Aberystwyth from the jetty at Tanybwlch - photo, P.Jenkins I'm standing at the edge of the stone jetty at Tanybwlch near Aberystwyth.
Suddenly, I feel a lightness and fear of falling I never experienced as a child here : too many nightmares about cliff-edges.
I'm scattering the remains of my stepfather down into the sea, which sometimes whips up as a serpent of spray so characteristic of this area.
Simultaneously, my brother - a sure-footed risk-taker and flier - is letting loose my mother's ashes from a wooden casket with a metal plaque on it.
My sister stands bare-foot on the cold pebbly jetty, lost in a large green riding-hood cloak.
I am spilling him out as a fountain of powdery ash to join her, just as he willed.
They had talked about buying a house there, overlooking the harbour : his enduring love of boats and her affection for the town where she spent her formative years, yet also a marriage which would gradually deteriorate ( to my father).
My brother says - 'It's our turn next!'.....but I have no intention of making that too soon and step gingerly back from the brink.
Some of my stepfather's ashes remain on my hand and I am content to leave them there.
There is no great sense of sadness among us, just an acceptance.
My mother died five years ago, but my stepfather died very unexpectedly during the summer.
I can recognise and admire his great love for her and how that meant, for many years, that he never wanted to share her with her own family though - truth be told - she was never inclined to being an enthusiastic mother or grandmother, quite the opposite.
The evening before we had toured Penparcau and Aber in a memory-trail of intense nostalgia.
It was too much for my sister, whose recollections of our flat and council house were all disturbing and full of unhappiness.
While those of our grandparents' flat in Caradog Road must have summoned a deep sense of loss, as she was brought up by our 'Nanny' when my mother had mastitis and rejected her.
For my brother - who has returned less frequently - it must've been a fascinating journey into the past with some buildings changed so little and others,like his old school Ardwyn, now transformed into flats.
For me it was less unsettling or surprising. I have gone back so often as a student, teacher-trainer and when my older daughter was studying there.
But the scattering was something different.
'Will you write something for the occasion?'my brother had asked.
'I don't think so!'
But then I wrote a haiku yn Gymraeg the day before. I would know when we got there if it was fitting to read it and it didn't feel right.
Neither my mother nor stepfather had any affinity with Cymraeg and, in fact my mum, like my dad, had an antipathy.
I recall her referring on a number of occasions to the Urdd as the 'Welsh Hitler Youth movement'. She was never one for understatement!
On the way home I showed my haiku to my siblings and translated it. My sister liked it and my brother felt I should've read it out (maybe that's for another time in Aber).
Lludw yn yr awyr,
y mor yw'r cartref olaf :
ymuno a'r ddwr.
(Ashes in the air,
the sea is the final home :
joining with the water.)
My brother had researched both tide and wind direction, so we avoided possible pitfalls and the jetty provided the perfect platform.
My stepfather always said how much he loved Aber and my mother very much belonged there, though she had always resisted becoming an adopted Welsh woman.
As children, we had played many times on Tanybwlch storm-beach and both my sister and I had learnt to swim in the cold and treacherously shelving sea there. It hardened us and we both prefer to swim in the sea rather than pampered and chemical pools.
To our house my brother brought just some of the clear-outs from my stepfather's place and amongst them a folder my mother had inscribed with 'Mike's Poems'. There were books, magazines, newspaper cuttings and even old school Speech Day programmes (the one year I won two prizes, they got my initials wrong!).
In among all this were several poems written by her.
I knew she had begun writing some when she attended the Univ. of the 3rd Age in her 70s and had read one in their magazine.
Unlike my dad, who had real pretensions to be a writer (when he didn't have pretensions to be a sailor, pilot, painter, photographer etc etc), my mother possessed genuine talent.
I just wish I'd read these when she was alive and discussed them with her.
She may have wanted rid of her children and made this evident (who was it told me I had been a MISTAKE?), yet I do owe her a good deal when it comes to poetry.
I remember her early readings of Dylan Thomas into a tape-recorder, her love for Manley Hopkins' verse and the anthology 'New Poetry' she gave me which inspired me so much.
So the sentiments in this - one of her poems - are quite extraordinary : a strength of maternal bonding she never showed through the years, when her main priorities were always the men in her life (though not my crazy and sometimes dangerous father).
FOR MIKE
I cannot write poetry.
In my school poetry,
Was always Iambic Pentameters,
And making things rhyme.
How can you float the rhythms inside you
On an eternal dee-dum dee-dum?
I cannot write poetry.
My son can write poetry.
For him the words can flow,
With the fullness and force of the milk
Which he sucked with such strength from my breast,
That it fountained the facing wall
If he moved his lips away.
So may his words
Spread and coat the walls of the world.
My son can write poetry.
I cannot write poetry.
For me creation was always the rhythm
Of mine and other bodies
Fighting or indulging the elements
Of Space, Weight and Time.
And much of that creation got buried
In brussel sprouts and other things.
I cannot write poetry.
I am glad my son can write poetry.
When he was late inside me,
I pick-axed the rocky soil
To grow food for my family.
'There's dreadful she is', they said,
'The baby will be born dead.'
But he came from me
So swiftly and easily,
And with so little pain in his coming,
That I thought he was a pre-natal indulgence
In too many kippers!
How could any poet put that in a poem?
I cannot write poetry,
But I am glad my son can do so.
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