Dab Dab Splodge Splodge

Dab dab splodge splodge: here’s how I remember and forget all at the same time.

I copy the locket I wear for her. I collect soggy leaves, muddy berries, mossy bark from near her tree and string it together with fuse wire. I carve an ‘I’ into an apple. Dab dab splodge splodge. 18 marks for 18 months. Do we all think in multiples of nine these days? Nine months here, twice that gone.

Art Every Day Month. Or, as David would have it, Argument Every Day Month, as I fend off my terrorizing three-year-old from dab  dabbing her marks on my work. I call it Iris Every Day Month. Part of my quest to remember and be happy. The inverse of the Christina Rossetti poem:

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann’d:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

I don’t fancy living a poem. So I’ll just keep dabbing and splodging until I make, if not art, then maybe a tiny bit of joy.

‘Art Every Day’ Month

Inspired by Mother Henna’s Day of the Dead Art Swap, I’ve decided to participate in Art Every Day Month for November 2009. I’ve created a new page at the top of the blog where I will be posting my efforts daily.

I’m cringing as I type this because… well… I’m pretty sure it will all be crap and I’m scared of people leaving disdainful comments. Or, worse, silently judging me for my delusions.

Oh well.

Feel free to look and throw rotten cyber-eggs at my pathetic attempts.

Clever Clever

Next week we will be attending a parents’ evening at Ava’s school. And by ’school’ I mean the nursery she attends for 15 hours a week. And by ‘evening’ I  mean 10.15 in the morning.

I’m not really sure what to expect, but I think it will be something along the lines of ‘She eats everything we give her. She is willing to stick pasta shapes to sugar paper on a weekly basis. She will queue for the toilet without complaint.’ At least I hope so. I’m not particularly  worried about anything they’ll say to us. I know that if they had concerns about Ava they wouldn’t wait until parents’ evening to raise them. I’m just a little reluctant to get into a conversation about ‘potential’ or ‘ability’ or ‘milestones’. If I’m honest (and I’m not particularly, but let’s give it a whirl) I think all of that stuff, all those funny little value judgements we place on our children’s development, is a load of bollocks.

Since the age of 6 months Ava has made block towers of various heights and attempted to draw various circles and lines for various groups of medical students. They have watched her play, listened to her speak, tried to coax a jump or a hop out of her to delight their peers and their professor (my dad.) My bright, imaginative, funny, frustrating, happy, grumpy, loving, stubborn, cheeky little girl can be turned into a tick-box exercise with relative ease. Tick tick tick. Ooh very advanced, how lovely.  Look at that representational play – Oxbridge material, I shouldn’t wonder. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Next Tuesday,  David and I will balance on tiny toddler chairs and listen. We’ll hear about literacy and numeracy. We’ll hear about class projects. We’ll hear about what kind of child our daughter is. We’ll take that away and think about it and talk about it. We’ll wonder what it means for her. We both know what it is to grow up ‘clever’. We both know that ‘clever’ doesn’t necessarily equal ‘Einstein’; potential is not the same as success.

Ava is three years old. I believe that the label she is given now will be with her for the rest of her life, for good or ill. I think that’s a powerful thing; I’m afraid of it.

What do you think? Did you suffer a label growing up? What did it mean for you? Do you think you fulfilled your potential?

Day of the Dead

I’m celebrating Dia de los Meurtos by taking part in Mother Henna’s art swap and blog fest. Read more about my pieces here and find links to all the other artists here.

Now I know I have a tendency to be a little hyperbolic, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that taking part in this art swap has been an amazing experience. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this and it openned up a whole new creative world for me.

Thank you so much Mother Henna. I can’t wait to do the next one!

The Bells! The Bells!

Three days before I gave birth to Ava I developed Bell’s Palsy. The left side of my face slid downwards like melted candlewax. I couldn’t eat without drooling, or speak without misforming simple words. I couldn’t blink my left eye, so a salty snail-trail weeped down my cheek and was frequently dabbed away.

Strangers would chuckle delightedly into my sling, giddy from her milky aroma and puffy little cheeks then look sharply at my lopsided face as I attempted my 100th grimace-smile of the day. I hid myself behind sunglasses and scarves, ashamed of my quasimodo-like appearance. Everyone could see me, everyone was looking at me, everyone knew that something wasn’t quite right.

It was written all over my face.

Bell’s Palsy was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. The morning that I looked in the mirror and saw the first slight movement of my left eyebrow after 3 weeks of facial paralysis was one of the most intensely joyful of my life. Appalling vanity? Perhaps. 

Three days before I gave birth to Iris she jostled and elbowed and wriggled. My face was all expression: tired, happy, anticipation in every pore. But then she died and there was no sling, no milky aroma, her cheeks were blue-ish and chilly. Strangers’ eyes slid over me disinterestedly. No one  could see my pain, no one could tell from looking at me, none of them knew that something had gone terribly wrong.

Tash wrote yesterday about being in the “dead baby closet” and it made me think about how often we half-jokingly wish for a My Baby Died t-shirt or forehead tattoo. I thought of this place, our little blogworld, our own Notre Dame where we can hide among all the other gargoyles.

As Halloween approaches we all become ghouls, disguising sweet features with masks and gruesome maquillage. This year I wish I could peel off my skin; peel away the muscle, tissue, fat, bone, organ, blood. Then start on my intellect. Shed the layers of ego, reason, education. So that all that’s left behind is my essence, my soul, whatever you want to call it. Bereft.

I think that would be pretty damn scary. Scare me up some pretty good candy.

Six Words

In 2006, Wired published a set of six word stories by 33 different authors. My favourites:

We went solar; sun went nova.
- Ken MacLeod

Metrosexuals notwithstanding, quiche still lacks something.
- David Brin

I saw, darling, but do lie.
- Orson Scott Card

It cost too much, staying human.
- Bruce Sterling

With bloody hands, I say good-bye.
- Frank Miller

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

There’s something so wry about these stories, so much potential for humour and pathos. I love the way they speak to that incredible human ability to read between the lines (or in this case, the words). I love that they are so beautifully simple, deceptively simple. My own attempts:

Lightning flashed. Glimpsed face at window.

Chocolate biscuits, fifty pounds each? Apocalypse.

Spilt Milk. Cried. Must remember medication.

I’d love to see your six word stories in the comments, and if you’re in the mood for creative writing you should check out Carly’s blog too.

Most of the six word stories featured by Wired are funny, but the story that inspired them hit me like a poleaxe when I saw it. I’d read it before, years ago, and admired it’s truth and simplicity but never fully appreciated it until now. Breathless, winded, I stared at the original six word story by the magnificent Ernest Hemingway:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Hate

I just spent an hour of my life reading a message board written by people who hate us. Dead baby mothers. They HATE us. Really, really, really. I mean not me or you specifically, or you, or you… oh wait, maybe you…

I just kept on clicking through. Following the threads. Deciphering the drama.  They are furious. Furious. They’re angry about ‘breeders’; the ‘moos’ and ‘duhs’ with their filthy, screaming brats who have the temerity to come in to the same coffee shop as them while they’re reading the weekend papers and enjoying their latte. They’re angry about maternity leave, about the money that’s spent on IVF or keeping sick babies alive. They’re angry that people put pictures of their kids on Face.book or on their desk at work.

I read their hate and I thought: WOW. This exists?

And then I kept reading.

And I felt… kind of bad for them. We all know what it’s like out there. The babies, the bellies, the buggies. It’s everywhere. The Family is writ large on our collective consciousness. And we grieve something they despise. We passionately, vocally, uninhibitedly mourn something they find abhorrent. We often feel invisible in our loss. We want our babies to be recognised, remembered, validated. These people hate us, but their anger stems from exactly the same place. They want to be recognised, remembered, validated.  They want to stop feeling so ‘other’ in a world that venerates fertility and parenthood above all else.

I’ve been thinking a lot about tolerance recently, about what I personally find acceptable, about ‘the line’.  In a week that the BBC will be giving a platform to the far-right BNP;  in a month where celebrities became rape-apologists ; in a year when a doctor was murdered in his church by someone who disagreed with his work I’d like to ask:

How tolerant are you of people who hold views that oppose your own? How do you deal with difference? Do you hate anyone? Has the death of your baby made you more or less accepting of other people’s opinions?

Remembrance

 For Iris, and all of our beautiful babies, on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

who knows if the moon’s
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky–filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited,where

always
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves.

- ee cummings

Where’s Iris?

- Where’s Iris?

- She died, sweetheart.

- Where is she dead?

- Well when she died we had a kind of sad party and Iris became special dust, and then we went and chose her tree.

- Shall I clean her?

- No, her dust is too precious to clean.

- Where is she though?

- In our memories my darling.

- Where’s our memories?

- In our heads, in our brains.

- Baby Iris is in my head?

- Well… sort of.  She’s in your imagination, in your thoughts.

- Do I carry her?

- Yes, in a way. But not like you carry things with your hands.

- She’s heavy on my brain.

- Is she?

- She goes “wah wah” and I do singing: “Baby Iris, Baby Iris/ I love you, I love you/ Turn around, touch the ground, shimmy shimmy all around/ Who do you love?/ BA-A-A-A-BY IRIS!”

- I think she’d like that, Ava. I like that very much.

- Can you do shimmy shimmy all around, Mummy?

- Anything for you, my love. Anything.

Sticky Meditations

20 skulls scissored; stuck with classroom glue. 20 skulls decorated with bright paint and paper. Making Mexican images with my English fingers, I think about culture, cultural differences, cultural appropriation. I think about my tattoos; the polynesian designs on my back and calf. I think about the tribal patterns blazoned on the pink shoulders of English football fans. Cultural colonialism. Huh. I’m discomfited.

A traditionally English halloween celebration largely consists of teenagers donning scream masks and fake blood, knocking on doors and shouting ‘TRICK-OR-TREAT’ with special-brew breath; not hiding their disappointment when they’re presented with sweets instead of money. At least that’s how it was in my day.

I stick my skulls to pages torn from an Agatha Christie novel. The English explore their fascination with mortality in the pages of genteel detective novels; Death comes to tea in a floral sundress and thick stockings. I pull the many Poirots and Marples off my shelves, searching through their tatty pages, marvelling at how many duplicate copies I seem to have purchased from car-boot sales and charity shops over the years. This particular volume,  Sparkling Cyanide, was bought from Oxfam for 50p. I flick through the pages and stop still when I discover a chapter entitled ‘All Souls Day’. Perfect. Then I look closer. The main character’s name is Iris. Spoooooky…

Ava loves the glue:

I, I’m just doing this sticking now Mummy, because, because, you see, it’s time for me to have the glue because it’s my turn now and we’re sharing. Baby Jessica likes sticking, Mummy, because we’re friends. Will she be my best friend one day and I can share my glue with her and show her my sticking and Moe can come too because he’s my brother? Can she do sticking at my house? Now? Can she come now, Mummy, can you phone her and she can come here now in the car? Please can I have more glue please? Can I squeeze it? Can I do it? Can I do it? I want to do it!  More! More please Mummy! Muuuuuummmmeeeeeeeee! PLEASE CAN I HAVE MORE GLUE! You’re not my best friend now…

…

…

You ARE my best friend, Mummy.

…

Please can I have more glue?

I cut out her name 20 times. I stick it down 20 times. I fleck the paint around it. Rainbow colours. In Greek mythology Iris was the rainbow goddess, an Olympian messenger, a handmaiden of Hera. The daughter of the sea and the sky.

I lay out my pieces and photograph them, then bundle them together with some left over dollars my dad found in his desk drawer for return postage.

My brain sings Aretha:

…And I’m stuck like glue
‘Cause I ain’t never
I ain’t never, I ain’t never, no, no (loved a man)
(The way that I, I love you)

Oh David.

* * *

I’ve loved this project. Thank you, Angie. Thank you, Mother Henna.

* * *

Update 31/10/09

I made these pieces for Mother Henna’s Day of the Dead Blog Fest and Art Swap. Visit  here to see the beautiful contributions by the other artists!