Photo A Day: my work here is done
Posted under Photo A Day 2011
The 6yo listening to the 4yo reading. Not shown: mummy loafing around drinking booze, smoking fags and cackling wildly.
Posts Tagged ‘Digby’
To my boy on starting school…the 2011 version
Posted under People I love
Oh my boy, sweet boy of mine. Where do I even start to find the words for you on this, the eve of you starting school? A year ago I wrote to your brother on the same occasion, and the words came easily…tumbling out, fingers tripping over themselves on the keyboard to get the eager, giddy emotion of it all down for posterity. But not tonight. Tonight it’s quieter and more measured because I’m much more reluctant to let you go than I was Bertie. Not because you’re not ready and certainly not because I love you more…it’s just because you’re my baby. There it is, pure and simple, you’re my baby and always will be. Stay home and play awhile longer, won’t you?
“I’m so excited to go to school, Mummy”, you said to me tonight, “because I’ll be with Bertie again”. And there it is, the nub of it … we’ve pottered through the last 12 months with you boys being apart during the day but, in the end, you both want to be together. How I hope your closeness is a gift that will stay with you all the days of your lives. When you weren’t at nursery we muddled along together without MrB but by lunchtime you’d be asking, “When is it going to be time to get Bertie?”. I’m no measure for Bertie as a playmate and companion, and I couldn’t be more pleased that you’ll be back together again at school.
What joy you have brought to all our lives! I could not imagine our lives without you, although we never planned a sibling for Bertie. “No sense of consequence”, that’s what your late grandfather used to say about you as your hurtled towards certain injury, all the while screaming for joy. How true that is when I think of your entrance in to our family. We didn’t plan another baby, frankly we didn’t WANT another baby for various reasons…but in you breezed with your white blonde locks and ocean blue eyes and we were smitten. In you skipped with your big personality, your funny little ways, your ‘all or nothing’ approach to absolutely everything. You challenged us, at times you pushed us to the edge with your seemingly non-stop screaming and tantrums. But then the clouds of fury would clear, you’d smile that charming smile of yours and we’d fall in love with you all over again.
“He’s good value is Mr Diggy”, this has been my refrain for the past 4 years. It’s all or nothing with you; there’s no half measures, far from it…if you’re doing it…you’re DOING IT…generally at 150%. You exhaust, infuriate, charm and delight me in equal measures. Your stubbornness and wilfulness is surpassed only by my own and, at times, living with you makes me respect your father even more for putting up with me.
Everywhere I go people stop me in the street, in cafes, in shops to tell me how beautiful you are. And you are. You are extraordinarily beautiful to look at but, hand on heart, it took me a while to see your beautiful spirit. In the beginning it felt too hard to have two very young children, it took a bit of mental rearranging to make sense of it all. I loved you right from the moment you were thrust in to my arms, deeply and passionately. But I didn’t fall in love with you until later and, when I did, oh I fell hard. Really hard. Even now, even when you are testing me to my limits and I’m furious … even now you have the power to disarm me with your sweet smile and good heart. You can put your arms around me, clutch me tight and whisper, in all sincerity, “I’m sorry Mummy” and I’m in your thrall. All over again.
So, be well my boy. Love school. Make friends. Learn well and eagerly. You’re so ready for it, you already read absolutely beautifully and I’m so proud of you for doing so. You’re quick with numbers and have, in the words of the Elephant’s Child, ‘satiable curiosity’ and that’s all you need. I said these words to Bertie last year and I’ll say them again because I can’t say them any better:
“To my boy on starting school, I give you this….courage to know who you are and defend it to the end…vision to know who your friends are because, in the end, they will mean more than you can ever imagine…steeliness of spirit to fight through the worst of it…energy to make the most of every opportunity that comes your way…inquisitiveness which is the foundation of learning and patience enough to deal with the inevitable frustrations along the way”.
Rather more unwillingly than I was last year, I am unravelling my apron strings and weaving them in to wings. Wings to set you free with. But come back won’t you?
Love from Mummy xxx
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Slipping away
Posted under People I love
1 September and, though the sun has shone and it’s been unusually hot today, I can feel the summer slipping away. The way the light moves around the house has noticeably changed in the last few days, the evenings come to a close quicker and the heat of the day slopes off with surprising abruptness. The glut of early summer veg is long gone, leaving a bounty of tomatoes ripening faster than we can eat them, a couple of sugar sweet melons, some stubbornly unripe peppers and chillis and a pumpkin patch which is threatening to take over the garden. We’ve just harvested the last of our main crop potatoes, and planted our seed spuds ready for Christmas Day. Last week’s holiday to Cornwall seems like a month ago, and the deliciously pure ‘fresh’ light in my photos seems like something from a lifestyle magazine rather than how it really was. Whichever way you measure it, summer is slipping away.
I’m fending off the back-to-school glums. It’s been a glorious summer holiday, gone all too soon…how I will miss my little chums. Only 5 more sleeps until my baby starts school and my big boy goes in to Year 1. Hardly seems like a minute since Bertie started school and, yet, here we are and Digby is about to join him. Having resigned, I have no job and no plans at this point. I’ve been waiting for inspiration to strike but nothing beyond a vague desire to feel ‘successful’ has presented itself. My measure of ‘success’ is also rather ill defined at the moment. I’m sure it will all muddle itself out for the best.
For now I’m clinging on to the last few days of the holiday, trying to erase the mental image of Diggy in his school uniform and wondering where the time has gone. Let me get through next week, Bertie’s 6th birthday and the eight (yes, eight) birthday parties in the calendar and then I’ll re-group and Make A Plan.
Really? My baby is going to school? Not right, not right at all…potters off quietly, shaking head.
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Career Clinic
Posted under People I love
Megaboys playing 'doctors' with a pencil for a stethoscope. Odd.
Diggy: “Mummy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Me: “Um…older?”
Diggy: “NO! What do you want to BE?”
Me: “Um…happy?”
Diggy, exasperated: “NOOOOOOO!!! What do you want to BE? Like I want to be a surfer boy and a parachute man, and Bertie wants to be a face painter…so what do YOU want to be?”
Me: “Oh, well I don’t want to be anything else. I’m already grown up and I have a proper job which is to [insert long boring description of my job]”
Diggy: [long silence]
Diggy, in a hushed and crestfallen voice: ”Mummy…that sounds really, really boring. So, what do you want to be when you’re a grown up?”
I might be 40 years old but my 4 year doesn’t think I’m a grown up. Does a happy little dance. What shall I be when I’m a grown up? Any suggestions?
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The wisdom of a 4 year old
Posted under Witterings
Diggy, whining: “I’m cold, brrrr….I’m cold mummy…I’m freeeeeeeezing!”
Me: “Don’t be silly, it’s not cold”
Diggy, crossly: “I am Mummy I am! Are you ME?”
Me, bashful: “Well, no…I’m not you”
Diggy, triumphant: “Well then you can’t know if I’m cold or not. I am me. And you are not in charge of me. I am in charge of myself. Everyone is in charge of their own selves.”
Exit Spud, followed by a Wise Man.
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The Gallery…Mother Love
Posted under The Gallery
I write about this a lot, mother love. Hard to avoid really since I am a mother, and had a mother whose absence is more keenly felt with every day that passes. I didn’t think I had much more to say on the topic but, never one to be lost for words, it seems I have. I didn’t think I had ‘the’ picture to go with this post, and then I stumbled upon this one…taken when Diggy had just turned one and I was coming out of the fog of that awful first year with him…when I was falling in love with him and I think you can see it in this picture. I have no recollection of it being taken, it was taken at my Dad’s when we were staying with him. That’s his crazy dog lolloping around to the right.
Last week I found myself explaining to Bertie (5) what the role of a parent is, “My job is to love you forever and keep you safe”. I’d given no thought to what I was saying as it was one of those conversations that came at me out of nowhere. For a week or so I’ve chewed it over and, more or less, I think I hit the nail on the head in terms of how I define my role as a mother…to love my children and to keep them safe. It would be easy to spin off and add all kinds of fancy bits…”to support you to achieve your ambitions”… “to help you fulfil your potential” blah blah. But that’s just a load of crappy management speak to be honest, right up there with “blue sky thinking” and all that toe curling nonsense.
In the end, it boils down to love. Ideally I would love to take responsibility for keeping my children safe but, realistically, I’m not with them 24/7 even now…never mind when they are grown up and gone. But loving them forever, and making them feel that love? I can do that. I can do that with bells on.
It’s been 12 years since my mother died and I feel as loved now as I ever did. Her love for me didn’t die with her, I feel seeped and bathed in her quiet but all encompassing love for me. She gave me enough of her love when she was alive to last me all the days of my life. I want the same for my boys. If I could give them anything in the world it would be the power and comfort that comes from knowing and feeling that they will be loved, unconditionally, forever. Because, in the end, it’s all about love. Actually.
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Copy cat…a story without words
Posted under People I love
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Silent Sunday…Angelic
Posted under People I love, Photography
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Like mother, like son
Posted under Photo A Day 2011, Photography
A little light-hearted fun at bedtime…alas the emphasis on ‘fun’ was too great and they are still bouncing around now at 8.30pm which is waaaaaaay past their bedtime. All the photos are on the soft side but there we go. Here’s Diggy, making some fine tune adjustments to the Holga. Pity there’s no film in it of course…
Bertie battles with the beastly Polaroid…
The master at work. “Click!” he says triumphantly…”Good one!”
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The Gallery…Mother Nature
Posted under The Gallery
Oh..The Gallery! Haven’t done this for a while, but then I haven’t come up for air for a while either. Tara’s theme this week is Mother Nature. I was a bit stumped as about 90% of my photos fall in to this category, but then I remembered this shot. I took it last Spring, along with many others, in a wonderful poppy field. I particularly love this one, although I never shared it for reasons I can’t remember.
I love the blurry Diggy and Bertie pottering along in the background. You can’t really see it but Bertie is hauling a couple of massive sugar beet along with him, left over from the previous year’s crop. Strange child…
Mother nature…flowers, greenery, megaboys…the holy trinity. x
