Waiting

I am very much a list person. It doesn't take long once I meet a new person for them to realise this: even the builder has taken to teasing me about my lists. If I lose one, which happens quite often, it is like a fire alarm: nobody stops to collect anything, we all hunt for the list. I am often told to "chill out" but I find that my lists are what keeps me sane and calm. Once all the swirling thoughts are on a piece of paper they no longer feel so threatening or overwhelming: they can be moved, but under my control; priorities are easier to identify; time-scales easier to calculate and I can find ways of trying to factor in some space. And when everything suddenly changes, at least I know what didn't get done, what needs picking up later and what just has to be left.
I had a list yesterday, and had already written today's and Friday's, making sure that I had enough time to do everything that I needed to before I catch the train to Derby for a weekend away walking.
And then the phone rang and it was my mother's neighbour telling me that mum was being taken to hospital, leaving her frail, elderly husband at home. It was helpful to have my list, so that when I had to drop everything and leave, I knew what had to be caught by someone else and what I just had to let fall. It is amazing to have friends that are willing and able to give their time to drive my son to his god-mother's for the over-night stay and day trip that he has been counting the weeks, days and hours to. He had only just told me that it was 35 minutes until he left.
It has also been amazing to see social services in action and to have a carer arrive only minutes after I did to tell me that 48 hours of live-in care were in place while longer term arrangements were made, leaving me free to visit my mother and reassure myself that she was comfortable and in good hands.
And now I am waiting. I have another list of what I need to do once my step-father is safely in respite care, which will be organised today. I cannot even make a list of what to do to help my mother until she has had the necessary tests to determine what happened yesterday. So, at the moment I have only one thing on my list: wait.

Benchmarks

I was telling someone the other day about my dog doing the Kennel Club Good Citizen Dog Awards. I am very laid back about my children's education, but I can release my inner pushy parent on the dog and put her through exams at a very early age without fear of causing permanent psychological harm. I have not been very happy with Coco's progress recently but my friend reminded me today how far this puppy has come. She will walk to heel, mostly, and especially if I make it very obvious that I have a treat in my hand. She will even walk to heel with no lead as we weave in and out of posts. She will come back across the park when I call, running right up to me and sitting. She will stay, usually resigning herself to the boredom by putting her chin on the floor and occasionally eating grass, and she will leave a tempting treat or her favourite toy until told she can take it. She has achieved both her puppy and her bronze certificates and I have rosettes for each to be proud of.
I always meant to measure my children's heights on a door-post so that we could all marvel at how much they had grown but I never did. Their development is clear to see however: they out-grow shoes and clothes, they bump their hips rather than their heads on grandma's breakfast table and they even coo over tiny baby shoes in the shops, which they themselves wore not so long ago.
It is important to notice progress and the only way to do this is to remember how things were. No matter how depressed I am about the state of my garden, there are a few photos of how it was three or four years ago that never fail to cheer me up. In the hazy worlds of home-ed and personal development it is hard to see this progress and easy to slip into the trap of feeling that nothing is changing.
Perhaps it is necessary to be intentional about noticing progress. To pay attention to what the children can do, or read, or understand right now so that I have something to compare last and next year with and to see how they are thriving; to pay attention to where I am right now, what I cope with, what causes me to spin out, how I respond to a difficult situation so that I can see that I am indeed becoming calmer and better humoured as I deal with some of the uncomfortable feelings in my life. Perhaps it is even time to fashion some rosettes of our own.

Tate Watercolours

I have been lucky enough to have another 'day off' and have spent it at the Tate Gallery in London at the watercolour exhibition. I felt like a child on a school day out, almost hopping up and down with excitement, and I was not disappointed. I had thought carefully about whether to join up with someone, my husband, a friend, a fellow evening-class student perhaps, but decided that I actually would enjoy it more by myself. There were a few occasions when I was tempted to comment to a total stranger about one of the pictures but most of the time I was happy to think my own thoughts, to not have to listen to anyone else's and to go at my own pace, lingering or moving on as I wanted. Picture after picture astounded me with colour, dexterity, detail, boldness and more colour. There were maps, portraits, architecture, botany, landscape, abstracts and war paintings. I tuned in to my own mental chatter, trying to capture what it was that made me internally exclaim, "amazing!" I asked myself over and again what I liked about the pictures that made me stop and examine them. Would I like to paint like that? It is hard to get passed the feeling that I will never have the skill to be able to paint like any of these artists and to let myself discover what I was drawn to. I also struggle not to apologies for my tastes, as if what I like must lack sophistication or substance. I find that I like bright colours, especially red and green; I like pen and wash, pictures with outlines, a somewhat 'illustrative' style; I am awed by courage: large scale, intimate detail or strong brush marks, reminding me the idea I once read in a climbing book of a 'committing move'. I have thoroughly enjoyed my day out and learned a great deal more about the range of the medium I am learning to paint in. Unexpected though, was how I have learned a little bit more about myself, who I am and what I love.

Priorities - again!

I love the idea of having a clear idea of what matters most and getting it done, of letting go of the "small stuff". I applied this principle well in some areas of my life last term, most notably my running. I accepted that it mattered to me to do well in the Hastings Half Marathon, I put my training runs first into my weekly plan and I ran with purpose. I focused on my goal and I achieved it. But I am struggling again. I think the problem I have has is two-faced: I deny what I really want and I try to have too many priorities. An example of the first: I can think through that having hummus for lunch is not very important and that filing my son's term's work and preparing him for the Junior Maths Challenge are my real priorities but when I find myself getting the food processor out as my husband calls the children to lunch, I know that in my heart, hummus was paramount. I am beginning to plan next term and have come face-to-face with the second: trying to fit too much in. It all looks so good until I hear myself tell the children that we will concentrate on improving their cycling in the summer months and that we will "slot it in" to our timetable. A friend suggests a dog walk and I find myself thinking that I have filled every day between now and the end of June and wonder how I will fit in seeing any friends. Something will have to give. Can I really do no handwriting or grammar practice until September. What about the project the children would like to do - where will it fit? Surely we need to finish Maths? And I want to do the things we love, like Poetry Tea and Chapter Book. And I want to have time for spontaneous picnics in the park or the garden. Even I can see that it isn't all going to happen -certainly not if I want it to feel like fun and not like Boot Camp.

Orphans

Have you ever noticed how grown-ups just don't feature in children's literature, not unless they are the baddies? Harry Potter's parents are dead, along with the Baudelaire siblings' and Sara Crewe's in A Little Princess. The Railway Children have one parent in prison and one withdrawn to her study writing and The Famous Five are sent off with only the requirement to send a postcard once a day. The Balicki's in "The Silver Sword" cross Europe, Dorothy travels the Yellow Brick Road and the Pevensie's explore Narnia without the guiding hand of parents. (Even Maisy, Kipper and Wibbly Pig carry on their lives without any grown-ups.) Without benevolent adults, these young people have adventures and fun; they experience danger and overcome difficulties, achieve their goals and develop as people. The Easter holidays have started and my husband is off school. I have skived family responsibilities for a few days, taking time out to begin walking the North Downs Way, and now I am busy catching up with admin and tutoring private students. I haven't spent any "quality time" with my children and I am beginning to feel that pervading sense of parental guilt that I should be doing more, that I am neglecting my children. But they have dug out a not-yet-played Christmas present game, played football, sun-bathed, eaten ice-cream, read books and not got dressed all day. Hardly fighting the White Witch or Voldemort, but still, I think that they are having adventures and fun: maybe more so with a little less parenting!

Voices in my head

I have begun to realise how much I listen to the voice in my head which tells me that I am wrong. Often, like the best of tv impressionists, this voice is a perfect copy of someone else and I am beginning to discover how often I really believe that what I am hearing is what that person is thinking. Sometimes it's the voice of a complete stranger: maybe someone reading a job application, the assistant in a shop or even a figure from history. There is another voice. This one tends to speak quickly, quietly and then retreat like a shy bird. This voice is the one that says, "I'm so tired, I need to sit down," or "No, I don't want to do what you're asking of me," or "I love that piece of art." The first voice shouts it down with accusations of laziness, selfishness or poor taste. I am beginning to learn to silence the first, at least momentarily, to take some control over and responsibility for my thoughts, to add some reason to the mix. I am beginning to learn to listen to the second, to take it seriously, just as I would one of my children. I am beginning to do what it says, when I can, and at least to hear it when I can't. Yesterday evening, in art class, we looked at abstraction. We listened to excerpts of music and sketched the inspired images in our heads, working the one we felt most drawn to into a painting. There was that voice telling me that I was doing it wrong, that my pictures were rubbish, that I was no good. And there was the second speaking of colours and shapes unique to me, rustling grasses, swooping rose stems and ambiguous lizard-shaped oases. I listened; I painted; and every time I do that, the first voice loses some of its power and the second gains a little more confidence.

North Downs Way, part 1

It was hard work getting out of bed this morning. My legs felt heavy and just a little bit sore. I have spent the last two days walking. I have walked, altogether, from Farnham to Merstham, a distance of around 35 miles: I have begun to fulfil my year's intention of completing the North Downs Way. We had two days of beautiful weather, wide open skies, green fields, woods, rivers, hills and little birds. We have talked deeply and laughed a lot; drunk tea and eaten cake on the top of Box Hill and outside a Pre-Raphaelite Art Gallery; discovered forticfications to transform the North Downs into the last line of defence from a threatened French Invasion at the end of the 19th Century and lime quarries and water towers. (I took some great photos too, but sadly my phone has had to go back for repair (oh no, not again!) so they will have to be added later.) It has been a great couple of days out from life and, despite being exhausted, I am happily refreshed.