Mortgage Relief

Weeding plans at the allotment delayed

while I talk to a man on the phone

about changing our mortgage. 

I write down on the back of the letter

the ten options he offers -  

standard variable rates,

percentages over the Bank of England base rates,

tracker mortgages

with an arrangement fee of £499,

or a fixed rate with no fee at 3.29%

for 2 years.

I put the phone on loud speaker

but my husband

sitting next to me on a stool

shakes his head and shrugs

incomprehension

of the words 

and 

strong Scottish accent 

of the man talking into the peace 

of our kitchen.

Who isn’t allowed to give advice.

I feel awkward,

out of my depth

being the one

who has to understand this stuff

which was my husband’s area of

expertise.

In the end we compare the options

choose one

with a calculator

right or wrong 

and I call the Scottish man back.

He asks more endless questions

which I strain to hear

so my husband says he’s off to buy

grow-bags for the tomatoes.

Leaving me to manage 

my own growth spurt

into the world of 

financial responsibility.

It’s a relief to join him later at the allotment 

my hands in the cool rhubarb bed,

pulling up the weeds.

Craving For Redwoods

After the long session with the lovely woman from Welfare Rights - the very same angel from our Tribunal days last year - this time filling out a 40 page form to apply for DLA - Disabiliy Living Allowance, I have a craving to be in the presence of Giant Redwoods.

I’m feeling wobbly and tearful  - the questions are about the kinds of care/help/supervision my husband needs to get about ouside and at home. And he does now - need support for things which would have been unthinkable  - like  not knowing that the red lights on the hob mean it’s off but still hot.....or that he knows and has met many times  the woman who has just been sitting in our living room for two hours....or that the interview was about applying for a benefit for him ( maybe £20 a week) because he doesn’t recall the meaning of the word benefit....

Luckily we have nine huge Sequoias, imported from California in 1854, and planted in the beautiful landscaped gardens of Killerton House - less than 15 minutes away from us, so I can satisfy my longing to touch their rough bark and breathe in their deep rooted, ancient permanence and marvel at their unwavering strength...

More than that when we arrive in the grounds we find that spring has flown ahead of us and arranged a wedding party of blossom  - a dense confetti display of acers and blackthorn, rhododendrons and magnolias in all shades of mauve and magenta, peach and apricot, moon white and scarlet - beaming out against the blue afternoon sky.

 And in the grass at their feet a mass of new and tender bluebells......reminding me of my parents and their secret bluebell anniversary.....reminding me nothing is permanent in this world - everything changes, dies.

 Except Love.....

This Was My Thursday

Cherry blossom on the way back from the polling station...

Make our green smoothie for breakfast - cleaning the machine takes longer than juicing the spinach and cucumber, lime and carrots....but it helps me to do the same thing every morning until I wake up properly and start calming the panic in my head....

Buy lots of green veggies in the farmers’ market and huge organic eggs.

Stop off at the health food shop on the way home and stock up with linseeds and tahini and dried figs  - my husband’s biscuit substitute.

Take the car to be cleaned inside and out by a hive of young men in blue T- shirts with  power hoses and suds and not much English. 

While they are sprucing it up I walk into town and buy a magnetic tax disc holder at Halfords as my old one keeps falling off the windscreen. And I go into a shop I haven’t been into before - The International Stores -  selling wonderful exotic stuff from India and the Middle East, with Arabic/Turkish music playing. I buy a box of fresh dates from Iran - much cheaper than in Sainsbury’s.

Love my clean lemon scented car - all for £13 - thank you young foreign men.

Hang the second load of washing out in the sunshine - and run out of pegs.

My husband comes back happy from his walk by the river with the lovely woman from Age UK - his regular Thursday 3 hours with her. She says they have spotted a bird of prey called a Hobby. It makes me happy when he’s enjoyed himself.

We walk 2 minutes down the road to the polling station in the church and put a cross next to a name on the ballot paper. I vote for the Green Party because our neighbour is the candidate and I like him.

We divert to the allotment and while I pick two more asparagus spears and a bunch of spinach my husband fills the watering cans and gives the broad beans a drink.

Lunch is smoked mackerel salad on the patio with suncream on my nose. My husband already has a lovely suntanned face - I hate having to be so careful of my skin in the sun now.

Afternoon at my desk - emails and arrangements about our NZ trip and organising times for my husband’s wonderful support team. I order a keyboard and cover for the ipad I bought ages ago and got totally daunted about how to use it.

I was going to walk to my chiropractic appointment but run out of time. She pummels my back with a buzzing machine - it’s especially sore in the muscles I’ve been using to yank up weeds and ivy.

Just time to water the garden - especially the  dry tulip pots -  and bring in the washing and eat an oat cake with hummus before we leave for our Deeksha meditaton group with a big bag of deep ruby red rhubarb stalks to give away.

Wonderful to sit down and be still and be bathed in the sounds of the sitar and beautiful Indian voices, the evening sun and the loving warmth of our friends pouring into the room.

Back home I watch the final of MasterChef while my husband cooks us poached eggs and his marvellous asparagus and brings it to me on a tray so I don’t miss any chefy details. The finalist all create extraordinary plates of food. But I knew all along who would win - not just because  their food tasted and looked fabulous but you could tell it was cooked with love ....and I love being right.

No blogs for a few day as I’m away in Birmingham with my sisters and few hundred other people at The Course in Miracles Conference.....

Coming Home

 Coming home to tulips in the garden this evening...

1st May 2013

I forgot to take my camera to the allotment this morning. ....didn’t really have time to take photos ....too busy clearing the raised beds with two dear companions who had offered to come and be an advance weeding party - to give my husband the kick start he needs to climb out from under the overwhelming march of thistle, convolvulous and dock.

Wearing old floppy hats, suncream smeared on noses and shoulders, rubber gloves pulled over arthritic fingers, with copper trowels in hand we squat or kneel by the first choked bed and start digging, chuntering about our lives, hardly noticing the piles of weeds growing bigger and bigger in our buckets. My husband plants and waters his seedlings and mends the netting on the fruit cages.

It feels like coming home, like barn raising....sharing the work, sharing the burden of it all  so that it doesn’t feel like a huge chore.  It doesn’t feel like work at all....it feels like fun.... the  opposite of being alone and scared - doing it together....

What’s been coming up for me a lot at the moment is how to ask for help, how to receive it graciously, how to let in all the love and support that’s flowing towards me without feeling that I somehow don’t deserve it or I have to give back in some other way..... So today’s TUT Note From the Universe made me think about what  bigger dream I could have that’s buried in the circumstance of my husband having a brain disease.

Sometimes, when circumstances or disapointments bump you off track, it’s the beginning of an even bigger dream coming true, that could not have come true on the track you were on....

Maybe something to do with coming home to Myself ....

The First Asparagus......

Some firsts today - 

1. My husband brings back the first four long bright wands of asparagus, purple tipped with soil clinging to their woody white ends.....I’m thrilled at how sweet they taste compared to the bunch I bought on special offer in Sainsbury’s the other day. As there are only four I eke out our lunch with green brushes of sprouting broccoli to dip into soft boiled eggs and a garlicky sesame dressing as well ( which just about slips into the category of hollandaise or butter - but not really). And two slices of my Oaty Seedy Bread  - the hemp seeds jump out under the grill when I toast it....

2.We have lunch outside on the patio - the sun bouncing off the white plastic table top - making me go inside for sunglasses to shield the glare.I think this is our first lunch in the garden this year.....the first really hot one anyway....

.

3. My first sight of open bluebells in the hedgerow on our walk above the River Otter this afternoon....and noticing the tiny violets hiding in the grass..... and is that white lacey froth wild carrot or cow parsley?.....wishing I knew more names of wild flowers - I love them so much - they feel like delicate, vulnerable companions along our route to the bridge across the river....

4.Not for the first time I’m glad I accepted my husband’s invitation to walk with him when in the past I would have declined as I already had my day full to the brim with THINGS TO DO.....but then I would have missed the swan who looked like he was posing for me - treading water .....but really he was waiting for his mate who was dawdling in the reeds....taking her time....knowing he'd always be there......

Phone Death

I’m grieving for my mobile phone. I’ve had it since 2009. It died on Friday taking with it most of my contact numbers and the familiar way I had of using it. The sweet young man in the Vodaphone shop showed me how to use the replacement one  - you have to touch the screen instead of the keys to make it work and most things are different - like where the space key is.....and my fingers are big and clumsy on the little pad. When I tried to send my first text it took me so long that I wanted to throw it out of the window.

I don’t want to learn a whole new way of how to communicate with my loved ones. I don’t want to take the time and trouble to read the manual. To understand it and practise it. I loved my old phone. I knew how to make it work. I want it back.

Like my old life. I don’t know how to do this new one.......how to swim between the sharks and the icebergs.

Maybe I could listen to my husband. On Saturday afternoon I leave my undiscovered phone at home and we walk by the river in and out of icy shade and bright sun. But I haven’t really left the phone at home and I’m swamped by loss, frustration. My husband is patient and understanding and doesn’t make me wrong. He says sorry a lot even though it’s not his fault. After a while he says the thing he always says,

We could just be here now and have a day of joy by living out of our hearts.

He’s right of course. While I’m having my tantrum about the phone I don’t see the white sprays of hawthorn blossom, or the yellow coconutty gorse flowers, or smell the wild garlic growing all along the path, or hear the crows squabbling in the branches of the beech trees above us. Or notice that my old life and my new life are the same - it’s just me that’s stopping me from loving it - waiting for icebergs....missing the joy....

Still pressing the old buttons  - not stroking the screen where the light is....

An Aunty's Lunch

 Chocolate-free Fruit and Nut Truffles

My husband’s aunty who is 85 and very spry comes for a birthday lunch. She’s a pleasure to cook for as she loves vegetables and doesn’t mind not having pudding. So she fits perfectly into our current eating regimen.We sit on our small patio among the pots of daffodils and tulips, drinking apple juice. When it clouds over and the temperature drops a bit we come inside.

I serve lemon baked fillets of seabass, an emerald green salsa verde but made with parsley and coriander instead of basil, roasted aubergines, red onions and peppers, a bowl of tender purple sprouting broccoli and soft spears of asparagus, and cubes of butternut squash flecked with nibs of red chilli ( thank you Paul Hollywood for that recipe).

For afters, with her camomile tea, we have a plate of my Fruit and Nut Truffles  - just almonds and sunflower seeds, raisins, dried apricots and lemon juice -  ( no chocolate, cream or sugar in sight) rolled in coconut shreds accompanied by sprigs of crisp grapes.  She brings a bag of caramelised peanuts from her recent trip to Seville which my husband loves and which aren’t allowed on our diet -  but since it’s a special occasion...

Before she leaves she says she notices a difference in my husband but doesn’t have a chance to say what. I’ve been noticing it for a few weeks now - just a slight shift, missing more words, more meanings.....

Later, when I take back the packets of jumbo oats and the sunflower seeds that my husband bought at Waitrose a few weeks ago, the nice woman serving me says,

Oh, I remember your husband. It was a while ago. I helped him find the oats. Are they no good?

I explain about jumbo and porridge and why he wouldn’t know that jumbo means big and porridge means small. But I’m really impressed and touched that she remembers him...like belonging to a community. Makes me want to shop at Waitrose all the time.....

(No blog tomorrow - on a gardening mission at my big sister’s....)