And the wheel turns...

Remarkable - we went away for a few days last week and when we came home, the wheel of the year had turned! I had my hands full with bags from our trip, and I did notice the snowdrops as I came through the garden, but was focussed on getting in, putting things away, getting the kettle on... FB wasn't following me and I could hear him chattering excitedly outside, so I stuck my head out of the door to see what was going on to see his face lit up, eyes sparkling as he pointed to a small drift of snowdrops 'Look mummy, snowdrops!' he said, 'that means it must be spring!'.

Indeed, the snowdrops are drifting all along the roadsides through the village and stretching up towards the top road, as are crocuses and primulas; the blackbirds are singing so much more in the mornings, and the rooks are thronging in the trees at the front of the house again in increasing numbers, and I've seen them busying to and fro in the daytimes with twigs in their beaks... I've got washing dried outside on the line, the thermostat turned down, the air feels drier, warmer, full of promise... I'm itching for the chance to get out and spend some proper time and effort in the garden. My boy was right - it must be spring!

Sap rising and I respond in ebbs and flows, at once excited and somehow sad. I've been reflecting on losses and trying hard to move forward from the grief therein without regret - the promise of spring brings new opportunity and motivation, but all that brightness sparks the memory too. But we create our own reality and I've worked so hard for this one! I will not let it pass me by!

FB slept tonight with cheeks ruddy from hours outdoors and a weekend's play with family - how he loves to be surrounded by people! Especially his people, our people - my sister, 2 brothers, 2 nephews and grandparents - what a treat! And how I see how for both of us, communal living makes so much sense! We both of us thrive on those interactions, the easy company, shared work, gentle engagement with the world... Slowly, carefully, I am finding myself reimagining my world, because I am free and I can. As a teenager, I had in my head (and various notebooks) 'The Pillar of Dreams' - a great tower of hopes and fantasties and it led me forwards through even the darkest of times, and was never, ever dependent upon any kind of sense of making all or any of it real - I'm rebuilding the Pillar of Dreams.

A smile in grey day...

How lovely to realise that my friend Lucie has tagged me on her blog!! What a lovely surprise!

So I'm a bit new to these things and I don't really know if I can fulfill all the requirements of this tag, but what I can certainly do is say, should you be reading this and not already know about it, please do go and check out Lucie's blog at http://somillie.blogspot.com/

Now let's see... The rules are:

* link to the person who gave you the award

* post the rules on your blog

* list six things that make you happy

* tag six people at the end of your post and link to them

* let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog

* let the person who awarded you know when your entry is up.

So 6 things that make me happy - only 6! How can I choose! Ask me tomorrow and you'll get a different list I suspect... But here's what makes me happy just now

1. My boy (obviously!)

2. The rest of my family

3. Hand-spun, hand-dyed wool

4. The sun turning the wide sky pink and orange, morning and evening

5. The moon hanging pale in a twilight sky

6. A particular part of the Suffolk coast that is the home of my heart...

And now, 6 lovely people that I'm supposed to tag - only I don't know 6 people to tag (apart from those Lucie already tagged!) So I'm sorry not to pass it on...

Thankyou Lucie, for brightening a grey day!

I'm still thick in a fug of snot and snivels and aches... It gives the world an odd, fuzzy quality so that I end up feeling not quite in the world. My thinking gets muddy, my dreams seem to lap at the edges of waking, needing me to shake my head or blink in an attempt to find certainty in which world is real.

And I'm not good at being ill! I know, I know, what a ridiculous thing to say - who is good at it?! I swing between feeling shamefully sorry for myself one minute and frustrated with it and determined to ignore it the next - today's bout of ignoring how ill I feel involved a fairly major (for an ill person!) clean and tidy of the house. Needless to say, it left me totally exhausted and feeling far worse this evening than I did yesterday. Foolish woman...

I'm trying to unpick some of these waking dreams and strange thoughts and feelings of the last few days. I've felt a sadness - not a heavy sadness, nor threatening, but a sadness none the less... Perhaps it's just slef-pity at my depleted state... I have regrets, and that, I think is the crux of it. I am not a person who has had regrets - there have been times of horror in my life that I still do not regret, but all of a sudden I have them. Not about horrors or dramatic things - mainly about spending such a long time allowing myself to remain unhappy, when it has been so transformational for me to come here and become happy again. Regrets feel sad, especially after so long without them. I wonder if they go away over time; if one can work at letting go of them and them be gone; or if they just are, despite one's efforts - if they exist despite me and are just something I have to learn to live with...

Nothing seems to soothe today... not honey and lemon, not the big bowl of home-made meatballs and tomato and garlic sauce, not a hot bath, not knitting, not even FBs cuddles... There's an unease in me that I can't quite fathom. I think maybe I have unleashed something in acknowledging that there would be space for a little passion and desire within me - that in noticing that, in letting the thoughts exist outside myself it spirals and grows in ways which, truth be told, I'm not comfortable with! No, there's more to it than that - there was news yesterday that tapped into those feelings - not something that is mine to share here, but suffice to say it seems to have awakened a sleeping dragon in me... But then again, I can trust little in this state where reality and fantasy or dream seem to be so hard to distinguish through my fuggy wee head...

I'm ok. Just processing...

On colds and self-indulgence

The sky is heavy with the weight of wet snow. It began as rain this morning, but I noticed it was falling thicker than water on the windscreen and by 9.30 it was definitely rain no longer, but fat, wet snowflakes. It isn't settling yet, but the air has grown steadily colder all morning, so there's time yet. I have guiltily let the central heating thermostat creep up a couple of notches as we've struggled to feel warm. But the damp seems to find infinate ways into this house and I wonder if we will ever feel truly warm and dry until the seasons move on again!

The world feels grey and heavy and my own vision is clouded and weighted by a cold that has left me not only with sinuses full and sore, but every joint in my body (even the top joints of my fingers!) aching and complaining at even the small movements. FB too has been under the weather and I'd thought maybe he was out the other side - perhaps he is but emotionally he's all over the place. This morning the pair of us met headlong in a horrible combination of both of our sadness and heaviness and less-than-top-form-ness. And I'm sad and I'm sorry that these moments happen, when my energies are depleted and I haven't the resources to meet him as he needs me to. It isn't awful, it isn't some terrible thing, I haven't failed him, but neither have I been enough, and it's a sad old feeling...

And sadness hangs doesn't it?I feel an emptiness today, a space inside that would really like to feel that it contained something... I am very loved but I no longer remember what it is to be desired and sometimes it would be nice to remember what it is to crackle and fizz under another's touch, to know that someone somewhere is anticipating me, to know warmth and softness and hunger and searching... I need not for another, but it doesn't stop me wanting at times!

I'm looking for a place to root myself again as my cold leaves me feeling floaty and ungrounded, I'm trying to catch a hold of that contentment that usually holds me so well, I'm trying hard not to launch into flights of fancy, or to entertain fantasies that can't sustain, trying to find a route back into my body even though it doesn't feel a very welcoming place today!

Oh what a self-indulgent post! Forgive me! Bare with me - I'll be home again in myself very soon, just need to allow myself a little wonder and a little wallow!

Cold days and a lovely long boy...

It's been days full of icy cold, breath freezing as it rises, pale moons that never set, bloody red sunrises and lilac, pink and grey sunsets...

We had a walk with some friends on Beverley Westwoods - FB had fun spotting things (most exciting find:- dead leaves!) and finding dens to play in. But the cold chased us home after an hour or so. (mental note: where can I get thermal long johns to fit a coming-up 4 year old? Or maybe I should just buy him some tights... I used to when he was a baby...)

He's growing so fast - clothes not long new to him are getting shorter in leg and sleave. He's a great long boy - always was. I shall never forget the moment he was lifted out of me, held up for me to see, and as they lifted he just seemed to keep on coming and coming and coming... I thought 'where on earth did all that baby come from?', this great long, lean boy being lifted out of the hole they'd made in my belly...

And now here he is with all that fine straw-coloured hair, charging round the woods, jumping on my bed and growing out of his clothes... Looking like his mama...

... And his dad...

Christmas 2008

One of the things I missed during the years in Wales was the big family Christmases of my childhood, and later, after FB was born, the way I felt about family was so absolutely altered, and I longed not just for a big family Christmas, but my big family. Last year was the first year that I came home for Christmas after possibly as mny as 15 years away - I had promised from the beginning that my child's 2nd Christmas was to be with my family. This year, FB's third Christmas (and possibly the first that he will have real, lasting memories of), home is here, our family are here. There's no awful long journey to get here, no dread as the day of leaving approaches, no packing, no upheaval, no tears...

Our Christmas was full and joyful - FB was quietly excited, polite, appreciative and an absolute delight to be with! We both loved hanging out with most of our family (there's only one of my brothers we've not yet seen), eating wonderful food, playing together, chatting together... FB and I had the most magical and gentle Christmas morning together before heading off to my parents for a couple of less quiet and gentle, but no less happy days.

And now it's over for another year and that's ok - the magic we had will carry us through til next time around, and I hope I've sewn the seeds for FB of some childhood Christmas memories for him that are as glorious, magical and filled with Love as my own are.

It's been a strange few weeks - I was unsettled, restless, without ever really understanding why... FB and I prickled and sparked at each other; one minute playfully and the next more spikily (after which I would berate myself and feel ever shittier...). I felt lost - under the stresses of beginning work outside my home; under the feelings of there being not enough room in my head; under sleeping badly; under the expectations of others; under my own confused and confusing feelings - a sudden brief, but powerfully deep longing for a partner/lover the knocked me sideways and sent me spinning into tears at unexpected moments for a few days; under the weight of my desire to mother more children; under my foolish (and thankfully also brief) indulgence in feelings of regret and if only; under the endless rounds of washing, cleaning, cooking, shopping...

And then on Friday I turned 35 and you know all those things began to unravel and look a little less tangled, a little less dense, a little less big... This is a very new thing for me, to feel any sort of anxiety or trepidation about ageing - and I don't feel those things in a conscious way, but I notice what has happened here! Part of it is context - finding myself here more than 10 years since the beginning of my last relationship, and recognising that if you had asked my then 24 year old self where she imagined she'd be at 35, it would be very unlikely to be here! It's been a hard year, full of harsh choices and brave decisions and whole heap of shit to deal with, and I do feel on the cusp of new and exciting things. 35 is fine - I need to remember not to allow myself to get into looking backwards (what I could/should/might have done differently - the point is I didn't, but you know, I could now!) - I am happy to embrace who and what I am now as I emerge from whatever chrysalis it is I've inhabited. The Solstice has passed and I feel already the barely perceptible shift in energy,the miniscule first movements as we turn back towards the light... I turn with the Earth - towards the light, towards the gathering energy, still deep, deep down beneath the soil, the barest little quiver, but rising, rising, and knowing the pace will gather and push us up and out...

Visitors have been abound this weekend and deserve a mention because they brought with them Love and affirmation, inspiration and hawthorn jelly... The love of my boy, my family and my oldest friend and his beautiful partner - all that I needed after my little wobble!

So my little world turns onward, the path a little clearer again, the light a little brighter, my poor wee slow head a little less busy and my heart light and full - loved and loving.