A Patchwork Year

*With especial thanks to my good friend, Jay Kantor, for allowing me to use this wonderful piece of his original art to adorn my written endeavour. Thanks, JBud!

***

This has been a strange year for me. There have been a lot of factors at play, a lot of them out of my control.

Not all have been good.

Some of them have heralded a new era in my existence, reminding me of my mortality and my dwindling elasticity, both physical and mental.

Some of them have been prideful, some real chest-puffers and presented me with a view of myself that is unexpected, like turning a corner and seeing an exquisite landscape through the trees.

Some of them have been levelling, whether prompting scrutiny of myself or reminding me of the brevity of life and how its end can sneak and strike, cutting down those who you believed would stand for a long time yet.

Some of them have involved ticking items off bucket lists and feeling the fulfilment of a goal achieved.

So what can I take away from 2024?

Let's start with how you know me: Rachel Deeming, the writer. That's not how I'm viewed anywhere else. Maybe on Medium (am I allowed to mention them?). It's not how I see myself either. Not wholly.

Vocal takes up a lot of my time, a proportion that I love to give. It is very much part of my life. This year, with the microfiction challenge I've embarked on with L.C. Schäfer and Gerard DiLeo as well alongside D.J. Reddall's phenomenal poetry-athon, it has dominated the pie chart section of my life marked "Hobbies and Pastimes".

Unlike the one below, it is not a sizeable wedge.

Ah, who am I kidding? Writing has dominated all of my life this year. It has been more than a guilty pleasure; if I was a marquis, it would be my mistress, such is the time I have spent with it. It is demanding, omnipresent, coaxing and I cannot resist its allure. I love it. But fucking hell, does it take time!

And so, I have struggled, because just like seeking the company of a heady, sensual concubine, I have wanted to be seduced, to devote myself wholly to its presence, indulging in flights of fancy and saucy word play, with the feather-like tickle of a limerick and the frisson of anticipation created by a challenge - oh my! How I have wanted to be the devoted lover at the expense of everything else! Put me in my own little writing love nest and leave me!

But, of course, it's not possible. Writing can not be all. There are shirts to iron and school runs to do and floors to mop and football matches to drive to (don't forget practice!) and encouragement to give and conversations to have and days to reflect on and advice to administer (whether it's wanted or not) and meals to cook.

And washing. Did I mention washing? So much washing! Drudgery of the highest order.

Or is it? Because those activities are centred around those I love most and much as I love writing, it's not a living, breathing thing that needs me and this year I have been conscious of the fact that living things stop living and breathing things stop breathing and then they're gone. And this comes unexpectedly and suddenly and it rattles your world and brings a perspective like the brutal sharpness of a searchlight and makes things stark.

Never more than in 2024 have I realised that life is fleeting.

Onto that next. Trust a writer to get carried away with writing about something.

Writing. It's been a blast, this microfiction marathon. It has shown me that I can write; my ideas have been varied and I've loved thinking up something every day; I am a storyteller. I think that I have honed my style and that this is not something that will end once 2024 reaches its last day.

The writing will continue and so will the challenge to myself. Maybe longer fiction, maybe a collection, maybe a novel - who knows?

And now, to death.

*

I lost my aunty this year. I never saw it coming until it was inevitable. It's not nice losing family members. I don't like the space it leaves and I don't like the way it changes dynamics. I don't like the emptiness, the lack, the no-longer-ness of it. It makes things messy and it makes things weird.

I don't like her being gone.

Other people passed, perhaps not as close to me but still people from my life. I wrote about some of them. Their loss affected me, deeply: mentors, associates, barbers.

People who are part of my story are now gone. They may have been bit players, sharing a portion of time but they have shaped me, influenced me, made me better and now, they're gone. That solidity of knowing they share this world with me still, even if I've not seen them or contacted them because life has taken us apart, has gone - the fact that they were there was significant.

And now, they're not and that leaves a space so real that I don't know how to fill it or if I can. It's like I'm a puzzle, once a whole picture, and piece by piece those crucial pieces are fading.

How their families must feel...

It also made me realise that I am in the second part of my life. 51. I don't feel 51. My body is telling me but my mind is spry. More and more though, I feel the restrictions and limitations of my shell. I'm wearing out and I'm trying not to think about it but the signs are there in the lines and the aches and the energy levels.

It's a bitch.

I need to live and I intend to because more and more, I am seeing that life is continuing and at some point, I'm not going to. It will come to a stop and I want that to be a long time into the future.

But there's no guarantee of that.

And it's not just in my physical appearance or my heavy limbs: it's in the people around me. My parents, becoming older, less firm, diminishing. What will my life be without them? And my sons, becoming older, taller, more confident. They are reaching out to what life can offer and I'm not at the core of that anymore. A fundamental part, yes, but I'm less needed and more taken for granted, for lifts and making sure the cupboards are full of snacks and clothes are washed.

I may have mentioned washing before.

I'm lucky - I still get cuddles and every one I'm given, I grab and savour, like I'm feeling the sun's warmth on my face or breathing the bouquet of a summer rose. I preserve those moments selfishly, extracting their very essence from the time that is given to me.

Because I can see them retreating.

Sure, they'll be replaced by other stuff and those moments will be unique and filled with love and become the fabric of memories too but they will be different and the sphere will have widened to include new people and inevitably, that closeness, physical and emotional will diminish in its dependency, both from what they get from it and what I do too. Such is the nature of life.

But while they're here, I'm going to grab hold tight and squeeze every last drop I can from them and store it up, like an expensive perfume, to take a whiff of it now and again when I need to indulge.

*

Wings are being flexed and the nest will soon be losing a fledgling. Another transition, another change. How to ease that? Maximise the time you have together.

My kids miss North America. We lived in Canada for seven years and those formative years sculpt who you are more than I think I ever realised. Because our family are British, I always felt the tie to this little island, but I'm learning, that for my boys, it's not as tight. The history is not there.

I've been naïve to think that my boys would be happy in Britain and not miss Canada. It has been a revelation to me and made me feel rather stupid.

It was only right then, that what could be our last big family holiday was spent across the pond. Such an understated description of the distance the Atlantic provides.

And so, that's what we did. We went back to North America and did what we did when we lived in Canada. We stayed in KOAs and visited National Parks and travelled the open road, through gulches by rivers, over flat plains, descending into canyons, walking trails and dried river beds, over boulders to vistas that inspire awe, where houses have been built into cliffs or rock has been carved by the elements.

We made some wonderful memories which was what it was essentially all about.

But it also made me reflect.

The world never fails to surprise me with its variety and its beauty and its otherness, the otherness of not being human and the fact that it works independently of us, despite the fact that we continually want to leave our mark on it: we are the worst graffiti artists.

I don't know why we as a race always feel the need to dominate, that it is in this that power lies. If the world is ruined and everything in it, what will there be to rule over?

I have revelled in what I have seen and want to preserve and conserve. I want to share and enjoy, and more and more, I wonder about where the world is heading in what appears to be its lack of love and respect to those living in it and towards the essence of what it is: its blueness, its greenness, its variety of species; its differing landscapes; its human heritage; other humans.

Seeing new horizons will make you think about those that are not yet reached. I hope that what the media tells us every day could be on our horizon is just empty discussion

When I think about the things that hold my life together, I realise that there is more than what is revealed or portrayed on social media or the news. There are good things, good people, a lot of love and support, well wishes and encouragement.

And that these ideas need to be held onto tightly, like a kid flying a kite in a hurricane.

I guess that this year has been a reminder of what can be achieved with consistency and determination in an environment that offers encouragement; that life is but a series of finite breaths but that your influence can be felt beyond them; that things change, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better but change is always coming and that this is a wave that needs to faced, ready to dive in and through and not retreated from in fear; and finally, that the world is a great place, filled with natural wonders in stone but also in flesh.

There is much more to live for and long may that life last. Here's to more encouraging, exploring and writing.