Bluebell Woods

It’s bluebell season, or rather, the start of it. My son wanted to hunt for a carpet of bluebells under a canopy of sparse spring foliage so off we went. Meandered through several villages, stopped by a couple of cafes and village shops in the sloping hills of the cheshire countryside to ask if anybody knew where we could find bluebells.

One kind lady drew us a map and we parked our car next to a quaint little church and made our way over a stile and into a pine wood. My kids moaned and complained about the steep climbs and the many holes in the ground – badger setts? Fox dens?

Oh they WHINGED and it got on my NERVES and I told them so! My son was afraid of a little fluffy white dog and I told him not to be such a baby which was really mean in hindsight, given that he was attacked by some dogs when he was two and still harbours a (sensibly healthy!!!) fear of canines. I feel awful about it to be honest. The frustration with the moaning, the lack of patience with the fear….

But we found bluebells. Carpets and carpets of them, flowing and rippling in the wind over little slopes in the wood. My son picked a bunch and said they were for me because I was the most beautiful and best Mama ever. See? So much guilt. Why can’t I just be what he says I am. Why do I have to be such a witch sometimes!

Then when we had our fill of bluebells we drove to the ruins of a castle, climbed up a steep hill to the top (more moaning, more whingeing), and then the children’s screams of laughter and joy on the windy summit, the glorious view of sunny Cheshire all around us, oat crackers and grapes in hand – and suddenly it was all worth it.

Is it all worth it? I asked my five year old.

He asked to sit on my lap and I said no, but you can lean on me.

So he leant on me and I stoked his hair and he said it was so amazing up here.

There’s guilt and joy and sadness and regret and guilt and then so much joy and love in their presence and being and existence… and then there is me promising myself, after they are in bed, to be more patient, more kind, more lenient, more validating, more wholesome….

Tomorrow we walk to the library (I expect more whingeing but they must learn to walk long distances!) and then to the hospital for an appointment, and then perhaps stop at the shops on the way home for some seeds and laundry detergent.

Hopefully my phone will be out of sight and mind, I will be more patient (despite knowing i will need to nag a million times to get their toys put away and their shoes put on), and I will be more accepting of my children as they are in their own precious little spaces.

Because dear God I love them.

NOT my photo! This photo was taken from here.

Little Moments

This week, as is every week, was full of little moments.

I never usually stop and really take them in, I think it’s an addiction to dopamine. Fast paced life. Although life seems a lot more slower, less stressful, now that my kids are out of nursery and my job has… vamoosed. Less money… more time. Ahh, life.

Here are some little moments.

My mother sending me a selflie. A mirror selfie. Not for any other reason than to show me a beautiful dress she got for my sister’s upcoming nuptials. Her hair – always something my curly-haired self deeply admired – black and thick and framing her face. The way she held her phone in her left hand, her right index pointing at the camera button, mid-click, her pinky out. The pose of a generation allowed to grow up in the freedom of a lack of surveillance. Not used to taking pictures of oneself. It moved me in a way I can’t describe. My sweet mother. I thought. I don’t think that often. I think, my hardworking mother. I think, mother who I love.

Nettles. Long nettles as tall as my shoulder growing just beyond my back garden. Behind the trellis fences we put up because ivy had taken over the previous ones and rendered them a ruin. To keep the ivy away, we put trellises, so we can catch them the moment they start snaking up the fence posts. So now nettles have taken over, growing over and through the carpet of ivy at the back of the back neighbour’s garden, behind the huge trees they have covering their house. Well. it’s an old man’s house. He was taken ill and carted off to a nursing home last December. His garden a beautiful memory of 40 years of life and love and family. Ivy and conifers taller than the houses now, but which must have been small when he planted them with his wife – in a bygone era.

My moment was that I went into the back, pulled up all the nettles using a pair of rubber kitchen gloves under my usual gardening gloves. I picked each leaf off, while my kids watched from a safe distance. My boy ran inside to collect his scissors, and started snipping at other foliage, emulating me. My daughter pushed her babies around in a little pram, stopping by me every so often and putting a small chubby hand on my shoulder.

I picked all the nettles, we had nettle tea. A nettle rinse for our thin curls. Some nettle soup with toast.

Slowing down.

Screens off.

Rain on our faces and down our necks.

Appreciation of love.

Image Credit

Fruits of Labour

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever had surgery? What for?

View all responses

Yes I have had surgery, twice. Surgery to entice my children out into the world.

The first was an emergency surgery, doctors swiftly pulling my consciousness under a thick blanket of anaesthesia and deftly slicing my insides open to pull my baby out, his heart rate dropping rapidly. They did the job in under eight minutes and wheeled me away to a recovery room. When I came to, I was so sleepy, and they gently put his little sleeping body onto my skin as so we could wake up from the ordeal together.

The recovery from that was awful, but I don’t think its a story that needs to be told.

The second surgery was elective. An elective c section. I elected to have doctors slice me open to pull my second baby out, and this time I was awake for the duration of it. It was a fascinating, mesmerising experience, and I do not regret it at all.

My second baby was a fat little dumpling who was wide awake and such a strong little thing.

She still is. I see her carrying a mountain of joy and scattering it wherever her little feet take her.

On Things

Hello! (Said in a voice like Izzy. Loud, there is an upwards inflection on the ‘o’ at the end, it’s cheerful, but there is a hint of trying something – too hard?)

It’s March! (Said in a voice like ME. A GIRL. No. Not a girl. A WOMAN. The child me cringes at that word, I used to think a ‘woman’ was an awful thing. I always wanted to be a ‘lady’. The woman me cringes at ‘lady’. Seems to me that to be a ‘lady’ is a patriarchal invention. To keep the WOMEN looking pretty for the male gaze. Staying prim in their kitchens and nurseries and painting pictures and filling their heads with frills. A WOMAN hoes onions. Hoovers stairs. Lifts two children with her solid, muscular arms. Works hard. Loves fiercely. Fills her mind with knowledge. Whatever it may be. She writes and reads and [read the following as verbs] mothers and daughters and sisters and wifes [no not wives – she VERB wife’s] and she is an entity in and of herself and…. I DIGRESS!).

it’s march.

the month I adore.

mainly because I was born in march.

i was loved when I was born. i was loved till I was 8 or 9, and then I was just… there.

Anyway. I adore March.

March in the UK this year is blustery, I am afraid. Cold. But we have glorious blossoms on glorious trees and my neighbours recently trimmed their apple tree and a couple of the branches fell over into our side of the garden, and I could see the buds forming on the branches so I seized them, precious things that they are, and put them in old glass jars filled with water and in my kitchen, right now, a miracle is happening. Buds are opening their delicious petals to the warmth of my oven and hob and the hum of my woman self humming as I prepare meals for my family. There is a spring in my kitchen. And it makes me so glad.

But folks, I am tired. I am on my feet from 5 am most days till about 1 am. And then I sleep a deep sleep only to be seized out of it and shaken viciously awake by a new day and my responsibilities.

I have no time to write or read. Just work. And kids.

And I am also prioritising time with my kids. To play with them and teach them. Things like fungus growing on old tree trunks and how not to slap each other when one doesn’t get their way. Things like washing one’s hands after one eats and how to not squash a ladybird to death everytime we examine one. Things like a cup full of fat juicy wriggly worms. Things like not eating soil. Things like ‘mowing the lawn’ with a pair of scissors. Things like not pulling Grandma’s cat’s tail. Things like days of the week and months of the year and years of the decade and century and what people did. Things like not wiping your hands on the chair in the same breath you use to tell me about the solar system.

Wondrous wondrous eyes.

Wondrous children.

Bittersweet, sad, joyful and frustrating.

If you are a parent, and if your child has long flown the nest, how do you manage the heartbreak? Or are you sensible about your emotions?

A Quiet Life

What’s a quiet life, to you?

If the first thought that sprung to your mind is … a comfortable retirement?

Comfortable retirement. Dancing in the living room. Through the dining room. Tap on the shoulder in the kitchen, lit only by a lamp and the shadows of the plants behind his back moving as they sway gently across the hall. Lines deepening on faces, death followed by new life. Leaves falling and blooming again. Piercing cries in the night, but this time they belong to the generation below their progeny so they sleep a little deeper. Urgency no longer beckons them in their dreams, it does not sit on their shoulders anymore and they do not hear it when they are in the shower. Piercing cries. Precious baby they can love without shackles.

What is a quiet life… to you?

Oh, you there. Yes you. I see it in your eyes.

Your quiet life is still. Even in the chaos there is a dark stillness that shrouds your heart as you wander slowly through a crowded hall with two beautiful loves clinging to your skirts, and you see those who are like you, but not like you, and you feel on the fringes again.

Urgency calls you.

It’s a silent kitchen is a quiet life.

Voiceless.

Echo.

Empty buildings, the sun setting and slanting through the dusty glass and the road outside is still, dry, dust pooling on the pavements because..

Nobody calls you.

You grow alone and you may die alone.

That’s a quiet life.

And there is frustration because you have always felt this deep chasm of loneliness. And you thought it would go away. In your teens you waited. In your twenties you yearned. And you approach 30 and it’s banging on your door this desolation and it won’t go away.

You tell yourself, your mother, your people.. you tell them you’re cosy in this cocoon of isolation.

But you aren’t.

You aren’t.

You worry this will seep through the invisible gossamer veil that hangs delicately between you and your children, you worry it will shroud them too like a clingy web that won’t go away.

You don’t want this sadness to be theirs. This loneliness to ache in their chest. Their precious hopeful faces.

You don’t want a quiet life for them.

So you aren’t. Cosy. Happy. Content.

What is your quiet life?

Liver Pâté

Are you a parent?

If you are, I think you can attest that one of the toughest, most worrying things as a parent is seeing your child ill.

My son has been so ill recently. He has caught one thing after another from nursery, and has developed huge dark circles under his eyes, and lost some weight. I can feel his little tiny bones through his skin, and he has lost that round chubbiness of toddlerhood.

It’s the most troubling thing and frankly I am just burdened by it.

Now of course we are having him checked up by doctors and whatnot, but I also sat down to research some ways to add nutrients into the body after bouts of illness and weightloss.

One of the biggest causes for dark circles around eyes is vitamin A deficiency. I have no proof (yet) that my son is deficient in vitamin A but it can’t harm to get some down him, can it?

Liver is apparently one of the biggest sources of vitamin A, so I sourced some liver from the local butcher.

I hated liver growing up. My father loves it, and the Moroccan way to cook it is to cut it into small pieces, fry it up with onions, garlic, coriander and a bit of cumin. Lots of seasoning, and the resulting liver in gravy concoction is eaten with some crusty bread. Freshly baked french loaf is the tastiest option, according to my family. I could never eat this food. The smell of liver alone put me off, and therefore eating it was simply impossible.

I am an adult now. And I know that liver is an excellent source of nutrients for my unwell child, so I looked up ways to cook it where it would not taste so… LIVERY.

One great way is making liver pâté! It’s liver cooked up with onions and garlic, some dijon mustard, balsmic vinegar, herbs and seasonings…. and a LOT of butter. You can spread it on toast or crackers and it’s just a really tasty savoury spread. So I made some tonight while my kids were in bed.

Let us see how well it goes down tomorrow, ey.

Image credit

The Nugget

PLEASE SHIP TO THE UK, my fingers screamed into my keyboard. Then I really thought about it and realised that no, I do not have £400 to spend on a sofa type thing that sounds like a mini chicken goujon. In addition, I do not have the space to house a sofa-type thing that kids can climb on. Maybe that is why they don’t sell the ‘Nugget’ in the UK, because houses here are so small that we cannot make room for children to play daring games on climbey things.

No we just make do with our own personal sofas, you know, the ones we sit on, for our children to make obstacle courses with and throw themselves off head first in their quests to understand what their little bodies can handle as they grow into human beings and parts of the society.

It doesn’t make any sense, you know, that houses here are so small. The weather is only nice for about 3 months out of twelve, and so the rest of the time most kids spend cooped up indoors because it’s either raining or just too darn cold to layer up in one million layers and slip and slide in the mud outside before coming home and doing a massive clean to remove all traces of the outside world from one’s teeny tiny living room.

BECAUSE HOUSES HERE ARE TINY, did I mention that?

So if we have to spend more time indoors, why not make houses bigger?

The thousand hours outside people will tell you that kids should be out in nature no matter the rain or snow or sleet or blizzard, and I would agree that it does wonders for the mood and the brain and for exploration and for living in general. However, I also still think houses here are too small, and that it’s tough work taking small kids outside in the mud and cold every single day. One gets frustrated with all the cleaning one has to do. Mud and wet grass are awfully messy and gunky things to have on one’s carpets and sofas and all up in the many crevices of baby fat folds.

All this to say, I really want a Nugget.

An expensive sofa type climbey thing that kids can use to jump on, climb over, make forts with and generally be creative. I think my kids would love it. They are ruining my nice sofas with their games and climbing and I think this would get them off my sofas in my teeny house and onto their own climbey things. I also want them to be able to climb and jump about without me feeling like I want to pull my teeth out in frustration. I also think they need to release energy indoors when it’s especially cold and I have no energy to let them roll around in icy mud or poke sticks in icy pools of puddles that are really overflowing drains at the local park.

I can’t justify a Nugget because we are now in a ‘cost of living crisis’, but I want one nevertheless.

I won’t get one.

But I want one.

And I am just putting this out into the ether, as the stars twinkle above me, as the wind roars in the trees, as the cold air drafting through the windows whispers of a tough winter to come.

Baby Bathwater

My two children have been insanely poorly this week. High temperatures, breaking 40C, coughing, lethargy, crying, aches and pains and multiple visits to the GP and also A&E. They’re both on antibiotics because their fevers just refused to budge after 5+ days, my daughter fell over and couldn’t stand on her left leg for abut two days…

Then our fridge stopped working.

Our car started making a funny noise and the mechanic said it was the exhaust pipe connector thingy and would cost about £1800 to fix… the car itself is only worth about £1000, if that.

So now we have no car, no fridge, two poorly children with no appetites, and just a general air of ‘What will happen next?!’

There is a saying isn’t there? Something about raining and pouring? It doesn’t rain, it pours?

All the bad things happen at once?

I heard a man say yesterday, ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’ and it shivered me timbers, I tell you. What an awful saying. What, why would you throw the baby out with the bath water?

I have heard this saying multiple times and it’s so horrid, so I did some research and it means something like, don’t discard something valuable with the rubbish.

Just like that man who accidentally threw away his hard drive containing a tonne of bitcoin, estimated to be now worth 150 million pounds, so he has assembled a team of experts to excavate a landfill in order to find it. He certainly did throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But back to that, WHO came up with that saying? Had someone actually done that, so it became a bar by which to judge other similar and not so similar situations? Could we not say something else? Why must it be so horrific and morbid?

Those are my thoughts for today. Unfiltered, unedited, just posting because I need to say something, not that the void needs to hear another yammering voice.

We seem to have become a generation of all talk and no listening.

that evasive slumber

Do you ever overeat when you’re tired? I do. Both my children were up all night last night and as a consequence I have eaten my bodyweight’s worth in snacks today without even realising.

When I finally collapsed in bed at 2am last ‘night’, I shut my eyes and succumbed to slumber. It was the most glorious feeling. Then that familiar cry. Only at night it’s twenty thousand times more irritating and has that unique power to make you feel furious.

But you fight it. For that precious sweet face. You scoop the chubby bundle of baby up and bring them into your own bed.

Then the pattering feet, and the croaky child voice, ‘Mama, mama, I’m scared.’

So you haul the other one into your bed too.

And try to succumb again to that glorious sleep. It’s there alright. Tantalising. Close. You feel it.

But your kids have other ideas. One of them is attempting to crawl in the bed because it is her newly found skill and she loves to do it. She is laughing as she tries to get her chubby legs up, chaos in the covers, pitch black room. And then the almost-3-year old is awake. Banging his feet on the headboard. Asking me to open my eyes. Telling me stories. Chatting to his baby sister, who chats right back.

All through the night.

All through till morning.

And they do not tire. No siree. They hanker for breakfast and are little spitfires ready and gearing for their day of action. Playing, fighting, giggling, pulling things out of cupboards, sticking play dough in corners and smushing it into rugs, snotty noses from leftover colds.

I wish today I could say ‘Ahhhh it’s all so precious and worth it.’

Y’all.

I KNOW it is.

But I don’t feel it today.

I feel angry. Tired. Frustrated. Guilty. Bloated from all the sweet chilli thai rice crackers I have been eating to keep my bleary eyes awake. And the countless mugs of coffee I have downed today. That massive hot chocolate I had for lunch. My oh my. I fell asleep trying to put them to bed at 7:30pm BECAUSE HELLO, SHOULDN’T THEY BE TIRED AFTER THEIR NIGHT OF PARTYING?

No.

No they are not.

8:30pm came and went and it crept to 9… still wide and happily awake.

Bloody hell.

Some days parenting is a ride.

Today is that day.

Today I am bedraggled, a mess, and totally lost. I sit here writing this when I am supposed to be working but I am so tired from my sleepless night and my full-on day that I want to go to bed. But I am also terrified to go to bed because I know as soon as I give in to the glorious sleep that is beckoning to me.. I will be rudely yanked away again.

I know it.

News From Sebastapol. Charles West Cope (1811-1896). Oil On Canvas, 1875.

P.S. Look, I only write this to document. Not to complain. I love my babies with every fibre of my being. I would wrestle sleep to the ground if I thought their lives and health were in danger. I know one day I will sleep and sleep and sleep because they will be grown and off living their own lives and I will be sad and miss them. I KNOW this. However, I also know that in the moment, sometimes, it all gets a bit too much. You can feel frustrated and angry. You will also feel guilty for feeling frustrated and angry. Being a mother is so insane. It’s so mad. It’s so crazy. It’s so surreal and unbelievable and unfair and beautiful. You can’t hold it in your hands. You can’t catch the fleeting time, and yet you wish it all away. You can’t get enough, and you have way too much.

8 Years of Bloggery

I have been a WordPress blogger for 8 years.

My favourite thing about blogging here is the lovely community. This here is a space on the internet where people are more civil towards each other, and there is something to be said about writing from the heart.

I don’t know what is to be said about it though because I am an overwhelmed mother of two little children, with a full time job and a never ending to-do list. When I have time to think I may reflect on it properly. Maybe tonight. Maybe next week. Maybe in ten years.

For now, though, the sun is shining and even though Jack Frost has been to visit, I think I will utilise my morning and take my children to taste some vitamin D before the manic panic hours of work take over.

Eight years. Jeez.