of the not-at-all elegant garden seat oozed through my cotton wrap and I lay back and sipped the icy liquid.  The heat was  intense now and the air seemed to hover around me.  I was lulled by the humming sound of bees in the shrub that clung the length of the brick wall, camouflaging the ugly garden sheds of my neighbours and turning my concrete jungle into a secret garden.

A rustle in the leaves of the tall pear tree disturbed me from my reverie and I glanced lazily in that direction.  That was when I saw him………