At my mum’s funeral, her best friend Joyce looked at my daughter and thought ‘that’s her, that’s Pat’. My daughter, then 18, was about the age mum had been when this friendship had kindled, and family likeness did the rest. I think the moment was both pain and pleasure for Joyce, there to say farewell to her friend of 70 years, co-creator of vivid war-time memories of two young WAAFs, who stayed close in heart thereafter.

One of the deep pleasures of old friendships is that we still see past selves. Especially how the person was when we first met. My best friend is always the slim-waisted, chic blonde student crossing the courtyard with purposeful vitality, even as the present presents otherwise.  So also with siblings:  my grey-haired, bearded brother in my mind’s eye is yet a small boy offering me his birthday money so I could buy a stuffed toy dog (the lack of which threatened to be the biggest tragedy of my seven year old life). The colleagues I work with, they only see my grey hair, they only know me with grown-up children.  They cannot know more than that. Perhaps that is why, as we grow older, we reminisce more: not simply for the pleasure of sharing memories, but to assert that we are more than we appear to be.

For inside, of course, we remain mutable: we can be all ages, any age.  My internalised, idealised self is still in early adulthood, still on the cusp, full of energy and optimism.  And when the world feels overwhelming and I yearn to be comforted, my inner self feels like a child again.  The different selves shuffle according to mood and moment.  If I look back at my past, there are so many of them, so much life lived – like Banquo’s progeny: ‘will the line stretch out to the crack of doom’? I know they aren’t really distinct, that this must be a continuum, nonetheless they feel like paper dolls, individually transient, flimsy, two-dimensional.  Changing a little each time – a touch broader, a touch narrower again; changes of hair cut and colours and clothes with varying success, the smile sometimes wide and easeful, then a growing uncertainty and an anxiety about the eyes.

When I was trying to sort the family photographs this summer, I suddenly realised that I didn’t have to keep them chronologically. Other themes emerged, in particular recurrent locations, and my family grew used to my plaguing them with asynchronous linked images via WhatsApp, such as myself and my brother with a football in our back garden, then my own children playing in the same way and in the same safe space, now ‘grandma’s house’.

I wonder what would happen if I could scatter my paper doll selves across the floor: what new patterns might emerge as I gathered them back up. All the selves who went to the theatre, of course. Innumerable theatre-going Lesleys. Yes, that would definitely be a theme. Intermittently selves playing the piano – not enough, never enough practice put in there! But perhaps I could add in the singing selves: school and church and college and community choirs. The reader, of course, a big pile there all looking absorbed, even absent – my inner self vanished into imaginary worlds. The work selves, conscientious, perhaps over-conscientious; there are a few too many of those for the number of paid hours they represent. The knitter/sewer/craftsperson, a small pile but still meriting assembly. The friend – a big pile of repeated images here: sitting talking on the phone, sometimes spats and discomfort but much more often sympathy and laughter, hugs of greeting, hugs of farewell.

There would, I know, be a pile called ‘mother’ – or just ‘mum’? I am less confident about that one. Should that pile should be assembled by my children?  And the ones called wife. Ah. Those I cannot assemble. Those selves have fallen and scattered so widely, I fear that they may be already blown away, puddle-fallen, mud-spattered. I am not sure they can be gathered together at all and if they were, I do not know what face would be there or whether I would recognise it.

This becomes difficult. I have to turn away, use the other selves to minister (knit, read, watch good acting).  I let the metaphor of wind and rain and approaching storm pass over. Now I can resume, and return to the pile called ‘mother’. It’s not fair to leave that task to the children as if they are sorting through my relics and writing my epitaph. For it’s a huge pile: my pregnant self, twice over, then days and days and days, months, years when this self was the most important of all. Selves which, if put together in sequence, run like a flip book, the children firstly internal, then cradled in my arms, hitched on hip – sometimes one on each side – then standing holding my hand. Each time moving away, growing into independence, until they feature only in hugs of greeting and farewell. In truth, not all these ‘mum’ selves are happy: there are also worried selves, tired selves, bored selves: endless providing of meals and cleaning and tidying and shopping. But here are more: a stack of seated paper dolls: ah!  cuddled up side by side on the bed to read – how many times? Picture books, then story books and then Harry Potter giving us cause to retain this right through to teenage years; watching tv together on the sofa: Playdays and Happy Gang, Robot Wars and The Simpsons, Dr Who and Lost and Torchwood. My response to the children growing bigger was simply to buy the most enormous sofa: feeling too old to cuddle, we could still sprawl across this shared space in glorious casual physical proximity.

That’s a lot of paper dolls. A lot of living. Just as with the photographs this summer, sorting them becomes overwhelming.

It’s like in fairy tales, where the heroine is faced with an impossible task such as sorting a huge heap of grain in a single night. In these stories, helpers appear and what was indeed impossible for one is suddenly achievable.  So, perhaps, with friends and siblings:  each single doll is flimsy and ephemeral and these long-connected people help us link our selves together; they see through time, keep focus.  How we feel now is not how we always are, and our helpers caringly remind us and assure us of that.  They help us build ourselves, recognise ourselves, validate and centre ourselves. 

We are always timeless inside.  When I meet ‘auntie’ Joyce and she shares her memories, the 18-year old Joyce is there, youthful and beautiful, just as much as the present figure, a little stooped and wrinkled at, now, 99.  Still vital and funny, dearly loved by me for being my mum’s friend.  Now and for always.