A Life in Words

Too Like You

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Memories evoked by music are a bit like dreams sometimes…

You can feel the emotion, there is no avoiding that. That is the thing that hits you over the head, blind sides you and stops you in your tracks. Christ yeah…I forgot about that song…I forgot about that. As well as the emotion there is something visual there, something tapping at the corners of your mind, something stealing into your vision, a bright flash that fades again just as quickly as it came. Like a dream you try to hold onto it, try to hold it still for examination but the more you try to see it and explain it, the more elusive and teasing it becomes. It’s like it does not really want to be caught or defined.

It’s all you can do not to cry, or just sigh. It’s fleeting, like everything in life, here one minute and gone the next, just like the moment itself, when it happened all those years ago. I don’t want to keep getting older and forgetting all of these things.

Money Mark singing Tomorrow Will Be Like Today. That was a new CD you bought over, and it was a small garden, enclosed by tall panel fences. The smell of yesterdays barbeque lingering in the air with cut grass. My knees pulled up onto the plastic garden chair. A crack in one leg playing on my mind. Too Like You. Hand In My Head. Makes me smile and think of you.

Did I become more like you, or did you become more like me?

I used to be the negative one, the worrier, the anti-social, and you used to be the smiler. Sandy haired and loose limbed, you used to say it all of the time; don’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t ever worry about anything.

But that is not you now. Now I am the one who encourages you to see the light and to smile. Now I am the one who says don’t worry, and you are the one reluctant to go out there and deal with people and time and life.

You rubbed off on me. That was the way it happened. From moments like that, always with a new album playing in the background. So much of our story has a soundtrack. That’s why it happens like that when I hear a song, when it takes me back. Bang and I am young again. Not sat in the car staring solemnly at the rain on the window while you nip into the shop to buy some bread and milk.

How easily we grew up. It’s not really fair the way it happens like that. It takes you by surprise, because you are never paying attention as the years creep up. Then suddenly a decade has passed, and then another. It’s sometimes like we are still back there, existing back in time. We are two lots of people. Them and us. Then and now.

I am too like you now because you got inside my head.

You say that tomorrow will be like today and I say that sometimes you are wrong. I can’t remember what happened to that day. How did it end? Where did we go? What did we talk about and laugh about? I can just remember the feel of the plastic chair under me and the wobble, the give, from the crack in the leg. I can just remember the music, and that it was summer. I can see your face and the way you always smiled about everything and I can see you walking in with CD’s in your hand. I miss us.

Rainy Day Book Shop…

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Half term. Raining of course. Oldest child wants to stay in all day watching Supernatural on dvd. 10 and 7 year old want to keep playing their car game on the landing. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy too. Another load of washing. Floors to clean. Wet dogs to rub dry. A baby to entertain. But it’s half term, no school! We should be doing something together as a family…

So we force them out. Into their coats and into the car and out into the world and the empty wet streets that lead down to a favourite haunt. Every time we go looking for it I worry that it has gone. That we didn’t go often enough, didn’t keep an eye on it and it vanished, faded away when we weren’t paying attention. Good things do that sometimes. You forget they are there, and then when you need them you find out they have moved on.

But not so The Crooked Book. Push open the door and the smell brings a smile to my face, and I am carrying in the baby with the feeling that I am introducing him to a warm and wonderful place. Which it is anyway. On first glance, on first smell, old and musty and reminds me of my Nan’s house when we were growing up. Old things well cared for. Ceramic basins and wooden spoons. 1920’s wardrobes. 1960’s coats. An ancient typewriter or two. I wonder how many words were tapped out on its keys… Tables and chairs, mismatched and eccentric, two men in suits chatting about a business plan. Free wi-fi. Tea, coffee, cake and soup. But those are not the reasons we come.

We make our way slowly to the back. Where the books are. Piled high and higher still, on clumsy shelves and scruffy displays. The familiar face at the till says hello how are you? We are fine, and we move on, carefully, trying not to knock over anything precious or valuable. Like the books, I want all of the things…And the smell…

The smell of books and thoughts and feelings and dreams. The smell of pages thumbed and worn. The smell of cracked spines and cricked necks. It makes me sigh. My shoulders relax. I hug the baby tighter, and feel the urge to show him all of the books. A whole world, I want to tell him. In fact a million, million worlds. A million, million, million words and ideas and tragedies and triumphs.

It feels safe here. Close and comfortable and sheltered. We huddle in the kid’s section while 7 year old laments the fact they never have the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid book he is after. But we find him a Doctor Who annual to keep him smiling. 12 year old as ever has an armful and we have to cajole her down to just two. 10 year old finds a book on dragons and a book on vampires. I’m lost. Or is it found?

I suddenly remember that I want to read Toni Morrison, so me and the baby hunch down and find M on the bottom shelf in the left hand corner and there is Beloved. Something I have wanted to read for years. Happy, but not done. I find a book by Roddy Doyle that I have not read, and a whole selection of Douglas Coupland novels catch my eye. In the end I choose Beloved and Girlfriend In A Coma. At the till husband is in a world of his own with Marx and Engels…

Fifteen pounds worth of books, smiles all around, priceless and a collective urge to get back home. Back into the warm with a coffee and a biscuit. Our books under our arms, we run back to the car, jumping puddles, job well done. We came, we browsed, we conquered. I feel slightly bereft as always for all the books left behind. Goodbye The Crooked Book. Until next time.

How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life

~ ChanAtkins ~ 7 Comments

I am writing this for the contest ‘How Writing Has Postively Influenced My Life’ hosted by Positive Writer http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-how-writing-has-positively-influenced-my-life/#sthash.lKiCckuh.dpuf

Writing has been a positive influence on my life in so many ways. It has been my friend for most of my life. It was my friend when I was a child who had learnt to read. Books opened up my imagination, enticed me to dive in and swim up to the surface with my own ideas exploding. It was there for me then, poking me in the back, winking, telling me I could do it too. I could write a story. And then my head became full of them. They were with me all the time; the stories and the people that came with them. Thanks to writing, I have never been lonely, not once. Writing has been behind me the whole time, urging me on, winding me up, filling my head.

It was there for me when I was an awkward teen, full of self-doubt and negativity. There was always somewhere to stash those feelings when pen hit paper. Words would pour from me like blood being washed from a wound. Every word was a gasp, a letting go. At the same time though, I was holding on. Because I had something that was all mine. Something secret and precious, something that saved my life in so many ways. Something that more than anything else in my life, made me me.

When I think about who I am, I think of writing. When I think about what sets me apart, what makes me stand tall, what makes me smile, and dream and hope, I think of writing. It is something I can never part with, it is something that can never be taken from me.Without it, I would be empty, or I would explode.

I once let it drift. I was so busy with work and children and being exhausted. It was there in my head the whole time though, looking sadly on. Silenced, but still needling. It didn’t let me forget about it. Every time I thought it had gone forever, it would jump up and remind me, sending me off into a dream, a trance, conversations spiralling inside my head. People watching when I did not mean to. Plots weaving slowly between the voices that were piping up.

I got it back before it was too late. I had the urge one day to write and it was like something alive inside of me, clawing at my eyes. I found a notepad and pen and didn’t stop writing for about six weeks. Could I do it? Could I really do it? Rewrite one of my books, one of my stories from long ago? Did I have in me? Did I have any talent? Writing did not give me a choice. Once it had me back in its grips it was not going to let go again. Not a chance. Not ever.

Writing reminded me that I had books inside of me. I had people living inside my head. Actually living there! Knocking on the walls, banging at the door. They were fed up to the back teeth of this; living inside a prison, unable to speak. They wanted to tell their stories, and not just to me this time. They wanted to get out, right out, and into the open. They had all sorts going on, this lot. A real rabble. I’ve had to quieten them down, tell them to be patient and wait their turn. The thing is, some of them have been waiting so long! I don’t think I can write fast enough to keep them happy!

But they will get heard. They will get out. There are readers. I will make it happen. I won’t waste any more time.  Writing has been my friend my entire life. It has made me who I am, it has helped me deal with pain and confusion and desperation; it has taught me how to speak up for the people inside my head, how to make their words dance on the page. Writing is my addiction. It’s how I make sense of the world, and how I keep myself anchored to it. In conclusion, writing makes every single day of my life an exciting one.

The Pink Haze

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

The pink haze is a phrase used by the author Kate Rigby in her gritty novel Down The Tubes. The novel follows the two lives of estranged mother and son, Cheryl and Michael. (You can find my review and a link to the book at the end of this post.) For the character of Cheryl, the pink haze describes that aura of loveliness and addiction that surrounds the newborn child. What a perfect way to describe the near dream like state you exist in after having your first child. Although Cheryl is not exactly mother of the year (you’ll have to read the book to find out why!) I found myself completely understanding this state she found herself existing in during those early newborn days.

A haze indeed. Sleep deprived, foggy headed, surrounded by attention and well wishers and smiling faces. Everyone goes to jelly over newborns. Everyone wants to stop and stare at that rare little piece of perfection. Everyone says enjoy it while it lasts. They soon grow. It doesn’t last for long that haze. Because everything passes to the next stage so quickly. One minute your house is full of chunky baby equipment; baby gyms, and bouncers and car seats. The next moment these items are vanishing one by one. And you start to realise that as they change before your eyes, you cease to become the centre of their world. If you get in their way, they start to peer around you.

The pink haze is an addiction to love and needing and fulfillment. Maybe you have never experienced those things quite so strongly before. Will it ever be enough? It will always be transient and shifting. Like sand slipping through the sand timer, like the earth shifting beneath your feet. None of these moments can be held onto or held still. You are forever forced to chase leaves in the wind. You only get so close, your fingers brushing, before it lifts away again teasingly.

Chasing your next fix. That sweet milky baby smell. When even the waste in the nappy smells good. Inhaling every part of them so that you might contain it forever. No description fits. No words are ever adequate. The smell of their musty sick on your clothes, or the cheese balls that you scrape out from under their chubby chins. The smell of their hair and their scalp and their breath. Sniffing them up, as if that might be a way to capture them. Oh their cries are just for you. Their needs and wants and comforts are delivered by you. You exist in your own hazy bubble bouncing away from the world. Separate and secret.

A secret addiction. When you hold them in your arms and feel the urge from your heart to squeeze them back inside of you. Absorb them back to where they came from so that they might be yours again. Their fat wet drooly cheek pressed up against yours. The smell of their warm neck. The giggles from their lips. The curl and bend and thrust and flop of their changing bodies.

My baby. My baby. No other two words so precious, so beautiful. But every gasp of your love for them is a painful one. Because they grow and change and move away. You feel it is shameful. How you secretly long to keep them small and in love with you, needing you. You, the centre of everything.

Time marches on, though you drag your feet, and those special moments wander and wane. Demands are put upon you. Expectations have been raised. Now you are one of the mothers, sighing and rolling your eyes and rattling your car keys at the school gates. And most days are a rush from one fixed point to another. Breakfast is shovelled in. School bags packed and thrust upon shoulders. Lists are needed so that nothing is forgotten, so that you do not fall short or fail. You miss them and wish they would think of you, but they rarely do. You put the washing on the stairs and you wash out their lunch box at the end of the day. You tell them off and grit your teeth, and everyone is the same, everyone is moaning and whining and saying there is never enough time, a mothers work is never done, I have a lot to do and a short time to do it in!

Sometimes you think about the pink haze. Sometimes you can still feel them kicking inside of you. Sometimes if you close your eyes you can still feel their body in your arms, their head against your shoulder. You can still hear their breath as the snores whistle in and out, and their tiny ribcage moves against your breast. And you can still remember how you never really wanted to put them in the cot. And you never really wanted to move them from the breast. And you never really wanted to say goodbye at the school gates knowing that the pink haze was over.

Like all addictions, you could go back for more. Have another one, and then another. But eventually time will smash this apart too. Eventually mother nature will shake her head.

All you can do is watch them go. All you can do is be there whenever they come back. All you can do is hope that when the day comes that they hold their own newborn in their own arms, and they find themselves surrounded by the pink haze, that then they will know what they meant to you.

This book gets 5 stars from me because it was quite simply everything I look for in a book, and can never seem to find! A brilliant storyline, real characters, real dialogue, gritty, hard-hitting, heartbreaking and touching. I am so pleased the author has written lots of other books! Down The Tubes is a story about two people; Cheryl, who has all but turned her back on her four children in order to have a ‘life’ and is pursuing a career in drug rehabilitation, and her estranged son Michael, who ran away from home aged sixteen. The book brilliantly weaves their two life stories together, in the third person and present tense. Cheryl is such an interesting character, in many ways extremely unlikable, but I could not help be intrigued by her. Married young, she has child after child, seemingly addicted to the ‘pink haze’ that surrounds an innocent young baby. However once they start to walk and talk she sees their innocence fade and starts to lose interest. Michael, on the other hand, having been abused by his father, is such a lost soul that you are immediately drawn to him, instantly rooting for him and hoping he can eventually kick his drug habit. As the narration takes us back and forth between their two lives, the two characters almost cross paths but seem destined to never be reunited. This is such a well written book, and I am so pleased I have found an author who does not shy away from gritty storylines that make you flinch. I was left wanting more