by Dinah Latham
Below us, the beach, with its wide dunes, creates a landscape that contrasts dramatically with the flat sweep of the sand as it runs away to the tide. I’ve always enjoyed sand dune landscapes: soft sand between the toes, gazing out to sea, watching the early morning sun rising up from the horizon line, always seems to hold promise. Solitude and contemplation heighten the anticipation; what might this precious day bring?
A small flock of gannets in the distance drops from the air into the grey green waters onto a shoal of fish. Seagulls screech overhead. The last wisps of morning sea mist are slowly lifting. Out to sea, a patch of silver light on the water promises a little brightness to come. The glorious, hot sunny summer this year has almost imperceptibly given way to a mellow, misty autumn.
As I watch, the mist starts to dissolve and a scrap of sunlight begins to spread in from the sea, breathing new life into the bracken; now a deep glowing gold. The gaudy yellow of the autumn-flowering gorse bushes gives off an almost fluorescent glow.
The white dots of sheep are spread out over the distant fields to the far left of the beach. They’re grazing among fresh, pale green bracken where the field meets the rolling hills; where we walked yesterday up and along the coastal path from Widemouth to Bude.
* * *
I remembered that we had walked those paths earlier in the year. Then the warmth of a glorious May day had evaporated and the sea mist crept up the valley. There was a bank on the far side of the road covered with delicate, late flowering primroses, still bright yellow in the lengthening evening shadows.
I compared the surroundings then and now: an early morning in late September now; an early evening in May then. Both landscapes unrivalled, both full of pleasures that can’t be bought.
* * *
We walk down onto the beach where the incessant crash of the waves grows louder. The tide is on the turn and rushes up between the rocks at each roll in, depositing its cargo of seaweed onto the shore before receding to form again the swell of the next wave.
There is such inevitability about the tide that all uncertainties appear diminished by its relentless to and fro. Whatever happens in rapidly changing or uncertain times, the tide will turn, and the sun will rise.
I throw one last ball along the beach for Harriet, before heading back to climb the dunes. My step is determined and my confidence strengthened by the timelessness of our sojourn. I pop into the village shop, before it’s really open, to get some still-warm croissants to take back for us all for breakfast. Aren’t I the lucky one to have grown-up children who still want to include Harriet and me in their holidays? The warmth of our breakfast comes through the white paper bag onto my hands, reminding me of the secret treasures I’m bringing back for them.
* * *
Helen
The thought of secrets makes me think of many confidences the district nurses shared and always carried with them.
On one particular morning, I was passing a house that, several weeks ago, I had been attending daily, and I began wondering how things were in the family now. I had visited to dress a wound on a young child, where a burn had been caused by him tipping very hot coffee over himself. It had healed well and it was some time now since I’d finished visiting. I’m not sure what made me stop and knock on the door, but I had become used over the years to following my intuition when it seemed to nudge me. It wouldn’t take a minute just to pop in and say hi.
Helen answered the door and welcomed me in, announcing that it was a good time to call because Joe, the little one, was down for his sleep and she was just going to have coffee. Why did I feel something unspoken was hanging in the air? Maybe it wasn’t really a good time to call after all… Helen continued on, almost hurriedly, as she made the drinks; wiping down kitchen surfaces and chattering too rapidly. There was a lovely homemade cake sitting on the kitchen table, with a big layer of bright blue butter icing on top, forked up into peaks. Helen seemed to hesitate as she handed me my coffee and, to my surprise, I noticed tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. She caught her breath as she blurted out that, somewhere, there was a little boy who was seven today and she didn’t even know whether or not he was alive.
Helen had given birth to her first baby when she was just sixteen years old in a ‘naughty-girls-home’ in North London, handing the baby over for adoption at six weeks old. Her parents had disowned her at the time they discovered she was pregnant. Helen had never managed to tell her husband about her illegitimate son. Every year on his birthday she made her firstborn a cake.
I’m pleased to be part of a society that no longer condemns women in Helen’s position to suffer this perpetual cruelty; a sorrow without relief, that doesn’t ease, where the pain, the guilt and the heartache go on throughout their lives with no reprieve. There is no end to the sentence they are forced to serve for their perceived crime.
I remember thinking about the memory boxes and scrapbooks that I used to help parents put together when they were dying, to leave for their children. Some would write letters for their children to read when they were perhaps eighteen, expressing their love. Some left photos, or diary accounts of special days; and I knew how precious these mementos become to children whose parents have died.
I wished Helen had been able to write a letter or leave a keepsake for her baby, so that he would know how much she loved him.
* * *
I quicken my step in an attempt to leave my thoughts behind, as Harriet and I begin climbing the hill back to the chalet. Harriet shows some reluctance to go back but I manage to convince her that we will return tomorrow. She seems to get the message and remembers she’ll get breakfast when we get back. We’re nearly there at the cabin and everywhere is still and quiet. I can only just hear the now distant waves breaking on the sand. It must be nearly high tide now.
13
DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT TO THE VIEW
Harriet is excited today as we start a new walk along a canal bank. I’ve come over to walk with Kay, a very dear work colleague. She is twenty years younger than me and so still there on the district as a community nurse or, as she informs me now, an ‘Adult Community Care Worker’! We worked in partnership for several years, sharing the same caseload. We worked well together and Kay was one of the few features of the job I was sorry to leave by the time I retired. It was a good partnership that she was sorry to lose too. We held shared beliefs about what good nursing care was and, together, managed to continue to spend more of our time concerned with patients, rather than computers.
In some sense, being from the ‘old school’, I had managed to hold back some of the constant continuous changes that were being forced on us; not all of them by any means but I continued working closely as a team member with the GPs for many of my latter years. This allowed us continuity of patient care even though that was rapidly being pulled apart in the name of progress by nursing management.
I listen to Kay as we talk about what’s happening now and my heart bleeds for the care that has disappeared and I feel sad that her care-giving abilities are now unappreciated, even unrecognised, in this climate of ‘never mind the quality; it’s only the quantity of visits that counts’.
It’s a lovely day, with just a hint that summer might be on its way, borne out by blossom fluttering at the far end of a rather scraggy branch overhanging the canal. The boats tethered alongside our path bob up and down in the water, as other barges pass by. Some are clearly inhabited, with gingham curtains and window boxes, while others seem forlorn and deserted.
It’s great to see Kay. Many work acquaintances fall away when work terminates, and you find that the only thing you shared was the job. I feel fortunate that this friendship has continued, has in fact grown stronger, since I left. Kay throws yet another stick for Harriet along the towpath and we go on to talk about how much a part of my life Harriet has become. It’s strange how the years between Kay and myself disappear. She tells me she thinks I’ve made a great job of retiring and goes on to say she thinks I’ve really
embraced retirement like no-one else she knows. We give each other a hug and arrange to meet for lunch in a couple of weeks’ time. Harriet decides she’d like to stay longer and hesitates before getting up onto the back seat of the car. She then stares longingly out of the back window as I pull away with a goodbye wave to Kay. I’m glad it’s not long until we get together again; we always have more to say. She’s only about ten years older than my kids and I’m certainly nearer her mother’s age than that and yet we relate as friends; a special friend who’s seen me go through the end of my career and into retirement and who shared that very special retirement party with me.
* * *
As I drive home, I’m giving thanks again for all those blessed friendships. I’m thinking about how I’ve adapted to retirement and how it has felt for me and how great it is. I have a number of other friends who see leaving work as the end of everything; whereas for me it has felt more like the beginning of something else. When I was pregnant with my first child, and leaving my district nurse/midwife post that had always been my career goal, friends said then what they also said when I was retiring:
“You’ll never leave. You’ll be back in months. Nursing is in your blood; you’ll never manage without it!”
Yet I never hankered to return to work. I’ve always been pleased that I had the opportunity in those early years to be a stay-at-home mum. It was a different career, another beginning, and I still see it as the principal and most valuable job I did. To have to return to full-time nursing at the time of the divorce, with my youngest aged only six, was painful for me.
I worked from home in a small way throughout those years with a young family, teaching antenatal classes; to prepare couples for childbirth.
It was something I got great satisfaction from; something I felt was a service I was able to provide and provide well. Making it possible for parents to have a meaningful labour experience kept me close to the midwifery I loved and enabled me to give care in a way that brought its own rewards. It also opened my mind to teaching; an ability I developed and took pleasure in returning to much later in my career.
My working life has grown up around those two big life events it seems: birthing and dying. Whether caring for, or teaching about; these life events have been at the heart of my career and for by far the largest part, set within the community in which I’ve lived. I’m wondering why this has been the direction I’ve taken within my vocation, when it occurs to me that these are situations where the full theatre of life is played out; emotional places, sorrowful and joyful places. Have I sought these settings in which to work or have they sought me out; do they use some hidden ability within me or am I drawn to the struggle for survival that surfaces in all who become caught up in these experiences? I’m left wondering, with no answers; perhaps there aren’t any.
Retirement throws up different thoughts. Perhaps we’re more inclined to think of retirement as an end, rather than a new beginning, whereas, essentially, it is a new beginning… a start of growing old, perhaps.
Maybe that’s the big difference. Each generation will have longer lives than their parents and yet the society in which they will experience that longer life almost forbids them to grow old, requiring that they remain young for as long as possible. Ageism is unbridled in our youth-orientated society. We expect the elderly to disappear and be content with the crumbs we throw them. With this attitude, it’s little wonder that when they are made to feel in the way, so many become withdrawn and feel they are no longer worth anything. I was always perturbed as to why, when we admitted retired persons into hospital, we always referred to what their job had been when they were working. It was always retired shopkeeper or retired builder. Why don’t we ask what they do now, rather than what they did then? It all goes to emphasise that what they did then was important but what they do now isn’t. The older we become, the more we are seen as burdensome. So maybe it isn’t surprising that so many of us fear getting older and consequently don’t perceive retirement as a new beginning or a journey to look forward to.
Yet I really believe it is possible to live to old age retaining self-esteem, growing old positively, feeling fulfilled, and living harmoniously with rich friendships. Retirement would seem to offer a good opportunity to start getting a feel for it; planning to grow old well. We are surrounded by suggestions for keeping physically healthy but living a contented, well-balanced life may be more to do with the psychological and spiritual aspects of our lives.
Being happy in retirement has to surely be the forerunner to being happy in old age. Equally, it is perhaps personality differences that define our retirement behaviours. Maybe the ‘glass half full’ temperament, rather than the ‘glass half empty’ characteristic, encourages a happier, more positive, approach to growing old. For me, it’s become a time of freedom, with more time to myself and with less to worry about.
There is an inner place of stillness that has found somewhere to settle inside me; it’s a feeling of contemplation, almost akin to meditation, I think. It’s a place I want my spirit to hold on to always because it somehow recognises the precariousness of life without exposing fear about what might happen next; bringing about an acceptance that what will be will be. Maybe that is part of growing older; I have indeed seen serenity in some older people, some with a certain presence that seems to sing out contentment. These times encourage in me a feeling of being essentially a castaway, here in my stillness.
As I arrive home, still thinking about my lovely walk with Kay, I decide to top up my ‘glass half full’ attitude to life by pouring some Merlot into a rather nice glass, one of a precious set given to me when I retired by a very special lecturing colleague. I determinedly fill the glass, not only half but right to the brim, as I wonder how much being happy in retirement has to do with being happy to be alone; happily being single.
Conceivably, a leaflet entitled ‘Keeping Happy in Retirement’ might be more useful than the ‘Keeping Fit’ one; after all, managing our psycho-spiritual selves has to be at least as important as the ‘eat less, exercise more’ advice.
* * *
We’re taking a late walk today, right up the hill to the farm. We’ve already done about five miles. It’s been a beautiful day and it’s now late afternoon and the heat of the day has gone. A gust of wind ruffles Harriet’s fur as she tears ahead and I follow on up the path by the hedge, climbing slowly to the top, glad of that breeze on my face. I stand and turn, looking down the hill, and cast my eyes all the way round, feeding them with the scene.
It’s one of those blissful moments when everything feels right with the world; when the sheer good fortune of being here and being me for this one moment in time seems to flood my heart with joy and contentment. Summer’s riches will not last. I breathe in deeply, trying to draw something from the instant and lock it within me forever. I can almost taste the coming together of it all; the sweet smell of new mown grass, the low hum of bees in the hedge blossom, the pale warmth of the evening sun. And here am I, as part of the setting, a woman and her dog in happy harmony.
* * *
As I negotiate the stile, I think about our local walks throughout the neighbourhood, and the miles we have covered in all directions, in all weathers. We have ambled through meadows, strolled through woods, stepped purposefully along roadsides, criss-crossing the well-trodden footpaths across the landscape with our two feet and four paws marking out our very own patchwork territory. (There was often some other ‘marking’ undertaken by Harriet but let’s not blight the image.)
The unravelled garment of my life seemed to knit together on those blessed walks – the plain and the purl, the joy and the care – the walks gave me the opportunity to recognise the colours and the pattern.
These times and reflections have been a gift; a precious gift from Harriet. The nature of our relationship moves on with every day and every walk. I feel she has accompanied me on my reflective journey into my past, and she’s now with me moving forward to my future. She provides a very
real companionship, not a replacement for human connections but a steadfast and loving presence; these are gifts I could never repay.
* * *
I return my gaze to my present. The intensity of the daylight is just beginning to fade, but the sheep grazing on rolling pasture behind and to my left are still visible. I have a newfound fondness for sheep that has developed alongside my passion for sheepherding. Their presence adds an enduring timelessness to the country scene.
* * *
I allow my mind to take a flight of fancy, wondering whether to risk adding to my perfect life by seeking out the farmer to see whether he would allow us to practise our sheepherding skills on some of his sheep. Could there be anything more perfect right now than having Harriet go to the end of that field at my behest and bring those sheep to me on this beautiful day? I’ll never be able to have my own herd of sheep in my very own field but maybe there is a farmer somewhere who would be delighted to have us work his sheep. I’m imagining we would move them leisurely from field to barn with Harriet performing brilliantly.
I then remember her attempted execution of the outrun and lift in our sheepherding session this week; and realise perhaps we’re not quite ready… and would the farmer appreciate that my interest is only in his sheep?
I reflect on my contentedness with my single life; with Harriet as my significant other. I remember the words of the feminist Germaine Greer, when she talked of the release from the continual need and insatiable desire for sex that accompanies the ageing process; and so it is… well, most of the time.
I find now that I really do like this single life. Alongside its shortcomings, there seem to be a host of compensations that are just there, that don’t have to be struggled for or earned or negotiated; they just happen. Furthermore, they seem to be the things that many of my friends are searching for, as they face the prospect of spending retirement with their husband.
