November 7, 2008 – 11:21 pm
It’s marvellous strange what crafty wily things genes are. How they hide and divide, stowaway or skip generations. My son is a changeling a Rogue Russian (who were themselves Rogue Germans once upon a time).
I love looking at him, wondering what else he carries. Has he inherited my father’s talent for music, his singing voice? [...]
January 17, 2008 – 3:13 pm
Suicide runs through my father’s family. Whether it’s the slow doing in of the self through alchohol or overwork, or the more explosive methods favoured by my Georgian cousins, at least once in every generation it shows itself.
Wakes up in someone. The sirensong in the blood. The yearning for oblivion. The long sleep.
On particularly bad [...]
October 6, 2006 – 5:14 pm
Five weeks ago Z’s mum was in hospital where the diagnosis of ‘chronic bronchitis’ became ’suspected malignancy in the right lung’. The fact that it was lung cancer did not surpirse anyone considering a) how much the woman smoked and b) that she had worked in the chemical industry all her adult life. It also [...]
August 11, 2006 – 9:31 pm
Emigration by Tony Hoagland
Try being sick for a year,
then having that year turn into two,
until the memory of your health is like an island
going out of sight behind you
and you sail on in twilight,
with the sound of waves.
It’s not a dream. You pass
through waiting rooms and clinics
until the very sky seems pharmaceutical,
and the faces [...]
March 26, 2006 – 11:14 am
A few days ago, had he been alive, my father would have turned 60 years old. It is an odd thought – the image of him as a young, fit man is tattood firmly into my brain and I almost cannot imagine him aging. When I do think of him as older it’s simply a [...]
The doctor came today to listen to my grandmother’s heart and fit her with some kind of heart monitoring device.
Grandmother to Dr who is monitoring her heartbeat: “Is it looking very bad?”
Dr:”Dear lady people with hearts like this live to be 100.”
“Ah,” sighs my grandmother, “not long left, then”.
February 17, 2006 – 3:51 am
Z: How was your seminar today?
N:It was good. A bit intense. All about childhood bereavement and how we can bring up death in therapy with children.
Z: Perhaps you could just hand them a balloon on which it’s written “Your Mum’s Dead”.
Death was something that shaped the fabric of my family long before my father had [...]
February 6, 2006 – 3:48 pm
My grandma to the carer: Now make sure you close the door so Nina can’t get in here so she doesn’t wee all over the place.
Carer: But surely Nina wouldn’t do that.
Grandma: Oh I was thinking of the dog.
Nowadays, I don’t have the same terrible longings and I’m grateful for that. But by moments, I still miss him terribly. I miss the physical dimension of his existence so badly that it hurts.
And in those moments, I think I would give away years of my own life, just to have him back for ten [...]
December 10, 2004 – 12:24 pm
Most days the surface of my mind is placid and still, turqoise, cobalt and indigo blue. A sea mind.
The surface stillness may go on for days or weeks or months. And then sometimes, something happens a fragment of thought or feeling or memory erupts from the depths like a leaping marlin.
Today, I was shopping for [...]
