I just wanted to record how good it feels to wake up to a glorious, sunny, frosty morning.
The sky is an absolutely brilliant blue; the sun is already casting crisp shadows and there is a definite feeling of Spring on its way. After a long, hard winter this is wonderfully welcome!
I've had a tough few weeks emotionally; the nest has felt very empty indeed. As someone who spent her entire life from the age of three planning to have two little girls (and had them!) I still have to work on making the shift into Life After Motherhood. It's not as though I didn't prepare, nor is it that recent but - I suppose nursing someone through a horrible illness for seven years brings you extremely close.
I have lots of other things to do in life. I write, swim, walk, enjoy the countryside and have a full-time job. Yet still I am aware of an emptiness in my heart, feeling bereft on a bad day and merely nostalgic on a good one. This is classic midlife stuff and I know I shall get through to the other side.
I feel a little irritated with myself to be honest. I am thrilled that my daughters have built their new lives. I am excited by what they are doing. And it's quite possible that I am feeling the stirrings of needing to get out there myself. Is there any excuse for someone who speaks several languages to sit at home in England wishing she wasn't lonely at times?
Money - of course. But... there are jobs abroad. There are cheap holidays. And there are two beautiful capital cities to visit in the company of my daughters, the locals.
Now that I'm off crutches and no longer hobbling around, it's time to get off my backside and stop feeling sorry for myself!
Watch this space...
Showing posts with label motherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motherhood. Show all posts
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Monday, 25 May 2009
Radio Silence...
Sorry... I've logged on here a few times intending to write something, but the truth is, I've just had too many thoughts in my head to choose from! What with bereavement, the Scandal of MPs' expenses, the ongoing insanity which is the Education System, etc etc... it's been hard to know where to start!
As for the bereavement, that's going well I think. I have a clearer picture of a Real Woman in my mind now, not just the Mum who didn't get on with me. I wrote a poem about her. Here it is:
My Mother.
My mother
Sits oblivious to her humanity
Gazes through my face with her pale blue eyes,
No longer annoyed by my presence:
Years of ill-concealed dislike replaced
By an unseeing, smiling old-lady mask.
My mother
Had the brain of an Oxford Don,
And a drunken dad who saw no need for school.
For the lack of a uniform, she lost her chance
To attend the grammar school of her dreams.
Her father wouldn't pay -
But my sister and I did.
My mother
Shifts slightly in her chair,
Glances at the table;
Wonders what the cup is doing there,
Dips her finger, chimp-like, in her tea
And sucks it for a while, with childlike glee.
Years ago,I would watch in silent fascination,
Afraid to interrupt her concentration
As the bastions of the Azed crossword
Fell to the armies of her intellect.
Her self-taught knowledge casually outstripped
The offerings of my brothers' Oxbridge friends.
She quoted Shakespeare, Auden, Dickens and the rest;
Read D.H. Lawrence, but was not impressed.
Proud as the fiercest lioness of her sons,
But as daughters, we were the Resented Ones.
My mother
Babbles nonsense fluently,
No longer knows her name,
Breaks briefly into English
To tell me that she had a daughter once,
Then farts, and laughs uproariously.
My brothers think we had the better deal.
Indifference looked easier to bear
Than loving, probing questions,
Expectations, disapproval and despair.
At least, they say, you got to choose your school.
How did my mother cope with irony so cruel?
My mother
Sits in her room all day
Smearing the walls with excrement.
Is it Art? Or some Bobby Sands-like protest
At her incarceration in this twilight world?
She seems quite happy.
But she doesn't eat.
No visitor to our house
Ever escaped her legendary hospitality.
Fresh-baked bread, cheese-on-a-plate,
Scrambled egg, scones as soft as clouds.
She fattened up her friends,
Mercilessly feeding them
Irresistible delicacies, washed down with
Gallons of tea.
My mother
Lies in her bed all day
LIke some curled figure from the ruins of Pompeii.
One son waits by the phone in America
And three of us sit here and watch
The frail old body which gave us all life -
My sister, my brother, myself.
She was never still...
She was a giant hummingbird,
Endlessly searching for the nectar of friendship.
Even in these last years
Her singing filled the home with sunshine,
So they told me.
I had forgotten her singing...
My mother
Lies in a coffin in church,
Two hundred people singing their hearts out,
Laughing quietly at the memory of
This woman they knew.
This irrepressible, generous, humorous, over-the-top woman
They remembered
And I hardly knew.
She's carried out to a song by Doris Day.
Then somebody tells me,
"She lives on in you!"
As for the bereavement, that's going well I think. I have a clearer picture of a Real Woman in my mind now, not just the Mum who didn't get on with me. I wrote a poem about her. Here it is:
My Mother.
My mother
Sits oblivious to her humanity
Gazes through my face with her pale blue eyes,
No longer annoyed by my presence:
Years of ill-concealed dislike replaced
By an unseeing, smiling old-lady mask.
My mother
Had the brain of an Oxford Don,
And a drunken dad who saw no need for school.
For the lack of a uniform, she lost her chance
To attend the grammar school of her dreams.
Her father wouldn't pay -
But my sister and I did.
My mother
Shifts slightly in her chair,
Glances at the table;
Wonders what the cup is doing there,
Dips her finger, chimp-like, in her tea
And sucks it for a while, with childlike glee.
Years ago,I would watch in silent fascination,
Afraid to interrupt her concentration
As the bastions of the Azed crossword
Fell to the armies of her intellect.
Her self-taught knowledge casually outstripped
The offerings of my brothers' Oxbridge friends.
She quoted Shakespeare, Auden, Dickens and the rest;
Read D.H. Lawrence, but was not impressed.
Proud as the fiercest lioness of her sons,
But as daughters, we were the Resented Ones.
My mother
Babbles nonsense fluently,
No longer knows her name,
Breaks briefly into English
To tell me that she had a daughter once,
Then farts, and laughs uproariously.
My brothers think we had the better deal.
Indifference looked easier to bear
Than loving, probing questions,
Expectations, disapproval and despair.
At least, they say, you got to choose your school.
How did my mother cope with irony so cruel?
My mother
Sits in her room all day
Smearing the walls with excrement.
Is it Art? Or some Bobby Sands-like protest
At her incarceration in this twilight world?
She seems quite happy.
But she doesn't eat.
No visitor to our house
Ever escaped her legendary hospitality.
Fresh-baked bread, cheese-on-a-plate,
Scrambled egg, scones as soft as clouds.
She fattened up her friends,
Mercilessly feeding them
Irresistible delicacies, washed down with
Gallons of tea.
My mother
Lies in her bed all day
LIke some curled figure from the ruins of Pompeii.
One son waits by the phone in America
And three of us sit here and watch
The frail old body which gave us all life -
My sister, my brother, myself.
She was never still...
She was a giant hummingbird,
Endlessly searching for the nectar of friendship.
Even in these last years
Her singing filled the home with sunshine,
So they told me.
I had forgotten her singing...
My mother
Lies in a coffin in church,
Two hundred people singing their hearts out,
Laughing quietly at the memory of
This woman they knew.
This irrepressible, generous, humorous, over-the-top woman
They remembered
And I hardly knew.
She's carried out to a song by Doris Day.
Then somebody tells me,
"She lives on in you!"
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Strait-jacket for the soul
I have had a break from blogging - quite deliberately. I was off work last week, and took some time to sit and think, write poetry, sip coffee in cafes... all those things we do when we have Spare Time.
When I was younger, I was aware of the vast amount of thoughts going through my head (at such speed, too!) and it used to drive me to the brink of insanity. Why couldn't I stop thinking? Would I ever be able to stop the ideas from coursing through my brain for long enough to relax?
I managed it, in the end. I learnt to Be Still and Know, to enjoy silence, to watch the flame of a candle and lose myself in the ever-changing shapes, to sit by the sea and become one with its rhythms... I even stopped and smelt every rose I passed as I walked along.
More problems began when I started work. Motherhood, whilst frantic, I found provided endless opportunities for Being - not always just when I wanted, but every day there was a sense of treasuring what I had, of this being a never-repeatable phase of my life. The silences were rare, candles a little dangerous with toddlers around, but there was the joy of teaching people new to the planet the art of Doing Little and Enjoying Much. I was blessed with daughters who very early on appreciated the hush of a church, or the sun on the sea. Together we experienced the everyday wonders which enrich our lives.
But then I started work. It felt - feels at times - like a strait-jacket around my soul. I'm not complaining about having to earn a living - not at all. I feel privileged to be able to do so, especially in these turbulent times. I have to confess, though, that I have a particularly bad case of the 'Rather-be-elsewhere-blues' at times.
Most of the time I knuckle down and get on with earning my crust. But occasionally I allow myself the luxury of wondering how and why I ever got drawn into the rat race. It was never what I wanted. And yet I was inexorably sucked in, just like everybody else. I admire those who make a break for it, dash for the wall and scale it in one leap... in my heart I'd love to follow them, but then I lose my nerve...
How have we reached this place? A place where everyone buys into the same lie - that money is worth more than the right to take a day to lie in the grass watching clouds, or paddle in the sea and listen to the eternal rhythm of the tides? Why is it such a disaster that money has finally been shown up as the false god it has always been? Why are we so surprised that a system built on greed and keeping up appearances, where time with our children is valued less than time at our desk, is finally collapsing before our eyes?
Why do so many think it is perfectly okay to 'earn' bonuses of over half a million pounds, whilst others see their homes repossessed? To focus in, as someone who has struggled with the fact that my monthly deductions total more than my friend's gross income, how can we die of food whilst others die without it? For every morbidly fat person fitted with a gastric band, there is probably a whole village starving to death.
When did all this become acceptable? How did our values change?
And please God, will this recession turn us around at last and let us see once more the things which truly matter in life?
When I was younger, I was aware of the vast amount of thoughts going through my head (at such speed, too!) and it used to drive me to the brink of insanity. Why couldn't I stop thinking? Would I ever be able to stop the ideas from coursing through my brain for long enough to relax?
I managed it, in the end. I learnt to Be Still and Know, to enjoy silence, to watch the flame of a candle and lose myself in the ever-changing shapes, to sit by the sea and become one with its rhythms... I even stopped and smelt every rose I passed as I walked along.
More problems began when I started work. Motherhood, whilst frantic, I found provided endless opportunities for Being - not always just when I wanted, but every day there was a sense of treasuring what I had, of this being a never-repeatable phase of my life. The silences were rare, candles a little dangerous with toddlers around, but there was the joy of teaching people new to the planet the art of Doing Little and Enjoying Much. I was blessed with daughters who very early on appreciated the hush of a church, or the sun on the sea. Together we experienced the everyday wonders which enrich our lives.
But then I started work. It felt - feels at times - like a strait-jacket around my soul. I'm not complaining about having to earn a living - not at all. I feel privileged to be able to do so, especially in these turbulent times. I have to confess, though, that I have a particularly bad case of the 'Rather-be-elsewhere-blues' at times.
Most of the time I knuckle down and get on with earning my crust. But occasionally I allow myself the luxury of wondering how and why I ever got drawn into the rat race. It was never what I wanted. And yet I was inexorably sucked in, just like everybody else. I admire those who make a break for it, dash for the wall and scale it in one leap... in my heart I'd love to follow them, but then I lose my nerve...
How have we reached this place? A place where everyone buys into the same lie - that money is worth more than the right to take a day to lie in the grass watching clouds, or paddle in the sea and listen to the eternal rhythm of the tides? Why is it such a disaster that money has finally been shown up as the false god it has always been? Why are we so surprised that a system built on greed and keeping up appearances, where time with our children is valued less than time at our desk, is finally collapsing before our eyes?
Why do so many think it is perfectly okay to 'earn' bonuses of over half a million pounds, whilst others see their homes repossessed? To focus in, as someone who has struggled with the fact that my monthly deductions total more than my friend's gross income, how can we die of food whilst others die without it? For every morbidly fat person fitted with a gastric band, there is probably a whole village starving to death.
When did all this become acceptable? How did our values change?
And please God, will this recession turn us around at last and let us see once more the things which truly matter in life?
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