Thank you / Long legged beasties

Just wanted to say thank you so much to Angie and to everyone participating in the Spoken Word Blog Round Up. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed listening to every single post. I am so very grateful to Angie for having this brain wave, setting it up and being brave enough to post herself, and to everyone else who has contributed. My husband thinks I have gone completely mad as I don my ear phones and laugh, cry and utter little squeals of recognition at my computer screen. Alone. Yet very far from alone.

I know I found it quite scary to record myself speaking, it is strange how anxious you can feel sitting alone in your own bedroom talking to a totally non judgemental piece of electrical equipment. I wish I'd been brave enough to give it another go and at least tried to look more presentable or to speak more clearly but thank you so much for accepting my spoken word post, warts and all.

***

I've been thinking about Jess's post at Glow, turning it over in my mind. Ghouls and gruesomeness. How I sometimes feel that I am going out of my way to avoid them? That I am a liar. There are things that, even after all this time and all these words, I find difficult to give voice to.

In an act of divine retribution for my contribution to the realm of the spoken word I have, today, lost my voice. Sunday, when I decided to record my post, seems to have been a merciful respite between the appearance and lingering disappearance of a massive pimple right between my eyebrows and the reduction of my voice to a low croak. If I believed in favourable omens still . . . .

The sore throat, combined with the sudden cold and dark weather and the approach of Halloween, murmurs of the arrival of winter. Jessica exclaims at her own reflection in the window, "DARK! Look DARK!" I open the door to retrieve something from the car and hear soft, socked footfalls creeping up behind me. I rush her back in and cram her feet into bright, floral patterned wellington boots. They clash with conditions outside, incongruous against the damp, autumn mulch.

We are going hunting in the dark. We discuss what we might find. Or I say their names and she repeats them. 'Discussion' is over egging the pudding a wee bit. Hedgehogs perhaps? Bats? Owls? Foxes? But I know that all of my suggestions are a little over ambitious. More of an attempt at educating her with a brief 'Who's Who' of nocturnal animals than a list of what we might actually see here in suburban England.

I know where I am taking her. To the great evening snail crossing. She puts out her hand to hold one. "Eyesssss," she breathes out heavily as the delicate stems unfold and poke up at her accusingly.

We put the reproachful snail back down into the damp grass and tread carefully around his companions, all crossing in the same direction, on some mysterious snail business of their own no doubt.

We head into the large, unlit pavilion that stands outside the front of our house. It is dark in here. Very dark. There are no streetlights. Jessica's pale hair flashes past as she runs around the outside. "Look Mum-mee, woooooooo!" I laugh, a strange, rasping croak. An old crone's laugh. A witchy laugh. We run around, my little wailing ghost and I. It feels a mite creepy. But what am I to do? Is Jessica never allowed to pretend to be a ghost or a skeleton? I suspect she's doomed to a lifetime of spider, pumpkin and cat costumes given my reaction to even the mere sight of a skeleton costume in size 2-3. Thanks to my over-thinking and ability to find pathos and symbolism in every fricking thing. Sorry Jess. You aren't allowed to play at dead things. Though I know you will, most children do.

Her attempt at ghostliness. It's unsettling and oddly comforting both together. Perhaps we are being haunted. By an absence. Or I say we. I, really. Her haunting may be only just beginning. I hope not. My mum told her today that she loved her, that she loved Reuben, and Jessica piped up with "Georgie." Scared that this strange, elusive presence known as Baby Georgie might be missing out, might be left out. I was proud but sad. That she trusts me to the extent that she accepts the existence of this other baby, this sister baby, that she has never clapped eyes upon. Just part of a story that mummy tells her about tummies and plastic boxes and death that seems as unlikely as the other stories mummy tells about pigs and wolves and fairy princesses.

I wouldn't mind being haunted by a presence, by a connection. But not by this small void, the size of a three year old girl. This sort of haunting isn't fun or spine tingling. But yes, like something squirming in my heart.

***

It's strange. As I said in my spoken word post, it honestly never occurred to me that other people would feel awkward when I talked about Georgina. It took me about a year to tumble to the fact that even a cursory mention made some people feel very awkward indeed, not knowing where to put themselves or what to say next. But I was caught up in such a rush of love that I didn't see that. I honesty didn't. I thought everyone would let me carry on talking about her, forever.

Now I wonder if people find me creepy. Am I a thing that goes bump in the night? A three legged beastie? With the necklace with my dead daughter's name on it around my neck and her listing on my facebook profile page and my burning candles and my box of ashes. And this blog if they've found it. "Hai, enjoy the car wreck folks," if you have. Here I am in all my (possible) creepiness, step right up and come on down.

I try to imagine myself back into my pre August 2008 mind. But that door is firmly locked, no matter how hard I kick at it. I would like to be let back in, just for half an hour or so, to assess my own level of creepiness. Not those exhibited here but as seen through the eyes of my ex-school friends on the horribly compelling facebook, through the eyes of my old friends, through the eyes of my sister or my mother. Do they find it gruesome? This is a thought that has only recently started to trickle down the back of my neck, like ice water. Perhaps this is something like the awkwardness effect, one that, through my own lack of imagination or awareness, I am slow to see. I suppose I could ask but I don't really want to hear the answer. I hope, hope, hope that there is understanding, sympathy. I'd settle for indifference.

I suppose I don't much care if other people think I'm gruesome or creepy or strange. Do your worst acquaintances. If you think you can make a dent in me after late 2008 go ahead. But I don't want them thinking that Georgina is creepy. She wasn't creepy. What happened TO her was creepy and gruesome and painful. Some elements of it certainly were, there is no denying that. Not even for me who viewed them through a haze of love and shock.

But she wasn't creepy. She was a lovely little baby. At least that is how she looked to me. And I'm sorry that she died. I'm still really very sorry indeed. More than I can say.

As I watched Jessica poking in the puddles with sticks and talking to snails, I think how very acceptable my love for her is. I can post endless pictures on facebook and coo and tell stories and I am probably never going to get told to shut up or that I am sick or creepy. The harshest response I'm going to get will be 'breeder' from some quarters.

I don't know how people would react if I posted anything truly about Georgina. Not just a memorial. I mean really Georgina, a photograph of her or something about what happened to her. Medical details, her birthweight, even her blood group. My store of facts is small but true. Probably truer than my posting about my living children, whose mouths I am frequently to be caught stuffing words into. Assigning personalities and quirks and publishing them on the internet. Yay me!

Those who find my breeding tendencies laughable or who sit in silence. What do they think when I mention Georgina? I find I've started to fill in the silences with all sorts of poisonous words. And I don't like it.

Because it is just the same.
That is what I want to tell them.
The love is just the same.
Jessica, Georgina, Reuben.
The root is just the same.
The stem is just the same.

"From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us" 
Old Cornish (or possibly Scottish, the wisdom of the internetz is conflicted about this) prayer