Storms are Forecast

Christmas was good! We sang carols in a big barn. We hosted friends at our house. We had a very good time with all my family and I enjoyed the sense of holiday I always get when I'm at my parents' house. We gave and received lots of presents and ate lots of good things. I even did a bit of studying in quiet moments, not that there were many of them.

Manna and my dad reading 'Press Here' for the tenth time:

Ember ice skating for the very first time (my dad on the left, about to crash into the barrier and my nephew and sister on the right helping not at all):

About halfway through present-opening, the girls hit a lull and got engrossed in one new thing. Ember drew an intricate tesselating design for a tree in her notebook ("It's like your art, Mama") and Manna made colour-sorted cog towers. I had a cup of tea :).

One of our loveliest gifts has been Manna's very own quilt, made my her great grandmother. It's toddler-bed-size, but so lovely I couldn't wait and she's using it in her cot already. Everyone in the family has one of these. They are all different and represent hundreds of hours of work. We are very lucky.

And we have been doing some 'normal' things too, things which we know make us very happy. We have been to our lovely mum-run forest school and marauded about with sticks.

Ember has done more rushwork with Linda Lemieux, who worked a lot with Thomas and taught him all he knew about weaving and basketry. It is special to both of us to see Ember showing such enthusiasm and aptitude for this. Here she is, happily engrossed in a basket, with splendidly muddy trousers :).

My mum showed me some 'lovely' photos of myself. I was appalled and cut my hair at once!
So instead of this:

I now look like this:

Well, actually right now I'm in my pyjamas, but I won't inflict that on you.

We have enjoyed the bracing Dartmoor weather (read: sideways rain) and taken advantage of milder days to scramble about outside and, of course, splash in all available water.

More storms are forecast; internally too. I have made it through the sixth anniversary of Thomas dying. Usually I hide in my house behind the biggest bag of crisps I can find, but this year I experimented with going out. A friend had organised a clothes swap (very hard to resist on any day), so I got a babysitter (another thing I 'don't do') and had a good evening seeing how I look in clothes I might never actually buy. Fatter than expected, is the first answer (those damn steroids!), but also pretty good. So I have a selection of the kind of clothes I love...and a bright yellow miniskirt which hasn't been out yet, but definitely will.

On Monday 29th, Manna will be exactly the age Ember was when Thomas died. I cannot hug either of them enough at the moment. I cannot look at them enough or say enough prayers of thanks that they are mine and they are here and that, thanks to my mum, I will be here for them for a very long time.

Storms are forecast, but if you're dressed right, you can cope with anything.

Life On Steroids

This week my blood crashed. I ran out of platelets, which means I basically stopped clotting - quite a whoopsie, medically speaking. After a day of hanging around hospital trying to study while my wonderful friends and family cared for my children, I was put on an 'astronomical' (my GP's term) dose of steroids to sort me out. Which has worked, pretty much. I need to stay on them for a while, which is not a fun prospect, but I am learning a lot about myself in the process.

For a start, I am not - and never have been - lazy. Sometimes I look at other people's lives and wonder why I can't summon what it takes to achieve what they do. I can really blame myself for that, especially if I imagine my girls are missing out on something. But it turns out that as soon as I have energy I use it to do all those jobs I have been planning to do 'when I have a minute'. When you can't sleep, you have a lot of minutes. So once I am off these drugs, I will endeavour to be kinder to myself. My autoimmune stuff comes with fatigue and that is not a moral failing - just a fact.

Right now, for example, it's 11:45. Downstairs is a wonderfully enormous spread of presents I am giving this year, in the process of final organistaion - last wrapping, checking siblings have a similar pile, double-checking everything I ordered has arrived...but I am not downstairs. I am upstairs with Manna who has woken as her chicken alter ego and is lying in her cot, requesting "book, book, book". Normally I would stand by her until she slept again, or sit on the bed and read if it took ages, but tonight I have seized this chance to write the thoughts I couldn't capture earlier. The difference between being glad I can get something done rather than relieved I can do nothing for a few minutes has an enormous cumulative impact. I wonder if I can teach myself to be more productive after this.

I am also less careful, less particular, less afraid on steroids. If I haven't got time to clean something properly I will give it a quick wipe - much more effective than my usual perfectionist ploy of leaving it until I have time to be thorough...which can take a long time. Bish bash bosh is the way forward.

And the fear: I had a spider encounter which would usually have put me into a phobic state, but I barely flinched. I still needed it out the house, but I could put it out gently and pragmatically. I have since learned that my cortisol is suppressed by these drugs, which makes perfect sense.

And I am not sleeping enough. I have a body knowledge of a deep exhaustion, but I am restless. I cannot stop or sleep like I need to. It is 1:15 now. Manna is silent and wide-eyed. I am much the same. I understand why they wean you off these so slowly - a crash now would be from a dangerous height.

So it is good to be achieving things - I don't know how else I would have got ready for Christmas - but this is not sustainable. The biggest loss is being unable to match Manna's pace. She wants me to read the same book over and over, but not even read it - just point at the pictures and repeat the names and noises of things and play Boo with the flaps and then do it all again. This is how I spend hours of every day. This is how I don't vacuum much. Now my whole house has been thoroughly vacuumed, but I don't feel I have spent enough time just being with my daughters. I built one Megablocks tower, but then I'd finished so I moved on and left Manna to crash it by herself. These days are precious; I can vacuum for the rest of my life but I don't have many years left of children young enough to sit on me and sing action rhymes.

And I can't cry! I keep wanting to. I feel a pain in my throat and face and heart, but I cannot release the tears. It reminds me of the first phases of grief - at times I could not stop crying and at times I could not start.

I have been thinking of those times a lot over the last couple of months because the other big thing happening in my internal world is a dire countdown to the day Manna is as old as Ember was when Thomas died. Their birthdays being only four days apart, it is all too easy to flashback to when this bright and plumptious child in my arms, full of delight and secure in her world, was Ember. It is all too easy to flashback to how that security quaked terrifyingly; how she would freeze, motionless, at a sudden noise or unexpected touch. Only breastfeeding could reassure her on a deep enough level then, and let her howl like she needed to. I felt I was literally giving love into the centre of her body.

And now I still sometimes see that scared little girl in my eight-year-old Ember. I get heart-tearing flashes of how that deep peace and unshaken confidence in the world will never return for her. It is hell to be unable to give her that and all I can do is just keep loving her - when she's screaming while I brush her hair, when she won't get ready in the morning, when I find her still reading at 9:30 after she's been weeping with tiredness all day...just love, as much as I can manage, all the time.

So this Christmas is going to be mixed. It will be the first year Manna will really participate and I will love her enjoyment, as I always love Ember's. I will be with my family and I am looking forward to giving out presents. But in my mind will be a photo my sister took at Christmas six years ago:

Ember, holding a card, looking healthy and happy, meeting the eye of the camera;

Thomas, horribly pale, visibly exhausted, watching her with huge love;

and me, also pale, watching Thomas and looking very worried.

We didn't know. We were assured he would be okay until he was in his fifties. We didn't know...but there is no denying the fear in my face that last Christmas together.

Still Falling For You

It Is The Day

Dear Thomas,
It is the day. I hate this day. I would redact it from the world if I could, the way I once had to redact you from the electoral roll, as if you had never lived.
It feels like a bomb has exploded inside me and all my hard-won resilience has particulated into the air. It is lost in this shockingly beautiful day, and I am stripped to my devastated core.
I am glad you cannot read this. Much as I am desperate to tell you, I do not want you to know how it really feels to be your widow. I want you to think I am missing you in a wistful, romantic way, taking long walks alone to think of you and fondly wrapping myself in your oversized jumper.
Well, I am wearing your jumper, but the sleeves are annoyingly long. They unroll into the washing up water and I don't have time to keep rolling them up again. I have children to care for!  have a house to run! I need to make art and earn and keep finding a way to live without your help and I'm cross with you and your jumper's stupid.
I was always so far from the cheerful pixie bride I imagined would suit you best - some smiley, fey woman who could play the fiddle or at least honestly enjoy you practising. But you chose me. I still don't really understand why and it still feels like the biggest compliment. I was stompy, snarky, a smoker, a meat-eater. I wanted to dance, but only by myself. I wanted to listen to music, but not more of your twiddly folk albums. Somehow you loved my Johnny Rotten T-shirt and my bad cooking, the way I would laugh and laugh at slapstick while you worried someone had got hurt. Somehow you loved me.
This fantasy (my fantasy, not yours) fey bride would now be weeping prettily and looking at photos of you. I want to take the photos down - they make me sad - but Ember wants them up, so they stay. And I'm not crying - not right now. In a minute I will read and eat crisps until the baby wakes, then I will do my best not to be miserable and grumpy with her all day. And all the long night.
Nothing is as good without you, my Captain. I had no idea it would be this hard for this long. I feel the scar tissue on my heart thickening every year, just as it did on yours. I can only hope that, unlike you, I will survive.

More twiddly folk music

Cosmic Mother

OK. Brace yourselves. We're going into what may seem weird territory for some... But if you've started reading a post called 'Cosmic Mother', you're probably not scared easy.

So. Another painting by yours truly. And this one has a story, which I will tell a little tentatively because it has fronds reaching to the very core of my heart. 

Cosmic Mother

Oil on Canvas

16"x16"

I was on a course run by Eagle's Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism. 

Amongst other acts of crazy sanity, we buried ourselves alive. Yes. We dug our own graves and, like the free-thinking, independent warriors that we are, we followed instructions to get into them at sunset, lie down... and listen to the earth being shoveled over our wood and tarp roofs. The sound of soil hitting my roof in ever-quieter thuds and sprinkles may never leave me. I have rarely been so grateful to have recently peed. 

And then the strangest thing happened: I stopped feeling scared. In fact, I felt safer than usual; comforted, like a baby.

The Earth was holding me, I realised, not in her arms as she normally does when I walk her surface, but deeply in her womb. I felt a breadth of love I have only had sniffs of with people, even my very loving human mum.

And then... I knew. I had the most curious Russian-doll feeling that I was a baby in the womb of the Cosmic Mother and in my womb... Oh. So that's why the digging was so hard.

And the best feeling, of being able to express this booming love I was receiving, washed through me. I was a holy conduit calling into me the love of the universe and flowing it into the child I carried.   I was a mother.

All night I blissed and loved and dozed in this Russian-doll blessing. I spoke with my child; my boy. Not words; not mind; just a connection so I could sing my love into his tiny, tiny body and he could let me know how urgently he had wanted to contact me. Every time I recall his urgency I am so grateful to have had this unique experience. So grateful.

And at dawn, when others eagerly fled their graves, I was reluctant. I feared losing the love I'd felt. And, anyway, I didn't feel like breakfast. 

But, of course, the love stayed strong and is with me still.

My boy - he has a name, but I will hold that close to my chest for now - is not with me. When I was ten weeks pregnant he left. And I grieved like I had known him all my life.

And so I learned that the love of the Cosmic Mother is not pretty and easy and sweet in the way we often use the word. It is vast and powerful and sometimes terrifying. It is all truth and no mercy. And still I am grateful.

Perhaps, without the burial that night, I would have escaped the bereavement I experienced. But I would never have met my son. And what mother would choose to not know her child? Not this one.

The love I experienced that night now guides me, sometimes minute by minute, in the raising of my healthy, happy daughter.

I wish you all the luck to feel such love and the courage to withstand it.