That text message

On this day, thirteen years ago, I babysat my friends' twins. My friends came home late, jolly and keen to continue the party. What's a girl to do? Drink too much wine, is the answer. Except, although it definitely felt like too much wine the next morning, I now think it was exactly the right amount.

Stumbling home I realised I'd received a text from Thomas. Nothing unusual in that; we'd been friends for years and had been in regular contact since he'd moved to Wales to study a couple of months before. I was very pleased to receive this text. I was very pleased to receive every text from Thomas. In fact, I had been trying to conceal how very much I was missing his presence in my life.

I'm blaming/crediting the wine for what happened next. I sent this message:

'I think I'm in love with you.'

He replied:

'If you say that again I'll have to come home.'

'I am in love with you.'

Cut to me loitering by the bus stop, feeling slightly terrified and weirdly shy, waiting for this scruffy, leggedy, joy of a man to come home, where he had always belonged, by my side.

Samhain blessings, everyone.

Cheers!

It's been an intense week.

I can now drive round a roundabout, even a complex one with weird lane changes or traffic lights or an overturned trailer of hay or all of the above, without breaking a sweat. I mostly even take my intended exit. So now my driving lessons comprise two hours exploring the shortest, blindest, deadliest slip roads known to West Devon. And then, when I am so tired I can barely think, I drive through Chagford and run the gauntlet of horses and double-parked delivery lorries and roads created for tinners' sleds. Ah, the joys of rural life :).

The final year of my degree's up and running now. I am jogging alongside trying not to look winded yet, although the truth is I'm already developing a stitch and when I peeked ahead at the essay questions I almost fainted. But everyone and their dog's running now, it seems, so this is my version and I won't quit until I get to the finish line, whatever state I'm in by then.

My little job has begun, which has already meant I got to have coffee with Terri Windling and Ellen Sherman while they discussed writing. (Tilly was of course in attendance, but chose on this occasion not to join in the discussion.) At one point Terri mentioned the Jean Rhys quote:

'All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.'

and I realised that's part of why I'm loving this work. Jean Rhys is talking about one's own writing - and, next year, yes with a hallelujah on top to that - but it's how I think about assisting a writer and artist too. I may not be pouring my own words into the lake, but I am removing obstacles so other words and art can get there. It seems a very humble thing, but actually feels important and deeply satisfying.

I feel Rhys has set the bar uncomfortably high for 'trickle', so I'll say I've added a puddle-splash to the lake. It's just one poem, but it's my poem and I'm proud of it and it's (soon to be) published, so I'm very happy about it. 

Meanwhile, there are still those girls to raise. 3yo is having a dressing-up phase. Here she is on the way to collect her sister from school:

and I am feeling quite emotional about 9yo's decision to learn the fiddle. I've bought her a half-size one, but I still have Thomas's and it would be a wonderful thing if she could play it one day.

Last Friday was the ten year anniversary of our wedding.

I manage these powerful dates a little better each year. We were given some homemade mead as a wedding present, to be drunk in 2012. We had planned to celebrate our second wedding anniversary with it, but of course that didn't happen. It has just been standing miserably at the back of the teas cupboard all this time. So, as our women's group gathered so near my anniversary, I risked the possibility of explosion and/or poisoning and opened it. It didn't explode and it was surprisingly drinkable (in tiny quantities - it's definitely potent!). Even 9yo had a sip, and although she pronounced it 'disgusting' and went back to elderflower cordial, I'm glad she tried it because she was at the wedding too :).

I am definitely not a writer who can work whilst drinking alcohol, but I'm raising a virtual glass of this mead to love in all its forms and to the next ten years. Cheers!

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.

Happy Mummyversary!

Four days! What with Manna being a magic science IVF baby, you would think I could have planned things better, but that is the magic in the science: actually it is just as impossible to know when you might become pregnant via a petri dish as it is when making a baby in the traditional manner. So, I became a mum for the second time four calendar days (and six life years) after the first time. Having done the double birthday week once I can see pros and cons. All the stress, planning, expense, shopping, wrapping, inviting, cooking for both celebrations all in one week - but also all the fun and memories and opportunities to celebrate these gorgeous girls I get to live with. I felt a bit harrassed and very proud. I thought of my mum and wondered if my birthday is still a source of pride for her. Does she still take a moment to think, I made that person. Blimey, I must be awesome! I hope she does, because she is. 

To raise a child is the most ridiculous and magnificent adventure. The first moment you really feel like a parent - at the birth, as soon as you know you're pregnant, the day you bring your birth or adopted child home, whenever it is - that day needs celebrating. I have made a card full of forever flowers to honour the day a normal, muddling-along woman became a superhero. Hooray for us! We may still be muddling along, but now we are doing it with so much love for another person. We mums are truly heroic.

Click here to see this card in my Etsy shop.

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

Day of the Dreads

Thomas died three years ago today.

Gappy, Pickle and I and a couple of friends went up our hill to the Dada Lump. It's not as obvious as it once was, but still makes a good seat.

We lit a little fire (Thomas always made a fire) to burn some special things.

We ate (another of his favourite passtimes); even Pickle who is still too poorly to eat much.

 Treasures were hung in hedges and buried in the earth, but my favourite thing was this:

I hung all my splendid dreads, wool and all, in the branches of the hawthorn tree which grows above Thomas's head. He always wanted dreads, so now he has mine.

I don't know how long they'll last; I expect birds will make good use of them for nests.

The wind may take one or two, possibly for miles.

Or they may just dangle about, confusing the fat and happy sheep.

The hundred trees, planted by Thomas's wider community and lovingly tended by his father when he visits Pickle and I, are flourishing. It is a good place, this land which holds the Dada Lump. I am very grateful.

Pickle was tired and cold, so we blew kisses to Primrose and Fey, who also lie up here; put out the fire in the traditional manner (a very quick way to warm one's cockles) and headed for the nearest pizza.

It has been a tough day, but also it has been just right.

Wedding Poems

It is the anniversary of Thomas's death soon. All words are flown, and with them levity. My friends, I wish I could make possible your desire to be with me; but in this I am alone, even as I feel your love. 

For want of direction, I re-read the poems, written by me, which my good friend Sam read at our wedding. Here they are:

Poem for Thomas

I walk in to your study to tell you I love you.

You have your headphones on and your back to me.

I stand behind you and tell you anyway.

I tell you that you make my days, my life, special;

that I will try, when we have a family,

to be what a family needs me to be.

I will try to be bold when the urge to hide tugs me away.

I will try to remember that your faults are few and insignificant.

It does not matter if the milk does not return to the fridge.

It does not matter if you do not know what I told you this morning.

It does not matter if you never buy a birthday card.

It matters, more than my heart can hold,

the truth of it spilling down my cheeks and neck,

that you love me;

that you stand with me.

As I tell you all this

you nod your head to your private rhythm

because of course you know already.

The urge to kiss you is strong

but I can’t stop watching you,

wondering at you.

I tell you I think you are brilliant.

You nod harder.

I laugh.

You turn and grin.

He and I

The day is old and beautiful.

The music stopped a while ago.

He and I dance in the living room,

Dancing slow for my knees and his heart -

A lifetime of dancing and loving paying its toll.

He and I dance our forgotten dreams,

Lost hopes,

Flown children.

He and I dance as darkness falls on our shared life;

Smiling because it’s been so good

Crying because so little is left to do.

He and I keep dancing,

Keep daring to know all of each other,

Keep dancing towards death,

But all the while dancing together in life.

He and I

Old and beautiful

 Thomas on Our Honeymoon

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, everybody!
Samhain has passed. We're all on the dark side now... :o).

When I last wrote we were full of excitement about Pickle's first experience of trick-or-treating. We left treats at the bottom of our path (the route to our door being too genuinely dangerous for kids high on sweets in the dark) clenched between the teeth of a skull and lit only by the world's most menacing apple. (A Crawley Beauty, if you were wondering.)

Just before we set off, Thomas rushed to get his mask. Sadly for those of us with a sadistic sense of humour, he noticed and evicted the hibernating wasp before he put it on. But as you can see, he failed to notice the massive spider about to crawl into his eye.

Strangely, given how attractive he looks in that mask, Pickle cried and he had to take it off. Then, when we met up with our friends, one of them had full Sith face paint and she got truly terrified. Slightly mollified by being in my arms rather than in the buggy, we carried on, but every painted face caused her to cling to me in such desperate horror that we soon turned back. If I didn't know face paint existed, I'd have been running for the hills too - if only to avoid catching something!

Samhain is our anniversary of being together (five years now), so we'd planned a babysitter so we could go out once she was asleep. But, after her traumatic evening, we just couldn't bear to risk her waking without us there.

Fireworks night was far more successful, but Thomas has taken the camera to the sea, so more of that when I'm here next.

And that may not be soon. I'm in the midst of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo to those in the know) and attempting to write 1667 words a day. As a compulsive editor, I can delete faster than I can produce words, so to give me any chance, I've resurrected a novel which I've been ignoring for months... or, actually, years. It turns out to be a) bordering on chick lit and b) bordering on good. Still trying to work out how those happen simultaneously, but that's how it is. I'm up to 11,885 words, which is on target (to save you the maths) and appreciating being online so much less. Maybe it's the 'net rather than the screen which gets to me.

If I stay on target, I'll give you an update on my progress; and if I don't, I'll make my excuses on the other side. (Now those I could write about at great length!)

Wish me inspiration!