30. Goodbye, November

I began this month feeling hopeful; we had just emerged from a particularly warm October. Indian summer. Evenings shorter but not quite cold enough to realise the inevitability of the hibernation season. Then as November progressed, I succumbed to the misery of short evenings and lack of vitamin D. It was mostly due to not getting out as often as I would like. It’s being too cold, my worry over bundling children up, a myriad of things. But we have reached the end of November, and are hurtling towards the middle of winter, and I find myself resigned to the season. Not just resigned, but gathering some hope in it. Seeing the beauty in the darkness.

Like how the stars glitter in the black sky.

Like how bright the moon is on clear nights.

Like how beautiful the icy crystals of frost as they decorate everything the sun does not touch.

How the water has frozen in the watering can, and what a beautiful pattern icicles make on the shed windows. How the leaves crunch when they’re frozen as opposed to when they’re dry. How the birds still find a way to chirp when the very air feels laden with cold.

How the mornings are hazy, clouds of mist billowing over the grass, ice in the atmosphere, in our very breath. The landscape is magical when the sun chooses to reveal herself.

But even when it is cloudy, the scenery revealed by the lack of dense foliage on trees can be breathtaking.

November has been kind to me this year. Patient with my tantrums. Holding space for my impatience. Much kinder than I have been to her – to winter in general – heck, even to my family.

I leave November a little sombre. Deep in reflection. Hoping to be more kind of spirit as December knocks a cold fist at the door.

How was your November?

29. Light in the Dark

On driving home from an appointment this wintry night, when frost from the morning still adorned every blade of grass and leaf, when houses breathed their heated breaths into the air from pipes protruding out their sides, when people stood like icicles at bus stops… I saw the warmest sight.

I saw on the canal a houseboat. It nestled on the furthest bank, and its little windows, sunken to a level below the walking knee, were alight. Little curtains pulled aside to reveal the warm glow of a compact living space. Much like one would see in an illustrated painting in a cosy children’s book.

I saw pictures on the walls, I saw a table adorned with candles ready for an evening meal. I saw fairy lights along the ceiling, and caught sight of a stripy jumper and a loaf of bread tucked under a stripy arm.

All in the matter of moments as my car trundled on by.

And I thought, as I traversed the icy, winding roads of the Cheshire countryside, that winter, for all its harsh dreariness, is not so bad after all.

Why, all the better to appreciate the summer with.

And the beautiful winter moon, gleaming in the dark, glistening sky.

And the magnificent sunsets, enriched only more for how fleeting they are, unlike the long drawn out goodbyes of summer ones.

It lifted my spirits a little, seeing that wink of cosiness in a houseboat on a frosty winter night.

It’s not so bad after all. The change in season is inevitable, essential.

Image Credit: The Narrowboat Gallery on Etsy

28. Man Hands

Hard-working hands. Work-worn hands. My language teacher when I was 12 used to have what I thought were very manly hands. I used to look at them and hope to God my hands would never turn out like that. My father used to say I had inherited his hands – he still says this lol – and that used to fill me with horror because I did not want MAN hands. I wanted dainty pretty hands with slender fingers like my mother and sister.

I don’t know why I was obsessed with hands. I’m nearly thirty now, not ten years younger than my language teacher was back when I was 12, and when I look at my hands I don’t dislike what I see. They’re worn, veiny, a little bit dry. I bite my nails. Never been able to shake that annoying habit. But I like them. I don’t see ‘man’ hands. I see my father’s hands, yes, and I see my father’s hands in my son’s hands – little and dimpled as they are – similarity in features does not mean a clone copy. I see my ancestry in them. I see years of toil in them. I don’t mind them.

Over the past year I have managed to lose 17kg of weight. Weight I had packed on over two difficult pregnancies and c-section deliveries. Also lockdown. Also general life. Last November I had HAD ENOUGH and decided to get rid of the extra bulk once and for all. I was sick of my clothes not fitting me and dared not buy any in a larger size because that would just be admitting defeat. My knees were starting to hurt (yes, at 28!!!) and I found it hard to run after my kids for so long. I needed to get healthy and strong, for my kids at least.

So for a year I toiled, folks. I lifted heavy weights five times a week and reduced my calorie intake whilst keeping my protein higher than it has ever been in my entire life. I am not still where I would like to be but last month at my sister’s wedding, and my brother in law’s wedding before that, for the first time in my life, I wore a dress that was figure hugging and I felt great. I felt really really good. I’ve never felt that good in clothes ever. Now I knew how all my ‘slim’ friends feel when they wear whatever the heck they want to wear with confidence. I worked really hard, and that is where the confidence came from. Not the weight loss.

Anyway, my hands are calloused from lifting heavy metal bars at the gym, from holding on to bars and pulling my body up with the strength of my arm muscles, and I look at them, and I am thankful for them. For their strength. For how they serve me. I guess I have come a long way from my frivolous twelve year old self. My ‘man’ hands help me get strong.

27. Winter Joy

It’s cold and it’s cold and it’s cold. I have the blues and it’s cold. It’s the time of year where darkness comes suddenly, overpoweringly, menacingly. Days are grey and they blend into nights and you just want to hibernate but you can’t.

You’re solely responsible, you see. For others. Their education. Their morals. Their diets. Their exercise. Their mental health. All on your shoulders. So you pick it up, whatever it is that you are supposed to be shouldering, and you drape it over your shoulders and carry on.

Even as the peircing air drives blades into your nose and prickles at your eyes. And the grey days highlight the dirtiness this modern world has become, and reminds you of horrible teenage days driven down and beaten by depression and manipulative psychopaths.

Sunday blues, but it’s Monday.

Traversing the earth no longer seems appealing, as you dip another biscuit into a hot cup of tea, and your eyelids grow heavy with the inactivity of your brain.

It’s depressing, winter is.

What did people do to stave off the dreariness of these sombre months, in the days of yore?

I like to fancy that they did not suffer the moroseness this dank, grey weather carries with it. I like to think lives and lifestyles were acquainted with the seasons and greeted each like an old friend. Perhaps they had customs in the winter months which, when adhered to, enabled them to carry on with their lives with as much cheer and joy as what would come easy to one in the summer months.

Perhaps.

What is the secret to getting through winter in one happy, non-dreary piece? For I fear pieces of me are scattered everywhere this season much like the dead and rotting leaves I have let settle around my garden.

26. Tea

Today my son asked me if I would have some tea with him.

Of course my boy, I will certainly have tea with you.

He asked me repeatedly if he could have caramel in it.

Caramel? Since when do you know about caramel?

Turns out he was asking for camomile.

He had a temperature of 40 degrees C. Lying on the sofa with bright red ears and scarlet cheeks, lethargic and still, cold hands and feet. Not the boy that runs around all day talking nineteen to the dozen.

So in the evening when he was supposed to be in bed, and couldn’t sleep, and asked instead if he could have tea with me…

I said yes.

Mama, he said, I am too old now.

Are you?

Yes but I am four now, not three. Means I am old. Means I am a big boy. I’m just too old, Mama.

Too old for what?

I am an old boy. I am too old to sit on your lap anymore.

I will miss when you’re too old to sit on my lap anymore.

Extra Post – Anniversary

WordPress informs me this morning that it is my TEN YEAR bloggiversary. Bloggaversary. Ten years since I made a wordpress blog. TEN YEARS. Since I had that dark bedroom with bare floorboards that somebody had painted a leaf pattern on. Ten years since that old black fireplace in front of which I piled towers of all my books for lack of a proper bookshelf. Ten years since I was nineteen years old, naive, tentative, hopeful. TEN YEARS.

It’s so scary to think about the ten years because if I dare to think about what I have achieved in that time it sears my heart and breaks my mind. I feel inadequate – I certainly have not achieved all I desired to. I imagined that I would be much more accomplished by now than I actually am.

So let’s not dwell on THAT. Ten years, 719 posts – some I have taken down, of course, but that does leave about 700 or so posts. That is not even a hundred a year. Some years have been very busy, some have been more quiet. But I like to think that this little old blog will be quietly churning out small mundane posts ten years from now too.

How long have you been blogging?

A riot of roses by Nicky Hunter.

25. Dear Diary

If I were to write a diary here, I would say. I would say, dear diary, I am in love. With what, well I could not begin to tell you. I do not know for myself.

The solitude in the hour before dawn, perhaps. Listening to the wind whistle through the hole under the radiator. That coffee I have at 5:30am before the gym when my family is fast asleep in their beds and I have a few moments to just ..be.

I don’t ever ‘be’ though because my mind is elsewhere, planning for other ‘be’s which are never ‘be’s because my mind during those ‘be’s is in yet another ‘be’. What does it mean to just ‘be’?

If I were to write a diary here I would say I almost married a doctor, except I did not almost marry him, I did not entertain the thought of marrying him at all, and the man I did end up marrying, was the one I had wanted to marry since I was eleven years old. The world is old and ancient and spinning on its axis, but once every so often it catches your eye with its own rheumy ones, sighs a dreary, earthy sigh, and there. You have one of your moments to just ‘be’. It was always meant to be. The trees knew it, the mountains knew it, the tempests which curled their fingers around the waving grasses knew it.

If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that Eliza’s child gave me the most adorable hug, and kissed my cheek upon leaving my home. In the same breath she told me she was very happy to be going home as she did not want to be in my house anymore. I laughed and Eliza laughed because at three years old, the world is so very simple, and two juxtapositions can dance merrily together.

If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that I am starting to get SAD, not ‘sad’, but SAD, as the nights draw drearily closer to the mornings, as the icy winds whip and bite even though the sun shines, as the days become bitter, harsh, and turn a cold shoulder to the adventurous spirit. I would say that I don’t have enough social interaction to fill my cup, I would say that I need my house bursting with the warmth of PEOPLE, I would say that winter is a time to make warm soups and hot drinks and share food, share light bulbs, share laughter, share plants, share soil, share beds.

If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that on the 25th of November, as Midwinter hurtles towards us with terrifying speed, as the creatures of the night roam ever closer to our periphery, as the moon looms large through the spindly ebony branches of undressed trees, I would say that I am in love with the beauty of this earth, and in the same token pained severely by the morbidity of life, and content, so so content, with the fact that we all have fates and they are all scheduled for us, and that fates are not set in stone, and so one must always gather one’s scruples, tie one’s horses, speculate on one’s plan, and get up, and carry on.

Image Credit

24. Literacy

We woke up to sunshine, and when we realised the train was due in half an hour we ripped through the house, coats, shoes, scarves, hats – half on half off as we laughingly made our way to the train station. Was the front door locked? It didn’t matter, there was nothing of consequence to steal from the house anyway, unless somebody deigned to go in and usurp our residency there. They would not dare. This is the west, after all. We are civilised.

We caught our train to the city where the birds chirped the songs of robots, and the trees swayed to the tune of tram-hum. Hum drum. Our feet joining the thousands of others that battered gum-spotted pavements. The trees scattered about as an afterthought, the asphalt and cement rising around us like an enchanted concrete wood. The enchanted forest, Brenda breathed, only it was dotted with windows, sewage pipes and institutional systems.

We found the library in the end. It was nestled in between two glass towers which reflected the sun and beamed right into our eyes, distracting us, it seemed, from our literary goals. We made it, though, we always do. We made it up the ancient stone steps, the gargoyles heralding, guarding, sentinels of the treasures of the mind that lay within. We entered from light into darkness, into light again. The light of the hundreds of worlds that lay between thin leaves, that resided in the musty smell of time. The light of the voices all clamouring for attention, thousands of them, rising in unison to ensnare our minds and guide them towards the myriad of pathways to nowhere, everywhere, all the same, different.

When we left, it was dark. The sun had set. The night bore down heavily on us, too overwhelming even for the twinkling lights of the city trying its mightiest to beat away the sombre winter. Our books tucked under our arms, our laughter stilted, muffled by the bounty of knowledge we sensed we had achieved, our eyes blinking under the too-bright fluorescent lights of the train home.

This beautiful image can be credited to ClappedBEANZ on Deviant Art.

23.

I keep trying to remind myself that I was a person before.

22. Requite

Gale force winds tore at the bare branches. Dead, withered leaves flew past, circled the ground, were wrenched here and there until they crumbled under the pressure of the storm or blew themselves into a rut from which they could not escape. Heavy clouds scudded speedily across the sky, grey and gloomy, bright here and dark there, while geese soared against the tempest in their hundreds under the clouds. It was a mighty sight for the sorest eyes.

It was under such blustery circumstances that she found herself being introduced to Thomas Norton, the doctor from South Bridge, a very distinguished young man.

‘Oh,’ he began eagerly, and she recognised his tone, and put her hand out directly, and saying curtly, ‘Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dr Norton,’.

She saw his lips part, in surprise, his eyebrows rise in curiosity.

‘But, L-‘ he began again, and again she interrupted, ‘I did not know you were from South Bridge. My family lives there also. I have just taken the train from there this very morning. How long has it been since you left the dear place?’

He looked flustered, and glancing at their mutual acquaintance, regained his composure. She saw him swallow, she saw his fist tighten, she saw the way his chin moved – all these mannerisms she recognised so very well from their childhood, adolescence, early adulthood together, all these mannerisms she knew with such familiarity, and which tore at her heartstrings. Still, she held firm under his discomfort.

‘Two years,’ came his reply. Sombre now.

‘Oh, that’s a while, Doctor.’

‘Indeed it is,’ he murmured.

‘Have you any plans to return?’ she inquired, knowing full well his answer.

‘Not at present,’ and his eyes smarted at her, ‘I have – I have other plans here at present.’

‘Yes!’ gasped Lady Locke, clapping her hands, ‘Why yes! Doctor Norton is to be married soon, Laura, to the wonderful Miss Rosalind Winters. You made her acquaintance yesterday, she came for tea with her cousins.’

‘Oh how lovely,’ said Laura, simply. She smiled, her fullest, brightest smile at him, and he had the gall to look downcast about it. Her eyes danced, her dimples flitted in and out of her cheeks, ‘congratulations, Doctor Norton, I wish you’ she paused, her eyes meeting his, wordless exchange running between them like a current of fire, ‘all the happiness in the world.’ The last came out as a breathless whisper.

‘Thank you, very much, Miss Smith,’ was his reply.

When the two ladies carried on their way, skirts tugged this way and that by the wind, shawls flapping behind them, he stood for a few moments as the world darkened around him. He wasn’t looking after them. He looked at the sky. The birds soaring above, the wind was almost visible. It whipped around him, almost carrying him off with the strength of it.

James Mallord William Turner, Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the “Ariel” left Harwich), 1842, oil on canvas, 91 cm × 122 cm (Tate Britain, London)