a (birthday) letter
life at the tipping point | taking nothing for granted | my Finland aspiration
I reach the end of the contributors page of the book I have just finished reading. The names, the credentials, the excellent things they have done, the great offerings they have made to society. Each person a luminous, cut-glass, star. I close the book and pull the bed covers over my head. Curled up underneath I listen to my recycled breath as it circulates and warms the pocket of space between my chin and stomach.
I want to tell you that at 42 years old I have purchased my first pair of skis. How they are waiting for me in the corner of the room, and for the terrain that will bring them to life. I want to tell it to you in a way that seems magnificent and redemptive. Like I have overcome something other than simply myself to deserve them. And had this been a different day I might have, but today there are – I am reminded – people who arrange global conferences for the marginalised, who start social movements, who collaborate to build monuments, who create near-celestial magic from the black hole of nothingness.
What relevance or interest is it to anyone that I cried as I peeled the bubble wrap from their slender points, slipped each cross-country slipper onto a foot, and stood braced at the knees (but surely six foot tall!) on my white shag rug pretending to be somebody I am not. Someone Nordic and strapping and ruddy-cheeked. Someone that lives somewhere that will be one of the last places ever to see snow before we make it a myth.
There is nothing I have done to deserve this gift to myself. There is nothing I have survived other than the daily grind of a life defined by a time that's always departing, and the losses and everyday struggles it brings for millions upon millions. Yes, I have known these things – these tragedies and maladies – but I’ve done no more than this, and no less. I did not earn it beyond the mere fact of my endurance, which is sometimes a feat but other times simply what happens in a body that for now is stable and functioning. I got lucky. Life doesn’t rotate around an axis of fairness, it doesn’t turn for justice. You just wake up and you’re here, or you’re somewhere else. You may wake into war, you may not.
All I can say is how it is; that I have always tried to a live a life that is brave for me in its own quiet and inviolable way. Where courage is relative, not absolute. But enduring; of the Sisu variety. I have always strived to push myself out of the small enclosure that the sensitive mind makes for itself. I have fought the legacy of nihilism and fatalism that is held in my own marrow; my unglamorous ancestry. I once thought I might be a person to stand for government. I thought I might start a charity. I hoped once that I might inform policy, or change the way something is done, or simply say to a crowd I am so glad you’re all here for this momentous occasion.
But I am tipping into the second half of my life now, and I have done nothing like this. Mostly what I have done is lighten, if only for a moment, the gravity writ on people’s faces. I have helped share some burdens and offered tonics. I have walked alongside, talked alongside. I have put out the bird seed, kept the dead leaves in place and left the lawn unmown. I have buried every dead animal on my path. Laid flowers. I have stayed out of trouble – not always, but mostly – and tried not to give anyone anything to worry about. I have made some food that was occasionally unforgettable. I have filled pages with words – not all of them useful – convinced that I have, in truth, only written one good line in my life. As I write this, I am notified that someone has turned my lesser words into a meme. They are words about being alone, and a few people follow me for it. I have tried to take none of it for granted, but I cannot say that there is much more than this.
But what I want to say, I suppose, is that it is never too late to do unremarkable things. To give the scared child of yourself what it once craved to belong. It is not too late to confess I will never be a contender, but still watch the dark sky dance with green fox tails and imagine what you might still become. What perhaps you are somewhere, in that bolder reality. That this could be enough. Because wherever we are, we will die. Whatever we wake to we will die. Whatever magic comes to us in threes, we will die. There is only, in the end, enough time to imagine yourself a star, and gaze in awe toward those that truly are.
Under the covers, I run a hand down my leg. I feel the gentle calf muscle flex and taut, think of all the things I have started late. How I dance in an ugly heap every week because I can. How I have run the length of countries alone when no one was looking. How I have changed tack and shovelled shit, and said No when I could have made good money. How I have cared slowly but past the point. How I have loved the world as each threshold is crossed (let it be heard that love is a vigil, there is no thanks). These are small things that I won’t be remembered by. l will leave no trace.
In 2019, I was taught briefly how to move on cross country skis, and in all years but one that followed, I have taught myself to run on a young deer’s legs. How to fall and laugh, mainly. Every year I return on my birthday. I take the flight I am too scared for, face pressed against the window to monitor the steady-state of the horizon. I eat the same food, take the same photos, court the same pink across an unrisen sky. This standing date in my diary with the Arctic is the most ostentatious gift I give myself without shame. I book, and I book again every year stepping into this rented life for a week. My Finnish aspiration.
Only this year, I have my own skis. They are long, and they are green with yellow. They have a special bag, and because of all this I have become a person who has skis. The child I carry inside of me, who didn’t know then there were worse things in the world than to be told No, we can’t afford it, looks at me with a glee that breaks the husk from the seed. Soon and almost without friction, they will glide into their purpose, and I attached to them will fantasise the same. I am meant to be here, I will say gulping down the coldest, driest air, and no one will see my wobbling bones.
Let me say it again, I have done nothing to deserve them, I can make no such claims. I am 42, yes, but I am still alive, and this is barely of note. But oh, how my new skis will carry me away from myself. Away from the greatness I once dreamt of when being something was a protection against being nothing. Deeper into this precarious snow-driven world I am only ever briefly passing through, each unique and fragile flake filling my tracks.
Sisu is a Finnish concept that can be roughly translated into courage that is a strength of will and perseverance. It is not momentary, but sustained. A way of being.
In Finnish mythology, the aurora borealis are also know as ‘Revontulet’, which literally translates as ‘fox fire’ - racing across the sky in sparks as fox leaps across the ground.
Every word here is beautiful and makes my heart sing!
Here on the west coast of Wales, nearer seventy than I care to admit, facing the undeniable truth that I have done nothing momentous with my 'one wild and precious life', I am riotously cheered to think that 'it is never to late to do unremarkable things'
I shall go to yoga today and, hope to be a blessing to the small group; I shall make sourdough and share it in the neighbourhood, and crochet 'scarves-for-refugees'
Blessed Imbolc everyone...
Thank you xx
Ruth, this is so achingly poetic and sweetly melancholy, I loved every word of it.
Like you, I used to dream of being "a contender", as you say. I now believe this is because the hero's journey is sold to us all as the only way to leave a trace, be noticed (and loved) and remembered. Like you, I slowly came to the conclusion that I would never be a star and you know what? I'm at peace with it. Loving this world, and all that lives in it, is an unending vigil (that sentence, oh my heart ! 💔)
As Summer Brennan wrote in a recent post, "We are in the business of goodbyes here on this earth."