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.

That bloody phone.

Daily writing prompt

How do you use social media?

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Too bloody much, if I am honest.

And too bloody much around my kids, to be honest. I am on my bloody phone in the car, while they’re falling asleep chatting to me… it’s in my damn pocket while I read them bedtime stories.

And what do I bloody even do on it?

Scroll social media, that’s what.

Even though I am supposed to be doing a million other productive things.

Either way, whether it’s scrolling social online dopamine prison or replying to emails or organising one’s life or scheduling the next homeschooling day or arranging an educational trip to the local quarry or searching for local bluebell woods on google maps…. it’s still my damn face stuck in front of a damn phone and it’s what my son is looking at as slumber sweetly rocks him into dreamland.

Kids watch everything you do and their neurones use what they’re exposed to, to make pathways. What sorts of pathways am I enabling in my sweet, sweet innocent children when they see me on my STUPID phone!?

Oh I grate on my own bloody nerves is what I do.

Cannot stand my bloody self!

Have made a decision to NOT use my phone around my kids at all. Leave it upstairs, on loud, so if anybody important rings I’ll be able to hear it. And that’s that.

Stupid bloody phone.

Spring and Aging

On the 11th of April, or even a few days beforehand, it really started to feel like spring. I could wear a light dress and enjoy the breeze on my skin instead of shivering under a large coat. My kids walked barefoot on some grass. The smell of freshly mowed lawn hung in the air and daffodils and tulips nodded blissfully in a sunny, tolerable breeze.

No more winter coats, my daughter wore a dress with nothing on top, and my son raced about in a t-shirt. I turned thirty years old but the woman in ASDA asked me for ID because I looked under twenty five.

That joy I felt at being mistaken for being less than 25 years old made me realise that I am in fact old.

I am a parent, a mother. I had a relaxing soak in a hot bath and my muscles felt more at ease than they have in five years, and I could have sunk into my bedsheets into a deep and healing slumber afterwards but did that happen? No. Of course not. My son was up every hour with burning fever, wheezing and vomiting. I was by his side with a bucket, his inhaler and an oxygen meter. The next morning he was right as rain, ignoring a niggling cough and rushing about with his cousins like he had wings on his feet.

But we’re old. Older. My sister in law has lines around her eyes and my other one says her back is full of knots after consecutive night shifts.

Can’t fix the problems of the world but can ensure your presence in it doesn’t cause anybody any harm.

Kevin Hill

Eighteenth of January

Every year on the 18th of January I post about my marriage anniversary. This year I forgot. I can’t remember what I was doing. Rushing about like a headless chicken, probably. My husband worked late, I recall. It was our Big Ten. A decade of marriage.

I am not soppy or sappy. A pragmatist, I think. I enjoy romance but not too much of it, and romantic gestures make me want to laugh. I think proposals are silly and believe public proclamations of love to be suspicious. I like romance to be intimate and personal. Only for those involved.

My husband thinks I want him to be Mr Darcy, and after re-reading Pride and Prejudice this year I decided that I very much do not want him to be Mr Darcy. I am perfectly happy with his flaws, thank you, and prefer them over the perfection of storybook heroes. Not that Mr Darcy is portrayed to be perfect by any means.

I am content with our differing tastes in films and books. I am happy that he enjoys laughing at things I shudder at. I can lie next to him reading Wuthering Heights while he chuckles himself silly over an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, both of us in our separate worlds, but happy in each other’s company. I don’t even mind him doing irritating things like mixing coffee with chicory – and I came to the conclusion that although he drives me insanely mad, I enjoy having him around to be mad at.

I think that is what it boils down to really.

Image Credit

Wuthering Heights!

I didn’t have any resolutions for this year – I didn’t have any last year either. Not because I thought I would fail them, but really because I couldn’t think of any. Everything I am doing in life right now is a continuation of a goal I had set myself or a responsibility I had out on myself prior to the year’s beginning.

Like homeschooling, like being consistent with lifting weights, like losing weight, like reading more, like practising art skills or walking out in nature more often with my kids or adding colour in my life. All ongoing.

I suppose one thing I like to think about 2024 is that it will be ‘the year of the core’. Exploring core strength, rehabilitating my damaged core (child-carrying does things to core muscles). Not getting ‘abs’ but experiencing the deep strength that comes with a built core. Doing certain exercises, like pull-ups, chin-ups, leg raises while hanging, heck maybe even a cartwheel.

I would like to pen down this story that is scribbled all around the walls of my brain, and which seeps out from between my fingers sometimes and darts through the pages of this blog like an uncontrollable menace. It sizzles and hisses and won’t be silenced, so I expect if I immortalise it on ‘paper’ it might finally find rest, and give my brain some respite from its incessant chatter.

I finished a re-read of Jane Eyre last month and yesterday I turned the last page on that chaotic nightmare that is Wuthering Heights. It’s my fourth time reading it and I tell you, it’s emotionally unhinged. It tells me a different story each time I read it. This time, it spoke of futile hope when love and kindness are not given freely. Also that people ought to socialise with people other than their own families sometimes lest they all marry each other for want of better things to do.

Have you any resolutions for this year?

Am I doing bloganuary? I just logged in to check my blog before kids’ bedtime..

Daily writing prompt

Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

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Oh dear. Ugh. I hate this one. But I’ll answer it anyway. The past, probably. Cringefest in my brain, all the embarrassing things I said and did. And the dumb things I chose to do. And the downright idiotic psychopathic people my lonely lost self chose to associate with. Starved of affection? Validation? God knows. Couldn’t smell the real deal when it was shoved in my face, so chased after something bogus, and harmful. Eurgh. It reeks.

I don’t think about that a lot anymore though. It rears its ugly head every so often but I soon snuff it out.

I am scared of the future. Always have been. I feel somehow I don’t deserve it. Like it’s too good for me. Or the good in it is too high for me to reach. Like I am not worthy. But when I question it I don’t understand what I have ever done to be unworthy?

Hmm, maybe making a stupid choice at 16? I was told often enough it ruined my life and made me the most evil villain to ever exist.

But the rational almost 30-year old me knows this cannot be true.

Then I try to psychoanalyse it and it presents itself clear as day but I am terrified to take it and let it speak to me.

It says ‘you never felt you deserved good things as a child.’

Now, THERE is some unpacking for me to do. Do it I must, before my kids get older, and think they too don’t deserve good things in life, so don’t go chasing better.

On Tantrums and Chicory

I had a terrific tantrum with my dearest husband the other day. He emptied my jar of chicory into the coffee jar, saying ‘it took up too much space’ and ‘it tastes the same anyway’.

It most certainly does not.

He did it, too, after I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to mix the two, when he suggested it a night prior to the event. He said the result of mixing the two was a creamier coffee, but I begged to differ. Coffee is coffee and chicory is decaffeinated, child-friendly, and the pleasant accompaniment of a cold wintry walk in a flask. When you boil chicory with milk and a little honey, it’s a delicious drink that all members of the family can partake in.

But when you have a jar full of coffee mixed with chicory – it’s an abomination. I can’t do anything with it. I can’t drink it because it’s disgusting and I can’t serve it to my kids because it contains caffeine.

I can’t go out and buy a new jar of chicory because my frugal, non-wasteful nature forbids it, and I can’t buy a new jar of coffee because we HAVE some, even though it is mixed with chicory.

But it wasn’t only that, it was the blatant disrespect of my wishes. He did it just because he wanted one less jar on the shelf, no other reason. That man would happily munch on mashed paper if I served it to him and told him it was food. He eats to live, not the other way around, and does not care for the taste of things, as long as it provides him nourishment and stops him from passing out with hunger. Which he is often close to because that man… forgets to eat. I wish I bloody forgot to eat.

So, when one does not care much for the taste of food, one is not bothered if his coffee is mixed with his chicory, because to him it’s just a hot beverage.

TO ME, it’s an energy-boosting drink on cold dark mornings when I don’t want to haul myself out of bed to serve my family and educate my children. TO ME, it’s a delicious drink I serve to my children to keep us warm when the wind is biting. TO ME… it’s comfort.

So yes, I had a colossal tantrum.

First world problems, ey?

Image Credit

On Rice and Dhal

I made a spelt loaf for my children yesterday when an unexpected guest popped by. Three people. An adult and two children. They stayed for lunch and we got to chatting, and then it was 5pm, then 6pm and we were still talking away so I eventually said, ‘why don’t you stay for dinner?’

‘Oh no I couldn’t possibly, we have outstayed our welcome!’

‘No no, stay, I insist!’

So they stayed. I opened my fridge door and said ‘let’s do eggs and beans and chips’ – only there weren’t any potatoes to make chips with so in the end we went with a Pakistani classic, rice and dhal.

My guest set about washing the dishes and we chatted some more while I pottered about making the meal.

Red lentils, white basmati rice. Wash both. Soak. Boil the lentils with a bit of chopped ginger and garlic, turmeric and cumin, chilli and salt. Then boil the rice with a dash of oil and a cinnamon stick. Fry the onions in butter until nicely browned and crispy, also add some cumin seeds, chopped garlic, sliced chillis. Pour that hot buttery fried onion right into the boiling lentils so it sizzles beautifully on top, give it a last stir, garnish with coriander.

We served it with rice and yogurt.

And for dessert I hunted through my cupboards, found some dates and almonds and cashews. And a packet of lotus biscuits. Cup of tea. More chatter, children being their noisy, happy selves. Then finally our guest stood up and said, ‘well, we definitely have outstayed our welcome now’, and made their way to the front door.

They didn’t though.

They were so very much wanted and welcome.

In this rushed, hurried world of nine to fives and fives to nines, it was nice for a day to forget rigid plans and schedules, sit back and make rice and lentils with a friend while our kids played together. And fought together. In the winter darkness, it felt good to have the warmth of friends staying unexpectedly for dinner.

Love Letters #48

This photo

Gives me a strange ache

In my chest

Some would say it is my heart.

But does a heart have feelings? Or is it just the brain projecting?

And why do the most emotive of sensations make themselves felt in the chest?

I don’t know why this photo has such an impact on me.

Something about summer, and roses.

It reminds me of my grandmother. She had a kaleidoscope of roses in her garden, plants all over her home. Silence ringing through rooms, interrupted with the soft tick-tick-tick of a clock, gentle chirping outside, the distant buzz of a lawnmower. Sunlight flooding through tall windows.

Knitting needles, clicking.

One leg crossed, over the other. Face knotted in concentration, but never frowning.

All that hurt in her heart, but always a smile.

All that pain in her body, but always patience.

Now I am going through a very similar physical pain, and I don’t know how she managed to do it. To give so much, so effortlessly, with all that burden on her heart.

So when I came across this photo today, my heart thumped painfully in my chest, probably because my brain told it to.

Because it reminds me of my childhood in her garden, her love and patience and life,

Enveloping me in warm comfort.

She was a mother to her own children, and a mother to their children too. A mother in the deepest, most emotional sense of the word.

And what is lost can never be returned.

The credit for this image goes to this blog on Tumblr. 

Love Letters

Dear Pip,

Penelope.

Penny.

Pip, I have known you for approximately six years. And forty seven days. And three and a half hours (at the time of writing this).

We met the day I met with my fate. My fate was you, of course. Didn’t you know?

We were both looking at the same teapot. It was yellow and had blue spots on and I remember thinking you had to be a certain kind of person with a certain kind of taste to like such a teapot because let me tell you, it was hideous.

But there was only one of them left and you said, ‘Oh, you have it.’

And I said, ‘Please, no, you have it.’ Because I didn’t even want it in the first place.

And you said, ‘Oh, no, I was only looking. You have it.’

And I said, ‘I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I took it when a young lady has her eye on it. It would be daylight robbery.’

And you snorted and said, ‘Well how about we halfsies it and then share it.’

‘What, like, monthly swaps?’ I asked, ‘or shall we cut it in half?’

‘Sure.’ You were nonchalant. Casual. You even shrugged and that is when I noticed the apple green jacket you are wearing. It was hideous also. (Please don’t hate me. We have discussed the ways colours are worn. And apple green blazers were out of the question. I even made a graph. Please see attached piece of paper for reference.)

‘Well,’ I said very carefully, ‘that then means, of course, that we shall have to swap details.’

‘Let’s buy this thing.’ You picked it up gently and as I reached into my pocket to take out my wallet my elbow jerked yours and it slipped out of your hands and fell down, down down onto the brightly polished John Lewis floors.

We both stared at it.

‘Ah well,’ you said, ‘I was only looking at it because I was curious about something so ugly. Good riddance, I say! I’m Pip. What’s your name?’

I stared at you in pleasant surprise and I felt my lips stretching out my face of their own accord.

‘James.’ I said, and then, ‘let us look for more ugly teapots.’

Of course we had to pay for that ugly yellow polka dot tea pot. It was atrocious. And then for your birthday present a year later I got you a similar teapot which you use for your indoor geraniums. You killed yourself laughing at it and told me I was a money waster because there was no way you would use that for anybody. It could never grace your table.

I remember asking you all wounded, like, ‘What, not even for the reason that it was graced by my hands?’ I was also slightly flirting even though we were firm friends by then, but I could not resist. I can never resist you, Pip.

‘Nope.’ You were very firm.

I am writing to tell you that I want to marry you. I can’t say it to your face because you have beautiful eyes and I know exactly how they will look at me and I will not be able to help myself because I will kiss you and then I will be done for. I know you will be impatient with that and tell me that is nonsense and of course I can help myself but I will not want to. Help myself. At all.

Also I asked my aunt if she read those French books I gave her and she said yes, they were lovely books. You were right. She didn’t read them. Else she would have called me to lecture me horrendously about them. Lovely books indeed. She asks about you a lot and tells me I should marry you quicktimes before you grow too old to have kids.

So back to my fate. You are my fate either way. If you say yes then it will have been a good fate and if you say no I will be broken hearted forever and when I do eventually heal and marry somebody for realsies I will still remember you as the first ever woman who broke my heart. Truly, broke it.

You know love is a strange thing. So strange. I used to think I loved a woman before. I was seventeen. She wasn’t particularly beautiful but I was infatuated by her and loved her to pieces but she always treated me badly. And one day she went too far and I discovered she was sleeping with a right old tramp of a fellow {he was not, he was a respectable LAWYER, but to me in my hurt he was a tramp], but I forgave her. Well I told her I did but I don’t think I really did. Something inside of me snapped that day. She walked on me one too many times. And three miserable months of forced smiles and fake kisses later I met you and the day afterwards she wanted to see me and I called her and I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.’

And when I was with her I thought there could never be anyone else because she was my first love. But it was meagre and ridiculous and pathetic and also desperate. Compared to what I feel about you. I am crazy about you. I look at you and I see my future. And I want to spend all my time with you and walk home from work with you and call you every single day but I stop myself because I don’t want you to get sick of me. I also want to kiss your forehead. It is so gentle and smooth and beautiful.

But see, if we were married I could call you everyday and it wouldn’t be weird, right? I could also kiss your forehead and it would be comfortable.

So, what do you say, Pip?

Yours sincerely and faithfully and truly,

Jim

 

 

 

This image was generated for me by DALL.E 3 – the latest AI photo-generating software. Ahh me. We no longer need to whip out the watercolours to demonstrate the painted thoughts in our heads.