All posts tagged: childhood memories

Tiptoeing through tulips towards love, perhaps?

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Hello Folks, thanks for dropping by. Now, I loved my Dad, who died in 2008 aged 73. Too soon, too young. He taught me to play Backgammon when I was only 3 or 4, helping me understand the rules and vagaries of chance with every roll of the dice. The year he died, I’d sit up late at night playing Backgammon with myself, all the house lights blazing, while a depressive fog of grief and loss rolled over me for months. One of our other favourite games, when I was similarly small, was a song we’d sing while I stood barefoot on his feet, my nose to his belly, as he high-stepped round the room, holding my hands tight. “Tiptoe, through the tulips, through the tulips, that’s the way we’ll go, We’ll tiptoe, through the tulips, Today… “ I’ve no idea the provenance of this rhyme, or what else it may say? Perhaps I’m even recalling it wrong? But we giggled and stomped, getting faster and faster, as I tried not to fall off! Such …

I am the Keeper of Stories now Mum’s gone

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As I let the bath water cool around me last night, I remembered being 10 or 11, paddling in the chilly English sea. Forty-five years have passed, yet I can still recall the sand sinking beneath my toes, and the seaweed slithering against my pale legs. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore; it had been fun briefly, in the novelty of visiting the beach for the first time, but I was cold, and wanted to get out. I was only knee-deep in water, and Mum had taken my younger brother back to the warm dry sand, telling me to follow when ready. But I was trapped! Writhing and heaving between me and my family was a two metre-thick band of brown kelp, some strands as thick as my skinny legs, freezing me in fear. What lurked beneath? My vivid yet anxious imagination created snakes, grabbing hands, various sea monsters, and perhaps a pirate’s dead body or two for good measure. I couldn’t even wave to Mum, who was fussing with my brother and had her back …