Gender Issues

Life, my crafty old nemesis, seems to keep moving forward and bringing more and more Blog-worthy things into my sphere of awareness. This is great, because it's nice to actually have something to write about when one sits down to write, but also profoundly not great because it means that if I let too many days go by, I find myself simply unable to catch up to all the wonders that have transpired before the here and now. In the last batch of days we've had Florence, food, absurdist Russian spectacle theatre, romance, reunions, and raving relatives. However, I'm going to have to leave the great majority of these topics scattered around the globe in various letters, because this particular blog is going to be about my mad Grandmother and the specifics of female anatomy. Tantalized and titillated? Read on...

I arrived back in England on the 20th (a much anticipated date) and managed to locate my mother on an evening train bound for King's Lynn the following day. After much happy leaping and giggling, we managed to settle down enough to exchange stories of all that had transpired in the five months since we'd last clapped eyes on each other. The end of the WGA strike came as particularly welcome news, as it means I'll actually have a house to come home to instead of a refrigerator box with bookshelves. And the Oscars got to happen. Which I suppose is good for those people who won Oscars. Well done there.

We've ended up together in Sedgeford, a very small town in the wilds of Norfolk inhabited by various relatives of mine. The only one who's actually related to me by blood, my grandmother Wendy, has Alzheimer's and is quite mad. I may have touched upon this is a previous post. She is, however, a delightful woman who is still quite shockingly silly and incredibly rude. (See: Unafraid to gesture as to just where I could stick the carrot I was trying to feed her this evening over dinner.) Unfortunately, she has very little short-term memory, and therefore tends to forget who I am a great deal. I was alright with this on previous visits, but as I've cut off all my hair in recent weeks, she keeps mistaking me for a member of the opposite sex.

Granted, I have become used to this since I first cut my hair short six years ago, but under normal circumstances a single correction is all you need to make the offending person blush scarlet and apologise profusely. Not so here. Regardless of how many times I patiently explain that I am, in fact, a girl. Named Lucy.

"Yes, that's right. Lucy Bellwood. Your granddaughter. Yes. Daughter. No, really I am. And that's my mother, who's your daughter. No, I just said. I'm a girl. Yes. Why? Because I like having it this short. No, we're visiting from America and we -- FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH!"

Etcetera.

It's essentially like re-living the same five minutes over and over again for all eternity. Or at least all of ten days. I try to maintain my sanity by doing the crossword every morning and knitting with concentrated ferocity -- two activities which, in and of themselves, already seem to suggest a distinct lack of normal. Maybe I'm not doing so well after all...

Anyway, the moment in particular that I'd like to draw your attention to took place over breakfast the other morning. Sunshine was slanting through the French windows, turning the kitchen pleasant and warm. My mother was sipping a suspiciously green healthy smoothie and Wendy, sat opposite me, was spitting bits of tomato skin about the place with reckless abandon. In the course of her circular conversations, she had been asking "And who's that lovely young man over there?" quite frequently. At first, I had answered patiently that I was, in fact, her granddaughter, and hoped that she would get the idea, but no luck. I moved on to just saying "GIRL" very pointedly every time she used the wrong personal pronoun, but still to no avail.

The sheer hopelessness of it all started to get to me. I was also stuck on a particularly obscure crossword clue. And I hadn't eaten. I also hadn't slept much the night before. Basically, I'm just trying to find an excuse for what happened next, but there isn't really a good one to be had. The fact of the matter is that after I'd shouted "I'm a GIRL!" for about the 13th time, she looked at me in a befuddled manner and asked "But why are you a girl?" In retrospect, I have been able to correctly identify this as The Last Straw, mainly because, in response, I proceeded to tear open my kimono and bellow "BECAUSE I HAVE THESE!"

Many things happened in quick succession at that point. My mother spat smoothie across half the table, I realized that I had, effectively, just flashed my oldest surviving relative (at the breakfast table no less), and my grandmother looked quite taken aback for a few moments before bursting into peals of laughter. After expelling the remainder of her smoothie (Thankfully into the glass from whence it came) my mother did the same. And I, breasters akimbo and feeling slightly silly, couldn't help but join in.

This may now go down in history as the defining moment of what it means to be a member of the long and noble line of Christie women. In short: We're all raving lunatics, Alzheimer's or no. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

For those of you who take a scientific interest in this sort of thing, I am happy to report that my drastic exhibitionism did actually result in a lack of gender confusion for all of the next five minutes. Still, one has to start somewhere.

Thanks For The Cheer

This Blog arrives courtesy of: My mother, for reminding me that it exists, and Philip Hansel, for bolstering my ego and persuading me that it might be a good idea to update once in a while.

So: Cambridge says "Hello," as do I.

The wind keeps blowing from across the Atlantic, the sky keeps trying to put on a good display when the sun hits the horizon around 3:45pm, the rest of the time it rains, and the chickens instinctively cruise the yard in separate factions, black and white, and I write more letters than I know what to do with, sometimes I eat crumpets for breakfast, most days it's tea and nothing more, I think about sailing, I jump on the trampoline and get very wet, I get sick, and then get better, I play Scrabble with my Godfather, I remember that somewhere in the world it's still sunny, I think of how quickly the last few years have flown by, I knit, I knit some more, I open the drapes, I close the drapes, I take the bus and read coffeetable tomes on tall ships and oceanic navigation, I dream about trying to moor longboats around luxury yachts with prehistoric alligators who are supposedly no longer hungry for the taste of sailors as my Captain spontaneously combusts for no apparent reason and doesn't seem too concerned.

See, it wasn't too wierd until that last one. I swaer it seemed perfectly logical while I was asleep. My dreams have been vivid and hectic these last few weeks, leaving me strangely satisfied when I wake up, knowing that I've seen my shipmates and my friends and the children I learned my ABC's with in some capacity at least. It staves off the feeling of being cut off. Some days are fabulous because I hear from someone on break in Ojai, someone traveling to the mountains in Australia, someone weathering the winter in France, dealing with potential in-laws in Washington, navigating the 5 down to Los Angeles, waiting for the weather to clear, studying for finals, taking a photo a day, heading off on a New Year retreat...Anything beyond the fire in the grate and the the rain relentlessly flowing down the gutters outside. Anything that reminds me of the family I've built up over the years. They're an amazing crowd of beautiful, lively, intelligent, silly people and I love them all dearly, perhaps I don't tell them enough. Driving me to write and tell them now from 8,000 miles away.

Alysia wins first prize for writing back to me on this leg of the journey. Her postcard and letter arrived today, carefully forwarded from home, full of sunny Australian news, making me dream of Sespe backpacking and Mount Brewer in the snow. But now is the time for some practicality. I begin work on Tuesday at Borders bookstore, earning minimum wage here, which sneakily translates to $10 an hour at home. Thank you, failing economy. With the money I earn I'll be able to finish my trip with cash to spare for a ticket North when the time comes to rejoin my precious sailorly contingent and live it up away from the hard for a change. I get to wear a shiny red Borders shirt and spend eight hours a day in the company of books. Lots of books. I should mention that the particular Borders I am employed at is the largest in Europe. Oh yes. Lots of books for me.

This is probably all the sensical writing I can manage for today. Slacking off on journaling for the sake of letter-writing leads to a surplus of nostalgic rambling, which unfortunately must be emptied before I reach critical mass and go super nova.

Other things, like holly and the distinctive smell of tinsel and London and trains and dresses and just remembering to breathe every day. Taking anew the farmhouse I remember from age 6, sitting in a vortex of bubble bath and giggling, hot water bottles, a little more tar off the Turk's Head each day, playing with calligraphic pens, helping to decorate the village hall in tatty cellophane, stringing ornaments 25 feet up a ladder, flashbacks to countless light hangs in countless spaces, Shakespearean Festival nights and where are they now? All of those power tools, interns, flats, crusted rollers, wads of gaff tape, baseball caps, memorized lines, bad Italian accents, tambourines, innocent crushes. Standing still as the world flows on around me. It gives one a strange sort of perspective.

Haircut here, frostbite there, new top, old pants, replacing shoelaces, knitting handwarmers, new handwriting, same news, remembering to wash my hands, forgetting what sort of cake I had for my eighth birthday, listening to the same music, superimposing different connotations, running home in the five pm darkness, could be any time of night for all anyone can tell, understanding the meaning of perpetual summer, resisting the temptation to run home and jump on the Lady and sail away, to book the next flight to South Africa and regain feeling in my fingers again, knowing I should head to the kitchen and defrost, but deciding just a few more words, just a little more thought, saying goodbye and hello to all these different parts of myself.

This is what the world is all about: Hello and goodbye. Goodbye and hello.

Just keep breathing.