Yesterday we attempted a big Hollywood style welcome for our granddaughter who was arriving home from France.
Everything was set up, we knew which window to wave at. We had tracked the ferry.
Everything was set.
And then we missed the moment by a moment.
You might think that a docked ferry suggests more than a moment, but from regular ferry watching I can assure you that sometimes it takes me longer to reverse my car into a parking space than for these ferries to nip backwards into the port. I am confident that we will be easily forgiven by an 18-month-old. But next year we really do have to get our ‘A’ game on. It is always the people who live closest that are late.
Privacy and a woman who ponders daily online might not seem a natural pairing.But only a very small percentage of my ponderables or imponderables are blogged about. People don’t feature much in pictures. Today is an exception This blob on a beach is our middle grandchild enjoying a soft sandy beach close to home. This is a week of very high tides, something that can be a flood worry. The other side of the story is very low, low-tides which is how we found the soft sandy beach, way beyond our usual rocky shore. The sand was so very soft and clean she immediately ducked down to run the damp sand through her fingers and became a living version of drone filming , a technique that has become so popular as infill in film and television story telling. Artists and designers also love a flat-lay image. It is probably not going to catch on as a portraiture fashion but I rather like the image. Low tide near home is not my usual thing, the rocks are slippy and slimy but the area of the beach that only gets seen infrequently seems much cleaner and kinder to my ankles. I may become a low-tide wanderer. A reliable habit, of more value than being a cranio- caudal portraitist.
My random blogging suits the way I ponder life. Back in January, I followed a challenge to accept a prompt every day and incorporate the prompt into ponderings. Initially, I dreaded the prompts but 31 days of a very dull month, with prompts, taught me a little bit. By using the prompts WordPress shares my blog a little wider than my usual small group of followers. I have since gained a few more. There are prompts available year-round and I suppose I use about 1 a week in ordinary circumstances. So it is unusual for me to use two in a weekend. I was about to ignore this morning’s prompt but it could work on Mother’s Day.
Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
Congratulations old thing, you made it to 100. 100 years of being an imperfect human, mother, grandmother and friend. Following a delightful female inheritance of not being a stereotypical perfect woman. Sometimes barely even making the grade of ‘ good enough’ which was exactly the standard you set yourself.
Enjoy 100 and beyond, Perfection is over-rated.
Xx
I have two children and three grandchildren. I have been the oldest woman in their maternal line for nearly 30 years. So not just their mum but the oldest woman in their Matriarchy.
Just like beautiful weeds they did just fine, better than fine as we muddled along with no elder wisdom.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers who just make it up as they go.
My daytime yesterday was a series of jobs. Intrinsically with not a jot of anything worth blogging about. Apart from the evening which was fab. But sometimes the prompts that my blogging platform puts out each morning hit a nerve. This morning was such a moment. Yesterday I ran out of sticky tape to wrap a parcel. I had also run out of a specialist tape used for framing pictures. It made logistical sense to buy both from a specialist art shop. But as you can see there are four items in the above picture. Nowhere on my mental shopping list did a rose gold highlighter or an off-white marker feature. My exact thought as I walked out of the shop was .Why can I never just buy the two really dull items? Why does every trip to an art shop tempt me to buy more materials?
So with the two additional items in hand I then ponder where the fault lies. The culprit I decide is the specialist framing tape. I could have popped in anywhere and picked up parcel tape and just picked up parcel tape. But Loxley Gumstick Handy Artist Gummed Tape is a very dull looking product. I had to search it down . Past every known and unknown art product.
Then my pondering attention turned to the parcel tape. Had I not needed it to wrap a birthday gift, I would not have needed to be anywhere near the art shop because the framing tape was not a super urgent need.
Is not buying unplanned items a skill?
Is it even possible in an art shop ?
Two questions worthy of a ponder…
Maybe the blame lies with the birthday girl whose parcel needed wrapping.
Maybe I should just accept that for a trip to an art shop, only two unplanned items was not such a bad result and that the fault is all mine.
The 15th of September, a day that I usually allow to pass without too much notice. It is 29 years ago that my father died and it is maths that makes today different. I was 29 when I had my first child so he is now the age I was when I effectively became parentless. My mother was already terminally ill with neurosarcoidosis at the time of my fathers death. This is not in any way a sad ponder. I am blissfully lucky to have two adult children who stand successfully on their own two feet and for whom being actively parented is not essential. They are also fabulous parents themselves. But what exactly, as a fully grown adult did I lose 29 years ago. How has my life map been altered by not having an older generation above me for almost half of my life. No brothers or sisters aunts, uncles or cousins to seek the answer to life’s adult quandaries. In truth I have muddled along with the help of friends and sometimes strangers. By and large muddling along has been fine, there really has been no other option. I am certain that with my parents around some of my adult decisions would have been different and better informed. That in itself is quite life affirming, in that, with a little bit of effort poor decision making can be turned around.
A few years ago I bought this painting of two Hares from a fellow artist. It reminded me of that September day 29 years ago. My Dad has quite a sociable death and he had gathered the people he wanted to see over the few days of his demise. His bedroom overlooked the flat fields of the Essex countryside. The recently harvested fields were the playground of Hares whose antics gave everyone something else, beyond death to think of.
I have never seen a Hare since.
Today I decided to turn this small picture into a much larger print as a celebration of love and loss, and all the complexity of being the young matriarch and growing to be an old one.
Sometimes there is a question that requires an answer and sometimes the answer has to wait a bit. This time last year we were accustomed to being, mostly distant, hands off, Skype, grandparents to one small person. On the horizon however were two more grandchildren.
How would we cope with 3 when our hearts were somewhat full of one?
As it happens hearts swell to accomodate and we have just concluded a summer month of 3.
The answer turns out to be that we coped and 3 is fabulous.
I was in a slightly eccentric cafe today when this picture knocked on my memory. In the 1970’s this print hung on my parents dining room wall. It was a mass produced print. Possibly from a chain retailer like Woolworth. This would have been completely out of character, our home exuded mid century modern good taste long before it was retro-chic. I was possibly the only person who ever looked at this picture In a small family of three we all sat at the same place at the table every day. I know my dad hated it, my mum never expressed an opinion. I imagine it was a gift that had to be seen when the person who gifted it visited. I looked at this lightly wooded scene most days for ten years. Then when I left home and there were just two people left in my home my parents decided to build a new extension on the back of the house. The wall where this picture hung was fitted with shelf units and it was never seen again, until today.
Oh the difficult conversations that have been had while staring at this woodland stream. The awkward silences, the introduction of unsuitable boyfriends. The endurance of meals that did not suit my hungover, teenage self. There were celebrations and happy meals too, reunions, parties and special birthday gatherings.
I wonder where the picture went. My heart gave a little jump when I saw it today. There is a part of me that still wonders where the stream of life is taking me and another part that would be happy to still be in the dining room just looking at this, one more time with my parents.
@theoldmortuary we have been without Dads for quite a long while. So it was a surprise to us that today was Fathers Day. We were at a party recently when people were excitedly discussing their grown up children visiting at the weekend.
” How lovely” we said ” Why are they coming this weekend”
“Fathers Day!”, said with incredulity, was the chorus.
It says a lot about targeted advertising that we are no longer made sad by being bombarded by advertisers trying to sell us gifts for our deceased parents. Post Covid it seems that people are making more effort to mark these days, not with gifts but with visits. Family time is more precious when it has been denied or not easy for 2-3 years.
Now we get to witness ‘ Fathering’ from a different direction. Our three granddaughters have two excellent Dads, their mothers are excellent too, but that is for another day.
Fathers Day is, for us, a day of celebrating a job well done, by the next generation.
However my photo archive has failed me. To illustrate this blog I wanted pictures of Seahorses, creatures where the Dad really does the hard graft of actually giving birth. They are not so good at barbeques or reading books but, giving birth! That is quite a good task to lift.
All my photograph archive held, was a horse by the sea.
Such a solid piece of good sense. This popped up on Facebook yesterday. Mostly these positivity posts leave me a bit cold, particularly if they have a religious or new-age vibe. But this one just feels like a pragmatic way to cope with the tough stuff. My dad was a pragmatic, kind person who always stated the obvious in a way that was instantly useful. Although he has been dead a while I still rely on many nuggets of his wisdom and am reminded of him often.
Museum of Modern Art. Bangkok
This painting which I met for the first time last week made me want to walk this path with my dad. I Imagine many people viewing this for the first time would instantly think of their fathers. So often parental relationships are complicated or difficult to explain but this simple straight avenue of trees looks inviting and calm, a place of great conversations no matter how insignificant or indeed life changing.
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
This prompt from the host of my blog made me laugh this morning so it seemed foolish not to use it as my source material. Jetpack, my host, gives a daily prompt which I ignore for the most part.
At age five I was heartily sick of being asked what I wanted to be when I was a grown up so had formulated an answer that made adults slink away.
“A lady, how about you”
My mum always told me off for being rude but I was truly sick of being asked that question.
A better one was, “What sort of house would you like when you are grown up?”
The answer was always the same and could even be an adult dream fulfilment.
“I would like a house where every room has chocolate digestive biscuits available”
Neither of these were the answer that made me chuckle this morning.
In the 60’s and 70’s my mum ran several Contraception and Sexual Health Clinics. The talk in my house was often of a pragmatic sexual nature. Imagine my parents ran a hardware store and talked about nuts and bolts. That level of conversation.
Not surprisingly my mums colleagues did not have a lot of children so when they held a monthly planning meeting at our house, there was usually only one other girl, Briony, brought over to play while our mothers plotted to limit the worlds population, starting in rural Essex.
One particular summers day myself and Briony were having the best time dressing up as Hippies and planning our careers at age 8. I had at that point moved on from the thoughts of being ‘a lady ‘ .
We both almost certainly knew what might irritate our mothers. Briony’s family were Quakers and if anything the conversations in her home were even more liberal and free thinking than in mine.
Eventually our mothers clip clopped into the garden to see what we were up to. I say, clip clopped, because all of my mothers friends wore Dr Scholl wooden sandals.
Our mothers and their friends were eager to hear what two such vibrant and enegetic little hippies were planning to be.
The answer, when it came, was not what anyone expected.
” We are going to travel the world as sex addicts”
While researching for this blog I went to the website for Scholl. I may well get a pair for old time sake and to commiserate with myself with never reaching my ambitious goal in life.
theoldmortuary.design 