Roasting and Finding Another Way

16th December 2012 Sunday

I start and end the day with a pan of vegetables roasting in the oven.

Blearey eyed this morning I toss small cubes and slices of our potatoes, parsnips, butternut squash, carrots, beetroots and red onions in olive oil and scrunches of sea salt. When they are melting soft, blackened at the edges and all stained pink by the beets I turn them in chopped corainder and coarse-ground toasted cumin seeds.  For a dressing I grate a knob of fresh ginger into a thick slick of tahini paste, thin it down with lemon juice, pack it all into an insulated bag and drive over to my Course in Miracles Group in a litte village outside Exeter. 

The shared lunch is always a treat at the end of our meeting but for me it’s the place where for a few hours I can let the constant noise in my head come to a standstill and with my dear companions untie some of the stories I make up in my mind, release the pain I put myself through and find another way to perceive it all. Which is mostly asking for help in the silence from a Higher Source than my bogged-down ego which knows nothing useful at all.....

Much later while my husband rests in bed after his long drive this afternoon I roast more roots, chop purple sprouting broccoli, put brown trout cutlets under the grill for supper and start writing Christmas cards.......wondering how I got to the week before Christmas without wrapping a single present or making a single mincepie....and not really minding at all....

Shopping War

15th December 2012

We live near Exeter Football Ground, walk past it on our way into town, get caught up in the crowds flooding the pavements in their red and white striped scarves. Above us two whirring helicopters roar so low in the sky that we can’t hear each other talk. The High Street is thick with people and their umbrellas and their bulging carrier bags. 

I feel like I’m in a shopping war zone.

I never come into town on a Saturday and never on a Christmas Saturday but I’m on a train-set mission for my great-nephew’s present. And my husband is singing in a carol concert with his Global Harmony choir raising money for Wateraid. I sit in the dark auditorium and watch his dear face in the back row with the tenors - or devons as he sometimes calls them, and the shining faces of our friends as they sing. I’m glad the lights are down as most of the songs make me cry - John Lennon’s Imagine and Jessie J’s’ Forget about the price tag/we want to make the world dance’ and The Judd’s  ‘Love can build a bridge between your heart and mine/don’t you think it’s time’, and an African one  - Never Give Up.

We arrive home dripping wet - even my socks in my boots are wet. We have cheese on toast, olives, pickled garlic and sundried tomatoes for a late lunch the sky already getting dark over the soggy lawn and the blue tits snacking on the fat balls in the naked apple tree.

And I’m so grateful I don’t live in country really at war - or in Connecticut.

Struggling

14th December 2012 

All a bit of a struggle today - what with Christmas shopping in the endless rain, my husband in pain, the utility roof leaking again, slow progress with the cards, picking bones out of the red mullet fillets that don’t want to leave their fleshy home and wondering how Nigella makes it all look so breezy and sparkly and easy on the telly.

And my heart all in pieces about my husband’s pain tonight -  which isn’t only in his back....

How Well Did You Love?

13th December 2012

Tonight, sitting in a wonderful performance of The Messiah with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and in the Festival Chorus, the face of our dear friend beaming down on us, I’m flooded with memories, with tears - the music whisking me back in time to other Christmases......to a younger time when I could never have dreamed that my husband would say to me - “What’s the Messiah?”

But the name doesn’t matter as he’s sitting in the dark next to me loving every note which he knows in his cells. He’s also wincing in pain every time he moves his left leg. I expect the worst - sciatica. I’m not very tolerant of my own pain but even worse with his - sympathetic but annoyed at the same time....how mean is that.

Maybe I’m grumpy  because we missed supper and I’m hungry and it’s too late to eat...

Maybe I’m sad  because I keep thinking about a saying in a Christmas letter from my dear Uncle who holds a special place in my heart being my father’s only remaining brother. He says he and my aunt often quote it to each other...

What matters most is -

How well did you love?

How well did you live?

How well did you let go?

If I put that in the present tense instead of the past then it's not too late....I could just feel for my husband in his pain and take out my judgements.... now that would be loving and living and letting go well......

Hope I Got It Right

12th December 2012 Wednesday

12 /12/2012    Looks like a magical configuration of numbers....

I forget to seek out magic today and lie low nursing my sore throat and don’t make much headway on the Christmas card front. As my husband is going out anyway to his ceramics class he takes the cards to be posted to Canada and New Zealand and Switzerland. Even though I could send emails instead, Christmas cards are such a familiar ritual that I don’t want to give them up. But maybe I will next year when I’m stretching the pennies....

My husband signs the cards but I have to remind him who everyone is - sometimes it takes a long time.... ‘Where’s Middlesex?‘  ‘What’s Brigadier?‘ ‘They live in London? Are you sure?’

We haven’t spent much time together today, even our ten minute soup lunch is snatched between appointments.  I thank him for doing a wonderful job hoovering the stairs and mopping the floors. He says, ‘I hope I got it right.’  Breaking my heart....

After our grilled salmon, leek and cabbage supper he counts up the calories and says he still has 75 left. I know a flapjack is much more than that, and it would be stretching the limits of our ‘fasting’ day but I say have it anyway. I savoured two illicit squares of very dark chocolate this afternoon so I’ve already gone into the f*** it zone.....

The Budget Game

11th December 2012 Tuesday

I wake at 5am with a raw sore throat, thinking it’s 7am and I need to get up - so don’t go back to sleep.

Our lady decorator arrives to finish the second coat of paint on the woodwork. She’s quick and neat and cheerful - leaving her gentle  presence in the walls.

I make a rooty vegetable soup for lunch, poach a thick slab of smoked haddock for supper, and peel potatoes and leeks to have with it.

My sister arrives to spend the day with me working on how to live  on a budget while my husband spends the day with her husband walking in the frosty Quantock Hills.

We pour over the figures and make up guesstimates of how much I spend on food and loo rolls, haircuts and shoes, books and therapies, gifts and face cream and reduce it and reduce it to make it fit the monthly income. Like most people have to do. My sister holds my hand when I wobble, says it’s just a game we have to play. 

I don’t know how to win this one but I’m going to try. Even though every time I think about it  my stomach knots with shame and fear... the spectre of becoming diminished and mean hearted always hovering in the wings...

A Bit Weird And Wonderful

10th December 2012 Monday

Hard to type with splits at the ends of my fingers - such tiny cuts, so sore.....it’s my dry, dry skin protesting the cold weather and my hands always in water....

My husband doesn’t come to our yoga class this morning - we thought it would be something to do together, with friends. He doesn’t enjoy it - he wants to get it right but the poses hurt  his body.....I find I can let it go - my disapointment....

While I bend and stretch and salute the sun, our sweet decorator paints the downstairs cloakroom -  a soft, pale greeny-blue like the shimmering inside of a paua shell from New Zealand...

I  stab holes in the Christmas cake with a knitting needle - and dribble it with brandy  - I’m sure I’ve overcooked it again.........no way of knowing till it’s too late and we cut it on the day....

I fill four fat glass bottles with the speckly mincemeat I made on Saturday and slosh in more brandy and orange juice as it looks like it needs it...

I don’t even like brandy....

The date for posting Christmas cards overseas has been and gone. I feel at a loss about how to write about this year to our friends and family  - how to put it in a few sentences  - how shock and grief and disbelief transmute into practising acceptance, giving up resistance and guilt and finding out what a budget really means.....with no idea where to start.......

And with the person I love becoming a bit weird and wonderful at the same time...