She grapples with duality
Part of the story, yet apart,
Part of the story, yet apart,
simultaneously.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Giving Birth to a Dancing Star
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery” Samuel Smiles.
I learn to paint and draw through a constant round of trial, failure, then trying again, until that technique has been conquered. It never stops – there is always a challenge and that’s what makes it exciting for me. Artists are never happy with their work; they return to the same themes again and again in their lives. Picasso’s bulls, Matisse’s odalisques, Monet’s waterlillies. They have their reasons, but I bet they are also determined to ‘get it right this time.’
Creative people are subject to emotional highs and, much worse, lows. When in this dark vacuum the whole business of making art seems difficult and fraught with terror. Fear of the blank white canvas is a well known artist’s block. In my periods of darkness I am convinced that I am worthless, and that the art world is a sham, trivial, pointless and heavily rigged in favour of a lucky few. This can go on for years until I somehow reach within and find the equilibrium so necessary to open up my heart to inspiration. The beauty has always been there, but I have been blind for the long dark period.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding” Khalil Gibran.
Within the vortex I try to convey my thoughts and feelings in a visual way through drawing and painting. It becomes harder and harder, trying to do this thing that I’ve never succeeded at before, but now have a burning need to do. Many wasted sheets of paper and canvas later I am still no nearer to conveying my ideas, and am now plunged into despair by my ineptitude. I give up making art all together and stop attending exhibitions, reading about painters and all the other things that have up till now made my life a pleasure.
“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”. Helen Keller
Three years pass, I somehow come out of the shadow, and find inspiration wherever I look. Life takes on new meaning, and painting and drawing become an exquisite joy again. During the void, my visual problems have been churning over in my brain, unbeknownst to me, and have resolved themselves. I find myself able to show my feelings and thoughts in my work to some small degree. I venture out on a new set of paintings, delighted with the different shapes and colours appearing under my brush.
“Understanding is acquired by means of suffering or distress or experience. Will, desire, pain, envy etc are all natural, but understanding is acquired.” William Blake
And this quotation, from Friedrich Nietzsche, should give comfort to any person struggling to emerge from the dark zone:
“I say to you: One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.”
Anne King
I learn to paint and draw through a constant round of trial, failure, then trying again, until that technique has been conquered. It never stops – there is always a challenge and that’s what makes it exciting for me. Artists are never happy with their work; they return to the same themes again and again in their lives. Picasso’s bulls, Matisse’s odalisques, Monet’s waterlillies. They have their reasons, but I bet they are also determined to ‘get it right this time.’
Creative people are subject to emotional highs and, much worse, lows. When in this dark vacuum the whole business of making art seems difficult and fraught with terror. Fear of the blank white canvas is a well known artist’s block. In my periods of darkness I am convinced that I am worthless, and that the art world is a sham, trivial, pointless and heavily rigged in favour of a lucky few. This can go on for years until I somehow reach within and find the equilibrium so necessary to open up my heart to inspiration. The beauty has always been there, but I have been blind for the long dark period.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding” Khalil Gibran.
Within the vortex I try to convey my thoughts and feelings in a visual way through drawing and painting. It becomes harder and harder, trying to do this thing that I’ve never succeeded at before, but now have a burning need to do. Many wasted sheets of paper and canvas later I am still no nearer to conveying my ideas, and am now plunged into despair by my ineptitude. I give up making art all together and stop attending exhibitions, reading about painters and all the other things that have up till now made my life a pleasure.
“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”. Helen Keller
Three years pass, I somehow come out of the shadow, and find inspiration wherever I look. Life takes on new meaning, and painting and drawing become an exquisite joy again. During the void, my visual problems have been churning over in my brain, unbeknownst to me, and have resolved themselves. I find myself able to show my feelings and thoughts in my work to some small degree. I venture out on a new set of paintings, delighted with the different shapes and colours appearing under my brush.
“Understanding is acquired by means of suffering or distress or experience. Will, desire, pain, envy etc are all natural, but understanding is acquired.” William Blake
And this quotation, from Friedrich Nietzsche, should give comfort to any person struggling to emerge from the dark zone:
“I say to you: One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.”
Anne King
A small village in Provence
Eygalieres
Creeping down the stairs in the early morning, the lightwell above casts a rosy glow on the natural handmade tiles of the staircase. I note the one with the dogs footprint deeply embedded in the clay as I do every time I walk up or down, thinking again of the vision and attention to detail of the people who had renovated this fine 19th century French ‘mas’, or farmhouse, in the south west of Provence.
I am glad to be up early before the others; glad to have a few minutes to myself to savor the dawn, and to pay attention to the strange and wonderful sensations of the place.
I cross the long dining room, dark except for the weak light coming through glass panes in the front door. At one end, a wide stone fireplace is filled with swathes of fragrant lavender, above it a gutsy modern painting in the style of Cezanne who was a native of this area. The French oak sideboard bristles with local wines, red white and a remarkable rose, which changes my taste in wine forever. The long table seats 16 or more but we never use it, preferring the kitchen which is flooded with morning light. It is an inviting room at any time, with its scrubbed table, huge Lacanche range and profusion of copper saucepans, conical sieves, colanders and large metal serving spoons hanging above.
The kitchen is a recent addition to the house. Two walls are completely glass from the waist up in narrow panels between steel frames to deter would-be criminals, which are the bane of the wealthy absentee landlords of Provence. It is not unusual for whole house contents to be removed, and so we have a resident caretaker living in a flat attached to the house to keep an eye on things, mow the lawns, feed the chickens, and look after the swimming pool. The pool is large and inviting, with a low white drystone wall surrounding it and a changing room and shade area alongside. There are comfortable reclining chairs and umbrellas and a paved deck edged with an appetizing hedge of rosemary.
I open the front door and step out onto the stone paving. At once the heady fragrance of lavender surrounds me and looking straight ahead over a good 100 metres of lawn area, I see in neat straight lines, a mass of lavender, more than I have ever seen in my life. Some is trimmed down into neat round clumps but the majority is in full flower, not the glorious bright purple of the high season but still abundant..
To my left on the paving is another large table and chairs ideal for al fresco dining. The sturdy façade of the house is honestly built of local stone in a natural blonde shade. It has big arched windows on this the south face, which allows the light to flood into the study and lounge in wide dusty shafts, picking up the creamy white covers on the big comfy sofas.
The lounge or ‘salon’ is large, 75 square metres, with a massive fireplace and two grand pianos, one a Steinway, as the owner is a concert pianist. The ceiling hangs low overhead supported by massive dark beams, each a whole tree. This gives an effect of reassuring solidity, softened by the addition of warm woven rugs and cushions.
The north side of the house is almost completely windowless to protect it from the raging mistrals which come in three day bursts, and have been known to drive men insane. We experienced an autumn mistral, a ferocious gusting wind, which literally pushed your body along if you didn’t resist it. The full force of an icy winter mistral would be hard to take.
To my right is a bench seat below the kitchen window and a white pebbled parking area which leads crisply to the little chicken shed where a couple of dear little chooks give us two large free range eggs each day and keep us amused with their antics. One day I spotted a crazy dance, the chickens leaping up and down in turn to peck the grapes off the vine which was 20 centimetres or so above their heads. When the shed door opened they would race off together across the lawn towards the orchard and olive grove, their legs striding out in enormous leaps, and a joyous cackle trailing behind them.
Behind the olive, almond and fig trees is a huge vegetable garden, with 10 metre rows of oxheart tomatoes, orange and red capsicums, corn, sprawling vines of plum tomatoes, large leaf parsley, chives, basil and garlic. Everything needed for a good Mediterranean meal, except the fish and meat, and that can be bought from the Friday market which takes over the main street of the village Eygalieres, five minutes away by car.
Alongside the vegetable garden is a patch of luscious vines, 100 Cyrah (Shraz) and 10 Viognier, used for making wine each year in the old stone barn, and some very rare Jacquez vines, banned for wine production because of their grapes’ high sugar content.
Each day, it is a pleasure to take a basket and walk down to the vegetable garden to gather supplies. I follow the sunny stone path around the raised kitchen herb garden,
stop and peer into the bristling reeds surrounding the frog pond, where two or three large brown speckled frogs plop into the water at my approach. Later we would see the tadpoles hatch, and the large flat waterlily pads would be scattered with dozens of tiny frogs.
I brush through a narrow channel in the lavender patch on to the orchard and nut trees picking the soft ripe black figs, popping one in my mouth and carrying the rest carefully so they won’t get squashed.
In the vegetable garden, I nudge the leaves away from the mass of writhing plum tomato vines. Gathering the bright red fruit, my mind runs through a litany of delicious uses I can put them to. We make fresh and tasty tomato salads with basil and chives, our own rich pizza topping, semi-dried tomatoes which burst powerfully on the tastebuds, and many roasted and grilled tomato dishes. They are so ripe and sweet; they lend themselves to creating beautiful meals. I move on to the capsicums, and collect 5 or 6 at a time, small slightly bitter orange ones I haven’t seen before and big red juicy ones, which go so well with the basil parsley and chives which I cut in great fistfuls, and stand in vases around the kitchen.
By eight o’clock, we’re all up, and a volunteer drives to the village to collect the croissants. Each of us has our favorite. I like the plain ones, warm and flaky from the oven, which smell so appetizing. Chris likes the ‘au chocolat’, and Jurgen’s pleasure is ‘one with the world’ as he calls it, a delicious concoction of croissant, cream custard and almonds. We gather round the table, and a contented groaning ensues, as we devour the lot, spread with lashings of butter and confitures and washed down with cup after cup of strong fresh coffee from the Miele machine installed in the kitchen. And so another day begins.
Anne King
Creeping down the stairs in the early morning, the lightwell above casts a rosy glow on the natural handmade tiles of the staircase. I note the one with the dogs footprint deeply embedded in the clay as I do every time I walk up or down, thinking again of the vision and attention to detail of the people who had renovated this fine 19th century French ‘mas’, or farmhouse, in the south west of Provence.
I am glad to be up early before the others; glad to have a few minutes to myself to savor the dawn, and to pay attention to the strange and wonderful sensations of the place.
I cross the long dining room, dark except for the weak light coming through glass panes in the front door. At one end, a wide stone fireplace is filled with swathes of fragrant lavender, above it a gutsy modern painting in the style of Cezanne who was a native of this area. The French oak sideboard bristles with local wines, red white and a remarkable rose, which changes my taste in wine forever. The long table seats 16 or more but we never use it, preferring the kitchen which is flooded with morning light. It is an inviting room at any time, with its scrubbed table, huge Lacanche range and profusion of copper saucepans, conical sieves, colanders and large metal serving spoons hanging above.
The kitchen is a recent addition to the house. Two walls are completely glass from the waist up in narrow panels between steel frames to deter would-be criminals, which are the bane of the wealthy absentee landlords of Provence. It is not unusual for whole house contents to be removed, and so we have a resident caretaker living in a flat attached to the house to keep an eye on things, mow the lawns, feed the chickens, and look after the swimming pool. The pool is large and inviting, with a low white drystone wall surrounding it and a changing room and shade area alongside. There are comfortable reclining chairs and umbrellas and a paved deck edged with an appetizing hedge of rosemary.
I open the front door and step out onto the stone paving. At once the heady fragrance of lavender surrounds me and looking straight ahead over a good 100 metres of lawn area, I see in neat straight lines, a mass of lavender, more than I have ever seen in my life. Some is trimmed down into neat round clumps but the majority is in full flower, not the glorious bright purple of the high season but still abundant..
To my left on the paving is another large table and chairs ideal for al fresco dining. The sturdy façade of the house is honestly built of local stone in a natural blonde shade. It has big arched windows on this the south face, which allows the light to flood into the study and lounge in wide dusty shafts, picking up the creamy white covers on the big comfy sofas.
The lounge or ‘salon’ is large, 75 square metres, with a massive fireplace and two grand pianos, one a Steinway, as the owner is a concert pianist. The ceiling hangs low overhead supported by massive dark beams, each a whole tree. This gives an effect of reassuring solidity, softened by the addition of warm woven rugs and cushions.
The north side of the house is almost completely windowless to protect it from the raging mistrals which come in three day bursts, and have been known to drive men insane. We experienced an autumn mistral, a ferocious gusting wind, which literally pushed your body along if you didn’t resist it. The full force of an icy winter mistral would be hard to take.
To my right is a bench seat below the kitchen window and a white pebbled parking area which leads crisply to the little chicken shed where a couple of dear little chooks give us two large free range eggs each day and keep us amused with their antics. One day I spotted a crazy dance, the chickens leaping up and down in turn to peck the grapes off the vine which was 20 centimetres or so above their heads. When the shed door opened they would race off together across the lawn towards the orchard and olive grove, their legs striding out in enormous leaps, and a joyous cackle trailing behind them.
Behind the olive, almond and fig trees is a huge vegetable garden, with 10 metre rows of oxheart tomatoes, orange and red capsicums, corn, sprawling vines of plum tomatoes, large leaf parsley, chives, basil and garlic. Everything needed for a good Mediterranean meal, except the fish and meat, and that can be bought from the Friday market which takes over the main street of the village Eygalieres, five minutes away by car.
Alongside the vegetable garden is a patch of luscious vines, 100 Cyrah (Shraz) and 10 Viognier, used for making wine each year in the old stone barn, and some very rare Jacquez vines, banned for wine production because of their grapes’ high sugar content.
Each day, it is a pleasure to take a basket and walk down to the vegetable garden to gather supplies. I follow the sunny stone path around the raised kitchen herb garden,
stop and peer into the bristling reeds surrounding the frog pond, where two or three large brown speckled frogs plop into the water at my approach. Later we would see the tadpoles hatch, and the large flat waterlily pads would be scattered with dozens of tiny frogs.
I brush through a narrow channel in the lavender patch on to the orchard and nut trees picking the soft ripe black figs, popping one in my mouth and carrying the rest carefully so they won’t get squashed.
In the vegetable garden, I nudge the leaves away from the mass of writhing plum tomato vines. Gathering the bright red fruit, my mind runs through a litany of delicious uses I can put them to. We make fresh and tasty tomato salads with basil and chives, our own rich pizza topping, semi-dried tomatoes which burst powerfully on the tastebuds, and many roasted and grilled tomato dishes. They are so ripe and sweet; they lend themselves to creating beautiful meals. I move on to the capsicums, and collect 5 or 6 at a time, small slightly bitter orange ones I haven’t seen before and big red juicy ones, which go so well with the basil parsley and chives which I cut in great fistfuls, and stand in vases around the kitchen.
By eight o’clock, we’re all up, and a volunteer drives to the village to collect the croissants. Each of us has our favorite. I like the plain ones, warm and flaky from the oven, which smell so appetizing. Chris likes the ‘au chocolat’, and Jurgen’s pleasure is ‘one with the world’ as he calls it, a delicious concoction of croissant, cream custard and almonds. We gather round the table, and a contented groaning ensues, as we devour the lot, spread with lashings of butter and confitures and washed down with cup after cup of strong fresh coffee from the Miele machine installed in the kitchen. And so another day begins.
Anne King
Skin
Sue cuts the skin, it’s the same as always. Tough.
“ Damn this skin.”
She takes the blade out, it’s 10 inches long and heavy, solid metal. She sets up the sharpener, the big metal plate with the grooves. Pours the alumina over it, places the knife on the plate, pushes it slowly round and round, round and round, for 5 minutes, turns it over, round and round, the same again for 5 minutes. Cleans it off, back to the lab, back to the skin, tries again.
Sue hates walking through the tunnel, it’s dank and ill-lit, but it cuts off 3 or 4 minutes from the walk between the lab. and the shop. She’s very aware of how alone she is, down there in the bowels of the hospital. Big pipes run alongside, and strange loud clunking sounds happen suddenly, making her jump. She keeps her fingers crossed that she won’t meet Phil.
She hears him before she sees him; an erratic squeaking that couldn’t be anything else. It’s Phil alright, trundling back towards the mortuary with the death cart. He’s always got such a strange smile, such a weird look in his eyes. Phil squeaks past; the body covered with a tarpaulin sheet. Sue smiles awkwardly and hurries on.
“What about that eh? Bet you wish you had one of these.” The boy’s rolled up sleeve was pulled back to expose a new garish tattoo on his arm, DEATH OR GLORY, the letters curling round a ruby red rose.
She cuts the skin; it’s better this time. Four microns thin, the sections peel off the paraffin wax block, joined together by the heat of friction, a little ribbon of skin, set in wax. All its cells denuded of water, and filled with paraffin wax, so that it can be cut very thin. The sharpened blade has cut through this time without too much tearing. She picks up the ribbon with a sable brush and a pair of very fine tweezers, and floats it out on a warm water bath, which makes it stretch out to its fullest extent.
The boy climbed into the wooden box. “It’s fine dad, fits just fine.”
“ It’s well made son, I’ve dovetailed all the joints, stained and varnished it.”
She meets her friend for lunch in the café which is down in the basement, drab and old. Pipes hang everywhere just below the low ceiling which is a dirty yellow cream colour.
It’s cheap so they eat there for preference, they’re always broke. Judy tells her about the boy in her ward, only 18, dying of blood poisoning. He’d had a tattoo done, and now he
was dying.
“He’s such a nice boy; it’s so sad. Why do the good ones always die young?”
“I don’t think they do – it’s just that you notice them, like when you start driving a beetle, suddenly you see beetles everywhere.”
“I suppose so. It makes me sad though – dying for the sake of a skin decoration.”
Sue bumps into Phil outside the mortuary on her way back from lunch. He’s bragging to one of the doctors about his prize roses.
“Best in all of Mornington they are. I win the prize every year regular as clockwork. My ruby red roses, best every time. Blood and bone that’s the secret. Plenty of fertilizer.”
She has trouble looking him in the face; he’s forgotten to put in his teeth today, and his face looks all rubbery and weird. He’s not dirty; he always takes off his bloody apron when he comes out of the mortuary. He looks showered and shaved, in his white overalls and white gum boots. His skin is pink and healthy, his hair shining white.
He sort of glows like a man who loves his life, she thinks, how odd when he’s surrounded by death. He must live for his prize roses.
She smiles and sidles out past the mortuary scales, glad to get away.
The skin looks bright pink on the slide, it’s been through the little glass pots full of different solutions. Xylene to dissolve the wax, alcohol to dry it out, blue and pink dyes to show up the nuclei and cytoplasm. It’s had a cover slip popped on to keep it clean and in place; now she sends it in to the pathologist, in a folder with the other twenty slides from the post mortem. She glances at the paperwork, “ Age: 18.”
It’s only then that she realizes who it is.
It must be that boy with the tattoo, “ Death or Glory” poor kid.
Judy told her about the boy’s family being very open minded about things.
“They’re doing the whole funeral themselves. They’ve got it all worked out; his Dad even made the coffin.
She’d never seen a post mortem. Couldn’t face it, didn’t want to know what people looked like inside. It was bad enough having to go in there to empty out the specimen pots from the operating theatres each month. All the kidneys, uteri, bowels, and breasts floating in their brown formalin. They all had to be put down the mincer in the mortuary.
Once she and her friend Clare had got into a fit of uncontrollable giggles. A head of femur had got stuck in the mincer, and all the organs and goo were backed up and wouldn’t go down. She’d had to get a broom handle and ram the mincer again and again, trying to shift it, the roar of the labouring machine echoing in the tiled room.
“Horror movie” Clare yelled, tears running down her face.
“I hate to think where all this stuff goes”, Sue shouted, as the head of femur went ‘thump’ down into the mincer and all the organs flew down after it.
“Glad we don’t get the amputations.”
She had made a fool of herself once. The specimen lift from the theatre had pinged, and she’d gone over to it, and found a big black polythene bag inside. When she picked it up it was warm; her hands told her it was a leg.
“Ugh!” she’d said, and dropped it.
They’d all laughed at her.
She met Phil as she was flying out the back door at knock-off time. He was tying on his helmet and climbing onto his old motor scooter. He looked bright and happy, glad to be heading home to his roses.
“Bye Phil”, she said, “Drive safely”.
“Bye dear, see you tomorrow.”
Off he drove, a man with a mission, bulging saddlebags hanging on either side of his scooter.
Anne King
Kathy’s story. Anne King
.
I looked at the old blokes, and all of a sudden, I understood my old man. It was as if he was standing there with me. He had died two days before; there’s no doubt he was on my mind, but this day was like a gift from him, to make me understand – himself, men and war, humanity, the whole goddamn thing.
It was a cold rainy April day, 1998. I was stuck in town watching an Anzac Parade, not through choice, I just couldn’t move till the main street was clear.
At once I was struck by how few old diggers there were, only a handful of men and the brass band, frail and elderly, but proudly striding out as best they could. At the rear a guy about my own age, forty-five or thereabouts, marched along. His face showed he had been through a lot, and he was trying to hold himself together and get through this march as though it was a hurdle he had to overcome for the sake of his sanity, or his soul. Across the road a smartly dressed man of similar age was watching the Vietnam vet. intently. He stepped forward and put his hand on the vet’s creased and shabby suit, ‘Good on yer mate’ , he said, “I wish I’d marched too.”
To my surprise I was very moved by the little procession. I’d never had much time for Anzac celebrations, I thought it was men’s chest-beating and didn’t really approve. But when the old guy making the speech read out a letter from an 18 year old in the first world war to his mother about his terrible fear and his certainty that he would die tomorrow; when he touched his heart, and said ‘ Lest we forget’, it came to me in a flash what this ceremony was all about, and I realized these old men were not warmongers, as I’d thought, they were the only ones left from the group that had gone to war at 17 or 18 and watched their dear friends die before their eyes. It was about remembering these young men, who’d never had the chance to live out their lives.
I thought immediately of my own sons, now at that very age themselves. Of how I would feel if they had to go off to war. Then I thought of my dear old Dad, who had joined up at 17 for his own war.
We’d never really been close Dad and I, though we made an effort, and I’d always admired him. He was a working class man from Yorkshire, who had made something of himself. He was always positive, and when he was captured at Dunkirk and ended up in a German prisoner-of-war camp, it was full of educated men who were hanging around with nothing to do. He said to himself ‘I’m going to treat this like a university and educate myself.’ By the time he got back to Yorkshire five years later he could speak fluent French and German, could knock out a tune on the saxophone and several other musical instruments, had gained confidence acting and singing in the productions put on in the camps, and had become articulate and organized by sitting on many committees. He had read literature that he would never have come across before, having left school at 14 to go out to work.
He had seen many friends die though, both before and then in the prison camp, and when he came home there was a deep hidden anger inside him that would flare up from time to time for the rest of his life. Mum told me he was a changed man, that anger had not been there before he went away, but we kids only knew what we saw, and I was a bit afraid of him.
Standing there in the rain, my understanding of Dad came to me as a revelation. It was as though I was inside his head, and heard his thoughts as a young man, felt his pain. Quaked with that same terror he must have felt as an 18 year old facing gunfire. Suffered the resentment and anguish on his return home, having left his youth behind in a prison camp.
‘Lest we Forget’, and I saw again the Vietnam veteran, my own age, still suffering emotionally from his war, and from the rejection when he returned. Had my father still suffered on at fifty? ‘Lest we Forget”, and I saw again how many families must have wept watching their young boys go off to war, and coming home maimed in body and mind, if they came home at all.
‘Lest we Forget’, the old guy said, with his hand on his heart. Those words made a massive imprint on my soul. I felt connected with all these men, past and present, who were remembering their lost young friends. I became one of the women who had watched them go off to war. In my heart at that moment I stopped judging my father, and truly accepted him and loved him for who he was.
868
.
I looked at the old blokes, and all of a sudden, I understood my old man. It was as if he was standing there with me. He had died two days before; there’s no doubt he was on my mind, but this day was like a gift from him, to make me understand – himself, men and war, humanity, the whole goddamn thing.
It was a cold rainy April day, 1998. I was stuck in town watching an Anzac Parade, not through choice, I just couldn’t move till the main street was clear.
At once I was struck by how few old diggers there were, only a handful of men and the brass band, frail and elderly, but proudly striding out as best they could. At the rear a guy about my own age, forty-five or thereabouts, marched along. His face showed he had been through a lot, and he was trying to hold himself together and get through this march as though it was a hurdle he had to overcome for the sake of his sanity, or his soul. Across the road a smartly dressed man of similar age was watching the Vietnam vet. intently. He stepped forward and put his hand on the vet’s creased and shabby suit, ‘Good on yer mate’ , he said, “I wish I’d marched too.”
To my surprise I was very moved by the little procession. I’d never had much time for Anzac celebrations, I thought it was men’s chest-beating and didn’t really approve. But when the old guy making the speech read out a letter from an 18 year old in the first world war to his mother about his terrible fear and his certainty that he would die tomorrow; when he touched his heart, and said ‘ Lest we forget’, it came to me in a flash what this ceremony was all about, and I realized these old men were not warmongers, as I’d thought, they were the only ones left from the group that had gone to war at 17 or 18 and watched their dear friends die before their eyes. It was about remembering these young men, who’d never had the chance to live out their lives.
I thought immediately of my own sons, now at that very age themselves. Of how I would feel if they had to go off to war. Then I thought of my dear old Dad, who had joined up at 17 for his own war.
We’d never really been close Dad and I, though we made an effort, and I’d always admired him. He was a working class man from Yorkshire, who had made something of himself. He was always positive, and when he was captured at Dunkirk and ended up in a German prisoner-of-war camp, it was full of educated men who were hanging around with nothing to do. He said to himself ‘I’m going to treat this like a university and educate myself.’ By the time he got back to Yorkshire five years later he could speak fluent French and German, could knock out a tune on the saxophone and several other musical instruments, had gained confidence acting and singing in the productions put on in the camps, and had become articulate and organized by sitting on many committees. He had read literature that he would never have come across before, having left school at 14 to go out to work.
He had seen many friends die though, both before and then in the prison camp, and when he came home there was a deep hidden anger inside him that would flare up from time to time for the rest of his life. Mum told me he was a changed man, that anger had not been there before he went away, but we kids only knew what we saw, and I was a bit afraid of him.
Standing there in the rain, my understanding of Dad came to me as a revelation. It was as though I was inside his head, and heard his thoughts as a young man, felt his pain. Quaked with that same terror he must have felt as an 18 year old facing gunfire. Suffered the resentment and anguish on his return home, having left his youth behind in a prison camp.
‘Lest we Forget’, and I saw again the Vietnam veteran, my own age, still suffering emotionally from his war, and from the rejection when he returned. Had my father still suffered on at fifty? ‘Lest we Forget”, and I saw again how many families must have wept watching their young boys go off to war, and coming home maimed in body and mind, if they came home at all.
‘Lest we Forget’, the old guy said, with his hand on his heart. Those words made a massive imprint on my soul. I felt connected with all these men, past and present, who were remembering their lost young friends. I became one of the women who had watched them go off to war. In my heart at that moment I stopped judging my father, and truly accepted him and loved him for who he was.
868
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