I woke to a bad mood and I am not sure why. Wendy and the children were in a fab mood; phoned me up chanting for coffee; callumphed downstairs and tried to pull the downie off of me giggling all the time. Made noise and fuss and laughter and initially I was delighted but I did really want my bed!
Charlotte sat on my chest trying to get me to get up and later, in the sitting room, James snuggled into his Mum and insisted he knew what he wanted for breakfast but that he had forgotten what it was called. He had this wee grin all over his face and then when I tried to make a shopping list tried to grab my phone off me; with lots of encouragement from Wendy and Charlotte.
If think I just wanted Wendy to myself today. However, I have had a good time.
When I dropped Wendy and the children off for swimming, I went to the antique shop at the torpedo factory. I love it there, but always think that the shop keeper thinks I am shop lifting though! It is full of stuff; lovely stuff: jewelry, ship’s compasses, inlaid boxes, silver punch bowls, Chinese screens, pots, bookcases, chests, baskets and chests of drawers, medals and uniforms, glasses, bowls.
If I could, I would have bought so many things there but there is no room in our house. Actually now I think of it, it was there that I got fed up; all these lovely things and yet I could not find anything for Wendy or the children. There is just nowhere in the house to put things; no surface for things, no room for cupboards or shelves.
I should be grateful we already have so much but I am not because I would so much love to find something they would all love to get.
Anyway I am now sitting on my bed. The ceiling lights are dimmed, the salt lamp is rosy, the weird lamp is yellow and the radio is on. I have shopped and I have been for a walk with Dash the dog. I have looked through a middle eastern recipe book and got excited and I have also just realized why I am always impatient and angry with myself nowadays.
On my walk; I was initially cross; grumping with myself because I wasn’t writing, wasn’t putting in applications to go on retreats. But as I walked round, saw the seals, watched Dash rushing all over the place, looked at the dark clouds and the small splashes of blue in the sky; felt the wind on my face, heard the waves and the birds, smelt the sea smell of the mudlflats; squelched in the mud at the far end of the peninsular. I calmed down, became soft and started to enjoy myself.
Now, sitting down, I realise that the last few weeks I am always in a hurry. I am impatient to get things done. There is so much I want to achieve and do and so little time! I am fifty six and I want to write books, cook meals, make love, do my work, decorate the house, play with the children and Dash the dog and I think it must be my dad dying that has made me like this. That realization that I really only have a couple of decades to do all the living I want to do, if I am very lucky that is.
I think I have became aware of my mortality and become consumed with the need to do more and yet I do not know just what it is that I really want to achieve. I want so much and yet if I manage to pause a bit, I must know that I have it already! That joy walking in the wind with Dash the dog, with my socks scrunched in my boots, squelching in the mud and puddles. Yesterday evening, when Charlotte was cross with her mummy, and snuggled in to me to feel better; told her Mummy later on that she loved me. James, occasionally brightening my day, when he says I need to keep a meter away from him at all times and then giggling about it.
I have a richness in my life that I ignore; Wendy’s kisses in the morning, Dash, who has just come into my snoring room to settle at my feet. The fact that I have food to cook; exotic recipes waiting for me. A comfy bed; books to read. All these things and yet somehow I have managed to convince myself that I need more, have to do more.
Silly me.
コメント