Mostly Is Good Enough

Outside art at the Mythic Garden on Dartmoor.

 This morning I leave Robin at The Mede day care centre - he hasn't been for two weeks - his arms hanging heavy and long by his sides -  meeting and greeting and kissing all his friends there like long lost relatives. It's heartening to see.

I drive away into town with the window wound down and Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits blaring into the car. I feel like an army recruit on a 6 hour leave of absence. But really I'm just doing my own thing in my own time..... filling the precious space with tea with my friend, market shopping, an extended lunch with my book and a brownie, starting some family history research - reading my mother's airmail letters to  me in the 1970s, dropping me softly into the past  - into her African world and into my student world  -  when we were both young.

Then it's time to tune in to Neil Diamond again as I drive back to the Mede to collect Robin. But I feel calmed and comforted by my 6 hours so that later when I do the dressing and undressing, the feeding and the toileting, the showering and the reassuring - all that caring  - I can do it with kindness and patience - mostly - albeit with some exasperation about the pee on the floor, and the jam on the carpet, the spilt juice on the table. 

But mostly is good enough tonight.