Being present

“…a tiny but spirited curve”

If you haven’t read Summer Book by Tove Jansson, you might want to give it go. It’s a whimsical book about a little girl and her grandma, spending the Summer on a tiny island in the most basic of circumstances in the Gulf of Finland. The author’s name may jog a memory because she’s perhaps more famous for writing the Moomin children’s books. I’m grateful to Teresa Wilson, an amazing coach (check out her website here) who recommended it to me. 

As a visitor says in the book’s introduction, the island takes four and a half minutes to walk round. Yet, Sophia and her grandma find pleasure, conversation and sometimes annoyance in every tiny detail. This micro-slice of land magnifies into a playful galaxy, a universe even, that is never boring and always illuminating for both of them. 

In a chapter about mating Scolder ducks (I’d never heard of them either) Tove writes about Grandma, lying on her side.  “There was a piece of grass in the sand beside her, and between its saw-toothed leaves it held a piece of seabird down. She carefully observed the construction of this piece of down – the taut white rib in the middle, surrounded by the down itself, which was pale brown and lighter than the air, and then darker and shiny towards the tip, which ended in a tiny but spirited curve. The down moved in a draft of air too slight for her to feel”.

I love that idea of a “tiny but spirited curve”. It makes me smile to think of Grandma, resting on the ground taking such care in the way she looks at the tiny feather in all its detail, and it makes me smile thinking of Tove Jansson lightly painting that picture with her words like a delicate watercolour sketch. Wouldn’t you just love to find a piece of down that ends with a “spirited curve” right now, this minute, outside your door, on the grass? 

This Summer, I spent part of August at the Paris Olympics. The Olympics was great - if you ever get a chance to go, do. Who knew that table tennis is so fast that you hardly know how to watch or that the pose for a badminton serve resembles an avant garde ballet move? I was engrossed. I was also engrossed back at the campsite where the pitch boundary was a row of gnarly poplars trees and underneath them grew a spectacular display of wildflowers. If you watched the Games, you’ll know that temperatures soared to 38 degrees in Paris.  The space in that poplar shade was a sanctuary. I took to painting what I could see, focussing on the creamy heads of wild carrot and stands of bright yellow hawkbit. I forgot myself for a few blissful hours in the brown petal at the base of the flower head, almost lost among the yellow and the way the wild carrot closed like a fist as its seed began to set.

I wonder if you know that experience of focus, observation and attention-giving too?  My husband has it watching West Ham play football. He seems alert as his eyes track the ball, but aside from the odd mutter of affirmation or frustration, his body is still, as if in a trance. With football, I can manage about 15 minutes of this - he can go the full 90 (I’m not a great companion for football). His hearing, never good at the best of times seems worse. I barge in, impatient to distract him. “Barry, do you want this coffee or not?”

My granddaughter finds it when she swims. I asked her once, “What is it about swimming you love?” For an eleven-year old, she was surprisingly erudite. Her eyes opened wide and she sat up straighter, “I feel free.”

A friend said that when she walked the pilgrim’s path to Santiago, all that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other. In part, this was to avoid stumbling, but it was also because with the path came no responsibilities, all that mattered was to keep moving, eat and sleep. On that walk, macro Europe, the destination of Santiago, the matters of the world and the domestic detail of her life were no longer important. What mattered was being present, breathing, observing, noticing, paying attention… one step at a time. 

Maybe you find that feeling of being present and the intensity and beauty of the here and now elsewhere. Perhaps when you run in the early mornings, bend and stretch in a pilates class, hold your child close, prepare a meal, sing in a choir, carefully weed between lines of broad beans on an allotment, listen to a friend? Or maybe you find it walking along the street, waiting for a train, standing in the queue for a coffee or as you lift your head to track a plane across the sky?

When Grandma in Tove Jansson’s story rises, she writes, “It was important for her not to stand up too quickly, so she had time to watch the blade of grass just as the down left its hold and was borne away in a light morning breeze.  It was carried out of her field of vision, and when she got on her feet the landscape had grown smaller”. 

Grandma’s perspective had changed as a result of being so present. Going from the micro back to the macro, from the intensity of the here and now to the bigger picture, you might imagine it would be disorientating and that Grandma would be slightly off balance. But my experience is of feeling replenished, rejuvenated, re-balanced, as if those moments of intense focus help give me a more relaxed and adjusted perspective. 

In 2022, Cathy Hollingworth found out she had breast cancer. She was diagnosed on the same day in the same month as her mother had been several decades before. Her mother lived for 5 years after that diagnosis. Cathy was very scared. As for anyone with cancer, her treatment was gruelling and during it she wrote poetry. Her poems have now been published as an audio book along with photos she took of herself along the way. She says, “I thought it might resonate with others who have been there with me. We’ve all passed through a door that allows for no return journey”. Her poems are by turn alarming, angry, sad, and very funny. Read in her calm crisp voice, they resonate not just with those who have travelled the cancer road. In her final poem “Prognosis” she wonders whether it’s worth knowing the statistics of how much longer she might have to live.  She writes:

Instead of a prognosis that’s too frightening

Here's one you can absolutely delight in
Live each and every day that comes your way, 
It may be a cheesy thing to say, but hey,
What else to do, can’t fight it? 

Marvel at trees, their stately presence, standing tall, 
The way the leaves move in the breeze, 
The long slow clattering of leaf fall; 
Bathe in the polyphony of birdsong in the morning; 
Such sweet callings; serene uplifting, lyrical; 
Plant your sweet peas and train their fragile tendrils; 
Tend to rhubarb and to roses; 
Hold still and catch the flight of pipistrels at night; 
Breathe in the scented air; 
Gather your loved ones close and closer; 
And watch for summer swifts to swoop and sing the skies

Getting It Off My Chest by Cathy Hollingworth is downloadable from Apple Books, Kindle and Spotify.  It costs £1.99 and all proceeds go to cancer charities. You can also hear her talk and read aloud some of her poems on Women’s Hour on BBC Sounds, first broadcast on 4th October.

If you’d like to be more present, maybe it’s time to work with a coach, I’d love to hear from you. Give me a call on 07958 732803 or drop me an email and let’s start a conversation to find out more about how coaching might help you replenish, rejuvenate and re-balance.