Today I turned seventy, my Mother was born in April 1931, she birthed me in March 1956, her Mother was born in 1902.
Yesterday I spent some time with a newish friend, she was born in 1957.
She suggested the day out as a celebration of my birthday and we met at the royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, and wandered… and were wondered… around and within the paintings of Rose Wylie who was born in 1934.
Somehow I haven’t heard of her or seen her work before, really glad I have found her and her work now, what a brilliant and powerful human creative she is.
From there we walked to Wardour street and had a meal at a Vietnamese cafe, food was good and the staff were thoughtful and… any word that lands here doesn’t feel right… so maybe… I liked the way they housed us for our meal.
From there my friend got the tube home from Oxford Circus and I walked home catching a bus for the last couple of stops as it started raining.
A old friend who was born in 1961 had called me while I was in the cafe, reminding me that there was a Resonance FM fundraiser at the Lexington that evening, his band was playing and he had put me on the guest list. I wasn’t sure I would make it as I was diagnosed with a blood (bone marrow) cancer a few days ago and I find it leaves me tired more easily, ( I had thought that was just getting older for the last several months)… so I decided I’d make a choice once I got home and rested a while.
By 9pm I felt up for the 10 minute walk to the gig and went along getting there 20 minutes before my friends’ band came on stage. I’d seen this friend perform live with his first band in 1977 and seen the band he put together around 1983 a couple of dozen times or maybe more.
When I got home around midnight I realised I had missed a text from a friend I have know for a while, they were born around the same time as my third daughter 1990.
I replied to her text just to let her know I was home and around if she was still up for a call. We spent a couple of hours sharing what was going on for us… there were smiles and tears shared between us both as we dived into how amazing and how shit our lives can feel sometimes.
I am not sure why I am writing this, it doesn’t feel like my usual writing… it feels like… something else… and… maybe now I am seventy every thing starts to feel like something else… stepping into these years of life to come that are set against a background of knowing that the reality and the gradual shedding of… err… ok… knowing this gradual shedding and leaving behindnessness is a new inevitability.
Finding a balance… an equilibrium… while navigating this fine and convoluted line we call life and living… I have thought for a long time… is neither good or bad… easy or hard… right or wrong… meaningful or less, finding this balance, here and now, in my eighth decade on the wobbly planet… maybe becomes a process of not clinging onto to that fine line and accommodating the vibes of… to fall softly.
Are we allowed to be not what we were encouraged and prompted and coerced towards becoming from our early childhood and all the way through our adulthood… until we arrive at this re-tired re-membered and dis-membered phase of becoming like a dependent child again?
That is a question I am not seeking an answer for… rather an observation… based around a life time of understanding and knowing that what our rich world culture here on this island suggests… (more than suggests, insists under the threat of being shamed and/or incarcerated)… is only ever right or wrong… easy or hard… good or bad… meaningful or less… and that binary restrictive message is not something I could trust or wish for any of the eight billion humans I share this beautiful, generative planet with.
Now, these last few bits are more like my usual written ramblings… and I carry a fear that these always just come across as angry, upset, and maybe needy af and the whinge of an unsatisfied privileged white bloke… old white bloke.
I will continue to share how I feel though… and aim to included the glorious and gory… because for my mothers mother, for my mother, for my sister, for my daughters, from my friends, for my lovers and haters… we all deserve to live as well as we could with all the other life here… and I know that making this happen… pushing for a global justice that never shames, blames, incarcerates or uses violence to resolve difficult feelings and misunderstandings… is the work that is really needed by and from all us humans who have the freedom to speak up and out and call in those who struggle to believe in the possibility of a kinder, caring, considerate and compassionate based future for us all.
Once we believe in that possibility, we are facing in the right… ok… in that generative and creative direction and thereby (my new fave word) becoming more likely to find our ways there.
Hugs and love and smiles and tears and comfort and pain… shows up as I feel my through the struggles and soft landings that others offer me.
This is for today, and that first morning that showed up around this time of day seventy years ago and invited me to dance all this way through… landing on this sofa where I sit and write and care and love in these moments.
Thanks if you got this far, in the reading of this… and in treading this fine line we call being at peace… in peace we may succeed, here’s to that for all of you and yours too.
P.S. for anyone reading this who knows me and I haven’t yet shared the blood cancer diagnosis with, sorry if that lands heavy for you, I am feeling surprisingly easy with it and it looks like I will find out for sure whether this is a biggie that takes me out soon or if it is a less aggressive one by the end of March. Ask me if you need to, I’m ok with sharing any updates as they show up.
Me and my first born, 1981, thanks to all those ancestral births that landed her mother and me and her and her sisters on this planet together.