Back.

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

(Nelson Mandela)

 

(Photos: Gigi, album)

 

"Hi Honey, I'm home!"

 Just when you thought it was safe to meander along Blogger again, something stirs down by the pier at Gigi-on-Sea. I haven't blogged for the longest time: not since late February; more like a writer's barricade than just a block.

I certainly hadn't intended to stop writing on "The Water is Wide". Having been quite ill at the beginning of the year, I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Australia for most of March, my birthday month. I knew I wouldn't be writing while I was away from home, but came back bristling with stories, songs and smiles. Sadly, my telecommunications back in Brighton were not bristling with anything much throughout April and May; a personal supply of BT engineers crawling around your living room looking for your WIFI hotspot really isn't as exciting as it might sound.

By June, I decided that maybe my little blog had retired into a natural decline and should be left to pass gently in it's sleep. While the blog slept deeper, this year has rushed ahead of many of us as we try to keep track of work, bills and other people. My sister has started her Christmas shopping for goodness' sake, although my brother-in-law would probably say that it takes her mind off real estate.

Since February, I've still not learnt to play my ukulele but have also acquired a bodhran. I've been adopted by a second seagull, introduced by Jonathan but clearly not schooled by him. Where Jonathan is large and a bit brash and bombastic, Junior is smaller, louder and possibly psychotic. Jonathan is a Frequent Flyer to Gigi-on-Sea; Junior more of a stalker, hanging on the garden fence from dawn till dusk and knocking on the window of any room he spies me in. Ginger the cat was already stressed by Jonathan but now looks as though he might just call The Cats' Protection League.

Ginger has been very poorly this month after lacerating his tongue probably eating out of a rusty tin-can somewhere. In true Drama Cat style, he reacted badly to being confined to convalesce indoors by jumping out of a first floor window. Having shocked the pair of us, he's made a rapid and even remarkable recovery, largely to stop me pureeing his food and Becoming Emotional with him.

In the past couple of months, I've realised that I've made a few false friends in Brighton and elsewhere. Yet I've also rediscovered friends from old long since, for all the good reasons that originally bound me to them. Since February, friends have married, separated, reproduced, found religion, discovered themselves (although one went to Birmingham to do this which sounds unlikely). One friend has landed a great position without looking or applying for it; a couple have lost steady jobs, their sense of humour or even the plot.
My effervescent friend Leigh sadly lost his long battle with the bottle but inspired half a town to turn out to walk behind his coffin.

In recent weeks, I've known people lose their partners and parents while yet another has given birth ten years after being told she would never conceive; similar to my mother's experience when I cam along. Apart from being a boy, obviously.
Then in March, I met Hollie, much loved baby born to Kelli, my much missed friend who returned to her Australian homeland a few years ago. I immediately felt like Hollie's long-lost Auntie G, and after some whooping and grinning at Brisbane airport it felt like I had just met up with Kel again after work for a jar.

The late poet and mystic John O'Donohue realised that the truest and most natural friendships are always an act of recognition, an ancient knowledge. I believe this most tangible form of deja vu, which soothes the heart and moves the spirit, applies to places and animals as well as people. Sometimes encountering strangers or travelling to new places feels less like a departure or discovery than an almost foetal homing. It's a feeling I experienced when I first set foot in Sydney many years ago, when I first came to view my little house in Brighton with it's dampness and dismal wallpaper; when I first created my template for "The Water is Wide".

There are stories everywhere. There is history and hope in every stone, twig and droplet. I believe that baby Hollie has been born with all the words she will ever need, waiting within. Her stories were already written when her mum met her dad. More than any photo albums, letters and mementos, my sister and I am what endures of my own mother and father; we carry their stories within our own. What is left up to us is the unfolding. It really is the way we tell 'em. I've often wondered if my parents would be reading this blog if they were alive. The truest answer is that they've helped to write it.
For someone seen as "the quiet one" in the family, I've always had much to say for myself, occasionally for others too. When I was about eight, my headmistress Sister Sebastian chastised me for attempting to read a more "adult" book in preference to Enid Blyton. The book was actually Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and I was a tiny convent schoolgirl, so I can fully appreciate her concerns.
"Why are you reading a different book to the one we've given you?"
"I know all the words in that book already Sister."
"Is that so? And why do you feel you need to know so many other words right now?"
"Then I can write my own book Sister."
"Is that so? Do you know the word precocious, Gisele?"
"Pre-what Sister?"
"It means The Little Girl Who Wants All The Words."
"Yes, that's me Sister!"
I soon realised this was the wrong answer.
My convent schooldays seem to play an increasing part in my stories, all these years later. I know my sister worries that my blog is a bit too Catholic, too wordy and quite eccentric. My brother-in-law worries that the blog is too personal and that identity fraud is rife. Would anyone want to steal a Catholic, socialist, vegetarian, sentimental, quizzical persona with a penchant for bright colours and dangly earrings? Good luck with that....
My friend Leigh was hugely supportive of me writing although he found my posts too long for his butterfly attention span; this from the man who's funeral cortege in May stretched the length of a high street.
Every story is a journey, no matter how short or long. A couple of weeks ago, I received an anonymous message on Blogger: "I came to look for Gigi-on-Sea and there was nobody home. Where did you go?" The wonders of Down Under aside, I never went away from my own story. I will probably never write that book and I may never feel I have all the words. But the little convent schoolgirl in me is delighted that if you Google "Gigi-on-Sea", this humble blog is currently the first hit that pops up. You probably weren't expecting that, Sister Sebastian...
It's good to be back x

 

"Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when I first considered going."

(Amelia Earhart)

"One"  Ed Sheeran

 
"All my friends have gone to find
another place to let their hearts collide;
just promise me you'll always be
a friend;
because you are the only one"
 

 

Epiphany - Star of Wonder

 

 "Without the quest, there can be no epiphany."
(Constantine E. Scaros)

 "Epiphany Poem"

 

The red king
Came to a great water. He said,
Here the journey ends.
No keel or skipper on this shore.
The yellow king
Halted under a hill. He said,
Turn the camels round.
Beyond, ice summits only.
The black king
Knocked on a city gate. He said,
All roads stop here.
These are gravestones, no inn.
The three kings
Met under a dry star.
There, at midnight,
The star began its singing.
The three kings
Suffered salt, snow, skulls.
They suffered the silence
Before the first word.
                                                   (George Mackay-Brown)

 

I've always liked the sound of the word "Epiphany". I probably use it far too often, way out of context and largely inappropriately. I also know some very charming and articulate atheists who enthuse about their "epiphanies" and "road to Damascus" moments.

The Christmas story tells us that wise men and uneducated shepherds alike followed an uncharted and unusually bright star as a celestial augury; many might find this naïve in these times of out-of-this-world technologies such as space telescopes and particle physics. We've witnessed eclipses of the moon and sun, the appearance of "new" stars and planets, asteroid storms and catastrophically extreme weather; the latter, all too prevalent in our Christmas and New Year news. Sometimes jaded about disasters in the Great Elsewhere, we call it misfortune closer to Home.

When I was little, someone told me the sun was the morning star. Far from being scientifically correct, it seemed very comforting. It still does, even after discovering the joys of the late lamented Sir Patrick Moore, Professor Brian Cox and of course Doctor Who. Our solace in familiarity and continuity evolves from childhood fears: the moon lights the night and the sun will be there to greet us in the morning.

Maybe we're so keen to establish continuity, order and control, unravelling the mysteries of the universe as we harness new ways to exterminate mankind, that we take for granted the true wonders of our lives. A Facebook friend pointed out today that the sun really is always waiting beyond the dark, stormy skies and unprecedented tides. Aside from being our morning star, the sun never actually sets, blazing in the Great Elsewhere while we sleep. We've lost the wonder of things we cannot recreate or fully capture because they support our everyday existence.

The thing I find most haunting about George Mackay-Brown's poem for Epiphany is that it makes no mention of the traditional gifts associated with the magi. Frankincense, gold and myrrh would be heady gifts for an infant even by Kardashian standards. The real gift from these learned and respected men was that they acknowledged wonder and followed faithfully into the unknown; an epiphany for them and the greatest gift of all to themselves, as much as any offering they could make to an unknown baby born in a barn.



"There's nothing better when something comes and hits you and you think 'YES'!"  
(J.K. Rowling)

 "I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking."  
(Albert Einstein)

 "I had an epiphany a few years ago when I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends.”
(Moby)

"Looking into the spirit of others is sometimes like looking into a pond. Though we aim to see what's deep in the bottom, we are often distracted by our own reflection."
(Katina Ferguson)

"The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany."
(Rebecca Solnit)

"God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell."
(Nicholas Sparks)

"These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere…and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren’t clearing and aren’t going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There’s the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember."
(Paul Bogard)

"I always like those moments of epiphany, when you have the next destination."
(Brad Pitt)

 

"Lark in the Clear Air"  Cara Dillon (version)

 

Storm damage

 "One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken."
(Leo Tolstoy)

The storm that crashed against the south coast of these islands before ripping it's way upland on the 27th and 28th of October has inevitably left it's mark on Brighton. A local estate agent told me he'd been retrieving TV aerials, roof tiles and garden furniture from his rental properties from literally high and low across the city. Having previously walked the seawall at the marina, apparently the largest in Europe; I was staggered to see footage of the waves dwarfing the wall and the yachts, almost reclaiming the manmade enclosure to the open sea.
"Storm St Jude" was named after the patron saint of lost causes, arriving with a crash on the eve of his feast day. It certainly carved a desperate path; I'm respectful that tens of thousands of people across this county and others were left without power for days and that four people lost their lives in the UK. A further thirteen people have died as Storm Jude evolved into Cyclone Christian, wreaking destruction across northern and eastern Europe.
My little house is a hundred and fifty years old and full of leaks, creaks and gremlins on a daily basis. Faced with torrential rain and predicted gusts of more than eighty miles an hour, I brought in garden mirrors, lanterns, tree baubles and next door's cat and tied down everything else; including Noel the seven foot Christmas tree after even he was blown over in his ridiculously heavy pot. The house, Ginger Tom and I braced ourselves. I watched my tall pear tree appear to double over against the wind at around two in the morning, while the guardian angel sun-catcher in it's highest branches (I couldn't reach her without a ladder) was whipped about mercilessly.
As Monday opened up and the winds dropped to a manageable 60, I realised that my house and garden were largely intact. A section of guttering has loosened, but then Jonathan Seagull has been using it as some kind of high-rise latrine for a couple of years. All the paint above my bathroom window has ripped away, taking a layer of mortar with it, but I've never liked that stale buttermilk colour and intend to paint the house a zesty yellow as soon as possible. My windows seem spattered with every kind of seaside muck that could be airborne, but they're due a cleaning anyway.
In the garden, only one of a few marooned tree baubles didn't make it; even the tiniest, most delicately budded patio roses and fuchsias have only conceded some petals. The pear tree has uncurled to it's full height; the angel still miraculously spinning round at the top. I went round oohing and aahing, patting potplants and shrubs reassuringly, while Ginger watched from the safety of the kitchen step, clearly bemused that he'd spent a day and night sheltering with an idiot.
The BBC's southeast reportage seemed to focus on Brighton, with one hapless reporter stationed on the pebble beach in front of the skeletal West Pier. Blue-faced in his puffa jacket and woolly beanie hat, he flapped about a bit and spluttered that this type of weather was not uncommon on this windy little edge of East Sussex. Worryingly close to the waves himself, he stressed that the Sussex police had warned folk to stay away from the piers and indeed the sea for the next few hours, just as a hardy local family splashed past him while he struggled to stop his microphone from hitting him in the face.

I was thankful to see the West Pier still standing, albeit at a more precarious angle than ever before. The pier was built within a year of my little workmen's terrace and it's remains are Grade II listed, one of only two piers in the UK to be granted what should be a level of protection. Not that the West Pier has been shielded from outrageous fortune in any way in her long history. Yet, after three fires, the great storm of 1987 and several others, countless horrendous winters (including each one since I moved here) and even being crashed into by an RAF fighter plane in 1944, the West Pier has never been completely destroyed.
On several occasions, the structure has had to be partially demolished for safety reasons. Now completely severed from the shore, the pier is nonetheless increasingly part of this city. The remaining fretwork seems to float in the rising and falling tides; her fragility belies the Victorian engineering that keeps her cast iron legs firm in the seabed. Now frequently compared to am upturned fruit basket or burned out wedding cake, she was known as "The Pleasure Pier" in her heydays, I know some people find the pier a sorry sight. Technically, she's been terminally deteriorating since the 1970s; to those of us who love her and find her beautiful, the West Pier is constant to the point of persistence and embodies the spirit of the city of Brighton.
Walking down to the West Pier after St Jude, I wasn't surprised to see several others standing in the cracked sunshine and sea breeze, all there for the same reason. One very dapper middle-aged man with what I think was a French accent described her as "wretchedly lovely". I think the West Pier is a bit like a Bronte heroine; ageless and virginal but fatally bedraggled in sodden hooped petticoats. For every person who sees the old pier as an eyesore that should be completely dismantled, there will be many more who cherish her as an essential part of Brighton beach's skyline. Her iconicity has swelled as her original purpose built structure has diminished.

It's been weeks since I've posted on this blog. I almost wish I could say it's been due to sheer volume of work, being away with friends or even just doing possibly unmentionable, hedonistic things. Alas, I can't rely on any of these excuses.

It's true that I've been working rather difficult hours, but the most complete story of my extended writer's block is that my heart just hasn't been in it. My heart has been scuttled away like a deflated little bird. Like the West Pier, it feels like it's had the stuffing kicked out of it. Aside from any continuing neighbourhood unpleasantness, beyond the bereavement, unemployment and upheaval of fortune of the past few years, it felt as though something had finally broken me. One gust just too harsh, one wave too fierce. Mark Twain once said that a broken promise was better than none at all; much as I admire Mr Twain, I've often thought him uncharacteristically, utterly wrong on that one. Promises hold both the recognition of long held wishes and our hopes for the future; a broken promise or dream damages who we've been and scars who we've yet to become.

A few people who actually read this blog but have never met me realised something was wrong and I'm grateful for their concern and wishes. My friend Lin put it quite bluntly: "Not blogging, not talking: not you! Sick??" My confidence in myself and my instinctive faith in others is obviously dented, but I find I'm still here, just as the West Pier is right where I left it. Sometimes, the strength isn't in holding firm against the break but in what you do with the broken pieces. In circumstances that I guess were quite different from Mr Twain's, Oscar Wilde noted that broken hearts allow God and love to seep in. And so you can either focus on what's tearing you apart, or on what's holding you together.

Storms like St Jude unleash the omnipotence of nature but also magnify the resilience of even the smallest plants and creatures. For some reason, "The Lightning Strike" has always been my Snow Patrol song: I have the expressed permission of Mr Lightbody to add it to this post that breaks my writer's block! I'm sure my little house, for all it's cracks and groans, will stand beyond the end of my years; I hope the West Pier might do the same. Even with feet of iron, that kind of fortitude feels as organic as that of my pear tree or the tiny buds on my patio roses. I guess it's all in the foundations.

 

*Especially at this time for Gill A, Luci, Marian and Stuart*

 

 

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."

(Ernest Hemingway)

"Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is the glue."
(Eugene O'Neill)

The West Pier Trust:
www.westpier.co.uk
 
 

"The Lightning Strike (What If The Storm Ends)"  Snow Patrol

 

 "What if this storm ends
And I don't see you,
As you are now
Ever again?
Painted in flames,
All peeling thunder;
Be the lightning in me
That strikes relentless"

(Gary Lightbody)

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks."

(Tennessee Williams)

 

The roar of the Tigger

 "Only the weak are cruel. True gentleness can only be expected from the strong."

(Leo Buscaglia)

 

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."

(St Francis de Sales) 

 

When I was a little girl, I decided I was going to be Tarzan's Jane in the jungle: the jungle in question clearly my parent's long, lawned back garden, complete with trees, swing, vegetable patch and Dad's mysterious homemade shed. Within a year or so, I decided the jungle was a bit tame and Tarzan probably a tad boring and made the career choice of Doctor Who's Assistant. And this was long before I became smitten with David Tennant (best Doctor Who ever).
Often easily thwarted by my own lack of self-confidence, I can be utterly fearless in situations larger than the petty scrutiny of appearance, background or what is appropriate behaviour or position. I have a friend who believes that most folk can be identified with the characters from "Winnie the Pooh" stories; recently, she announced that I was "definitely a bit Tigger". Apparently, the similarity has much to do with my energy and enthusiasm rather than my bottom being made out of springs... Although I do tend to bounce about a bit when I'm particularly excited or enthused by something. Like Tigger, I do have a tendency to climb up things with no real consideration for how (or capacity) to get down again. Also like Tigger, I can appear mindlessly courageous when I am actually most scared and simply wanting to be stroked and given a slice of treacle tart. His bravado is usually borne from loyalty and protectiveness rather than cussedness or aggression; I like Tigger.
I was actually born in the Chinese year of the Tiger, a favourite animal of mine. I love cats, and tigers are just whiskery, big pawed, stripey kittycats. But I also love their sinewy prowess and effortless, graceful strength; if only they could embrace vegetarianism. There's a palpable power in gracefulness, as there is an ingenuity in the most instinctive courage. Although the Sunday school meekness that will inherit the earth is often seen as interchangeable with gentleness, I've always felt that true gentleness can be as in-your-face as the loudest roar.
Someone in my neighbourhood is trying to push me around at the moment; attempted bullying, if you will. I find it upsetting, most simply because I've tried to help and support this person. I've tried to show them kindness and tolerance. I realise now that they've interpreted my own brand of gentleness as vulnerability and weakness, probably enabled by my stature, blondeness and penchant for floral frocks.
I don't like aggression and find slanging matches distasteful and wearying. On a rugby pitch, I would much prefer to deploy my dummy sidestep and sprint rather than throw myself headfirst into a tackle. In spite of any health glitches, I'm aware of and thankful for my physical strength; I could definitely kick-box my way out of a paper bag, but I would infinitelyy prefer to dance or cuddle.

 

 

 

Christians learn about God's "relentless" tenderness and mercy as an essence of our faith. Aside from organised religion, our greatest heroes of justice and righteousness, folk like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and most recently Nelson Mandela, have been staggering in their graciousness; their words of reconciliation resonate around the world and across class and culture. These people were natural leaders, defenders and champions; far from pushovers. Vociferously pacifist, they sadly also became threats to those whose insecurities fester on force, division and control.
Gentleness doesn't have to be meek; it's a bold, brave and sometimes isolating path to take through today's hyperactive, hyperbolic world. You have to be pretty tough to maintain your grace in the face of spite and injustice. It's very empowering to realise that refusing to claw your way up and over others has lifted you out of the fray. Personally, I believe that my God would want me to turn the other cheek, but still avoid being bitch-slapped in the first instance. I hope I'll always have enough self respect as well as compassion to refrain from back-biting and snarling; but the occasional roar from a lamb can confound the hungriest lion in the jungle.
If anyone from the BBC should ever stumble upon this blog, I would still like to be Doctor Who's Assistant. 

 

  
"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time."

(St Francis de Sales)

 

  

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a
listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all
of which have the potential to turn a life around."

(Leo Buscaglia) 

 

 

"Roar"  Katy Perry

 

 

Boys will be men

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

(Mark Twain)

Yesterday was Father's Day. With every passing year, my Dad becomes ever more the yardstick that any man who should come into my life in the future will be held up to. With every passing year, he has also become the mirror I hold up to myself.

Father's Day was originally inaugurated in the United States early in the twentieth century to compliment the celebration of Mother's Day. Most probably founded in 1910 in Washington by Ms Sonora Smart-Dodd, a member of the Christian Women's Temperance Society. She had told her pastor that fathers should be honoured as well as mothers; her own father, a veteran of the Civil War, was a widower who had raised his six children on his own. 

The first celebration was on 19th June that year; Sonora's father's birthday was a couple of weeks earlier. Initially, public acknowledgement was vague and variable; Americans resisted the innovation for some decades, viewing it as a mainly commercial venture. Finally, after two failed lobbies, President Johnson issued a presidential proclamation in 1966, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. As recently as 1972 , Richard Nixon passed it into law as a public holiday in the States, finally following the annual celebration of motherhood.

On a recent visit to the doctor's surgery, I realised I had interrupted quite a busy antenatal clinic. I'm accustomed to seeing very young mums-to-be in Brighton; often with one or two other small children already attached. In a city with such severe housing problems, seasonal employment and a burgeoning younger population, you often note the pattern of four year gaps between pregnancies. A "career mother" may necessarily escape the often demoralising job-search and fortnightly interrogations at the local benefits office. I asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to do when she left school and this bright and confident child promptly told me she wanted to have her first child at eighteen and a sister or brother at around twenty two. But I readily admit that I know very young and very devoted single mums, who love their kids obviously and unconditionally and who appreciate that parenting is both as tough and as good as it gets. But what of the young fathers?

Sat opposite me at the surgery was a young, skinny boy of seventeen, flanked by his seriously pregnant girlfriend, two years older, and by her mother; seemingly three feet taller and broader than both of them. His trainer laces were undone and his coach's cap was back to front. Both of these affectations appeared to be deliberate, unlike his presence at a prenatal clinic. He looked terrified. 

The granny-to-be glared at me as I made conversation with the couple. I asked him if he was looking forward to being a dad: he shrugged and muttered that he didn't even know his own father yet. This nearly broke my heart but earned him a threatening scowl from uber-gran. She told me being a father was a "piece of p***"; that her own kids had three different dads and she'd managed without hearing from any of them. The lad shuddered, as if he too was wondering if she'd disposed of a stream of baby-fathers. 

I disagree with her utterly: it's true that a boy can easily father a child, but it takes a man to become a dad. We pressurise our boys to man-up even though this often encourages eternal laddishness. We smile indulgently as little Mikey struts around after his big brothers with his water-gun in the park but tut unsympathetically and from a distance when an older but not wiser Mick confuses assertion and aggression at the football pitch. Is it any wonder that many teenage boys prefer to steer clear of the minefield of open emotions, theirs or anyone else's? 

While society may not actively encourage boys to be promiscuous, the sowing of the male oats can still be seen as an unspoken rite of passage. Determinedly chaste at twenty five, I was considered a scared, silly or at worst frigid female. One of my dearest friends around then, a confident and funny gay man who was a virgin in his early twenties, was simply seen as some kind of freak. Pressurised into sex with his first boyfriend, he was diagnosed with AIDS at the age of twenty three.

Traditionally, little girls are not dissuaded from developing nurturing skills from an early age. Generally, I don't believe we wholeheartedly prepare little boys to expect and embrace fatherhood: toys, games and the media are still very gender-centric. 

The lad at the surgery told me he'd not really ever thought about being a father and had known his girlfriend three months before she fell pregnant. He looked as though he was being punished, although the girl and her mother professed themselves to be over-joyed at the news. His possible mum-in-law-to-be nudged him and said at least he was "in working order" and that the hardest part was over for him. I wanted to tell him that actually being a father could be the biggest, bravest, brightest part of him. I wish I had: I wish someone had told him long before he was pulled into an antenatal clinic with his laces undone and feeling that his future was all stitched up against him.

"By the time a man realises that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."

(Charles Wadsworth)

 

"For a New Father"

(John O'Donohue)

As the shimmer of dawn transforms the night

Into a blush of color futured with delight,

The eyes of your new child awaken in you

A brightness that surprises your life.

Since the first stir of its secret becoming,

The echo of your child has lived inside you,

Strengthening through all its night of forming

Into a sure pulse of fostering music.

How quietly and gently that embryo-echo

Can womb in the bone of a man

And foster across the distance to the mother

A shadow-shelter around this fragile voyage.

Now as you behold your infant, you know

That this child has come from you and to you;

You feel the full force of a father' desire

To protect and shelter.

Perhaps for the first time

There awakens in you

A sense of your own mortality.

May your heart rest in the grace of the gift

And you sense how you have been called

Inside the dream of this new destiny.

May you be gentle and loving,

Clear and sure.

May you trust in the unseen providence

That has chosen you all to be a family.

May you stand sure on your ground

And know that every grace you need

Will unfold before you

Like all the mornings of your life

"This is my most important role. If I fail at this, I fail at everything."

(Actor Mark Wahlberg)

"Father and Son" Ronan Keating and Yusuf Islam

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was."
(Anne Sexton)

Little women

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." 

(Nora Ephron)

(All photos: Gigi, album)

Mum before she married.

I was quite distressed today when my sister told me my Mother's Day card for Mum hadn't arrived in Hampshire. This will be our third Mothering Sunday without her. It may seem silly to send a card to be placed at your Mum's grave, but I've always sent her one; don't think I ever missed a year. Like her, I'm big on cards, giving as well as receiving. You can often write out what sticks in the throat and crushes the heart and the written word is a memorable testament to a feeling. Hopefully, my card will arrive on Monday.
I've been thinking I should post a little testament to my Mum as the beautiful, funny, vibrant woman that she was. Mum had a strong femininity that wrapped itself around her motherhood like a Harris Tweed cloak; reassuringly abrasive, irrefutably warm and seemingly indestructible. The photos here span most of Mum's adult life as a wife, mother and early widow, but she herself never stopped being her mother's daughter. 

I never knew Granny Barbara, but Mum talked about her a lot. Like Mum, she was a petite and coquettish woman who loved things with bows and trims, in spite of her harsh and sparse upbringing. A Glaswegian Presbyterian by birth, she left her clan to marry my grandfather; by all accounts a surly Norn Irish Catholic widower, a farmer with no land of his own. 

Barbara was initially ostracised by the other Catholic women in their part of rural Antrim. They threw eggs at her front door and refused to sit with her in church: very Christian. She won them over with a gentle nature that belied her resilience; and with her gift for "knowing": they would come to her to reveal their fortunes apparently; also, not strictly Christian! She must have said something right because the egg throwing stopped and she was embraced by the women and the parish.

Mum's feistiness seems to have been inherited from her father; her quiet determination from her mother. She often referred to her as "poor Mum", but Granny was rich in the admiration and respect she invoked in her own four daughters. There was a fifth, youngest child, a son called William; also his mother's boy, to the anxiety of his father. My grandfather was a commanding but demanding man. Barbara bore her son when she was fifty, which may seem an unthinkable age, but she was by then very much a Catholic Mother. 

Her health deteriorated after her last pregnancy, although she lived to see her girls bear their own children in England before she eventually succumbed to cancer. She encouraged all her children to fly the nest and make something of themselves, even though at the time this essentially meant leaving Antrim and leaving her on her own with a weary but volatile husband. She eventually came to England in her final illness: my Dad helped to nurse her. Practically disinherited by his own family in Belgium, she became a mum to him too.

My Mum often grieved that my sister and I are childless; for me, it hasn't been a choice and it's my one big regret in life. I like nurturing creatures: it feels empowering rather than compromising.  I often say that I felt orphaned when Mum followed my Dad two and a half years ago, but I will never feel motherless, whichever day my card is delivered.

It's funny how the circles turn: Mum always said that Granny loved the song "Que Sera, Sera" and would sing it while she did the family laundry. Mum loved it too; I look at photos of her before she became my mother and she reminds me of Doris Day, who I find adorable. The song features in the old Hitchcock film "The Man Who Knew Too Much", also starring my Jimmy Stewart. Somewhere I have the film on DVD; I warble this now, sometimes when hoovering. I hope I've inherited much from some strong minded, big hearted little women; I hope I don't waste it. What will be, will be.

When Tony and Josie got married...

Mum with her own mother, my Scots-Irish Granny, and with her first baby; my sister.

With me when I was about eighteen years old. Please ignore floral jacket.

Mum in Paris with me and my sister, the year Princess Diana was killed there. Mum's in her favorite shade of red; my sister appears to be wearing a deceased animal with shoulder pads. I am honestly wearing a skirt, albeit a very short one, and black nail polish; Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Mum went to Australia in her later years, when her health was already failing and she depended on a walking stick; she loved it there, later encouraging me to go and fall in love with the continent too.

My sister and I with Mum on her birthday, nine years ago.

This is one of the last photos taken of Mum, a few months before she died. It was taken on my birthday, almost exactly three years ago. Already very frail and ill here, she died little more than six months later.

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce." 

(Mark Twain)

"Que Sera Sera"  Doris Day

"Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic." 

(Rosalind Russell) 

"You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation." 

(Brigham Young) 

"I am a woman; my country is the whole world." 

(Virginia Woolf) 

Wherever

"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." 

(Buddha)

The other day, I popped into church to light a candle for a friend. I exited onto the street, a short distance away from another woman who I know only to nod to. A man walking past turned to look at us and the church behind us. "Catholics!" he snorted, "You don't know whether you're coming or going these days!" I assumed this outburst was fueled by the current focus on alleged Cardinal sins. Sometimes, you come up with the perfect subtle yet incisive riposte, but it's hours or days after a challenging remark or put-down In this instance, my mouth just yapped out the first thing that came into my head: "No, but we're still here!" The other woman, probably in her late sixties, wearing very sensible shoes and carrying a possibly even more sensible bag of shopping from M and S, suddenly let out a raucous "Yeah, deal with it!" After this display of random but surprisingly satisfying unity, the man scarpered up the road; the woman and I set off in different directions.

Recently, there have been several seemingly authoritative reports concluding that the Catholic Church will now need to reflect on her way forward, particularly as she chooses and embraces a new pontiff. In fact, the Church will always need to reflect; she's the Church, for goodness sake. Of course, the Papal Conclave may well instigate more particular and specific dialogues, to be welcomed by many of us. Essentially, much as others might want her to disappear in a cloud of non-Vatican smoke, the Church isn't "going" anywhere in the most basic sense, but will continue to reach wherever we may be.
A lot of pointed and sometimes pointless commentaries will be made about the latest scandal in the Catholic Church in coming weeks, in and outside of the media. This post is sincerely not intended to join in such speculation. I'm not belittling the seriousness of any individual's situation, nor any future implications for the Church as a whole. But to paraphrase an old saying, faith and people can be a bit like teabags: you may not appreciate their strength until they're in hot water. The Catholic Church does expect a lot from people; in turn, we ask much more of her priests and effectively heaven and earth from the Church herself.

I do feel that although religion is sculpted and organised by man, faith is naturally occurring. I know that I'm still very ignorant about Catholicism, but my own rather unpolished faith feels instinctive. The truest friendships seem intuitive to me; it's instinctive for me to light a candle sometimes when I sense someone is feeling lost or dark. This is what I was doing the other day; this post is also partly for that friend, even if they never read it.

Unusually for me, I have no idea where I copied this prayer from, nor who originally composed it: it was nesting in one of my scribble-books. I've resisted the urge to Google it; also rather unusual for me. It's occurred to me that it doesn't matter where or who a wish, blessing, prayer or indeed faith comes from, simply where it's intended and who it might touch along the way.

*Prayer For Unfailing Strength* 

Do not look forward to what may happen 

tomorrow; the same everlasting One who cares 

for you today will take care of you tomorrow and 

every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, 

or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. 

Be at peace, then. Put aside all anxious thoughts and 

imaginations, and say: "You are my 

strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in You 

and I am helped. You are not only with me but in me, 

and I in You." 

"Wherever You Will Go" Charlene Soraia

"No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect." 

(George Bernard Shaw)

(Photo: Gigi, album)