Last night middlest and I sat on our sofa, ready to absorb another episode of IT Crowd. I passed her the obligatory packet of something chocolate and she passed back the drink that she had just removed from me. This removal is ritualistic for middlest and eldest. It begins with them seeing my drink sitting on the side. They ask me if its my drink. I say yes. They pick it up and drink some of it then put it down. I pretend to look indifferent.
This scene has graced the last ten years. No doubt there would be some intricate psychoanlaytic interpretation of this; however even with my tendency to explore, I have avoided this and just enjoyed it for what it is. Regardless of time or day for that moment we are all standing on the same point in time and we laugh.
“Its nice”, she said. She passes it back.
“Yup”, I replied, “it is isn’t it?”
“What’s in it?”, she says.
I read, “Er 36 strawberries, 2 and a half bananas”.
“Ooooh”, she says “very precise”-
“5 grapes and…. what’s this?” I say.
I squint at the teeny tiny writing on the side of the colourful bottle. “1…… Alice Pineapple……what the heck is an alice pineapple?!” I say.
“You what??!” says middlest and she looks at me. “Alice pineapple”, I repeat.
She takes back the bottle from me and holds it up, mirroring my facial squint, “alice pineapple….what even is that?” ,her voice travels up in question.
It does not occur to answer our question with a google search, instead we just sit our faces scrunched up in disbelief at the alice pineapple and its place in our (my) smoothie.
They put so much stuff in here. Middlest carries on staring at the bottle. She stops and sighs and says, “its like my list of homework – why they cant just reference the chapter we need to read and ask us to make outline of it? Why give us a list of points we need to make about the chapter- it just overcomplicates things .I just want to read something without panicking I am focusing upon the wrong thing”.
“Are you saying the smoothie is overcomplicated” I reply.
“No, just that we don’t need a bloomin’ list of ingredients like that… that we can’t even read”, she exhales.
I am not sure of the comparison, I think she might just be venting but I concur – at least with the homework issue. Teaching became more of a faff as the years went by, the focus drifting from encouraging learning to ensuring that they students ticked criteria points in the syllabus. It makes sense to want to make sure that you are covering everything but in reality it took away from just enjoying the experience of learning and the sense of well being this can instil. Too much focus on the detail caused anxiety. When you are teaching students, especially with complex needs, just achieving the former is an outcome but there is no box for that on the syllabus. Learning moved from being an experience to a process.

“….And how did they do it?..”, Middlest holds the bottle up, “Put a whole pineapple in here??”, she is exasperated now .”Maybe its a miniature.”
“Yeh, maybe; I cant believe I’ve not heard of it though” I muse.
“Alice pineapple”. I shake my head and after this delay we press play.

Eldest comes in and seeing the bottle sitting next to me walks over .I look up and he nods his head toward the bottle, “Is that your drink?”.
“Yes”, I say.
“Right”, and he picks it up and sits down on the armchair opposite.

We are watching the episode of IT Crowd where Moss sets the office on fire. We settle into the episode and as we do eldest starts to read the ingredients, “36 strawberries, two and half bananas, 5 grapes oh and a… what is that?…. oh, he squints and stares, ” 1 ….. Alice? no…. 1 slice of pineapple.

Middlest snorts and I open my mouth and make what she describes as a Minecraft potion noise.

I think that I feel

I think that i

I think that

I think

I

Is this the me of young

Or old, me?

Redux

The woman standing at

the crest of the street

Where l live divagating

Or

Or is

Or is this

Or is this me

Or is this me now

Or is this me now and then

Letting

Letting the

Letting the words

Letting the words unfold

Letting the words unfold and

With relief , the comfort of knowing I have always been here.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

---

Private: Tennyson, Alfred Lord

An excerpt taken from In Memorium.

It’s been a while since I have posted. It seemed over Christmas that I might contribute a post about the kind of traditions that we uphold here in our home. The winky snowman that we have as a table centre piece, annoying Santa, who hangs on the living room door, rattling every time the door gets knocked. He has lost limbs and his beard in his 10th year but has managed to retain his ability to irritate . The robins which we place on the tree, one for us all and my sister. Some may recall my sister has passed, so her robin, now 39 years old, has travelled from our childhood and keeps her as part of our celebrations. He has lost his beak. Then there’s Christmas Eve PJs. Cheese and crackers on Christmas Eve. Reading Christmas stories on Christmas Eve. And so many more little things we do as a family.

Last night we sat and we made our resolutions and we looked back at our best bits and my daughter offered me a reminder of how our minds are so different. Very often it seems that we are thinking along similar veins but it struck me throughout the evening how little the pandemic and the lockdown has followed her through to the present. I wondered if perhaps, it’s impact upon others is not quite held in young people’s minds. Perhaps it’s not only the lockdown but people’s inner lives which escape us when we are young. The egocentricity of youth though keeps the young buoyant across rough seas and for this year it has been with good reason.

So I held back in reminding her the full impact upon others and prompt myself, it’s unnecessary to burden the young with too much. Highlighting all the differences in between us does nothing for the present. Or our future. Ignorance is bliss. Just as Santa and Snowman and the Robins are enjoyed without seeing their differences; being in the present without too much analysis is the lesson which I have taken from 2020 , to accompany me throughout 2021 and beyond.

---

Looking back many of my posts have focused on Lockdown. I wondered if going into the New Year things might change enough for me to take my eye away from all things Covid related. Not to be folks. We remain in Tier 2- one of only three towns in Essex who are not in Tier 4 and with my Dad in the latter, we are back to dropping food at his door and retreating. It’s a bit worrying now. So we went to Walton and were greeted by this.

Life became lighter for a couple of hours and then we returned home for Shepherds Pie. Not forgetting the sublime truffles created by middlest. Praying for a turning point.

open.spotify.com/wrapped/share-592a8577e4fa468d909f48b99021e142-1080×1920

It’s a sad day. Not just because this is the last day of the NaNoPoBlano challenge but because tonight…..I sang my last twinkle twinkle little star to my son. It’s a funny thing but after 20 odd years of parenting I didn’t think of this as being a milestone. Quite often though, these milestones are slotted in between minutes that are hurried and unexpected. And this was definitely the latter. Why the significance? Maybe it’s because he is my last, maybe it’s because he is my loudest or maybe because he chose this milestone himself. He lay in his racing car bed, looked at me and said, “I’m getting big now Mummy. No more songs – I can go to sleep all by myself”. While my throat tightened and I swallowed hard, i also felt the joy that you feel when your child makes a decision for themselves; based upon them realising something about themselves. This is definitely something I have been so much more aware of with smallest. It doesn’t matter how long they have a bottle or stay in nappies or in this case how long they like to be sung to sleep for, what matters is that they feel in themselves when the time is right for them to grow. Allowing them the space to feel for themselves when things are right, helps them to transfer this knowledge to all situations in life. Making sure they aren’t imposed upon helps them learn to feel based upon what they experience within, rather than due to someone else’s expectation.

So it’s a bittersweet moment. I am just blessed to have the opportunity to have sung this nursery rhyme in the town where its lyrics were composed, to three beautiful children who maybe one day will do the same.

And that’s it from me for this challenge. It’s been a blast and I have really enjoyed reading some amazing and inspiring posts. From the inspirational work of Anyes to the information loaded posts by Steven, the beautiful words of Ra and all in between, I have enjoyed it all. Much love and goodnight 👍

This was a header for a previous post though looking back I don’t feel it was necessarily entirely well placed.

Today though i feel I have found a better space to use it, here in my penultimate post for the month. A month when I picked up the challenge to write 10 posts, (I opted for 10/10/10) and when I found myself indoors mostly- again. I have only been blogging for a short while; it has given me immense pleasure and has allowed me to use some of that brain power which has been redundant since I stripped my life down a few months back. Most of my posts , if not all have featured one of my three children but I felt this time round I wanted to think without them.

So anyway I thought I would write something about what I have learned of life recently. Something that has been useful to me and which I might share, on the off chance it might offer something to others.

Life has offered me plenty of possibilities and chucked some difficulties along for good measure. Some I have walked into and at other times I have turned away. The choice I have made recently though has shown me that life is not as hard if you can let yourself be present. Don’t let past moments intrude on who you are or cast your mind too deeply into the future to check out the impact of the present. In the words of the Chemical Brothers just “let forever be”.

This morning i awoke thinking about this poem it, I wrote it down and then looked back at the original. I realised that my memory of it is skewed and what I thought I had written originally is actually what I think now. So I wrote them both to marvel at the fallibility of memory but also how this can occur in the service of who we have become.

Rules are there to be broken mistakes are there to be made;rules they all make and mistakes we all make and our memories of this they won’t fade. Ez June 1995

Rules are there to be broken,

mistakes, there to be made.

Rules we all break,

Mistakes we all make,

Memories with time will fade.

Esther December 2020