Tick Tock

Just after Christmas I shared this picture on my facebook profile – courtesy of George Takei…I believe in its sentiment – you can’t wish for a good life, you have to make it happen, sometimes you can’t do that overnight, but if you are clear about what makes you happy or perhaps more importantly unhappy, you can do the right things for you and make positive changes.

I’m not really one for new Year’s resolutions – not really, I don’t think the 1^st January is any different from the 31^st December or even the 15^th March (have I randomly picked the ides there?) but as the light noticeably returns after the winter solstice, I do find myself taking stock and thinking what I want the future to hold for me and mine. At this point in time, these are my thoughts…

 I’m still thinking about how I can manifest my support of women in maternity, childbirth and post natally – I talk and post things on facebook about it a lot – this might be the year I actually get hands on and I’m considering (still) possible diversions into midwifery or as a Doula.

 I want to write more – so I will write more, just this evening I read this blog post, written by a friend of mine – I intend to apply it, and here I am writing a blog post…

 I need to make the childminding make more money – I have some enquiries pending, if they don’t pan out, I need to be more active looking for others, and less passive. This will, I trust, support my other desires.

 We have an idea to move (possibly) when our middle daughter, Daisy finishes Primary school – that’s only 2 and a half years away now, we should make a plan…

 These things, I believe, will make me (and mine) happy, but then one of my aunts posted this great question under the picture:

“If we all did just one thing to make 2013 better for someone else, what would you do?”

I love this question – Resolutions are so often about the person making the resolution, lose weight, get fit, be happy and so on, not that these are bad aspirations but turning it around is a genius stroke and if we all did it, just one thing, then wouldn’t our communities be better places? The trouble is, and maybe this is why it doesn’t spring to mind is, it’s difficult. I like to think of myself as a compassionate and giving human being, but finding my answer to this question has been hard – just one thing, for someone else…

I could remember to take my Krill Oil every day, so I’m less snippy at my husband when the PMT’s strike – that would make his life better…

I could volunteer for the local integrated gym club, that Daisy used to attend, they are moving this year to a building not 200 yards from my front door – that wouldn’t even be too difficult and I might do it anyway, but I think my actual answer to the question is this:

I will make more time for my daughter to be 9. You’ll know if you’ve read my blog before, that Daisy is disabled following a brain tumour operation over 3 years ago. She doesn’t have a tumour any more, but she can’t walk well, speaks slowly and erratically and is generally clumsy. She’s still 9 though and wants to do things the way 9 year olds do them, and talk about things to me that 9 year olds want to talk about. The trouble is, if we’re (and by that I mean I’m) in a hurry, she gets cut off, I tell her what to do and when to do it. She complies but it makes me sad, and sometimes it makes her sad too. So on school days, I will get up promptly so that I am not in a rush, so that she can have the space to be 9. I will not hurry her when she’s trying to explain something I will try very hard not to interrupt – I should apply this to everyone actually, I know it annoys my husband too – and I will give her more opportunities to make her feelings and ideas known. This, I think, will make her life better, and that is what I will make so for 2013.

What will you do?

Writing

Dear Reader

I do like to write. That may seem obvious from the fact that I am writing this blog, but I don’t mean that, or my ambition to write a book or several. I mean I like to write letters, to friends and family, with a pen.

Don’t get me wrong I also love the communication potential of the internet and the immediate access you have to your loved ones via facebook, email and the like, but there is nothing like writing, and dare I say receiving a proper letter.

I am of an age, where letters came first. At school my mother and I would write long, descriptive letters to each other. She describing her and my father’s life in the Middle East and the progress of my then baby brother, me my adolescent antics at a girls’ boarding school in Oxfordshire. Somehow I think she knew more about my life and my friends because of this than she would have known if I had lived at home with them. In the long summer holidays we girls would write to each other, on thin airmail paper or those folding up things, where the words were restricted by the size of the paper. It makes you precise I suppose.

Last year I made a resolution to write at least one letter a month to people I care for who I haven’t contacted in a while, some of them being those same “girls” from correspondences past. I think I managed about 9 out of 12 but I intend to carry on with the practice this year. I continue to believe that they are well received!

I have some nice paper for the purpose, and I use a fountain pen, my grandad’s old Parker51 as it happens, which he gave to me when I was at University and which I have recently had serviced. It has his initials on the barrel and even though I mostly write about my family and other animals, I am reminded of him all the while. In a time before computers, it was his main communication tool, and being as he was a man of words, he used it often. The soul of the man and the memory of the words he wrote sit warmly in my hand as I settle down to write.

I have to make time for writing a letter, unlike electronic means, you cannot multi-task. It’s quiet and still and a moment of time to think about who you are writing to and what you want them to know. I prefer to be uninterrupted, but it’s easy enough to put the pen down and return to it later, and almost no danger of losing what you have already written. Most of the letters I write are family updates, so I also reflect on the things that have happened since I last wrote. For me this is as much a flexing of my increasingly poor memory muscle as it is a means to count my blessings, depending on how long it was since I last wrote.

The creation of words on the page in my ever-changing scrawl is almost magical, those streams of blue black permanent symbols coming out of the pen, making code that other people can decipher, understand and hopefully enjoy. The fluid link of mind and hand, you think the words and your hand makes them appear, this is most probably the most brilliant invention of humankind ever, everything else since is just gravy!

A hand-written letter is not perfect, you can’t go back and correct grammatical errors or repeated words, but that’s the charm. A letter is a point in time, it represents the thoughts and sometimes dreams of a person and through the pen to the page it is a gift of time, thought and for me, ritual in this age of immediacy and instant gratification.

Lots and lots of love

Mel

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