Joining Soulemama today for {This Moment}
Nola drawing a piece of art on the chalkboard entitled (according to Nola) "A Kind Mama Spider with her Babies and her Nest"
Have a wonderful weekend :)
I love this child.
Friday, 9 August 2013
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Gratitude Sunday
Joining Taryn @ Wooly Moss Roots for Gratitude Sunday
And Ann for Multitude Monday
- Boo's smiling face and sparkling eyes when she saw this... Jenny makes the most incredibly beautitul dolls, we are so grateful for this generous gift.
- Windbreaks on a very windy beach :)
- Warm waves, long and shallow enough for little girls to splash about in.
- Making friends with a little boy and having fun playing frisbee even though the wind kept blowing it about and no one could catch it!
- Nola making friends with a puppy on the beach
- A husband who is my best friend in all the world. Who knows when it is the right time to take his wife out and buy her a Bellini just because they are her favourite and her best :)
- Emmy playing her own compositions on the piano.
- Girls colouring quietly on the table.
- A deserted piece of park, a blanket, some sunshine, a poetry book and blue sky peeping through the leaves of a lime tree, while listening to the imaginative play of my two middle girls in the distance.
- Small margins for meditation.
- An evening spent crafting and chatting about life the universe and everything with a dear friend.
- Finally, the bungalow my mother hoped for but didn't expect and her joy and my relief.
- Homemade green gooseberry jam on Irish Soda Bread
- Reading Alfie and Annie Rose to Fi on the bed
- Saying sorry for being impatient about chocolate icecream splatters on the carpet
- An impromptu living room performance of a Grimms Brothers fairytale
- Tickets to a show in the girls bedroom, starring their dolls, with counters to buy icecream in the interval
- Midsummer Nights Dream on a perfect Summer Eve with strawberries, icecream and hide and seek in the gardens during the interval for the girls and a newly made friend.
Friday, 2 August 2013
Sacred Fragments...
Today was one of those days.... After a very full to brimming over Summer my mind, body, heart and soul are very ready to simply sit...down.
But what to do with many little bodies, minds, hearts and souls who are ready to create floods and swamps in the garden and jump in them?
It was one of those wash out days. When five girls were lined up watching Arriety at 10 am while the sun shined unusually brightly for an English Summer, and I was curled up with Pinterest and tea, feeling guilty.
It was one of those days where my heart cried SOLITUDE. And I wistfully reflected upon hermits living for years up mountains...And envied them.
It was one of those days where Nola played merrily in the bath till she was prune like and almost amphibian... Until she told me she had caught a fish, which actually was not a fish but a rather large, plughole blocking...ahem, something else.
Yes, she had been in the bath that long.
And, yes, our tiny garden flooded. And the oven blew up, it really did. And muddy footprints were traipsed through the house until I gave up cleaning them till they dried and could be hovered. And half my head was in a poem I wanted to write (quite an angsty one as you can well imagine by this point)...And I was wondering what we might eat for tea, while the meal we'd planned on sweltered in our damp, rather drippy fridge.
And, and, and....
Life constricted, small and shallow, inside my sinews... And I felt bad for not being the change, showing up, mind body, heart and soul, being present, engaged and brimming full with joyful surrender...
And then Tilly came up to withered, wilting me with the biggest smile on her face and a huge hug... And I heard her say something...
"What, what did you say?" I ask her, incredulous!
"Thank you Mama" (They all call me Mama which is unusual for English kids, and I really don't know how or why they started doing it but I like it)
"Thank you Mama! You are the best, you always let us play, and bring us yummy food when we want it, and you let us be Arriety all day if we want to! Today was the best day!"
The day had clearly only fallen apart within the confines of my own mind. No one else had caught on!
I wondered about sharing this day, this fragment. The sacred beauty of it all betrayed somehow in the writing down and the the passing around. But what are our lives if the broken bread of it all is left unshared. Besides, these are just crumbs. I'm well acquainted with crumbs :)
These days I seem to be finding God, in the ambiguity and beauty in the pied rather than the tidy and the coherent.
And so here is the untidy incoherence of one (sometimes) tired Mama. Well a little bit of it.
Something beautiful, rare and precious is being fashioned beneath the tides of tempest. I'm becoming convinced that these are the seas that turn grit into pearls.
Thanking Matilda and Boo for these pictures I just found on my camera ;)
Linking with Emily
But what to do with many little bodies, minds, hearts and souls who are ready to create floods and swamps in the garden and jump in them?
It was one of those wash out days. When five girls were lined up watching Arriety at 10 am while the sun shined unusually brightly for an English Summer, and I was curled up with Pinterest and tea, feeling guilty.
It was one of those days where my heart cried SOLITUDE. And I wistfully reflected upon hermits living for years up mountains...And envied them.
It was one of those days where Nola played merrily in the bath till she was prune like and almost amphibian... Until she told me she had caught a fish, which actually was not a fish but a rather large, plughole blocking...ahem, something else.
Yes, she had been in the bath that long.
And, yes, our tiny garden flooded. And the oven blew up, it really did. And muddy footprints were traipsed through the house until I gave up cleaning them till they dried and could be hovered. And half my head was in a poem I wanted to write (quite an angsty one as you can well imagine by this point)...And I was wondering what we might eat for tea, while the meal we'd planned on sweltered in our damp, rather drippy fridge.
And, and, and....
Life constricted, small and shallow, inside my sinews... And I felt bad for not being the change, showing up, mind body, heart and soul, being present, engaged and brimming full with joyful surrender...
And then Tilly came up to withered, wilting me with the biggest smile on her face and a huge hug... And I heard her say something...
"What, what did you say?" I ask her, incredulous!
"Thank you Mama" (They all call me Mama which is unusual for English kids, and I really don't know how or why they started doing it but I like it)
"Thank you Mama! You are the best, you always let us play, and bring us yummy food when we want it, and you let us be Arriety all day if we want to! Today was the best day!"
The day had clearly only fallen apart within the confines of my own mind. No one else had caught on!
I wondered about sharing this day, this fragment. The sacred beauty of it all betrayed somehow in the writing down and the the passing around. But what are our lives if the broken bread of it all is left unshared. Besides, these are just crumbs. I'm well acquainted with crumbs :)
These days I seem to be finding God, in the ambiguity and beauty in the pied rather than the tidy and the coherent.
And so here is the untidy incoherence of one (sometimes) tired Mama. Well a little bit of it.
Something beautiful, rare and precious is being fashioned beneath the tides of tempest. I'm becoming convinced that these are the seas that turn grit into pearls.
Thanking Matilda and Boo for these pictures I just found on my camera ;)
Linking with Emily
