Fran’s School of Hard Knocks

October 6, 2021

Busy doing nothing

, , 2 Comments

Busy doing nothing

I used to ascribe my almost legendary ability to sit still, to a simple – or perhaps, not so simple – realisation of the physical effort of getting a life.

If, as I do believe, it takes me a lot of energy to do a thing, that tends to mitigate against doing it. Thus, I have spent a lot of my time doing little except either reading about other peoples’ exciting lives, or worse, watching other people doing things.

Perhaps there is another factor at play.  

My family, and especially my parents, were and are opinionated. That is, generally, a good thing; and nothing new. My mother however, has also been and remains, incredibly contrary. So, I share a family joke that goes,

Fran: Mum, you realise you contradict everything I say.

Mum: No I don’t! That’s’ just not true…

And I notice afresh how often what I say will be met with contradiction. For example, if Mum has had a good night’s rest, she will say she doesn’t need or want night-time carers. Conversely, if there were no night-time carers in place she will just as easily complain of having had a bad time of it, and that the long watches of the night are dreadful to endure alone… It may well be that the progress of her illness exacerbates an existing underlying trend, so that what was previously accepted as the sometimes-amusing quirk of a contrary nature now becomes glaringly obvious.

But in the particular context of what this means for my own behaviour, I have to conclude firstly, that – well, yes! – if one grows up knowing that whatever one says or does will meet with criticism or contradiction, one learns it is best to do and say as little as possible; and secondly, if I don’t wish to replicate that pattern of learned uselessness in anyone else, I must never criticise anyone, nor comment too forcefully on what they choose to do.

After all, I do know, intimately, how hard it is to do anything when one is watched with eagle-eyed interest, and one’s every action and utterance is subjected to pointed comment. It’s only recently that I have realised that (a) it wouldn’t matter what I chose to do, the response would be the same; (b) it’s a habit so ingrained that it’s totally not personal; therefore (c) not only may I follow my own path, but I must do so.

Thanks so much for reading.  

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

September 10, 2021

Do people forget?

, , 0 Comments

Do people forget?

By now, I’ve been intimately involved with my mother’s affairs for several years. And whereas even members of my family will say on occasion, “It’s just to collect Mum’s meds, she’s just out of hospital!” or “It’s only one day, what’s the problem?” I can’t help feeling an ache and exhaustion in my bones, nor can I escape the regret of knowing that doing any physical task – let alone tasks for my mother that have become loaded with worry, regret and sorrow – takes me three times as much energy as for someone who walks easily, who can stroll at the run twice as fast as I stagger, and who doesn’t have to worry about falling off pavements and such like. For me, there are no longer any ‘simple’ things.

Do people forget to see that? In the midst of others’ busy lives, I find that my very real limitations impede their expectations of what I will do for them. Even my nearest and dearest sometimes appear to be oblivious to my exhaustion. But though I’m still here, still working, I have finally begun to accept that the end result of continuing to work as I have done, navigating and dealing with constant demands and a shifting landscape of imperatives and semi-disasters, for me will be complete physical and emotional collapse.

I have no wish to go down that route. So, as a first priority, I have to do what I can to set my own agenda and stick with it. Faced with seemingly endless and tiring jobs to manage for other people, this is the only answer I can summon: I must do first what I need to do, and the rest will have to be dealt with by others, or simply not dealt with. Any and various disasters that crop up will either have to be endured, allowed to languish, or sorted out, and not always by me. It’s what we planned for in any case: no-where has it ever been writ, or stated, that I am my mother’s physical carer, or that I am available for her every beck and call.

In recognition of that, I have to truly begin to accept my limitations and step back, so that, little by little, I can reassert my right to make choices which, though they may not always be the best, are at least my own.

My mother will approve of my desire to reassert my freedom in what is, after all, my own life.

Thanks for reading.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

August 30, 2021

The speed at which I work

, 2 Comments

The speed at which I work

Recent events have been a painful reminder to me that I’m not being entirely honest when I say that “I’m fine, I can manage.” It appears to me now, that the speed at which I work is not what others – nor what I – suppose it to be.

Yes, I can manage, and I do. But the effort of managing takes its toll, as does the effort to maintain the appearance of being able to do what others do, at their speed, and with the insouciance that seems almost universally expected: just because they understand what they are talking about and always work at the run, does not mean that I do, or can.

Recently my mother was discharged from hospital – again. Only this time it seems to have been done in a hurry. Perhaps that is down to my mother’s own very clearly expressed misery at once again being in hospital, and her doubtless acute desire to get home as soon as possible. But the end result has been, that when the physio, the staff nurse, the OT, the carers or the GP surgery manage to contact me, I’m expected to leap up, agree with their requests and do what I’m told immediately. “Go here, fetch that, yes, now.”

And I have no objection, in principle, to this. I’m glad to know what I can, or need to do, to help matters to settle satisfactorily. But whereas a walk round to my mother’s would, for an Anita or a Bob be a matter of cheerful moments to be leapt into and thereafter instantly forgotten on the way to the next thing, for me it requires at least a half hour of thought and action, the interruption of my hastily cobbled together sandwich, and a traipse through the complex morass of my emotions to achieve a fresh accommodation with my other priorities.

Does having to meet the taxi driver who is bringing my mother’s medications from the hospital mean I won’t get any lunch? Will yet another trip to my mother’s front door – the third in a busy morning – mean that I can’t go with my daughter to do what we had previously planned? After well-nigh four years of leaping and sorting and late-night emergency dashes in the car, what’s the best way to do this next thing quickly?

(to be continued)

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

August 18, 2021

A Day to myself

, , 6 Comments

A day to myself.

Today, having a rare day all to myself, thus far I have worked hard and still have several hours in which to write. So I am writing, and after all my worrying about whether or if I would or could, I find that writing has its own momentum and happens simply, without the angst, and perhaps because I decide it will: Note to self: Cure for writer’s block: Just decide to write and then start writing.

So I’m finally back to reading through my novels – YAY! – and after a year of leaving them lying almost fallow, I am delighted to read and review them slightly differently, happy to refine them further with refreshed eyes. It’s a pleasure to do so, and to trip through them with a clearer idea of why I’m writing and what I wish to say.

The relief of that reassurance – that when I have a day to myself, I can write, and that there is still life in my work that feels meaningful to me, after all – is immense and most encouraging, knowing now that I can work hard when the occasion presents itself. I know without having to remind myself, that the opportunity to write and edit is always beneficial.

Perhaps if I had realised and truly understood this sooner, I would have spared myself a lot of rumbling anxiety of the sort that hovers in the background and occasionally bursts through in moments of self-doubt. Increasingly, I realise that everything we do has its time and place. And occasionally, this means that fallow periods in the field of writing are meant to arrive and stay with us, to allow us to rest and regroup, learning differently and coming back to our work with fresh perspectives. It’s no use constantly working at the hewing and chopping of wood: sometimes we need to leave things be, to allow them to grow in peace.

Thanks for reading.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

May 17, 2021

More Lessons from lockdown

0 Comments

More Lessons from lockdown

Have I learned any enduring lessons from lockdown? I have to admit to feelings of puzzlement and slightly desperate nausea when the travel industry and the ‘frequent fliers club’ enthuse about air travel getting ‘back to normal’ soon. Is it ‘normal’ to expect to fly everywhere? And should we be aiming to get back to ‘business before covid’? What about the climate crisis and protecting the environment? If covid has shown me anything, it is the vulnerability of our erstwhile ‘normal’ expectations.

I’ll not fly by plane again, unless it is to visit somewhere like New York – there not being ships available to make the journey, as there used to be in the ‘good old days’ circa 1920…  – but will be looking to travel by Eurotunnel or other scheduled ferry and overland services if the need arises. As my husband often says, “I like to make the journey part of our holiday.”

This year, I’m going to think twice before buying non-consumables, though that is proving to be a challenge. I seem to live a fairly minimal lifestyle as it is, and sometimes I yearn to splurge, but it’s a good discipline first make use of what we have, and to look afresh at all the books already in our bookcases, the cds and other things in the home. Do I need more? Can what I have be recycled? Redeployed?

If I go too far down the minimalist road, I might find all my shelves and rooms empty, except for two changes of clothes in my wardrobe and my computer. I will not, therefore, be ‘getting rid’ of my old clothes, CDs, paper books, and dictionaries, since ‘getting rid’ of these is merely passing their matter sideways. Anyway, in the course of a life, one does find favourites, and these I will keep. So until my ‘legacy’ collection of CDs is rendered entirely obsolete, I shall reinstall my CD drive on my computer whenever the latest updates delete it. A small price to be able to work with music of my choice.

I feel so blessed to live in the world as we have made it now. Freed of the need to go and find firewood and water, and walk twenty miles for healthcare, there is so much I can do to please myself. We have so many chances to be happy. These may be small, but to preserve the ability of others to access that happiness, we must do more to help each other. The world – like the democratic freedoms we have rather taken for granted – is a fragile, complex web, infinitely precious and worth preserving.

Thanks so much for reading.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

May 5, 2021

More lessons learned in lockdown

, 0 Comments

More lessons learned in lockdown

We may never get back to the way things used to be: the ‘new normal’ may well be here to stay, and in some ways, the year-long lockdown feels to me like a dress rehearsal for the real business of saving the planet, which means that we all have to urgently redesign our lives around low-impact living: using less, saving more of our stuff, repairing, mending and tidying, instead of taking the line of least resistance and first resort to high-gear newness.

The way things have been running is expensive – I don’t mean financially – careless and extravagant in ways we are finally beginning to appreciate. And too often, it is other people and creatures in distant places that are now paying the cost for our extravagance. So what more lessons have I learned during lockdown this year?

I’m now as much of a vegetarian as I can be, which is to say I avoid meat and fish, though when I feel the need to eat a portion of chicken curry that everyone else is having, I will do so, and I will eat sardines occasionally. I’m not a meat reducer and not a vegan, since although I avoid milk and cheese products, I do reserve the right to eat eggs. Vegetarianism feels like a release from the old tired expectations of ‘meat and two veg’ as I finally give myself permission to extend my usual range and eat the things I really do prefer: grapefruit and soya yogurt with breakfast, almond and cashew butter as well as peanut butter; more vegetables and greens, more home-made soup…It’s such a relief to enjoy my food more, and to enjoy cooking. Conversely, it is astonishing to see how quickly I turn away from meat. So there is, in me, no sense of hardship, nor any need to buy ‘fake’ bacon to fill some perceived longing or lack.  

I’m using bamboo products more, instead of traditional paper options so often sourced from wood-pulp and paper; and sustainable and natural fibre clothing wherever possible. There is of course a place for using recycled paper products, and those often made from rags and such like. But once I started looking at what can be made from bamboo – food to eat, clothes, cups, utensils – I had to ask myself what took me so long to clock on.

(To be continued.) Thanks for reading.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

April 29, 2021

Life as I know it

, 4 Comments

Life as I know it

It seems that my life as I know it is about to change, though I have no idea when. My mother, who for several years has ‘enjoyed indifferent health’ – the kind of health that Georgette Heyer gifts to the hypochondriacal mothers of her feisty heroines, so my mother would appreciate the joke: she doesn’t enjoy her indifferent health at all – is on a steady decline. Another one, following several previous occasions when her life hung in the balance. It is testament to her strength of character that she has come so far, so often pulling herself back from the brink by sheer willpower and refusal to concede defeat.

And I’m grateful for the time we have had together, time which, I reflect, we didn’t have while my siblings and I were growing up. Sent off to boarding schools – two apiece, my eldest sister and brother to one, my twin sister and I to a different one – as unlike Mallory Towers as it is possible to imagine, we grew up apart, finding solace, I suspect, in learning, reading and books, much as my mother has always done.

The times when Mum was at home with us – school holidays, mostly – I remember her working hard at her typewriter / computer, in her own thoughts, in her workspace. Determined not to follow that particular example of absenting oneself from the rest of life, I have made a very conscious effort to set my work aside whenever I have company, and so far, the effort has paid dividends. I am not as work obsessed as my mother was, nor as I used to be, since I appreciate with fresh urgency how precious is time spent with other people. A realisation that has become crystal clear during lockdown.

Being in my mother’s company has taught me to be patient, and that there is always room for cheerfulness and optimism; being cheerful and optimistic is often the best thing we can gift to any situation. That is a lesson that will stand me in good stead, and for which I am immensely grateful. Why things are as they are, is often unknown to us; but we can appreciate the progress we make in each day, being kinder and gentler with one another. In being so, there is less to regret, less to worry about. A wonderful lesson to have collected from being with Mum.

Thanks for reading.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

January 14, 2021

Dear Blog

, 3 Comments

Dear Blog

I know a post is overdue. It’s been too long since I wrote to you.

Though I get a lot of help from my sisters, I still find myself subsisting on about five hours sleep a night: I want to go to bed early, but life gets in the way, and besides, I find the late evenings and early mornings peaceful, and just about the only time I can be sure the phone won’t ring, the family won’t need anything and there won’t be stuff around the flat that needs seeing to. I putter about sorting things, ready for the next day, and am surprised when I see 12:34 grinning at me from the kitchen clock. That time already?

Some people have a high tolerance for living with lots of stuff around them – they don’t mind leaving things in pursuit of a bigger objective – but, perhaps since I’m slower anyway, I find that harder than doubtless it should be.

Mum is still in hospital, on a general medical ward, free of covid – everyone is tested twice a week, and yesterday one case was found – and finally a diagnosis has been confirmed that fits well enough with her symptoms. Is this good news or bad? How does Mum feel about it? I can’t know. I can only go by the brave face that she puts on things when she phones me. Not too bad, I gather, and knowing her, she will be glad to have something to focus on.

Though I feel she needs to get home in order to locate something she can genuinely recognise and find soothing, I am kindly reminded by my friends that the hospital would not keep Mum in a moment longer than need be, the current pressures and risks being what they are.

With that I am content. Almost. Most of the time. I listen to loud music through my fab headphones, work, and hope. Which will have to be enough in these strange times.

Thanks for reading.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

December 21, 2020

Quiet Crises

, 2 Comments

Quiet crises

Throughout this year, I have gained a new appreciation for those among us who soldier on: the health care workers, supermarket supervisors and the staff stacking shelves, the cohorts of recyclers, cleaners and organisers. It has been too easy, while we were taking our previously “normal” lives in our stride, to overlook the crucial parts taken by so many players in keeping our erstwhile expectations on track. I feel a sincere gratitude to those of us who get on with things, because they have little choice: a semblance of normal life has to continue.

Which has always been my mother’s rationale for keeping going, despite her increasing frailty. Recently, she was taken into hospital. On the advice of a GP, an ambulance was summoned, and asked to ferry my mother to one of the Edinburgh hospitals, where her arrival was expected. Ten hours later, an ambulance finally came to the door because my husband, coming to the scene fresh, and alarmed at my mother’s pallor, called the emergency services again; so that my mother’s case was re-prioritised; and thus, two paramedics arrived.

For our pains, and those of my mother, we received a small peroration from the lead paramedic on the use of the emergency services to summon help and a comment that he disliked the emergency ambulance being used as a taxi service.

It’s only now, after an exhausting weekend in recovery from a series of eight-, ten- and twelve-hour days in attendance on my mother, while seeing to a dozen things at once and keeping abreast of my own household’s needs, that I sense the illogicality of much of what he said: I was not at all offended that he felt the need to speak his mind; I am, however, rather puzzled by the implications.

If the ambulance service is not there to ferry sick persons about, what is it for? At what point does a sick person, unable to move, feed or toilet themselves, become an emergency? And why is it only noisy emergencies that get priority? Without re-prioritisation, would my mother still be waiting to reach her bed in the hospital as other calls were constantly prioritised above her? Must we both be in a state of collapse before someone notices our lives crumbling under the weight of accumulated impossibility? For we had no carers on hand no help manage our own quiet crises, nor hope of any. (I had had to tell my mother’s carers not to come to the house, since by then she had been expecting admission to hospital.)

In the last two weeks, I have begun to appreciate some of the complexities that underpin our public services and their organisation. I’m grateful for these insights, and can only hope that I have learned enough to carry me through the next phase of my mother’s rehabilitation. No hospital visits allowed, but phonecalls are always a route through the maze.

In this season of love and goodwill, in the midst of a million quiet crises, I wish you all well, and hope that the New Year brings us peace and joy.

Merry Christmas.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr

December 10, 2020

My mother as she is

, 2 Comments

My mother as she is

I went to a zoom meeting recently, organised by my eldest sister, and conducted at my mother’s house, on my mobile phone: Mum has neither a camera, nor a microphone, nor the will to organise such things herself, so we sat companionably side by side at the dining table – a large, reassuring object harkening back to the days of large family dinners – and warbled happily on the phone. It was good.

I noticed that at times my mother has difficulty speaking, but otherwise, she seems to me to have been much more like her usual self. My elder sister, seeing my mother under the overhead lights, expressed concern to me – when Mum was elsewhere phoning my other sister – and I said, “Oh, yes, I suppose Mum does not look very well… But she’s fine…” All the usual things one says to reassure, when one needs reassurance too.

My mother is indeed tired, so tired, that at times, her skin looks translucent. I am used to being a witness to her decline and her constant struggle to recalibrate for the things she can no longer do – for her, a heartbreaking realisation, that I have at least had time to accustom myself to, rather more than my siblings have. To them, a sudden realisation is alarming.

My mother cannot help harking back to the way she was; I too feel hamstrung, so, while I get used to that feeling, meanwhile I do my best to help, smile and hope. It’s just about all I can do. That, and make phonecalls to organise deliveries, extra help; all that kind of thing. I have to stay cheerful, and even when fatigued, I accept there is no better alternative.

My elder sister would like to phone me to talk about it. She will do that when she has time. And I will reassure her as best I can. I know Mum is lucky. She is still able to live at home and has the freedom to live unfettered by the well-meaning “supervision” of others, a word I noted in a recent advert for a care-home, which reminds me of my kindergarten days and makes me shudder.

I try not to supervise, or worry, but I do grieve, a gradual process like the tipping of a sand-timer to the inevitable empty glass.

Thanks for listening.

Please share:

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblr
1 2 3 4 ›»