Size matters

I sat, yesterday, watching a Mum walk to the bank, walk to the dentists, walk back to her car.  She walked with easy stride, a casual walk with purpose.  And holding on to her hand was, one presumed, her little son, with legs so short at 3 or 4 that for every step she took in leisure he had to take several, at a run.  Why do parents do this?  Why do they scoot along and make their children run and run to keep up?  Why not slow down a little, walk perhaps at the child's pace.  Would it be so bad?

And so I supped my tea and read articles in The Times.  A man dead, two men arrested, much scandal, and then, settled in inner pages, slid in gently amongst gossip, a report on the growing hunger in South Somalia, with the word Famine being suggested.  For the dead man, who will grieve?  Some?  Many?  Is there a parent to weep?  And for the thousands who lay their children out to die, themselves out to die, for no food.  Who weeps?  Are we more affected by the one death that we see locally than by the very many, far, far away? I ate my toast and pondered.

One of my offspring is sad.  Not a great sadness like a tornado wiping out an entire family, nor one that faces cancer with no cure, nor have they become addicted to cocaine, nor caught for armed robbery.  The pain is caused by the coldness of another.  And this pain of theirs, my loved one, it seeps into every bone, every pore, every fibre until my whole of who I am is agonised by it.  And I feel for the parents of others, but today, for me in my moment, for me here and now, it is the magnitude of sorrow in my little world that overflows.

Left turn

Why do we notice some junctions more than others, why do we look down some side streets and not others.  Some days I want to take the left turn I never take and just drive and drive, but I dont know if I am driving towards or driving away.  I think maybe away.  And towards a new adventure.  A left turn untaken signals a possible escape route, an exit.  Some days I want freedom from my work, or maybe a worry, or a stress, or a row.

I sometimes look at people who are busy working in exotic places, or someone ordinary running an orphanage they just happened to start up in some african village somewhere and wonder how they got there.  And how come I never did.  Did they take that left turn?

They found the body of a soldier who was missing and I had to think of his parents grief, the tearing of their world.  And maybe today my road is fine just the way it is.  Today I am not in the lane they are in.  

I have laughed today, and been loved, and eaten, and driven home.  I have drunk water, and have clothed myself.  I have talked and shared my love.  I have looked into eyes of friends.  I have watched TV.  I have swallowed chocolate.  This is my journey.  Just today.  And all is well. 

Taking up Space

Mountaineering, for example.  Lets say I decide to write a blog on the exciting world of mountaineering, and all that it is to hang on to Nature....... and I get excited and I create and design and there, then, is MountainBlog - and then as my excitement seeps away and reality rushes in to fill the void, I wake up to the nagging thought  that apart from the fact that I know there are mountains and I know, for a second fact, that people climb them, I do, in actual fact, know nothing more.  So the great future that was MountainBlog dies a rather sudden yet quiet, and may I say, somewhat dignified,  death.  But then, once dead, where does it go?  I don't write it, no-one reads it, but it cant just stop and disappear. Does it take up space somewhere?  Is it sitting on a massive computer somewhere (and here I confess that in my mind most of what we call internet is actually a huge clanking mega computer that exists, like a digital warehouse).  Does MountainBlog just float around an ether of deadness, does it lie on some data shelf?  And if many, many people all do the same and abandon blogs, and emails, and websites, where do they go?  Where are they?  I think it comes from me seeing them as concrete things in the first place, webs are items, solid bodies somewhere.  Does this blog, the rainbowblog, does this inhabit the same space as MountainBlog?  Are we neighbours with our deceased data?

And what of people?  I mean, in time, since the first person, be it stone age or whatever age, since the first 'man' there have been lots of people.  And I mean LOTS of people.  And we are told that the massive chalk cliffs are sea animals, and we dig up dinosaurs and we are told that oil came from dinosaurs and ancient life etc., but where are all the people?  Where are the hundreds of thousands of the people who have lived before us?  Why don't we have cliffs made out of people bones?  Where did they go?  How come we aren't tripping over skeletal remains of ancient man wherever we dig?  And that oil, if it was proven to contain ancient man bones too, would we still feel as happy about pumping it out and using it? 

Ah, the wonders of climbing, seeking out each foothold....... testing, no, daring nature with each step, throwing the challenge of survival to fate, reaching ......... oh forget it, I know nothing about mountaineering.  Now, cakes - that I could do.

The language of a hug

It's an odd thing, we sit in our cars and talk at the radio (can one talk to a radio?) and we talk to people on the TV as we iron (we shout out answers they cannot hear, we criticize their singing, we may even warn them against the dubious wisdom of searching the basement for that odd noise using only a mini torch and never, ever turning on a decent light), and yet we hardly ever talk to real people.  So, there we are, with thoughts and feelings and expressions and dreams swelling up in our heads, practically leaking out and we find a place to direct the seepage to.... some Tweet, some fb whilst we others blog.  Blog - what a word, so toiletry in its name, but Blog is as Blog is.

So I have moved from the comfortable settlement of voices in my head, to letting them out, run free little words, run as if your life depends on it. 

And I feel as if I am late.  I feel that I got to the party just as everyone else was singing the final song, just as the last fading balloon began to sink towards the floor.  And yet I am here, so I shall be content with that.

Isn't the word 'cuddle' just the most warm blanket sooth of a word?  It encompasses within it the very warmth of belonging, of love, of making the world OK.  And is a cuddle the same as a hug?  Sometimes yes, often no.  I sat my daughter, and on other times my son, upon my lap, within the embrace of a cuddle. Often I hugged them.  Well done and I love you hugs are a holding of soul to soul, for the briefest of moments.  I lassoo my children to share a hug, to give a cuddle.  It is the all of Love.  And yet.  Last week I stood and held one with a hug to keep out the bad people who would cause hurt and dstress.  Last night I held the other in a hug so tight that I felt the body of the hugged shake with deep and sad emotion.  These hugs say 'if only I could spare you from pain I would'.  At these moments love is not quite enough for it cannot heal.  And yet the hug, the love, is all we have to give and we hope that these, then, are the best of all hugs, the most important ones.