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.

There have been more spectacular evening skies - like a little compensation for the shorter days in this last long march towards the Solstice... There is still ice along the lane; sometimes just a little slick, unnoticeable, to slip on as you walk, sometimes a puddle, shattered like glass, small triangles thrown outward to freeze again in some other spot... The morningtimes are glorious too, but I have to confess that the cold has a tendency to keep me in bed - cuddled up with FB with the blankets pulled up to our ears until we have no choice but to brave the world for pees, clothes, breakfast...

My days spin on through work and domesticity and the huge efforts of concentration it feels like it takes for me to feel even vaguely on top of things. It will get easier, I know, but dear me, it feels like hard work just now! Coming home in the dark and the cold and feeling like sleep but there's a small person to play with, bellies to fill, washing, dishes, cleaning to be done, hot water bottles to fill, stories to read, kisses to be had... I feel there's too little room left for creativity - either for myself or room to come up with exciting things to share with FB. It'll come, it'll come, I have only to catch my stride and settle into a new order.

FB has been poorly - we both have suffered today with the minimal sleep we managed last night until he finally gave up late this afternoon and climbed up onto my knee and allowed his poor, hot little body to relax onto mine and his watery eyes to close. My heart reaches out to him - those flushed cheeks set on a sad, pale face, his lips sore and cracked from licking and rubbing, and his nose chapped from wiping the almost permanent canldes of snot there... His breath rattles in his chest and he snores softly, uncomfortably... My poor boy... And yet it can feel such a joyous treat to have him there, his little body against mine, his hot face pressed against my chest, to be able to watch him sleep, to stroke his head, to just be with him without needing to think, or respond to anything or do or be anything at all - just me holding my boy, being nothing but his mother, nothing but Love... Why would I want anything more?

It's been a funny few days - I've been anticipating again and filling brim-full of anxieties and fears in the process. I realise just how much my confidence about my abilities beyond these walls and my own little family has slipped away over recent years and all of a sudden I found myself about to start a new job with the feeling that I wasn't sure I was capable of it at all! I tried so hard yesterday evening to feel peaceful and calm, but nothing seemed to quell the feeling I had of having made a terrible mistake that was going to let people down dreadfully...

It was, of course, fine. I have a lot to learn - about how not to get wound up into such a state for starters, but also about little things like how to dress for work and still feel like myself, how to organise myself better so that there's quick and easy meals planned for work days, how to get us both up and sorted in the mornings without it feeling like a horrible rush... But it feels good. I'm over the dreadful hurdle of the first day, I'll have a pay packet in December and am earning the money that FB and I need, and it looks like it's going to be an engaging, challenging, interesting and worthwhile job. The world is good.

Beyond that, there are all sorts of thoughts and ideas, and this wonderful landscape to hold them, ground them (and me). Last night we drove home as the sun turned down towards a low bank of heavy black cloud that seemed to add a vast city-scape to the usually level horizon. The higher, paler cloud above was flooded with orange light so that the horizon turned into a sprawling black metropolis engulfed in raging fire... And then a bright sliver of moon hung in the little birch tree at the front of the house - FB called from his bedroom - he'd gone up to look for starts in the gathering dark - 'it's a moon, a moon, a moon!'. So excited! How wonderful this little boy whose face lights up because he's seen the moon hanging outside his window! I tried to photograph it, but it didn't work. I'll put it here anyway beause the sky is such a lovely blue...

I have thoughts I feel I shouldn't have. Or rather, little longings that I should not have entertained because they are not yet attainable... Thoughts about a bigger home, more children, about how a little passion really wouldn't go amiss... Push them away, push them away, all in good time...I love what I have, andit really is enough, and I am not ungrateful... Think of it as ambition... I am still, you see, sitting and waiting in that pumpkin patch!

And snow again, and more forecast - it feels very cold this evening, despite my layers. There were spectacular tales in the office today of how much snow there might be tomorrow (and a contingency plan to work at home for those of us who might not get through) and I can't help but feel a little excited at the thought of lots of snow - it is so beautiful and it does make the world an even more magical place...

And it didn't happen...

We woke to an incredibly hard frost - the world sparkled and danced in bright, high sunlight spilling out of a clear turquoise sky. There was an early mist, blurring the lines between frosted ground and tree and sky, swirling around the bases of trees and swallowing the legs of sheep in the fields... FB was excited and happy, and though I still felt a level of trepidation and anxiety, his happiness was infectious and we set off through that pale world singing and laughing together.

We managed 90 miles. After 80 miles we hit horrific traffic over Saddleworth moor and spent 2 hours crawling the 10 miles to the next available motorway exit at which we could give up and turn around. Despite a clear and bright sky, the sun appeared to have little impact on the cold - when we stopped for a break we slipped and slid on black ice on the tarmac as we walked away from the car. My heart sank at FBs sorrow at not being able to make the journey he had been so excited about, but it felt like the safe thing to do - it was icy, I was tired already and was still a long way short of half way, and had no idea how long it might take to get through whatever was holding us up.

FB an I cut a deal to support his sorrow - one that involved, at his request, a motorway services, sitting at a table (apparently terribly important to him), juice and chocolate brownie - my funny wee boy and his gentle simple request to heal his heart. We sat in uncomfortable fake leather bucket chairs and shared our cake and chatted about what we should do with the weekend to make ourselves feel better about not being able to go...

And away we went, back past over 10 miles of static traffic, past the strangely unsettling greyness of cities and finally, away from the motorway and into the rolling open space of East Yorkshire. My heart lifted immediately we saw the landscape of home open up around us. The mist had cleared but the day remained cold and crisp and bright, the Wolds rolling up before us. A huge grey heron joined us, flying parallel to us for a time as it made it's way across the patchwork fields - a little gift of it's company for those short minutes. I know my instinct is often to stay at home, but leaving it opens up the bright joy of returning. Back home again FB decided that the Saturday should be cooking day and Sunday should be drawing day, and so it has been - huge amounts of painting and colouring and sticking and stamping and far too many gingerbread men, alongside soup for the freezer and fritters for tea.

I'd felt huge anxiety calling my ex to explain that we had decided to turn around, but it has turned to huge relief as my decision was accepted and understood without question. Tentatively, I begin to wonder whether something has shifted and we can begin to move forward again more positively and without the same levels of negativity, hostility and misunderstanding that we have been struggling with.

I worried that, having planned to spend an FB-free weekend working on some essays that I would end up getting nothing done, but have ended up being, I suspect, more productive than I would have been. Being at home and relaxed and content after a day-full of drawing and cooking is actually a pretty good setting in which to spend an evening working - better than in an unfamiliar space in which I know I would have been focused on, and worrying about not being with FB. Now, his soft snores are a background to my work and the motivation I dragged out of my apprehensions about the weekend I thought I would have has stayed with me in this gentler weekend and I've been productive. OK, it's not finished, but I'm nearly there!!

And so on the face of it, all that waiting and apprehension I described came to nothing, but of course that's not true at all - it just came to something different than I had expected. It was horribly frustrating to be stuck in traffic like that, and to drive all that way only to turn around. But if I hadn't done that, I would have missed the heron, missed the sun dancing on the frost over East Yorkshire and on Saddleworth moor, missed my lovely boy carefully tucking his horrible chair up to the table he so wanted at the motorway services, and his pleasure at eating bought chocolate brownie from the packet. That's enough for me.

Waiting...

I'm in a funny kind of limbo today. Tomorrow FB and I head back down to Wales for the weekend. There are lots of things, not least my dreading that hideously long journey, my not wanting to leave FB, my not wanting to go away from home... But I know it will be ok, in a way I didn't until this week, and that's a good thing. But it still feels like limbo - I need it to be over, to get on with moving forwards...

There are other waitings going on too though, and so when I think more carefully about it, I realise that this is just the theme for now - I must be patient, I must wait and when I've waited a while, the time will be right and I will move forward again... There's no rush, no point in trying to force anything, it will all come in it's own time... The weekend will be what it will be - no amount of anxiety or thinking will make anything happen or not happen... The new job will start, and will also be what it will be, but not yet!... My wishes may well be manifest, but in good time, when the time is right... I am the Seven of Discs - I haven't used my Motherpeace Tarot for so long, and yet that card is so vivid for me now - the image is of a pregnant woman in a pumpkin patch! Just waiting, just gestating and not quite ready for harvest. I am the Seven of Discs - impatient perhaps, but impatience won't change anything! So here's to waiting!

Snow!

I've had a busy weekend, but I've been longing to come here and post my photos!!

When I woke on Saturday morning I thought FB must have slept really late because there seemed to be so much light in the room, and so I was surprised when I looked at the clock and realised it was before 7... It wasn't until half an hour later, after cuddles and snuggles, that we opened the curtains and realised why the world was so light...

FBs initial response was to bury his head in my pillow! But eventually I convinced him that snow is exciting and beautiful, not scary!

I felt like a child myself, giddy and excited, anxious to get outside and be in the snow as soon as possible. The world was muffled and quiet, still and beautiful and utterly, utterly magical! And funny, having only just posted my thoughts on spiralling into winter, so wake to find myself so deep in wintery-ness! The sky was so with thick with snow that the sun was barely visible as a small, pale disc struggling through all that grey. Robins made Christmas cards of the garden, picking at the bruised apples on the bird table, knocking snow off the feeders as they sought out seed. And the rooks shone black, stark against the snow as they poked those long, sharp beaks through the blanket of white to search out tasty morsels in the field below.

We drove (slowly, carefully!) the few miles over to my parents to share our excitement about the snow and for me to have the opportunity to talk through my job interview presentation with them. Their house sits on the top of a small hill - we tried, and failed to make it up the curve of their drive, so parked by the hen house where the hens sat and stubbornly refused to leave the warmth of the house for the entire day.

Sunday was a baking day - inspired by the snow we baked sticky cinnamon rolls (and then ate too many of them) and roasted and stuffed one of my mother's pumpkins. And then while FB slept, I made the final changes to my presentation and tried hard to stay relaxed, reminding myself of my last post here, and my determination to be active and positive in shaping the future I'm trying to make...

And it worked. I left the interview feeling happy with what I had done, but fairly certain that I wouldn't get the job. I was wrong - they called this evening to offer it to me. And so here is the beginning of yet another new chapter, and I cannot accuse myself of coasting! The snow is all but gone - just a few traces along the hedgerows where it had managed to make little drifts. And I emerge from that slightly unreal world of the weekend, out of that muffled quiet, a new bud, a new beginning.

On spiralling into winter and my own inaction!

And the cold grows and the night slopes in earlier and the air smells earthy with rotting leaves and woodsmoke and rings with gunshot and rooksong...

I love this time of year, the slow turn inward, spiralling down, reflecting and reckoning over what has come before and the first tiny seeds of ideas for future germination. I love the bright cold mornings where the frost sings and sparkles on the brown fields and the first spikes of winter wheat poking through the earth. I love the crisp, pale sunshine in the afternoon, tinting all the thick low cloud with yellow and faintest pink, the silhouettes of trees against a hazy western horizon. And I love turning east again, the strange sensation of heading into the dark with the golden light behind me. I love walking in from the cold and the smells of woodspice and cooking. I love coming home to casseroles and stews - slow-cooked, hearty, heart-warming food that nourishes body and soul. I love the yeasty freshness of just-cooked bread, the earthy heartiness of lentils and roots for soup, apples turning to froth and stickiness as they slowly bake. I love my snuggly jumper in the long evenings.I love hot water bottles and extra blankets and their ability to facilitate my sleeping naked...

I've been mindful today of my needing to be a more active participant in shaping this new future I have chosen. We moved and were caught in the early struggles to settle - physically and emotionally... We found this place to live and I was involved in painting and cleaning and sorting and unpacking (which, admittedly, remains and unfinished task)... I worked hard to try and maintain a sense of rootedness and security for FB through all of it and we have played and walked and talked and sung and read and baked and drawn and glued and cut... But all of a sudden I feel I'm coasting, lazily. Just riding along without thinking, without asking myself what it is I want now, what I need now, how I want to continue shaping my world... I loose myself too easily - in others, in the computer, in lists of meaningless things to do, in my sense of responsibility, in all this newness - part of my coming here was to remember myself, not forget again!! I want to follow the earth's slowing, let all the dead stuff fall away to rot into the ground, and know that the re-growth is up to me. If I want more time to be creative, then it is up to me to make time. If I want to feel healthy, I need to do those things that I know facilitate that. If I want to change the ways some of my relationships work, I need to put attention and energy into that...

But then I am aware that it's too easy to fall into berating myself my failings and that becoming yet another excuse for not getting my shit together! It's been a hard time, with so much happening, so much to take in and adjust to. I am - we are - in a process of change, and it can't be rushed, only embraced, and mostly I think I've been fairly good at embracing. There are active steps I have taken since coming here, particularly in terms of gently altering some of the ways I operate within some of my relationships - truth is that there are bits of me that wish I could retreat from the anger, conflict and discomfort that induces! But I've done that - I've made some changes, taken my destiny into my own hands. So I'm not completely shirking!

And with a view to continuing to do so, here's what happened, all in the course of the last week:

* I have, finally, bought a new (second hand) freezer, which will be delivered tomorrow and will allow me to cook and store food. I'm trying really hard not to have a go at myself for taking so long to do this when I know it'll make such a difference...

* I have, finally, bought a bookcase, also being delivered tomorrow, so that I can unpack the boxes of books that have been sitting around since I moved in.

* I have begun listing some things I've been carrying around without using for far too long on ebay - if they don't sell, they can go to freecycle or charity shops.

* I have had some incredibly difficult and painful discussions with my ex partner that have been filled with pain and anger on both sides, but I have been completely honest and feel good in my heart for being true to myself and my child.

* I have acknowledged openly my overwhelming desire for more children.

* I have got a job interview on Monday (for which I also have a presentation to write - for a part time job! - and about which I am terrified, which may well be the root of much of this post...)

* I have booked a bed and breakfast for next weekend - something I've been avoiding because I didn't want to think about it - FB will be staying with my ex partner - my b&b will be nearby and will give me the opportunity to relax, do some knitting, work on an essay that is long overdue for my antenatal teacher training, read, sleep, take showers, and know that I am closeby for FB should he need me, but also make the most of a peaceful time alone.

I'm taking deep breaths, trying hard to stay present, and stepping forward...

An early start treated us to a lovely sky this morning and looked like perhaps it would be a clear day. I hurried to get a couple of loads of washing done in the hope that I could get them dry, but by lunchtime the sky was thick powder grey and the first heavy drops of rain began to fall.

I drove up the top road to town at 2.30 and the sky felt so thick and low I might have touched it! The Rooks conspire to confound me every time - this afternoon I drove against them as they straggled up into the sky and streamed back in a South-easterly direction as I drove west. I figure they keep me on my toes. It gets earlier and earlier, these darkening days, that they begin their long evening rituals towards roosting. Days like today, when so much of it is shrouded in heavy cloud which blocks out the light so early, they have so little light...

For myself, there were two frustrations with the rain today, one being the washing still not dry. The other is that the garlic still no planted, but then I was perfectly capable of going out and doing it in the rain, I was just being lame and feeling the cold! But FB and I stayed in and made paper fishes. I'd thought we might use them to decorate the house at christmas time, but I'm sure he'll have other ideas for them. This evening he was overcome with tiredness and flopped in my arms for an hour before bedtime and I held him and rocked him and marvelled at his beauty... I caught a little tiny fleeting glimpse of old days, when he was tiny, and I would hold him in my arms like that, close to me, rocking gently... These days I don't often get such long periods of uninterrupted holding. I want him to feel ok, but I can enjoy the prolonged holding and the very physical, embodied memories of his tiny self that it brings me. I wonder how he got so big, how we came so far and in such darkness. I can feel sad at the time we spent struggling through the darkness, but it's good to be in the light, eyes open wide, finding our way easily, hand in hand, together...

We have come a long way, my boy and I, and it hasn't been easy, but there's a level at which that's part of the intense joy now - that it is easy now! That it's simple at last for the two of us to step lightly through our days. There are seeds of new thoughts and ideas already, and here I am, with the world slowing around me, but already I anticipate the quickening in my bones - I know it's coming. But in the meantime, we'll step lightly and easily - there's no hurry. We've only ourselves to please and the way is bright and clear. We'll wait for the midwinter baying of the foxes, we'll wait for snow and snowdrops, we'll wait through the quiet and still and we'll listen for the quickening and we'll follow it wherever it leads us.

Intimacy and Solitude

I've been thinking a lot these last few days about company, intimacy, solitude... Singledom and partnership...

I've been single for over a year now, after 9 years of living in partnership. I like being single - I enjoy my own company, though of course parenting ensures that 'single' never means 'alone'!. I'm utterly contented in the warmest, gentlest kind of way. That's not to say there are never moments when I'm less content - this week has been hard - I've felt ill so much of it and FB's been waking incredibly early and it would have been nice to have someone to share that with, or someone to have a chat with in the evenings... Or sometimes a little intimacy, a little passion wouldn't go amiss... But what I know is that, right now, I'm not willing or ready yet to pay the price that comes for those things - right now, I am enjoying closing that door on the world when I feel like it. I'm enjoying having - always - the whole of a king size bed to myself, I'm enjoying getting up at 5 with FB if I feel like it, or taking him into my bed for quiet cuddles til 7 when I don't feel like getting up, taking responsibility for only FB and my washing, cooking, cleaning...

I'm not ready yet to share any of this, I want it all to myself. I want myself all to myself. And above all, I want FB all to myself! I spent the first 3 years of his life being a single parent with a partner. Now I am a single parent without a partner and oh my, it's wonderful! It's fantastically easier and more joyful - I have no expectations of support or anything else; I have no resentments at jobs not done, help not offered; I don't watch the clock waiting for when I may (or may not) get a pleasantly distracting conversation, some adult input; I am, really, what it says on the tin - single - and it is wonderfully liberating! For me and for FB, who equally does not have to expect attention that doesn't come, or not on his terms, and does not have to watch his mother looking for things that aren't there, or resenting anything - we can each joyfully relax in each other's being, in our own instinctive ways of being and doing, together and independently, needing only to remain in tune with one another and never to bend ourselves to fit a shape that doesn't suit...

And he is easy company - we fall into a gentle pattern of our days, our warm early morning cuddles, chatty breakfasts, playful days filled with laughter and song and chatter and nonsense and seriousness and mess and walks and getting things done, together and apart, quieter evenings, sleepy bath- and storytimes, more snuggles, I love you's, kisses... Truth be told, I realise he is more than enough for me, and I no longer need to feel ashamed of that, or that it must be my guilty secret for fear of hurting anyone else's feelings: FB and I can just be who and what we are, mother and son and enough for each other at this point in time as we make our new way in the world...

And I do know that I perhaps sound like I'm casting aspersions on partnership itself, and I really don't mean to. There is fundamental truth that partnership involves sacrifice and compromise, but in a right moment, between the right people, that might actually be described as joyful sharing and equal commitment. Partnership itself is not some kind of shackle - it's only that my last partnership became one. Sharing a particular love and commitment doesn't have to exclude all others - it's only that I felt it was expected of me this last time... And so I can have moments of jadedness about it, though mostly I have moments of enjoying the freedom of mothering my child in all the unrestricted ways I want to, and spend no time at all thinking about partnership! Sometimes I can long for adult conversation, or to feel the breath of another sing through my body, but those things will come when the time and people are right, when all of us are ready. For now, FB and I are free and alone-together and it's joyous and liberating and fun and more than enough for anyone!

Fallen leaves

It's been an odd few days, the air cold and still and cushioned with quiet - it has felt we were waiting for something, and yet nothing quite happens. Perhaps we are still waiting...

The wide skies have been so grey and heavy and all that cloud has brought early darkness so that yesterday as early as 3 o'clock the rooks were swarming up at the top road - gathering in the fields around the crossroads, in the trees, lining the telephone wires, swooping and diving and playing. Then suddenly taking a more serious tone as they fall still and quiet before boiling up into the sky and heading for the trees in Church Wood to roost. I expect something to hae happened by the time they have gone, but no - the air remains still, and quiet apart from their calls, and still somehow expecting.

It hasn't really rained as such, but the air has been so wet that FB and I have gotten soaked on even our shorter excursions. He discovered the joys of fallen leaves in a rather big way after a short walk with his grandaddy where he filled a paper bag with fallen leaves. We dried them and made tree pictures, but then the leaves were all gone so he wanted more. A short walk up the back lane with his basket produced a fine new crop for drying, which later made a beautiful crown. FB, King of Autumn.

He's been unhappy today, which has meant he's not been easy company - he's been firey and angry and beligerant and defiant (so much like his mother!). And I'm worn from full-up sinuses and headaches and snot and lack of sleep, and so much less well resourced to deal positively with it, but I do notice how shocking it is to have a day like this - one where it feels like the trolls have been in the night and stolen my boy, replacing him with one of their troll children... It has been a very, very long time, and so even in the midst of what has been admittedly a pretty grim day, I have been reflecting on what it means that it is so shocking to find a day like this because they are so uncommon. And I hate the feeling that nothing is good enough, that I can never be or do or say the right thing in these moments, but I am thrilled to realise that these days used to be regular, if infrequent - we have turned a corner somewhere, and whilst our general content can make days like this seem harder, it is also our content that keeps these days at bay, or helps carry us through when they do come... I'll make another corvid analagy - generally, FB and I are rooks - social, chatty, resolutely communal and collaberative. Occasionally, we are each more like crows - solitary scavengers, taking whatever we can and begrudging company and certainly disinterested in any sort of co-operation.

So, one way or another, we have both been off-kilter today, which has meant that my plans for baking bread and biscuits never came to fruition. That means two things - one is that we can't have toast for breakfast, but the other is that, chances are, tomorrow afternoon will find a mother and her boy licking dribbles of butter off our fingers and wiping biscuit crumbs from cheek and lap... Definately something to look forward to.

So I'm going to be idle today - I sat down here because I wanted to write, but you know I'm terribly tired and have a stinking cold so I'm just going to post some photos - they speak for themselves I think...

This was the sun climbing up through a bank of cloud early this morning. The photo doesn't do the colours justice at all - as is usually the way of these things...

I just think the colours are so wonderful at this time of year. It's a general thing, but Beech tress are especially spectacular, don't you think?
We drive past this wood if we're going between Brigham and Lowthorpe. FB loves the way the trees reach out over the road and make a frame for our journey. "Now we're going through the beech woods!". It's also a favourite place to walk.

I just thought the fallen leaves looked pretty against the grass... Good for collecting and making things with too!

It's just a lovely, peaceful place to be!

A little green and gold canopy...

Today's soundtrack - Pekko Kappi - Jos Ken Pahoin Uneksii - joyful and uplifting...

Halloween and All Saints

We've had such appropriate skies - bright beautiful beginnings which have quickly become skies heavy with low, pale cloud and boiling with rooks, dancing and surfing on the winds, soaring high and spinning down landwards, as if feigning death, laughing all the while... And my mood has matched those heavy skies - grey and bleak and weighted down. But it's just one of those things... It will pass...

FB and I have both been filled with cold and not sleeping brillianly as a result (see - my low spirits arise in part from that, so of course it will pass!) and the knock-on effect of that is that FB was wholly unimpressed with pumkin carving, despite one of the most enourmous (home-grown!) pumpkins I've ever seen. In fact, he refused to join in with the carving and went on to refuse to be in the same room as the pumpkin if the lights were off and the candle lit... Never mind, we found other things instead - he collected a big paper bag full of fallen leaves to dry and make a picture with, and spent ages carefully threading stones and shells onto garden twine for his granny to hang in her garden this afternoon.

I watched a greater spotted woodpecker in the crab apple tree in my neighbour's garden this morning - that certainly lifted my day - I don't think I've ever been to close to one before! I wish I had my wits about me better to have tried to take a photo, but I didn't. But perhaps sometimes these things are meant only to exist in one's own head - 'preserved in their excellence' as a friend once said to me.

Tonight I have farmer's market comfort food (pork and cabbage) and my mother's chocolate pudding. Soundtrack for today has been Anouar Brahem - Astrakhan Cafe - lovely soaring clarinet, gentle oud... Tomorrow, I hope, the grump will be gone!

Circles

There was a hard frost this morning - I had expected as much; despite the boiler having been fixed and our finally having a decent, efficient (and affordable!) heat source, somehow last night I never quite felt warm... So we woke to a treat of a sparkling landscape - all the trees, grass and fields touched with white. Magical.

FB and I had a slow mooch of a morning, leisurely breakfast, dishes, cleaning (he's a whizz with the hoover!), changing beds... I had thought we could do some baking together and maybe have a walk in the afternoon, collect some leaves, maybe... But he had other ideas, announcing firmly that he wanted to go to his granny's house. So away we went through the sparkling lanes (the rosehips will be good now, after that frost...) with FB pointing out all the little way-markers (the railway line, the Beech wood, the house with the red leaves, the church, the old pump...) that show him the way to Granny's house. He almost fell over himself so eager was he to get into her embrace and return to her the jelly bag I had borrowed, that he had carefully held onto all the way there so that he could be the on to give it to her. He then spent the entire day cooking with his granny - bread, biscuits, scrubbing potatoes, making breadcrumbs...

I'm minded of how we come full circle - it seems not long ago that I was 3, 4, 5, at my own granny's knee in her Scottish kitchen. I would wait greedily for her offer to lick the bowl - and cared not at all if it was sticky cake mixture or the faint aluminium taste of deliciously salty and buttery mashed potato - anything that came from her hand (or her oven) was delicious and devoured. How I love that FB loves to cook and that he is able to enjoy that same special and magical relationship with his Granny that I had with mine.

The circles go on and on, spiralling in and out, overlapping, interweaving - the circle of my return here to Yorkshire; the circles of life and love within and between my family, my extended family; the inward turn with the cycle of the year, mirroring my own internal processes as I slow down, take time to reflect on the shifting tides of change that have been so present this year; my taking up the projects that were my own mothers during her early mothering years; my feeling rooted once more in a landscape that belongs to me and I to it, and the new shoots that grow from such rootedness...

What I know is that is that there is real joy stirring in me, a joy that I had never quite managed to realise was never quite present for far too long. Better late than never. Indeed it is - FB has not always had the best of me in his first years of life (though he's always had enough), but my, how we both revel in the joy we are able to share now. Better late than never. The circle turns and spirals on, and we both grow, our roots settled and well-nourished.

A thrush's song

Woke early (curtesy of FB!) on Saturday and was treated to the early sun turning the world to red. FB opened his curtains and squealed with the delight at the tree-full of rooks outside his window, calling for me to come and see. The air was cold and we loafed in bed together as long as possible, watching the sunlight turn from red to pale butter yellow as it rose, eventually hunger over-riding our desire for the warmth of blankets and cuddles.

I made a rare trip into the city this weeked - lured only by the promise of some good music and my sister - her band were playing. It felt strange driving in - the lanes and hedgerows fell away behind me and were replaced by concrete, lights, bars and restaurants - a city that was once my home and now feels as alien as another planet to me...

But the arts centre became a haven with my little sister's welcoming smile and warm hugs. The music filled me - Hanna's strange, ever-shifting vocals, Chris's bouzouki and clarinet and the warmth of his deep voice on the occasions he sang, my sister, Aby, playing viola or twisting her fingers at her side as she sang, rich and mellow, to complement Hanna's vocal swoops and curls... And as I listened, I was transported home again as they sang a thrush's song, the song of the Little Bear in the Land of Northern - it isn't always my own country, but it's wild and open and home none the less.

Home again, I play the CDs and sink again into a world of dark, ancient, Northern folk tales that, like all ancient story-telling traditions, echoe deep in the cells of all our bodies on one level or another.

I remember the part the music plays in the shaping of me, how, like landscape, music sits at the very core of me. So what of the city?! I had it all wrong, driving in, focussed on the landscape I was leaving behind - what I found when I arrived was as alive as any garden, any vista of fields, any hedgerow swarming with life, any rookery! And who cares what concrete monstrosities, who cares what heaviness of memory resides, what childhood insecurities or terrors - it's all gone, always, in the light of my sister's smile, and little else matters.

Home is here, undoubtedly, but it is also within me. And I would do well to hold on to that.

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Wild is the Wind

Yesterday started brightly, but there was a high wall of pale cloud that built over the course of the day til it threatened snow in the early evening. The wind whipped up alongside the gathering clouds, lifting the leaves of the trees so that they showed their undersides, looking like flashes of silver amongst the green and gold. By early afternoon the wind was howling round the corners of the house and screaming through cracks in the doors and window frames. I remembered how afraid I had been of the howls of the wind as a child - I remember hiding under the table in the kitchen in Suffolk, imagining the wind as some wild creature, bound to 'get me' were it not for the safety provided by my mother's knees as she stood at the table kneading bread dough...

My son, FB, was not as concerned with the wind as he was by the pheasant calls he heard as we walked a little circuit around the village - up the lane past Church Wood, almost as far as the top road, and back again through fields (pasture and the remains of corn) towards the house. He refused to accept that the noise he heard was something as ordinary and unthreatening as a pheasant, and was suddenly very keen to hold my hand - it didn't last. He collected prizes along the way - a stick for poking cow shit, and a dry leaf, which he minced in the garlic crusher when we got home and has since refused to throw away.

The rooks came in to roost earlier than usual, alongside an early twilight - they came streaming in from the North-West, some skilfully surfing the strong air currents, others being buffetted about all over the place and seeming to arrive at their destination far more by luck than judgement. FB and I watched them from his bedroom window - the best vantage point. "I like rooks", he told me, which pleased me, but of course, truth be told, he likes most things you happen to be talking about at any given moment (with the possible exception of food).

I spent a cold evening listening to the wind make it's way through the huge number of holes that there appear to be in the house, and knitting a baby blanket that should have been completed in August - when the baby was born - but will now make a lovely Christmas present! I was glad of the knitting - I spread it over my knees as I worked - at least they were warm.

So it was a surprise this morning to wake and find the early sun high and pale, and the air still, with no trace of yesterday's wildness. And as the day wore on, that buttery sun even managed to find a little warmth. We celebrated by having a festival of creating - making soup and spelt bread and apple jelly - followed by a festival of indulgence - there's not a great deal better than bread buttered straight from the oven with sweet honey-coloured jam. FB doesn't often seem to really enjoy eating, but even he managed to fall quiet for a few minutes while he ate, finishing with a grin and chin full of dribbled butter and sticky cheeks.

A beginning...

Rooks - and all their corvid cousins, Raven, Crow, Jackdaw, Magpie - have always been metaphors and symbols for me. Of course, exactly how those symbols manifested has always shifted over time - both for time itself, and the increased knowledge and awareness time brings, and for changes in mood, atmosphere, myself... Time was, it was Crow and Raven who spoke most deeply to me, seemeing to respresent some dark, solitary, romantic artistry that I thought (hoped) was somehow akin to myself - a very teenage fantasty, and somewhat wide of the mark, but perhaps very typical!

These days, it is Rooks who hold me. I watch them, these autumn evenings when the light is pale and the shadows long. They pool in the field opposite the house, collecting quietly like a dark lagoon in the centre of the field. They form a tight group, though sometimes a few birds fly up lightly and move over the group, alighting on another side to take advantage of a new opportunity to pick in the grass for food. As the evening gathers, the group quietens further, waiting... Then there is a barely perceptable ripple of excitement, a shiver of anticipation, and quite suddenly, the whole flock rises, a joyous cacophony of calls as the birds lift from the field and take to the darkening sky, their small bodies floating impossibly, sometimes wildly like rags on the wind, sometimes in more graceful, purposeful swoops and arcs. It is a wild and joyful, heartlifting moment to watch - this huge community of family moving together, delighting in their bodies, in their comrades, in their Rook-ness as they perform their outlandish aeronautical displays. Sometimes the display ends sharply as the group suddenly disperses and the birds stream off towards a Rookery to the north of here, other times, the cloud of Rooks lifts and drifts and settles in the trees opposite the house til dawn...

I once wrote, many years ago, and with little understanding of the real meaning behind my words, that Rooks are old, old friends. Old friends have the ability to root oneself - to be at once an anchor to a particular moment in time, and a firm, safe grounding from which to grow. And I had not realised, these last ten years, how that anchor was missing. Not, of course, that there were no Rooks - I saw them in their ones, twos, threes, wheeling alongside Jackdaws over the railway embankment at the bottom of the garden, perched, calling to unknown, unseen colleagues from the top of the telegraph pole... But neither they nor I fully belonged in that landscape, and so I gathered together what I could of ten years and left - 250 miles away to where the Rooks throng in their hundreds, to a landscape where they and I are held, rooted - home. Home in Rook Country.