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.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
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.
'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.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Discomania
I'm at a disco! We went on a muddy walk with the kids yesterday around a lake; backpacks, jogging strollers, picnic, the works. When we got back I remembered I was running out of time to join a virtual blog party at Pinterest. To the uninitiated this involved taking a picture of myself (looking appropriately discotastic), posting it to Flikr and tweeting the organizer, who then pined it. The idea (I think) being that lots of friendly bloggers get to meet each other. Until yesterday, I was the uninitiated, and that meant joining Flikr and Twitter. In between mashing the potatoes and cooking the carrots I think I managed the upload and tweet. Despite wearing an apron and still being in hiking boots, I was able to sit down to supper and announce to my family that my cyber ego was actually jiving under a disco ball! This could be fun.
The party organizer is Holly Becker. When we started flirting with the idea of doing our house up I found her very cool blog, decor8. I love her style and she has a great book, Decorate which has plenty of ideas and fab looks. Enjoy!
***
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
A reminder
Happy New Year! I seem to remember grabbing on to 2011 as if it were a life raft in rough sea. 2010 had seen me so laden with anxieties - in so many forms - that by the end of the year I was ready to jump ship. This New Year, Dom and I sat for a while in the dark, on our doorstep, to say goodbye to 2011. We listened to the whisper of Abba coming from a party in a fifth floor apartment down the street, and tried to work out what stars we were looking at. It wasn't a raucous welcome to 2012, but it was perfect.
***
Jack hadn't settled well. He didn't have a fever, didn't have cold. I sat in his room, in the dark, holding him, on the oversized rocking chair that we bought for just this kind of thing a few years ago. His head was on my shoulder, his hair still rabbit soft and fine as silk threads, his face turned slightly towards me. In the grainy grey of a late December night his face looked almost hyper-real, like a Pixar character - a grey blush on his full cheeks, long eyelashes like dark feathers, he closed his eyes ever so slowly only to reopen them abruptly to the sound of his own breath. Wrapped in his fleecy sleeping bag, I took time to notice the weight of his body on me, his legs tucked up to his tummy. I stroked his cheek and he smiled with effort. Knowing my hand was near, he reached out for it and we rocked together in a cozy cocoon of exchanged warmth and breath. In his waking hours Jack does not have this snuggling ease. Getting him dressed is like putting clothes on a cat; he crawls off, scampering away, with one wry glance back, to find his brothers or simply be out of my reach. Although it's never ideal to have a child refusing sleep it gave me a moment to think about the changes in him this year. I wonder now if this little boy was just reminding me that he won't be this small for long.
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