Baby Face

Happenings abound. Our annual Artisan Fayre was splendid as ever and very welcome as a dip in energies prevented me doing extra markets before Christmas. The big day itself was good and happy. Pickle and I stayed with my parents in a very damp and lovely part of Somerset for a few days. I was not permitted to leave the sofa (to be honest, I didn't put up much of a fight) and Pickle had a great time amassing wonders. Mum was a bit twitchy every time the phone rang because my sister-in-law was due to have their first baby on January 1st. Luckily she has stayed put well past National Hangover Day and we're all now impatient to meet her, particularly her mum.

Meanwhile I have been working and readying our home for my new daughter. My laptop is going through a tricky patch in its relations with my external harddrive, so I can't access photos, but I do have this scan picture:

I had an extra scan because her growth chart looks disasterous, but it seems that is because she is trying out a new position every time she's measured. I've told her my preference for head down, but you know how hard it is to get kids to listen.

So all is well. Pickle has gone back to school having not had enough holiday to really recover from last term and the excitement of Christmas, but she is happy to do so and I, while predictably tired and experiencing mild versions of various pregnancy ailments, am basically hale and hearty and deeply grateful that my family is growing in this beautiful way.

Wishing you all joy this year - not simply happiness (although go ahead and have a bunch of that too), but the kind of wriggling, skipping joy which makes it nearly impossible to behave sensibly.

Broken Shells

So, six weeks of injecting hormones and thousands of pounds later (keep breathing Lunar; just breathe and mention your shop), my good friend and neighbour drove me to the clinic to welcome one of my snow babies home. 

Sitting in the waiting room, my phone started to sing. Two missed messages, both from the embryologist asking me to phone her. I had a cold couple of minutes to wait before she led us into her office. No snow babies. No transfer today. Both protective shells had broken in the freeze and the thaw and those precious cells inside now had no hope of life.

As she spoke, my own shell cracked open and a chill draught touched my heart. You might not have known, though. I calmly listened to her explanation, asked sensible questions, insisted on the earliest possible date for the next step and left with smiles and thanks for the staff, because I didn't want them to feel bad. I'm very good at taking bad news. (I actually cut short the commiserations of the nurse who rang to say Thomas had died because I needed to be with Pickle while she had breakfast.) Life just goes on. Except for when it doesn't.

Halfway down the corridor some tears found the exit and I stopped for a hug. We talked in the car about what I could do next, but my brain wasn't really engaged. At home, I sat on my bed and just stared out the window for half an hour, no thoughts or emotions, just a subtle adjustment to the new world order. Then I had a nap and made Pickle's tea. It was the next day, glancing up at myself while brushing my teeth, that I really cried.

I will try again, but first my body needs a month to let this batch of hormones go and be ready for more. And I need this time to be ready for more too. No-one said it was easy and they were all right.

But it is a lot easier for having my girl with me. We are leaving love notes for each other to find,

spontaneously charging each other for hugs

and enjoying the sun when it shines.

Pickle has made progress in her career as a paleontologist, excavating fossils including a chick in its shell and in the process learning why paleontologists traditionally work outside:

There is always hope.

I wish...

Completed another piece this morning, having experimented in yet another direction. I'm appreciating how this series is hanging together well, even though each piece explores a different style or idea.

This one, 'I wish', contains my favourite poem by my favourite poet. It would take me a week to boil down to my top ten poems, but this is clearly number one for me. I recommend I Heard God Laughing to everyone.

I wish

Mixed media on canvas

5" x 7"

This is my favourite poem because it so perfectly expresses my intention. Much of what I do is moving towards this. I believe we are perfect. And if only we had the faith to believe that, we would behave like it. My own winding animist/mystic path runs nice parallels to the Sufi ideas of Allah in everyone; in everything.

All of which makes me sound very saintly to ears which are accustomed to hearing 'perfect' as a long list of what it is not. The more I think about perfection, the less I can exclude from it. My daughter teaches me about this. She is indisputably perfect (at least, I strongly recommend not disputing it in my hearing!) and this is not changed when she learns she can draw on the wall with her toothbrush, or that I make an entertaining noise when she pokes me in the eye. Just perfect, with lots to learn. Like the rest of us.

How about you? Are you perfect?

Five Small Stones

Decided to keep these separate this time. 
Do click the River of Stones widget on the right to join in - it's never too late. 
And please let me know your favourite :o).

My daughter
In my mother's arms
Is captured on a mug.
The mug, 
In my mother's hand,
Captures a tear.

I have an entire
Chocolate biscuit
In my mouth.
It makes me grin.

January dusk
Enfolds the hills
Like sleep.

One crocus
And a thousand promises
Of snowdrops.
It is coming.

I am grateful for today.
It has brought me
To you.
Yes, you.

Love in the Snow

Disharmony

Two days of chilly shoulders and frosty undertones. No more snow outside. It has gathered on our hearts. 

We rally round our daughter, coaxing her from tears to joy again and again. It is exhausting, but she keeps us in some kind of contact.

The Solstice fire has died. Christmas has been unwrapped. Another year looms and I am unready to meet it.

Another 365 days of nappies and hoovering and washing up and surviving from coffee with a friend until a cup of tea at playgroup.

I feel physically dis-heartened. Something has gone so wrong. I am tired, but I am always tired and I didn't feel like this last week. I don't remember feeling like this since I have been in partnership with my husband who is usually such a source of joy for me. Today he is an irritant, possibly acidic. Not even a bath of asses milk would be balm enough. I need something else.

 Feeling Rather Tense

My husband needs something else too. And though I ache to give it, I cannot name it, much less find it in myself.

He cannot stay in a space with me. He laces his boots in a silent, depressed fury, kisses our girl who sits on my lap goodbye and opens the door to leave.

My breath stops. He has never, ever, refused to kiss me like this. A desperate voice  from inside me calls,

'I love you.'

The door shuts. The tears track my cheeks and I hug the baby tight as I watch him descend our steps.

He turns around. He'll take his bike; get further from me.

But no. He has opened the door again.

He is in the room.

He says,

'I love you too.'

More tears. And we tell of the mirrored smallnesses which have sucked the heat from our lives.

We kiss. Find resolutions. Find comfort in each other again.

There is a bright flame in the dark and we gratefully warm our hands; thaw our hearts.

Later, I ponder what had led us to that place. Many things, of course, had interwoven the net which caught us, but I see one thing clearly: I had forgotten my machete. When the world is tangled and dense and catches at my hair I have a tool which never fails me if only I remember to use it: I can write.

I recall evenings too busy and sociable or too tired and miserable to write my journal and the dream-binding which followed; which always follows.

Fool

I am a fool. If I achieve nothing else this coming year, may I remember that writing is not only my passion and my talent and, newly, my job. It is also my lifeline, the lighthouse beam which sweeps an arc accros the unknown so I can catch a glimpse of my mind-corners and chase the scuttling creatures away.

And I am wise. 2 days of iciness out of 365? We're not doing so badly. I did call out. And he did turn around. He is the source of much of my joy once again.

And all those nappies? That's where the real love is. One nappy at a time, I am saying to my family,

'I love you'.

In Love; At Peace