Lost in Transition

I'm stopped in my tracks by

the shining whiteness of this silver birch tree glowing 

like angel wings on a dull morning as I walk through Northernhay Gardens.

And very excited to see a new bird in the garden...

my bird book says it's a Black Cap....

a  migratory warbler with a song as sweet as a nightingale's. I haven't heard it yet...

These house sparrows are much more common visitors at my fat balls.

I'm getting ready to go away for a few weeks to Portugal. I did the same thing about this time last year.....wanting time alone to grieve in a beautiful place  - familiar but not home. I was grateful to be there but was still recently raw from Robin's death and could only feel numb and disconnected.

Not sure how I'll be this time. But still grateful for the space and beauty and especially to be so close to the sea.

I'm trying to decide what to pack. Every time I open a drawer I get distracted.....tugged down into a  treasure box of memories.....knowing I need to de-clutter ......wanting to let go....but feeling lost in transition.

Last blog till I come back ...it will be March already.

 Time blowing in the wind....flinging fragile seeds.

Dolly Mixture....robin redbreast and more.

This morning I bump into two dear friends in the furniture department of John Lewis.They are sitting at a round dining room table set in a big window alcove on the top floor. They are looking for a table to buy. I sit with them and we discuss the merits of wood and glass topped and chrome.

I wasn't planning to be in the furniture department  - I just popped in on my way home to browse...to soak up ideas and fabrics and colours ....to dream about creating my new interior ...

and I was drawn to these beautiful rugs...

especially this one called Dolly Mixture....all the colours and softness and heat of a robin redbreast....and more.

'The Freshest Chamber of the Heart'

I'm posting this article about the chambered nautilus shell creature

 in full because it speaks directly to me and to my heart.

About living in the most recent chamber...

....only when the past is behind us and not before us can we open enough and empty enough to feel what is truly about to happen.

Living In The Freshest Chamber Of The Heart by Mark Nepo [Listen to Audio!] Our ability to find something to love, and to love again for the first time depends greatly on how we resolve and integrate where we've been before. A great model for us exists in the chambered nautilus, an exquisite shell creature that lives along the ocean floor. The nautilus is a deep-sea form of life that inches like a soft man in a hard shell finding his prayers along the bottom. Over time it builds a spiral shell, but always lives in the newest chamber. The other chambers, they say, contain a gas or liquid

that helps the nautilus control its buoyancy.

Even here, a mute lesson in how to use the past:

live in the most recent chamber and use the others to stay afloat. Can we, in this way, build strong chambers for our traumas:

not living there, but breaking our past down till it is fluid enough

to lose most of its weight?

Can we internalize where we've been enough

to know that we are no longer living there? When we can,

life will seem lighter. It is not by accident that the nautilus turns its slow digestion

of the bottom into a body that can float.

It tells us that only time can put the past in perspective,

and only when the past is behind us, and not before us,

can we open enough and empty enough to truly feel

what is about to happen. Only by living in the freshest chamber

of the heart

can we love again and again for the first time.

I haven't got a picture of a spiral nautilus shell creature but this pebble from Sidmouth is the closest I can find to  its tiger striped beauty.

Tonight 

just before the sun slipped away beyond Haldon Hills

 I received a phone call from the estate agent to say that the nice woman who came to view the house this morning, 

wants to bring her husband back to see it on Saturday.

Which lightens the most recent chamber of my heart.

The Pivot of the See-Saw and Hopefulness

This morning my lovely therapist helps me to find a strong and central pivot between the see-saw of 

letting go of the house

and 

moving towards the new one.

So I still feel sad when I think about leaving our home but not overwhelmed. 

And I  still feel tremulous about moving to a whole new place but also excited.

The pivot is something to do with my true essence which is bigger  and bolder than my anxieties....something to be trusted and relied on ....situated in the core of my being....which I'm not always aware of.

 A resource to remind me that I am allowed to follow my heart and receive all good things.

So after my session I drive to the building site to check on the progress of my new house.... the roof is on....and I buy a bottle of organic Prosecco at the Aldi store next door.... in anticipation of celebrating a happy exchange of contracts and completion at the right time and in the right place.

Then I walk in the blue sky beauty of the River Valley Park with its dis-used paper mill, and witness the first tiny hints of spring nudging me with hopefulness. 

Small Mountains and the Elephants

What a tail.....

and you can see why this salix is called pussy willow...in the park on Sunday.

Today the stairs are mountains - 

 air at the summit

is thin.

I need to sit

on the carpet 

 to catch my breath

my legs weak as 

willow twigs.

Maybe it's

last week's virus

hanging around 

in my blood - 

a house guest 

outstaying its 

welcome.

Or maybe it's

the weekend's onslaught

of new grief 

weakening 

my resolve

to leave 

our home

and all my 

safe

anchors.

And then I think about the elephants

and how they never forget.

And how if you think about someone

you have loved and lost

you are already with them.**

A thought which helps me

 scale all my small mountains 

today.

**Thanks to Jodi Picoult in her novel 'Leaving Time' about the plight of the elephants...and how they grieve and how they remember.

Sunrise from a train....and a funeral

Sunrise over frosty fields  from the window of the London train this morning .....on my way to the funeral of Robin's uncle who died recently after a long illness. He was 91.

He was a military man and they gave him a good send off. When they played the Last Post at the end it cut me up...it's always the music that does it. Funerals are rather a trigger for me now....and seeing some members of Robin's family....it plunges me into my life as it was.....forever over.

The train home was seriously delayed so I'm travel weary and unsettled tonight. And so grateful that all I have to do now is sleep till morning and let tomorrow unfurl as it will.