LOST

Lost ©

By Michael Casey

Well it’s the last day of April and tomorrow is another day, and when God made Time he made plenty of it. I can remember my dad saying this to cheer me up when I was unemployed and I was in a hurry for things to change. I have not had a starry starry life, quiet the reverse, I’ve lost my way a few times. Being LOST happens to all of us in a variety of ways. The thing is though that you can find your way back to wherever you want to be. You can go your own way as Fleetwood Mac sing in the background, but you can also return from being lost.

We have Cobwebs of Love to bring us gently home. As a child the furthest we go away is to the corner shop, our mum stands on the front door step to reassure us that we will not get lost. So we go to Off ye Goes and buy a loaf of bread and run back to safety of home and mum, as I did 55 years ago.

We grow up or wider in my case, and we lose our fear of getting lost, so we wander off on an airbed and drift out to sea, and could have even drown. So dad tracks us down by the sea wall, only the steps are too steep to climb out at Rhyll or was it Colwynn Bay, so that I had to paddle back again to the safety of the beach, I was 10 or so then. I suppose I could have become a tragic statistic, instead of a tragedy of a writer perhaps?

We lose things and sometimes they stay lost, my mother used to say that my brother would lose his arse if it was not tied on to him. I think I never lost anything in my life till I met an old friend on a bus and lost my gloves. But I knew where they were, they were on the bus, so I wish good luck to whoever found them.

You get older and you want to lose the influence of your parents. So you go to University to lose your accent, your inhibitions and your virginity. Only you discover its your naivety which was the biggest lost. At least you did not get any disease nor, get pregnant, your family would have killed you, and any unborn baby. They are so strict and you went to the University the furthest away from your home town, almost in another Time Zone.

So you have lost your naivety and become a Monk or a Nun, because at least now your know the difference between sex and love, even if you had to practice a bit before you finally realised. So you end up celibate, but at least you have now lost your innocent view of innocence. But you come top in Philosophy now, so it’s an ill wind that blows no good. But you cannot look grannie in the eye any more.

You lose your gran she was 91 after all, and you have lost a friend, and a private banker, she always gave you money and said don’t tell your dad, why should he waste her money after she was gone. Then as you scatter her ashes at the beach by Abegele you open a letter with instructions. Thanks for scattering my ashes here, I gave myself away to a Welshman here, but I did not marry him. Yes, your dad is a bastard, but a nice Coventry man took me in, I told him the truth, but we pretended I was a widow.

You gasp, grannie had a past, lost on the beach amongst the shingle. So she knew when you gave yourself away to that lad. She saw herself in you, that’s why she loved you so much. That’s why she gave you money. So you have lost a grannie and gained enough money to buy a car, and visit beaches galore, though not doing what grannie did, you have learnt your lesson, you are a nun now.

With time you pass those exams and then do even more, you , little you end up as a PhD, a Dr of something. Marine Biology, well it must have been grannie’s spirit in you. You lose you ignorance and become very very good in your field. But history does repeat itself, and the urge will out, so after years of being a nun your feel children would be good for you. So do you visit that beach near Abegele?

You like comfort when you are not in the field, so you seduce a farmer in his barn with cows looking on. The time was right, it was time to lose the nun, and get back in the habit, the habit of love. He was kind and gentle and with him you can lose all inhibitions. So you have 6 children and a sheepdog to keep them all in check. You are no longer lost, you are home, home with a family and 1000 acres to farm. There is a beach nearby and there the children learn to swim with the sheepdog in attendance.

Now I lost the direction of this story, as I often do with stories, but there is always something that guides us home to mum and dad. I could cry if I continued with a few other memories, but all I’ll say is that mum and dad , all mums and dads should be always there waiting on the doorstep with the light on ready to wrap us up in cobwebs of love. Just as my mum and dad always did for me, and I hope I will do for my own children. I will never lose them.