Gathered Together

Image by Stuart Tonge

On sunday afternoon, after visiting my mum we decided to take a walk in an orchard nearby before heading home. We parked the car under a pretty, blossom heavy tree that immediately began showering us with its soft petal confetti. We each separately remarked how sweet it was and after watching the boys catching the flying petals for a little while, we then went on our way. When we returned to the car after our walk in the woods and a meadow and through the orchard, we found our car's roof covered in the prettiest display of blossom. Beautiful pastel pink flowers scattered perfectly upon our roof. I then shouted 'we're getting married!' as I often do when I see flowers on our family walks. At that moment our boys smiled and then my eldest said 'look up, there are wild birds'. We each looked up as the blossom carried on its showering petal serenade and as I dismissed my boy's comment, suddenly I saw exactly what he did - two green parrots. 'There are two more above them mum!'. Indeed there were, four green parrots in the local park near my mother's house! Where they had come from I do not know, but they were together and they looked lovingly at one another and groomed one another. We even watched them rub their beaks together and kiss. It was quite something. We eventually peeled ourselves away and got back into our prettied car and in a sentimental moment, I couldn't help but think that those parrots represented each of us in our family and I began thinking of the four of us, flying free perhaps travelling and turning up somewhere unlikely. Clinging to one another for support, needing only each other to face the times ahead. As we pulled away and caught our last glimpse of the blossoming tree with the four wild birds, I said to my hubby. 'We should renew our vows and get married again'. He said 'yes!' enthusiastically and as we began talking about our twentieth wedding anniversary coming up later in the year, our eldest said 'Can I marry you right now? I think I've read about people being able to do that as long as you use the right words'. So right there and then he uttered some eloquent words and some familiar ones and asked us to kiss, and kiss we did along the quiet lane leading out to take us home. Then our youngest boy decided to take part too and he chose his very own words to speak to each of us. At times his words can trip and dance, pirouetting and taking a little time to spill out, part of the dyslexia legacy that his father has passed down to him. However, much like his father does, he found the perfect words to capture the sentiment and the occasion. Again he too gave his permission for us to kiss. And just like that, before our boys, we got married and it was as simple as could be and it was a moment. A small and quiet moment that rested between the noise and the daily humdrum. Never to be forgotten but carefully stored in the pages of my mind, pressed like you do a flower, as a happy keepsake.

Image by Stuart Tonge

Remembering the last days of Summer - 2014

This was the day that we spent in Bewdley. Not too far from home, but far enough to feel like an adventure and with home made sandwiches and a picnic prepared, we headed out. I can still remember the heat of the sun on our skin and the weight of the wind coming in through the open car windows on our journey there. This is important when you're still in the midst of days spent with skin wrapped in layers and car windows firmly closed. Today we at least have mostly blue sky, and I am privileged to be listening to sweet bird song from nearby companions playing in the trees that surround my garden. I am reminiscing about warm and happy days last year spent with these precious ones of mine. Sounds of the river, the smell of fish and chips and vinegar, trainers accidentally covered by river water, ice cream, the really good kind that comes from shops that offer a huge variety of flavours that include butterscotch and bubblegum! Small museums with fun games and sunlight that catches your goldilocks if you happen to be blessed enough to have goldilocks, and walks that lead round winding paths that lead on to bushes filled with hundreds and hundreds of heavy blackberries. Picking and eating berries until your lips are stained and your tongue says no more, and the slightest change in the wind tells you it is time to draw things to a close. I can't be certain on this but I'm pretty sure this day ended with us sitting by the river eating fish and chips. That's mostly how our days end in Bewdley and those simple days are always the best. The days when tired and sometimes wet and dirty, you climb back into the car and on the journey home you catch sight of one boy who falls asleep in minutes. He is flat out with exhaustion sleeping in his seat with curls completely hiding his face, not long after this the other boy, the elder, squeezes your shoulder and says 'that was the best day, thank you mum, thank you dad' and for just that moment everything feels perfect. A perfect summer's day ending.

One Day in May

There are always those days that you think you will remember. The ones that just work out really quite effortlessly. The ones that are easily forgotten on those colder, crisper autumn days of present. If these photos hadn't been sat waiting on my phone I probably would have forgotten this lovely day, not because it wasn't wonderful but because it all came so easily, it was just so simple. I may even have forgotten hubby's moustache phase. The moustache which kinda scared me a little, the one that made him look a bit too much like a handsome but strict uncle, like Uncle Quentin in The Famous Five! I may even have forgotten that this was the day that my youngest boy learned to make delightful high pitched whistles with blades of grass, the day he tried and tried and tried some more till he mastered it. The same day that I turned for just a second and they'd all climbed down into that slippy bit of the lock with the fast running water. The bit that I had told them to stay away from, the bit that their dad had jumped into and lifted them down into. The bit that just doesn't look very deep on photos but I assure you really was! The bit he was stood in where he could be heard saying things like 'of course it's safe' and 'you're meant to feel like you can't stand up' and 'Yeah, I love it when you think the water is going to knock you off your feet'. I did not forget that moment when they all stood on the bridge and they looked like a 1970's album cover, one of those that you pick up in record shops or charity shops just for the cover and if the album is good then it's just a bonus. I did not forget the cute sign that we saw along the canal towpath, the one showing eggs and cosmos and books for sale. The one that said 'money in the pipe please' that made me grin. I probably would have forgotten when hubby gave out instructions and made me take pictures of him, when he wanted me to capture a little bit of the edwardian feel that his moustache was giving out. What I didn't know on this day was that my youngest boy would draw in a large journal I'd bought him and encouraged him to begin recording in. I didn't know that this would be the beginning of his recording events and trips out in this way. Now, months down the line, I see his data, his capturing, his progress, his journey and it makes me get a lump in my throat. This was just one day in may. 

Easter Break

Lazy mornings, endless games, mostly with the tiniest of marbles that end up catapulted from one side of the room to the other or up and down or along stairs using the simplest man made contraptions from separate parts of unused toys. Races from sitting room to bedroom with regular shouts of 'red card' blurted out to mother, mostly ignored I might add. Breakfast and second breakfasts and third before we manage to find our way out of the front door, not before a few meltdowns, mostly mine urging three very easily distracted males out into the sunshine (if we're lucky) before she disappears. Fresh air, food, fighting mostly in that order and set to repeat with late afternoons for unwinding or being wound up depending on who and where and what. Cosy times in my bed with just one of them allowed for some time out with mama, nuzzling their nest of hair into my bosom reminding me of when I was a girl and did the same with my mum. How I loved how she would fuss with my face or hair whilst I picked up the faint smell of onions on her hands which bothered me enough to identify its source but not enough to risk her stopping her tender display. I wonder all the time what memories I am imprinting on these boys of mine? Apart from the softness of my 'big fat belly' which my littlest one likes to speak of regularly. On good days it makes me laugh as he jiggle jiggles it around, wrinkling his little nose up in deep laughter. On bad I scold him somewhat or show him a serious enough sadness in that way that only mothers can, in return he showers me with love. You know that deep kind, the kind that when you think of it out of the blue it gives you goose bumps. 

Time spent admiring the youngest member of our family, my sweet nephew and the boys second boy cousin. Watching as his hair sprouts and waiting expectantly for the famous family curls, listening as he makes that special satisfied sound as he takes in each gulp of milk from his bottle, looking in disbelief at his ample delicious baby thighs that you just cant help but squeeze. Looking on with admiration seeing that eldest boy of mine tenderly playing with this little one of ours, pure joy. Catching my big sister literally pinching herself watching the scene unfold, reminding herself that this little one is hers and that she is a mama now and seeing her glow, literally glow.

Remembering the excitement as a child when days were unscheduled, unusual, when things for one reason or another didn't go to plan for your parents and knowing that the result meant staying an extra hour at your granny's house or travelling back home in the car in the dark instead of daylight or going to bed much later than usual, not having to have a shower or bath before bed or eating fast food. Funnily enough that's exactly what happened recently and my boys punched their fists in the air in celebration of mama's failure meaning a fish and chips lunch after all. Seeing these two boys excited at: having to catch the bus into the city, the video pieces in the gas hall gallery (particularly the one where the windows of an old building get smashed with stones, from the inside) and in particular at watching their daddy perform live music for the first time. The look of pride on my first borns face is one that I'll never forget, my heart exploded and I'll forever be picking up and admiring the pretty, pretty pieces of that I am sure!  

Trips back to our favourite places because ... well because we still love them so. Time changes, weather changes, each of us going through our constant changes but somehow these cycles, these re-visits make time stand still and we cherish that! And when the sky stayed blue on our canalside picnic, we *'sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks to where the wild things are'. Once there, we smiled our biggest smiles and *'roared our terrible roars' and all was well with the world!

* Extract from Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

The Custard Factory, Digbeth.

During these recent summer days and weeks my family and I have been existing simply. Our days consist of unrushed starts, sometimes unusual breakfast treats (american pancakes are our current favourite) followed by making delicious home made sandwiches and then scooters and bikes are packed into the car, hubby (our designated driver) selects his music of choice (current favourites are Beastie Boys, Neil Young, LCD Soundsytem ... can't think what the other seven odd cd's are in the glove compartment, this will be of much disappointment to my hubby and children!) and then we're off in search of fresh air adventure normally in the form of local parks and woodland. On most days we have established a family tradition of one member of the family selecting an activity for the whole family to carry out for that day. The photographs added here show Zach's choice: a visit to the Custard Factory in Digbeth, again a particular favorite of his at this time. Hubby had taken the boys there on his own a couple of times recently whilst I had some alone time and so Zach was very keen for me to share in their good time experiences of the Custard Factory. Actually, when Zach came home one day excitedly telling me about his adventure at the Custard Factory, I began telling him that hubby and I had ended up at there on our first date - he paused and looked right into my eyes raising an eyebrow and then uttered: 'Wow, the Custard Factory was open even that long ago ...!' 

Zach led me all around the premises and was particularly keen to show me the music shop that he had visited previously where his dad had bought a Cajon. Zach is very much in love the Cajon at the moment too, he seems a bit of a natural ... said the proud mother! There's a little magic in the history of the cajon and the idea of my boy being drawn to it and its history makes my heart swell with pride. I think of the Cajon as the equivalent in instrument form of my hubby's and my own mixed race identities. The fusion of afro spanish influences and experiences, me growing up in Ghana and my hubby's roots in Spanish culture having grown up in Spain. That said, I do not play an instrument and so whilst I looked around the exotic and splendid instruments in store I felt somewhat redundant until I spied something with my little eye - a kazoo! Now a kazoo, I can do!!

I was bought my first kazoo when I was around 20 years of age by my slightly eccentric mother-in-law, a real kazoo enthusiast. I have great memories of watching her play her own kazoo on the same visit where she presented me with my own. I had no idea at the time that she had a long standing relationship with the kazoo until very recently when hubby borrowed some cassette tapes of recordings that they had made as a family to send home to relatives, when they were living in Spain (when he was a child). On one of these cassette recordings my mother-in-law performs a brilliant twenty minute solo on the kazoo which hubby featured in one of his own recordings recently - beautiful no?

So on this great day of adventure after discovering the kazoo's I asked each member of my family to select a kazoo and I purchased four kazoo's at the bargain price of £1.50 and we proceeded to be the most annoying family of four in Birmingham city centre. That walk from Digbeth to the centre of town will forever be imprinted in my memory, there were four part harmonies I can tell you! I have seen families like this before and have been perhaps a little scornful when I have observed them ... well, that's me and mine now! Oh and I forgot to mention, my kazoo is silver - she is beautiful!

There was time to take a look around vintage stores, furniture, knick knacks, clothing, a fifties boutique. There was even time for a little outdoor table tennis although I got a bit worried about having to constantly retrieve ping pong balls from large volumes of water whilst balancing precariously on one knee with the three men in my life laughing and I suspect hankering for me to fall into large volumes of water - all because I'm a little bit better than them all at table tennis! Our bellies were filled by the lovely and fresh food at 'Yumm' who had come with a great recommendation from Zach who was particularly impressed with their fish finger sandwich. He was a greatly disappointed that it was not on their specials board on this particular visit, however I was blown away by their freshly made coleslaw - delicious!

A great time was had by us all on this day, many many thanks to that boy of mine for his great idea and more importantly for his great enthusiasm and appreciation for both the big and the little things. 

Digbeth we love you, love from the Acquaye-Tonge's xxx.