Mayday - 2019

I haven’t written to you for a while. I do it when I feel it. Sometimes it’s not there, and then it returns, on a breeze, willing me to put down our memories for the future. To write is to fulfil the requirement, and then I blow it away again, like a dandelion seed head.

So, you’re 8 years old. I’ve just been to watch you dance around the Maypole for the Mayday celebrations at your school. I will treasure these memories. You’ll be grown up before I know it and I can feel it coming. I don’t fear it, as such. I just feel it. The passing of time once happened way up in the stratosphere. It happened without me noticing. Like wispy white clouds blowing away in a blue sky. Now I feel it all around me like a paper thin silk veil blowing and draping over my body as I walk. It touches my face, my arms, my body and my legs. It’s soft and gentle, not heavy, just there to lightly remind me.

You have seemed older recently. You are moving from young child to older girl so seamlessly and effortlessly that I barely notice. But if I stop for a moment, and pay attention to your chatter, I notice that it has changed. You ask if I am ok a lot. You tell me about your learning at school. You tell me what’s happened that day on the playground and who has been kind and who hasn’t. You still want to write, to paint and to draw. You talk about creation. You ponder on the big questions. You talk kindly about everyone and you care so much. You put other people’s needs before yours and you care about those with less than you. You adore your cat, Penny, with everything you have and I will be forever grateful for that funny and impulsive day when we looked at each other and said “shall we get a cat?”

You playing 'rock paper scissors' with Penny

You read everything and you devour books with such joy, especially Tom Gates books. You also love Lord of the Rings and Minecraft. I never tried to steer you, and never will, but, somehow, I knew that you wouldn’t be a princess and unicorn kind of girl.

Tonight you asked if you and Annie could be sisters. I said it wouldnt be possible because a Mummy needs 9 months to grow a baby and you and Annie only have a month between you. You thought for a moment and responded with, “Mummy, tapir babies take 13 months to grow in their Mummies’ tummies!”

You still love babies and you talk incessantly about having your own one day. It was Easter a couple of weeks ago. We discussed that the Easter bunny is actually Mummy. You were grateful that you knew the truth because, apparently, if I’d never told you, you would have waitied for him when you had your own children and they wouldn’t have got any eggs! Oliver did your Easter egg hunt this year and he was much better than any rabbit anyway.

I’ve just tucked you into bed. I read The Royal Rabbits of London for your bedtime story. I’ve read to you every night that I could, since you were born and we still do our “moon and back million times” routine and sing “You are my sunshine.” You are changing every day before my very eyes, but you hold tightly to our funny little ways and traditions and that is one of the many reasons that I love you with every fibre of my being. See you in the morning sweetie x

“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.” 
- Galadriel: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings

Whispers of Travel

(for Louisa, who named this poem for me, for Kevin who travels with me and for Molly, who I’ll always come home for x)

When I have been to places new,

I’m filled with riches shared with you.

I’ve learnt of cultures, strange to me,

And looked around in wondrous glee.

But I’m always a stranger and never at home,

For after a while the glee’s not alone.

It starts off gently, begins to pull

A yearning for home, for my heart to be full.

Where autumn air hangs all around,

Where the leaves and the mud become one on the ground.

Winding grey lanes over hills and through woods,

I am one with my home, I belong where I should.

With all that I’ve seen, I’m returning much richer,

I’ve built up some pieces to add to my picture.

A picture of people, places and time,

Dissolving together with past thoughts of mine.

The road still stretches out in front

Which way shall I go? What path do I want?

I will float on the wind, let it take me there,

To places I love in and places to care.

But after a while, I feel it again,

Like swimming upstream, my strength starts to wane.

For a time I have stayed, but now it has changed.

I go, leave this place, and its lives, all arranged.

Back to my home as if all were a dream,

Leaving no shadow of me, where I’ve been. 

Coming home from Lille, France ~ November 2018 

Lille, November 2018

St Pancras ~ Tracy Emin installation 

The Falling Leaves ~ September 2018

Dear Molly,

I feel the autumn coming

Long before I see.

The noise of the summer fades

Peace begins to fall.

I remember in autumn

The memories hang low. 

When autumn leaves start to fall

Why does it get me?

Melancholy mist comes down

I know it so well.

The leaves; some green, some yellow

Soon they’ll all be gone.

And so will my doubts and fears

But they will be back.

Maybe they won’t be the same

I pause and reflect.

The leaves are red and orange.

It is now their time.

As they all lift on the wind

Then fall to the ground,

I can finally exhale

I try to let go.

I’m more myself again now

I smile at the clouds

And Autumn, she smiles at me.

Her smokey air will clear

And big skies give me new hope

That I’ll be ok

And as;

nights grow long and days grow short

Nothing is certain……

                 ……but hope, and spring.

All my love, Mummy x



Photos - Autumn sunset, at home in Brinkley. Oliver’s new dragonfly friend at university. You and Milly. You and your cousins at Nana’s birthday lunch and big autumn skies at home ~ September 2018

"For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning." ~ Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot

Paris ~ 2018

Sometimes I find it hard to know how to enjoy the world. I am anxious not to waste the moments. Sometimes too anxious to enjoy them. As a child, time almost stood still. Summer days seemed endless and rolled into one. As an adult, time passes fast. I feel like, each time I take a step, I am stepping out of a memory forever. I don’t always feel like that. I look out of the window of our Parisian apartment at the spot on the street where we all stood for a family photo the day before. That spot will stay there forever and we will never stand there again. Children will grow up and, hopefully, remember. They will remember. You will remember. I just feel melancholy. I don’t know why.

It makes me happy to share Paris with you and the others. I hope you got that same feeling of wonder when you turned a corner to see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc du Triomphe......and your little face, when you first saw the Eiffel Tower, was just so full of excitement. Even simply the streets upon streets of beautiful, iron-balconied apartment buildings, with leafy greenery adorning them, are a joy. Paris is unmistakably beautiful.

After dinner, at the Trocadero fountain, the air still hot from the day, we cooled our feet in the water as children paddled and played and we waited for the sun to go down so we could all see the Eiffel Tower’s twinkly light show. 

Time does pass quickly but I try to preserve these moments, here in my writing, for you, for me, for us. And now, my darling, "We’ll always have Paris" ~ Casablanca, 1942 xxx