Gossip Gossip

I strayed onto facebook last night and eavesdropped on the lives of others, cause that is what it feels like. Apart from this blog, which I do more for myself than for others, I have yet to plunge myself into the world of virtual friendships. Yet there they all were past and present acquaintances climbing mountains, feeling happy, feeling frustrated, sharing feelings. They post them for the world to read, yet I felt like I was trespassing, looking into worlds where I no longer belonged, worlds that I had left behind and had lost the right to share in. I looked and read, I voyeured . I am a traditional kinda girl; this digital age is scaring me.

GROWING PAINS

Why are we always so desperate to ‘grow up’? Life does that to you, makes you want to sample the green grass on the other side of the fence. It makes you wish away and waste your youth on yearnings for adulthood. When you get there you look back longingly at the pastures you left behind realising maybe they were the greenest after all.
Today there was no grass just sand, miles of beautiful golden sand and sunshine – actual sunshine on the north coast! You gleefully stripped down to bareness to run through the waves. Splashing and smiling, your cup running over. What a simple, special pleasure to watch my healthy, strong and wondrous little boy. With wind in our hair and sun on our backs, I thought, I never want to be anywhere but here, in this moment forever.

CLOCKS

‘Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans’
Sometimes I feel like the rabbit in Alison in Wonderland, running endlessly trying to catch up with time. So I stay up later, get up earlier, try to squeeze the most out of everyday. I am a time-junkie always wanting that little bit more: then I will write that book, read more, exercise, phone my friends more, do a cookery class, I will lounge back on my sofa and learn a new poem everyday. Internal clocks tick too chiming down my mother years. Time is cruel. It plays trick or treat with your life, you never know time’s trump card, never get to know the balance of your own account.

Rough Edges

Marriage is like a circle - united, smooth, symmetrical, unbreakable. How then is it supposed to be made up of people who have edges – pointy and sharp, with separate needs and wants?
I suppose that over the years it is hoped you rub the rough edges off one another, you grate together long enough to sand off the corners, leaving only smooth curves for the waves of time to wash over. Time. Time sprints past in pairs.

FRIENDS

There are women who have walked arm in arm with me through many years of my life. Women who understand me better than myself . Friends who help give me a place in this world. Their arms form a super-strength spider web of sisterhood that will catch me no matter how hard I fall. These friends are constant, a part of the many pieces of myself. There is one that has flown far away, I cannot feel the comfort of her presence, our bond reduced to an invisible thread that wraps around the globe. Some of these friends are wives, some of them are mothers, some of them have grown-up jobs full of importance, some run their own successful businesses. They are smart and brave and wise. They are all unique and extraordinary.

A few of them are understandably cool towards the arrival of my husband back into the family fold. They had to watch my pain, see my face crinkle into uncontrollable tears, the sparkle and life snuffed out. To stand on the sidelines and see the one they love hurt has hardened and changed how they feel about him. With backs arched, claws out, teeth barred, they sense danger and want to protect their little one. I understand. If it were the other way, I would be the same. My newer friends, the ones I have gladly picked up along the path of marriage and motherhood have found it easier to find forgiveness. They did not see me dressed in silk and lace at the altar, fresh faced and young, full of hope and love offering up my dreams for him to hold. They have not been on the whole journey.

I tell of how he has changed his ways, become a better man, put wrongs to right. Their eyes and silence speak a million words. They have little faith left in my man and want me to stay out of harm’s way – his way. I hope he will prove to them in time that he is an honourable man that has made mistakes, but is worthy of a second chance. Life is too short to hold the broken pieces and sharp edges of disappointment next your heart. If he fails… God help him, they hunt in a pack.

Summer Lovin'

Your hair has gone beach babe blonde, your little button nose has been kissed by the sun as well as by me. Days are spent with sand between our toes, wind in our hair and salty sea around our ankles. You are a King adventurer, brave and fearless, ready to conquer the summer ahead, green crocs on feet and shorts hanging at half-mast. I want to endlessly drink you up, kiss and squeeze your trunk clad bottom as you race in and out of the sea. I want to protect you from the badness of the world and let only the the goodness through. I want to be the soft, warm towel that envelopes you and makes you dry.

These days you make me roar with laughter and I think my heart might burst right through my chest with pride in you. I want to keep you close, so close, wrapped in my mother love, but I cannot. You are not my baby anymore but a soldier, marching with strength and power into your own world of independence. I have started to need you more than you need me. So I will let go, loosen out the cord but just a little, just a fraction. I will give you the freedom your adventure heart desires because I know there is plenty more time for mother love ahead. I will take a step back but I will always be within reach.

Love and madness

He came back. Like a boomerang he went to the physical limits of separation and then started off where he had begun, with me. I didn't have to take him back, I could have left him there abandoned in the grass, but I didn't. I have found it unnervingly easy to forgive and forget and move towards greener pastures, rarely glancing back at the painful memories scattered like fragments of broken glass, lethal and laced with danger, that lie behind us. He seems changed, happier, comfortable in his own skin again and well, I made vows. Vows that are supposed to keep you together when nothing else would. It has made me think that love really is akin to madness. The madness I felt during our separation, the madness for letting him back so easily, the madness of marriage. But what is this life if not mad!