Poem 5: Mothers

MOTHERS

© Stevie Dufyn November 2022

The mother bore her fifth child, in a dark cave.
Sheltered from the heat, cold, and wild creatures.
Married not by choice or for pleasure
Within the relentless cycle of life and death.

Her daughters minded her little ones, as she had done
In her own childhood, until her first pregnancy.
She knew her role, child-bearing and rearing,
And with her sisters, preparing food and clothing.

For the girls at their menarch, marriage will be arranged,
As hers was. She had no say then or now,
Her father and uncles choosing a cousin.
To keep wealth within the clan.

So the cooperative cycle of childcare continued
As the way life happened. No room for self,
Nor remembered names for wives, mothers or daughters,
But they had a kinship excluding fathers, brothers, uncles and other males.

Evolution at a crossroads, the male path leading to conflict,
The female to cooperation. The paths collide in war
When women are raped, captured for sex, murdered,
Men and women a separate species to each other.

Time moves on, but the patriarchy remains, now contested.
Women are beaten, killed, raped, without consequence,
Mutilated, forced into marriage and childbearing,
Subjected perpetually to the male gaze. The past is the present.

Women childless not by choice are cursed now as then,
Feeling at fault, unblessed by God, despised by others
Whilst men not supporting their children are condoned
In a society ruled without equity with double standards.

But from of old, Bible women had spirit. Eve took charge,
Lot’s unnamed daughters seduced their father
Leah cheated cheater Jacob, and outfought her sister Rachel.
Tamar accused father in law Judah, her accuser,

Zipporah circumcised husband Moses, bridegroom of blood
Fighting demonic peril. Miriam his sister sang,
Deborah led a battle, Jael plotted and killed,
But most suffered, humiliated, scorned, killed.

Much like today. Every effort made to ignore women’s voices,
To inhibit their progress through barriers and gatekeepers.
Coercive control not just at home, but in the streets
And in the workplace too.

Progress cannot be taken for granted.
Politicians are not rational, nor the voting public.
The popular voice stirred by prejudiced propaganda
Is not divine, but easily led, deceitfully unjust.

Mothers nurture children’s enthusiasms and relationships,
Honesty, cooperation, self discipline, politeness, creativity.
Schools have incompatible interests, of compliance,
Obedience to authority, challenging nothing.

I was a child carer, mother to younger sibs, 
So school was not that great, and I was not great at school.
Suffering physical assault from some staff, emotional assault from others.
Every effort made to make learning unpleasant.

Mothers build family values, for good and bad,
Maybe in spite of fathers with fractured egos.
The mother child bond may be strong even when, especially when,
The mother/father, husband/wife bond is weak

© Stevie Dufyn, December 2022.

Poem 4: Being Human

 

BEING HUMAN

by Stevie Dufyn

Eve was joined to Adam by the hip, to be fruitful and multiply

To fill the earth, and to keep it healthy.
But they divided, Adam making Eve his assistant.
Who fed him, clothed him, blamed for gifting wisdom.

The patriarchy told the story, condemning Eve and sparing Adam,
Cancelling the serpent, cursing us all.
Men distanced from women, humans from animals
Which they killed, skinned and ate.

The hunter Cain killed gardener-grower Abel
Cutting final links with paradise,
Requiring nakedness to be covered
And lives to be lived in pain.

Our human predicament contained within a myth,
Hard to reverse now patriarchy deifies itself.
A patriarchy greedy for power, riches, land,
Who make and police their rules.

Jealousy and violence creates war and violence.
Revenge, disrespect, lust.
Even the chosen family of Noah divides
Black, brown and white families via Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Of the women, Sarah bullied Hagar, almost to death,
Rebecca favoured cheater Jacob over Esau the Red.
Dinah was raped, the rapist’s family slaughtered.
Worthy Tamar condemned to death for having rights.

These were not peaceful times, at least in these fictions.
Heads roll, bodies cut up, girls kidnapped for marriage.
Their plots match police TV dramas today,
About wealth, power, jealousy, misogyny, greed.

The poor were made slaves, captives and foreigners too.
Vicious war against neighbours common.
Recent wars, and social violence worldwide, make this a human condition,
A genetic flaw, a contributor to human extinction.

Humans are custodians of a burning world, an oven
Which our grandchildren will inherit.
Political lies unchecked, misinformation of the rich
Small minds, small thoughts, corrupt leaders,

©  Stevie Dufyn   December 2020.

Poem 3. Ghosts.

 

GHOSTS 

Stevie Dufyn, 2022

Are there ghosts in this house? a young carer asked. 
Yes, I replied, there are ghosts. Oh yes, there are ghosts.

Ghosts of the young, who never reached adulthood.
Of the diseased, who died in pain, too early.
Of might-have-been children, parents of grandchildren
Never born,  remembered in memory, talked to as living.

Ghosts are not all dead but memories of loss.
People lost to us now who were important once.
Some may re-emerge, some lost for ever
Except in memory, photos on mental mantelpieces.

On my actual mantle photos of dead friends,.
And water-colour sailing boats, luggers,
Cards from an absent sailor friend .
Close by, mementos of parents, their relics of long lives.

A young carer asked, Are there ghosts in the house?
Yes, I replied, there are ghosts
After all these years, there are ghosts.

Ghosts not all dead. People fall out of our lives,
For reasons neither remembers, the busyness of lives,
Sleights that should have been repaired,
Some for offences hard to forget, where ghosts are unforgiving.

Ghosts fill our nights with sadness, pleasure, fear and regret,
With guilt if we have offended or caused pain
And anger where pain was caused to us.
A ghost is a hole whose emptiness needs memories.

I too am a ghost, a hole in another’s life, an unresolved trauma,
Hoping to communicate still but hearing only silence,
Wanting to apologise, or hoping for an apology,
But finding it is too late.

Life is a communion of ghosts, unwilling or unable to cohabit,
Unable to mend what was broken.
In a world of easy communication, where folks don’t stay hidden,
We choose to hide, to remain ghosts to each other.

Memories of family and friends now gone, colleagues, influencers,
Some I never met – authors, musicians, artists, unaware of my existence
And unaware of the debt I owe them. Some I helped, I think,
They will know, and may remember.

Ghosts mix with the living, maintain relationships,
Refresh memories. Ghosts of the dead live on in us.
Ghosts of the living can be found again, as can I,
To rekindle what was once broken.

A young carer asked, Are there ghosts in the house?
Yes, I replied, there are ghosts. Oh yes, there are ghosts.

©  Stevie Dufyn (pen-name for Stephen Bigger), 8.November 2022.

Poem 2: Chance Meetings

 

CHANCE MEETINGS

By Stevie Dufyn, 2022.

 

X marks a point where two lives cross.
A pause on long journeys, an exchange of spirit and soul
‘I have come from afar. I greet you’, each affirms.
Will they cross by? or travel together?


Roads divide, with choices to be made,
Crossroads, with destinations unknown,. demanding decision.
Choices with consequences, controlling our future
Blocking alternative might-have-been lives.


Such an X marks the day my father and mother met,
A Bomber Command boy invited for Sunday lunch.
Five children owe their being to this moment,
Who otherwise would never have existed.


So the person called ‘I’ was born by luck
By fortune good or bad, Cards were dealt
Which need skillful playing. The might-have-been ‘I’
Would have held and played a quite different hand.


So who am ‘I’? A body, a brain, a bundle of thoughts,
A chaos of feelings, emotions, ambitions, loyalties.
The moral path is narrow and tortuous. A giver? a just contributor?
Or a taker, a greedy self-serving consumer.


A voice inside says ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘mine’.
It imagines that we exist for ourselves, for our own purposes.
It is a fragile picture, a changeable, breakable image.
When ‘I’ becomes ‘we’, relationship is born and community begins.


‘I’ was taught to obey, but failed that lesson. I questioned.
‘I’ was required to accept, another fail. I argued.
‘I’ publicly dispatched Santa at 4, enraging local parents.
‘I’ discovered that goldfish die in polluted water.


‘I’ was curious, an investigator, a questioner, an experimenter.
A reader, a watcher and a listener. Memories are as if yesterday.
Even in my own way, a performer, story-teller and musician.
These fragments loosely jostle. And then I went to school.


School has left few memories And certainly no good ones.
Thirty silent children in rows, embarrassed even to laugh.
Shamed, controlled by sarcasm, bullying and shouting.
But it failed again. I became subversive, a rebel.


We recited the catechism. ‘I believe in God…’, the Christian myth,
Jesus and his implausible parentage, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension.
I was not Christened, so not ‘a child of God’, not ‘an inheritor of the kingdom’,
An outsider, thoughtlessly created, now proudly subverted..


‘I’, written off by school, got a First and PhD at university
Manchester but I might have gone to Sheffield,
Meeting my wife from Bradford who might have gone to Leeds.
‘Might-have-been I’ might have met a different might-have-been wife.


Different lives, with different consequences.
Lives cross, touch, feed, guide, learn and teach.
We are the prisoner of choices, luck, and live with the consequences
Responsible for the lasting relationships that emerge.


Real ‘we’ had no surviving children, and hence no grandchildren.
‘Might-have-been-we’ might have a family, and grandchildren,
Who might have kept in touch. How hard human life can be.
As we live with what is, not what ‘might-have-been’.


Now in old age, some might-have-beens are friends,
And ‘might-become’ take the stage.
New choices emerge, children, grandchildren, sisters and brothers
By choice not birth, as friendships widen, deepen.


X records a treasure, not measured in gold or stones
But in a healthy world with a sane future.
And X is a vote, not for power, grift and greed,
But for selfless public service, with moral vision.


Who am ‘I’ when faculties are dimmed?
Will I have a sense of who I am, and why I am?
Will the fragments of self and understanding cohere?
Will ‘I’, me, my self, my soul, still be whole?

By Stevie Dufyn (Stephen Bigger), November 2022. 

Poem 1: June, 2022.

 June, 2022 © by Stevie Dufyn (pen-name).

JUNE, 2022.

Stevie Dufyn 26 June 2022.

In an English village a millennium old,
Lies our hedge-lined hill, overgrown now,
Growing new memories, chirruping families mixing with the old and frail.
Our house, older than its years, has seen joy and sadness,
ts garden oozing colour across the seasons, planned and wild.
In this spot, life goes on in a world that has lost its way.

June is the month when folks sit in their gardens,
Talking, drinking, phoning, enjoying the cooling of the day.
The month of roses, competing for the attention of bees and butterflies.
I am with those I know, who comfort me, strangers but friends
Who offer me food, drink, music and love,
Whose smiling faces offer words of joy, hope and pleasure.


I hear nearby sounds, Blackbirds complaining about cats,

Magpie thugs threatening smaller neighbours,
Looking for plunder to feed their young on the young of others.
A robin defends its territory, noisily but uselessly,
It perches on my table, seeking food and company.
Scents spread, honeysuckle, jasmine, roses – a blur, I knew each one once.

Breezes rustle through shrubs and trees. I hear a road.
A car goes by, a motorbike rasps,. a steam train rattles far away,
Lorries beep warnings, insistent alarms, a helicopter, a plane..
They are noises, indistinct, unrecognized, whose purpose escapes me,
But compete in the soundtrack of that moment.
Toe-tapping music rings out close by. Arm-waving, I gurgle joyfully.


Some noises I understand, children laughing, cats pleading.
Adult voices, talking about life, problems, disasters, the family.
Faces smiling, checking, sometimes weeping. They say hello, and goodbye.
I laugh. Their words remind me of things I can no longer grasp.
I chuckle, but have few words to offer them.
The words are in my head, but the journey to my mouth is hard.


The sun is low in the sky. It is getting cool.
The sky turns shades of red, orange, maroon, like on fire,
Blue patches struggling through until everything fades.
Flower scents drift over, heady perfumes I remember.
The moon shines bright, a globe, a full moon behind shadowy trees.
Starlings crowd the skies with their dance and roost.


Time for my sleep too, as eyelids grow heavy.
Cuddled in blankets and pillows, a cat on guard, in bed.
People I scarcely remember, but who know me, and are my friends.
Familiar faces and voices care for me, and bring me peace,
Faces and voices grow dimmer each day. No one will tell me who I am,
Or what I did, or who I was once, or who I will be. My name only remains..


I dream, where life is real, with folks I like, doing what I enjoy.
My dad, husband, daughter and niece are there. And lost friends.
Humming tunes and songs where old loves and friends still thrive.
A world I cannot share with those around me now.
Since they have no window into my mind and soul.
It is my secret world, my only world now with no way back.


Yet I am not alone, or lonely, fret not,
Old friends are with me, in vivid memory.
My head still has my lost words, thoughts and pictures.
In there I know who I am, my essence.
Who I used to be is more than what I did,
And I know now the mystery of who I will become.


In the world I have left, a fox screams, an owl hunts, silent.
Clouds scud across the sky, drops of rain seek out plants.
While other pump out their night scents seeking out moths.
In my dreams I live my own story, happier, without disappointments.
Flowers close up for the own sleep, the water lilies and poppies,
So farewell for now, I have another life to live.

Stevie Dufyn, November 2022.

Some new poems.

Time to give some serious time to this blog so there is something to fall back on if Twitter dies. That is something no one would have believed if we put it in a novel. There are bits of unfinished business that needs polishing. Looking at earlier posts you will see I am a full-time carer to my wife, who has brain damage and paralysis. That is 24 hours a day every day.. Starting in November 2015 that covers 7 years.

The danger of being a housebound carer is to be isolated and social media has protected me a little, Facebook for family and friends, Twitter for people I don't know face to face. Many of those are carers too giving each other moral support. 

I wrote a few observations for a research group of which this is a part.

Loss of personhood..
We take for granted a body/spirit dichotomy and when my mother died she was sure that she would go to heaven to be with her late husband. It is not a belief I share which made giving her eulogy quite tricky. It did however help her decide that the end had come.

In this section I deal with self-hood / personhood. From that moment in time in November 2015. things that mark us off as human persons began rapidly to disappear in her. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of a lifetime disappeared overnight. A keen historian who volunteered in Kelmscott Manor (William Morris's home) lost all the knowledge that made her outstanding at her role as guide. A keen plantswoman, that knowledge disappeared and she could no longer differentiate between garden plants and weeds. She became unable to read even children's books although for a while practiced decoding words, but without comprehension. Her vocabulary decreased from whatever is normal for a Masters Graduate to around 50 words. Now she speaks no words at all with comprehension but plays with sound like a baby. For a while she lost normal behavioral controls which made her difficult to deal with as her condition had given her vice like upper body strength. She cannot use knife, fork or spoon but will feed herself if food can be picked up in finger size portions. She can no longer pick up a mug but will drink from it if it is presented to her mouth. I advise friends if they come to see her that she will not recognize them, as she indeed does not recognise me.

However she is living a life in her head and will sometimes appear to have inner conversations and sometimes get the giggles. All this raises the question of how this person now relates to the Jean who once was, who had a husband, close friends, views and insights. To me that blasts a hole in bodily/spiritual dualism and points to the body/brain as a single entity within which we construct our personhood and values, and lose these if the brain malfunctions and deteriorates. In Jean's case a blow on the head playing hockey at 16 began a slow process of brain damage of which I am now seeing and dealing with the terminal stages.

In the posts which follow, I  introducing a few poems I have written in 2022. I am not a poet, but want to comment on the life of a caring carer. and giving voice to someone who now has no voice.

© Stephen Bigger 2022

Christmas 2021

Christmas will be home alone, again. That was always a positive, a special time for Jean and myself, reading, listening to music, phoning family and friends. That will still be the same, a sabbath rest without guilt about jobs around the house. But with Jean now unable to have a conversation, it will have its lonely side. Cards are on route, around 80 of them. If I have missed you out, my apologies. Rather than write lots in every card, I am setting out our news here. There won't be any foreign holidays described, or even British ones since we are basically stuck at home. The carers persuaded me to put up a Christmas tree. It cost £50 online, five foot tall, lights integrated. The photo is of Jean's last real tree 6 years ago, a nice memory.

We have all had a tough year so no complaints from me. January 2022 will mark two years of housebound lockdown, which takes its toll, although social media, phone and email have left doors open to the outside world. Jean my wife suffers from brain damage and paralysis and I am now in my 6th year of caring for her in this state. A carer company give me an hour to get her up and an hour to get her to bed (her teacher pension funds it) and occasional hours for shopping, dentist and so on. The garden has suffered and I still need solutions  to maintain it. Jean had to go into hospital for ten days a short time ago to recover from dehydration. She looked very frail and the doctor warned me to expect the worst. I went in every day to get her eating and drinking again, but it was a close call. She is now eating and drinking well again but gets tired and lethargic. We had our 52nd wedding anniversary in August, without celebration of course. I notice that when returned from hospital Jean said 'I want my husband' so I guess I am in there somewhere. When briefly in an awful care home, I heard many women saying such things. Very sad. Have had no trouble with online shopping slots. Waitrose have us as 'protected' which offers priority bookings. We couldn't have managed without it.

Touch wood we have steered clear of the dreaded virus, largely by being very careful. I am having a go at future proofing the house, and have solar panels, renewed roof insulation (current stuff now 70 years old),  a refurbed drainage system and a renewed damp proof course. Well, we can't spend money on holidays nowadays. I am sure painting and decorating will come next. Decluttering is not as easy as it sounds, particularly in these covid days.  The attic has been emptied so now I need to wade through tons of stuff. I don't think I will need school and university notes, paraffin lamps, victorian sewing machines and heaven knows what else. 

I have managed a little writing, ending a long term project reviewing and republishing children's adventure series (seven introductions for Malcolm Saville thrillers for Girls Gone By Publishers). In addition I wrote an article for EJOLTS (Educational Journal of Living Theories, 14). I wrote a short piece on 'a week in the life of an unpaid carer' which went a little  viral and brought me into carer support groups. I am lucky to have survived six years of it relatively unscathed and have accumulated many online friends.

Some of you might know I had a long term stalker making death threats and dialing 999 to accuse me of abusing Jean. He tracked me for years via Facebook, creating more than 20 fake accounts. With police help we tracked him down and made his life very uncomfortable. My twitter account gave me a safe space.  It has been good to share ideas with people I have never met, and probably will never meet. Networking works differently today, even more so after these Covid -  Zoom years. Good also to hear from many old friends in real life. My cards have been on my desk for three weeks but haven't made it to the post yet. They offer Season's Greetings so should arrive between Christmas and  New Year.

The two cats are 17 now and ailing with hyperthyroidism. This requires 2 tablets a day, each. Fortunately they are insured. One is doubly incontinent so I have to sniff and locate throughout the day. After her return from hospital, an episode happened which necessitated the call for an ambulance. She was fine, but in the half hour this was happening the cat pooed on the kitchen floor. The paramedic photographed it, reported it to social services in case I 'needed support'. I didn't, but has inspired neurotic daily cleaning! I invited social services to check but they haven't so far.  Yesterday the house was very tidy. Today the attic is empty and I have to check through 50 years of papers and stuff, including school and university notes for both of us.

Best wishes to all friends and family. Thinking of you all. Happy cooking, reading, listening, viewing and whatever else turns you on! Keep in touch, if you can.  Stephen