Something out of nothing

It's been a busy week with Elliott still in trial mode at nursery, sampling two hour sessions and so this week it has been back and forth on school and nursery runs. I'm not complaining, it's still very exciting even getting a window of an hour to myself .... fiddling with paper, moving images around. So, not much art work done but enough to satisfy the craving, this is a card and envelope I made for a friend who had Elliott and I over for lunch this week. The boy starts nursery properly next week, technically this gives me 2.5 days to myself but we'll see how it translates realistically over the coming weeks. Change is in the air ...

Sweet Sixteen ...

Sixteen years ago today I married a boy, he was 21 and I was 20. We had known each other a year. We met just as we were completing our Art courses at the same college and finally got chatting on the opening night of our final exhibition. I remember being worried about having no money because having no money meant not being able to go for drinks that had already been mentioned by other friends. Mum was with me at the time having attended my exhibition and trouper that she always is, she gave me some money and told me to have a great night and off I went in pursuit of the boy with the lovely freckles and the greenest eyes I'd ever seen!

The evening was a success and the summer of 1994 is one I will never forget. Hubby told me on our third date that he loved me and on our fourth he mentioned marriage, it all felt very effortless and very inevitable. There were hard times to face when we went off to different universities and longed for the week-ends so that we could jump on a coach to get to each other, hearts beating so fast with anticipation as you stepped off the coach ... it was pure bliss and I was certain that I'd found my soul mate!

We were married at a time when it wasn't cool to get married, it was some what unusual for a pair our age but we never minded that. When I went off to uni the day after I got married with my new husband, being a fresher was the last concern I had. I was living in the very romantic city of Oxford and I remember it rained and rained and rained for that whole long winter. We didn't mind the weather conditions, we still took long walks around beautiful parks, drank coffee's in quirky little cafes, watched lots of films at the cinema, got dressed up and went out for special meals whilst all at once counting our student pennies. We were living in a ghastly shared house with a newly arrived nigerian couple deep in the throes of culture shock and a thieving south american boy/girl who stole from us but thought he might be able to conceal his thievery by reaching out to us and lending us deeply disturbing films of a sexual nature from his film collection! Through all the hard lessons of our first year of marriage finding out why for example, you should never write six months worth of post dated cheques to a landlord or why you shouldn't put bills just in your name in a shared house or why you should never rent or live anywhere that has even the slightest whiff of mould, through it all, we were blissfully happy ... even during times of unhappiness. Hubby and I have never professed to have a perfect marriage, we don't. We bicker, we can be mean to each other, impatient, we fall into habits of being very unromantic and we have times of being out of synch but above all of this we still know what we have always known, what we knew on our third date .... that we are soul mates and forever will be.

Fleeing the nest

I am sat at the computer and I am alone in the house. I am deep in the knowledge that this will be occurring with more regularity very soon as my little one is starting nursery. When I was leaving him yesterday for his first session, I spotted a few parents with quivery lips looking a little sombre but I was not one of them. Perhaps this is because Elliott The Great ran straight into nursery, ready for adventure and battle like he was Captain Jack Sparrow (his current favourite hero), perhaps it is because after six years working as a stay-at-home mother I am also ready to take flight.

I am in no denial that over the coming weeks I will miss him. I will get a lump in my throat at some stage that I will not be able to shift for a time, I will mourn my baby days being over and I will question my future but above all of this I am thankful. Thankful for the privilege of having spent these months, days, hours and minutes with my 'pocket rocket' of a boy, thankful for his health and happiness, his growing independence, his busyness and his ability to make his entire family collapse in laughter, again and again and again. I am also thankful to my hubby for making it all possible.

All photos by Stuart Tonge

Reciprocated Gift

It is such a delight to receive an unexpected gift in the post and even more so to know that someone has taken time out of their day to think of you .... and then they act on that thought! I was thrilled when a thoughtful friend did just that some months ago but it's taken me some time to repay the gesture.

The Estranged

Yesterday was my brother's birthday. He turned 43. I know this because I am seven years younger and always will be. This is a comfort as it is one of the few things in my brother's and my relationship that will remain the same. I no longer have contact with my brother, we are estranged. He made the decision many years ago that he did not want to continue having contact with either myself or any of my family members. This is a strange and hard fact and one that I am often uncomfortable and ashamed to admit, it's just all a bit too .... soap opera for my liking but hey, some of that stuff 'actually' happens in real life!

I still love my big brother. I can't help it! I still want to shout out at the top of my voice and tell the world stuff about my big brother, just like I always did when I was his little sister. I want people to know the perhaps unexpected things about him, like how he was a great draughtsman and spent hours drawing tropical birds when we were children. That he achieved a Grade A for Bible Knowledge at school, that he was a strong swimmer, had a phobia of snakes and that it was in fact he and not I, that ate Debbie's entire tin of cerelac in the summer of 1983!

No matter what has happened in these latter years, be it troubled times before the estrangement or the troubled times experienced because of the estrangement, he still remains the one who came to be my memory keeper. The one who loved to tell me 'remember whens', some good some not so good ... 'remember when you couldn't say 'idiot' and you kept calling me 'idinot'' and yes it was he who taught me the word itself. 'Remember when I convinced you to throw your shawly (my comfort blanket that I wasn't without for the first four years of my life) into the sea and we watched the tide carry it away?' he would say. Or 'remember when you swore at the table at Aunty Mary Berko's house and really embarassed everyone?'. 'Or the time that you hid behind the settee and cried when you knew I was going back to boarding school and wouldn't see you for months'.

He still remains the one who taught me about humour and about how to laugh, I mean really laugh. There is no laughter quite like the sort that comes out of completing a successful prank on a sibling (you know the kind of old school Tom Sawyer prank!). My brother and I enjoyed playing many a prank on one another. From small jugs of water balanced on tops of doors, hiding in small spaces for long periods, just waiting to pounce (our sport often took real discipline!) to throwing heavy leather pouffes when the other person was least expecting it. This, by the way, works particularly well if you have a brother who weight trains and has done 'legs' on said day, a) he cannot chase you as he is already in too much pain b) just the anticipation of the pouffe being dropped causes the body, legs muscles included, to contract causing discomfort. Brilliant!!!

One of my favourite pranks of all time came out of my big brother's habit of drinking my coke without asking and then mocking me as I opened the fridge door with a rather disappointed look on my face immediately after discovering it was no longer there. My revenge after many times of this taking place was as follows:

I took an empty coke bottle and filled it with gravy browning, bicarbonate of soda and sparkling water and voila - you then have something resembling coke that has quite a different flavour! Only make enough mixture to fill a small glass, this has a greater impact as greedy brothers knock it back quickly!!!! My brother, just back from the gym did everything as predicted, straight to the fridge to check out what was in there, glug glug followed by uuuurrrgggghhh, whilst I sat quietly laughing into a cushion. Of course, he was ANGRY, he had quite a temper but with our pranks he would always come round and would give credit and praise where it was due and after all I had performed a great prank!!!

When something made my brother laugh, it would always make him laugh and so laugh he would often at this prank I had played and I would feel a cosy 'he's my big brother and he's proud of me' kind of feeling as I would watch him laughing his deep, energetic belly laugh, shaking his head from side to side just like my Dad used to. So big brother, whether you like it or not I am shouting at the top of my voice and I'm telling the world that 'Kate-Anne' still loves you. If I'm honest, sometimes when I'm missing you I still want to hide behind the settee and cry .....

N.B Please note photo of me by a palm tree desperately trying to imitate my big bro's earlier pose. He was kind enough to give me a hand!

Me in the highchair staring adoringly at my funny big bro!

Me in big bro's arms

Laid back big brother taking me under his wing

A little help from my friend

Faith

photo by Jim Davies 2006

At times it feels like time speeds up and all that you would typically experience, say, in a year, you somehow experience and process in a matter of days. This week has seen two huge events in my life, both highly emotive. The first was saying farewell to a friend who recently passed away, a very lovely 'shiny, happy person' forever burned in the memory of all of us who had the pleasure of knowing her. Watching her husband and family bearing their loss with such absolute grace and courage has been truly humbling and inspiring.

Loss is a complex thing. So personal, so open to interpretation and ever changing. When dealing with loss, or even observing someone else's loss, it is so hard not to make it 'all about you'. I think it is one's instinct to think about how the loss either affects them personally or to ponder how they might deal with the loss of their own loved ones. I must admit, I have thought about my Dad often this week. Losing him when I was ten years old I believe has hugely defined my identity and life choices. Yet this week I have been reflecting on not just my ten year old self experiencing loss but also the experience of loss that my mother endured, whilst continuing to be mother to four children aged between ten and seventeen. As a mother myself now, I empathize with mum on an entirely new level .... needless to say, I have so much respect for this incredible woman and once again I am humbled.

This week I have also seen incredible blessing. I have spent much of my time giving thanks for my hubby's life. Hubby was knocked off his bike by a car on his journey to work a few days back and miraculously survived. He is hobbling on a sore and very swollen foot but will make a full recovery and we are both so thankful for God's protection. A nurse who happened to be passing by stopped at the scene and when she saw hubby's distorted foot was convinced that he had a bad break as were the paramedics - we are amazed that his injuries do not reflect the trauma that his body experienced. For some, this is 'luck', 'chance' but for us this is God present in a situation, it is God protecting us and very much God's functional presence in our lives.

photo by Jim Davies 2006