The Year I Watched The Sky
Long sunbleached grasses backlit by late summer sun
Whenever I can’t be bothered to go out for a walk after a long day at the laptop I motivate myself by remembering when I was too ill to walk. Tonight the long sunbleached grasses are glowing in evening sun and I’m glad I made the effort. I’ve been quietly (perhaps secretly) working on a book. It’s still a long way off finished, but it’s taking shape and I’m gradually gaining confidence in it. I recently wrote a little spin-off piece for a competition and was thrilled to be award Runner-Up prize.
Author Lily Dunn ran the competition, inviting entrants to write one year of their life in 1,000 words, inspired by Richard Beard’s Universal Turing Machine. I’ve shared my winning entry below, all about the year that I lost due to Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD), a type of chronic vertigo.
In my book I use my nature connection and wildlife tracking skills to find lost parts of my self, while navigating chronic vertigo and loss. It’s part memoir, but it’s also about the wellbeing practice of Nature Connection and the complexity of connecting with a natural world that is suffering through climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. I might share more in future posts, or I might get ‘the fear’ and withdraw back into my shell for a while. Let me know in the comments on my blog if you want more!
A cloudy blue sky seen through a window, with silhouettes of stones and honesty seeds on the windowsill
The Year I Watched The Sky
When my children were young, I used to fantasise about hitting a pause button and freezing them, so I could get on top of the laundry pile, batch cook healthy meals and have a bath in peace. Now, something has hit my pause button, while the rest of the world goes on without me. Something has made me lie down and stay there.
It is nine months since vertigo knocked me off my feet. During that time, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched, the Taliban seized control of Kabul, Russia invaded Ukraine and British scientist Bethany Lodge broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest 100metre forward rolls (42.64 seconds). In the same time period, between lying down, I had five phone consultations with my GP, three in-person appointments, three different types of (ineffective) medication and one MRI brain scan. Today I received my p45, having resigned from a job I could no longer manage because of head lurching dizziness. I am 52 and my life has stopped.
Each morning, I get up and go into the spare room where I lie until bedtime, when I return to my room. It feels important to enact this pitiable version of a daily routine, separating night from day and one day from the next. From my bed, the sky is reduced to a flat screen of abstract colours and shapes. Just now it took less than fifty seconds for the intense blue to turn white, then grey. The translucent fringes of cloud that drifted in from the top left corner were hesitant at first. I silently willed them on. They were followed by curling white strands, spiralling downwards, pulling a curtain of pearl air-glow. The window briefly filled with dense white, before blue holes tore through and sped in billowing swirls out of the frame. They left a film of the softest feathery grey. Flat and impassive.
Sometimes my mind fills in the blanks. When I see blue, I know that the sun is bouncing off the garden pond and fat bees are lazily investigating the acid yellow himalayan poppies. I can see the stuttering flight of a peacock butterfly on the buddleia, its impossibly bright colours glimmering in the light. Each flap of its wings comes just in time to stop it tumbling out of the sky. On dark days I can smell the rain in the air as the sky turns charcoal and I know the leaves of the mint and sage will look brave and refreshed after the dousing.
I am grateful I paid so much attention to this garden, taking it inside myself, as if I knew I was going to need it. I turn the pillow over to the fresh side and watch the sky-screen, as a shining edge of light puffs white meringues over a grey veil. In the beginning I fought against the symptoms, somehow carrying baskets of washing down a staircase that dipped and swelled beneath my feet like rollercoaster. Now I have surrendered. A hundred luminous greys glow and dissolve.
I am sensitised to the sound of the house downstairs, a place I no longer visit. The clatter of pans, pinging microwave and chugging dishwasher are a comforting routine accompanied by smell of hot food wafting up the stair before my husband, Pete arrives with a plate of food. My daughter and her boyfriend hustle in and out of the house all day long, shouting greetings through the open bedroom door if they are in a hurry, or plonking themselves messily on the floor to talk to me.
‘What’s been happening? Tell me everything’
Tilly starts, “Everything? We can’t tell you everything, we haven’t got time! We’re going climbing, but I forgot my climbing shoes” only to be cut off by Tobias, “I bet they are in her really, really messy car and she hasn’t even looked, “OW! Ow! Tilly that hurt”
I’m smiling now, “Toby, she poked you with one finger. Sorry, but no sympathy from me this time. You might be right about the shoes though.” Tilly pulls an injured face and flounces out, throwing a smile over her shoulder.
It is my secret wish that whenever someone rings the doorbell, Pete would run immediately upstairs to bring news of the outside world: The postie delivered a parcel to us for one of the neighbours. The window cleaner came for his money and said that he’s going to Torremolinos next week. I hate the just-out-of-earshot interactions that happen downstairs. They speak to the parts of my life that no longer include me.
One summer morning I make it outside to lie on the grass. A silky blue canopy opens over the whole world. Lying on my back, staring into infinity, I think about the fragility of life and wonder how any of us tolerate such uncertainty about our future. The heat of the sunlight on my skin is magnificent. The vast blue sky wraps itself around me, my garden, all the houses, fields, trees, cars, people, on and on across the world, a steady constant presence from birth until death. I catch a feeling of clear, brilliant lightness from the vastness of the sky. My brain expands and contracts and I steady myself by focussing on the feeling of being grounded and held by the earth.
The memory of this carries me through the winter. It has rained for days. Watching the raindrops dribble down the windows I feel melancholy. My mind keeps revisiting my childhood, when my dad was confined to bed for weeks at a time by chronic illness. I was scared of him being vulnerable, so I crept past his door, avoiding the tense shadow that spilled out of his darkened room. I wonder now, with shame, if he was lonely. As darkness falls and the last raindrops slobber down the glass, the clouds part and the sky is exultant. I decide not to close the curtains and let the sky into the room.