What, I think, would sixteen-year-old Becki (with an i) think of what we are doing just now?
Would she think we are off our rockers or would she be impressed that on a random Friday night in January, we are sitting around a campfire on a beach marvelling at just how clear the night sky is, and how bright the stars?
Chances are she might think we’re boring. At her age, I held the belief that reallylivingwould come in the form of mad nights out – doing the things forbidden to me then. Really living would surely be throwing back drink after drink, dancing on tables and singing until my throat hurt. It would be walking home in my bare feet – my soles burning from hours in painfully high heels. It would be finding someone to snog before the lights came back up in the club and maybe exchanging phone numbers – for landlines, on scraps of paper.
At her age, I thought really living meant having to live big – to travel, to experience new cultures, to take risks, to experiment, to be a bit wild. I’ve spent a long time regretting that I never fulfilled that brief. Or certainly not enough of it to count. I bypassed my wild era for my sensible and settled era, and something deep inside me has felt disappointed by that. I didn’t so much at the time. At the time I probably felt annoyingly smug that while others were still out getting wrecked each weekend I was falling into a cosy, but ultimately unsatisfying, relationship with Simon. They were sharing houses with their mates and having parties at the weekend. I was sharing with Simon and having dinner parties with him, Laura and her then boyfriend – now husband – Aidan. Aidan and Simon were more joined at the hip than Laura and me, which caused its own share of problems when my marriage went south.
But still, I’d congratulated myself on getting on the property ladder early, avoiding the worst of the early twenties hangovers and having my personal life all sussed.
It was only when my twenties started to roll into my thirties – and I was under the cosh of motherhood and mortgage payments – that I started to wonder if I’d done the right thing after all.
Increasingly, I’ve been sure that when my time comes, I will look back on my life and, while I’ll never regret being there for my parents, and being a mother to my boys, I will wonder where I was in all that. Where was the me who did thingsfor meand not for others? Who did things I really wanted rather than things I thought were sensible? Where was the wild child I was still sure existed on some tiny level inside me?
When that day comes, I’ve wondered if I’ll hear the voice of sixteen-year-old me outlining my crazy ambitions and I will realise I failed her. And myself.
Until I found the time capsule and the letter that girl wrote me – the letter that has given me a giant kick up the bum. It’s given me the courage to start trying to find that version of myself.
So sitting on this beach right now, surrounded by the noise of the waves rushing to shore, the chatter of female voices and a guitar being strummed as someone with an angelic voice sings a cover of ‘Stay (I Missed You)’ by Lisa Loeb, I get the tiniest flicker of a feeling that I haven’t failed me at all.
Closing my eyes, I breathe in all the sensations around me as they combine with the crackle and hiss of the bonfire.
I do what Peggy suggested at the start of this session and I focus on each of my senses in turn. I marvel at the contrast between the cold of the night air and the warmth of the fire. The taste of the rich, smooth hot chocolate. The gorgeous, heady smells of smoke and salt in the air. The twinkle of the stars against a midnight-blue sky, the red and orange of the flames licking at the darkness around us. All the sounds – the music and the laughter – and the rush of wind whipping around my face, and it all feels so very perfect.
I feel at peace, I realise, with a bit of a start. It’s been such a long time since I felt anything close to this that I almost don’t recognise it. It has been forever since my mind stopped racing and the conflicting voices in my head stopped talking over each other with their big to-do lists and their loud self-deprecation.
Closing my eyes, I start to sing along, as do many of the other women – each of us lost in a memory of the women we were when we first heard it. When life was so much simpler in many ways, but nowhere near as rich. It’s a huge deal that I’m singing. One that most of the women around me couldn’t possibly understand. I have not been gifted in that department and always felt too self-conscious to open my mouth to sing in front of others. Alone in my shower or my car is a different story, of course. I’m a one-woman Kelly Clarkson tribute act. But among these women, in this wonderful space, I find myself automatically comfortable enough to sing along too.
I feel Laura rest her head on my shoulder. I remember that Kitty loved this song so very much. She’d join in singing when we played it over and over again in her front room. Dropping a kiss on my friend’s head, I know I don’t need to say anything. I know we are both thinking of her incredible, strong and resilient mother.
21
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Niamh
After waking to a silent yurt, and a silent campsite for that matter, Niamh looks at her now contraband phone and sees that she has been asleep for around an hour and a half. She should probably get up and change out of her work clothes, maybe brush her teeth or, even better, get something to eat. Right now, down on the beach, they’ll be enjoying s’mores and hot chocolate and the thought makes her tummy rumble.
She’d absolutely kill for a couple of slices of toast. Surely there will be someone up in the meeting house who can direct her to a toaster. She was sure Becca had told her there was a shared kitchen they could access when they wanted outside of designated mealtimes. There’s no way she can face the myriad sweet snacks they had packed into their cases. Not with her stomach now rebelling strongly against the alcohol she’s consumed. It has to be something plain. And carb loaded. It wouldn’t hurt to walk up to the meeting house and check.
Pulling on her coat, and lifting her phone, she leaves their yurt, listening for any sounds rising from the nearby beach. She wonders if this Fire Starter ceremony has already started the goddess-unleashing process. Maybe her bunking off will mean her inner goddess will forever stay trapped within her, beside her annoying inner child and whatever inner demon voices her self-doubt. Maybe it’s better to leave her where she is.
She’d never admit it to Becca or Laura – the truth is she doesn’t even believe in all this inner goddess mumbo jumbo. Spirituality is not her thing.
Science is her bag. Science, she finds, has an explanation for almost everything. She doesn’t believe that there is anything anyone can do involving dancing around a fire and chanting affirmations that will really make a difference. It’s all just hocus pocus and placebo effects.
We all just cling onto our beliefs because the alternative is too grim. Dear God, she thinks, she might just be in danger of releasing her inner depression demon if she carries on thinking and feeling like this.
Using the torch on her phone to help light the way, she tries to think happy thoughts as she walks. Thoughts of hot toast with melted butter. A nice cup of tea. Then back to bed, and hopefully asleep again before the others return. If she’s lucky, she can sleep through the worst of the impending hangover.
The sound of her name being called on the wind stops her in her tracks.
‘Niamh!’ the voice calls again. It’s not a voice she recognises. It’s neither Becca nor Laura. She knows that for sure. She absolutely does not want to talk to whoever it belongs to. Sadly, whoever it is seems to be more persistent than she gives them credit for and they call again. This time their voice is louder, which means definitely closer.
As she hears the voice a fourth time, louder again, it’s clear she can no longer, believably, continue to ignore the caller – so she stops, turns around and is immediately blinded by the flash of a torch.
‘Jesus!’ she exclaims.
‘Sorry! Sorry! Not Jesus. Just me!’ the faceless voice sputters, lowering their light. Blinking, Niamh slowly sees their face come into focus. It’s Peggy, looking ethereal against the night sky and the soft glow of their torches.
