Look around, maybe the 1960s peace and love worked!
WE were having tea in my aunt and uncle’s house in Seaham. Uncle Colm had the posh teapot and fancy biscuits out.
Ringtons, a Newcastle tea company in operation for over a century, still come to the door once a month selling their wares and my indulgent uncle is powerless to resist their traditional goodies. They also still get their milk in actual glass bottles delivered to the door every morning. I am savagely envious. Tomorrow I will have to go back home and do my own shop instead of being waited on hand and foot — getting milk with the cream on top. How will I cope?
Alan, Colm’s brother-in-law arrives for afternoon tea. We do the meet and greet thing, then the two of us sit on benches in the small kitchen while Col potters about in the galley gathering china mugs and seeking out sugar bowls. Alan starts regaling us with a story of staggering human ignorance — a new neighbour blocking everyone in with wilfully selfish parking.
‘Why would anybody want to do that to their neighbours?’ I exclaimed. ‘The only thing behaviour like that does is make people hate you. Who wants to incur the wrath of their neighbours? I just don’t understand it.’
‘It was all peace and love,’ Colm said. ‘Now it’s all anger and hate.’ The optimistic 1960s was his heyday and now Trump’s in charge. I’m not surprised he’s disappointed. I feel the same about the 1980s. We thought we were conquering feminism and re-inventing ‘street’ fashion, but now all our daughters aspire to look like porn-stars. It’s depressing. Time to change the subject.
‘Speaking of love,’ I said, ‘when are you going to break out those biscuits you keep telling us about?’ Alan winked. He knows where they are.
The following day Tommo and I had to leave our family’s hearth and travel back to Ireland. Back to reality. Colm and Jean drove us to the station and waved us goodbye.
Tom was exhausted and, I think, a little sad that he was separating from his cousin, Ivy. He doesn’t understand why we cannot have all of the people we love around us all of the time. I don’t fully understand it either except that the older I get, the more determined I become to spend my time with the people I care about.
We were on a busy commuter train. Fiction fodder for a writer. I’m good at observing people without making eye contact and noticed a rather ordinarylooking woman, with mousy hair and a weary expression sitting opposite us.
As the train pulled out, she reached into her handbag and pulled out an envelope. Inside it was a card, not for a special occasion that I could see, but as she read the contents, her eyes scanning backwards and forwards, a smile spread across her face that transformed her into someone beautiful. Her eyes sparkled as she held onto the card for a moment, treasuring its contents, before placing it back into her bag and smiling, as she looked out the window. Her joy cheered me up.
A few seats along I noticed two young women in their 30s — a gay couple, their shoulders settling into each other, hands seeking out the other’s, small smiles playing across their lips — bright eyed, optimistic — in love.
ACROSS the carriage was a beautiful girl. She had a face like a Hollywood actress whose name I can’t remember, and was scrolling through her phone. There were tears pouring down her face as she texted and wiped. Her face looked kind, with maybe a hint of regret? I imagined she was writing a break-up text. Breaking up with someone that you don’t truly love is an act of love in itself.
She looked up and ‘caught’ me staring, so I opened the paper Jean had given me at the station and read the obituary of her close friend, Kevin.
He was an amazing guy — an educator, academic, community worker, who advocated for youth. He had died a few weeks before and along with his widow and daughters, my family had been grieving. Grief is awful, but it’s still love. When death comes, petty anger and hate disappear. We lose the person, but not the love. If anything, love becomes more powerful in death.
Small random experiences of love are all part of the world’s tapestry of love. Your 1960s peace and love Uncle Col? Maybe it worked!