Henry wishes the New Year would bring a few changes

I live in a rather unremarkable cupboard in the house this blogger lives in.  I share it with random bits and pieces, a polisher, lots of electric bits, bulbs, batteries and wires and to be honest, it isn't a great place to spend a life.  I hear things going on and especially at this time of year because the Christmas Tree is right outside the door of my cupboard.  I heard Sebastian moving the parcels around, making sure that they were in the right piles for the right people, I heard him showing all the other children where their piles were.  I saw the lights on the Christmas tree coming on and going off and heard all the merry sounds of children opening presents BUT nothing happened for me, not during the whole of a  long Christmas Day.  Nobody needs a Henry on Christmas Day so nobody got me out at all, not even to watch the Queen's Christmas message.  In fact nobody thought about me until I was finally pulled out on Boxing Day to hoover up all the leftovers.   This was my moment, this was when  I decided to get myself noticed.  The way I did this was to refuse to go round corners.  She, the blogger is in a hurry so she really notices when I stick on the chest in the hall and she has to come back and call me.  I can tell she that she is finding my smile irritating but after a few tugs from her and a few more refusals from me, she comes back and looks at me with a new eye.  I can tell my actions have caught her attention and and that maybe she has realised that my life and particularly my diet aren't all that great.  After all, my meals over Christmas have been crumbs from the pudding mixed with little bits of paper from the crackers and dog hair!  I hate dog hair, it is so indigestible.  There isn't much that she can do about that but she knows that she needs me and has promised to put me in her blog which goes some way towards easing my feeling of neglect.  What I would like her to do on the blog is to create a movement to change my name.  Dave or Charlie would be better than having the same name as every other hoover which looks like me but in this new world of transgender possibility, I would really like to be reassigned and called Cecily.  Go blogger Go!  And Happy New Year to everyone!

Happy Christmas may not be Merry Christmas

Everyone is heading somewhere for Christmas. There is definitely something afoot which is moving us to clear our larders and cupboards, polish the polishable, make lists of people to give presents to, plan the journeys to the shops, to the pantomine, to Legoland or the office Christmas party.  Some people are packing salopettes and ski boots, some are packing bikinis and shorts and taking off for hotter climes and some people are not.  Some people have stepped aside from the movement, some by choice and some because they don't have the choice.  Perhaps you are somewhere between  the choosers and the not choosers.  Spending time with one of my favourite not choosers who can't  now choose to go out is a blessed way of stepping aside for just enough time to recharge  and rethink my Christmas planning.  Stepping aside in this way is like stepping out into the fresh air and feeling the beauty which can easily be missed when you are head down, collecting the crackers and stuffing the turkey.   

Our morning starts early, we, he, Mary and I   meditate as dawn breaks and then catch up on his current reading from St Luke.  No easy Christianity here, this is tough stuff: Woe, says our Christ about to be reborn in just under a week, Woe, he says to the Pharisees and lawyers and all hypocrites everywhere.  This is not comfortable stuff because lost in the sentimental side of Christmas and the Victorian trees and baubles, we forget and forget and forget that Christmas celebrates the arrival of a radical thinker and teacher who offered Himself to help us be free from the illusion that our lives were our own and were all there was and would never end.  It is a good time to examine the inner hypocrite lurking in our own set up!

After this visit I am left thinking how it may be possible to give the best Christmas present, not just the lego and the Christmas paper and the turkey and stuffing, but just a little touch of the patient invitation to choose to practice being still amongst it all.  One day it will probably be forced upon us and we should learn to know how to handle it.  My old friend, who is a real lover of life is now slowed down to chair and bed but he has practiced meditation over years, has studied the map of reality and not only manages to find space to be still but gives me, who sits alongside one morning each week, the best Christmas present there is.  The real Christmas present is Wisdom.  If I could give a present, it would be to help make stillness as lovely as Legoland will be today.  Not easy I think

marmite, meditation and moving forward

from this teeny hand

That teeny tiny baby who spent the first few weeks of life in a spaceship incubator is now very nearly one year old.  Life has moved on, her mother is now back at work 3 days a week and to my utter joy, I get little windows of time with her.  On the downside, Grandpa and I trip over the baby walker and the legs of the high chair and we knock into toys which repeatedly play Row, Row, Row your boat as you struggle to keep your balance.  On the upside, we spend hours, she and I looking out of the window and as she is enchanted by the trees and the birds, I am enchanted by the simplicity of life through her eyes.  I have noticed that Grandpa has suddenly come into play, he plays hide and seek with her when she is in our bed in the mornings and never passes her without having a conversation.  

To these bigger ones

This interplay of people in her life is the way life works best, the interweaving of generations is a blessing to everyone.  The hard-working parent gets a little help from the retired grandparent, the retired grandparent gets down on its knees and crawls round the bedroom floor playing all the old games.  Grandpa walks the dogs, I fiddle about in the kitchen with the baby, picking her up, putting her down, helping her stand, offering her toys and apples and bits of toast and marmite.  Meditation in the early mornings has taken a bit of a hit but I find that I can sit on the window seat and circle her with my hand holding on to the back of her dungarees and dip in and out of little bits of meditation.  She twirls round and rests her head on me and that doesn't disturb me a bit, not a bit.

But I love it when her mother comes home and so does she.  I love to be able to tidy up the surfaces and spaces and put the wretched toy which sings at us, right at the bottom of the toy box!  And of course, having a proper uninterrupted 30 minutes of meditation at the end of the day is a bonus.

How lucky are we!

You Can DO this magic yourself

Father Laurence Freeman OSB

Here is my first Advent wish for you.  This is Father Laurence Freeman speaking about making the change we most wish for, the change of mind which lets us become free from ..... past, future, from stress, from pointless imaginings, from Christmas wrapping, from worry about your children.  You will be free from concern about politics, from worrying about Grandpa travelling back from Dubai on his own, from worry about getting flu, thinking about who will win Strictly, worrying about being spiritual enough or not at all, worrying that you don't have the power to transcend the things which tie you down.  You are about to realise that it is in your own power to do small acts of kindness and prepare yourself for your own magic transformation.  Just click on his picture and he will be right there on your screen, speaking to you and making sure you know YOU are the ONE who CAN.

Finding your way

The unstoppable growth of a baby amazes us

It seems to me that a life has a particular purpose for each person and the purpose is to get back home! A bit like a game of rounders or ludo or snakes and ladders, there is an end goal although we often don't see what it is but we are propelled forward by the tempo of the game.  That once teeny tiny  baby who started life in a space ship is propelled forwards by some unstoppable force to become the next stage.  And we are all complicit in the growth game, we hold her up to let her get the feel of her legs, we sing and chat to her, making noises which she begins to replicate.  We, the old grandparents are seen clapping our hands and blowing bubbles, Grandpa wiggles his eyebrows and can't resist just a little tickle.  Communication is life and she responds by smiling and chatting in her own way back at us.  We all feel good and if for any reason one of us doesn't feel so great, we all work hard to get back to good as quick as can be.  She has a sprouting of hair now and several teeth, can sit up on her own, stand and turn and wave spoons about.  Her first birthday is just over a month away and we are astounded at how the time has flown.

 www.brahmakumaris.org/uk/live

So, what do we want for her?  A good life, that is for sure but we also want to equip her with all that she needs to find her way over and round the pitfalls which are bound to come.  She, at the moment is like a little brook rising at the top of a mountain which will find a course down to the sea.  We are probably in sight of the sea and with our friends of the same age are beginning to wave goodbye to pride in our figures, pride in our small talents, pride in our achievements.  We are beginning to get the scent of the sea and funnily enough there is an excitement rather like the excitement you get as you round the last corner on the way to your seaside holiday, a sense that what lies ahead is going to be wonderful.   But just as going on holiday needs you to be equipped with your bathing things, your bucket and spade and maybe nowadays your wetsuit, you need to be equipped with knowledge from those who have taken our sort of journey before, to help you step fearlessly into that forgotten home.  So, we look to the wise who can explain what is needed and have already dipped their toe into that universal ocean.  It is the greatest of all luck to find someone who can shine a light on our questioning and answer our concerns.  

If you have questions too about leaving the limits of your life for something bigger, then come and hear from some marvellous people this Saturday, come to Global Cooperation House (which will surprise you by its hugeness and hospitality) or click on the link for the webcast.  It will be worth your while.  I hope that what I hear will be something I can pass on to our now not so small granddaughter.  Hope to see you there or hope that you will see us via the internet

What we do when you go home!

Even the egg tries a hat on!

Waiting for your return

Do you wonder what we do when you go home?  Of course we are sad to see you go or sad not to see you because you are so far away BUT there are a few things which cheer us up.  First we meditate madly to remind ourselves that we aren't just sad old grandparents.  Then we might go to the cinema to fill the other quieter evenings but apart from that we have a few other jolly ways of sort of reminding ourselves that you were here even though you are now there.  we pick up all the leftover bits, the hats and odd socks and put the hats in places where they can remind us of YOU or you or you or even those who haven't been here for a while.  And of course we talk about you and how well you are and how brilliant of course!  We do a sort of round of the family, a little worry here, a little smile here, a getting out of the diaries and deciding what we will do until you come again.  The one allowable bit of bliss for a pair of grandparents whose children and grandchildren have gone home is to find the odd socks and get them in pairs.  There are still a few odd ones hanging around but if nobody claims them, they will be tossed into the rubbish!

Taliban pumpkin 

                                 

GETTING FREE!

Do you think you are free?  I thought I was free, after all I'm not a client of  HM Prison Service.  I seem to be free to get up when I like, to choose what I will eat, what I will watch, what I will wear and who I will see and what I will say.  Isn't that meant to be freedom?    

Father Laurence Freeman

 But is it real freedom?  After all, mostly what you do and eat and watch and wear and who you see are all part of the identity of YOU the chooser and being the chooser you stamp your own sentence on almost everything.  Of course there is a freedom of sorts in this ability to choose what you do but it is worth watching what happens in your own heart and mind when things cross your chosen identity.  That is when you begin to see if and how you might be trapped in the web of your own creation.  

Sister Jayanti

Take your sense of being right about something, how do you feel when a person disagrees with you?

Take  having completed a task to your own satisfaction or performed what you thought was a good and kind action and nobody notices!  Are you a bit miffed? 

Take someone doing you what you consider to be a wrong, do you understand their point of view?

Take the feeling you get when you have been rejected or rebuffed?  

Are you ever jealous? 

All these things and other feelings knock on the door of our identity and quite often we just shut the door more tightly and shut these things out.  

Do we like these feelings?        NO      But nor do we like to feel threatened in our sense of ourselves.

Jeremy Sinclair

So, how do we start to dissolve the barriers to real freedom?  I am as interested as you because although I am not stuck in a physical prison, I know when I am imprisoned by my idea of me.  

I do know some remarkable people who have the key to freedom and here is an invitation to you to come and hear them and discover more about getting free.  They  will be sharing the sense of freedom which comes from discovering your identity as a universal being.  Come and join me and others on November 18th at Global Cooperation House in Willesden and you may find your own key to freedom is only a little way away, in fact it may just be in your inside pocket!

If you can't actually be with us, you can listen to them on the Brahma Kumaris website 

Register for this event 

BK Mina Karawadra

Sea Changes, She changes, do you see changes?

Grandpa strides into the sea

The sea which is always the same is always changing. That man striding into the sea is always the same but apparently changing too; from a young man on the brink of marriage taking his fiancée to see the North Sea to a Grandpa of some fine grandchildren, from newly employed to retired. And there is photographic evidence that once upon a time, that Grandpa was a small child and even a baby!  In Suffolk by the sea we visit a young woman who we have known since she was a child.  She has returned again and again to the shingle beach with her own children, naturally instilling in them a love of the great sea and sky, of an uncomplicated life.  She gives me tea while managing the children who range from 16 down to 6, all with different needs.  One needs her artwork looked at, one needs a film put on, one has to move for the film to be screened, one just wants a chocolate biscuit because her new friend next door has preferred her older brother as a playmate!  It was always thus and faint memories of being that mother return and I wonder how I ever managed juggling cups of tea and all the movement which children bring!  I am in awe of motherhood as it takes shape in a young woman with all the qualities needed to bring up a family, some instilled in her own childhood by her own mother, some new ones which we older ones either admire or worry about!  The eyes which are watching this change in their physical way are changing, they need the help of lenses to see the beauty out there, but the inner eye which is always watching, doesn't change in that way.  It simply sees and more and more how very beautiful everything in its proper place is.

It starts in the Heart

Ronnie attending funeral with friends!

We love our MUM, never mind
the rest of the people we didn't like!

It is the heart where it all starts; where all the feelings which bring about action and movement begin.  Everyone has a store of good heartedness and even a  criminal will probably love  their baby or their mother.  Think of the really bad  Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie who, having killed, robbed and threatened more people than even they admitted to, adored their mother and used their hidden stash of cash to give her a  magnificent East End funeral  Their hearts were pretty over all black but even they had a little area in there reserved for their mother Violet.  That first love between child and mother, mother and child is a natural start point.  The mother loves the child unconditionally and as the child grows it can extend its area of love as far as it is able.  Some children may extend their natural love through loving friends and teachers, their pets, their dogs, cats and ponies and then they may start to see that there are people in the world in trouble and they may feel moved by this.   Love may, if it is looked after, extend from a particular friend or pet to lots of friends, and all animals.  The only trouble for the heart is when the love gets stopped, when the love for one thing means excluding others.  You can end up loving just the people like you, your own countrymen, your own family and your own friends and instead of love taking you out beyond the limit of the feeling, it closes right down and the heart can get hard patches which allow the one inside the heart to see things in a very partial light and to allow themselves to hate another person.  

love for a dear old dog

Love in old age

This is where you have to work on your heart  to make it cleaner. Just by seeing where and why it closes down and what in your being triggers off the negative reactions you get a chance to clean it up and make it as it was when you started off.  Sometimes it takes something painful to kick start feeling for others.  If you are ill or in pain, you begin to feel for others in pain.  If you lose someone you love, you start to realise what loss is for another person, if something goes wrong, you receive a blow to your own heart, you begin to know what another person might feel.  Thus, it is worth the pain if the end result means your love goes further than the Krays did.  It starts in the heart and ends there too

A magical waking up

Rembrandt painted this

She, my friend,  paints pictures which transport you to the place she painted them, pictures of sky and its changing colours, pictures of places, familiar and loved.  Portraits of people she has met and painted, a few children but mostly people who have caught her artist's eye.  On the wall, they catch our eye and we begin to see the world as she has seen it.  When we look at those pictures we don't feel apart from the painter or the place.  

I wonder to myself if painting and writing are selfish pleasures because in a way so much delight comes from capturing the essence of a thing or a feeling or a person. But selfish or otherwise, capturing a moment for oneself or for another is compelling and as I wake up for the last of our mornings in Amsterdam I feel as if I am in a picture and want to capture it and send it to whoever wants to catch it.

A plaque over a door which
reminded us of our dogs! 

Dawn is later here so when I wake up in our room at the top of the house which has been converted into an hotel, it is still dark.  We sleep with all the curtains open and the windows too because the days have been uncommonly warm for early autumn.  It is like waking up inside an advent calendar, lights in gabled houses across the canal come on here and there and the lights show up the shapes of the houses.  Looking across the very large room which has been a welcome retreat during our days here, the pieces of furniture, the lamps and books on the table and the flowers too are all shapes emerging slowly in the dawn light.  The curtain is going up on the new day's drama for each person waking up.  Some to go to work, some to simply stretch and turn over and dream a little more, some may be happy, some less so but all wake up to this new day.  Waking happens in the heart of each person, we wake up first clear and empty and then moving to the mind and memory and thoughts of who and where we are, we start to imagine what is likely to come next.  

The wise, we have heard, wake up each morning and say: May all be happy, May all be without disease, May all creatures enjoy well-being and none be in misery of any sort.  Wise or not, we join that prayer knowing that everywhere people are waking up and facing whatever lies ahead and there may not be many who have had the chance of 5 days and 4 nights away in a small hotel on the edge of a canal in the heart of old Amsterdam where everything seems magic.

Flowers are nature's painting but irresistible to the painter and this writer in all forms

Getting to grips with what mother means

A medieval Mary with her infant son

Van Gogh paints Mary giving us her son. 

Spending time in Amsterdam with Grandpa, walking round the streets and the galleries, we notice recurrent themes which  play out again and again  and which can be seen in so many paintings and in writings and of course in everyday life. The galleries are often laid out following  the history of a country which could be all countries and shows that there are some things which never change and  which
recur again and again.  Landscapes and seascapes show a constantly changing world. Warships and victories show the ambitions of  nations to have and to hold their position against others, to explore and collect riches from what would become an extension through empire.  Then there are marine paintings of fishermen and their catches, of farmers and their tools and of the rich merchant classes in their magnificent furs and jewels, often the product of the exploration and trade which they pursued. 

A very modern Mary becomes a mother

Faces from the past in their own costumes and settings tell us about their world but also about our own world where if you look carefully, you see the faces repeating only now the clothes may have changed from velvet into denim and wool!  There are mothers in domestic settings, some posing for portraits, some working with their hands in ancient interiors and many depictions of the Mother of God, Mary.  I have picked out two from different centuries because of something universal they share with each other and with all mothers.  It isn't exactly personal and yet it becomes personal when you become a mother.  It pre-exists your mothering in a way although you had a mother and it is the great universal mother love which gets each mother through each day of nursing babies, teaching toddlers, taming teenagers, watching each child become whatever it is going to become, good or bad and then never giving up on them.  It is the energy which compels the mother who goes to work to provide for her child, which compels the mother who has to stay behind when the child is ill, it is that which means that every mother wants the best for her child even if it takes that child miles away.  

Taking Grandpa and a Duck round Amsterdam

Duck seems to be on his head! Tabac shop

Duck on the Royal Barge, Maritime Museum

We, a pair of meditating Grandparents are in Amsterdam on a four day break from our daily life. We do just manage to meditate before we head off into this wonderful  city.   We have come on a British Airways deal to an hotel which we chose from a menu of hotels  Our hotel is called Hotel Seven One Seven and it is at No 717 Prinzengraaht, right on a canal.  This is in an old Amsterdam house and our room is on the top floor up 60 steps of stair (plus about 10 to get to the front door).  Our room is lovely with a great big brass bed, a bathroom with windows looking out over the rooftops and on a table beside the bath is a child's rubber duck. There is a message beside which says that we should take the duck with us, photograph it in different places and then, if our photos are deemed to be the BEST, we will win a prize of a weekend free back in the same hotel.  So, off we go!  I have the duck in my rucksack. 

The duck joins singing at the Noordemarkets

The duck makes it to the foot of King Neptune

Grandpa, who looks as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth rises to the challenge and is complicit in placing the duck in places where he/she/the non-binary  duck can be photographed to best show off the skill of the photographer.  Here are some of the results!  

First off, the tabac shop where he is sat on a box of cigars and the man with a face so Dutch you could dress him in the 17th Century clothing and have him painted by Rembrandt and he would be hanging in the Rijksmuseum alongside other citizens.  Then, we go to the Maritime Museum and left alone in the splendid boathouse with the Royal Barge, Grandpa whizzes round the railings and places the duck on the golden ornamentation and then on King Neptune's foot.  Next stop the Noordemarket where the street singer above lets us put the rather surprised duck in front of him while he sings "let me go home".  

Next off, the market and he nestles amongst the branches of fruit looking rather surprised!  We are running out of charge on our cameras and out of energy in our feet so we decide to take the advice of Deuntje Teuntje and head for home or at least head back on the tram to our top floor room up the 60 or so stairs for a bath, a slightly slumberous meditation before heading out again.  We are so proud of ourselves for taking all this photographs and are sure we MUST WIN THE PRIZE however, when we read the conditions again, it says that duck has to be more than 717 kilometres from home for the photographs to qualify!  Never mind ducky, we'll take you back with us and you will find yourself in some most interesting places because we are so keen to come back here

One surprised duck among the fruits is perhaps disappointed not to be eligible for the prize!

Memories of good times

We start off slowly, a cup of tea and then the three of us meditate together.  This is a different part of our lives, he is a bit weaker and we, the two women, one wife, one friend are keeping company together with him in this new way of passing the days.  We move so much more slowly than we used to, our children are all grown up now and the demands on our time are different so we can afford this time together.  He reads to us, a really beautiful voice, word by word and read with interest.  As he was my son's teacher, I am reminded of what a powerful thing a beautiful voice telling out the old stories is.  We nod and think about what he has read and then up there in the bedroom with the weather going on outside and the beginning of builders and their lorries arriving next door, we have breakfast together, toast, marmite, marmalade and coffee and we remember the days when breakfast on holiday was a manoeuvre of weetabix and toast and then what would we all do each day of the holiday.

Peter Pan, Wendy, one lost boy and one determined batman.  Where is Captain Hook?

She says that they have been looking at old photographs of our time together and here are some of the family dressed up for a Suffolk village fete, dressed up as Peter Pan and Wendy and the lost boys.  You can see the last boy wasn't about to be dressed up but wanted to be batman and not wear striped pyjamas.  There is one boy missing, he was Captain Hook and we will look out for his photograph too.  The photographs take us back to our aspirations for family, our own youth and the fun we had together and we think we look really old fashioned in  the photographs of us in Laura Ashley floral prints and with children under our arms.  Oh! We didn't realise then that we would be a part of the movement which is growing up and evolving.  We thought this would be forever.  It isn't but it has such a sweetness about it that posting a photograph of it may bring a smile to others who were around at the same time as well as Peter Pan, Wendy, the lost boy, batman and the missing Captain Hook.

When the .... hits the fan!

He did it

He did it 

Sister Wendy Beckett does it

When the proverbial four letter substance hits the fan, you have to duck.  FAST!  When someone throws something which isn't meant to be friendly, you duck and then maybe run in case that person has something else to throw.  This is only common sense because nobody wants to get covered in rubbish or smacked around by an object hurtling in his or her direction.  When you are protecting yourself, you  are also protecting the thrower of both the four letter proverbial and of the missile, you are protecting them from the consequences of your injury.
That protection is what you have to practice in meditation;  only in meditation, the missile thrower and the fan are both in your own mind and it is that mind which you are protecting and the method is the same, you duck and you do it FAST.  If you aren't quick, and if you get knocked, it is much much harder to retrieve your good state of mind.  Meditation is a method to help make the mind clear and transparent so YOU can begin to sense that you are not the mind.   To do this you have to get that mind in check and you have to be determined from the beginning that you will get it under control.  From my experience, this isn't necessarily an immediate shift to nirvana, it can be more like dodging bullets fired by your own ignorance.  Here are a few tips to help which have been given by every wise person and every spiritual teacher.  You have to be well equipped emotionally.  The equipment you need are these four things which sound easy but let me tell you, they strike right at the centre of your own selfishness.  The four things are these..... first, Friendliness, second, compassion for those who are in need, third, happiness in the happiness of others and fourth, equanimity in the face of being hated.  Ah ha you think... I am friendly, I am a nice person.... but are you?  Are you friendly to everyone and to every creature?  Compassion, you think, you have in bucketfuls but are you compassionate towards people who seem to blindly fall into bad ways, people who you think should know better?  Go on, think about it, do you feel compassion for absolutely everyone in need? Then, happiness in the happiness of others sounds easy but if their happiness is taking something away from your bag of joy, then are you still going to be happy.  Are you going to be happy if your friend goes off with someone else?  Are you going to be happy when their good fortune seems unfair and seems to diminish yours?  Then the final one, equanimity when people hate you.  Equanimity means exactly that, you don't get moved by hatred and of course as well as equanimity, you are going to be wishing the person who hates you happiness and feeling compassion for their ignorance and keeping a friendly feeling for them!  See, these are quite tough preliminaries to getting your mind pure and transparent.  But the wise have told us that once the mind is pure, then the I of the mind which is you yourself, will see beauty in everything and never feel the lack of any outside thing.  It must be worth it mustn't it?

He is trying to tell us why we should do it

                                                                  

Back to work, mother and grandmother, what fun

first days

getting bigger

She, the baby's mother went back to work today after over a year of in and out of hospital, looking after an early baby in a spaceship incubator, weighing her, feeding her, weighing again, weaning, weighing, baby yoga, swimming, not so much weighing now, starting solid food and then trying out the right childcare to cover the three days a week back at work.  She is good at her work and I am pleased to help her back because one day I may need the sort of care she gives as a working person.  It takes over an hour for her to get to work and I get the baby for a couple of hours before formal childcare starts.  I realise that this Granny time is an opportunity not to miss.  Not only do I get to learn new tricks, to learn about Ella's kitchen and how to sterilise a bottle in the microwave, she, the baby is being exposed to my singing and chanting to her in the time we spend together.  The great thing is that she doesn't mind when I sing hymns on the dog walk, and chant a few little Eastern prayers which are carried away by the wind and whisper  a few secrets into her ear.  She doesn't look embarrassed when I am clearly way out of tune, she just smiles and waves her arms and legs.  I am allowed to imagine that these ancient influences will make some difference! They are amongst the real treasures which I would like to pass on to make life easier to negotiate as she makes her way along.  

Under the Grandparental eye!

That BirthDay

Here, near the home of our then growing family, I am just yards away from that house we all loved.  5 children arrived to join us there, one was already born when we moved in.  Today's birthday boy was born in the evening and his brothers were lodged in the house where I now sit musing on time passing.  A fourth boy!!! I had given up thinking of girls and shelved the large pink sleeping bag I had knitted and kitted out with a flowery lining for No 3 boy.  When Grandpa (I didn't call him that then!) walked round in the morning to collect the 3 to come and meet no 4, a lady whose house looked out at the back of ours, threw up her window and shouted out to him "What's she had then?" "A boy" said Grandpa, "What a shame!" she said and banged down her window.  When a girl finally did join us a few years on, she was overjoyed and presented me with pink carnations.

I see that this birthday boy now 37 and living in a busy city has been given a scooter and it looks terrific.  When that boy was about 3, his brothers and his mother (me) took him to a large toy shop where he sat on a battery driven train which you turned on and it went forwards carrying him round the shop to his great joy.  We bought it! Home it came, was wrapped up and on Christmas Day out it came.  That boy, now 37, then 3 sat on it, put it into reverse and pushed it forwards.  It broke and that was that.  We are all hoping that the new and shiny scooter which is now sitting in his house doesn't get the same treatment!

What is so interesting from the perspective of years passing is how convinced by nature you are and indeed how convinced you have to be to do the job, that the baby is yours!  If you didn't take on that role fully, how would you manage the childcare.  What each child comes with tucked within itself is a measure of love that will mean you will wash it and feed it and snuggle it and take it out and teach it to swim and ride a bicycle and play tennis or play whatever is your particular sport.  You are programmed to give that child the very best you can find, the best friends, the best food and you will find it the best school you can to give it the best education according to your view of what that child will turn out to be.  You may want it to be an academic and if it has the capability, you may succeed; you may want it to be a lawyer or a doctor or a businessman or woman and you may or may not be right; above all you will aim to pass on the values you treasure and if being smart is one of the values you will send it to a smart making school.  You may want it to be politically aware in which case you will also choose your school with that in mind or you may want to give it the chance to think deeply about who it is and what its relationship with the world will be.  You may want more than anything to equip it to deal with all that life will bring to its feet with a degree of equanimity.  You will do your best anyway as that birthday boy and his brothers and sisters will do according to their own lights for their own children.  Once you have done your best, it is best to then step to the side and watch what happens and establish a degree of equanimity yourself as your once very own babies grow up, leave home, get married, have children, move to other countries and leave you and Grandpa to make your own next steps together.   I can say for certain that the latter bit of life is where you really have to discover who you and he really are.  It is the culmination of a great adventure and well worth the effort it may seem to be.  At this point he really is yours and you are his and for the purposes of the adventure, nature has planted enough love in each of you to see you both through and sometimes you have to tap into it.

Birthday presence

next birthday boy

Four birthdays in one week in our family!  And only one of the birthday people near at hand for us to sing to and make a cake for.  Never mind, YOU all four are present with us whether near or far.  Especially the one who wakes up on the first day of being 16!  Now that really is a good age to be.  We, all your relatives welcome YOU particularly to your next chapter and wish you well.  There are so many excellent relatives standing alongside you even if you can't see them.  There are uncles and aunts, grandpas and grandmothers, cousins of all sizes and especially the one new one who has just woken up to the possibilities life can offer when you are 8 months old!  She is looking forward to getting moving, in fact all she wants to do is to move.  That movement is all poised to go inside her, she is primed for movement out beyond the confines which being a new baby puts round her, she can roll and reach and push with her legs, she doesn't just want to be held tight, she wants to look around. No longer content with a bottle of milk, she pushes it away and just wants to to stand up and be amongst the rest of the people.  You, newly 16 are at your own crossroads and ready to start pushing off from your base.  We wish you luck, all of us and we, and all the relatives across the world are ready to watch you fly. I think we are all in here.