annanotbob2's Diaryland
Diary
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Water
My writing mentor asked me to write about the role of water in my life and Sammie's. It's been a fuck of a week so these are unfinished bits 1. Sammie loved the beach. She was born in a house right on the seafront with the sound of waves lulling her to sleep in her cot. When I was pregnant I swam in the sea all through the summer, floating on my back, my ever growing belly rising round and brown out of the water. We moved inland (like a whole half mile inland) but still went to the beach as often as we could, keeping a tide-table handy so we could always catch low tide and the hard wet sand. In winter we’d walk on it for miles, in summer the kids would splash about in the water all day. I never took anything with us beyond a towel and a bottle of water, no toys or snacks, just us and the beach, the sun and the wind. My friend Marie-Pierre came over from France with her English husband every August and we always went to the beach, no matter what the weather did and it was never kind. We have loads of photos of us all huddled in jackets with the kids running around half naked, communicating freely by the employment of strong accents. Alix and Arthur spoke their French with a thick English accent, Sam and the little ‘uns spoke English like Peter Sellars being Inspector Clouseau. 2. Mental health swims – when I started winter swimming I knew I didn’t want to do it alone – lesson one in my safety course had been to never swim alone – and someone pointed me to this group that operates nationally, including at Hove. They swim on a Sunday morning, and turn up no matter what the weather’s like, three years now, balmy summer days, wild winter storms, faces becoming familiar, becoming friends, joining me for other things like silent discos, dancing on the wet sand by the neon lights of the pier as the sun falls out of the sky 3. The winter after Sammie needed a feeding tube, when I realized she’d never have the life she’d expected, I found myself walking the beaches all winter, gathering firewood. I was angry and heart-broken and beside myself with sorrow and all I could do was stomp furiously along the tideline, picking small bits of wood out of the mass of seaweed for kindling, keeping my eyes open for good sized pieces of driftwood to chop up and burn, or make things with. The wind was often fierce, but I liked it, blowing in my face, tangling my hair, creating massive crashing waves that matched the destruction I felt in my heart. I learned to use the wind – walking head first into it felt right – it was hard, I had to force my steps into it, but that had to be the first part, fighting the wind until I could do no more, then turning and having it blow me back to the car. The prevailing wind is westerly so I walked to the west, but every now and then it would turn and an easterly wind would blow me miles before I noticed and had to summon the energy and strength to get back to the car. I did this for months, day after day after day, collecting enough wood to see us through the winter, including some massive pieces which I learned I could carry by balancing them on my shoulder – the only problem was lifting them up there but I was resolute. After a while I heard a voice in my head singing ‘You’re not alone, I’ll take your hand, you’re not alone, I’ll take my share, I’ll help you with the pain.’ It felt familiar, comforting, was often with me for weeks, months, but I couldn’t place it for ages till I heard it on the radio – David Bowie, Rock and Roll Suicide. Such a comfort – I felt him with me, not bothered if it was entirely my imagination or not, the fading ‘you’re wonderful’ and always ‘you’re not alone.’ 4. I took Sam to Venezuela when she was just two, to stay with my friend Maggie, who’d married Venezuelan Paco and gone out there to live. Their daughter Amba was born a few weeks after Sam, perfect. El Tocuyo was dusty and hot, long roads full of pot holes, with high kerbs and flat-roofed, single storey buildings, each one surrounded by railings with spikes or walls with broken glass embedded on top. When it rained it felt like someone had turned a shower up to full power, torrential wasn’t the half of it. Everyone stopped what they were doing – all appointments were missed – llovio – it rained – oh, OK. The streets filled with water – now I understood why the kerbs were so high, water flooded down the street, poured down from the hills, filled rivers, every pot hole overflowed with it. The tiny toddlers Sam and Amba loved the rain – they ran out into it shrieking with laughter, holding their faces up to the sky, letting it pour over their heads, down their backs, loving it. And then just as suddenly it stopped, the sun came back out overhead, burning down from the bright blue sky, steam rose up from everywhere, briefly, and in no time it was all just as before, except for the pot holes in the road. Sam and Amba loved to lie down and lap the water out of these puddles, like dogs. No! Sucia! Dirty! We’d yell and rush to pick them up out of the filthy mess – so dirty, so much disease – maybe – who knew? But no other toddlers lay in the road lapping the water from the puddles. 5. In El Tocuyo we sometimes went to the reservoir, a big lake that supplied the town’s water, which trickled cloudy and brown from the taps. Massive bottles of the local golden rum were consumed by all – it seemed the rule was that if you were drinking (and you were) you only drove in second gear. Rich people raced cross the water in their speedboats and crowds would gather round the edges to bathe, mostly the men and children. The woman sat supervising towels, snacks, drinks, but Maggie and I got right in and let the girls paddle about round the edges – it wasn’t very deep. Sam always wore a thin white cotton rompersuit and jacket to protect her from the sun. One day she was splashing about and somehow the breeze blew up and under the jacket, forming an air bubble that tipped her forward with her head under water, the back of the jacket sealed, her legs dangling. She was about thirty yards away from me, lounging in the shade, but I was up and there in a flash, faster than I knew I could move, without thought or decision, just grabbing her, setting her back upright in my arms, amazing us both.
1:01 a.m. - 31.10.24
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