on being lucky

ON BEING LUCKY

I once consulted a Chinese woman acupuncturist.    After seeing her for several sessions she told me that when she first saw me,  she thought, Here comes Good Luck Woman.   She was not a flattering sort of woman and had  made several interesting comments already, so   I was intrigued and asked her how she could tell.  The way your head sit on shoulders, the way you look out of eyes, how your feet hit the ground.  So I just agreed  with her. I have always felt myself to be a lucky woman.

I was fortunate enough to be  accounted beautiful and to have been regarded as clever. I do not say these things boastfully for they are in  no way deserved by me or any similar endowed woman.  They are a birth gift, entirely undeserved.   The holder of these wonderful gifts almost always takes them for granted and does not consider  what an undeserved advantage she has in life.    She is always assured of attention.  Not for her the sorrow of seeing an attractive man being completely unware of her existence while he pays court to some pretty bimbo  not worth a tenth of her plainer sister.

Beauty is a gift  that bites its holder however, for it goes, Is going to be beauiful one day,  becoming beautiful, beautiful, still beautiful,  was once beautiful.   I am in the latter category now that age and ill heath have robbed my face of its one time beauty.   Nobody looks at an old woman especially and you become just like every other woman.   It’s a salutary lesson, and it would have bee better if you had learned it earlier in life.    I find however that I do not mind.   Other things become more important and you realise that beauty (and cleverness) are over-valued in our society.  

I recently complimented  two young women on their beauty.   One was getting divorced, and I said to her, You are as beautiful as ever.  The other I had not seen for a long time and i told her, I see you are still beautiful.   They both accepted the compliments as I would have done, graciously, it is nice to be  told, but it clearly it was no great novelty for them.  They had heard this often enough before.  Sometimes men would say to me Has anyone ever told you how beautiful   you are, and I always felt like replying, No-one has ever noticed except you.  (But I never did.)

I was fortunate in my husband, who has loved me during all our 46 years of marriage.   One of the last remarks my father made me was on how he had enjoyed my beauty.   My children are  attentive and loving, and my friends are true and generous and helpful and loyal.

One of my children referred to the ‘sacrifice’ that I had made in being their mother.   On reflection I realized she meant the career I might have had if I had not opted to look after them.   I made no sacrifice.  I never wanted a career.  I wanted space and rime to think and write, and to be obliged to obey no orders, and I was fortunate to have a husband who enjoyed having this kind of wife and did  not pressure me to work and earn money.

I wanted children of both sexes and I was lucky enough to have three. all healthy,   which I think every woman appreciates as the great gift that it is.

I wanted to travel and see the world, and again I was lucky that my husband saw in the beginnings of my illness that I would not always be able to travel so freely, so he crammed a lifetime of travelling into a decade or so when I was able to do it, and in modest comfort too.

Now we come  to whether other people would still regard me as lucky.   I have a degenerative illness which is likely to get worse.  I have been able to slow down its progress but it is inexorable and is  getting more difficult to live with.  I am in continual pain and very restricted in what I can physically do.

One of the most difficult things with such a condition is seeing the grief that it causes to those who love you, which they cannot cure or alleviate.  Sometimes they despair or become angry and frustrated and you have to help them to overcome these feelings.  I think it must be easier  to have the illness than to be the partner and watch its effect on someone you love.

But I did not ask why I had been so richly gifted with my good luck tokens, I just took them as my due. So why should I query the inclusion of a few negative conditions.   If someone had said to me, you can have these gifts but they will be accompanied by pain and suffering, I would have taken them still.  Plus we learn in adversity.    Had I not had these diffciulties , I would have  gone on being the rather arrogant and thoughtless of others young woman that I used to be.   I am, though I says it as shouldn’t, much nicer now.

So my dear friends, please forgive my assumptions.   I am one lucky woman, and I’m extremely grateful.

SEPTEMBER SOLACE

SEPTEMBER SOLACE

And my fifth favourite month of the year (after June, May. April and March).

September is a month of transition.   It was the time when ‘kings went forth to battle‘ – the harvest being by then safely gathered in.

MY Image of September is of the scarlet rowanberry against a vivid blue sky.  It is often a month pf fine weather – sunny days and dry.   The drive is on to get in the harvest and when I was a girl and lived in country  areas one would meet tractors and even the enormous combine harvesters on the road  They were not speedy but were also disinclined to get out of the way for anyone else –( far simpler just to ride over them!); and  cars would disappear down narrow tracks in front of them with great promptness to avoid this fate.

There are flowers which specialise in late summer blooming.   Dahlias, the Japanese anemone, buddlea with its halo of butterflies.   The wasps are dying off in the cooler evenings and there are fewer butterflies around.   The birds are stuffing themselves as full as they can manage with nuts and berries and as a result are vivid in colouring.   

We have two birthdays in September – joanna’s on the first, and John’s  sister Helen on the third.

We have been on very successful holidays at this time of year. We used to go to France quite a lot in September when they stop thinking about tourists and start thinking about wine.   We went to Tuscany  the first holiday we took without our children.  Here the weather was delightfully warm, but we noticed that every day at 4 pm the locals would fetch out an umbrella.  We were at first mystified by this for there was no sign of rain.   At precisely the same time every day, a cool wind would suddenly blow in, bringing with it a short but heavy shower of rain.  We bought an umbrella!

You are aware that the nights are drawing in.   It does not get light until about 6 in  the morning.   The leaves have just a hint of autumn colouring.

Although the main body of the swallows has long gone, this year’s generation of new borns has stayed behind, to put on much needed fat, to enable them to survive the long, previously unattempted journey to Africa.   Sometimes you see a solitary swallow by  himself, and you feel like saying to him anxiously, you had better go.   Soon there will be no insects for you to eat.  Go now while the going is good.

And then one day you step outside and you breathe deeply, and suddenly you catch it, the smell of Autumn, still far off and faint on the wind, cool, green and damp, and you think, the summer is over.