LalaDom.world

We are in British summertime now. The whole winter has passed since you died. And I have a feeling that you know very well what’s going on with me and what’s going on in the world. Still, I hear your voice on the phone as you drove back from work every evening. Still I wait in my chair for you to bounce through the front door with armfuls of flowers or with a look that said ‘seeking sanctuary for a short while’. Still, I wonder where we should meet for a coffee and which garden centre to browse in?

Eric was learning about Van Gogh and told me he’s drawn ‘Starry Starry Night’ at school. I know you’d like that.

On 5th November 2019 we were in Plymouth for a few days to see Chow and Julie and the bairns.We stayed in the Premier Inn at March Mills, so only five minutes away from Chow’s. John went to the art group with Chow on Tuesday morning – lovely for them both. You’d have been proud of me on the way down, cos I drove from M6 toll to Bristol services! Not bad eh?

Well Ria, we were all doing OK in the field of sad poppies without you. I gave Julie your poppy scarf and Chow has your metal poppy and your Dad’s white box etc. All safe.

There have been monsoons of rain since you died.

Susan’s Dad, Arthur, died in October. Poor Susan and Chris worked so hard and gave him a lovely send off. John and I went too, but it was very hard. Felt you all around. Katie looked lovely in your dark coat and it fits her beautifully. She’s still teaching.

I’ve been wearing your Winnie the Pooh nightie. It’s really comfy and warm. I think I’ll look for another one. Don’t know what I’ll do when my green coat wears out. It’s such a comfort – remember, you got it for me when Dom died?

We had a short trip to Looe and went up high to look at the sea for you. What a sight! What a colour! I’ve put some of your sea glass into Dom’s duck pate bottle in the bathroom. It looks cool. I miss you terribly.

30.1.2020

Happy New Year my darling – wherever you are.

I’m getting round to writing but it is hard to get down to it. I’m in Scona, lots of chatter and a few children playing – sort of happy noises with the clatter of tea and coffee cups. It’s nice to be out in the hills, but I’m without you. And tonight I’m taking your sewing materials and lovely threads to Maria in Uppermill. Mel never forgets me – she and Deli are a great comfort. Your friends have planted an apple tree for you in Mossley. It’s a little gem and will blossom in spring.

Marcus and Catherine came to see us two weeks ago – they are both well you’ll be glad to know -and busy settling into their new house in Macclesfield. Marcus is wishing for a bigger room for his study…It was lovely to feed them and listen to them…a bit like having you in the room, but of course, you were there anyway.

Some parts of Christmas were very difficult. Not wrapping your present was worst – but also those moments on my own in the living room, just waiting for you to bounce in through the front door with your lovely smile. I think that’s my strongest memory – Ria arriving. And I know what it meant to Dom too. My mind often goes to how I felt to hold you as a baby and our love for each other as we started to explore the world together. Me nineteen and you nine minutes old.

I’m told by Marcus that Cal is well. Working one day a week in Manchester and living with Claire’s family and Muj the cat in Chorlton.We don’t hear from him at all and I don’t chase him. He will come if he wants to and when his time is right.

The Books of Condolence from AQA were posted to me. The words people wrote about you would warm your heart Ria – from Manchester, Harrogate and Guildford  – beautifully wrapped. I have passed them on to Marcus and Catherine to keep.

I’m hoping I might see Janet tonight at Maria’s – and Kaz sent a Christmas card. I’ve put a scarlet polyanthus in your red teapot and it stands next to Dom’s boot full of narcissus. Fill your boots with narcissus! I’ve got all your seeds to plant out in the spring.

Was at the Christie last week. The strangest thing was not texting you straight away with my scan results. You were always the first one I told. Still, nothing to worry about, as you probably know, just new meds in March after the next scan.

I’ll stop now and sup my tea and eat a cheese scone. I love you.x

20.4.20

April Ria and you wouldn’t believe what’s goin on. Well, maybe you know.

I’ve put a lemon drizzle cake in the oven, so I’ll write a bit while it’s cooking. The whole world has been visited by a new virus called Covid19 and we’re all in what they call ‘lockdown’! The hatches have been battened down me hearties, to ‘suppress the infection rate’. It seems it spreads like flu, in droplets from the mouth. Not dribbles, but if you can smell someone’s breath you’re in danger of infection. The whole world, I kid you not Ria!

The cake’s cooked. I’ve left it to cool while I write. Everywhere has closed down – schools and AQA – most retail but not supermarkets – garden centres, where they’re throwing away plants – cinemas and theatres – cafes and restaurants – leisure centres and gyms – swimming baths and parks – nurseries and universities – and we all have to stay indoors until this murderous government decides they can unlock people. 

The hospitals are very busy trying to save lives in Intensive Care and Critical Care and doctors and nurses putting their lives on the line treating people infected. Stuart’s brother died in London ten days ago (you remember my friend Stuart in Barbados who had bowel cancer?) Someone in John’s art group lost his mother three days ago. People in Care homes and hospices are quite trapped when the infection starts. Jean is having to stay in her room in the Care home in Halifax, with no visitors allowed. How do you continually explain it all to someone with dementia? She has phone calls from Ant, Gary and Ben and Dougie of course – and I write to her as often as I can. Remember, we planned to go there together? I haven’t seen Jeanjeanie for two months now.

Nell’s at home with us now that the theatres have closed and to be honest, I was glad when they did. This murderous government left everything too late cos they’re fucking thick as a double ditch and all standing like Childcatchers in their black suits with their patronising turns of phrase.

Hinnie and Noni do our shopping for us, God bless them. They have to leave it near the doorstep as we all have to stay two metres away from each other. You can imagine how John and I feel because we can’t see Eric or Ella. I can imagine how hard it is for Eric and Ella too. Sometimes their Dad brings them to look at us and wave…but it’s when we say goodbye to them that I see the toll it’s taking on their little faces. Our house is their second home and it’s not the same without them. Just as it’s not the same without you. But nothing will ever be the same again.

We have a Covid19 update everyday on tele. Yesterday Ria, we heard that 16060 people have died in UK hospitals, but that doesn’t include those in Care homes, hospices, at home or on the streets, so it’s probably double that figure. Most research establishments are working on a vaccine which might be a year away at least. So it could be a long lockdown for us.

When I see the work going on in Intensive Care units Ria, it seems as if all the patients are going through what you went through as you were dying. I’ve even found myself asking if Covid19 killed you in September…You told me you thought you had flu, but none of us were to know. Or ever will. I keep getting thrown back to sitting by your bed, talking quietly to you, knowing you could hear me and stroking your hair, holding your little hand and kissing you softly. It’s a funny thing, but you looked like my little baby girl, lying helplessly in your cot and I couldn’t keep my hands off you.

We watched you slip from the induced coma into unconsciousness. We watched your eyes open and see nothing, as the attentive nurses moved you to make you comfortable. Hin and I saw you look at us from a deep distance as you lay quietly, and we saw your fear. It matched our own Ria, but it is equally matched by our love for each other and we shared that. You heard us I know, but you never woke again.

We sat with you for seventeen days. Several times the doctors reduced the anaesthesia to see if you would wake. Maria, Janet, Kaz and Mel were all beside you, caring for you with great love and Chow and Chris were your guard of honour. Marcus and Cal did as much as they could bear and Claire brought love from all your work colleagues. We played your music to you every day and we played the music others wanted you to hear.

A sweet hospital chaplain came to sit with us, to pray with us and to ask if we would like a reading from the New Testament. I asked him for the story of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, calming the storm. He chose the version from St. Mark, because, he said, “Jesus is sitting on a cushion”. It felt right.

On another visit, he asked John and I if he could bring a poem you love for us to read to you. We chose John Keats’ “To Autumn” and he brought a printed copy for you. This chaplain had been a priest in the Swedish church.

Now I listen and watch across the country and the world those families who cannot be with their loved ones as they are dying and cannot even attend their funerals. 

The early morning of September 10th was a gentle and fresh dawn. Your bed had been moved from Intensive Care to a general ward with a quiet room and huge window looking out over treetops into sky and free wheeling birds. A blackbird was singing. Always the first and the last…

A blackbird visits here about three times a day. We whistle at each other, but he’s the best singer.

The cake will be cool now, so I’ll nip off and dribble lemon icing on to it.

I miss you always and you are with me always.

Let it be known that the ballerina is not a woman dancing:
that, within those juxtaposed motifs she is not a woman,
but a metaphor that summarises one of the elemental
aspects of our form, sword, goblet etc.,
and
that she is not dancing, suggesting, by the wonder of
ellipses or bounds, with a corporeal writing,
that which would take entire paragraphs of dialogued
as well as descriptive prose to express in written composition:
a poem detached from all instruments of the scribe.

Mallarme, “Oeuvres Completes”

Lines written at 6.35 a.m. on Tuesday 11th August 2009

We’ll walk together over grey pavements
and cross in busy night traffic
– wider than usual, this road –
and you’ll touch my arm
to keep me safe.

We’ll talk at the bus stop
and all the passing people are
everything you know
and you’ll check the time,
knowing it’s a new place for me.

We’ll climb together
into a big, fat, red London bus
to the top deck
– you like a feather
in a bedroom breeze
and me testing the gravity
of each stepped move.

We’re on a roll:
loving me, loving you,
loving London
and going home.

January has passed and I’ve given the birds the last of the Christmas cake…

……

I like this – especially because it came from Susan Sontag…

“There is something about facing a mortal illness that means you never completely come back. Once you’ve had the death sentence, you have taken on board in a deeper way the knowledge of your own mortality… there’s something in you that’s permanently strengthened or deepened. It’s called having a life.”

…..

Frogs and Conkers

I love my brother Eric to the moon and back. As a child he was my best friend.

He always rang the bell upstairs on the bus on the way home from Sunday school when I dared him and he was always the one who got told off by the conductor while I sat in innocence. .

 

He walked out on to the ice on Longholme Lake in Bedford when I dared him  and fell through it while I watched in horror. A man rescued him and we went with him in dripping freezing clothes to Nan’s.

He and Patrick Francis stuffed a frog down my back and thumped it.  I went completely hysterical. I didn’t think that’s what frogs were for. They also showed me how to cook bread on a stick over an open fire. Cubs was an interesting place. I used to walk across the allotments to meet him coming out of cubs with Buster, our dog.

He was always a good listener. He taught me how to smoke a fag properly, having watched my early attempts. He was always quiet and brave.

We were standing by the garden gate getting ready to play conkers. The scissors worked a treat and made a hole in the conker and went on to make a hole right through his hand. We stood there, amazed. As we have done many times in our lives since.

……

Jo

I have a precious friend called Jo who lives in the Midlands with her husband Shaun and their daughters Lydia B and Rosie B. Jo and Dom were very close as stepbrother and sister and it  meant so much to him when she visited in the months leading up to his death. They were kindred spirits in many ways I think. It is really to Sandra that I owe this special relationship. Sandra Bickley is Jo’s stepmother and she brought us close.

It’s lovely to have the little gifts and notes sent from Lydia B and Rosie B at different times of the year – although I must be a very mysterious Nanaleigh to them. I love  how Jo remembers her big brother and am happy that she remembers me.

……

It’s February 2019 now and the birds are happy.

Plenty of tiny bits for them to gobble. An old gardener in Tenterden, Kent, told me that by February 17th the birds know who their mate will be. Percy was the last man in England to plough with oxen and the BBC came down to Tenterden to make a programme about him. So he was probably right about the birds.

The garden at Ye Olde Cellars in Tenterden was an Elizabethan walled garden. He cared for it every day and it was a source of great peace for me. He even let me help him now and again and I carefully followed his instructions as I planted his asters or picked his loganberries. He could never have known what he meant in my life. When I left, he gave me a plant with a note pinned to a stick in the soil:

“The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth,

You’re nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth”

……

Nearly midsummer – a night’s dream – I love that play!

……

In June Stuart asked me ‘What do you write?’ and this made me think. I do lots of thinking and not enough writing these days. A complete lack of self-discipline.

Water Melons and Hurricanes for Stuart

The melons are running and hurricanes coming,

and our texts cover oceans and oceans of stars,

like strong-hearted pirates,

on wind-blown galleons,

chasing the waves.

setting sail for Bim.

Your hurricane blows and the skies darken low

and you batten the hatches and make safe below.

It is patience and hope that will lessen the rain

and it’s love from the dear ones will soften the pain.

Now it’s time for the crow’s nest,

to hold, climb and balance,

watching the water for first light of dawn…

 ‘Land ahoy!’ we can holler,

 and all haul away to the last morning stars.

Then we’ll play on the beaches and sing in the bars.

…..

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shits that weigh you down.”

Toni Morrison

…..

I’m tryin’ Toni, I’m tryin!

…..

Jean O’Keeffe and I share a fifty year-plus friendship, give or take a few more years….

In 1967, I lived in Burton-on-Trent with my husband-at-that-time, John Mathews and our three children, Ria – nearly five, Chow – three and a half and Dom – about six months. We lived in a grey, granite house, rented to us by Ind Coope Brewery and formerly the home of a Chief Constable. It felt as if a uniformed person still haunted it. The children coped with the house better than I did with my postnatal depression

When you used to hang nappies out on a cold morning, it was a good thing to have a long washing line in a long garden. You just couldn’t help but notice if someone else was doing the same thing at the same time, a few doors away.

Walking along the street with the children, a smile and a wave from the dark-haired woman who looked busy and, before long, a chance to feel at home in a family home very like my own. Early mornings, nappies and nappy buckets, feeds, fish fingers, chocolate cake, biscuits, toys and children’s laughter. We’d push our prams out together and look after each other’s bairns and, generally, find ways to stay sane in the expanding bubble of young motherhood.

Jean is a northern lass, which chimed well with my Geordie heritage and our love of the north. Burton-on-Trent was definitely in the south.

Ria, at fifty-seven, said Jean is “the twinkliest person I know”.  You see, what Jean does is tell it like it is. I soon got used to that and to appreciate its great value. We’d go for picnics on the mound near Tutbury Castle – a Royalist stronghold – and still holding on strongly. I remember an amazing occasion when we met Oliver Reed in Burton. He was coming to grace some boring midlands event in the town and Colin, Jean’s husband-at-the-time had got us some tickets to get in with the in-crowd. We mingled with the scrubbed-up-well and drank posh drinks, ate tiny snacks  – and waited.

A sudden hush, then Oliver was conjured  up – drifting quietly through the double doors. All eyes were on him, as he started his magic weaving motion round the room. He was like a genie, oozing warmth and charm. A tall, strong man, with twinkling blue eyes and dark hair, who held the whole room in the palm of his hand. Quite a presence! One that is forever associated with Jeanjeanie in my mind.

Jean is a writer, with a mercurial wit and a dancing sense of humour, easy to warm to and great to get up to mischief with. Her husband-at-the-time used to come home from his work as a journalist with migraines. These were new things to me. I’d never come across them before. Highly visible, because you could tell what was happening when you caught sight of the clothes which started at the foot of the stairs, as he undressed on his way to lie down in a darkened room. Colin and John, my husband-at-the-time, would eventually come to share their love of motor bikes and cars and be off on adventures of their own.

When my marriage broke down later and I was fighting a legal battle for the custody of my children, Colin and Jean were right there with me, standing at my side, supporting my case as a mother and helping me to move forward through those dark days and nights. I remember their anger when the judge felt it was ok for Ria and Chow to go to boarding schools with a guardian appointed, while their father and stepmother were overseas. They fumed at his remarks that boarding school had served his own children well, when he was doing his colonialist service in Sierra Leone. The Sixties was good for hippies and Beatles fans but not good for women and children.

The Seventies brought re-structuring and our paths diverged. I lived in South Benfleet, then Ellesmere Port with Dom and second husband Howard. Jean had moved north to Norton, near Stockton-on-Tees and their home there became a place of sanctuary for the times when I could have  my children with me – usually boarding school holidays. Christian was born in 1973 and he spent his first Christmas there – our children all so happy to be together. We share our children.

Later, when her marriage broke down, Jean moved to Dublin with her boys. In 1980, I took the Dun Laoghaire ferry from Holyhead and Jean met me off the boat. We spent a few days together and a friend of hers from Derry gave me a copy of Ulysses. Early one morning, Gary, Jean’s eldest son, let me borrow his bike and I rode into Greystones along familiar lanes. On the way up the hill into the town, I noticed blood trickling down the edge of the road. At the top I found a cow lying on the verge – dead – and bleeding into the grass. I knew some vehicle from the ferry had hit it in the night. I stood by a gate looking across the landscape I loved, but it wasn’t long before I turned around and peddled back. Ireland was a country where cows crossed the road and dogs lay down in the middle of the road at that time. The bloody innocence stayed with me always.

We paddled our way independently forward, Jean and I, probably watching the horizon hoping to catch a glimpse of one another.

I can remember Jean coming to visit us in Oldham when Hinnie was born in 1984 and her joy when she saw the new babe. “Is she ours?” she asked with joy. Our children had grown and we both worked in vulnerable communities and started and completed studies we’d missed in our youth. We were both with new partners, Jean with Dougie Steel and me with John Cook.  Jean was in York and I was in Manchester.

In the winter of 2010, after lots of looking, I found her and we met again. It was as if no time had passed and there had been no pain in our journeys.

I drove up to Hebden Bridge, parked the car near the ducks, got out – and there was Jean, waiting for me! I had conjured her up and found one of my most precious pieces in the jigsaw of life. We had a coffee, talked non-stop and asked someone to take a photo of us. Jean pointed to a house high on one of the Hebden Bridge hills – an old school house I think, where she lived with Dougie. She told me she was teaching at Sheffield Hallam and about the Readers’ group she ran. Ant, Jean’s middle son, was teaching Art in Todmorden she said – and living in Mytholmroyd, not far away. Ben, her youngest, was away living in or near Bath and she loved going down there to see him. Gary was still in the northwest and she was seeing him regularly.

In March 2011, Jean got in touch because she was worrying whether Chow was safe. A new submarine had got itself into difficulties in the Kyle of Lochalsh. I explained to her that Chow wasn’t directly involved – but also told her I was in Peckham, south London, with Dom. Our son had just been diagnosed with aggressive rectal cancer. 2011 was the hardest year of my life. All the hard times I had ever known were simply rehearsals for what John and I faced throughout 2011. Dom  came home to live with us in May.

Hearing the consultant tell our son that he had within one year to live and then leaving us alone to gather ourselves and try to grasp the fact was hard, but listening to Dom’s question to me “What did she just say to me?” and having to answer him was of another dimension.

We set up a ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ list. When he had his heart attack in June 2011, I remember how cold the emergency A & E space felt as I sat with him in the early hours until he was taken by ambulance to a specialist unit in south Manchester. I remember the courage of his sisters and brothers at the time – and the dedicated visits they made to him.

Jeanjeanie was always there for me. We wrote letters now and again and I have all the emails she sent. The chemotherapy and radiotherapy visits were regular, with Dom lying in the back of the car on pillows on the journey to and from hospital. We had a last holiday in August 2011.   “Now is the time to take that holiday”, the consultant had told us. So, north. It had to be north. Dumfries and Galloway – with its hills, its woods and its night skies – was such a comfort.

In October 2011, our grandson Eric was born. Dom lived long enough to wonder at him and watch him. He loved children.

He died on November 6th 2011.

I remember Jean in her red dress at the funeral. I remembered Dom’s colour poem as a child, which ended “Red is the brightest and best colour of all.”

Our opportunities to be together dwindled after I had a kidney removed in 2013 and it took a while to recover. Jean mentioned tripping and falling and forgetfulness in her emails and that she had been diagnosed with a kind of epilepsy, which was interfering with her teaching and travelling. We were both growing old, doing too much and young in our heads. We swapped recipes and snippets of news about what we were up to or about the children. She was hoping to be able to move house and seemed very busy and occupied with it all.

Dougie’s message in May of this year about Jean’s fall and diagnosis of dementia was such a blow, but nothing compared to the blow to her boys. I could feel the depth of their pain. It’s so hard to be once-removed from the caring and closeness. I had lived through that with my children and Dom.

There is nothing can come between Jeanjeanie and me. “I love you dearly Leigh”, she would say or write to me and that is always with me. She knows she is loved dearly in return. It breaks my heart to leave her after a visit.

Our hearts were lifted so much when Ant and his partner Aga  came for a cuppa with us recently. He brought two silverpoint drawings for us and we got to know each other a bit. So like his twinkly Mum.

Ria went to Dublin and brought Jean back a little leprechaun. She loved his red hair!  Hinnie, our daughter, came with us with her four year old  Ella to see Jean, (who hadn’t seen Ella since she was a babe). It was such a joyful meeting. They talked about elephants and chocolate pennies.

Jean and I are forever young. It’s not our favourite song, but we have a song we agreed would be our ‘Help!’ song…

Wichita Lineman

It’s taken me a long time to get round to introducing you, dear Reader, to someone who has always made me feel truly valued as a human being.
Over a lifetime there are remarkably few people who genuinely transmit this. Genuineness is  precious.

This summer morning we arranged to meet in a Greenfield cafe for coffee.

I guess I sat quietly for about half an hour, making smiley faces at the sweet toddler two tables away, sitting comfortably on the floor, taking toys out of her bag and checking on me with a shy smile. I cut my fruit scone into Lego squares and buttered each one slowly, tasting each square like some old Buddhist monk.

Raja Miah, who is my found child, climbed the stairs, came across to hug me and ask if I would like another coffee, then disappeared to order them. If you’ve ever been to John Lennon Airport in Liverpool and come across the shining bronze statue of John Lennon, then that is the colour glow that glides into a room with Raj, along with playground hair and twinkly eyes.

There was a time some years ago, when we worked together long enough to recognise we shared a mutual distaste for injustice and a strong belief in the strengths of young people. Since then, we have stayed close.

When I retired, Raj invited me to come and work with him in Peacemaker – a project he was asked to take forward in the aftermath of the riots of 2001, when Oldham flared and the world knew about it. The work was rewarding amidst a young team with a cross-section of ages, where young people from different walks of life could show their strengths as mentors to others and take time to reflect on all they were experiencing and learning about collaboration, listening, challenging, respecting and walking alongside other young people in need of purpose and belonging.

Raj is someone who believes we have to charge our children and young people with listening and love, just as we charge our phones in order to communicate.

Our coffees came and we chatted about our friend Stuart Archer, now living in Barbados and on his sixth cycle of chemotherapy. Raj is flying out next week to sit in the sun and sort out the world with him.

I shall wait for news of Stuart when Raj gets back at the end of the month.

Eve is Raja and Gemma’s four year old daughter, born the day before our own granddaughter and the best thing, he says, that ever happened to him. He had just put her on a plane last evening, bound for California and time with precious uncles out there. Raj was missing her already.

     

 

He gets up at six and writes, working on his novel – maybe in several volumes when it’s finished. It’ll be worth a read when published, because he goes where angels fear to tread.

Northern Ireland is fluffing its feathers these days in the usual absence of recognition and valuing of its various voices by the English government. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose… There are some anxious people there.

One of the most positive residentials with Peacemaker was in Belfast, where the Oldham young people stayed in Queens University student rooms and got to know some of the outcomes of a city with divided communities. We saw the high fences, the union jack-daubed pavements, the murals, the museum pieces of war and we had the privilege of meeting some of the activists willing to share what The Troubles meant to them. We met with peoples’ representatives in Stormont – which is still struggling to find the means to collaborate today.

The Scona coffees were good and the wee toddler was ready for her morning sleep and tucked under her mum’s arm as they left. I showed Raj what he was taking to Barbados for us. Stuart has asked him for tomato ketchup and baked beans, just some of the small things Raj can do for his sick friend.

“I’ll come and have a cuppa with you as soon as I’m back”, he said as we parted.

His twinkly eyes softening into a serious gaze before he headed off to meet his friend for lunch in Manchester. We might go to Anfield together in August.

 

 

 

 

We rowed under stars
and we rowed through the storms.
Now, as I fall down in the storm
I think of us under the stars
and it seems that every heavy thunderclap
is you, calling to me.
It’s blue, the sea is blue.

 

 

Julia Luftmann

 

02.09.1977 – 15.06.2018

Ring the bells that still can ring!
Forget your perfect offering –
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…

Leonard Cohen

On June 15th Julia Luftmann died…

Some things can never be repaid. And about some people it’s hard to find words…but here they are, let me introduce you, dear Reader, to my daughters.

I’ll try to reveal some of my treasure on earth…

There are three people who are angels on earth to me – for many reasons –
and they are my daughters Maria, Hinnie and Nell. It’s not easy to write about them separately because
they intertwine for me, like climbing roses, honeysuckle and clematis

I could write a book about them, but these short pieces are to thank them – for knowing me so well,  for their patience and care and for the everlasting joy they bring me.

Nell, my faery child, when I first heard your voice it took my breath away. It was so musical and I thought ‘ Oh thank you God, you’ve given us a mezzo soprano…’ From that moment I always knew you’d be the pitch perfect singer you are. I love to hear you sing.

   

If I were to choose a colour for you, it would be bottle green. The colour of pine trees in winter, the colour of holly leaves, of bottles filled with red wine and of the snow-covered larches of Scandinavia.

Your music would be Arvo Part’s The Deer’s Cry and Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz – both chosen for your courage on your incredible journey through life.

Your book would be Wuthering Heights and The Little Mermaid your film.

Your poem would be William Butler Yeats’ Squirrel at Kyle-na-no.

A quiet place to meditate with a candle glowing for my sensitive and loving youngest daughter. Sometimes timid, sometimes doubting, always playful and curious, you’re a lover of words, of soft textures and shiny things and of your cat.

An artist and lover of clown, of theatre and of circus and movement, you also have the strength and stamina of an athlete. You walk taller than any small person I know.

And your voice…your brother was listening to it and said ‘You could make a career with that voice’ – and he knew a good voice! May you always find something to sing about.

I wish for you a happy home always and good people for you to love and share your journey with. Thank you for being my daughter.

 

 

Hinnie, my violin child,  you  always try to make people comfortable.

  

Quiet and reflective, philosophy was your friend from your early years and you’re a lover of books and really great at sharing them…a peacemaker.
I’ve watched you grow into T’ai Chi and care for the people around you. And as for me, well, you care for me in ways that reveal how well you know me. You are an active listener and you are wise.

You would go a hundred miles to find the kind of cat who will love your children and your children love you for it.

 
Storytelling is in your nature and poetry swirls  in the air around you like a coronet of cornflowers.
I wish that you always have a garden to tend and to find quiet, with fresh food and fragile flowers.

Your music would be Gustav Holst’s The Lark Ascending and any sweet Irish air.
Your poem would be William Butler Yeats’ When You Are Old.

 

May you have around you  comfortable clothes, a piano, laughing children who sing and dance, theatre and good friends –
and always a family who cherishes you for the love and energy you give to them.

May your grace and faith always be a stronghold for you and your life’s pilgrimage be  blessed. Thank you for being my daughter.

 

 

Ria, my flower child, my first daughter, generous and accepting, how you love a hug!

 

A lover of colours, sunrises, flowers, animals and insect detail…

With sunshine and music, may you always find pictures to take, seeds to grow, songs you love and a promising sky in the morning…

Eager to have a coffee with you any time, it’s always a treat to share time together…

Your music would be Rodriguez’ Concerto d’Aranjuaz  – under blue skies of course…and your poem would be William Butler Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

 

Supplier of Sweet Peas and Morning Glories – eater of Portuguese Tarts, green-fingered cook, mother, sister and beloved auntie, may you always find loving family and friends to share life with. Thank you for being my daughter.

 

 

 

 

 

I love these thoughts – so I’ll share them with you, dear Reader…

“Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object.

It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains.

Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it. All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometric problems, all clumsiness of style and all faulty connection of ideas…all such things are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to the truth.

The cause is always that we have wanted to be too active; we have wanted to carry out a search.”

Simone Weil