resposibility

My mother's garden seems woefully empty without the presence of our two cats, who have been living with her for the last seven years. When my partner and myself were obliged to move from the lodge in Hampshire, and found ourselves temporarily billeted at Turnpike Cottage in Somerset, we were unable to take the cats with us, as the front door of the cottage opened directly onto a busy road, and there was no garden at the back. Besides which, it had been stipulated that pets were not permitted. If we had had more time in which to find a place to live and had been in a healthier position financially, we would never have moved there.

My mother spoke up at once, offering to harbour the cats until we were able to afford them sanctuary, and welcoming the then three displaced animals into the home of herself and my father.. Within weeks, both sons had settled, but Alice, the restless mother, always consumed by wanderlust, and who had been leading a feral existence until becoming a member of our household at the lodge, had disappeared, much to my mother and father's concern. There was no sign of her; her departure, sudden and unexpected, was complete, and we conjectured that she had attempted to make her way back to the lodge, to the one fixed abode in her peripatetic life. We searched, and grieved and worried, but to no avail, for she never returned. I dream about her still, and, each time I see a plump, grey and white cat, my heart misses a beat, even though I know that I shall never see her again.

My partner and I moved once more, leaving the tiny , damp, dark cottage with relief, although I had been able to make some of my best drawings there, and found a rented house in the small market town of Frome nearby. I enquired about the possibility of having the cats to live with us there, and seem to remember that we were granted permission, but I was forbiddingly anxious about catching them, and disrupting their new life with my parents. Years passed, years that were often painful for me, as the journey of recovery from depression was long, seemingly without end; I was frequently cast down, and bitterly homesick. During these years, until my mother's accident, the cats had lived contentedly with my mother and father, enjoying the extensive garden, those of the neighbours, and the quiet allotments lying beyond the bottom fence.

I saw them when I visited, and did my utmost to maintain the bond between us afraid that they would forget me; worse, that they should become shy of me. They never did. Each time I made  visits to my mother and father, and then to my mother, they would greet me, request my attention, accompany me in the garden, sit by my feet before the fire in the evenings.

When our mother fell, and was first confined to hospital and then to the downstairs portion of the house, there was much discussion between myself and my sisters about her future. We were concerned that none of us would be able to stay with her continuously until she was fully recovered, and I was desperately worried about how she would fare with the cats; for some time I had been afraid that she might trip and fall over them, particularly Minos, the black cat, who has a habit of running close alongside one before suddenly dashing ahead thence to arrive at a standstill. I had been coming to the conclusion that I would have to  seek afresh our landlord's permission to have the cats live with us. Still I hesitated, my mind exercised agonisingly by doubt and anxiety. It was like a revelation when my youngest sister said, " Take them with you. This is your chance to realise a dream".

Both my sisters undertook to catch my nervous cats and load them into baskets; my younger sister provided baskets, cat litter, litter tray and a complement of soothing remedies to help the sensitive  animals undergo the transition. On the afternoon of their capture, a cold, golden afternoon in January, my younger sister and I were in the garden, she pruning the apple trees, myself picking up the cut lengths of timber and removing them to the bonfire heap. I was conscious of an all encompassing unrest, as from previous experience, I knew that the cats could be challenging to catch, and I was painfully anxious that something in our well thought out campaign would go awry. I felt also a great sadness for them, as they would be leaving a place that had become their home, and the garden would be bereft without them. Both cats were in the garden throughout the afternoon. oblivious to their coming fate, Minos shadowing me as I moved about the lawn collecting sticks, Silas, the tabby, disappearing with fluid motion into the undergrowth on business of his own.

Just before sunset, my sister and I repaired to the house, made up the fire, kept watch for the appearence of the cats, whose habit it was to come in at close of day and take up warming positions in front of the fire. Despite my fears to the contrary, they did appear, both, and my sister quietly got up and shut the back door, thus confining them indoors.

The ensuing capture proceeded as planned, myself absented from the fracas to the front room by my sisters , and without further ado, my partner and I set off for Somerset with the cats safely stowed in their baskets in the back of the car. I had expected much evidence of distress, but they were, for the most part, quiet.

During the first few days of having them with us, I felt overwhelmed by responsibility, and was given cause to reflect upon the responsibility I had laid at the feet of my mother, a responsibility that she discharged dedicatedly and without qualm. I almost wished that I had asked the RSPCA to take them from us as kittens, and rehome them, as they had initially offered, so overpowered did I feel. For a while, these unwelcome feelings took the place of any pleasure I might have felt in their company, and when I visited my mother in the meantime, to care for her, leaving the cats behind in their new home, I found myself weeping at the too empty garden, missing them, half expecting to see them, moved beyond measure at the sight of the two delicate curving paths they had made in the lawn, ghost tracks which would disappear without their continuing footfall.  I grieved on their behalf, as the garden of the rented house in Somerset is far smaller than that of my mother's, there are no adjoining allotments, and the neighbouring gardens are just as small as our own.

Given time, the sense of loss is replaced by the more welcome feeling of delight in their presence, the overweening burden of responsibility lifted, as we slip into a routine of care and companionship. I remain profoundly relieved that my mother is no longer at risk of falling over the cats, and deeply grateful to her for having provided without hesitation  a loving refuge for them. That she will miss them I know, but I hope that she has many memories  to sustain her  , as I have both a storehouse of images of them in my mother's garden, and am beginning to build the same of them in our very different home.

new year

Just a few days into January, my mother takes a fall in her home and sustains a complicated fracture of her right shoulder. She is admitted to hospital where it is deemed appropriate to replace the shattered joint with an artificial one fashioned from titanium. The evidence of her increasing frailty is borne heavily upon myself and my two sisters, and we each have serious concerns about the suitability and safety of her beloved house and garden , although she herself is determined to continue living there as long as is possible.

There are no words to describe the measure of alarm and anxiety that I experience on her behalf when I consider the house and garden in the light of her return from hospital. Much needs to be changed to render both safe and comfortable, some of it beyond our scope both financially, and in terms of our collective skills. Not for the first time, albeit not without a jolt of disloyalty and grief, do I wish fervently that she was already installed in a house of more modest size, with garden just enough for her to enjoy her array of ornamental pots and containers, which she has a genius for making beautiful with bright annuals and spring bulbs, in a smaller, less unfriendly town, with amenities to hand, the thriving, busy heart of a welcoming little town within walking distance.

In my mother's garden. snowdrops are beginning to flower in their customary places; discrete gatherings beneath the old privet hedge, sizable colonies in the lawn. Crocus are also showing pale spears above the lean winter grass, and the hellebores are a mass of creamy, roseate blooms. I feel keenly for my mother, who has been so far unable to go out into the garden to see them. Walking in the garden, a heavy frost glittering upon the lawns, lonely without the the company of our two cats, who are now, for safety's sake, removed to Somerset, I am overcome by a storm of conflicting emotions. I am painfully aware, that despite my mother's vigour of mind, and great love, the bequeathed garden is too big for  her to manage on her own, yet my heart quails at the thought of her having to give it up, to tear the roots that bind us all to this place. Reason instructs me that perhaps it is time to allow a younger family to live there and love it as we have done; we have had our day, yet our mother, although she has confided to each of us in turn her own fears concerning her abilities to continue to live there, is most unwilling to relinquish the house and garden, which harbour so many memories. Speaking with my sisters, I find that my youngest sister and I are united in our feelings of heartbreak, although my younger sister , the sister in the middle, has attuned herself to the eventual relinquishment of our family home, and that all three of us share the desire to see our mother settled contentedly in a safer, more suitable environment.

The first month of the new year passes with much unsettling change and challenge, and in a flurry of  visits to our mother. The days lengthen appreciably, the garden is alternately rimed by frost and scoured by bitter north easterly winds; a couple of times the lawns are dusted by the sparkle of light snowfall. The garden appears at first glance to be steeped in slumber, yet closer insepection reveals the presence of a multitude of elegant, pointed buds on the Ribes, the clusters of fragile, early flowering bulbs, the ruby red tips of the emerging peony buds. Our garden chairs remain almost in the positions they occupied throughout the months of Summer and Autumn, when my mother and I sipped wine in the long light evenings, took tea and coffee during breaks from our labours. I cannot help but wonder whether we shall do so again, and I know that this thought is not far from my mother's own mind. I take a photograph of the chairs, pools of water frozen in each, as a keepsake, my heart full to bursting within me, for at present it is well nigh impossible to believe that we shall be able to resume our former  relationship with the cherished garden.

ten thousand hours

Whilst enjoying a velvety coffee in my favourite cafe one winter afternoon, I chance to  overhear a fellow customer declare that excellence in a discipline is achieved only after ten thousand hours of dedicated practise.

The cafe is warm, softly lit, the murmer of conversation is comforting. Yellow light spills from the window onto the darkening world beyond the glass; it is the hour of dusk. I stir my coffee and ponder upon the magical equation proposed by my neighbour.

During the last week of November, I made seven, small, delicate studies of cloud formations, before losing confidence and coming once more to a tremulous standstill. Several hours were committed to each little study, nowhere near the number required for excellence, but my efforts marked something of a return to my practice, nevertheless.

A month later, no further drawings having been made, I retrieve the fragile pieces from the drawer in which I had hidden them from my censorious gaze, and lay them out on the floor of the back bedroom, in order to reappraise them. I am much relieved that I resisted the urge to destroy them; by so doing, I would have denied myself the opportunity of learning from them, vital steps marking my passage through the 'forest dark' would have been lost forever, and I would have again been floundering without the guiding light of their presence. As it is, each carefully dated study bears witness to my attempt to celebrate and understand the wondrous mutability of the clouds, each represents the sum of hours of work, carried out with a will to improvement.

I have still many more hours of such work ahead of me. At times my appetite for the task is fickle; weeks pass in which no drawings are produced, and I am again plunged headlong into the misery of doubt and self condemnation. However, thankfully, these painful intervals are  becoming shorter as my resolve strengthens, and sometimes I  experience the tiniest flicker of pleasure in my modest achievement, from which I gain a modicum of courage to continue. There are even days when I begin to believe that I tread the 'straight foreward path', the way forth from the darkness. I may yet come to behold the stars.

flotilla

It is plain to see that my mother's garden once bordered land unclaimed by urban development; at the foot of a neighbouring garden are two trees of the woodland, a sweet chestnut, and a walnut, both mature plants of majestic aspect. Every Autumn, amongst the prodigious fall of outsize papery leaves are to be found the fruits of each, glossy, bristle tufted chestnuts clad in spiny, floss lined jackets, gnarled and brittle walnuts. The crop represents a bountiful annual harvest for the resident squirrels, who bury both chestnut and walnut all over my mother's garden, frequently casting plants from flowerpots to hide their cache beneath the soft soil.

Emptied of their chewy, bitter kernal, the spent walnut shells resemble little boats, fashioned for the tiniest of passengers. Searching for a pastry cutter in the kitchen drawer of the rented house in Somerset, I unexpectedly come across a brown paper bag of these fragile craft, and remember gathering them in my mother's garden on a glowing Autumn evening, turning the fallen leaves with eager hand, guided by the last rays of a blood red sunset.

It was my intent to attach mast and sail to each, and set them afloat on the stilly waters of the pond, or launch them in my mother's bath tub, documenting the event with camera, but, my confidence having failed, instead thrust the paper bag to the back of the kitchen drawer, the idea to the back of my mind.

Dried earth from my mother's garden still clings to the shells; dust rains from the paper bag when I empty it. Sentimental, I cannot bear to sweep the dust away, returnng it to the bag with the shells, folding the bag over, and placing it atop the old piano, my repository for found and broken objects, abandoned birds nests, dried flowerpetals contained within sheets of tissue, paper fans, fragments of garden ornaments.

I remain unsure about the destiny of the sculptural walnut cases, feeling certain that there is potential for a piece of work, however modest, yet anxious that I may not have the ability necessary to realise it. The shells are lovely in their own right; perhaps a mast and tiny sail would appear amiss, as would a coat of paint. In my minds eye I envisage them bobbing amidst the glistening bubbles of a foam bath, motionless upon the crystal depths of the garden pond, marooned on a sea of creamy paper. Perhaps I should take a practical approach rather than a purely cerebral one; experiment, afix a mast and sail to one, at least, float them in sink, bath and pond, see what they look like. Or perhaps I should arrange them on the earth of my mother's garden, where I found them, setting them upright amid the rustling ocean of leaves, grouping them like a diminutive armada awaiting the command for battle.

expenditure

In an old wooden cold frame, fashioned by my father many years ago, we store the spent daffodil bulbs over the summer each year , having lifted them from the long flower beds of the front garden late in the spring after flowering, let them dry in the sun, and removed the yellowed foliage. Each autumn we add new, fresh bulbs to the colony before planting; every few years we replenish the entire stock. The task of planting the bulbs, later lifting them and setting them out to dry falls largely to myself, in my father's absence.

It happens one autumn, that we have too many to plant, and so the remainder are left in the cold frame at the bottom of the garden throughout the season. At the close of flowering time, when the planted bulbs have been lifted, dried, divested of their faded greenery and are ready for storage, we open the cold frame to discover that the surplus bulbs therein have flowered also. Fragile, dessicated blooms append each shrivelled, papery bulb, a tangle of pale gold and honey, exquisitely beautiful. My mother and I are profoundly moved by the sight. My mother whispers apologies; we are each conscious of guilt, and sadness for our unwitting negligence, for the plants unfailing and faithful response to the turning of the year, unwitnessed, unsung.

I cut the frail blooms from the shrunken bulbs, captivated by their beauty, and place them carefully in paper bags, anxious to preserve them, somehow to chronicle their effort, their ultimate, valiant expenditure.

image, text

A dear friend enjoins me to keep thinking, 'image, text', 'image, text'. This, after she read an earlier post entitled 'paper plane', which post comprises the digital photograph of a model aeroplane, and a text concerning my relationship with my father.

I am fast lodged in a period of sterility as far as making drawings is concerned and find myself instead much more inclined toward the act of writing, and the collection and arrangement of found objects, mostly from my mother's house and garden.

I must conjecture, therefore, that all is not lost, with regard to making visual work, it's just that my mind is not alive to drawing at present; rather is working in a different vein. If I were at all kind to myself, and to these fledgling ideas, I would pursue them with more energy, lay to rest my frantic, unassuageable desire to be drawing, for the moment, and allow myself to think as my friend bids me.

carol

It is the time of Advent. Both of the little schools where I volunteer my assistance are preparing for Christmas. Nativity plays are rehearsed, songs sung, crowns, wreaths and cards are fashioned.
In Assembly we sing 'Away in a Manger', a carol that I remember well from my own childhood.

I am unprepared for the flood of emotion that causes me to falter on hearing the familiar melody and simple refrain. The closing words of the last verse pierce me to the quick. I can only hope that I will be fit for heaven at the time of my death, whenever that shall be.