All Woman

When I'd thought about the word imagine, I'd envisaged expansion not contraction. And yet my life dreams of being smaller. I need to be a turtle inside its shell. Or a hedgehog curled into a ball.

It's about an internal down-sizing. A need to create space to engage space. To view my inner workings as a compass and to ascribe each direction the things that matter most.

I think the word is balance.

... and then I only went and spilt water all over my keyboard. The letters stopped working, became illiterate, and I couldn't upload any photos - the drive was broken as well. So how was I suppose to blog, then?

All an excuse though. I did have a solution.

There is always a solution.

Such busy beginnings to the year: a self editing course, a vintage-styled wedding (pretty girls and bearded boys), and I lost my woolly hat.

January has never been a good month. But this year was a little better, a little more fair-weather. The facts of her birth have grown dim. I am looking through frosted glass. The past is full of shadow and images that can't be touched. At her party there is a sea of Elsas and Annas, an icicle hunt, a snowball fight, bubbles and marshmallows and five-year-old fun. I no longer see the ward doors or the imposing white of the theatre - I simply see her bright smile, her proud shoulders as she sashays down the red carpet and takes her place on the birthday-girl throne.

February I met myself. February, I had to be honest. I imagined being happier with a smaller piece of cake. I imagined a simpler life, the complexities peeled away. Or so I would wish. I stripped everything back. I mean I stripped the blogging back. In its place I have a daily yoga practise, a better diet, a stream lined focus on the novel. I have taken up running again. I am journal writing again - one with a note book and pen. I will return to practice as a counsellor this year.

But it's more than that. I am changing. I am regrouping. I am emerging from the broken lines of the infant, toddler and pre-school years. I am slotting into place. Who am I? Where now? I am reacquainting me with me once more. I have never felt better about my body and as a woman as I do now. I am rediscovering the feminine beyond the role of mother and the contours prescribed by masculinity.

I am woman.

I am free.

This is what I imagine this year.

To step into authenticity. To be me.

Perpetuation

The morning has settled on grey. Is it really four years since I turned forty? I make a couple of wrong turns before finding the parking lot. By the time I apply the hand brake drizzle has coated the wind screen in an infectious sheet of transparent spots. How could it be otherwise on the 25th November?

The foyer of the cinema is empty. I collect my ticket from the machine and make my way to the overpriced refreshments. Is it wrong to buy a small carton of salted popcorn at 10.20 in the morning? No, of course it isn't. I take my VIP seat. The backs of the chairs in front look like rows of teeth; only two more people enter - a father and daughter with a giant carton of popcorn - and sit directly behind me. Do reservations really matter when the auditorium is this desolate? I regress in the cinema; after the performance I find bits of popcorn stuck in the woollen fibres of my cardigan and squashed and warming between my legs. It's made my innards feel sore and bloated. What does it do in there? Bounce around like lottery balls? My mouth feels dry.

When I enter Coco's I regret stuffing my face with a bucket of exploded carbs. I am not hungry. First I order one of Teddie's infamous chai lattes. The sugar perks me up. I take out the novel from my bag and begin reading sneaking glances at the other customers sat at the tables around me. I find myself repeatedly drawn to the double-knotted fuchsia scarf tied around the neck of a woman sitting on the other side of the cafe. Blimey, the thing's a visual overdose. On the table next to me sit four grey haired Scandinavian men chatting amiably in their native tongue.

It hits me after a few mouthfuls of halloumi and sweet potato tart - a feeling of deep perpetuation; that my mother passed though my grandmother, that I passed through my mother, that my daughter passed through me. The connection we women share, joined together like paper dolls. For a moment I sit blankly, taking it in, my body stunned in wonder. I think of what my mum went through on this day forty-four years ago: aged twenty-three; full of flu; isolated on the ward; no husband or family near her; struggling to push her first born out....

....and now here I am, looking out of the window at the damp and the decayed, trying to make sense of it all.

I celebrate quietly this year. A slow, peaceful day. I receive new pens, notebooks and a kindle. The weekend before Younger Dad treated me to a fabulous Indian meal at a rather fancy restaurant in Marylebone. A seven course taster menu - hotter than coals and delicately presented. I was full to bursting.

But the best part of any birthday now are Little A's hugs and happy birthdays to the best mummy EVER.
Also her tireless belief that I'm still only thirteen years old!

Rest well and have a magical holiday!

Winter Wonderland

This time, a winter wonderland.
White and blue.
Snowflakes on the table,
caught under shoe.

The belle of the ball,
she piles her presents high.
With friends, with family,
with Cheshire Cat smile.

The magician has a talking dog,
pulls rabbit out of hat,
grey and fluff, named Pancake,
the children squeal and pat.

Chequered paper plates, and cups.
Sandwiches, sausages, crisps,
iced rings, choc fingers; a seventies spread,
no fruit or sculptured veg.

Happy birthday is sung,
one, two, three lengthy times,
the candles blown out,
cake in green serviettes, tat in party bags.

They came again, my visual friends,
But this time far away...
Just pictures, no emotions,
a jaded silent movie, daguerreotype lens.

The midwife, the induction.
Curled over bean bag, timing deep breath,
Not enough in centimetres,
No time to stretch.

The table. The bright lights.
The knife.
Get my baby out safely.
That's all I care this night.

Out. Out. Out.
Memory be gone.
For she is here now.
Just her, is all.

Happy birthday to my baby, my sweetest, bestest friend.


If you like my writing, why not pre-order my little book, Seasons of Motherhood, launch March 2014.