Stasis

stasis (from Greek στάσις "a standing still") A state of stability in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other.

I have a tendency to gather moss. Unless forcefully pushed I like to stay where I am, static.

I live five minutes walk away from the hospital that I was born in, 1979.
My husband was born there too, same year.
The twins were born there.
Reuben was born there.

We live close to both my parents and my husband's parents, still married, residing in the homes that my husband and I grew up in. We went to those self same houses upon our returning from the hospital, 1979. On opposite sides of town.

An accumulation of memories, different heights and weights, doorways viewed from down low and suddenly, from high. As though on stilts. Or suddenly falling to the floor and straightening up, to find that you are not quite the height that you expected.

The years grow a thick, fuzzy patina over this small circular territory of ours. London overspill. Slops.

At times, this makes me feel like a failure. Adolescent-me slaps her open palm to her forehead and sighs. Really, you are still here. Oh. My. Days. Some kind of a loser you turned out to be.

And I wonder if it was her who, when the twins were born, hissed in my ear, "well, what did you expect?"

My mother says that sometimes, when she is out walking with Jessica, she looks down and is surprised to see that her hands are old. She feels displaced in time, my mother as me, me recast as Jessica.

She is not the only one travelling through time.

I take Jessica and Reuben to the park. This is a park I remember from my own childhood. We laze on the grass with cheese and bananas and fig rolls (they tasted better in my childhood memories although Reuben appeared to like them well enough.)

There is the pale brick wall that I used to walk along the top of when I was as old as Jessica is now.
There is the park where I used to slump on the swing at fourteen, listening to Metallica cassette tapes on my friend's stereo.

And I feel a strange sense of alignment. I look at my hands and feel mildly surprise to discover that I have hands at all.


I've been thinking about this post of Josh's a great deal this week.

When you have lived in the same town your entire life, it is rather hard not to think about time.
To envisage strange patterns and rhythms. Your child sits on that spot on the stairs opposite the hallway mirror where you used to sit. And the carpet wears.
Blink, you are a child.
Blink, you are your parents.
Blink, you are your grandparents (if you're lucky).
Blink again, you are gone.

I am all of a-withering, I have stood here too long. 1979 and cassette tapes seem an unimaginably long time ago. But yet, to me, they are still present.

Everything, everyone, they are all still with me. A vast plethora of items and memories and people strung to my ankles and wrists, trailing out on strings. My daughter, she is still with me. Slung around my neck on silver. Cold, dead weight on my heart. And in the beating of my blood pulsing around my body. She is as there as she ever was. Or perhaps she is as here as she ever was.

Life and death are an irrelevancy to my tiny, mighty daughter. I feel she is still here, right up against me, that I'm still holding her in my arms as I once did, our skins touching as they did touch. Once. Just minutes ago, just years ago.

Sitting there, in that same park, I feel as though I am simultaneous. I walk along the wall, my legs at once short and tall. I slump, I smoke, I cough, I'm drunk, I'm walking past this place to the shops, I'm walking past this place to catch the bus, I'm talking to my friend about the time she tried to kill herself, I'm running, I'm playing Manhunt around the Alleys, I'm pregnant and just starting to feel two sets of movements, I'm kissing that unsuitable boy over by the swings, I'm old, old and sitting here remembering. I don't think I will remember everything perhaps. But I will remember the wall walking, maybe I'll even try it again. If I'm still around and sure footed enough. And today it feels as though I already did. My old lady self has already walked that wall, her feet matching my four year old steps.

I'm here with Jessica and Reuben and I'm 32 years old and two of my children are solid, with muscles and bones. Displacing air and time in waves around them.

And Georgina seems to be there too. With the ghosts of myself as a child and my wall walking future old lady herself. With me, just separated by time. Or maybe not. Because we are all cut so very short, on a short fuse, time ticking, time a-wasting, we are going to the earth, we are going to the skies and into trees. Who knows where we will go?

Maybe everything that falls down, eventually rises.

We are so insignificant. Tiny specks of dust on a tiny speck in a tiny place. One brief blink and we are here and gone. But, in the park, I feel that this is what sets me free.

Because if you head out far enough, three days and thirty two years overlap perfectly. And I can stop searching and just be content in the knowledge that you aren't that far away. I can rest because you are here. One insignificance to another perhaps but my heart, my heart tells me otherwise.

Who wants to be burdened with significance when you could be light, your heels hardly making divots in the earth?

Who wants to drive their foot down and down into the soil. Attempting to stamp your significance upon things that are vastly indifferent.

You could try but you are here. Then gone. Before you've hardly woken up.

And to be all of those things, people, imaginings, ghosts, spirits, memories of size and movement, shallow dents in the earth. All of these things happening at once. Shadowy and solid.

And yet to mean nothing at all? Perhaps that is not so bad. It will do.

My dear girl, how I do miss you. Oh my heart.