Another Day

It's been weeks since I last posted.  We went skiing for a few days last month, which gave me a healthy break from the chores at home and actually some time away from myself and my own cluttered mind and my need to write.  At some point on holiday I looked down from a chairlift and traced the path of animal prints in the diamond-flecked snow and just soaked up the beauty of it.  That is what has stayed with me.
Home again, and we got back into the rhythm of school and after-school and everything else that entails. There were those evenings when the children wanted the easle, then they wanted paint, not crayons, oh and paper, not that kind.  Someone was missing a paintbrush, someone was hungry.  Jack, has an amazing ability to find pencils and he was no doubt trotting around with them tight in his fist.  I often tell his brothers to ask if they want something from Jack, not to grab, but to use their words - 'Look!' I say as I hold out my hand, 'he can be very obliging'.  That night I'm sure I pulled the pencils from his grasp, one after another.  Tonight, boys are circling me with demands and requests without, I'm afraid, a hint of manners.  I am trying to finish a chicken pie and the task is rolling out the pastry.  I have visions of this happening in my farmhouse-style kitchen, fresh flowers on the table, shafts of sunshine picking out the mist of flour as I endeavor to cook wholesome food for my family. In fact, it is raining, the defrosted pastry is too hard and the kitchen floor is a hazard of toys. I bang the pastry hard with my rolling pin. Exercising my frustration can at least have some practical purpose here.  Everyone stops in their tracks.
'Enough demands, I am trying to cook supper' I say.
Max disappears next door and I hear him picking out notes on the keyboard. I know I will not respond well if the volume is turned up and dark, loud chords are thrashed out of the instrument.  Luckily it remains quiet, even soothing, one key at a time. The pastry gets rolled. Max returns.
'Did you like the piano?'
I nod.
'I was trying to give you something relaxing.'
My parents came to visit the other week which was wonderful.  As their taxi pulled away at the end of the week, both Max and Oli burst into tears. 'It's sometimes sad to say goodbye' I told them and Oli now reminds me of that regularly, even when no-one is going anywhere.
What happened after that was that Dom left for a trip to Japan and Taiwan and with evenings to myself, I began watching documentaries that I knew I wouldn't have persuaded Dom to watch if he'd been there. First it was one on the US food industry. That got me a little wary and mildly depressed. Then I found a website where you can watch documentaries for free and I feasted on all versions of the apocalypse, exclusively related to climate change. Now I am properly terrified....but I want to keep you, my dear, only, reader, so I will try to veer away from these dark tendencies and put my energy into practical solutions.  Yesterday we planted a vegetable patch of peas surrounded by concentric circles of carrots, broccoli and basil.  It sits proudly where the fountain used to be. I say 'fountain' but it was really just a large circular tray where mosquitos bred in the muddy water left over from the rains.  Thanks to my Dad for getting that concrete beast out! And so here I am, back in the blogging saddle, a little rested, a little weary, a little terrified, a little cheery and hoping to see green shoots in the garden very shortly.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A package of sticky dots and some index cards to wish you a happy Valentine's Day!

Parallels

February is rattling past and I have been focusing my writing elsewhere (getting the nicest possible rejection!) and reading lots.  I've been trying to keep up my new year's resolution of exercising three times a week; running twice and making a trip to the hot yoga studio.  The evidence of three children is still written over my body but I'm beginning to feel better.
I had a minor epiphany during yoga this week. The temperature was above 100 and I was somewhere between Dandayamana-Dhanurasana and Tuladandasana.  The teacher was reeling off the benefits of what we were doing and reassuring us, 'It's meant to hurt like hell'. It struck me that my yoga session is a lot like life and mothering and writing. I turn up for class, I am there of my own volition (mostly), arms out to the side like airplane wings, the small of my back aching as I bring eyes up, chin up, whole body up.  Certainly, there are some easy bits, some bits where I cruise for a while, but that's usually when my mind wanders and I realize I'm not really concentrating, not in the sacred 'moment'.  Then there are bits when it really does hurt and I think I might throw up and I want to shout obscenities.  I know that's when my body will actually change but I'm sure the postures are going to break me.  I stay in the room and count to ten and try to breathe. Then there are bits where I switch off and cheat and my ankles don't really lift off the floor, my knee isn't locked and I keep my eyes down.  It doesn't make me feel good about myself, the cheating, but sometimes I need the break. I see the newcomers, the ones who have had to raise their hands and say it's their first class, and I remember when that was me.  They need help identifying their left hand from their right and are told to watch others before they join in.  But before I get cocky, there's always the people in the front row, immaculate in lycra, to remind me that I'm not a veteran either, and even though I've been doing this on and off for years, my postures still suck.  Sometimes the teacher opens the window and the cool evening air brushes me with it's magic and I can't think of anything better, and I remember how much I love this class and how great I feel when I'm flexible and strong and how it's going to keep me healthy as I get older, and I'm dripping with hope, remembering there's always the possibility that I might actually be able to get my legs off the floor in Salabhasana. Then I hear the window closing and I realize that, no, it's just hot, stifling and painful. By the end of the class, I've almost drained my water bottle, the last sip is luke warm and carries a hint of metal.  Then we end up in Savasana and the teacher switches off the lights.  I lie there for a few seconds in the clammy putrid dark, letting relief wash over me. And I keep coming back.

First Words

Mrs Clutterbuck's class: sometime in the early 'eighties.  The door opens onto rows of single desks, side on, and there's a window seat across the room. The school used to be a grand home but the furniture's changed and there are dry-erase white boards in place of artwork. There's an impressive entry with a marble slab stairwell clinging to the walls, taking it's time to meander past large stone windows, down to the iron studded double oak doors. Beyond Mrs Clutterbuck's class is the stairwell. We never use it, of course. We come in through the cloakroom at the back. Past the dining rooms, eyes on the black and red floor tiles, and up the back stairs. Homework is to find out what our first words were.
'Cow', I discover, and write it proudly on my piece of paper.  Cow. I learn that my brother said 'Clower' and I imagine my mum pushing him in the purple Silver Cross pram and pointing out the primroses and snowdrops as they emerged from the hedgerows. Or maybe it was later, May perhaps, and the lane was full of cow parsley and campions. By the time I arrived, my brother would have just been toddling at my mum's side. You didn't have to walk very far before reaching the crooked iron gates and seeing the cows. Damp pink noses pushing through the bars, whiskers as tough as fishing line.  The farmer left giant bricks of salt by the water troughs which they'd lick like eroded sandstone, before pushing their vast sandpaper tongues up a nostril.  My brother's gaze, by now, had shifted from flowers to cows and I was the beneficiary.  'Cow' would be my entry into language, my stepping stone.  How often did we walk up the lane? Twice daily, with the dog? A single track, muddied tarmac, with gravel smoothed in two neat grooves from the wear of car tyres.  I can only imagine those walks but they are sealed forever in a part of me with the knowledge of my first word.  I remember the later walks, using my doll's bonnet to stash wild strawberries only to find out that I had stained the soft blond flannel with a gash of red that looked forever like a head injury.  I was not a 'girly girl'; I had called the doll 'floppy legs', but it still shocked me. And later again, home from boarding school, walking with my camera, taking pictures of those noses, or of black and white hide pulled tight over angular haunches.  Then the walking became running the loop; up the lane in one direction, zig-zaging to the end, a left and right, up the hill, past Treswallen and Creed Lane, hugging the hedge on the way down the other side, over the bridge and back home.

What is a first word?  Must it be accompanied by a pointed finger? 'Look, a cow!' Or is it a mother's memory; 'You loved the cows, we walked the lane so often to look at them.' Our youngest has, in the past few weeks, put his first word on the slate of his emerging history.  Though he mimiced 'apple' beautifully several times he hasn't quite aligned the softly spoken syllables to the fruit in the bowl. What he does say frequently and what is all too clearly understood is 'Nee new', copied from his brothers' 'I need you!'  He must have worked out that 'Nee new', in this house, is the equivalent of dialing a first responder.  What picture will this third child draw for himself when he is asked by his teacher to find out his first word?  Mine, after all, could have come from a picture book.