Connection

Saturday 29 November 2014

OUR BIGGEST PORES are on the bottoms of our feet. Designed, when barefoot, to connect us with and to take up the energy of the earth. Balance, alignment, soul.

Jacko makes his way back to his wife and granddaughter this weekend, so his children tell me. His final journey of this life. He too will become part of the crust beneath our feet.

It's not about me, I know. Yet all of a sudden I crave connection. To walk shoeless. To gather my son up and squeeze him even more fervently. To hug someone else and let them hold me tightly without worrying that they're taking liberties with my heart and me.

It's about time boys were given boys' names in this family, Jacky states out loud, as my delicately-featured, long-haired son makes explorations: beneath his robotic bed, inside his waste paper bin.

Jack is not my father. But such insulting endearments are designed to make me feel as if he could be. He knows, I am certain, how much over the decades I've appreciated, needed that. To feel part of something special. To belong somewhere constantly safe.

He would tell his own son what a fool he had been to let me go - biggest mistake of his life - even though I was the one who left.

Thank you Jack, for all of that. For loving me.

Queen's Park Rangers are playing someone or other on the tele. He tells us that he ate porridge for breakfast. But he's lying, so the nurses he serenades with Scottish auld time tunes inform us. That, and he's been caught smoking roll-ups from his bed. Outwardly frowned upon. Inside smiling that he's still got it.

Full of energy as always. The Highland Fling. Yet small, shrunken, jutting and spindly, as he has been getting more of in recent years.

Travel well Jack over the next few days without your machines. I love you. We are always connected. My bare feet on this earth. Your charming caustic wit.

Jack's 75th birthday back in 2010. He knows how to party.

xx