Immigration – Nastasya Parker

Rooms Like Open Books

This Week’s Bit of String: A broken magnet and psycho kitty paintings

My last post ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger when our catsitter had to cancel. As with writing and other creative endeavours, I couldn’t plan for every contingency.

Now we’re back from our travels. In the meantime, our house was inhabited by my husband’s co-worker, her husband, and their two little kids. Like a tantalising story or at least a sitcom, their emergency of home renovations taking a turn aligned with our small crisis, and my husband managed the last minute arrangements on the Sunday. I finished my cleaning and caught my flight, rising at 3:30 a.m. Monday, while he joined me on Thursday before Good Friday and the other family moved in.

*I hope the kids weren’t old enough to fathom my magnetic poetry (a weird mashup of motherhood and Shakespearean sets).*

There was little time to childproof, or to worry how Obie the cat would tolerate sharing his home with children. Obie was very happy to see me on my return, but not desperately so. I think he was fine.

In the recycling, there are boxes from children’s chocolate Easter eggs and construction toys. I washed the sheets and replaced the towels. The only sign of young guests inside was a broken magnet. I have some shaped like tiny jam jars, perfectly tactile and definitely something I’d have reached for as a kid. Only, they haven’t been moved around much lately, and so when it was grabbed, the jar broke off. I’m disappointed for the children that they didn’t have a better experience with the magnets.

I wonder what memories they’ll take with them from here. What images will stick in their minds as they grow up, long after they’ve forgotten the circumstances of why they stayed? At least they’re probably too young to notice the bedroom paint jobs we never got round to updating, or the cracked kitchen tiles we’re too scared to lift up. Goodness knows what can of worms that would open.

Detail Selection

My family did a housesit/ catsit when I was little. We stayed at the new pastor’s house, with a big black and white cat called Asia. I remember lounging about in the living room patting Asia and listening to my new favourite tape on our brown Fisher Price cassette player. It was the Animal Alphabet tape, with a song for an animal starting with each letter of the alphabet.

(Yes, even Q: quahog. And X was a roundup of Latin animal names, a very catchy ditty.)

*Hello, Officer. I’d like to report an anti-cat hate crime.*

They had a sunny living room, whereas we rented a log end of a farmhouse which was rather dark. And they had a swingset. There was also a secret passage in the house, which we later pretended was Underground Railroad-related, although it probably was more modern than that.

I’ve no idea why my family of 6 were chosen for this job, because in addition to minding the house and Asia the cat, at least some of the pastor’s 6 kids were also there. I was 5 years old, meaning my youngest sister would have been an infant. It’s a bit of a mystery what we were doing there, but sounds and images remain in my memory. I can see why I occasionally opted to hang out with the cat, though, rather than 3-9 other kids at a time.

Packed with History

While we were away visiting my family just now, we helped with some sorting and packing, and also with house hunting. My husband and I aren’t doing the moving, but my family’s search for a new house—to meet the needs of my parents as they approach their 70s, my autistic cousin, and my neurodivergent youngest sister—has been quite consuming.

The first house they looked at, about a month ago, had 21 rooms. It was massive, built in 1910 and kept in the same family until now. We went along for my parents’ third viewing, last Friday. The rooms are filled with dark antique furniture and floor-to-ceiling metal safes. The extra furniture, in turn, is filled with vintage toys and books.

We saw broken baby dolls and Little People playground sets. Plus, the above paintings of cats which were clearly painted by dog people ascribing the wickedest intent to the feline species.

We also found that the house had maybe the original wiring (called knob and tube). The windows need replacing, the external paint contained lead so probably the internal paint did too, and the bathrooms were so dirty it seemed they’d need gutting. Outside, a covered in-ground pool was buried in dead leaves. Once it had been surrounded by a large patio and lawn chairs, with lantern posts now cracked, and a listing playhouse in a far corner.

It saddened me that no one could halt the decay of what must have been a beloved family spot. How did the late antiques dealer owner feel when he collected rare pieces but the grown children never helped maintain the home?

For me, traveling to see my family and assist with whatever I can is a bit tiring, sure, but it’s imperative. I hope international chaos or health crises never stop me from making the journey. Especially since my family did find a house to buy while we were there—practically all in one day. It came on the market Easter Monday, we all viewed, and the offer was in by Monday evening.

It’s light and spacious, built in 1993. It has fewer than 21 rooms, with some open plan which will be great for our lively gatherings while reserving quiet areas, too. There’s even a swingset and slide in the yard, viewable from the wraparound deck. 5-year-old me would have liked it as much my current self is eager to lend a hand turning it into a home.

What resonates when we peek into others’ houses can raise new questions while also illuminating our own thoughts and concerns. Are there random places that stand out in your memory and may have inspired your creativity?

New Year, New Doom

This Week’s Bit of String: Things that growl in the night

3 a.m. The cat is finished napping. Although unlike myself, Obie is naturally blessed with an ability to see (and hunt) in the dark, he doesn’t like to go downstairs alone. So every time he wants something downstairs, he scratches the wardrobe or mews chidingly, and I walk down with him. He goes to his food dish and I turn promptly around.

But then he starts growling at the back door. He makes those feline siren calls, starting low and building to a high whine. Then come the full-throated snarls and hisses. Something out there, through the full-length double-glazed glass, terrifies him. My husband and I don’t see anything, but I am shaking violently, thoroughly spooked.

While awake for ages afterward, I didn’t know exactly what I was afraid of. What could realistically have been out there that would pose a threat to us inside? An axe murderer? Maybe the proximity of another living being’s terror was enough to drive my own without any logical reason.

Scrolling, Scrolling, Scrolling

It wouldn’t have helped that I was anxious anyway. I’d been scrolling social media before bed and even during the night while already awake. Flinching past the attempted justifications for violence against immigrants and protesters in Minneapolis, worrying about the tensions over Greenland, horrified by the cost in human lives fighting for freedom in Iran.

2026, what is WRONG with you? I came into it excited, albeit cautiously. Looking forward to visits with my family, to working hard at writing, and especially to my own kiddo’s wedding in the summer. One reason I’m obsessing about the news is because I fear being separated.

*A beautiful place: the Minneapolis skyline viewed from its famous Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Sculpture Garden on the Loring Greenway*

The US is planning to tighten entry restrictions even for tourists. To visit with me, my husband will have 5 years’ worth of his social media scrutinised. What if he liked a meme that hurts their feelings and they don’t let him in?

I promise you, I know how fortunate I am. My life ticks along, even if sometimes on about 3 hours of sleep per night. Our house doors are sturdy and the country where I’m an immigrant hasn’t completely turned against me. But awareness of privilege doesn’t ease fear.

When I’m scrolling through news and social media, I’m not seeking personal affirmation. I’m looking for a sign that truth and empathy are winning. I crave universal agreement on what we see with our own eyes: that a human being with different beliefs or skin colour is still a human being, that a woman turning her car, maybe scared because some swearing paramilitary-looking dude was trying to force open her door, did not deserve to be executed.

Looking Ahead

We’re not going to get that, though, are we? A reasonable, empathetic consensus about human rights. It weighed heavily on me last week, exacerbated by the fact that a couple of students at work are so cruel and thoughtless, they’d fit right in with the Republican cabinet.

Another little group of students had asked me about guns violence in America. Kids will often make that association, and they want to know if I witnessed any. No, but there was a shooting at my school a couple years after I left, and another shooting widowed my sister’s best friend.

“How do you go out over there when you could get shot?” one of the British kids asked.

All I could say was, “You have to still live your life.”

We’ll vote for change and share the truth and advocate for empathy. In the meantime, I’ll plant my little crops, the first wave of which sits in compostable trays all over my dining room table. I’ll work on my writing, and I’ll try to read more than scroll. Panic doesn’t serve any use, and as my cat proved, it is infectious.

I’m also making use of the somewhat hospitable British climate, where I can take walks and admire the shape of bare tree branches against the sky. My final recommendation is to take in some art. We went to the Wilson Gallery in Cheltenham. It has an exhibit on the Arts and Crafts movement, and the sight of beautifully polished wood grain soothes me like flowing water.

How are you ensuring fear doesn’t get the better of you?

All Over the Place

This Week’s Bit of String: Expanding brackets

Back in school for the Christmas term, I spent 40 minutes working with a student on algebraic practice expanding brackets. Guiding him to multiply each bracketed term by each term in the other brackets, explaining why we’re multiplying here.

He was making progress, starting to remember a couple more steps as we moved on to the third problem of his online homework—and then he was sick of it. He insisted on guessing, repeatedly and incorrectly, stabbing the keyboard, for the fourth problem.

I sputtered reminders that he could work out the right answer if he tried.

*Autumn leaves at Mascoma Lake, New Hampshire*

He stabbed another wrong guess. “Miss, I just saw, like, three stages of grief pass over your face in one second.”

He may well have seen anger and bargaining and depression, but his comment then immediately made me laugh. It’s fitting, I suppose. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks.

Across the Ocean and Back

Just a week ago, as the half-term break ended, I arrived back from the USA. I published my previous blog post from Heathrow Departures on my way out, and spent the entire flight westward on writing tasks. Caught up on the latest Mslexia issue, scribbled about the journey, and wrote answers to interview questions for a Writers Showcase I’ll be participating in at the end of the month.

I made the trip for three reasons: to be with my family as we cope with bereavement, to start finding some private closure for myself, and to help out in any way possible. My parents are now in charge of my aunt’s house as well as their own, and my autistic cousin is now a wonderful part of our family. There’s a lot going on.

For example, on my first full day there I woke up at 4:15 a.m. and started scribbling about the previous evening’s reunion with my family. At the vaguest sign of daylight, around 6:45, I embarked on a 5-mile hike. I started in awe of the New England autumn colours which I haven’t seen much in 22 years and eventually made my way to the cemetery where I had a good cry at 8 a.m. over the family graves. I thanked our lost loves for giving us such good examples of how to look after each other.

After helping my mom with weeding, organising the pantry, and then hoovering up cobwebs from the basement ceiling, we left my aunt’s house for my parents’ and met up with my brother and his kids, plus my kiddo and their fiancé, for raucous family times. This included, among other random moments, me bouncing my niece on my lap while singing a sped-up version of a Sunday school song about Daniel in the lion’s den, in honour of my cousin’s middle name Daniel. Junie demanded it twice more.

And that was just one day! It was a wonderful week, I managed to squeeze a fair bit in, although it feels surreally separate from my back-to-term life. Despite the lack of sleep on the overnight flight home plus hints of jet lag, I made it through this past week at school while also cleaning my own house this time, running the BlueSky channel for Women Writers Network, critiquing 3 different pieces for other writers, editing the opening section of my new novel to submit that for feedback, starting my Thanksgiving cooking, and writing this masterful piece.

Ups and Downs

My day job itself is a microcosmic whirlwind of emotion. I’ll spend an excruciating hour with a student who refuses to go to classes so it’s down to TAs to educate her 1:1. An hour despairing of my career choice while she refuses to do anything while she glowers at her phone under a fur-lines parka hood. Try to make conversation and half the time I’m met with a sneering, “You WHAT?” The next hour, I might be fortunate enough to attend a Photography class, prompting and scribing a student’s self-evaluation of his work while a couple other boys in the class exchange corny jokes.

“Miss, what do you think of this one: What did the first hat say to the second hat? —You stay here, I’ll go on a head.”

I told my husband’s favourite joke which involves an elephant impersonation so I could never do it justice here. This surprised the boys so much, they cracked up. Meanwhile, my student tried his best to bite his smile back and I could claim my revenge:

“Pretty sure I just saw all five stages of grief pass over your face when I told that joke,” I quipped.

While acknowledging, and celebrating really, that our lives are made up of such emotional tempests, and that progress is often two steps forward and one (or two or three) back, I don’t necessarily like that portrayed too realistically in a book. I like a story to have a fairly orderly trajectory.

Yes, the protagonist, having been made suddenly aware of a problem during the inciting incident, will over-compensate and mess it all up. Yes, all will seem lost at the midpoint and they’ll have to rally again. But it irks me when a writer reconciles characters just to fall out over something else, for example, or gives them a crucial self-realisation only to forget it in the next chapter and have to learn it again. This seems common in stories of middle-class angst.

Maybe my intolerance makes me a selfish reader, but I don’t need fiction to resemble real life that much. I can read about real, sometimes harrowing issues, but give me some kind of actual trajectory through it. The ups and downs of real life are tiring enough.

Does that bother you in a book? How firmly do you like stories plotted, or are you happy enough to spend each moment with a character?

True Colours

This Week’s Bit of String: Jewelled hedgerows and painted roundabouts

The mini roundabout by Tesco has received fresh stripes. St. George’s red cross is now painted over the white, courtesy of an undoubtedly patriotic local citizen. I don’t think it makes much difference to how anyone drives or feels. Do some British citizens in this fairly homogenous town feel safer because someone spraypainted the emblem of a Roman soldier of Greek descent whose worship started in Palestine? Whatever works for them, I guess.

What surprised me was the title given to this campaign of painting and flying loads of extra English flags. “Raise the colours.” Before I remembered the military and scouting origins of the phrase, I thought it odd. The English flag isn’t spectacularly colourful.

As an immigrant (21 years living in Britain this past week!), I have my own perspective on the UK and its colours. They are sometimes dull grey skies and the stifling black or navy blue of school uniforms that I see at work. But they started for me with red double decker buses and purple cross-country trains, the pulsing bright lights of Student Union discos and the green of grass that grows through the winter.

Every late August, when I return to Gloucestershire from my summer visit to my family in New England, the colours of old England are deep purple berry-black and deceptively soft stinging nettle-green. I forage in the hedgerows and make blackberry-elderberry syrups and jam.

This year, the hedgerows are particularly festooned with colour. Dark blue sloes and so many little red hawthorn berries, you can barely see the leaves. Apparently, drought can stress trees into making extra fruit in a more desperate bid to pass on their genetic material. Hopefully they don’t feel too downhearted that some of their DNA is going into a crumble. It’s doing all kinds of good!

Full Spectrum

Ask my five and a half year old niece her favourite colour and she will tell you it’s rainbow. I didn’t know that was an option when I was a kid.

I hope no one nitpicks her and tells her rainbow isn’t one colour, it’s all of them. Of course it is, that’s why people are so enchanted by rainbows. Shining colours melded together more closely than a hedgerow, with far more beautiful range than a red cross on a white background. We all have an innate love of mixture and brightness.

*A baby bear and their great aunt Laurel, 23 years ago*

In my dining room, next to the spiderplant grown from a student’s gift and a felted leaf garland crafted by another student, a prism hangs. It is no tear-shaped slip of a thing, it’s a weighty diamond capable of pitching a whole swathe of rainbows.

My aunt Laurel gave it to me when I was struggling as an adolescent. “Sometimes you just need more rainbows in your life,” she told me, her voice catching on her compassion.

Three days ago, Laurel died suddenly of a heart attack in her Vermont home. On that side of the ocean, my family rallies to honour her and to support my cousin. On this side of the ocean, a friend gives me yellow gladioli at work and another drops an orange-papered Tony’s Chocolonely bar through my letterbox. British colours at work again.

Making Rainbows

More vibrant fruit yields can come from jeopardy, and rainbows don’t happen without storms. My aunt Laurel had her share of storms, but she absolutely sparkled for us.

She loved the lupins that grew in the median strip of Highway 91, she loved candied almonds and jewelry. She gave me my first CD of Les Miserables, and instigated the nerf gun battle that ended in my husband proposing. She invented her own evil twin to blame pranks on, and encouraged all of us to do the same. She was the source of many a thoughtful gift, and constantly opened her home to us, no matter what annoying phase we were going through.

When my baby was born (I mean, they were a baby then…) she was the one with me in the delivery room. Despite the tragedy and horror of the terrorist attacks that day, Laurel always reminded me how she couldn’t stop smiling after the birth. She strove to see the world through the most hopeful prism, and sometimes that’s awfully hard.

Even better than a prism, she’s left us with her wonderful son, my cousin, who will now be even more part of my immediate family. It’s excruciating to know she won’t be there the next time I get back to see my family. But she’s left us so much to be grateful for, especially an undying impression that no person or place is as dull as just two colours.

Wishing you rainbows this week, friends, and hopefully not too many storms.

Elections and Remembrance

This Week’s Bit of String: A trio of fortitude

This year, our school had our Remembrance Day assembly outside. Registration groups lined up on the field behind our young cadets and scouts in their various uniforms. Seagulls shrieked and fallen gingko leaves cut a gash on the grass as if the ground seeped golden ichor.

I was orbiting three Year 10 boys with a spectrum of special needs. In the time it took to get 1300 young people out on the field, they were quite tired of standing and had no interest in our reasons for gathering.

One boy had crumpled to half his size, twisting himself to lean a bony elbow on his upright knees. I guided him to a bench.

When I returned to the group, as the headteacher solemnly began reading poems barely audible from the sidelines, a second boy pitched up his insistent muttering.

“My hands are hot. They’re HOT. This isn’t normal.”

This student always has an ailment to stop him working. His eye is blurry. There’s a cut on his finger. His dog bit his knee and the painkillers are wearing off. He considers “This isn’t normal” to be the clincher when describing these maladies, and the phrase becomes ever more laughable since clearly, having some debilitating injury is completely normal for him. Anyway, I guided him to a different, further bench.

On my return, the third boy proved unmotivated to surpass their meagre mettle. He wanted to sit down too. At this point, though, the assembly had reached the Last Post and we were about to have our two minutes of silence. I told Boy #3 he could stand for just five more minutes.

Back in the classroom, the teacher checked in with me and I referred to the boys wryly as a Trio of Fortitude. I’d pointed out to the trio that the soldiers we were honouring had to stand very long whiles indeed, and live in trenches under awful conditions, etc. But through my annoyance when people can’t spend just 20-30 minutes without being the centre of attention, I feel compassion for the kids.

Each of this trio are capable of insights regarding others, in their own time. When fully confronted with experiences outside their own, though, they bridle against it and instinctively magnify their issues in defence.

More Than Fortitude

The feeling’s mutual sometimes, as you can perhaps tell. I don’t always want to hear about which hurty finger is stopping one of our Fortitudinous Ones from writing, or whatnot. I have my own agenda, and my own problems.

And when a grasping, narcissistic, thin-skinned sexual predator gets elected president of my native country where all my family live, I’m briefly uninterested in the desperation of voters who found it a bit pricey to gas up their SUVs so deemed him the preferable candidate. Personally, I’m ok with paying fuel duties to try and combat the effects of climate change, or with paying prices for eggs and milk that reflect the costs of making these products available. I’ll stick it out, thinking long-term. Fortitude!

To an extent, that’s a reflection of my privilege. My empathy will win out in the end. I’ll be patient with my students and with the voting public because I don’t like anyone to suffer and I do realise humanity is rife with struggle.

If we are tough and resilient without empathy, we get entrenched in our beliefs and when others don’t function in the exact same way we do, we may see them as less human.

Beyond Empathy

For the first several days after the election, I felt physically sick. On Wednesday the 6th, as I walked to school through crispy, sunset-coloured leaves, I remembered the Supreme Court and how he’ll make it even more awful for 30-50 years to come, and I nearly threw up. This is not normal.

*This is just a pretty picture which I stopped and took through my post-election daze.*

I lost more sleep, worrying about the impact on my kiddo and their partner. Will they still be accepted to work in schools? Will there even be funding for jobs in special needs education over there anymore? Should I send money, help them stock up on certain items before the promised tariffs and economy crash? When I do sleep, I have extra dreams about abuse and assault. Seeing misogynists and an adjudicated rapist assume power reopens trauma wounds.

There’s a weary frustration, as I wonder how to persuade people outside my information bubble to do what’s right (ie, vote against racism and sexism and authoritarianism) whether it seems to be in their best economic interest or not. And there’s grief because, well, now how can I go home? Not to live there with my family in the near future, anyway.

And yet, this is nothing like what those soldiers and their families went through in the World Wars, nothing like the terror and loss experienced in the Middle East or Ukraine. When we had our two minutes of silence last Monday, I was grateful to reflect on circumstances vaster than my own, and to move out of my feelings.

Surviving the incoming presidential administration will require a mix of empathy and fortitude. We need to be resilient and practical, and considering the big picture while planning specific action. No matter how tiring it is, we have to keep standing.

Learning Abroad

This Week’s Bit of String: On the way to somewhere else

I’d never have got into this whole immigrant fix, splitting myself between two countries, if I hadn’t done a term abroad while in college. My major was English/ Education in New Hampshire, where contributing to class discussion was key.

In the UK, on the other hand, professors seemed flummoxed when people turned up. They didn’t even expect us to read the assigned literature: “If you didn’t do the reading for this week, I hope you do at some point in your life. It’s a great book…”

*Twin American spires: church steeple and rocket*

I had read each book, as it happened, and was unimpressed having it summarised in a murmur for 3 hours. Screw it, I decided. I’ll do the reading while on the train to somewhere more interesting.

And off I went, to friends in Glasgow, Bangor, Wolverhampton, and especially London. I read, and listened to new-to-me British music (Texas, Robbie Williams, Steps), survived on Kingsmill rolls and Edam cheese and Smirnoff Ice, and fell for three different guys in quick succession, the final one being my now-husband.

I also wrote a wacky but fantastic story about a girl whose heart, in the form of a cookie, is eaten for breakfast. I got an A for that class, after only attending 1.3 lessons. I did the reading!

What I Wrote This Summer

*New England idyll: Billings Farm Museum, Vermont*

It’s always interesting to see other writers post about their vacations in the summer. Some catch up on reading, and many are busy with their children during the holidays anyway. For me, I spend 4 weeks out of the 6-week break going to see my family in New England. There are definite vacation aspects to this—the lakes and rivers, the mountains, the ice cream.

It’s also very busy as I condense a year’s worth of interactions into 1/12 of the time. Half my family are too busy to keep in touch when I’m not there, so I run around trying to help people out and make memories. They are all I have, and they are precarious without me recording them. When not Doing Things, I’m scribbling about them.

This leaves little reading time. I have writing commitments—promised critiques, etc, and also students I check in with even in the summer, so I squeeze those in. What I do find, though, is that the travel, the hiking and driving and swimming and reflecting, open me up to learning a lot of random things. Without the more rigid structure of work and long-term writing projects, my brain relaxes just enough to sponge up new information.

What I Learned This Summer

There were my discoveries while hiking, which I researched later:
The rather formidable Argiope aurantia (ok, yellow garden spider) keeping watch from her web in the lake bridge. It’s also known as a zigzag spider because of that uniquely thick central line. The purpose of this unique pattern is still unknown to us.

The Warren Rocket: My family got together in Warren, NH, near the White Mountains. While other towns have Civil War cannons on their greens or in front of their schools, Warren (population peaked in 1860 at 1100-something) has a great big Redstone missile rocket. (Pictured at the top.) It was funded and transported by a local veteran hoping to encourage interest in space travel.

Signs around the rocket tell visitors about SS Officer Wernher von Braun, who supervised concentration camp workers to manufacture missiles that killed 1400 Londoners. After the war, Americans smuggled von Braun out of Germany to design even deadlier rockets over here, but also realise his childhood dream of sending rockets to space. I wonder what the childhood dreams of his captive labourers were, or those civilians killed in airstrikes.

*You can see why the Morse Museum caught my eye…*

The Morse Museum: Another early morning Warren hike discovery, a building with granite plaques advertising Curios of India and China, and African Game Trophies. Now-vacant, it was dedicated in 1928 to house the collections of Ira H Morse, a local shoe store mogul and game hunter. There’s a colourful bio online of IH and others, written by affectionate family members. They include his adventures but also quirks like how he would “ream out” uncooperative salt shakers, at home or in public.

Speaking of museums, there are a couple in the area which I like to visit.
Billings Farm, a late 19th century agricultural reenactment site. It’s great for learning about cows and dairy, edible plants and farm life (see above). When we visited this year, they were making pasta in the farmhouse kitchen. I hadn’t realised how long pasta has been a staple in the US (it’s much more recent in the UK), but in fact Thomas Jefferson sampled and loved it in Europe, and by the time of the Civil War macaroni was very popular.

The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College: I always stand in awe before the incredible, ancient Assyrian tablets before moving on to the current exhibits. This summer, a diverse selection of art including Musasama’s elaborate arrangement of textiles and natural objects across the floor, part of the Maple Tree Series, made me aware of the maple tree abolitionist movement. Did you know that in the 1790s, free people of colour, white settlers, and native Americans advocated substituting maple syrup for cane sugar, to starve the economy propping up enslavers?

My family creates a good learning environment, with our eclectic interests. Dinner discussions might be about what’s the oldest continuously-used language in the world (Hebrew, Tamil, Sanskrit… Lithuanian and Icelandic appear in the top 10, too). My dad found an 1884 encyclopaedia in our AirBnB and read passages out loud to us. There was no entry for childbirth, but lots of details on “Brawling in Church” and the various statutes against it.

Even though I didn’t do much writing work over the summer, the feeling of my mind loosening to hold more is not an unwriterly sensation. New stories could develop from here!

Do travel and family time inspire your writing?

New Pleasures Prove

This Week’s Bit of String: Tale of two benches

Last Saturday night we went on a date. We got dinner from the chippy and sat in the rare clear evening on a bench above the car park.

“Like two yoofs,” my husband said as we popped open our cans of Rio tropical drink. “But without the cheeky ciggy.”

After our chips, we did a cultural about-face at the town cinema watching a broadcast of the National Theatre’s excellent The Motive and the Cue. Based on diaries from when John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in Hamlet, it made us want to see the actual 1964 production. It was my kind of nerdiness and luckily, my husband was all for it.

I remembered when we first moved to the town, new to the area (in my case, new to the whole nation) and unsure how to entertain our 3-year-old. We wandered up to a school playground on a typical cloudy afternoon. A plain, plasticky bench had a slightly rusting plaque: “In memory…” and a person’s name.

“Not the most flattering tribute,” said my husband.

“Well, it doesn’t say ‘In loving memory’ or anything,” I pointed out.

That made him laugh, and I felt smart and seen for a minute. That didn’t often happen in the first months as an immigrant and wife.

This week is our 20th anniversary. We’d used a John Donne quote from “The Bait” on our wedding invitations.

“Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove…”

I didn’t really have an idea what those pleasures would look like (does anybody?), and it took us a while to find the confidence and freedom–and economic stability–to come up with the successful melding of tastes like we had last week.

If That’s All We Have

It took time. Two decades ago, our wedding song was Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World,” from the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That is my husband’s type of nerdiness: gadgetry and fast cars and also outer space.

When we met and I was nearly 20, I was keen to lose myself. The movies we watched were ones he thought I should see, and I was thrilled to be trusted with them. We had 20 days together—weird how this number keeps popping up today—between meeting and my return from Old England to New. At some point in that mad rush, he played “We Have All the Time in the World” for me, and I was moved to the point of no return.

I’ve written about time before, though. It can be more romantic when you don’t have much of it, in the same way we sometimes use it better when we know it’s scarce.

When we said our wedding vows and I eventually sorted the paperwork for our kiddo and me to emigrate, the dream of being together became a promise. One of those takes more work than the other!

*Poses like these! New Orleans, New Years 2024*

The effort has been amply rewarded. My husband is a musician, so in addition to being immersed in James Bond and Star Trek, I get to be a jazz band groupie. I would never have imagined that my cautious British physicist would turn out to be a star poser for photos, or that he’d come along to Shakespeare performances.

Sticking with it for the amount of time that change requires is a small miracle. Other times, we swoop to each other’s rescue in an instant. That’s another miracle: when one vulnerable person reveals their desperation and their partner responds with care, no matter how lost and alone they too may feel.

Suddenly You Flare in My Sight

If a story equals character plus event plus time, there are infinite combinations. I come up with fiction ideas by asking “What if…?” sometimes about real-life situations, but not usually about my personal ones. Lately, though, I imagine alternative realities which would have unspooled had I made different choices.

We often liked to tell people, if they asked how we met, that we never would have if he’d been a moment later heading back to his uni, and had missed the train. But what if we’d met seven years ago, or ten, instead of twenty-three? If we met the same way, as students with no assets swiftly adding a child to the mix—we’d never have been able to live together as a family. The immigration laws are so tight now, they keep increasing the amount a British citizen must have in the bank to earn the right to bring an international spouse home. I ache for the people kept apart because of this, because of meeting each other a decade too late.

This helps me appreciate what we have, and I track our moments of delight in my daily scribbles. As favours we gave all our wedding guests copies of Wendell Berry’s poem “The Wild Rose.” He compares his longtime partner to a wild rose blooming… “where yesterday there was only shade, and once more I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before.”

There are so many twists in life which we can’t control, and always a fair few choices to regret. It’s nice to remember the ones we’re more than satisfied with, even—dare I say it—proud of. What surprising choices would you make all over again?

Pest Control

This Week’s Bit of String: A pestilence of Shoulds

Do you ever imagine your abstract stresses as actual creatures? I find it makes them more grapple-able.

Lately, the word should is plaguing me. If it came to life, I think it would be a multi-legged trudger, low to the ground with clinging claws. It would blast out barks: Should! Should! and be a right pest.

My mind gets infested by Shoulds, particularly in the summer. During term-time, there’s little question about what I have to do. There’s work, there’s squeezing in chores and writing deadlines and exercise and family commitments around that. But if I get time to myself, I’m overrun with quarrelling Shoulds. The guilt of leaving things undone becomes weightier, because what excuse do I have?

*I’m no artist but… I’m thinking stout caterpillar body, claws of a sloth, and stubborn pug face.*

You should be writing, a voice in my head says quite frequently. Editing my novel, inventing a whole new book, polishing and submitting short stories, putting effort into a Twitter presence—I should be working on all those things.

But there’s also the cluttered house, and my garden in a riotous bid for attention, and the thought that there’s no time like the present to get extra exercise and stretches in, should I be attempting some sort of social life, and actually, what if I caught up on sleep and reading; shouldn’t that benefit me in the school year?

If I created a word cloud based on my thoughts, the biggest word in it might be should—apart from family member’s names maybe, and definitely the cat and probably, embarrassingly, peanut butter (the latter accompanied by the phrase “should absolutely not eat anymore of it today…”)

‘Tis the Season

For most of my summer, I go to my family overseas. There are wonderful little vacations encased in this, but home time has a serious intensity to it so that I bristle if it’s called a holiday.

*Up at sunrise during the summer to seize every moment*

As an immigrant, my herd of Shoulds has extra directions to pull me in. And the limits of time give their claws an extra sharpness. It’s super important to me that I help out my parents and siblings and child while I can see them, but that we also make fun memories, and keep my husband entertained since it is, in fact, his vacation, and that I get moments to feast my senses on the mountains and lakes and rivers of home—all while keeping up with writing and exercise. So the Shoulds run rampant.

Without my teaching assistant job playing the alpha role among the Should herd, it’s hard to figure out which Should is in charge. Each seems quite as demanding as the others. Yes, I should dig into writing, but think how bad the weeds will be if I leave the garden any longer. And have I really recovered my strength enough for a new term—maybe I should spend an afternoon lying around reading.

The Long Game

The word should is rooted in debt and guilt. Any argument I come up with against one therefore sounds like an excuse to shirk. Which Shoulds can we allow ourselves to ignore?

I’ve tentatively decided one thing. I’m not ready for another deep edit of my Eve novel yet. I’m too frustrated now. I’d have her jumping up and down by the third paragraph shouting “Read me, fools!” like she’s Maleficent or something. I need time to think before the next edit and submission rounds. Maybe I’ll have mulled it enough by next weekend, maybe I’ll leave it for half-term or even next summer.

You know what I ended up spending lots of time on for the end of my break? Foraging. I turned myself into a scrappy little squirrel to combat my scruffy little Should flock. I walked the lanes for hours picking blackberries and elderberries, and cooked them together into jam. With its murky elder depths, I’m hoping it will ward off winter colds. Nothing leaves you helpless at the stubby, plodding feet of a Should herd the way illness does! So maybe I’ve played my priorities right. We’ll see.

What do you do when pestered by Shoulds?

Quaint Customs

This Week’s Bit of String: A world of queens

Years ago my kiddo emerged from a swimming pool changing room and treated me to this fabulous idea:

“The reason I took so long was because I invented a new musical. It will use the music of Queen and be all about if history had queens instead of kings.”

How would the British empire be different as a matriarchy? If there had been a Henrietta VIII, for example, would she have gone through 6 husbands? Some of the queens they did have were pretty brutal. Would they have felt less pressure to be so if they weren’t sandwiched between kings?

I suspect the ruthlessness lies not in gender but in unquestioned power, in the philosophy that there’s a divine right to rule for a particular bloodline. How then could a monarch, male or female, not believe they’re better than everyone else? Why should they genuinely take interest in what goes on for any of their subjects?

*I mean, it’s fun to see something a bit different…*

I can’t help thinking about these things with the coronation of the new king. It’s a rather inescapable affair. As an immigrant living in Britain, I was initially bemused by the knitted crowns on top of Royal Mail letterboxes and the bunting strung across main streets. One of my favourite cottages to walk past put up signs saying, “Party like royalty.” Cute.

Then there were £10 souvenir brochures for sale, and you can’t get a chocolate bar without a shiny crown stamped on it, and the public are offered the “opportunity” to participate in the coronation by swearing allegiance to the king… It became unsettling. Especially considering the monarchy’s cruel legacy of colonialism and the slave trade, and the current cost of living crisis.

Class Differences

When the queen died, it was a day or two after the Conservatives made Liz Truss prime minister, and during the first week of school. When you’re running around making sure your students actually have lunch to eat, swapping in new unelected leaders for old ones does not impress you.

I don’t begrudge people whatever small pleasures they find in life. Clearly some people enjoy celebrating the monarchy. I wish they could get that feeling from other things. It’s like my Year 12 student not wanting to join a cooking class in making burgers, because she’s convinced nothing can be better than MacDonalds.

Shouldn’t bluebell-carpeted woods, chips from the local takeaway, maybe a trip to a local production of ChittyChittyBangBang, make Britons feel proud of their country rather than a random guy donning ridiculously expensive headgear?

Many are concerned about the massive cost of this event. I’m happy for the children of our parish if they enjoy the hula hoops our council decided to gift to every schoolchild to mark the occasion. I’m glad if people like getting together for town-funded street parties. But the district Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, for example, has a waiting list of more than 200 young people with acute needs. Hula hoops are fun, but so’s cake and there’s a reason no one liked it when French royalty said, “Let them eat cake.”

Story Selection

I don’t read much about the royal family. I got fed up with it as an adolescent in the mid 1990s when Princess Di or Fergie or the American equivalent, JFK Jr, were constantly on People magazine covers. I do think it’s fascinating how being born to that level of privilege and scrutiny would affect a person and their relationships. There’s a wealth of opportunity for stories there and many have utilised it. For me though, other stories are so much more crucial.

I hope everyone remembers that the queen wasn’t the only person who sacrificed and toiled in WWII; pretty much everyone I cared for in my nursing home job a decade ago did. King Charles isn’t the only person who helps with good causes. So many unsung heroes work hard, or run food banks or volunteer at youth centres or take in refugees.

I’ll spend much of today on housework and editing my novel’s penultimate chapter, featuring the voice of a refugee girl struggling in a new land. It is different from the chapters told by Eve herself, and I must make this extra, incredibly important voice work. I also plan to visit the swimming pool. It probably won’t be too crowded today while children are forced to sit at home near the telly. I hope they come away with wild ideas about how things could be different.

Will you be celebrating anything today?

Summer Bucket List

This Week’s Bit of String: Can we fit it? … Yes we can

Packing time! 48 hours now till I’m on my flight to New Hampshire, to my son, my parents and siblings and childhood home, friends and haunts. To lakes and mountains and trees, to root beer and Dunkin’ Donuts.

I’m already getting distracted. My point is, time to decide what goes in my suitcase. They’ve changed the allowance from 23 down to 20 kilos maximum. This should be ok; I know by now what not to bring. I don’t need much in terms of dressing up or fancy footwear. I don’t need many books for myself because I often don’t get time to read; it’s all I can do to find moments for daily scribbles so I don’t forget all I’ve seen, what was said.

Concurrently with my packing, and with cleaning the house and weeding and trimming the garden before I go, I’m going deep with novel edits. This is only my second pass through my story of Eve. It’s familiar territory but not quite as much as an Aer Lingus flight from Bristol to Boston. I’m still learning what I really need and what I might not. It will take me a few more journeys to figure that out, I suspect.

The Days are Just Packed

Even more than keeping my suitcase light and my writing clear and engaging, planning the time while I’m away is a huge challenge. Thanks to working in school and getting a longer summer holiday, I have three weeks in my native country, but that isn’t much when it’s also one of my only chances to Mum for the whole year.

One thing I’ve learned as a writer—and parent—is that the worst thing we can do is tell ourselves there’s plenty of time. It sounds a bit sad, but most people I’ve discussed this with seem to feel the same.

If we are busy, we know we have to dedicate time to something. If we have more free time, we develop a more cavalier attitude and assume we’ll get to everything we want to do.

There’s so much fun I want to have with my kid, and with the rest of my family. We’re hoping to try tubing down a river with rapids and a covered bridge. I’d love campfire chats, board games, kayak sessions, listening to music together, maybe get him to build/ squash a sandcastle or two for old times’ sake. But he’ll also be working, so I’m looking forward to joining him at summer camp for writing workshops, and cooking some of his favourite dinners for when he gets home. We have things we need to troubleshoot together; job applications to fill out and things like that.

Being apart means I feel ready to appreciate even the work of it. Baking in a hot kitchen, coming up with cover letters for prospective employers. It’s not what everyone looks forward to doing when on vacation, but I will feel privileged to do it when I’m finally around more people I love.

Summer Goals

Do you have any aims for the summer? The Internet is rife with reading lists and exercise recommendations. I find them daunting. I just want to read and exercise daily and I’m going to have to be flexible about that.

Exercise: I’ll keep up my daily early morning hikes. No choice; I’m addicted. But I’ll also be incorporating 10 minutes of stretches, at least every other day because the last term at school viciously made me feel my age and then some.

Self-care: Also, I want to have a bath and soak the stiffness out. We don’t have a bathtub here in the UK but my parents do in the US, and on this matter my sister holds me very accountable. She’s already on my case. I’ve got the Lush bomb for the occasion. That’s it, that’s the goal.

Reading: If I can read almost every day, I’ll be happy. So far so good, since school ended last week. What utter bliss, once a morning hike has been completed, and then a bunch of chores and visits sorted, to stretch out with a book for an hour in the afternoon. I’m hoping to keep that routine going while away, and clear five books from my own, personal TBR list this summer.

*White Mountains, New Hampshire. Just go with the flow, man.*

Writing: There are my daily scribbles, of course. I’ve got a luscious thick notebook for observations, memories, exchanges, ideas. It should last me the weeks I’m away, and keeping up with everything I want to remember is a big commitment. However, I’ve also been pushing myself this summer to sit down and put focused effort into a writing project, for a couple hours maybe four times per week. I had lost the habit of that, since I could only write in small windows of time. It feels so good to stretch my concentration muscles again, to sit editing and not letting myself get distracted. I’d forgotten I was capable of it!

Parenting: My number one priority for the next three weeks. Anything that makes me feel like a mum again will do. Hearing complaints face to face instead of reading a Facebook message. Teaming up to show his dad Field of Dreams so he knows what we’re quoting when we say things like, “Peace, love, doooope!” All of it.

My goals are probably a bit more open-ended than targets are meant to be, but I prefer the term feasible. I advise a slightly gentle approach, because you never know what crises might come up. Do whatever it takes to enjoy each moment, whether it’s relishing a challenge or making yourself relax for once.