Do you see what I see?

Four early morning faces with character

looking out for a friend?

Have you read your children or your  grandchildren Jacquie and Jeremy Sinclair's book called 

persuaded to give a shy smile!

A bit coy, needing persuading perhaps

FACES- FACES- FACES?  If you have you will see what I see and it will help your children and grandchildren see the same thing too.  My early morning swim today at the Shingle beach reminded me of it.  Their book shows through words and pictures that everything has a face if you look out for it and of course when you see the face, you detect something else about each thing.  Well I think these stones are on their way to being people;  maybe they were once people who needed to learn something to become people again so their souls dropped into the ocean like stones and gradually over time, they have remembered who they are, remembered that they were once people with jobs and families and difficulties which made them tricky perhaps.  The years in the sea which has churned them and their memories round have meant that they are coming back towards being human and perhaps if a child recognises that and gives the stone a bit of affection, that soul will be cheered onwards to being a good kind probably seafaring person. 

Whoops, a bit unsure

Sorry I know I don't look great but take me home please.

 If you are going to a Shingle beach where the tide turns the stones over each day perhaps you will find a stone looking for a life beyond the churning bottom of the ocean where it is rather cold and there aren't all that many friends about.  Bring them home in your pocket and take another look at them.  And if you haven't read FACES, buy a copy NOW!

Taking him to the beach!

maybe better watching

We have to meditate in order to put up with each other getting older!  We have to ask one another to repeat what has just been said, we have to try remembering the thing that the other one has forgotten and today, found that getting dressed and undressed at the beach in a bit of a wind, requires a great deal of assistance!  The towel falls off easily, the socks won't go on, the shirt sticks from the salt when he is trying to pull it over his head and we are both liable to fall over if we have to stand on one leg.  As well as this we may well fall over with laughter and say to one another how lucky it is that we are both upright and that there is hardly anyone else on the beach to see should the towel fall off.

We watch our now 44 year old child as he boldly strikes out through the waves having changed in a flash without any help at all and there I am remembering years of helping children pull on trunks and then pants and find shoes and other bits and pieces.  We remember that we thought we would always be able to do all this and to carry small children from the beach when they couldn't stagger home.  Well having watched today's performance I'm not sure that they won't be carrying us back when we stagger back.  It is one of life's great jokes and so much  better if you can find things which are funny.

Always something to laugh at at the beach

What a grandparent might like to offer

boys go shooting

Every Grandparent wants their children and children's children to have all the best things they can offer. That's why on their arrival, Grandpa makes his favourite dishes.  His are moules mariniéres, steak and kidney pudding, taramasalata, oysters and revolting rognons de veau, and Granny's are probably fish pie and marmalade.  There is fishing and shooting and dogs and cousins and oysters occasionally. 

favoured dog Algie

We love them playing croquet with us, swimming in the chilly pond and in the  cold and brown North Sea.  We love them coming into our bed in the morning for family chats and the comfort of the big bed all covered with dogs and a now a new baby and cries of 'mind the tea' as a dog moves and all the while Grandpa is dishing out early morning wisdom.  We love all this and we hope they can keep all this cheerful stuff going for their children's children and on and on from that.  But what we can only offer but won't ever know if it has made any impact, is access to the deeper reality which underpins the whole jolly show.  This is because the show isn't always feeling so jolly; bad things appear in the everyday world of passing scenes; sickness, accidents, jealousies and resentments and how can you manage those things if you don't have anywhere to sort them out.

oyster fest

Meditation may not always seem peaceful but it is like putting money in a bank penny by penny and occasionally a pound or more.  It builds up and then when you have to face any of the above and you can't get your teeth into the steak and kidney pudding or you have lost your taste for fish pie, when you can't play croquet and you can't any longer reach your toes and put your socks on, then it is good to be able to sit unconcerned in the space which you and many meditators have worked to give everyone access to.  

meditation place

joined by one boy seeking meditation!

Good at egg collection too!

He says that of course meditation is much easier for children and I think he is right.  He is just 9 years old and has taken to joining me in the meditation place every time he knows I am there and as well as this he reminds me that I should have meditated, or rather just comes and says "Granny, have you  meditated yet?" in such a way that whatever else I think I might be doing, I realise immediately that meditation is what I should really be about.

Here is a link to a video of Father Laurence and children in Mexico.  It says it all really and makes me realise that we easily complicate the idea of meditation by trying to tell children who really manage to dive deep on their own without too much direction by giving them our own idea of directions. 

He says that it is easy to keep the meditation word in his mind and let the other thoughts go but he says that this is because he has that sort of mind  

For Sebastian, meditation is as normal as making peanut butter cookies with us and I am learning a lot from him about meditation and peanut butter cookie making.

Meditating Grandpa takes to the zip wire

Grandpa about to take off

All the Grannies I know are worried about them not going out enough, spending too much time on their i pads or watching tv and not doing all the things we used to do in our childhoods.  I am among these worried Grannies and have had to resort to new methods of persuasion to entice one of them out of a virtual world and into nature.  

Ah ha you are thinking that I am talking about today's children isn't that right?  But I am talking about the Grandpas who can now live in their own virtual world where they might stay if it wasn't for some outside attraction.  Now emptying the bins isn't going to really do the business, nor feeding the hens.  Sometimes mowing the lawn does the trick and of course going out and meeting friends is good too but now there is the recently arrived zip wire!!! Once it was up and he had seen his grandsons going whizzing along, he put his hand out, grabbed it, sat on the round seat and whizzed over the hedge 60 metres to the end and then ricocheted back to the middle.  This will do the trick, this will keep him away from too much i pad time or am I fooling myself!

No CARBS in this house he says

Grandpa says that he isn't having any carbs this week.  I wonder if he knows what carbs are because he has asked particularly for potatoes tonight and wondered if there might be a starter and a pudding! He offers me a martini and puts out the red wine glasses, I should remind him that we are babysitting for the now 6 month old baby

What sort of no carb diet is this say I?  There are others in this household who know a carb for what it is and they stick to the no carb menu with amazing results.  

Grandpa says he hasn't lost any weight despite being on this no carb diet for 2 days but I have seen him having toast with his no carb boiled egg so I am not surprised.  I can't be fished with changing my eating habits; I just keep trying and hoping and hoping and trying but age has delivered me some curious shapes to my legs, sort of bobbly.  I read in the newspaper that in a few years time we grandparents may be living until we are 125 years old.  Well I can tell you that is not in my plan.  The idea of years and years in this life is based on thinking that there is only this life.  I think this is just one of many and I would rather have a new and perfect body in that new life than struggle against the carbs and the blobby legs.  

However in his defence I have to say that Grandpa is a good meditator; he times our meditation to the end of 30 minutes when I am tempted to disappear out into the garden and dead head a few roses or water the tubs just a few minutes early.  He is a good Grandpa really, a bit shouty from time to time but I put that down to genetics!  His old Dad was a bit of a shouter too.  And he has allowed me to put in a zipwire for our grandchildren.  It is nearly in and perhaps he, Grandpa, fresh from meditation and carb free? will be the first to climb up the tree and grab the seat and whizz down the wire (60 metres) to the end.  I will post the news here..... It will be a post which says meditating Grandpa takes to the air!  

Do it and say it while you still can!

Beach monster

We haven't done well this week with meditation but it stands us in good stead when we have to say goodbye to people we love.

They live abroad and so we only see them when they come back or we go there.  We love seeing them and we and they pack in every customary summer event.  They see old friends and we do too, we swim in the sea no matter what the weather or the state of the tide, they catch crabs at Ramsholt, take the ferry to Felixstowe from Bawdsey and buy dover sole and lobsters!  We down pints at the pub, pick samphire on the muddy flats, play 7 up 7 down, go to bed pooped, early up with a grandchild perhaps snuggled in beside us.  The newest baby, though small, smiles and bashes her toy, the older children love her and then rush outside to the swing or the next thing.  Almost the best toy is the box which the new strimmer arrives in; long and strangely coffin shaped, it makes a perfect boat until the three of them try to get in together and then internal conflict breaks out.

Two beach monsters

We have done these things for years with our children, with their classmates when they were at school, with their friends and our friends and it is heartening when they want to come back and do the same things with their children.  Of course, in their memories, the sun is shining, the sea is warm and everyone is happy.  We know that there was rain and boredom and bickering as well but we all want to remember the good things.  We want to remind ourselves of the good things and pass them on to those we love.

I love this washing line

Alongside all this we see that old friends have left the village, gone to live in residential care homes, some have made it to the Church yard, some are still going strong, some are not.  We realise our energy has diminished, we are sooooo glad to get into our comfortable bed and not to quick to get out of it.  I relish the order of our grandparental life, relish the folded up towels, delight in the way the wind blows the clothes and linen into foldable dry clothes.  We realise our individual limitations but at the same time, love the fact that the great big universe is continuing to provide bliss for every new person.  Because we see how limited this little life is, it seems ever more important to make sure that we don't miss a chance to tell people we love that we do love them.   

Boys together doing and eating what boys love to do