Tag Archives: ancestry

Wine glass

Edwardian. Such delicate glass and perfect shape, on a slender stem. Subtle engraved patterns, like translucent petals or leaves. Honesty?

They belonged to Mum’s great-grandfather, and yet we use them daily – what point in having beautiful things if they’re just locked away?

The stem is smooth, and almost too delicate to grip. The glass lip also – will it cut mine? Is it actually sharp? I overcome hesitation, led on by the melon and ginseng exoticness of Aqua Libra. The fizz gathers in a central column up from the bottom of the glass – breath bubbles from some invisible diver.

“Is there another bottle?” asks Mum – still good-naturedly, yet somewhat slurred.

Dad gets up and retrieves it from its warming-place at the back of the hob. Slitting off the maroon foil seal, gripping the brass corkscrew in place while twisting the tap-like handle. No levers to help. The bottle held between thighs, and elbow grease to heave the cork out. No spillage.

More wine, more wine. Discussion turns to argument turns to sourness. The tension builds.

Later, Alice and Mum wash the dishes, swilling the perfect glasses clean with scalding water, and placing them, up-ended, on a tea towel to dry. Ineffective – a steamy mist condenses inside each delicate bowl.

Crash.

The roasting tin slides down from the drying rack, reducing four glasses to crushed shards. A moment’s silent denial, and then both Alice and Mum turn away, in shuddering, silent tears.

Something is broken that can never be mended, and never replaced.

@iHEARTPOETS

And no, I don’t know who you are, distant person who “is now following” me. Your words appear on the screen, striving for love, to matter, to be heard.

14.2K followers.

It’s a big world, and it’s an almost infinite history. So many heart poets, each of us in our fragility, our insignificance, and seeking significant other.

I really only matter deeply to less than a handful of folk. That’s the simple truth. Perhaps it’s everyone’s truth – give or take a factor or two.

So, what? Live with it? Celebrate it? Cherish, really see, savour, each moment in the presence of the ones who care?

It would be so easy to look at this infinity of tweets – this enormous electronic nest of hungry young mouths, clamouring to be fed with attention and love – and to judge, to despise. But no – that’s life, that’s the manifestation of longing, that’s what each of us (perhaps?) honestly, basically, feels. It’s just a little hard to admit:

I WANT TO MATTER.
I WANT PEOPLE TO CARE ABOUT ME.
I WANT, WHEN IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, MANY CARDS FROM LOVING FRIENDS.
I WANT IT TO MEAN SOMETHING.

I can dress myself up in sophistication, and could despise or mock the others, and I could feel silently overwhelmed by the infinity of other souls who diminish me to a pointless dot with “You are here!” like in the Douglas Adams vision.

But no.

Let’s just accept it. Each tweet, each click, each screen swipe, each browser refresh – it’s just looking for love.

Pomegranate

The kids have crowded round in the tall, darkened room. Lame jokes are told, muffled behind plastic masks. I hand out sweets and money.

“Would anyone like some of this? It’s a dragon’s heart!”

I tear open the pomegranate melodramatically, juice spraying, and the garnet-encrusted centre is revealed. A few dare to eat the sweet, seeded drops, discarding bitter yellow substrate. Only later do my children relate that one of the party fled the house in terror.

Finding the deer skull… Walking into the hillside woods, along the forestry track. I’m hungry for solitude and quietness of mind. Breaking off the trail, I descend into the conifers, expecting nothing, just wandering and being with what is.

She’s there on the brown, dead needles, like a pale jewel set on dark velvet. I gently lift her up and carry her home, feeling somehow she’s part of me, some wild and fragile soul spending solitary hours enjoying simplicity among the trees.

Since then, at Samhain, she keeps me company through the festival of the dead, of ancestry, of the endless line of souls we watch as we walk backwards into the future.