long time, but can't say sorry (Sorry!)

Hello to the folks who view. As you may know I am alive! And quite well too…
The leaves on the ‘tree of blog’ were always ones to be observed and quietly admired in a cupped palm; their tan veins a little life-reckoning…

A long time without posts… Just count me as caught in winter and the deep freeze or more honestly the budding of my boy Finn. Ah Mr Finn MacCool (!) Little sun, little Bugger! I think you were born with your namesake’s narrative imprinted, or maybe all heroes are two-year-olds! Your attitude and articulation of life know no bounds. They intrigue, appeal, remind, annoy, enrage, upset and often make me secretly snigger with misplaced pride (o your rages, o your certain feet-stomping’)

I (secretly) think you are all your middle-name of Wilson, but then you go and surprise me with Sager, all musically attuned and intent last night as you built ‘robot man’ with Dad out of MegaBlocks between drumming to ABC classical.

And the way you take to Grand-Souls’ homemade books (and yes they are darn good) like you know they are uniquely read to no-other-boy-but-Finn. Solway is your paternal Granny, she who comes with flute and home-made-books and songs sung in key (unlike ME!) but also dodgy heavy bread…

One day when you can understand we will most likely tell you why “ I don’t have Brothers or Sisters”. When you came along we named you for the ‘Fair One’ and for the wonderful Finn MacCumahaill (because you have some solid Irish heritage via the Cleary’s) and our friend Ursula blessed you with (dropped cigarette) ash and song when you were six days old…

Your name means at different times ‘fair’ or ‘bright’ or ‘certitude’.
You are none and possibly all of those. You are a toddler (baby/boy) with big eyes that seek. You are pretty wonderful, you give awesome hugs, and tell pretty funny stories, and play the drums better than Mum, and swim like a Fishy In Your Bath.

I like you as much as I love you. Liking you probably takes up more of my time! For me, my sweet and yummy-tummy boy, there is Certitude. I love you. I love Chris. I love your Father and all of your Grandparents. This is the post I felt too shy to write.

autumn morning at home with beauty

a songbird found my garden

Singing crept up and tapped me on the shoulder when I was depressed. I had post-natal anxiety, which even now just two years later is being acknowledged as a form of post-natal depression and treated similarly. The difference as I was told it at the time was that I was able to bond with my newborn, was able to get dressed and even sometimes leave the home, but that my anxiety about things that could go wrong had disabled me from being able to function normally. That means that I was awash with tears, as in all the time. That I’d cling to my husband as he left for work and cry harder. That when left alone with my newborn I could function as long as I didn’t have to leave the house or see anybody at all, including close family and friends. I'd had depression before, knew the shape of it and had done the medication route for a while with help from my GP.

I fought with my Mum. I cried. I held it together for some work-friends to visit. I cried and cried and had secret panics. Pushing the stroller I would fear that I’d get the urge to let it roll into traffic, then fearing that urge I would fear I had post-natal psychosis.

This vicious circle was worsened by not being successful at breastfeeding. That alone is loaded with womanly failure, but on a very practical level it means it’s harder to get a baby to sleep. Breast equals comfort; even adults know the pleasure of cuddling against breasts, and to not be able to offer this to my baby made getting him off to sleep all the more difficult. So he’d cry then so would I.

One day I tentatively started to sing. Feeling that the act of singing made me breathe deeply and slowly for the first time in weeks, I just kept going. When I first sang my chest hurt from breathing normally again it had been so compressed with panic. I ran out of known lullabies very fast and so fell back into singing what I had as a pre-smoking young woman: show tunes and jazz standards. I sang badly, then as my throat got used to the strange little stretches, I know I sang better. I found an ability to move into my own falsetto, and in doing so found many songs became more singable. I sang so constantly that before long I was walking the neighbourhood singing past new gardens and old people in them, past mechanics and bakers and thyme-pizza-makers. It not only got me past the worst, it made me happy, very often and very easily.

It helped fix my soul up. The next step was going to be meds, but I’m glad I didn’t have to go there. I think it was just part of the fix, combined with time, settling hormones, growing confidence, more fresh-air walks and a baby that was starting to sleep to a kind of routine. But I know that my singing and relaxing was all tied into his ability to sleep.

I don’t ‘have’ to sing as much now because I’m not constantly working to make a newborn relaxed and fearless. But I miss it and so remind myself when setting up the old sixties library I work at, to just sing. As I switch on PCs in the glowing early light, I sing folk tunes and gay tunes and swing tunes and rock. I sing jazz and when I forget the words I make up my own blue tales of women wronged and men with shine, tramps in new shoes and ladies pulling tricks for a dime.

Of all the lovely things to have come my way in the last few years this singing and the simple, forgiving pleasure I find in it has been the most singularly precious to me, the woman who came before the Mother and now sits alongside.