I Found My Tribe

by Ruth Fitzmaurice

  ‘Husband. Husband. Why do you keep calling me husband?’ her new husband laughs. The young wife doesn’t know. Maybe she feels like part of a team. Like they both know the joke and nobody else does. They both know something they call the deep magic.

  The woman at the table thinks her new husband is all of her best thoughts and feelings. She has crept out of bed to sit alone in the early sun, surrounded by shared lovely things. Glassware and wedding delft rattle softly in the cabinet as a train goes by. She is pleasantly surprised to like it here, and to like the feeling of her marital home. She used to be a girl not fond of things, too busy floating on the wind, hungry for the hunt, chase, adventure. In short, she was mostly miserable. They call this love the deep magic.

  I am surrounded by the same lovely things as the young wife. Home is still a plastic tablecloth. In this house, the pattern has changed to Cowboys and Indians. The unused cabinet of glass has clouded in ten years. I have pondered the perfect harmony of lining those glasses up on the back wall with steely calm. I could frisbee a few fancy plates at them. I could stick long-stemmed glasses into the ground like delicately upturned flowers glinting in the sun just to stomp on them. There is a magic deeper still.

  The young wife has unravelled herself from the warm furry limbs of her new husband. The perfect look of sleepy abandon on his face is somehow ageless. She loves him like this, but sits at the table to think of him further. She has never felt closer to another human being.

  I have an artist friend who was widowed in her twenties. She brought her grief to a young widows’ club only to find out she was the youngest member there. Kind ladies grabbed and pulled her into their circle. They wore their pain on pendants and preserved it in old photographs.

  I have sliced married life in two parts with a knife: before and after MND. I can hold myself in the present at my table. I can hold photographs in my hands. But how can I be sure these memories are not a preserved pendant around my neck?

  I can remember the first moment her shy, independent spirit crashed into something that was deep magic. It was all handsome eyes and dark brow. It wasn’t even a body, it was a stance. Tactile limbs and dancing hands. Shirt and ripped jeans hung from a frame with swagger. Within the frame was a beautiful mind with principles, dreams, love, confidence but mostly, yeah, she thinks, it was the swagger. This something was a man who made the young woman blush.

  The man saw himself as the Joker in the pack. Certain in his uncertainty, but never indifferent. The Joker is the philosopher, said the man. He’s on a relentless quest for truth. The woman didn’t know much about philosophy or universal truth. The man to her looked more like a Jack of Spades. All talk and charm and cheeky mischief, a bit of a chancer and yet full of natural wonder. As for her? The man jokingly called her the Nun. She was a full set of Hearts.

  The man tried to impress her with stories. She knew he’d told them all before and she told him so. The man was impressed, and the woman thought this was funny. She didn’t need his stories she could see his soul so clearly. She would have dived into those eyes like swimming pools and did not care that this sounded cheesy.

  The man wrote her poems and took her to dinner. This is the Joker finally getting the Nun, he wrote. Yes, after all these years, he finally gets her when no one is looking. The Nun blushed and thought this love is holy and if this is religion good God sign me up now. She was so overcome that she dropped her fork at dinner.

  How can I trust these memories? I know the Nun existed because I found her in the attic. She was Sellotaped up in a box. Her thoughts popped out of an old journal along with her casual insecurities, nibbling of nails, worries about work, being newly married, having babies. She is there all along, under dust, holding on to the Joker as he used to be. Her happiness was real – it was perfectly imperfect.

  Thanks to my journal, I see him now. Simon the reader, writer, poet, aspiring film-maker, weaver of dreams. He’s sitting at our tablecloth, licking his finger and turning the squeaking, glossy pages of a large cinema book. He’s hunched over his little desk, clean-shaven and shirted before work, manically tapping his laptop. He’s made me Ready-brek with honey for breakfast. A watch rattles on his wrist.

  Seven-year-old Arden gets distracted. He never gets dressed in time for school. ‘It’s not my fault!’ he wails and points at his two older brothers. ‘They distracted me!’ I used to get mad until their uncle explained it to me. Arden doesn’t see himself when he’s with them, he explains. He has no sense of self yet. He is living vicariously through them. Just like the Nun, his glassy eyes crave distraction. A spell has been cast. This is the deep magic.

  The Joker was purer than the Nun – ironically – and she loved him for it. Why would I watch a horror film about forests? he would shrug. I love forests. Why ruin that? He was so pure he was afraid of bad thoughts. The Nun had a funny bone that was cracked black and charcoaled and she told the Joker that bad thoughts could be fun. They could set you free. Never be afraid of your imagination, she said.

  The Joker showed the Nun real goodness and she stole his fear of the bad. And that was all the man needed for his imagination to take full flight. He had big dreams and together they would fly. The girl had dreams too but liked being distracted. True love was the deep magic. His dreams were big enough for two and the future was plenty long enough for her dreams too.

  Today I sit at my plastic tablecloth knowing the future no longer exists. Would my younger self have been better off knowing this future? Would I want to break the happy spell at her table? The cruelty of this life might crush her and big waves are coming. Surrounded by lovely things, she would laugh in my face. Get out of my home, mad woman! Don’t you know the power of deep magic? Don’t you know the rules? Nothing bad befalls the likes of us!

  The young wife thinks her life is as magical as it can be. Look at the glory of him. Her own self got sidetracked during this long fixed gaze. And who could blame her? Not me. This spell alone won’t carry her through the harsh waves ahead. It’s not enough. She will have to dive much deeper than that.

  At the young widows’ club, the dead are deities to be worshipped. My artist friend, the young widow, was horrified. She respected their coping skills but just couldn’t cope with them. Her husband had died but she was still alive. So she carried her grief out of the circle. Her late husband sat on her shoulders. She wore her pain proudly and booked a round-trip to see the world.

  The young wife at her kitchen table knows about deep magic. But I know her future. Life is going to push and pull her like a wave. She doesn’t have a choice and neither do I. Come with me, dear girl, sit at my tablecloth. The journey is upon us and to survive it, you can’t just ride the wave, you have to become one. Can we do this? Let’s go. Becoming a wave just might be the deepest magic of them all.

  Colour

  Nurses, nurses everywhere. Nurses filling kettles in the kitchen. Nurses scuffling with coffee cups. Ringed cups scattered about like a student flat. The bathroom door is locked and there’s a queue. Who’s in there? It’s a nurse. Nurses at the microwave nuking fragrant food during our dinner. Nurses at the sink spilling suds. Nurses standing over our bed at night as we sleep. Nurses catching me in my knickers. Lock the door. Nurses are everywhere. They’re just doing their job. Pain is chasing me through busy stressful rooms. Nurses are in every corner of our tiny home.

  What is a home? What exactly does home mean? I need an answer. The only answers forthcoming could fit on a few Post-its. They are all worthy slogans. They would make great fridge magnets:

  Home is not a house.

  Home is a feeling.

  Home is the people you love.

  Home is where the heart is.

  A house is made of bricks and beams, a home is made of love and dreams.

  That last one is an actual fridge magnet.

  When Simon came home on a ventilator, the hospital nurses all cried. ‘God doesn’t give you more than you’re able for,’ said one nurse to me as we hugged goodbye
. God is pretty creative, I think, or else he just saw me as a challenge.

  Nurses and carers are everywhere. They are a merry band of the kindest souls mixed with some wonderful freaks. Our home is a revolving door for a whole spectrum of psyches. A nurse slips me presents of holy medals while whispering, hand on heart, that the Devil talks to her in person. The Devil tells her to do bad things. A night nurse with a ghoulish white face hides behind hall corners and jumps out at me each time I pass. I must shout every word in defiance of her deaf ears and it is her job to listen through a baby monitor to make sure Simon stays alive. WHAT? This is the night of the living dead.

  Home for me has always been colour. Home is a warm colour. It’s a swirly orange-yellow colour like sunshine. I’m sitting with a cup of hot tea in my hands listening to birdsong in chorus. The dawn light is so bright it lights up the kitchen wall pure orange.

  I never knew that hippies were such control freaks. Beware the nurses brandishing big jewellery and natural remedies. Theirs is a will not to be battled with. If you don’t do it their way, they walk. Simon is a young man trapped in a body that doesn’t move. The hippies are up against pure fire. So they walk.

  Looking for peace, I need to lock pain away. Pain refuses to stay padlocked, so I park it outside of small moments. These moments are mostly rituals surrounding coffee. I make my coffee in a little pot and carry it in a cup away from madness. I must contemplate a weekend of two new nurses. Two more new nurses will be coming to our house. I will settle into the edges of our home. For a small moment, I will simply gaze out the window at my birch tree, at least until this cup is drained.

  Nurses with noisy shoes. Giant man nurses who don’t fit. They have to stoop in doorways. Tiny women nurses who can’t reach the cup press. The agency sends a Spanish carer with spina bifida who can barely walk. She cries because she can’t climb up on our double bed and help to hoist Simon. The nurse sends her away still crying. They’re very emotional people, she says.

  Pain chases me around the house like a big angry scribble. I make lists to unscramble it. I move my body away from it. My list says things like, buy a second microwave and a kettle to put in the nurses’ office. That might help. Organising order might help, but you cannot organise chaos. So I just keep moving.

  A nurse in clog shoes and a plain skirt explains that she rejects all forms of technology. For religious reasons. ‘I don’t need a radio because I sing and talk to the birds!’ she chirps. Mottled plastic bags and coat hangers full of clothes fill her car. There was a fire, she laments. She fishes out her wedding photo from a plastic bag to show me. Her wedding dress is the colour and texture of crumbly brown bread. I wonder if the dress is in her car too. She sings and keeps giving me presents of rose-scented soap. She chases my mother around the kitchen trying to give her a shoulder massage, shouting, ‘You look tense!’ Now it’s my mother’s turn to run the other away.

  I move and I get busy doing things. A good friend gave me a coffee cup with a great slogan. It says, ‘A clean house is the sign of a wasted life’. There is enough waste around here so I don’t do that. Instead, I paint colours. I sand down our postbox and paint it pillar box red. I sand and paint the garden bench and back door the same bright beacon red. I get on hands and knees outside and surround our red-brick house with a turquoise-green plinth. I get giddy in the back garden with greens and bright blues. Home is colour. It just makes me feel better.

  Many nurses bring gifts, from holy medals, to peppercorns and bathrobes for the kids. Unlike my mother I say yes to the offers of massage, especially during pregnancy when my feet are swollen and sore. A nurse gives me a head massage using masses of Deep Heat cream and it blows my head off. After that, I question my mantra of saying yes to things.

  I paint stuff and cook spicy food. Sometimes I bake but I’m a terrible baker. It requires precision and so my biscuits fall apart. Cooking calms me and makes the house smell more like family. A carer runs out of the room red-faced and eyes bulging – it turns out she is highly allergic to chilli. The fumes alone are chasing her down the road. She could blow up like a balloon and need adrenaline shots for anaphylactic shock. My cooking might actually kill her. In the face of potential death, I shamefully get the giggles.

  My kitchen fridge is a messy tapestry of colour. Kids’ pictures, scribbled poems, magnets and old photos cover it in muddled chaos. I don’t have any fridge magnet slogans except for one. Slapped right in the middle my magnet reads, This Too Shall Pass.

  Good nurses come and go. Cait has a voice that rings like a bell and fills the house with violin music. A Honda Shadow parked outside means young Adam with his Peter Pan heart has arrived. Paula brings mischief and laughter. The twins let Anna wipe their bums after going to the toilet. This is high praise indeed. Gentle Benedict shares so many Tuc crackers with the kids they are renamed Benedict crackers. Good nurses come and then they go.

  Moving is running, but you can’t run away for ever. Running away never solved anything. Did it? I need to take moments away from nurses. Get through it. No expectations but to survive. This Too Shall Pass.

  School runs make me run, run, run. I wish I could pause in the space between school pickups. Slip into a crack in the warmth of a parked car and stop time. Running is moving. Don’t stop moving. Running away is about taking moments. A super six-pack of Jack, Raife, Arden, Sadie, Hunter and I can run, but the seven of us can’t. I am all too aware that it’s escape without Simon. I struggle with it, but I need it. We would run for ever if only Simon could run with us. But he can’t. So that is why we invent Runaway Days.

  Then Marian arrives. She is very quiet at first but has smiling eyes. She talks when spoken to, laughs and knits neck warmers for all the children. They are five different colours. She is fascinated by all my cooking. ‘I’m a terrible cook,’ she chuckles, ‘but I can give a hell of a bed bath.’ It’s important to know your strengths, I reply and we both laugh. Marian is a woman who knows what she is good at.

  How do you run solo with five children under ten? Is it safe? We run with chaos. We go to Tesco and faces drop. Heads turn in our wake. My children are lying in the aisles and thrashing each other in the trolley. Chaos can be fun. We play the shop game. Each child gets to choose one thing and we return home laden with giant jammy rolls and cupcakes. We run through Ikea and blatantly follow the arrows the wrong way. We race to the cove to climb rocks and hurl stones and howl into the wild salty air. The sound of the sea is the only thing that can drown out this lot.

  On Runaway Days we are mayhem. We are lords and rulers of the playground. Don’t mess with us. After we visit people they gasp in the silent aftershock, once our noisy goodbyes leave. But mostly it’s just us six. Chaos is pure colour. We walk through forests with sticks that make swishing sounds. We drive to Dealz discount shop to buy plastic swords and giant cartons of teabags. We hit the Asian superstore, full of spices and weird plastic-looking sweets. It makes the shop game way more interesting.

  Runaway Days are allowed because we have other days with Simon. We always come home. We bring back colour until it’s time to run again. I don’t know if I can live like this. I don’t know who I am or what I am good at or how to make a home here. Is Simon OK? Are the kids OK? What is this doing to us all?

  Marian is the kindest person I have ever met and she is everywhere. Her knitting is on the couch. Her half-eaten ready-meals litter the kitchen and I couldn’t give a shit. It doesn’t matter because I don’t need to run away from Marian. Not ever.

  Marian sees colours and energies. She comes to work one day and laughs out loud. ‘Look at what you did with your painting, Ruth!’ she says with childish excitement. ‘You surrounded your house with the colours red and green and blue. Red and green are the angel colours of love and healing. Blue is protection. You’ve made a force field!’ Through her eyes I see it. I have done my best to make us a new home here. Best of all, I might even be getting good at it.

  Aifric

  My friend Aifric is like
a wishing well. I’ve been throwing wishes her way since we were three years old. From a family of seven and with four sisters, Aifric has been surrounded by chaos her whole life. She is the calmest person I know. All five sisters have an ethereal quality to them. A light magical step not quite of this world.

  Seven-year-old Arden marches into the kitchen and announces he’s leaving home. ‘Sorry, Momma,’ he commiserates, hand on my shoulder. ‘My friend Jack Diamond’s house is WAY cooler. I just like it there more.’ I smile and give him a hug, because I know. As a child, that’s exactly how I felt about Aifric’s house. Arden goes further and actually packs a bag. ‘Don’t worry, I still love you,’ he adds as an afterthought. Armed with a stick and a Samurai sword, he heads off down the road.

  Just married, we lived in Greystones where Simon had grown up. The sea was breathtaking but I was driving past it rather than jumping in. I was so busy having babies that our house got too small. We needed a bigger boat. Making a tribe of kids is one thing. For Simon and me this happened fast. But how do you find your tribe? How do you find your people and figure out where you belong? For us this happened slowly. We struggled to search for a place to take root.

  My favourite place to be as a kid was the kitchen at Aifric’s house. It was big enough to take in everyone. It was warm enough to take in anyone. A full stove of heat and the smell of warm peat. At teatime they would empty the fridge on to the counter. Whoever was around got to choose whatever they wanted to eat. Seven children, a few friends and maybe a random bronzed hitchhiker her mother had salvaged from the main road. Hitchhikers always got a bed for the night. Aifric’s kitchen had the capacity to absorb anything. We could make any kind of sandwich we liked. We rolled slices of bread around whole bananas. I loaded some cream cheese and honey on top. Why not?