Backed up with the debris...And the Light in the Darkness

Sunrise....

Sunday morning.

It rained and blustered all day. I stayed in and wrote Christmas cards....till it got too hard....remembering Robin and all our Christmases ...again and again.

Then in the late afternoon,

the sun visited the sky briefly

and turned the garden into a copper furnace 

till it left  soon after ....trailing apricot blushed clouds behind it.

This morning, early, before it's light, I walk into  the village which is  deserted and post the cards. On the way back people have started to come out of their houses...they are scraping the thin layer of ice patterns off their car windscreens.

Back home I walk the perimeter of the garden, across crunchy white iced grass and I notice the stream has backed up into a little flood plain at the place where it crosses the boundary with my neighbour, where it drops down a level, and is marked by a green wire fence which I know was put there by my predecessor to keep the dog in the garden.

I pull on wellies, take a rake and a spade from the garage, wade into the gravel bed of the stream and start rooting around in the water to see what is causing the blockage. I haul up huge spadefuls of dead leaves - oak and chestnut, ash and willow -  all mixed up with sludge and mud. I stagger about with my heavy loaded spade and throw the muck up onto the bank. It's hugely satisfying when suddenly it clears and the murky red, churned up water rushes through the squares of the wire fence, down into my neighbour's land, taking the rest of the leaves and debris with it.

I did it.... but really it's too much for my back, and I need to sit for a long while at the kitchen table with a glass of water before I get up to make breakfast. 

I feel sad that I used to be able to do much more in the garden, for much longer periods without everything hurting. Not so strong now. Or maybe I'm just weakened by this underground river of grieving....backed up with the debris of old losses. 

This evening I walk in the nearly deserted streets of Exeter after my late afternoon appointment at the hairdresser. I never go into town at this time of day if I can avoid it as I loathe crowds. But tonight I could see how everything looks different under the bright Christmas lights....an undercurrent of excitement, possibility, how I used to feel in the days of going out after dark ....when the night is still young, and anything can happen.

 And I'm suddenly transported back to the first time were were taken one night, as children, to look in the shop windows, all lit up with glitter and sparkle in the streets of Lusaka. Maybe we were going to the Pantomime.... but I still remember that feeling of wonder and excitement .... this was the mystery world of the grown-ups.........how the ordinary day time shops were totally transformed....beacons of   light in the darkness ....and how I wanted that night to go on forever.