From my week...

Miscellany

My short hair (and me looking very tired)...Morgan sleeping on the sofa with Baby stuffed up her tshirt again (and short hair herself after she copied mama!)...My first actual skein of handspun, mostly spun by the children to be honest (they LOVE the drop spindle)...Jenna ran away today, took herself two streets over to a friend of ours. So relieved that she is safe. So sad that she is this mixed up and hurting.

Taking a wee break now, hoping to find some clarity and peace somewhere out there in the real world. Dear friends, please pray for us.

To Do

Sunday: Make maps of fairyland. Go to Church with my mum. Spend an afternoon with Daddy (and get some talking done while the children play outside, too). Needle felt some more. Fall asleep on the sofa.


Monday: Walk to story time in the rain. Do some still life drawing in the museum. Eat lunch with a friend. Carry children upstairs one at a time when they fall asleep on the sofa again (the timing of this autonomy shift - thank GOODNESS I'm not trying to get them all to go to bed to a timetable!).
Tuesday: Walk to soft play. Lose a tiny white shoe on the way and have it returned by a friend walking the same route. Whine all day about wanting food/drinks/carrying/putting down etc. *sigh* Make bread. Fall asleep on the sofa at 4pm (lol). Work on some crafting commissions.Wednesday: Cry some more. Get put in separate rooms when the fighting gets too much. Finish reading a new book. Learn to use the new drop spindle. Eat olives and watch Narnia. Make more bread after devouring the entire loaf with chocolate spread. Yes, I know I know. ;)Thursday: Survive. Get proper Daddy time while Mummy escapes upstairs (to read, crochet, bathe, hide).

More Morgan-isms

Row-row is awake now! She can see squirrels!

Ooh, there is lots of ants-es here...

(On seeing my face after she opened a box and spread its contents everywhere...) Is OK mummy, me can do it, me got de INSTRUCTIONS. :)

I AM bigger! I bigger ALREADY! (When she wants me to lift her up to hang off the monkey bars which I then thirty seconds later have to rescue her from.)

Nooo, me SMALL! See! Me still so small! (When told that she is big enough to wait until we get home for mummy milk!)

Oh I do LIKE chamymile. Oh. Now it made mine tummy berry hot. Dat hurts me.

Why you stabbin' dat? (Needle felting, of course!) Me can helps stabbin'? (Um, er, no thanks Morgs!)

I am berry berry LOVE windey winding wools. :)

(Oh the world is such a funny place when viewed from her vantage point!)

Home

My home is touched by grief still. Through the lovely moments with my children. Through the chatter and life. There is a space.

In between feeling like I don't want to see him or talk to him or ANYTHING I also miss him. Even with so many things to keep me busy.

Home is where my kitchen and garden feed us.
Morgan podding peas. Baby courgettes on the bush.

Where I can be free to express my creativity.

Black beans and yarn in a bucket of cold water for 48hrs = steely blue-grey yarn! Piles of coloured dye-day madness waiting to be wound into centre-pull balls.

Where we find each other. Or it was.

My home is usually my safe place, a comforting warm lovely happy space. But even so, sometimes I have that horrible helpless child-like feeling, "I want to go home", inexplicable and filled with sadness.

The wonderful Emma told me, when I was engaging in one of those late night pit-of-despair phone calls that it takes a truly wonderful friend to really understand, "Honey, maybe that's because you're NOT home." I know what she meant. I do believe that I will find that true 100% feeling of home, just the other side of the curtain. I love this life, but I may always more or less long for that one. Especially when this one seems too hard to keep going on with.

Today we went to the park. Me, my little crowd of daughters, Emma, Chris, Connor, Ashleigh, and Martin (father of my children, breaker of my heart, love of my life, yes I'm sure you see what I mean about the grief). It was a good good day. We kicked of our shoes and walked on the earth. We played. We ate icecreams. We companionably crafted in the great outdoors.







For a while I lay on a sunny bank, alone inside my head. It was good.Lying there, barefoot, in the grass, in the sunshine, I felt right. A creeping awareness of the sounds around me, the touch of the sun on my skin, the movement of the air. I felt... right... It has been a while since I felt that much at peace with where I am, this minute, this day. Then I had a sudden overwhelming sense of a huge presence, a comforting oneness. Call it what you will. I feel like I can pray again.

Back at home I am tired, and so so sad. But there is always hope.

Colouring our World

A house full of wool again, because, well, what better to keep our hands and heads busy than soaking, washing, mixing, painting, pouring, warming, steaming, winding and spinning? Planned colour combinations taking up many sheets of paper. Witches' kitchen with coloured pots steaming. Breezy washing line drying out our treasures. Sharing and joy and creativity.

Momentum

Keep on moving so you don't fall off, right? That's the only way we have been living through this week, one step at a time, with a lot of making-allowances-for and a lot of love (and oh, friends, how much your love has meant to me).


Beautiful baby, in love with life, and so normal and happy. Just covered in eczema again, in her own way taking on our stresses too.

Creating, solace. Mandalas in watercolour and masking fluid. Yarnie madness taking over the house and garden.


Good, whole, wonderful food. To share. To nourish. To sustain.


Community, helping the simplest of practical daily routines go smoothly and providing much needed comfort (and distraction)!

Broken

Is there any way to face such times with grace?

My marriage is falling apart, and I feel utterly without hope. I feel broken. I don't know, honestly have no idea, what the future holds - perhaps for the first time - it is all utterly out of my control and... Well, it's like a hole in my body that my attention skitters away from rather than acknowledge how much it hurts, because if I let myself see how broken I am I might lose courage and pass out. Yes, it's like that.

I have been drinking lemon balm tea and crying. Whilst trying to keep some semblence of normality both to protect our privacy and help the children cope with their own grief and confusion without taking on mine too. Jenna has been furiously angry with everyone and anyone (Martin visited and was driven out by her screaming, "get out get out get out", because she thought it better to make him leave than have him leave her!) and Morgan has been very very quiet. I get stressed more quickly and snap at them. It is a mess.

Martin has been living with friends. I have been focused on coping, you know, the sort of coping that is a veneer on desperate flailing for solid ground. I can't remember how to pray. It sounds overly dramatic, somehow, but there it is.

I can have the children clothed and fed, remember to put through nappies (have I ever pointed out that he does all the washing?) and I can even Do Things like crafting and reading and taking the little ones for bike rides and remembering how to work the DVD player. But I can't make any of it feel real.

I want my life back.

A little something from my day: Crafty Love

Something good to dwell on: creating with (and for) friends. :) A little time with Ashleigh, spent immersed in crocheting and chatting, while the children played and my lovely husband made the journey to support and comfort his Dad.

A wet felting session with the fibres we dyed ourselves, we have put this off for so long but finally!
Little feet thought THEY had an idea what to do with a bowl of soapy water...Crafting for one of Jenna's friends who is having a birthday party tomorrow. She sat down with me this evening and started crocheting chains, and the first thing she wanted to make was this necklace for Livvy.Then the card, sweet original Jenna-ness. :)Some days I wonder at the slow pace of our lives and the simple tasks and pleasures it revolves around - mostly I ask myself, especially in those moments of emotional trials, whether this is enough. Whether what I am, what I do, is meeting their needs.

Today I didn't question it. We are who we are. It will all be OK.