azure

It is definitely a blue day. It is the sort of day that makes its presence known simply by being so blue. No need to look out the window, to check the weather or feel what the temperature is. No need to do anything because it is just going to be a blue day. There it is, nothing more to do about it other than get through it. No one will see it as I do. 

The plan is simple. I pick the next day that promises to have decent weather and let everyone know. We all agree that 48 hours notice is plenty of time. There isn’t much to organise, everyone has their own gear and transport. We could do this individually, and very nearly had, but for a little effort we can do this together. Perhaps not such a little effort, I am being way too optimistic about that I suspect. 

Three days ago, when it was no longer possible to deny that a blue day was on its way, I had alerted everyone. True, I took the cowardly but efficient option of texting them. Phone calls felt too dangerously personal and emails too business like. My choice, or preference, was to do my bit and set the day without any conversation about it. I only had to get the message out there and no more. I was not up to doing anymore.  

‘Hey all’ I texted, ‘This friday is our blue day, see you there at daybreak’. 

‘All good Jo.’ Was what I got back. They all stuck to what we had agreed, no drama or misplaced emotion.  

So today is friday and it is an hour, give or take a few minutes, to daybreak. I start to get my stuff together. I don’t want to be the first and inadvertently fall into the role of host. I plan to drift in, almost under cover, and lightly attach myself to them. I will be there as a participant and an observer but not as the leader. I never really belonged to them, loved them all but they are not mine and now is not the time to change that. 

‘Lets do this’, I mumble unconvincingly to myself. Not a good start. I need help; blue days are not always about the weather. I quiet my mind. I try to quiet my heart. I pull on my wetsuit slowly, tie my hair back carelessly, absentmindedly brush my teeth. I pick up the board and promptly collapse on the floor.  

Then I hear it. Help has arrived.  

‘Mum, are you still here?’ The call sifts through to me from the open back door. There she is, my daughter who has her fair share of blue days too, standing in front of me. She looks at me sitting on the floor, in my wetsuit with the board across my knees. 

‘You do know it is all about the board and not you’, she calmly states with only the slightest hint of humour in her voice.  

‘So have you come for me or the board?’ I reply sullenly whilst skidding around on my bottom so I can see her properly. 

‘The board, but as you are the only one who can bring it then I suppose I’ll have to bring you too.’ She quips back at me.

With a deep sigh I hand her up the board and get back up on to my feet. The board is taller than either of us; she is only slightly taller than me. We make a strange sort of pyramid, holding the board upright between us, both of us holding each other. 

‘You lead.’ I say as I point towards the door. And then we are off. Only then do I realise that she is already in her wetsuit, towel slung carefully over her shoulder, flowers from the garden in her hand.  

‘Do you think they will be there?’ I ask absentmindedly of her.  

‘Do you mean yet or how many?’ She asks. 

‘Yet. If it is only you and me I wouldn’t mind.’ I know that she already understands this.  

‘Well, I think you have you answer.’ She whispers back at me while pointing to the end of our street, where it turns into a track over the sand dunes. 

Of course they had come, and early. Early enough to light the way for us, standing to each side of the track to let us pass carrying the board. The sun was not far off rising.  

My daughter gently puts the nose of the board into the dark water and then turns to me. Together we walk into the surf beside it. We paddle out past the breakers and together we sit quietly on the board, she still has the flowers but now they are tucked into the neck of her wetsuit. The others join us. Mates all, witnesses to his life. It is a very blue day.  

No words are needed, we sit and rock with the ocean swell and wait for the sun to rise. The sky is cloudless. He always talked of blue bird days, turned days into them when he had little reason to think of them as being anything but endless grey. He taught his sister and me a new meaning for the colour blue. The sun comes up above the horizon. 

‘Blue birds days forever.’ I say.  

‘A pinch and punch.’ Adds my daughter. 

Others take their turn, no more than a couple of words each. When we are all done we slip into the water. Leaving our boards behind, my daughter placing the flowers on his, we swim back slowly to the beach.  As we reach the top of the dunes, and without design or plan, we all turn around as one and look back. We are grandly rewarded. 

What we see is a perfectly azure sky over a welcoming deep azure sea. A shield like cluster of coloured boards are drifting off together with his azure board, bunch of forget-me-nots safely astride, naturally in the middle of them.