Pebbles

Short story:- Waterfoot beach, a pocket full of pebbles and the lingering of an old life within the new.

The sun was edging upwards over the crest of Slievananee, with its promise beaming through the windscreen like a silver bullet. There we both were, bathed in an unusual light and warmth. The family had just ‘brought in the new year together’, and it was my first at home in what felt like ages. As though a miracle, we all decided to do it sober, given the circumstances. No-one was awake for midnight.

We were hauling the motor through the winding roads of Carraigin, twisting and turning in our seats as we hurtled along the Glenariffe Road. The landscape here was my favourite in all the North, rolling fields and jagged plains. All that would interrupt our line of sight was a dead tree, a derelict house, a lone sheep. You told me growing up this place made you feel alone, alone in hills a long way from home. I’d never seen it that way though, all I could see was a kind of boundless life and echoes of a world lived long before you ever thought of having me. I could see a family living here many years ago, struggling against the tide of quantifiable troubles. Not these modern ones that exist within our heads. Maybe that’s me doing this new way of living a disservice. Avoidance probably. There’s not much I miss about Ireland, except maybe the Glenariffe Road. And Harp Lager. Now I was living a polar existence. Moving through the postures of a sprawling metropolis, with far heavier beer. Both a struggle to get used to, but I was giving it a go regardless. I haven’t given it enough time truthfully.. — time as always will be the great teller. The beer here gave me less of a hangover at least, but the days are darker here — so maybe I’m sleeping them off better.

I swear, I think we covered everything as we licked the side of the Gleann Airimh, with the big girl paling in comparison to the chat we gave in that car. You were telling me stories of your party days before I came along, and I was telling you of my party days that were still at their most intense. We left out all the gory details — the comedowns, hangovers and rotting. I think we both agreed it would dampen the mood. It’s like I said, I hadn’t lived at home in a wee while, and the physical distance married the emotional distance. We grew apart. It’s a natural part of leaving the nest — the disconnect between Mother and child.

We hadn’t spoke like this in years too, and to be frank, I never thought we would again. We were both so busy trying to get away from the world. We were the same in that sense. Two big weains, scared of all that we couldn’t control. I knew the risks involved in moving home, and in fairness — you told me you didn’t need any help. Perhaps it was selfish of me thinking I could right a few of my own wrongs. Maybe I was the one looking a hand. Like always, I was struggling to do it alone. I wanted to stop a few times, to try bottle this within the jar we all hold over our heads, treating the moment as if it was whiskey or wine. It’s only looking back now that I realise there’s no point in holding on to a moment, the present is the present until it’s the past. Holding on only serves to underline the hurt.

With the sun now at our back, the car crackled over the loose stones of Waterfoot’s carpark. The air was crisp, with you happed up in what looked like ski gear. You lost yourself when you stepped out of the car. Kids and families were wrecking about and you fell silent. I had forgotten what that was like, seeing someone disappear in front of my eyes. This was your favourite trick — and one I have to thank you for, for I picked it up as a consequence of being you. I was a mirror of yourself.

I spotted a break in the barrier towards which the land met the Irish Sea. The beach here was a mix of pebble, shell and wet sand. No lush golden strands to warm the soles of our feet. Minerals in various states of decay. I held your hand as you stepped off the marram grass, with it laying trampled at your feet — surrendering to its new home beneath the boot. I remember thinking this was a path well walked, that crusades into the Glens must be what families do when they felt it all falling apart.

A mosaic of pebbles spread out before us, bursting with tone and texture, offering the story of the Aontroma Plateau. This well walked path was a testament to how all great and beautiful things take time. The attrition of land giving way to a new life underneath. I found my first pebble there, tinged with orange and hues of red, rich colours splintering through it’s midriff. I rubbed it tight between my palms and felt the grains of sand fall away.. — your eyes were scanning the horizon, a million miles from here. Looking for a way out. I suppose maybe I was too. We always were.

The sand that lay bare preceding the water was rippled, evidence of tides gone by and the verifiable power the moon held over the sea, yet the sea will always have it’s own. It’s own share in the power of the day. I had reached the end of land, of everything I had ever known, and closed my eyes. Desperate to hold this, wrestling with my amphetamine fried brain to remember. You were 4 steps behind me then, resolute in your complete silence. Maybe you didn’t give a fuck, maybe this dull January trip to the beach meant nothing to you. Maybe the efforts we were all making would avail to dick all (and so it has). Waves lapped gently over one and other, racing to see who would first make the shoreline of Eire, unearthing stories from the depths, washing away footprints, leaving nothing behind.

Waterfoot was a small beach, something I tried not to think of as we walked. In no time we would be back in the wagon, homeward bound. Meandering again through barren fields. Every light would be green. I wrestled with myself to stay here with you, to not let my mind go elsewhere. I wanted to break the silence, to ask you how you were feeling. I wanted you to ask me how I was feeling. I wanted to tell you how when I looked too long in a mirror I seen you, and I hated that. The aspects of myself I hated — they all came from you. Just like my most admirable traits. They were you. You existed somewhere within me, and I was having a bastard of a time getting you out.

When I was a weain you told me you liked people who could just sit in silence, that it was important to be still and lounge in the unspoken word. It’s only now I see that as a form of evasion. A retreat behind your walls. Now as a man when it’s time to talk I freeze up, like you do, or did — I don’t know now. We play dead, and hope to be left alone. The same storm that passed through my chest as a weain passes through now. All the unspoken words rattle about my ribcage still, searching for their way out. I’ve felt this all before, it wasn’t new then — just like it isn’t new now.

The only break in the tension was when I would stop to collect another pebble, all misshapen and smoothed out by the water… — each stumbling through their own unvoiced tale of charm. You had took the hand out of me when I was a weain for this quirk, calling me a magpie on the search for trinkets to hoard. I was a man now, and you had more sense than to rinse me for something so trivial. I had no idea why I felt the need to collect so many back then, but I think I do now.

I don’t remember a lot from my childhood, with good reason I suppose. I’m a bastard for nostalgia, and when I know a moment should become a core memories — I shit myself. I’m afraid to forget again. I need to write it down, or collect a memento to spur on the memory. I think that’s why I write now. So I can stop forgetting. I’m sure we were all happy together once, I just can’t remember it. I don’t think any of us do, or maybe we don’t want to remember. It makes everything easier this way.

The sun was now descending behind the plume of the Glen’s crown, casting shadows in testament to all that stood previous to our coming and would continue to uphold long after these memories fade. Shades of verdant green lay at our back, flowing freely towards the precipice within our soul. I could feel the moon pulling the tide in-land, concealing the tracks we left behind. We were reaching the end of a story with nowhere left to go. One foot on the beach, the other way off in the cosmic.

I found the pearl of the beach then, a broken piece of vase. The face of which was marbled cobalt blue, adorned for all the world to see. This was the darling of someone’s affection at a time I thought, now laying forgotten on a beach. A ode to the symbiosis of nature and man. Side by side amongst the seaweed and sand. It reminded me of you, broken with pieces of yourself scattered across every place you graced. You were standing pensively on a mound of sand, framed by nature and all she would ever be. Although parts of yourself were missing, and they had been for some time, I seen you completely in that moment. I seen the vase whole, exquisite in three shades of blue, loved by someone in a place called home. I wondered if we would happen upon all those parts we leave behind, all those shattered pieces of ceramic, in people we once called home.

Maybe this is the ultimate manifestation of a Mother’s love. We take what is needed and leave.

The sun had all but set, leaving us in darkness. Two pilgrims nearing the end of a great voyage to the centre of our being. A mother and son trying to fix the sickness in both our heads. In the dim light of the moon I stood at your side, I had nothing left to say. There was so much I would never know of you, just like there were things you would never know of me. I thought of the years leading to this moment, and the choices I could’ve made to change things. The story was coming to a close. I thought of the woman you could of been if you never had me, and the man I’d never get to be without you. Still I move through the postures of grief for the living. There were 31 years of you being yourself without me, but there hasn’t been a single year of me without you.

You left a few weeks later, clearing the gaff out of everything you owned. Our home became a house overnight. I left the next week, back to the city. I fought with these memories of home, and decided that it was too much to stare myself in the face at every corner I turned. I left for Berlin shortly after, a place I hoped would contain no traces of the past. And for the most part it hasn’t. It’s a city that only reflects me now, a place that couldn’t give a fuck about who you were before or who you will be. To live here is to grow with it, with both parties subsuming aspects of the others identity. It’s a black city which sucks in all the light leaving only room for the not so radiant present. My first Berlin winter as a foreigner has taught me much about everything and nothing. I’m finding it impossible to dry out. I’m still finding fresh ways to act the maggot. Maybe the summer will reveal itself differently, but I refuse to hold on the hope. Maybe when you were younger you’d of grown with it, just as I’m learning to grow with it. It would suit you I’d say, just as it suits me now. But I guess it’s like I said, time will be sure to let me know.

Our 3 weeks together after so long were enough to finally finish us. I told you after your last attempt that this time, things would be different. We would all finally learn to move happy within. You were so out of it you probably can’t remember, and I was so out of it that I was content to make up lies in the hope the universe would manifest their reality. The last thing you told me before you left was I couldn’t love anybody but myself. But, looking back, I’m not so sure that was true. The broken vase I had gave you disappeared as-well. It was the only gift I’d gave you that you took toward your fresh start. A fresh start toward the end of your life. I like to think that maybe you kept it, that maybe it’s sitting in your new home atop the mantle surrounded by all the tacky decorative shit you loved and by proxy I loved too. Maybe in time when you look at it you’ll understood the love I had and all it’s strange expressions. Maybe when you do you won’t feel so alone, because you never really were.

When I get a minute I like to close my eyes and hold on to a pebble from that day at Waterfoot. I brought a few with me here to Berlin. I’m not standing at the edge of Éire anymore, looking toward Caledonia. Maybe it’s the edge of the U-Bahn platform at Bundesplatz, Hermannstraße or Kotti, looking toward nowhere — but the feeling is still the same. We’ve both gone so deep in-land in our own respects, but within the memory we’re still standing there on a mound of sand. The drums in our chest are in tandem now, with our breathing harmonised. The waves are lapping gently over my boots and there’s a familiar weight in my pocket.

After all this time I’m still out there by the water, with a pocket full of pebbles.