One bite at a time

 I have been eating a lot of elephants lately.  Not literally, of course - elephants are out of season, so it's pelicans for dinner again.  (I hope a lot of you are fans of The Goon Show, otherwise you may be questioning my current state of mind!)

But when faced with a larger, seemingly overwhelming task, wisdom dictates that we tackle it like we would eating an elephant - little bit by little bit, one bite at a time. 

My elephants are baby ones compared to what others are facing - I know that.  These last two years have been particularly stressful globally, and have, I think, created a conformity vacuum that has allowed us all to sift the musts from the wants. 

I am digging up grass (again, for those of you who followed some of my gardening antics in my previous blog.) The task is elephant sized, and I am taking my own advice and doing it square metre by square metre. The purpose is to create a back garden we can enjoy that requires less maintenance and water. Sitting pulling out long grass runner roots reminded me of a time I was explaining "weeding my life" to someone who needed someone (me) to experiment on for a  lay person's counseling course she was doing.  I got all poetic about it - talking about the easy to pull weeds, the ones with deep roots, the ones that come back despite best efforts of getting rid of them.  All very symbolic of life's problems.  

We became friends -  good enough friends for her to tell me when she thought the tea tray didn't have enough variety of goodies to eat on it, or that the sandwiches had too much mayonnaise. Good enough friends to share opinions and laugh heartily.  One day she was confessing to me how much she disliked the holier- than- thou attitude of  a mutual acquaintance, who told anyone who would listen about her good deeds.  "Of course, the only good deed I do is come to have tea with you,"  she concluded.

I was gobsmacked.  And hurt.  Obviously I had misread the relationship, so I was embarrassed too.  I did not want to be any one's Good Deed.  What a chore!  What a sadness!

I think she realised what she had said, although we never spoke of it, and our friendship limped on with such caution that it really wasn't worth it in the end.  I think of her often - she died some time ago - and wish we had managed to resolve this one. But life moves on.

And with it comes new opportunities to plant new friendships, and cherish the ones that I have.  I did make a promise to myself to never assume that people need me more than I need them - I will not be anyone's good deed again, nor patronise anyone by suggesting they are that to me. 

I have some more grass/weed pulling to do today.  Some more elephants to eat .  Some more tasks to tackle.   I am hoping to start the planting part of the new garden in the next week or so, so that I can see some progress.  We need to see the flowers of our labours to feel we are getting somewhere!

 "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible" said St Francis of Assissi.  But, being the patron saint of animals and ecology, I doubt he ever tried to eat an elephant!

Interlinked hearts

 I was a gwarky teenager - long, nondescript hair, braces on my bunny teeth, and lacking confidence to enjoy being tall and thin. One Saturday morning I went with a friend who had considerably more outwardly confidence, self worth and make up,  to a local institutional home for adults with delayed development.  It was their annual fete, with the usual tea and scones, tombola stall, white elephant stall, and some oddly shaped knitted garments. We wandered around, spun the wheel of fortune, bought some second hand books and drank the tea.  I was feeling rather overshadowed by my confident friend, and did my usual shrinking act.  

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.  Not from behind - he boldly walked up to me and looking me in the eye,tapped my shoulder. I don't know how old he was - a young adult probably, definitely shorter than me, and had a huge open smile that a lot of the residents wore, especially the ones like him with Down Syndrome.

In his hand was clenched a tombola type prize of an interlaced hearts necklace.  He gave it to me, and asked me to put it on.  "You're beautiful" he said.  And then he turned and left.

I wonder if he had any idea of the enormity of the gift he had given me.

This gift accompanied me through some difficult teenage years.  It made me stand a little straighter, smile a lot more, and helped me begin to claim my own space in the world.  Kindness can change history, because  kindness recognises the humanity and connectivity we all share.  

 

 

 

 

This little old fashioned frame and saying hangs in my bedroom as a reminder.  It belonged to my Great Aunt many moons ago.
 

Heartbeat

 I found myself squelching through a Bad Mood last week.  The snappy, irritable type that makes me replace my usual sunny disposition with a cynical and cavalier dismissal of everything as  too much to deal with.  Sort of Tigger and Eeyore rolled into one.  I can't be much fun to live with when I am like this.  It's an annual thing, and predictable, so I can brace myself and my loved ones and ask for patience and forgiveness.

It was my birthday.  I find the week leading up to my birthday one of the most stressful of the year.  I am an oddball, I know, but that's the truth. I sometimes sit and puzzle the whys and prevention techniques, but this year - pandemic round 2- I just gave into it and became the family crocodile.  It is not about getting older (I don't think) - I am pragmatic about what can be controlled and what can't.  And it is not about not being celebrated - my husband and children are kind, thoughtful and lavish in their celebrations.  Nope - it is about me, and where I place myself in the world. Am I alone here?  Am I the only person who finds it difficult to celebrate my own life from the inside? 

This birthday was on a Sunday, and it was splendid.  We packed a picnic and headed to Kirstenbosch botanical gardens and lazed under a tree in the safety of fresh air and no one sitting nearby.  We gazed over Cape Town, ate sumptuously, and discussed the philosophy of being.  I was warmed by the afternoon sun, and the company of people I love.  

It got me to thinking that maybe next year I can end April in a chipper mood, and not worry so much about my birthday.  Perhaps it will be possible to break what may just be a habit of dread.  It got me thinking that, although my life is a little one, I have achieved greatness by being surrounded by wonderful beings and loving them deeply. Perhaps that is all there is to it:  Having a heartbeat and listening to myself being alive.

I will check in with you next year and let you know......

No heartbeat

Ah - you found me. Thank you.

  Time is a currency, and your spending moments reading this blog gives a sense of value to my thoughts, so whether you stumbled here by accident, or sought me out, or got sent here by the magical whisperings of connections, I welcome and appreciate your company.  

Momentous things happen in just seconds…. the build up and ramifications take much longer, sometimes several life times, but the actual event is usually as fleeting as sneeze. So fast, in fact, that often it just fits into a regular day, and only later surfaces as a momentous occasion that deserves a second look. So I want to revisit some seconds that have shaped my life, and give them the gravity, and words, they deserve.

I hope you can relate to that feeling.   Please be generous with me - I may get messy, or confused.  I may even anger the grammar police.  I may annoy without intending to.  I see those as positives. Anyway, let's see how we go, and if we are compatible.  

"There's no heartbeat."  Her voice was flat, with a hard edge.  It wasn't her fault she had to tell me this news, although I think she resented it, judging from her phone call to the gynaecologist who had sent me to her.  She had turned the monitor away from my view, so I lay on the examination table, a human coffin, willing the tiny odd looking being inside me to come back to life.  It had been the Pregnancy from Hell.  I vomited every day, had to have a slew of blood tests, knew that this foetus did not match all the health markers of  "normal pregnancies" and there was the complication of placenta previa.  In fact, I had been sent to this specialist to have a detailed scan to check for Down syndrome, as I had summarily cancelled the amniocentesis procedure an hour before it was going to be performed.  I longed for this baby with an indescribable ache, so adding any risk of miscarriage or injury scared me.  (By the way, my cancelling a procedure I had been told to do was a huge act of courage on my part.  I usually did what I was told in those days.)

The death of an unborn child is often an unacknowledged trauma.  And when this happened - 20 long years ago- it was not deemed to be worthy of external grief.  Although, as anyone who has been through this sort of ordeal knows, that grief doesn't disappear just because we are not meant to be feeling it.   It, ironically, grows inside you until you are ready to deliver it.  And often that takes longer than 9 months.

The body had to be removed from me the following day.  At 17 weeks, the little being was fully formed, had to be broken into bits before expulsion. And then, an hour or so later, we were sent home to get on with life and deal with the trauma silently and politely.  People dismissed our experience with statistics (one in eight pregnancies is thought to end in miscarriage - usually before the 12 week mark) or with pseudo care ("you can have another one") or even with religious jargon ("It was not in God's plan").  So silence was easier to deal with.  It is a personal loss. 

It took just seconds to hear that the baby had died.  It has taken me years to process.

(It was not my first miscarriage, or my last pregnancy....it is just the place I wanted to start this blog.)

This is our only picture of Bug, taken at 12 weeks, when she was happily tumbling and dancing so much the radiographer didn't think she would stay still long enough for us to have an unfuzzy picture.