Dolls instead of Brighton

Yesterday one of the tyres on the Audi burst. It was completely flat by the time I got to the storage with the auctioneer guy, but there was a placeholder in the back. Max was with me, so once he was done telling me what was what we jacked it up and switched it over. The little placeholder is not particularly robust and it has no grip. “No faster than 50mph,” it says. It’s pouring with rain. I was going to go to Brighton tonight in a storm.

“I don’t trust you not to get carried away and drive over fifty,” says Lou, who has driven extensively with me. She might be right. I like the roar of that Audi. Max is in on it too. They don’t even know each other so I can’t think they’re colluding. “I’m worried about that wheel long distance in the rain,” says Max. Me? I hadn’t even thought about it. I was just going to bimble down to the coast and back. Maybe see the sea, maybe get killed, maybe get some fresh air. I just wanted to see Lou.

She’s right though, and Max too. If I’m not going to look after my own safety, it’s nice occasionally to notice other people doing it. I shouldn’t be throwing the car around until I’ve put a decent wheel on. SensibAL. So I stayed at home and looked into a box of my mother’s dolls…

It is SO WEIRD to experience the toys of your deceased mother for the first time. Little word games on pieces of paper and sweet unusual dolls in dresses and ones that have eyes that open and close and … eew

I got a really clear picture of the child that owned those dolls, and I’m trying to work how that child became the woman that I said “I’m a grown up now mum gurrrr stop treating me like a child” to. There’s a Sindy doll there that was manufactured six years before she got married to dad. There’s a hedgehog smoking underneath a lamppost in a fur coat. Steiff 1960’s apparently. I asked the internet.

I had to put it all away before long. Information overload. I haven’t triggered like that for a while with this stuff.

Grief goes round and round. It retreats and then it surges like the tide.

Instead of going to Brighton I’m here again in the flat she was once in, still sleeping in the dining room instead of her bedroom. What’s that about? It’s fifteen years and more. It’s old now, and I know its name.

I guess I’m just tired so it’s easy to be sad. It’s also fine to be sad. Feeling and expressing is the best way of avoiding build-up.

I miss her, the lovely sensitive mother who was once the child of my grandparents and had a hedgehog streetwalker and a load of German dollies.

We were back Joybombing today – being happy and energetic in a window to give people a moment of odd colour. I got over 10k paces on my Fitbit without leaving the room. I’m pooped.

Night lovelies. Hope you’re all well. Bathtime. 😉