Tag: memories

Saab Monte Carlo Yellow

image010It was his favourite of all the cars that they had owned together. They had enjoyed many Saab’s over the years but this one remained in his memories and had a lace in his heart. Of all of them this one was his smile factor.

A bright yellow Saab 900 convertible. It was not the original shape vehicle, but the newer model on a 1998 registration. A 2.3 petrol engine with an Automatic gearbox and as it changed through it’s gears it flew with a whisper quiet engine. They loved it. It took them all over the country on many trips away, exploring together in the sunshine. Even in huge rainstorms you couldn’t help but smile. It made you feel like you were a small child that had found the biggest puddle in your favourite wellies. A car which made you feel totally safe. It’s big comfortable black leather interior always looked smart and turned heads approvingly down whichever street we drove.

They took it to Belgium and France on holiday, on day trips. Visited family and felt sure in the knowledge that they were perfectly safe exploring new things together. Those were happy times when they were younger and more carefree.

When he decided to get her new car some time later, he gave it up included into the deal. He regretted it, not for weeks but for years but did not say so for she would have wanted him to keep it.

Although they had many other Saab’s of the same model it was never quite the same. Later when the truth emerged that it was his favourite they looked for another to recapture the times gone by, to create new memories and to drive through France again exploring new things together. They haven’t managed to get another one yet, always somehow missing out when they see one, but she has not given up hope of fulfilling that particular wish just yet.

The Daily Post – Yellow

A Recipe for Love?

A short story. 

It was strange, there was a time when she thought that she may have loved him.  They had been around each other for a while. As friends, she liked his company, they laughed easily together. It was all there in the mix, the mutual and intense physical attraction. They Cooked meals together, drank wine, made love easily and talked freely. They had pastimes and interests which intermingled. They met quite regularly back then, so one day she summoned the courage to ask him whether he would ever see her as anything more than an affair. Perhaps in a bid to elicit feelings which were not really there, to find out whether they could be anything more, she swallowed her pride and broached the subject one day while he was getting ready to go.  They had fun, the memories of that would stay with her for a while, there were fireworks and chemistry, but he did not want any more. Maybe the time just wasn’t right for them. She had to ask, if her feelings were reciprocated then this could be a turning point for the relationships thus far. She wondered what she was doing wrong then she would know for sure which direction to take.

Although it wasn’t really meant as an ultimatum it suddenly seemed so. So that was it. He had decided that he wanted something different. A short while after that, she changed her social circle and found work in a different town. There was someone new and she moved on with her life not wanting to prolong or encourage the torture of his rejection. It was obviously just not meant to be. She was disappointed so did not go out of her way to see him, or frequent the places where they had been previously. She never found out whether it was love or not. But settled on a fondness for the time that they’d had. Some memories remained, good ones, they could have been much more, but she would keep the memories and occasionally they would make her smile.  She didn’t hold it against him, she was young, probably erratic at the time, she may have been too much of a liability, but she was certainly not what he was looking for.

It was strange when years later, she would suddenly look up as she drove past his place.  She remembered that he had a beautiful apartment where you could watch the sunrise from the bedroom its light bathing the space and welcoming the day. The window seat overlooking water and listening to the gulls flying overhead. A place where the sunsets warmed the skin and the soul. She often did that with people she knew though, look for the places which were familiar to her. Was it also odd when she would hear from him all those years later and he would send a message that said, “I looked for you once, without success, assumed that you had married and changed your name. I can’t believe that our paths never crossed again. I have good memories of our time together, as short as it was.” 
She smiled as they chatted online for a while.  Like old friends, just as they had been really.  They knew some of the same people although she hadn’t seen them in a while it always was a small town. She’d grown over those years, any person would it had been so many. She felt no bitterness, or remorse for what could have been and yes things could have been different but after all had been and gone she was happy. He had been married after it ended. Since divorced and now had a football team of grandchildren to be proud of. She hoped that he was happy again too now. 

The Daily Post – Elicit

 

The Scents of our Memories

If I were to ask what your favourite scent is I wonder what would spring to mind?

Whether just one thing, or many of them, what memories would they bring to you.  I have so many, I could not pick just the one.

So, in no particular order here are some of mine.

Fresh Mown Grass.  Laying on it in summertime, looking up at a blue sky with clouds.

Baking Bread. On the few occasions I’ve made it myself, the wonderful scent lingers in the home, I don’t do that nearly often enough.

Freshly Brewed Coffee. Reminding me of sunny mornings, with the light streaming through the window, sitting overlooking my favourite view on the hill.

Freesias, Roses, Lavender.  Just a few of my favourite flowers.

Sea Salt on the air. A reminder of all the moments, happy and sad when I sat on the beach.

Ysatis by Givenchy.  When I was younger, this was my signature scent. Years ago, my friend was in Hospital with difficulties when her first daughter was born, I remember her telling me that she knew I had been by her side because she had smelled my perfume when she awoke.

So which scents invoke special memories for you? Do share…

The Daily Post – Aromatic

 

 

 

 

I’d Lost My Marbles!

This is not a metaphor, but it’s not necessarily what you’d think either.

I have not been writing much lately. Instead I have been quietly storing away to memory hoping that I will remember it and write it later. I have not even written notes to jog the memory, so I hope that I don’t forget. My partner told me I “had far more important things to do” as he does from time to time when he wants me to stop what I’m doing and do something different. We had storage which needed to be emptied out on a deadline and with it memories of the past, so many moments lost in that room for years and years. Many people  have wondered why I keep stuff, I am sentimental and it started out as a habit. Those who know me have often asked. I used to collect the things that people did not want, or maybe I just found them interesting. I have furniture and things handed down to me by other family members.  I’d also kept all the books which I had as a child, some I had made as projects at school. I did not throw them away, wanting to share their wonders with children of mine some day, or ones I’d been lucky to look after in the early years, waiting for my time to come as a mother. I kept the books and as time went by I stored them away.

When I had to move out of my large flat and had no where to go, many of my belongings went into a storage facility and when I had filled that up, we talked a neighbour into lending us their storeroom, in the basement where I used to live.

And there it has stayed… For several years now, it’s amazing how time flies isn’t it?

For the past three years getting into the building has been impossible. Prior to which we used to go in there get things out and store other stuff, but basically things were left there. Many of them have been quietly rotting away, ravaged by time and flood water. I hoped that some at least could be salvaged before it was too late.

The anticipation of finding things again after all this time, was mounting in my mind.  My partner was dreading the whole process but did it with me. All my toot, as he referred to had to be moved.

So should we have cleared it all out and disposed of it all years ago?  I have to say that there have been times over the past fortnight when we both felt that we should have done, it was a horrible job to do, it was smelly and damp which got right on your chest and everywhere else.   We pulled muscles in the process but it is done and now we are sorting through, having moved what remained.

But there was some good news, there were things that I thought were long gone.  I had assumed that they had been taken when the storage facility moved my belongings leaving them out in a corridor for passers by to walk off with. From the numerous burglaries in the basement, or lost when I could not remember which place they had been put in. I thought I may have got confused and donated the wrong bags to charity shops. I had doubted that I had many of these items still, whilst others I would fondly look forward to finding again.

Unfortunately,  I lost most of my childrens’ books, all of my photograph albums from when I was growing up. During the clearance I picked up a box of books which were stored at floor level, hoping to keep them. They had obviously been placed there hurriedly. It looked fine from the top but as I moved it, the bottom fell out of it and water, so much water.  I took it towards the bin and as I put the box in there, I realised that it held the photos and the children’s books. The photo’s destroyed and the colours running from the pages in multi coloured rivers. These were my first photos from when as a teenager I had saved my pocket money to buy my first camera and develop the film.  I also found my art folder from my school days, the work was damp and mouldy and something I thought was there for years, is not. These were the low points but in the midst of it all, I found other things.

Among them was a bag which had been preserved containing the blue dress I bought when my Nan died and was wearing the first day that I met my partner.  I found the favourite dress which I had when I was 18 and wore on many a night out and other new/old dresses which I had not yet worn.  I found childhood collections, Love letters, letters and cards from friends. So many things, prized sentimental possessions from many years ago and after all these years I found my marbles!

My marble collection was won when I moved to this Southern town, new to the last year at Junior school. I was worried about settling in and making friends having been bullied at my previous school, there was a craze in the new school and I would learn how to play, then win a collection of marbles. I spent my meagre pocket money on marbles from the local toy shop and played every break time.  I won most of the marbles in this container that year.  I thought that the pasta jar (another of the things which had been stored away) was the perfect place in which to store them, on the kitchen windowsill where the light can bounce through them and I can enjoy them again.

Although I am a self-confessed hoarder and it will take me a while to get through it all. I will be working on my clutter and I have realised it is quite exhilarating to throw things out which are broken, or damaged and finding new homes for things which are no longer needed. As I enjoy finding other items from our past, no doubt there will be other things which put a smile on my face.

As I spoke to my oldest friend and also my mother after we had finished. I wondered out loud whether I would finally stop dreaming of the flat I’d had years earlier. Dreaming that I still lived there and that other people had taken over the place and my life along with it, holding parties that I did not want, with people I did not invite. That happened a lot. Mum told me that chapter is now over, now that things have gone from there I can finally stop living in the basement and be free at last. It seemed to mark the turning point, as I have been going through things with fervour throwing out decayed pieces of the past as I look towards the future. Maybe that is my metaphor and meanwhile, the strange dreams seem to have stopped.

 

The Daily Post – Anticipation

Twenty One – Remembering The Girl in the Blue Dress

img_00002714

This post is in Celebration, the fact that we made it to our 21st Anniversary and were able to celebrate with a day together doing some of the things we used to do. Yesterday for the first time in so long, we felt able to smile freely, laugh and talk about the girl in the blue dress, who walked everywhere and who he kept bumping into.

At the time we first met, there had been a series of commercials for The Post Office on the television, explaining all the many services and items that were available there. The catchphrase of this particular campaign was “It’s amazing what you can pick up at The Post Office!”

It sure is….
On a spring day, I was walking into town via the beach, I had things on my mind and it was a good hours walk from home to the High Street. I didn’t drive at the time and had very little work, so I walked everywhere. It was hot and I walked into the small post office near to the walkway down to the beach, to get a drink I was met by the sight of a small child of about 4 years old being tipped upside down and spun around and shrieking with laughter by a man in the shop. There is something quite lovely about hearing unexpected laughter from a child, especially when you have things on your mind and at the time my Grandmother was very ill and I was worried about her. As the tickling began of the postmasters’ daughter, between giggling, she begged him to stop as she was breathless from laughing.

I purchased my drink and the throwaway remark as I was about to leave the shop, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” He stopped and turned and smiled at me, I smiled back laughing and left. It was the first of several unexpected meetings, time we met.

A few weeks later, I was walking again, by then it was very warm but I liked the beach better when it was quiet. I had walked for three hours to meet a friend to go out on their boat for the afternoon and had missed them and was returning home hot and tired. I had some walking boots which had a heel and I loved them since I could walk for miles. I was wearing a lovely soft blue summer dress I had bought on the day my Grandmother died. I was in town that day and saw it. Thought it was a lovely dress, fitted and flared and bias cut which was very flattering and a perfect fit when I tried it on. It had crossover straps at the back and was the perfect summer dress. I thought about buying it and placed it back on the rail. I couldn’t really afford it. As I walked around the other shops, my thoughts we drawn back to the dress, My Nanny loved me in pretty dresses, she would have liked that one. It was blue, my favourite colour and was well made. I scratched around in my purse and found I had just enough to buy it and was due to be paid in a couple of days. I had food and electric, so I purchased the dress. She would have wanted me to have it.

As I walked up from the beach I thought I would make a phone call.
There was someone in there, piles of change on the side making a call. I waited for some time in the hope that he would vacate and I would be able to use the phone and some 15 minutes later he was not showing any signs of doing so. I tapped on the window, he opened the door and I asked if he was going to be long since I also needed to make a call. As he turned to look at me, it was him. A few moments later he came out puffing a cigar to allow me to use the phone. I made my phone call and afterwards we sat on the bench outside the train station and began to talk, he had a wonderful voice, like Sean Connery, the Scottish actor who played James Bond. He was very well spoken and quite obviously knowledgeable. He was just under 6ft Tall and had dark hair, a nice face and beautiful dark brown eyes. He was quite chunky, good muscles and a great pair of legs. I knew this as he was wearing shorts, he was a few years older than me.

It was wonderful to listen to him and about an hour and a half later we had been sitting there and decided to walk together. As we walked we continued talking and when we reached a few roads from my home, we were both thirsty. I had £1 in my purse, enough for a drink in the local pub. He had run out of change with his telephone calls.
We laughed about it, walked up the road and into the garden of the pub, where I spent my last pound on a glass of coke with two straws. We sat in the beer garden and shared it and continued to talk, he was good at listening as well as talking and we seemed to get along very well. He explained that he would be going to Spain during the next week as he often spent time there with Family and Business.
After about four hours of talking with each other, it was time to leave. The afternoon was turning into evening and the pub was getting lively, he said he would walk me home. I only lived at the next corner. He asked for my telephone number and as we said Goodbye, I thought if he’s off to Spain, then that’s probably the last I’ll see of him then. I never expected anything else.

Meanwhile a week or so later, I met someone who asked me on a date, he was younger than me, which was a first and we began to spend time together, but it didn’t last long. He was just too young for me and it stopped being fun in no time at all. We dated for a couple of months and then I tried to let him down gently.
Unfortunately, when the time was up the boy didn’t want to leave and so used to sit outside my house in his car all night and hammer on the door in the early hours. He was being a bit of a pest and I kept letting him in to talk to me.

Later that Summer, there was a knock at the door. I had visitors and went down to the main door to answer it. The Man from the Post Office was back. I was shocked to see him. I told him I had visitors, so he couldn’t come in. He asked me on a date a few days later he would pick me up for lunch. I was really pleased that he had come back. I had enjoyed his company and thought I would again.

It struck me that I was not the usual type of girl he dated. I think that he liked girls who spoke better than I did, were a bit more refined and classy. What on earth would I wear to a proper date with him?
I looked like a scruffy secretary, in an oversized jacket I had borrowed and skirt, blouse and heels. I also was so nervous that I put on my posh voice, tried to pronounce everything properly and I did not want to show off.
He saw through it in an instant.
He took me out to lunch to a place some way away from where we lived. I hoped that this was not because someone might see us together. Previous relationships had made me a tad cynical. It was the place that my Grandparents had gone on their first date. We had a lovely meal and part of the way through it. He turned and said to me, “You don’t need to try so hard to impress me, we spoke for hours before and I like the real you.” He took me home after the long lunch with lots more talking and arranged to see me again.,

I had no idea how long it would last, if I was what he wanted or he was what I wanted, or where it would go from there, little did I know that we would be celebrating our anniversary twenty one years later, or that we would go through so much together and I would still be with him and still in Love with him.

The Daily Post -Together  Image:Morguefile.com

The Nunight Song

For those of you who do not know, Nunight is slang for Goodnight.  In our house growing up we always used to say it, before heading off to bed and I carried on the tradition. Up until recently I used to play a particular piece of music for Kato and I to go to sleep to, it was Binaural music, intended to relax and sent both of us off into a calm and deep sleep in minutes although sometimes, we would play it twice.  I nicknamed it “The Nunight Song” he always knew when it was coming and would be snoring within minutes… I highly recommend it for peace and meditation if you have trouble getting into the right frame of mind and shutting all the other noise and thought out. I found mine via Mindvalley.com  Meanwhile, as we try to adjust almost two months later to the fact that he is no longer here, our days and our bedtime routine hasn’t got any easier and we miss him so much.

Nunight Sweet Pea, Our Darling Boy We love you xdscn4903

The Nunight Song…

As I play the Nunight song
And Daddy says he won’t be long.
Whilst I clamber on my bed
And say Goodnight to Little Ted.
I hope that I will feel you near,
As I wipe away another tear.
As time goes by and weeks have passed,
I wonder will the feeling last.
The one where every night to sleep
I lay my head and gently weep.
And feel the sadness of it all,
That you aren’t here to answer my call.
The raw emotion in my heart
As such huge loss, we are apart.
Until the day we meet once more
The Furry Son that I adore.
To see your fur, Black and White
Translucent shining, your eyes so bright.
To once again feel your kiss
And hold you close would be such bliss.

A Child Substitute

DSC_0334I never thought that when it happened, he would fill so many of the gaps in my life…

These were gaps that I didn’t even know I had, but somehow my partner did. He knew that I wanted so badly to be a mother to something and that I had so much love to give. I would make a good mother he said. After the loss of a child in my younger years, a hysterectomy and many further childless years, we had always said that one day we would get a dog. In my mind, the time wasn’t right at all, there was way too much going on and I was working around 50 hours a week in a stressful job.

So a little over five years ago, we were told that our friends Alaskan Malamutes were expecting puppies and that when they arrived, I would have to go and choose one. He felt that the time was right and when I saw them, I knew that it was.
I visited the puppies whenever I could and although they were all lovely, I thought that I couldn’t make up my mind, so I just kept visiting. One in particular would not leave my side, he was not interested in eating with the others when I was there and when I talked to them all, he listened, paying extra attention. He snuggled in tighter and gave wonderful puppy kisses and when I felt that I really should make a decision despite thinking that I would go for a grey and white, I chose him.

I asked the question you see, “Are you going to be my Kato and am I going to be your Mummy?” He placed a small paw upon my knee, instant ownership and gazed into my eyes. I actually caught the moment on camera too and it remains one of my all time favourites in a sea of photographs spanning his short life, all of which I cherish. But I knew that from that moment, there was no other. I had found my baby and he had found me. He was the best gift that I could ever have had.

The thing about having a living, breathing member of your family as a child substitute…

Is that one day, they are suddenly not there and your little comfortable part of life as you know it is suddenly ripped wide open. Laid bare for people to dissect, they say harmful things at their will and whilst you deal with that on top of your grief, you are just expected to get over it.

If you are part of a family then it is not just your own feelings which are left raw and damaged, with your own life with a huge gaping hole, but also that of your loved ones.
The thing about being parents is that there are two lots of grief to understand and deal with. You must try to understand what goes through another broken mind whilst you both try to fix it and figure out how to heal, being careful not to break each other with a misplaced word or emotion is so tough and we often get it wrong.

You cannot wrap yourself up in your own grief, since you are shutting the other one out, so grief is handled in an entirely different way to how you would normally. This is alien to you and you find it hard to deal with.
New, raw emotions appear and you hope that you are both able to peek out of the wreckage together and rebuild after the tornado has hit.

I think that I am getting better, but I still have not stopped talking to him, looking around before I move the chair, so that I don’t catch him, he was almost always at my side. His remains have come home, it makes it a little bit easier since it feels like he is here with us, although I do not yet often feel his spirit although there have been signs of him.

I have dreams which he is sometimes in, some good, some bad but he is somehow different in them slightly. In the last one I was saying that I want to see my son, who I haven’t seen in ages. I am in a hospital awaiting an operation and I am explaining this to the nurse. I hear him run up the stairs and drop his ball outside the door and I open the door, but he is coming in another door, greeting everyone there first as I say, where is my Kato and he is suddenly there. With my Hero’s welcome, my face and hands buried in his wonderful translucent fur again, being smothered in kisses.
Oh how I wish for that welcome again, but I am so very grateful for those five short years that I was his Mummy, I am sure that they made me a better person than before.

Missed Chances of a Highland Summer

IMG_2311

Should I have applied for the job travelling Scotland in a Visit Scotland campervan?

Missed chances eh? It’s not as bad as it seems, I may have been able to pay the bills at home. Slept in the Scottish countryside and possibly, just possibly taken my furry assistant along for the ride.

It would have meant that my partner would have had to fend for himself until I could get back there and who knows what sort of bother he could have got himself into in the meantime.  We could have stayed up on the hill at weekends and worked myself on the house trying to get things done, but in reality I have not been in  a position to do that for the past few months, which I guess is what held me back in the first place.

Sure, I would have met tonnes of people at events all over the country, seen a lot more of my beloved Scottish countryside in the summer months, the best time of year, braved terrain and nights not quite on my own.

Ahh yes, those missed chances for a different life and summer to the one we have been experiencing.  Is the grass greener? Ask the Coos, (for the uninitiated, those are the highland ones)

Visit Scotland – Thanks I’d love to have done.  I hope that I will again so very soon, for I am missing it more than you know.

And so the Highland Summer was not to be, A Summer far different from everything that I had ever imagined. It began quite well with promise of a brighter future for all of us, with hope and anticipation. The sun was shining on our skin, the weather was good and the garden flourished. Then it was shattered, broken and will remain in our memories as probably the worst we have ever experienced in all our years together.  Our family is smaller, our bodies weary and our hearts heavy.

Our hope that with the onset of Autumn at our doorstep and as the leaves begin to go brown and drop across the gardens and countryside. That it brings Good with it on the winds that have begun to blow, that it sets us on the right path towards Happiness once again and that our luck turns for the better.

The Daily Post – Mistake

The Teddy Parcel

372

The Teddy Parcel.

A knock was at the door today, A man was standing there.
He called, “He’s home and here to stay, I’ve brought your Little Bear”.
The most precious teddy parcel, he placed there in our hand.
Have fought to try to explain it, but they don’t really understand.
It is so very important, than we should bring him home.
For he was never happy, when he was left alone.
Wanted him back with his Mummy and his Dad.
Safely with our family, our furry little lad.
I clutched the teddy parcel and held it to my chest.
We cuddled as a family, the one we loved the best.
Put the kettle on and poured our favourite drink,
Brought it with your biscuit and didn’t stop to think.
We gathered up your blanket and put it in the sun,
As we talked some more about you and where you used to run.
Now although we cannot touch you, since you’re resting in the box,
The fact that you’re now with us helps, the pain it often blocks.
As you are in our hearts and always on our mind,
The memories we will cherish and the fur we’ll often find.
We’re watching and just hoping, that when you’re ready and in time
You’ll show you’re thinking of us and then send to us a sign.
So I will look for butterflies and feathers on the breeze,
And look out for you to smile at me and bless me when I sneeze.

366

The Daily Post – Longing

Butterflies & Dragonflies

Butterflies and Dragonflies

A butterfly just flew here
I blew it a small kiss,
As it danced around my face,
Since it’s you now that I miss.
Swept upon the air as off it began to race.
Careless for a moment, there for all to see
Up there in the sky and all, yearning to be free.
Resting on the flowers
Bees and butterfly
Drinking in the nectar,
I’m trying not to cry.
Sitting here with you, it’s easy to be cross,
At how it seems unfair as we struggle with our loss.
Am I being selfish, failing just to see,
That all I ever wanted was to have you here with me.
The one who watched over, snuggled nearby as I sleep,
Resting on his cover, is where I often weep.
But I am not the only one, wrapped up in my grief,
Wonder if it’s time to turn over a new leaf.
So as it prances over and around my head,
You are still here with me, never really dead.

It wasn’t a red admiral, it wasn’t black or white.
It danced around my shoulders, just like a bird in flight.
It skipped in and out the flowers, just as you used to do,
Then sat there smiling at the top, to watch and enjoy the view.
And there just minutes later, scented flowers all around,
I saw the dragonfly toward me, suddenly earthbound.
It flew across my shoulder and looked upon my knee
A message there at last, that I would finally see.
It sent me love and kisses, from you as if to say
But before I got to kiss it back, it skipped off again to play.
I know that you’re here with me, as I try to ease the pain
So if you love them, set them free to return to you again.
So stay here with your Mummy,
Even just for a wee while.
So that I can rub your tummy
And cherish again your smile.
Stroke your furry ears
And gaze into your face
Fighting back the tears,
In our special place.

The Daily Post – Ghostd3