Sunday 27 November 2016

Gifts

Last Thursday went to a great writing group at Gaskell House. The encourage you to write between classes. This a recent piece, no surprises in it for my friends but for me its the voicing of it that matters:

GIFTS

I don’t know what I was meant to do. All I knew was that I had to escape my family and the small town I grew up in. I needed a job and computing seemed to be the coming thing in the late 60s.

Looking back I realised that I found out who I was retrospectively by looking back at what I did. But I never knew what I would stick at. I always wanted to be able to say ‘I am a whatever – medic, teacher, carpenter, builder, father, grandfather, husband’.

So I guess that I have gifts but I was never brought up or taught how to recognise them. First one in the family to go to university – it’s a cliché but no-one told me you can never go back.

So I moved on losing friends with no care in the world. Every new step forward was the loss of the old life, like shedding a skin or sometimes becoming a butterfly.

And now another transformation is in progress. It is simple to say ‘I am retired’ but it is not a state it’s a process and I am not sure what is merging from the chrysalis.