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Bonfire Night

Blue Sky Yorkshire, if only this was the norm. Bonfire Night was certainly way more cloudy, way more drizzly. A few very damp fireworks, definitely way less than previous years. The only disruptive noise coming from next door’s mad Dog barking incessantly at the local Owl. The Owl sits on a tree overlooking the garden, and turns it back to the Dog. The Dog must get really frustrated at being ignored.

Hawklad loves F1, he has a real fascination for the motorsport. At the weekend we went to a talk by a former Team Principal and real character, Austrian Guenther Steiner. Hawklad loved it, especially as we got seats that were not next to anyone else, that really helps. If he feels hemmed in then it becomes way too stressful for him. If he feels stressed then he usually has to quickly leave. He has survived a number of rock concerts largely because of the combination of the noise, the darkness and people focused on the stage. This all adds to a feeling of anonymity, that’s the key. Plus he can move around to find less busy areas. He just doesn’t want to feel like he is seen.

This was all brought into stark focus after the talk had finished. Hawklad put his head down, hoody over his head. Out of the Arena, through the streets for 40 minutes, he never looked up once. Only when he got back into the safety of the car, did he raise his eyes and relax. The social side to life is so difficult for him.

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Huts

Tropical Scarborough on a blisteringly hot Autumn Day.

Forget the ice cream, hot soup was the order of the day.

Not sure if it was just the weather but when I offered to buy one of the brightly coloured beach hutches, Hawklad firmly declined…. The huts cost between about £70,000 to £160,000. You can rent them as well, Peak times set you back something like £300 for a week. For that you get a few kitchen items, a sink, deckchairs, use of the shared public toilets and free pet seagulls.

Peak includes Christmas, Wow that would be a brave call. Not sure the paper party hats would stay on too long with the inevitable Winter North Sea skin shredding sand blasting wind and icy horizontal rain.

Walking along the beach we passed a few groups of teenagers clearly starting the Half Term Break with some beach fun. I couldn’t help think about how Hawklad might view these scenes. It’s a part of teenage life that has so far eluded him, spending far too much time with his ancient relic of a Dad. Not sure those teenagers would spend too much time discussing beach huts…..

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Space

For a relatively small land, Switzerland often feels like it has so much space.

Sometimes we can have too much space….

When Hawklad was at Nursery and First School he had plenty of friends but things change.

Aspergers, going from a Tiny School to a huge Main School, Covid Insolation, Home Schooling, Rural Life, LIFE.

Currently Hawklad now finds himself self with only one Friend he has contact with, and that is only sporadically. Been like that for over 4 years now. No sign that position will change imminently.

Too much space.

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Dad

An evening Yorkshire Forest walk.

A thought struck me as we ambled towards the light. I would have loved to have done something like this with my Dad. Don’t get me wrong, we occasionally had trips out, but they were pretty rare. Looking back to my childhood I can still count the trips. I remember Dad taking me to see the 125 High Speed Locomotive, back then it looked like a Space Age Rocket rather than a Passenger Train as it passed through Darlington Station. I remember a trip to a Train Museum where I found an old ticket machine that dished out things that looked like raffle tickets. As we walked around the museum he eagerly checked out each steam train while I trailed a few paces behind. There was another trip to see a charity cricket match featuring the sporting legend Fred Truman. That was the trip Dad sent me into the players showers to get Fred’s autograph…. Not sure that’s happening these days…. A few trips to the coast to see a storm, sat in Dad’s banged out car, I’m eating chips while Dad is silently smoking.

The whole family would have an annual trip to Scarborough. Dad would frequently disappear for most of the days to do his thing. I can remember seeing him sat on a bench some distance away from the rest of the family as they tried to stop me from falling off the Donkey Rides on the beach.

That’s it, I can’t remember any other trips with Dad. Definitely no walks through a Forest….

To be completely fair, back then in our northern working class town travel was way less accessible. Few cars, even rarer aircraft tickets…

At home there was similarly limited Dad time. Dad might be briefly pulled away from reading the newspaper to talk, I might get a few words before he buried his head back into the racing and obituary pages. As Dad listened to his radio on an evening I would clearly annoy him with interruptions, you just know when someone wants you to shut up. Volunteering to take him a cup of tea to him while he sat in his Greenhouse might yield me a few minutes being told all about how to grow tomatoes or raspberries. Even when I was sent on a Sunday to the local Pub to tell Dad that his meal was getting cold, I would be lucky to get a brief nod before I was pointed in the direction of the door. On the way home again I trailed a few paces behind while. We just didn’t talk that much. So few chats with Dad.

Those times were so frustrating to me. I would have loved ME TIME with DAD, yet in reality MY DAD TIME felt very distanced. I’m sure it wasn’t the case but it just felt like I was often a nuisance, a bit in the way, an interruption to Dad’s routines.

The end result was I always felt distant from him. He didn’t understand me and I didn’t really know him. I knew he liked trains, liked cricket, he liked fishing, he liked gardening, he liked beer, he smoked, he was in the army. Looking back, I now realise that he wasn’t happy, probably chronically depressed and I still don’t know him. I will never know him.

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Donuts

Another late evening trip out for Hawklad, this time a couple of hours drive to the beautiful Peak District. It might well have been quicker but I managed to get lost in the dreaded Yorkshire Twilight Zone, otherwise known as the city Sheffield’s road network.

On the bright side, while lost we discovered a Dunkin Donuts store. One of those occasions where I happily ignore any gluten issues I may have for the GREATER GOOD….

The downside of evening trips is that you can far too quickly start to run out of light, BUT for those couple of hours, having somewhere as amazing as this place basically to ourselves, absolutely wonderful for Hawklad.

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6.30PM

Summer poses its own set of challenges. This season’s weather hasn’t been great with few warm weather days. Yes there has been sun but it’s often felt more like late October than high Summer. But the weather hasn’t deterred the crowds. Try to go anywhere around midday and the car parks are mobbed. Hawklad doesn’t do mobbed car parks….

But leave it until the evening and suddenly the car parks are empty. Ok that usually means the venue is shut but not everywhere. Just like Dalby Forest. A few hours earlier this walk would have been rammed with hikers, dog walkers and mountain bikers but now at 6-30pm it’s all change. It’s quiet, we are the only car in the car park. A 2 hour walk and we didn’t see another soul.

Or just like 6-30pm on the North East Coast. A couple of intrepid surfers enjoying warming drinks on the beach. A couple of ball chasing dogs with well wrapped up owners. That’s it. Solitude.

Yes 6-30PM cuts down the places open but it opens up so much space and peace. It works for us. Just don’t forget the Woolly Hats, it is Summer here.

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What did it cost them

I ended up with way too many missing pieces from the jigsaw which painted the life of my parents before they had our family, before me. I never took the time to ask for those missing pieces when I had the chance…..DEEP SIGH.

But I can sketch some details with the pieces I do have.

Dad loved playing cricket, loved to go and see Yorkshire play. He would go for long bike rides, go fishing, loved to ride on steam trains. He was also a bit of a party animal, putting on his suit and heading to the dance halls. He liked to look after himself, liked to be fit. Apparently he was also a bit of a comedian, very gregarious.

Mum loved to dress up and go dancing with her friends. Way too much dancing for her parents liking. She loved music, especially the likes of Crosby, Martin and her always favourite Sinatra. She also loved the cinema but only to see musicals or romance. She also really wanted to travel, wanted to see Paris and New York. In a word, apparently she was FUN.

Then they had three daughters and two sons.

Dad never talked about it, but looking back I’m convinced he fought depression for years. Boughts of heavy smoking and drinking. Hours sat in his chair, pretending to read the same newspaper page yet eyes fixed on a blank wall. Volcanic eruptions of anger, followed by days of silence. Those eyes, eyes filled with suppressed tears, frustration and anguish, was that why he frequently avoided eye contact. Some days he seemed unable to function, rooted to his bed, did sleep bring some temporary relief. Maybe he opened up at Work or at the Pub, not to his family. At home, one word summed the mood, UNAPPROACHABLE. Maybe DISTANCED is better. One word definitely didn’t fit Dad, HAPPY. I can’t remember him smiling or laughing. He worked, he gardened, he went to the pub.

Mum was more open. She said she struggled. She would apologise sometimes simply saying something like she wasn’t feeling like herself. Yes I can remember Mum laughing and smiling, but I can also remember way too many tears. She often seemed so sad. I remember a doctor visit, mum rooted to a sofa, talk of a nervous breakdown. She soldiered on. She had never touched alcohol but started to drink some sherry to calm her stomach. She went shopping, went to see her parents, went to her part time job, went to school evenings when school needed to see a parent, she looked after the house and US. She never went out socially, never met friends, never seemed to listen to music. She never put on a dress, she never made it to Paris or New York.

What did life, marriage and parenting COST THEM….

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Moors

Summer on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Just a few clouds make such a huge difference to the mood here.

Did I ever really grieve, TWICE

Back in 2016, almost to the day. I was sorting out mum’s funeral, broken yet my mind was on my seriously ill partner. It felt like grief had been put on hold. Then a few weeks later I’m sorting out my partners funeral and again …..

Was I really grieving, how much was I allowing myself to grieve.

My focus was on our son, trying to keep my head above the single parenting waves. Looking back I was living through Hawklad. If he was happy, I was happy. If he struggled, I struggled. Did I ever really think and meditate about what grief and death truly meant, how it was changing me.

Probably NOT.

Probably figured out way more about me as a PARENT.

Maybe the Mood will change one day and I can start to seek a little more clarity on grief and how it’s changed me, still changing me.

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Powers

There comes a stage when our kids start to develop superpowers as a direct result of trying to live with their strange and ancient parents. It’s the power of second guessing, otherwise known as the power to interpret muppet parents. Maybe it’s the result of too many sleepless nights, too many family crises, too many additions to the ‘to do list’. Maybe it’s not enough caffeine, too much mind numbing tv but often parents function with only 90% of the words they know, the other 10% is either randomly lost or corrupted. The end result is we often don’t make sense and yet our kids can somehow make sense of the rubbish that sometimes comes out of our mouths.

Example one of those superpower from our house…

Asking Hawklad what he wanted for tea… “do you want thingy and chips”. Seamlessly he replies “yes I’ll have an omelette but maybe with vegetables…”

Example two of the superpower….

Asking Hawklad “have you seen the erm, you know”. Without taking his eyes of his book, he points to the sofa, “the remote control is there”…

Example three….

In the car, we were talking history and Hawklad mentioned Theodore Roosevelt. His muppet dad immediately butted in with his Einstein like intellect….

“Theodore, wasn’t he one of the hamsters in that tv thing…”

Almost without blinking Hawklad replied

“You mean Chipmunk…. Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks..”

I was surprisingly close, Theodore was a rodent. As we don’t get chipmunks here, maybe we need a British version of that show. Harry and the Hamsters. Rather than singing pop songs badly, The Hamsters could recite Shakespeare really badly with annoying high pitch voices.

Example four….

“Erm, you had a {…. mumbling as I fight with the vacuum cleaner, …}, erm Whatsaface {…. more mumbling as I’m distracted by the vacuum cleaner bag emptying its contents onto the floor…}, don’t forget”

Hawklad somehow understood what I was trying to say and he went to phone a friend who had called him earlier….

BUT here is the thing, it’s a selective superpower that our children wield. The power seems to fail if the parent starts talking homework, housework or personal grooming…….

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Lost time

Sat in a surprisingly quiet cinema, watching Despicable Me 4. I could hear Hawklad laughing, along with his fellow Minion Movie Goers…. I smiled then slowly an emotion swept over me. One I’ve had before in these nearly 8 years of single parenting but never this strong, this striking. Would she recognise his laugh, it’s been 8 long years, so much has changed.

His mum never got to see or experience this moment, all the moments. In 2016, when he was just 8, she left this stage. She has missed out on so much, the highs, the lows, the laughs, the tears, the struggles, the adventures, the family time, seeing all the great strides he has taken. Would she even recognise him now.

She missed so much.

Missed so much precious time.

I know the value of that now, I didn’t a few years back. Maybe that’s the thing about LOSS and BEREAVEMENT. You get to see the fragility of life and what is lost. You start to develop a better focus on the value of time and the pricelessness of the precious moments.

Lake Thun, Spiez, Switzerland