Gaps and distance

Red string in a bow, December 2017

I've got a Xmas market coming up on Saturday and I've made some artwork for it which is quite good and, according to the schedule in my own head, I'm  supposed to be spending this morning writing a cheery post so you'll come to the market and buy some stuff.  But you know what I'm not feeling it.

This morning I couldn't give two flying fcks about the market or selling any prints.  No disrespect to the market, which will be a very good one, or to my prints, which are equally good.

It's just that I feel the gap of her absence so keenly.  I've got something to talk to her about and she's not here.  

Listening to  you cant' always get what you want as I write this. Music eases the ache, eh.  You listen and you know someone else felt the same and all of a sudden all this feeling just feels human like everyone else and you don't feel so wound up.

I have something I want right now, but I'm not getting it.  The distance between what I want and what I'm getting feels like Cook Strait. 

If she was here, I'd talk to her about it, and she'd say it's okay baby just be patient it will come. Chin up. and I'd feel annoyed at her and think yeah its alright for you you're not the one wanting this so badly and I'd say see you later Mum love you in an annoying offhand manner and drive home and then realise she was right and tell her so by text and she'd say love you baby and I'd feel all was right with my world again.

But she's not here.  She's so far away.

I'm left here writing by myself into the ether, trying to fill the gap she left with words, listening to rock songs very quietly so I don't wake my son, tears hot in my eyes, cool down my face.

I've got fifteen minutes before I start the day, before I shower and dress and walk the dog and put on my makeup and pretend for the rest of the day that I'm fine.  I'm not fine.  

Here's a lovely thing that happened.  This makes me feel better. Not such a miserable downer for you first thing in the morning lol.

I made a very large print of remember love for a beautiful couple J.D and A.B.  They live apart at the moment,, for work. This is the first artwork they have bought together.  You can't see it but under the large "remember love" I wrote "and stardust" because I don't know them from a bar of soap but they and their love feels a bit like magic to me, and this print, IRL, has lots of marks that look like dust and the stars and the expansive black universe.

Remember love [and stardust], for J.D and A.B, December 2017

Anyway, the other night they opened the artwork I'd sent them together, via Skype. This is the message J.D sent to me afterwards:

“I cried. It’s beautiful. Thank you so much Fleur. It’s subtle and it’s bold and it’s perfect. Was actually quite fitting that A and i opened it together but apart... our relationship has featured quite a few long-distance separations, and even now with only an island-length between us (barely anything at all when we’ve had to cover oceans’-worth of distance) it’s an amazing way to remember love. (and stardust.)”

It was so wonderful, getting these words from her.  It's why I keep doing what I do instead of curling up into a ball on my bed, which quite frankly at the moment is what I'd prefer to be doing.

Even though right now in my life I feel the gaps and distance between me and love and most kinds of loving, it cheers my heart to feel the love others have for eachother.  It makes me smile, it makes me glad for them, it makes me too remember the times I've felt all loved up, makes me hopeful I'll feel that again.  That I'll feel something strongly again, and not just this going-through-the-motions numbness that makes up so much of my days these days.

No time left on my writing clock this morning and  I gotta wrap this up.  This post feels like it's half written but I don't think the quality of the writing's gonna get any better today... Maybe tommorrow it'll be half decent. That's the thing, you just gotta keep at it.  Keep returning and pushing through.  Some days will suck like this one does.  Other days will feel like magic. 

You never know when you start which way the coin's gonna flip.  You just gotta keep flipping the coin.

Taking it all down

Boy with his bubble on my parent's wall, December 2017

I'm going to Palmerston North today to help my sisters pack my Dad up and into his new place.  He's leaving the home he spent the last years in with Mum.  Most of my mother's things will be distributed amongst us six kids.  Dad doesn't have room for it all.  I am happy for my Dad.  He wants and needs to move on  - he feels her absence too keenly there. 

It will be strange though, to no longer have a place to go back to which is full of my mother's things.  She loved her things.  My parents have moved around a lot in their lives, so we as a family don't have a family home as such.   What I didn't realise until now is that my mother's things were our family home.  She was like a turtle and carried what mattered to her with her wherever she went.  But as I said to one of my sisters, she no longer needs them now.

When I was child - maybe eight - my great grandmother gave Mum and Dad some money.  With it Mum chose to get a whole series of Pears Soap adverts framed.  They were there on the wall as I played  games in the wide hallway of my childhood.  As I skipped and bounced balls and ran my hands over the big old-fashioned brass telephone I was fascinated by, felt the texture of the telephone table beneath it. 

I'm not a big "things" person. I don't keep a helluva lot in my house, aside from photographs and artwork and notes the people I love write to me.  Mum had style and her things worked beautifully in the spaces she inhabited, but I don't need her stuff for myself.  Her things represent her life, not mine.

Instead, I made this photograph.  It has her in it, her love of this print, and it also has me. And my Dad and our family and our life together too.  This boy with his bubbles has been there through thick and thin.  If only he could talk!  The loud fierce arguments, the everyday living,  the big loud love.

I'm going to make a beautiful print of this, frame it. 

Then I can look at it and and picture my parents and their private life together, see them sitting beside eachother in their beige lazyboys watching Masterchef or league, hear Mum telling Dad off for spilling his dinner on his tshirt, hear Dad singing a line in his no-tune voice to her because it irritated her, and because he loved her and it was his clumsy shy way of showing it.  61 years living life beside eachother and as Dad says, they're still together now.  

Wish me luck for today.  Even though I'm feeling strong and have this photograph to keep me that way, it's not going to be easy, taking it all down.