The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2213 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I woke up and realised it was Sunday. Fine, Sundays are okay–yeah, except this one is the first day of the final month of the year. Yeah, so what? It’s two days before I’m thirty years old. Jesus H Christ, how can I be thirty in two days. Instead of lying there saying, “White Rabbits,” don’t ask why, it’s superstition, I was thinking, ‘Oh shit.’

Sometimes when I think of the things that have happened to me, I should be white haired and aged about ninety, if I wrote this as a biography no one would believe me and I wouldn’t blame them. My life does seem to be slightly incident prone. Why I have no idea, unless the Chinese curse stuff (more superstition) is right, and I was wished an interesting life.

Would I change any of it? Apart from one item, the death of my daughter Billie, and perhaps getting my gender and sex right from conception would be another. I feel I missed out on a girlhood, something I’m trying to make right for Trish and Danni, if Danni remains as female. Perhaps my experiences will be useful in that respect, and like other parents, try to use them to help our children avoid missing out on important things.

My life seemed to be flashing past as I moved inexorably towards my dotage in two days. Thirty seems so old–bloody hell, it is old compared to twenty nine. When Simon asked what I wanted for my birthday, I told him, ‘to be twenty nine again.’ He simply rolled his eyes, shook his head and sighed. If he’d frothed at the mouth, I’d have thought he was having a seizure of some sort rather than passing an opinion of a non-verbal type.

In the video that was running at high speed through my brain, I saw myself playing the Virgin Mary at my junior school, it was good although my father didn’t appear to recognise me at the time. My mother did, but that’s another story.*

My mind alighted on my mother. I really missed her. I wonder if she knew what was going on the way she surreptitiously trained me to run a house–teaching me housework, sewing, cooking as well as coordinating linens and carpets and so on. Okay, so if I lived alone in my own place it might have been useful but would she have known she wasn’t going to be there when I did? She died when I was twenty three, she was only fifty herself. A heart attack which might not have been helped by the difficulties in the relationship between us–especially between my father and me. At the same time she caused some of the friction by reporting me to him if I seemed to either act too femininely for her or be doing something she hadn’t instigated, like my cross stitch.

For a long time that puzzled me, was she as bad as him? Then it occurred to me, that she could have been doing one of two things: controlling my training as it suited her; or pretending to support my father, so that what she was showing me would pass less noticeably. On the other hand she might have been inconsistent and felt better about it some days than others.

I wondered how she’d feel about my life as it was now–not many boys get to become a peer’s wife. I suddenly wondered what would happen in the case of same sex marriages in the future. If Simon had been gay married me as Charlie, would I have had a title? I somehow doubt it. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.

I thought about my father. In some ways he was an ogre in others he tried his best. At least what he thought was best, perhaps more for him than me. The beatings I had from him certainly didn’t work if his goal was to make me into a man, though in other ways, he did help form me as I am today though I’m not sure he’d approve of that as a concept, except for fiddling with bikes.

Of course, the sixty four dollar question is, Would he have eventually come round to having a daughter if he hadn’t had the stroke? I’ll never know the answer to that but it does cross my mind every so often. That we achieved some form of reconciliation and that he seemed to approve of Simon does make my memories happier, or my memories of him. There is also his one good point, he loathed his sister, Doreen, with a vehemence. She does have the unhappy knack of being totally loathsome, so I suppose I share his opinion of her based upon my own experiences of her. I suspect she might be buried at sea to stop me dancing on her grave.

I also recall the day she came looking for the jewellery my mother left me–which was quite valuable–and to which she had no right whatsoever. I found out later that it came from my mother’s side of the family, not Dad’s, so I’d inherit it, full stop. The fun we had with them, my uncle and aunt, with a series of sketches involving the children nearly had me weeping with laughter. Julie with the baby pretending to be a gymslip mother and maid, Trish with her cannabis cakes and so on, part scripted by Stella and part improvised by the actors.

Then the Christmas play they did with Stella’s help was also very good and I believe Henry videoed. I must ask him about that. I thought about the way the school had been so good to take Trish and Billie and that they seemed to take to being schoolgirls so well. My own experience with the sadistic Murray who manipulated my father into agreeing to my dressing as a girl while we did the school play of Macbeth. I admit my hair was long and girlish, of course it was, I was trying to tell the world I was a girl, except very few were listening.

Then my revisiting the role at the convent with a real live stage actor of some renown after our matinee idol type got himself hurt and cried off. He redeemed himself a little later when he spoke to the sixth form girls at the convent. He actually admitted I knew more about stage acting than he did and then noticed me hiding at the back and called me out to the front. Boy, was I embarrassed.

My mind drifted over the mystery of the blue energy–where did it come from? Why did it come? Were my interactions, usually in dreams, with this Old Testament goddess just my mind playing tricks or what? Part of me wanted them to be so and perhaps part of me wanted it to be true, just so there were some things other than raw natural power, which were more powerful than man and his technology and science. I’m still agnostic, although respectful of my (imaginary?) friend, who may or may not have helped me out a few times when things got rough.

Jung claimed there were no such things as accidental coincidences, that such things were meaningful. I don’t know if I agree with the man, who was as barking as some of his patients, or whether Quantum Mechanics agrees with him or not. I’d have to read John Gribbin’s book, In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat, once I could prise it away from Trish.

“God, look at the time,” boomed Simon’s voice interrupting my reverie, and I was back to the reality of being two days away from being thirty, again–I must read that book, my browsing of it if I recall showed the line, “There is no such thing as reality.” Not sure what I think about that. “Come on, wifey, get my breakfast,” said Simon prodding me.

Yeah, maybe Gribbin’s right, Simon can be really unreal some days.

* http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/41235/nativity-play