The Hungry Gap Is Over

The hungry gap is over - all these fresh young things in the farmers' market this morning ( the radishes are ours from the allotment). Can't wait to use the green garlic.

All the way through the EFT session this afternoon Robin speaks quietly, fluently, in loops. No obscenities. He says he's been talking to some young people in his head - asking for help. After the tapping, our councillor tells him about the experiments with the effects of good and bad treatment of water.

Two glasses of water.

One glass is harangued, criticised, hated every day by a group of people.

Freeze the water. Cut into the ice and under a microscope you see a muddled, dark, discordant pattern of crystals.

The other glass of water is loved and cherished and appreciated every day by a group of people.

Freeze the water. Cut into the ice and under a microscope you see a clear, shining, beautiful pattern of crystals.

As our bodies are made up of something like 80 percent water, imagine what power we have with our words to create our world.

So when Robin says to himself out loud 'You s***** f*******a******', he lowers his vibration, and mine and those of the people around him and actually of the world. So it is a darker place to be for all of us.

And when he says You are so wonderful and I love you, he raises his vibration and mine and those of the people around him and actually of the world. So it is a brighter place to be for all of us. 

He says it all makes sense. We suggest it's something he can do to make a contribution to the world - to feel useful again.

In the car driving home after eating  our ice cream cones, watching the long slow waves crash onto the pebbles, he only says You s***** f****** a******* once and then he remembers.

 I turn up the volume of Handel's Water Music..... wind the windows down.....let in the hot breeze.... and he beats out the rhythm, with his teeth, with his hands on his thighs, on the dashboard in front of him,  singing along to the tune with different words which sound  clear and shining and beautiful....

You are so wonderful and I love you. 

Maybe another hungry gap is over  - for the moment.

Clean Green

May blossom on the edge of a field of

green wheat,

or barley. I stop to take all this clean greenness in a winding country lane on the way back from my Family Constellation session. It soothes all the fiery heat of all my pent up anger.....which I discover from the pattern of my ancestors, when repressed, gets turned into helplessness, powerlessness and sighing -  instead of the clear sharpness of released energy.  Clarity and kindness and courage is what I need at the moment....preparing myself for a difficult conversation on Friday.

This afternoon, after cutting the daisies in the lawn I find more tender green shoots - a Christmas tree  conifer -  at the bottom of the garden in the shade,

and the first climbing rose bud reaching for heaven.

You can't see this  waving white wisteria from the house,

or the black berries of this fatsia which started out as a tiny two inch cutting in a pot - a gift from friends -  and which is now as tall as a teenager.

I wish you could bask in the perfume of the honeysuckle rampaging through the hedges on the fence,

or brush your fingers over these

 delicate papery new leaves, a plant in a pot - another gift from a friend which returns every year like a  soft recurring blessing.

Uncontrollable

The sky this afternoon - a brief silver lining

swamped by grey.

Garden tulips after the rain....

sheltering their hearts.

 8.30 am-  I leave my brother at the bus station. He waves goodbye through the nearly black glass window of the coach - a sleek, towering monster streaking off into the rain.....taking him and all those other long ago, wrenching goodbyes packed in his trunk in its deep belly.

9.30 am - Another ending - the last session with our young Clinical Psychologist....NHS cuts.....but I suppose we've had our fair share over these last four years...what price the space to listen/be heard?

 RC is uncontrollably vocal most of the time...with his usual obscene phrases.....at one point, as we are leaving, he starts shouting them, his voice raising to a higher and higher pitch...both the CP and I try to shush him.... I take his face in my hands and say STOP.... but doesn't.

In the car I ask him not to say those things to other people, in public places....ask him if he thinks he can. He says he'll try.....then starts shouting them - his obscenities. I shout NO but he can't stop. The knot in my stomach is an eagle's claw squeezing a shrew.

 10.45am We arrive at our friend's house. On the doorstep he repeats his phrases - high falsetto voice....I say Remember what I said.  But he doesn't. She welcomes him into her calm and gentle care and I drive home, tight with rage and despair. I start hoovering the house....sucking up all the dust and  the crumbs and the griefs of last week.....till the pain in my back halts me..... I sit on the bottom step of the stairs and wait till it passes....and it's time to go back and collect him.

Our friend has worked her magic and RC is calm and smiley. We go out for lunch in Topsham and he doesn't say a single foul thing even though the meal is 25 minutes in the waiting and mine is greatly unappealing - flabby salmon swimming in olive oil, wilted, wet, impossible to eat without dripping on your chin rocket, a huge heap of hard halved new potatoes in a pink sludge of beetroot mayonnaise. 

When the waitress asks if everything is OK I  just say yes - today I haven't got whatever energy or guts it takes to complain....something much bigger claiming my attention....when you can't control the uncontrollable  - what do you do?

Can't write about my cousin's funeral yet....

Small and Ordinary

No fresh words tonight.... too knackered....... it's  very late. I've been faffing about trying to decide what to wear tomorrow..... the house is quiet ....my brother asleep in the spare room, my big sister on a mattress on the floor in my study.....RC is playing solitaire in his office above me.....his chair squeaking on the plastic runner on the carpet.

In the kitchen there's a box of flapjacks and a vegan Banana Walnut cake that I made this afternoon to take with us when we drive up the M5 and across the Bristol channel into Herefordshire  tomorrow for my cousin's funeral.

Just had some more sad news about my friend's daughter.......making me more determined to make each day precious ....at least some moments in each day...however small and ordinary.

Siblings Unrivalled

Siblings unrivalled....three of the four of us.... enfolded in a wet spring afternoon in the frothy white and green lanes by the River Otter....thank you, other sibling, for the photo.

We spend the morning in a steamed up cafe, drinking mint tea and coffee and hot chocolate....eating coconut, raspberry flapjacks topped with thick chocolate..... collecting memories of our dear cousin....recording them on the computer.....moving on to another cafe.....  eating big plates of salad, roast vegetable bruchettas  and goat's cheese parcels..... sharing the big stuff of our lives -  the things that hurt and humble and nourish us... holding hands across the table....blowing noses....drying tears....laughing ....remembering.....feeling the ache of goodbyes that will come too soon.

When the rain stops we walk out into the dripping green afternoon, stepping round deep muddy puddles in the path, stopping to skim stones on the surface of the churned up brown river water...still playing outside like we did in our African childhood.... usually separated by oceans and cities but together on this one brief precious day in Devon...honouring the spiral of love between us which can never be broken by time and distance.

Today

Last night while I was cooking for the family I let the peas boil over on the hob. Twice. It fused the cooker. I turned the mains power off in the fuse box which didn't fix it. But it messed up the broadband connection so no internet, no emails, no google, no blog.

This morning it's pouring with rain. I need to mop up the puddles on the kitchen floor, find a man to fix the cooker,  arrange to talk to dear friend about how to go about getting a Care Assessment from the social services,  and go the market and buy extra salad greens and green leaves as my brother, who eats a plant based diet, is visiting from Fiji.

 But it doesn't matter about the rain because the best thing about today is that I'm spending it with  my    brother and my two sisters -  us four together - a very rare and precious day....who knows when it'll happen again.  The last time was in South Africa after our father died and we planned what to say at his funeral. Some of today we'll talk about our dear cousin and what to say at his funeral on Saturday....  only words of love and laughter.

Smiles and Tears

Down on the farm on Saturday in the Blackdown Hills. My sister's neighbour keeps a rare breed of sheep called Jacobs.

We spent the afternoon with them and their sweet faces and 5 gorgeous little children all under 4 years old plus their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles - stroking the lambs, jumping in muddy puddles and running after blown up footballs and beach balls..... 

which kept a smile on my face all day - all that joy and energy and new life,

claiming the space, the air, the sunshine of the moment.

A river runs through it... the National Trust's Lydford Gorge on Sunday,

a wet green  Spring paradise, scented with  realms of wild garlic and bluebells. I could have walked the steep slippery paths all day but RC feared for my safety so much that we turned back,

and ate our picnic in  a windy meadow near the loos, with a bold grey headed crow strutting in front of us waiting for crumbs.

Haldon Woods on Monday evening. RC says he wants his funeral here at Haldon Belverdere.

 We stand and look at the view out over the estuary and I say I know you can hire it for weddings but not sure about funerals. He says he went to the doctor's that morning and asked her if she knew how long he had to live as it could affect his pension. She said no one knows. You can't predict it. I asked him if he was afraid of dying and he said no. But I don't know how to even imagine it - not being here - him or me.

A  birthday gift of tulips which I planted very late in the year  - not sure they would come up  - but they have -  tall and straight and delicate - soft tinged magenta, blooming long after all the others have died away. 

Reminding me to trust the new life you can't see yet - below the ground, in the darkness, gestating - waiting for the spring which always comes...thank goodness - as I'm getting tired of all these tears - more tonight -  which seem to start so easily at the slightest thing.