Father's Day
It was recently Father' s Day. I was given a lie-in (we take turns at the weekend) and Tom made me the most perfect, beautiful card any son has ever given his father in the full history of ridiculous tradition. Maybe this wasn't the best card ever but the jolt in my heart from being given the card is an unexplainable joy understood by other loving and loved fathers. I received one card fewer than I wanted. Ageing
I have jogged to and from work recently, 14k each way. I also cycle in and out when I can and when the weather is kind. I can't afford a sports car and was warned off motorbikes after a bone crunching crash 14 years ago so I ride bicycles. I don't wear Lycra, I don't ride bikes with drop handlebars and I only ride bakes that are customised or bespoke hand-built (by me). I am proud to actively avoid the MAMIL label (Middle Aged Man In Lycra).
I recently got an unusually positioned body piercing (septum), my first since youth, and a prominently placed but delicate tattoo, my first since youth.
I have taken a new young worker under my wing. She reminds me of myself at her age- hopeful, fiercely inclusive, idealistic, a constructive agitator- and is only a few years older than Ruby would be now.
I avoid bread, rice, pasta and potatoes, I eat no meat, I try to include chia seeds in every meal. I refuse all but the best coffee and rate pink gin as the pinnacle of alcoholic sophistication.
I buy jazz records and have restarted a love affair with my turntable.
I wear a cap and shorts and trainers. This has been my uniform of choice for many years but now, at 42, I know how ridiculous I look. I realised that the over couloured trainers I collect- one of my few habits- are worn only by young women along with equally sporty clothing or by middle-aged men who fool themselves they get away with it because they are being lightly ironic.
Silences
The silence of being together with someone I love- where noise is an unnecessary obstacle to connection. The silence can be still and deep like a dark sea when mutually agreed abatement provides a shared calmnes. Or it can be dynamic and clattering like a trout-filled stream, where a breath is slightly deeper than usual or an arm is resting upturned, taut not limp. The silence speaks to us, it is of itself, the third member of our group.
The silence of the studious office, the necessary silence of concentration and where productivity is a result of obvious focus. Every hour or two my thoughts suddenly break free, very suddenly and without warning, to utterly unconnected ideas, often Ruby. The dissonance between the professional and the intensely private thoughts can be jarring but then I realise, of course, this is the regular unpredictability of grief. And it should come as no surprise, but always does, that such apparently opposite cognitive functions- the professional and the personal- can occur almost simultaneously.
The discomforting silence of other people attempting to recognise my grief and empathise. At times when I am more fragile they are surely well meant but rarely sound platitudinous.
The silence of being alone which is an unhurried but considered quiet. This silence is always welcome and, increasingly as I age, useful.
