Love Letters #48

I truly think success is contentment, in whichever shape or form that takes.

For me contentment is dancing around my living room like a maniac making my ten month old bay girl laugh. She is a very smiley child. She has the most beautiful little dimples and she is forever making friends with anybody who so much as looks at her.

Contentment is wearing a tight red dress and red lipstick that I haven’t worn in nearly 3 years for a ‘date night’… in my living room. We ended up watching 15 minutes of a movie and then I was upstairs soothing a baby to sleep and he was upstairs cuddling a toddler who was afraid of ‘the bats’.

Contentment is taking my babies to the library on a Monday afternoon and choosing 8 books to take home. It’s stopping in a cafe amid the drizzly walk home and drinking a hot drink with my two year old boy. He is a wonder to behold. He is so human, with all his flaws and beautiful ways. A piece of art, I think, as he sips his warm milk and leaves a milk moustache on his upper lip, which he then proceeds to wipe away on his clean sleeve. My baby girl babbles away in the highchair, waving a croissant around and laughing at herself.

Contentment is making sliced pickled red onions and having them on a cracker with some cream cheese.

It’s tidying up the house.

It’s somebody popping round for a cup of tea.

It’s baby breath, and the warm sweet smell of a baby who has just woken up from their nap.

It’s a mother’s love, that trickles down the generations, and is felt decades and decades later, in hand-knitted cardigans and the echo of a voice telling me a smile makes the most plain face beautiful.

It’s feeling grateful for warmth at night.

It’s the catharsis of crying.

The ability to have hope that tomorrow will be better.

The gentle sigh, the pages of a book, the taste of tea, the sound of someone typing, the growl of hunger after a long day of physical and mental labour, the ache of loneliness, the prayer, the bright and numerous stars in an icy, black night sky.

What is contentment for you?

A Saturday Thought

One thing I have learned about life is that you have to have a lot of faith, and have to be a lot content with your lot in this world. You have to have faith in yourself, to pull you up and keep you going when times are rough. To wake you up in the mornings, and feed you and clothe you and take care of all your emotions.

You also have to have faith in other people, even though faith in them is sometimes thrown back in your face. You have to throw things to chance. You have to work hard, even though your heart is broken and your morale is low, and you have nothing going for you because eczema riddles your arms, your chest is wheezy, your hair loss has become so bad you can’t hide it anymore, you have extra fat and it’s putting you off looking pretty. You have to brush your hair and wash your face and wear a nice bra because you’re twenty two and even though you don’t feel like you look like regular gorgeous twenty two year olds, you still have to look good and feel good.

You have to fight even though your husband is being a moody git and denies it when questioned why. Even though both he and I know he is being a git.

You have to fight even though you feel so lonely and all your family is far away and there is so much work to do and so many things to plan for and you have barely started and you feel too ill and demotivated to start.

You have to have faith. You have to look at those below you because you have money in your bank account, a roof over your head, heating to warm your cold toes and a bloody good mattress. Plus you just ate a roast chicken for dinner and how many people can say they’ve had that?

That’s a blessing, folks. It’s a mighty blessing and all these complaints are trivial, and you have to have faith and hope and keep fighting for your hair and your marriage and your family and your friendships and your sanity.

And your faith.

I have a faith, folks. I don’t talk about my faith often, but my faith is what keeps me going, keeps me wondering at the majestic beauty of the world and the meticulous science behind everything. I have a faith, and I need to keep it alive.

That was my Saturday thought. Adieu! Have a great weekend.

 

First World Problems

“I’m coolldd!” my sister chattered after a shower, as she walked into the bedroom we used to share, a towel draped around her shoulders and reaching her wet knees.

She carried on complaining as she got into her clothes, her movements rickety and exaggerated.

I rolled my eyes.

“First world problems” I murmured.

She didn’t like that.

“Ok but it’s a genuine problem” she argued, “and so what if I’m not starving to death, I’m cold and I’m allowed to express it!”

“So get into bed then,” I said meanly, “other people can’t just get into their nice comfy beds with clean sheets and get warm, but you can!”

“I don’t want to get into bed.”

“Then stop complaining.”

 

We carried on like this (as we do), back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t serious. It was lighthearted with an underlay of years of sisterly resentment.

Later on, after I’d scrubbed a few things and my sister ceremoniously broomed the kitchen floor, she was sitting on her bed and me on mine.

“I have the worst headache,” I told her.

“First world problems.” she was quick to say, folding her legs and scrolling down her phone. She glanced smugly up at me, as I got up to go to the bathroom.

“I know, right?” I said, “Thank goodness that’s the heaviest of my problems today.”

“At least you have a head!” she called out, as I shut the bathroom door.