The Girls Are Alright

Mothers, Nans, Sisters, Daughters, Friends

At my 40th birthday party - fancy dress theme - Tart and Vicars, Nuns and Rent Boys

Dear friend,

I do hope you are well and have dodged the seasonal lurgy so far. Sadly, I have been under the weather this week with yet another chest infection. However, this has prompted some interesting ideas, and over the past week I have welcomed various interpretations of my crackling lungs.

One dear friend pointed out that one’s chest is the place where emotions can get wedged as they struggle up from the stomach and gut, creating congestion, much like a traffic jam.

Another friend told me of her healer in Dorset who uses the ‘Source’ as a way of dislodging trapped energy in the chest, therefore helping anxiety, asthma, and chest related stress.

My GP takes more a traditional approach and suspects my ‘lung feathers’, or cilia, could be damaged from Covid and so sent me off down the antibiotics and steroids aisle.

I agree with all three interpretations, and in order to be able to breathe, I will try anything. What I did not expect to happen was last Saturday, I found myself crying at ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, a film about young girls whose parents are trying to thwart their teenage dreams from becoming footballers. And this was what my letter was going to follow on with. A rumination on teenage passion and society and the lesbian undertones of this ground-breaking film.

But then…

You see, I did not want this letter to be a glum one about illness, or death. I wanted this to be more about that sixteen-year-old ‘butch’ Keira Knightly I saw on screen. I wanted to bring you a slice of youthful life. But, I am so sorry to have to tell you, that on Sunday, my dear mum Lily, died at home. I found her. If you’re new to this letter you won’t know how, along with my sister, I was her carer and I have long included her in my writing and art. Because of her Alzheimer’s, I had also leant her the part of her mind which was no longer working. Her body had become as close to mine in ways I can only write about in the future. Let’s just say, at times, I was her legs.

Mum also had a chest infection, but so much else was going on. I was aware something was slipping, shaking, unrooting itself. I’ll write more about this soon, as for now it is ever so raw. As one of her old friends phoned me and said, ‘Our mums are the centre of ourselves.’

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Before the devastating news, I was going to tell you about a recent train journey where I sat opposite three interesting young women and ear-wigged in on their conversation. I have decided I am still going to tell you this, because the story is a good one.

Me and Min were returning from our friend’s sumptuous lunch in Barnet. This rail journey should usually take about an hour and a half back to Penge, but like most UK train trips these days I just double the allowed time and halve my expectations.

It was 6pm and the three women, maybe twenty years olds, were pre-loading before their night out. One was very chatty, her long dark hair was punky-messy, and she wore a piercing in her nose, a plunging neck-like, and ripped jeans. She had already drunk half her bottle of Blossom Hill and was balancing the open bottle on her leg. As she wasn’t chugging it, I could tell she was saving it. The woman facing her had big long frizzy red hair and baggy ‘boy’s’ clothes which hid any body shape. The third I didn’t take too much notice of, apart from how she was dressed in a more traditionally ‘feminine’ style than the others.

When Min and I had first taken our seats, I had glanced over at the drinkers to check whether they were going to be ‘too loud’. I have a train rule now, if someone is inanely droning on, into their phone, or they’re playing something out loud on their phone, I prefer to get up and simply move along. Or if someone is odd, or menacing, or smelly, I will definitely change seats. Some days I dramatically increase my step count before I find the perfect fellow passenger.

‘Don’t you think Nan would want to see you in a face full of make up? Before she goes?’

From this sentence I decide these girls are fine; what’s more they are an interesting window into a different generation.

Glancing across at them, I realise they are sisters.

Punk-sister says to Frizzy-sister ‘I could cover your imperfections, a little blusher, maybe a bit of mascara. I could do ‘masc’ make up for you.’

Frizzy pipes up with, ‘I just want to be myself on Christmas day. It’s my one time; I get on my new clothes, and I can just be myself.’ She sips from a bottle of Orangina, possibly mixed with vodka. ‘It’s like you asking me to wear make up on my birthday.’

‘But Nan would like to see it, wouldn’t she? Just this once? Let me do it.’

The sister goes on a little longer about the make up, how she doesn’t really need to do much to the other one’s face, while the other gently rebuffs her advances. No one wins, or loses. They take turns battling to be themselves and also trying to get each other to please Nan. Christmas Day will mark the result. I love these young people and I really want to know how things will play out. My money is on Frizzy. It reminds me so much of how those teenage years are about matching the visible outsides of you with your inner life. How young women are still fighting the male gaze, how butch or non-feminine girls struggle to be left alone, to just feel comfortable. How this continues and how I wish it would stop.

And so this is where I stop writing for now.

I really wish you a good end of the year and hope you find time to sow some seeds of hope for 2025. I have plenty ready for when the soil warms up.

Thank you for all your support with my memoir, Lifting Off, this year, and for reading and continuing to subscribe to this Short Tall Letter. Below is a poem by Margaret Atwood which I just found in an email folder named ‘Funeral Inspo’. I think it’s quite the thing.

Keep writing, keep laughing,

With love, Karen x

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

Mum, Nan, Lily a few years ago on her birthday at a cafe where there were no cakes.