a moment with Van the man and Mr Heinz

Let me start by saying there are few ills in this world that cannot be soothed by a bowl of Big Red tomato soup. And so it came to pass, some days ago now, that after a week in which all five members of the family had been struck low (thankfully not at the same time) with a heinous gastro bug, I sat down to breathe a great sigh of relief and warm my cockles with a little Big Red. Sorely needed to say the least.

At the same time, my dear husband was browsing through YouTube looking for suitably ancient songs and videos to entertain and educate the two eldest of our children. He asked me what I felt like listening to, and since I was in a wound-licking, contemplative kind of mood I naturally answered “Into the Mystic”. Because it is one of my absolute favourite songs ever, and I marvel at how beautiful it is every time I hear it. This led to another question from my dear husband, namely to which Van Morrison song did we dance our first dance as husband and wife. And the answer: These Are The Days.

I’m not sure if I had heard the song in the ten years since our wedding day. It certainly didn’t feel like it, as I sat crying silently into my Big Red, overwhelmed by everything that had changed in our lives in the past ten years, and by the one extraordinary, unfaltering thing at the heart of it all that is still exactly the same.

almost one

It has been quite a year. One in which this blog has not necessarily been a high priority, but one in which I have learned that in order to hold onto the things that matter, sometimes you have to let go of many things that don't. It has been my happiest year ever, I can say that with absolute certainty, and for that I am so grateful. I can't believe it has been almost one year since Rosa arrived and changed all of our lives so deeply, none more than mine. This little poem might have been written especially for her, but then it applies equally to all children, and all the sweet girls sleeping tonight under our roof.

Little One
Bless this little heart, this white soul that has won the kiss of heaven for our earth.
She loves the light of the sun, she loves the sight of her mother's face.
She has not learned to despise the dust, nor to hanker after gold.
Clasp her to your heart and bless her.
She has come into this land of one hundred crossroads; I know not how she chose you from the crowd, how she came to your door, and grasped your hand to ask you the way.
She will follow you, laughing and talking and not a doubt in her heart.
Keep her trust, lead her straight and bless her.
Lay your hand on her head, and pray that, though the waves underneath grow threatening, yet the breath from above may come and fill her sails and waft her to the haven of peace.
Forget her not in your hurry, let her come to your heart, and bless her.

Rabindranath Tagore

take the weather with you

I recently heard the English actor Stephen Fry speak about mental illness, which as a sufferer of bipolar disorder he knows a bit about. He said that a person's mental state should be seen as their own personal weather. It was a mistake, he said, to see that it was raining and think that could be changed. It should just be accepted - it is raining therefore it will continue to rain until it stops. Raining. But it was equally futile, he said, to think that it would continue to rain for all eternity and that life was no longer worth living because the rain would never end.
I always thought Fry was talented, and sometimes funny. I had no idea he was so compellingly wise.

you have to read between the lines

There was once a young girl who discovered that she liked to make bread. She made it whenever she could and it was always very good bread so that made her happy. When the young girl grew into a young woman and she had to find a job, she naturally looked in a bakery and was hired the very same day. The big bread-making benches and mixers and ovens were very exciting for someone who had only ever baked at home in her own small kitchen, but after many months of working every day in the big bakery for somebody else the woman began to lose her passion for making bread. She saw the unnecessary ingredients that her employer made all his bakers put into the dough to help it rise better and look whiter and stay fresher for many more days than it normally would. She felt bad about feeding this kind of fake bread to the people who came to the bakery. It started to make her sick. She planned to save all the money she earned from working at the bakery and use it to leave the town and travel to another country where she might find something else she liked doing. She eventually saved enough to leave the bakery and she tried other jobs, but there was nothing in her life that she loved doing as much as she loved making bread. More than a year passed and she returned to her home town, which she loved, and was offered a job at the same bakery she had left. She thought maybe it would be different but she was wrong. The fake bread made her sad and she lost her joy. Then she met a man who she loved even more than making bread, and they were married and her joy returned and multiplied though it had nothing to do with bread. She and the man became a family, then a larger family, and she spent more and more time away from her job at the bakery. She went days, sometimes weeks, without giving the bakery a second thought, but dreamed almost daily of making her own special heartfelt bread to feed her family. As her youngest child grew, the woman faced returning to the job at the bakery that weighed so heavily on her heart. She knew that her wages would help her family, and that it would feel good to work the dough with her hands and feel the heat from the bakery ovens. But in her heart she knew that it was not the same as the making of real bread.

in which i see the light

In summer the Robinia tree in the corner of our garden is showered in leaves of an astonishing green, radiating light and life. Through winter it has been a mass of sticks and thorns but I have still thought it beautiful, maybe because I know what is to come in just a few months. 

I think this tiny glimpse of green is what nature likes to call The Light at the End of the Tunnel. 

raindrops on ... nasturtiums

Mother Nature was having a particularly fabulous day when she came up with nasturtiums, you'd have to say. They smell sweet, they're a work of art, you can even put them in salad - and they never even seem to try. Not needy and showy like roses, which are beautiful too but in a trumped-up kind of way. Nasturtiums are more like a little brown girl in a yellow sundress and bare feet.
So I hope someone patted Mother Nature on the back after her nasturtium moment, although she doesn't strike me as somebody who'd need anyone else's validation for a job well done. She's more of a: 'Here is my work. Admire it as you see fit. Ultimately I do not require your attention or praise - you need it more than I do.'
A few days ago I was kind of craving a nasturtium day, because it seemed that not much was going right. But then just yesterday I was down on all fours above Rosa and I leaned right in and gave her a big noisy kiss on the cheek and she just gazed into my eyes, six inches away, and smiled at me. Nasturtium moment.

doe: a deer, a female deer

I had to have this lovely deer when I saw it in a retro furniture shop out in the backwoods one recent weekend. When I say backwoods, I'm referring to a town that has a distinct Twin Peaks atmosphere about it, being set at the foothills of a mountain. At this time of year there's always a bracing chill in the air, although I'm never sure if it's from the frosty atmospheric conditions or the dead bodies in the back streets.
The nice lady in the retro furniture shop restores and sells beautiful furniture from the 1950s and 60s, which looks about as foreign in the backwoods as a small spaceship - possibly a time machine. She told me this deer was missing some antlers, although I prefer to think of her as a mother deer anyway, since she's so lovely and placid and graceful. Or maybe it's school holidays in the woodland glade and she's climbed this mountain of boulders, at great risk to her own personal safety, in order to get FIVE MINUTES PEACE. That expression on her face is deer for: Do not even think about following me up this mountain. The girls think the mountain looks like a pile of poo. You say potato.