You Are Not Gentle Like The Dove

you cackle, you cackle

How do you say hello when it’s been a while? How do you find your way back to the page? I have felt the niggling doubt creep in, asking who on earth I think I am and reminding me of all the ways I fall short. But I have also felt the prod and pinch of something else. The urge to write has become overwhelming, outweighing its spiteful counterpart - so here I am.

I have been thinking a lot about bad omens recently. Tiny tendrils of an idea fought their way to the surface but I didn’t rush to gather them up. I suppose I’m a little rusty. In fact, I have never not been rusty. But I have made a promise to myself to quietly show up, tap away at my keyboard and see what happens because, surely, that has to feel better than the dusty neglect that has been dominating?

This isn’t the piece I thought I would write, though truthfully I didn’t have a clear vision. But, as is the way of things, wisdom in the form of Anne Lamott appeared at just the right time:

“You can’t—and in fact, you’re not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing. First, you just point your attention and take the picture.”

Go steady if you’re feeling fragile, I’m writing around some difficult themes.

Do you remember that nursery rhyme? You know, the one that goes one for sorrow, two for joy… I know it because of my mother. She would give a small salute to every magpie that skittered across the windscreen as she drove, and sing-song ‘good morning mister magpie, how’s your lady wife?’. I’m not going to get bogged down by the obvious issues with that sentence. The point is she was trying to ward off the bad luck. You see magpies apparently mate for life, so to catch one alone inevitably means misfortune or sadness or doom depending on how dramatic you’re feeling. There are ways to counteract it, of course, the doom. If folklore is to be trusted you should doff your cap - like a sixteenth century gentleman! - greet the bird and, for the most prudent among us, flap your arms like wings and spit three times over your shoulder. Listen, I don’t make the rules.

I have seen what feels like far more than my fair share of solitary black and white birds hopping frantically from foot to foot over the past few months. I don’t flap or speak or spit, but I do copy my mother’s prim little salute. I don’t want bad luck any more than she did. Hardly a foolproof method though, is it? I should have seen that one coming. Sorrow, it turns out, doesn’t bend to our superstitions. And now it’s here I feel as though I was waiting for it all along. Although I suppose that’s true of all of us. 

Death, so far, has been more of a distant relative than close friend - a cousin twice removed, perhaps. I’m lucky, I know. But this is also true: I have held it in the palm of my hand; breathed in its scent mingled with antiseptic and freshly washed clothes. It’s easy to ignore the fluttering veil that hangs so thinly between catching a squirming pink body and the silence where a cry was supposed to be. But I am a midwife and that veil has become part of my fabric. I would rather you didn’t have to think about the times I have wrapped a lovingly knitted blanket in perfect stillness, or taken photographs to tuck inside a box that might never be opened. I would rather the pandemic memory of a mask and surgical gown and goggles steamed with tears was mine alone. Close your ears to the heartbeat I spent three long nights listening to, checking on its steady thrumming, only to meet it, quiet, days later. And whatever you do, look away from the greying and gruff healthcare assistant - the one who blinked, glassy eyed, as he came to stand at my side. As he asked what he could do and I passed him the soft gauze. As together, in gloved hands, we came as close as you can to a holy moment in an operating theatre. Who allows such things to happen?

But there is no one. It is nothing. Life comes and wreaks its havoc. It’s on the way again, closer this time but still not quite mine. It doesn’t care if we salute or flap or spit over our shoulders. Those superstitious acts are stabs in the dark, delusions of control. There is no control.