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.