Five Sevens -versus- Sally’s Bobbles

If you look through any of my school reports, you’ll find the odd instance or twelve from a teacher mentioning that I’m ‘easily distracted’ which is something I never disagreed with (not even at the time of the querulous parent reading said report and huffing at me for being so). Because I was probably exactly the same at home so they knew what my teachers had to endure.

It was during the pre-social networking scene of course; Instagram, Twitter and all other kinds of electronic worldwide-wonder-webbing hadn’t been invented, and so I wasn’t being distracted by pings and beeps and buzzes from a small device secreted down my sock during lessons, oh no, my distraction techniques were far more hands-on.

If Sally Reynolds (no such person but insert your own ‘Sally’ of choice) sitting at the front of the class was wearing a particularly interesting pair of hair bobbles (Google them) then I was away; off on one of my realms of fantasy. It would start fairly innocuously: nice bobbles. So, what shade would we call them? Where did she get them? How much had they cost? Did she buy them with her pocket money or did she get them as a present? Has she had a birthday recently… did she have a party and how come I wasn’t invited? How do those bobbles sit so high on her head with all that glossy blonde hair they’re holding? Does Sally’s mum do this for her or is she gifted with the magic fingers of a professional hair stylist herself? I’m sorry? five sevens you say? Nope. Not happening.  I’m round Sally’s watching her smiley mother lovingly scoop her daughter’s tresses up in one hand and winding a pair of spectacular-looking bobbles around them with the other. There may even be cake and lemonade. It might even be her birthday party and she’s only invited me round because she likes me the best. The Banana Splits could be playing on a colour telly in the background. Five sevens mean nothing in my world.

And nor have they ever. Call me ‘easily distracted’ if you like but I’ve never been anything but consistent. Consistently easily distracted. There ought to be a support group. There probably is. And I’m not going to Google it because I know that if I do, there’s every chance I’ll end up (six hours later) writing a cryptic e-mail to someone in Oregan (insert US state of preference) telling them that I know they’ve got—and have always had—Madeleine McCann. (Nearly, really happened). (I know.) (Just. Don’t.)

So I know I’ve always had this… trait. Let’s call it a trait. My parents might have decided to call it many other things: ‘daydreaming’, ‘miles away’, ‘showing (my) ignorance’ but I’ve learnt to appreciate this is what I do; it’s part of me and it’s a healthy part of being a writer. I have an inquisitive mind. I like to cogitate. I like conundrums. I like to challenge my mind. It meant I was never going to be an Accountant or work in a Bank, but it has meant that I’ve been able to visualise, conjure and create all kinds of things that never existed before I thought of them and about them.

I like to think of it as my own kind of magical mathematics.

 

The Let-Go

 

We’ve never held hands before. Not willingly. For the wedding photographs, of course, when a father is meant to hold his daughter’s hand: Father of the Bride and all that. But even during my childhood the only time I remember feeling your broad, warm hand was if I stepped too near the edge of a pavement and there were cars on the road. And in those instances it was fleeting: a grab, a squeeze, a tug, and then a swift let-go.

We were none of us tactile in our family. My brother and I became so after we moved into the same shared house in our twenties and came to realise that neither of us were actually the terrible disappointment you and mum had brought us up to believe. I remember once, towards the drunken end of one of our many house parties, I made an ill-judged dive at a window in order to open it and fell heavily against the radiator, bashing my head on it. As I’d surfaced (I managed to open the window), I’d suddenly felt two things: a steady stream of something warm running from my eyebrow to my lips, followed by my brother’s strong arm hauling me up from my scuppered position, manoeuvring me through the melee and into the bathroom where he daubed my cut skin with soaked toilet tissue. I can’t remember a time before—or after, come to that—when I’ve felt more cared for and looked after; loved, even.

I think it was the spontaneity of the whole thing. The immediate, knee-jerk reaction of scooping me up and whisking me to safety; the way lionesses do with their cubs. Natural.

When mum was lying in her hospital bed dying of the brain tumour she’d been growing (unbeknown to her. And us) for the past two or three years, I never had the urge to reach out and hold her hand. It would have been false. Of course I knew it might be the last time I’d get the opportunity but I think a part of me didn’t want her to leave this earth with any kind of misrepresentation of our relationship. Because you don’t suddenly start holding hands with someone you’ve never known just because they might be taking their last breath, do you? That’d be hypocritical. I’d grown up with hyper-criticism, so I wasn’t about to proclaim my previously undeclared love for a woman who’d never told me I mattered just because I’d been carved from her body a few decades before.

They’ve said you might still be able to hear voices; music, some sounds anyway, through the deep state of sleep you’re in. I didn’t manage to get here before the drugs took their effect and swept away your ability to keep your eyes open, your brain focused, your speech lucid. They’ve said to watch the heart monitor for signs of recognition and I’m used to searching for signs like these; you could say I’ve got a degree in hyper-awareness. That’s why I only ever slept ‘like a cat’; I think my brain was worried that if it relaxed too much then it might miss the moment somebody said something nice about me. Of course an increase in heart rhythm could also indicate a particularly energetic dream and not be caused my presence at all. Machines can only reveal so much.

I don’t mind, though. I think I always knew you were the more loving of the two. When it was just you and me (like those times I’d sit with you at the table making Airfix models of my own because that was what I noticed you liked doing) and something would make us laugh, or we’d make a comment and there’d be a spark. I don’t remember specifics, but I do remember the way your golden hazel eyes would light up, the glint of them, the laughter lines spreading from their corners like antennae, and I’d feel so connected. Like I actually belonged.

Did you know that once I was utterly convinced I was adopted? I used to watch so many (too many, you used to say) films and read books that’d put “ideas in my head” (you really meant “silly notions”). Well, along with those notions, they also helped me feel less alone; stories of lost children, abandoned children, children who weren’t given love, and somehow or another, before long, were finally noticed, recognised for who they were and wrapped in the love they’d always deserved. Those stories gave me hope. I never told you that. Perhaps I never needed to.

They’ve said you’re doing well to have lasted as long as you have; that when your major organs are shutting down, there isn’t always time for family to get here in time to say goodbye. I’d like to think you held on for me; that even though last night you virtually ordered me not to drive all this way to visit you because you hadn’t wanted me to see you in this condition, that in the end my heart overruled my promise. I knew I needed to hold your warm, broad hand one more time.

 

Written for the January 17th  https://creativewritingink.co.uk/resources/writing-prompts/ competition.