Remembering my life

I have decided to write a collection of poems, highlighting various areas of my life. But for the life of me, so many of these years are blank and I just can’t remember them.

I’m not sure whether that’s because I am being guided to write just one poem at a time, a bit like these blogs. Once an idea comes into my head, it won’t leave me until I write about it and neither will any new ideas enter until I have done so.

Or is it because a lot of those years faded into togetherness. With five young children, I didn’t have a lot of time other than caring for them, and during much of this time, I was also working on the farm, leaving even less time for other activities. All I know was that I was incredibly busy. And when I left Paul, I was still just as busy, working full-time, bringing up the kids and all that entailed – sports during weekends, practices to be carted to and so it went on.

I am trying to find topics for my poems that had an amusing element, or touching, or something to make it worth writing about. I have various animal characters who provided a bit of fun every now and again, but do these equate to interesting poems for the town person?

I am just surprised that other than cow poems, nothing at all is coming into my head. Last night, when I went to the toilet at 1.55am, I was tired enough to go straight back to sleep, but then my mind started ticking over, trying to think of topics I can write about. I didn’t recheck my clock, but I would have had a good 90 minutes of wakefulness and still nothing new coming to mind. This morning when I woke, I succumbed and starting writing my first cow poem. I am hoping that when I have a couple of these written, that other ideas will surface. I am hoping that that is the reason no new ideas are coming in. I am being guided to write these first.  

Often my kids will say to me, remember this or that, or even, you have to remember THAT, and I don’t, no recollection. So, I am hoping this isn’t a case of forgotten memories that will never resurface. Alzheimer’s has always been a bit of a worry of mine, as it was for my mother. She remained completely cognisant with a great memory for all of her 92 years. I am not so sure I will follow in her footsteps.

How can almost 25,000 days of living not produce plenty of fodder for poetry? I do wish I had retained some of the material I had written earlier, especially my dairy of my overseas trip back in 1978/79. That was an exciting time and would have made a great story. After I left Paul, a lot of that stuff got burnt, along with a couple of photo albums from that period of my life. Without my physical memory, and no photos, it is hard to remember many of my escapades. My girlfriend, whom I travelled around Europe with, has a lot more memories than me, and she often also says, remember when we did this or that. I might have something that feels so distant, it is like a dream from long ago, and that’s all I recall.

But anyway, there is a cow poem to work on. Lets hope that after this, memories will resurface.