family – Page 3 – Hues of Hankinson

The wealth and beauty in the time-worn.

In Japan they have a word Kintsugi and it relates to keeping something and continuing to use it even when it has become damaged and care-worn. I am finding that as I age in our very materialistic and modern world that this idea resonates greatly with me. I feel that I myself am almost Kintsugi as I have been broken and fixed so many times.

I no longer feel the need to have everything shiny and new and in the latest style, it is as if I feel now more than ever that there was a time where it was the meaning that gave the value and this was more important than the monetary value of the “thing”. On my wall I have a clock that my mother got for me many years ago and its monetary value is meaningless but it still adorns my wall, she got it for me because she thought it would appeal to me and it still holds that value and the love that came with it deep within.

Sunday afternoon was very cold and wintery and in an attempt to stave off the cold we ventured into Bruccianis for a hot chocolate. Bruccianis is on the promenade at Morecambe and it opened in 1939 and still occupies the same building and much of the interior design and decor is still untouched and it is now a grade 2 listed building.

For me the comfort is in its menu. It takes me back to days gone by when I would warm my hands on a mug of Horlicks in the Bus Station cafe in Rawtenstall after shopping with mum, Terry Jacks and “Seasons in the sun” playing on the radio. The menu here boasts Horlicks, Vimto, Bovril and the ultimate decadence of the Knickerbocker Glory. It isn’t shabby chic, or modern art nouveau but simply still the same as it was many years ago.

Its wealth and beauty is that it is what it is. No charlatan here. A place to warm up with a hot chocolate in the winter-time and chat with family and friends or a special ice-cream treat at the beach in a red-hot summer when the sand feels like it is on fire. Sometimes we don’t need perfection what we really need is congruence and familiarity.

Morecambe by the sea

Icy cold toes, winter sun

Horlicks comforts me.

I am submitting this for Haibun Monday at d’Verse, it breaks the rules a tad, but I think it reflects change and perhaps it is also indicative of a change yet to come, a return to a different set of values.

Light and shadows of loneliness.

As the day casts its long shadow homeward

I recognise that so much of it has to do with the light.

They say it is always darkest before the dawn and perhaps that dawn is the realisation that the fear, shame and guilt linger longest in the hours of darkness

and they dance and pirouette amongst the silhouettes and shadows to a tune that beguiles and steals the light.

We light candles, we whisper of hope and future happiness and draw circles in vain to cast aside the demons.

We crave love and long to belong to another so that we have a hand to hold in the darkness a kindred spirit to guide us through the pain and suffering and lamentable servitude to solitude.

Sunrise.

Night yields to day and despair drifts away and the endless ebb and flow brings us slowly to the shores of our halcyon dreams.

This is my contribution for World Mental Health Day. I think loneliness is a huge issue for so many people young and old alike and I think the hours of darkness are able to bring/conjure up their own unique set of torments.

For those who struggle to sleep it seems a long night.

For my girls.

Submitting this for open link night at d’Verse.

Scents of Childhood.

Lavender lush

Lulls to sleep

Creeps through seams in crisp new linen.

Scented sachets

Sandalwood

Smell of the orient in Nanna’s drawers.

Nivea and talc

Clean fresh towels.

Lily of the valley handcream and cheap eau de cologne.

Bonfire night

Sparks and crackles

Burned embers, toffee and smoke galore

Pine needles and frost

Gingerbread parkin, mince pie aromas

And freshly fallen snow.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’verse poetics, bit rusty have been out of the loop for a while.

Sounds of silence

Footfalls through the frost

Whispers on the wind,

Stillness in the stars,

Grubby chubby little hands

Seeking out shells on the shoreline.

Moments of magic in motherhood.

Memories fall like raindrops from the skies

Teardrops in my eyes

as I cherish every second of your lives.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Love you always wherever you may be-Mumma.

I think I have been silent for quite a while and now it is time to break the silence. I realise that so much of what I am and what I have done with my life and what I have become is linked to becoming a mother.

For me there was never any doubt that it was a fundamental part of what I held as important-not excelling in a sport or becoming a great leader or even the top of my career but giving and nurturing as best I could new members of the human race. I didn’t always do the job well, but I mostly did my best with the time and resources that I had at my disposal at the time.

I was always clear in my own mind that each would become their own person and make their own way in life and that in some respects all that I was doing was giving them some tools for their life basket and a safe place to grow. So it was a sprinkling of knowledge, a touch of high spiritedness, add in resilience backbone and compassion for others. I always wanted them to fly the nest and soar in the winds in their own little worlds build their own castles in the air and thrive and survive and have soul.

They have moved into their own lives now, almost effortlessly without a backwards glance and yet I know that they will always be connected. I don’t think the umbilical cord is ever truly broken and just as I will always carry my own mother in my heart even though she is long since gone I think they too will always carry a part of me in their hearts and so the story goes, the ebb and flow, mother to child.

Time passes.

Withered

Her hand frail against the withered fronds as she rearranged the flowers

For time had sold them short.

Joyful

Her youthful stance and gaze, as glorious bride in the gaily painted photo-frame

Captured in the stillness of time framed by the care-home mantle-piece.

Anguish

Forgetting fettered fragile moments of family-time,

Lost forever in the timelessness of a fretful mind.

Peacefulness

Her pain receding as the hands of time hold her soul

Serene against the backdrop of a moonlit sky.

This for poetics at d’verse. We were asked to explore something we couldn’t touch. It is coming up for the 10th anniversary of my mum passing away and she never got to be old so she never experienced losing her memories.

Prodigal

Clumsy — awkward steps across the hall — Childlike stomps beyond the wall.

My heart skips a beat.

Is it you? Are you home?

Stealth — I meld with the shadows — I limber lithely behind the arch.

Eager to surprise you with my smile.

Are you near? Is it your footsteps I hear?

Shouts — call out your name — voice cracks through the silence.

We melt into each other’s arms.

My child is home.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse mtb.

If only …….

Missing in action.

Still silent seamless sorrow as the shadows of the day recede

My loss and longing washes over me

And it feels like my heart might bleed.

To carry both of you with me across the seas of need

I long to have your hands to hold

And from this endless ache be freed.

Love sets us free to chase our dreams

Make no mistaking there

But the hollow place inside of me, still wishes you were here.

For Mental Health Awareness Week 2018.

For my girls. Whom I love, every day and more. For my Ellen across the seas. Some days leave a gaping chasm of loss. Hold your children tight when they are small if you are going to give them wings to fly. XXXXX

I am sharing this for open link night on d’Verse and of course the hand holding is part of the theme. For my beautiful girls. XXXX

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Pakaru

The car is at the garage

The engine is Kaput

Another worry in the bag

And now it won’t stay shut.

We appear to haemorrhage money

There’ll soon be nothing left

It isn’t remotely funny

Friends family fortitude bereft.

Pakaru and redundant

For all my story’s worth

Broken beyond replacement

Nothing left but mirth.

Pakaru- broken for Mental Health Awareness week 2018.

Fifteen years on…

Fifteen years ago we were at a child’s birthday party in the Church hall at Bride with our girls, when Dave revealed that he had received in the post that morning compulsory call- out papers to serve in Iraq. It was completely unexpected, he was a serving member of the Territorial Army but we had always been assured that they would never serve in an active Theatre of War, and yet here we were and my then 41-year-old husband was given less than a month to sort his affairs out before being whisked away at the end of May to Basra Palace.

We had only just moved to the Isle of Man with our girls and the whole situation was like some complete nightmare and it was a day full of sadness and grief, and as the children played party games I spent most of my time crying quietly in the corner. In so many ways that moment, that letter, that situation changed our lives forever, and in a sense, I think even at that moment we knew that things would never really be the same.

In fact it almost feels like fifteen years on, we are only just beginning to put it all behind us, the path it sent us down was not an unhappy path but it was a path that was less travelled and it is only now that we find ourselves walking back to the crossroads in an attempt to rediscover some of the life and lives we left behind.

This weekend the sun shines. We have taken a road trip to Harrogate to spend a night at the Old Swan Hotel. A beautiful place that used to be called the Harrogate Hydropathic and is infamous for providing Agatha Christie with a safe haven during a troubled part of her life in 1926. Unbelievably we have been given the room she stayed in as our room for the evening and I feel very privileged.

We stopped off in Skipton on the way through and enjoyed watching the Tour De Yorkshire. They were also celebrating down on the canal and the Accrington pipe band put on a splendid performance and they must have been sweltering in their uniforms. The canal barges looked inviting and the post-industrial landscape told a story of reinvention and rejuvenation.

We came to Skipton quite a few times before the girls were born, we even used it as a stepping stone and caught the train to Leeds a few times when I was having my IVF treatment there in 1998. So it is a place of memories, the last visit the girls were about 2 and in the double buggy, we stopped at what was Woolworths and bought Ellen a toy Jake from the Tweenies and Emily a Mopatop. I think she still has Mopatop, but Jake got lost in the Mcdonalds at Llandudno junction in about 2001.

After Skipton, we drove on to Harrogate where we are staying at The Old Swan Hotel. What a joy, it has its own character and sense of self and here we find ourselves in room 253 which was the room that Agatha Christie stayed in for 11 days in December 1926 when she went missing. It feels a little like serendipity, it has been a dark and deep week and the cracks have been showing and I could happily have disappeared myself on Wednesday and if I had found myself here I am sure it would have been a positive and healing thing to have done. I would like to think that she may have found this too. She divorced the following year and rumours about her mental state at the time of the missing 11 days vary from the concept that she was suicidal, or in a fugue state, to the fact that she was making it difficult for her husband to continue with his affair and he claimed she had amnesia following a car accident. I guess no one really knows. I hope she found peace here. The room doesn’t feel tormented so perhaps she did.