Lesson Unspoken

 

Lesson Unspoken

1950s children were to be seen and not heard, and on occasion it was preferable not to be seen either because if you were in sight you were usually ‘in the way’ and within range of a ‘skelp’. It was difficult to stay out from under foot in a three bed-roomed house with an extended family that included five adults.

It was still dark. I knew it wasn’t time for me to be up but the orange glow from beneath the door told me somebody was on the move and I wanted a drink. So I got out of bed and sneaked along the landing quietly so as not to wake the whole house. I was still learning at that stage not to ‘wake the whole house’ because of some nightmare or pain in my tummy. I heard voices as I took to the dark stairs on my bum. I pushed on the combed varnish of the living room door. It still smelt like Christmas – Christmas, the after-burn of town gas, burnt toast and peat briquettes.

There were indications enough, even for a five year old, that my presence would be an intrusion. The clashing of dishes in the sink. Mammy was in a bad fettle. As I neared the kitchen, there was a lull in the argument. So I slunk silently to the door, leaning my cheek on the hard jamb, half hidden, shivering in my pajamas, barefoot on January-cold linoleum, and I listened -- despite the conviction that, were I discovered, Mammy would be cross. Daddy was hardly ever cross. But then Daddy was working away all week, and Daddy didn’t have the bother of us.

“I have to go to work.”

Silence indicated she’d already had her say.

“I have to.”

Cups clattered. She had her back turned to him. If he had; he’d better get on with it.

“Okay. I’m going now, alright?” He opened the back door. “Are you really not for saying goodbye?” He put down his dufflebag and went back to where she stood at the sink. “Sure, I’ll see you on Friday.” He planted a kiss on the side of her head since that was all she offered. “Okay. So… I’m away then.”

Turning briefly by the back door, he noticed me skulking by the door, crouched down, waved his fingers, smiled and was gone.

I seized the opportunity to ask for that drink.

“How long have you been standin’ there?”

Oops – cross voice!

“When it’s time to be up, I’ll tell ye! Away on back tae bed,” and she aimed a bussock at my behind for good measure. I was away before the hand connected.

When the police came to the door that night, to tell us that Daddy would not be home on Friday, or any other Friday, we each felt our own kind of forsaken. Maybe she thought his heart had failed (it was a congenital condition) because of her coldness; iced right up and broken clean in two after that morning spat. The grown-ups uttered quiet euphemisms and shed tears. The family Doctor laced the tea with whiskey -- the only warm spot in that grievous day and in many an abandoned day to come. 

There are times darker than January and things colder than linoleum.

Oonah V Joslin

First Published in The View From Here magazine

A Christmas Poem for 2023

 

Patterns of Christmas Past

How life is stretched now, seven decades deep.

All those glittering cards scattered through time,

shards of people past who rest now asleep,

memories needle sharp, picked out in pine

that pierce the past and make the future weep.

There is a santa claus in every year,

his sack packed full of bitter, sour and sweet,

who brings this rueful smile, that happy tear,

baubles we lost, traditions that we keep

alive. The Christmas jumpers that we wear

remind us our good shepherds watched their sheep

and looked in proudly from the frosty air

and wished us warm and snuggly in our wraps,

hand knitted, stitched in plain and purl, with care.

Oonah V Joslin ©2023

On Angel's Wings

On Angels’ Wings

first published in Static Movement

Gabriel floated on a favourite cloud, knitting with silver needles. He found it quite therapeutic, though it was also part of the job. When he’d finished knitting his wings, it would be time to call time.

It wasn’t entirely up to him when that would be. He couldn’t knit his wings any faster than he could get hold of the materials, and the yarn was spun on Earth. Mankind had started spinning yarns long ago when they’d refused the gift of innocence and needed to cover-up. Since then they’d rejected many of the best gifts on offer, preferring the packaging. They had discarded reason in favour of woolly thinking and had substituted vanity for truth, sex for love, fragrance for freshness.

One day Gabriel would take flight on wings of innocence, reason, truth, responsibility -- the off-cuts of ingratitude – all the stuff man threw away. These unwanted things would bear everything to its destiny. Heaven wastes nothing.

In the beginning there had barely been enough to knit with, but recently supply had exceeded demand. Increasingly, human beings seemed only to value things that brought intense sensation or immediate gratification. They no longer cherished a moment for itself. Packaging was paramount.

So Gabriel’s wings grew and shone ever more brightly day by day. They glowed white with all virtue – light and pure as the air that had been displaced by pollution. His golden threads came from the tones of sunsets never contemplated and fruits not forbidden but left uneaten: pleasures spurned. Soft grey tones were woven from dove’s breast, beneath which beat sacrifice and freedom now disdained in equal measure. Magnesium bright, his needles clacked and scattered light for all to see but so few looked to heaven any more and that was up to them.

Soon he would don his ceremonial wings and place the golden trumpet to his lips and shatter time. He would pull on the little superstring by his feet and all would unravel and return to the light.

The Archangel admired his new wings. He passed no judgments. The choice was not his to make. If a DIY universe is put in the hands of those who will not follow the maker’s instructions, the outcome is perhaps inevitable. 

Halloween Greetings

Paws for Thought

I wish I could sleep

as a cat sleeps

all soft and paws

the whole being

an entity of pause

I wish I could sleep

like that – like a cat.

February 2023: Catching the Wind at Candlemas

My year never begins in January, remembered as the month in which my father died. This January my eldest sister Annabelle passed away too. Noel's half brother also passed on the same day.  

Annabelle was 17 when I was born, very pretty and she wore such lovley clothes! Clothes were elegant in the late fifties. I just about remember her wedding or at least my mother trying to keep me from disrupting it too much. I was only 3 after all! She was a very supportive big sister and on many occasions more of a mother figure to us 3 youngest siblings. 

                   Annbelle and Hubert on their wedding day with my Grandparents

My Grandmother died 45 yrs ago on 11th Feb. I know this because I had just left Ballymena to take my first teaching post in Cardiff when I received the news. In the photo you can just see Margaret, the bridesmaid and Esme was the little flower girl.

I didn't think of it as a great adventure. I was terrified really! Never lived in a city before! But I met up with Noel and we had our first date later that month and we never looked back. February is a welcome friend. It brings with it snowdrops and crocuses, if we are lucky, even daffs, and it's light until 5pm. I greet it with a smile of relief. It's not that Winter is over but it is beginning to be over. The yellow jasmine that has been in bloom since November, is now losing it's flowers and the nithering north winds pull at them, as if to set them free. 

February always feels like being set free. The sun just about warms our bones. So as I remember my sister, I'll heed the warmth and feel thankful and hopeful and share with you this little poem which really wrote itself from observation, (those are mostly the best poems!!!) and is therefore one of my favourites.

In February 1992 we made the first move towards living in Northumberland. I did regard that as an adventure! 

February is a time of new starts and who knows, after the covid doldrums of the past couple of years, maybe I can once more catch the wind.

Catching the Wind

 

Dainty, yellow jasmine flower,

 

                                                      tiny fairy skirt,

 

twisting in the twilight air,

                                                     quite the little flirt.

 

Toying are you with the dark;

                                                     finished with the day?

 

Darting this way, flutt’ring that;

                                                      can’t you get away?

 

Star-struck in the gloom of dusk;

                                                      I see how you’re pinned;

 

Caught there on a spider-line,

                                                       a lure to catch the wind.

First published by The Shine Journal 2007

Subsequently published in The Linnet’s Wings

Goodbye to 2022

I haven't written very much this year, or sent much for publication but I will leave this little memoire from childhood to round off the year and wish you all a Happy and Healthful 2023.

A resurrection in raspberries.

As we spilled out of the town hall, ears tingling with carols, jollity followed us, trinkled along wet streets and trickled in rainbow hues down slushy gutters. Friends, strangers, even old enemies it seemed, greeted one another with Christmas cheer.

Church Street, criss-crossed in multi-coloured bulbs, glowed with pride, its shops festooned with holly wreaths. Even the Brother Archie’s plate glass window bristled with festive sprigs among the Stanley knives, glass baubles glinting out among saws and planes. All was a-sparkle of splintery tinsel and fairy lights. Outside grocery shops, recently cut trees awaited another incarnation, an indoor, scented life among the tangerines and puddings.

As light faded to a glimmer, a single gap in the commerce reined in all sound. The old churchyard lowered black, sucking the celebration from the street. In there was full of people so long dead, they were deaf to Christmas bustle and their dark absence made the lights seem all unreal. I quickened my pace past those wrought iron gates where no tomorrow ever comes. And soon enough the town centre dwindled to narrower streets and darker lanes, and I felt suddenly alone and hurried homeward all happed up in hope.

But I knew life would return to that dank place of runkled graves and dilapidated stones, whose illustrious names, time had all but erased. When the sun was once more at its height, a little taste of heaven would spring up out of decay. We’d walk there, and our eager little hands would reach in through the black surround of the old grave by the crumbling tower, and we’d fill our Sunday hats with soft, ripe fruits, and buy ice cream on the way home, to share the biggest, sweetest raspberries you’ve ever seen. Though, it might have scunnered some to know where we came by them, sure, the grave is silent and we didn’t have to tell. Year after year, this miracle occurred. I never knew his name, our benefactor, but I have never forgot the lessons in hope his grave taught:

True light shines brightest in the darkest times.

The greatest gifts are always freely given and received.

Each day we live’s a little taste of heaven.

Oonah V Joslin 2022

Visiting the War Graves -- 8th November 2022

It is always our privilege to visit the grave of our friend Wojtek Jacobson's brother Andrej at this time of year and so once again we took a walk through the war graves at St Mary's Churchyard on this Autumn day and left a little tribute in remembrance and with thanks for friendships and to those who, like Andrej died far from home. 

There was evidence that the November service on the first Sunday had taken place, in the little candle that had been placed there. Pity it's plastic I thought... But then my own poppy was plastic too. 

Note to self -- must do better.