Happened 💫

By Lian Brook-Tyler

I happened to share the memory of my father crying with the Medicine circle earlier and then happened to see the writing below that mentions the very same memory.

Two happeneds make magic, of course.

DIFFERENT 

I was an awkward child but in the early years so blissfully unaware of my awkwardness that I wasn’t really awkward, just different.

And difference was something I could get onboard with, be proud of, even cultivate more of.

After all, my beloved father was different to almost all of my friends’ parents - he was clearly better, so clearly being different was the key.

Different how? Let me count the ways.

We had bean bags on the floor when others had sofas (sometimes we had sofas too but the point is: we had bean bags).

We went festival-going, back-packing and hitch-hiking, idling in Ibiza, and getting mugged in Morocco, whereas other families had their sensible week of sun and sangria. Sadly, my claim to fame of “My dad helped build the pyramid stage at Glastonbury... I’ve eaten macaroni cheese in the Eavis’s kitchen table” didn’t hold appeal for my class mates (I use the term ‘mates’ loosely, more on that another time).

Our walls, when we had them, were adorned with rainbow trees, moonlit fairies, and floor-to-ceiling tarot cards - I learned to tell my left and right by the High Priestess (L) and the Magician (R). Other families favoured patterned wallpaper and glossy white woodwork... my friends were amazed that I’d been allowed to render the likeness of a life-size horse in acrylics on the outside of my bedroom door.

We had a menagerie of fantastic beasts: chickens (especially fantastic because we were living in a flat at the time), ‘Deak The Beak’ - a pigeon I’d hand reared from a raggedy hatchling, dragonfly nymphs, and a long line of rats who attempted to follow in the illustrious paw prints of our beloved ‘Dr Rat’ - his burial was the first and one of the only times I’ve seen my dad cry. Other families had labradors.

 
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