Interregnum

Friday Fragment #45

Between is not often given its due as a state or place in its own right. Between is more commonly the preposition that both separates and links one thing from or to another – between the hours of sunrise and sunset; between two strangers on a train. Its job is to govern the nouns which follow, either pushing them apart or pulling them together. Between, by definition, requires two other items or articles to exist. For much of this year, between has been the time, the place and moreover the condition that I’ve found myself in. And those nouns which sit on either side of between’s steer and control have not always seemed so clear, nor so easy to move to and from. Between is the ample excuse card of the procrastinator (between jobs, between going this or that way). Between can cement a diplomatic bridge (progress between one party and another) and yet can also help to clarify a dividing gulf (the difference between one party and another). As I hasten towards the end of a fifth decade, my life feels as though it has reached a middle point: the years of youth on one side and those of older age ahead. And there is no noun or adjective that dresses itself quite so assertively in the cloak of betweenness as that word ‘middle’. This is the between of my life, and especially so, in more ways than I can easily record here, in these last weeks and months. The between links me on a daily basis to others, connects me to their lives, their struggles, their delights and the complexities of each: a wife, two daughters, two brothers and my mother. Many years ago, I started collecting thoughts about her, my mother, specifically images and ideas about place and belonging. Only recently have I begun to think deeply and reflectively on what those scribbled thoughts represented, and endeavoured to bring them together into a whole. She has spent her life, her entire life, under the shadow of illness. Between visits, between being with her and not with her, between the love we are able to show and not show, and the things we can say and not say is the place where I have been since this year began. And I think the between is holding onto many others at this moment. When I look around me, when I read the news, when I speak to family and friends, it feels that between is a place where life for so many, right now, seems to be stuck, with nouns trembling at each end. Between war and peace, between hope and fear, between scarcity and abundance, between understanding and callousness. This between for many is stifling: holding onto us without our always being aware of its grip; keeping us held, once we try to slip its grasp. The between, right now, feels like a forward step that won’t fully connect with the ground; a difficulty to differentiate pause from impasse; an enduring amber light that spits and stutters with flashes of red and green.

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