I don’t intend to write much tonight. What’s that I hear? A sigh of relief rising from the homes of all 50-odd of my readers? How very rude.
Isn’t it funny how, when you’re on holiday, and your brain is allowed to float and think of nothing in particular, ideas bubble to the surface like iridescent goldfish breath and threaten to burst and perish there if you don’t act in time and cup them gently in your hand and nourish them with your attention? Back home, with the meals and the laundry and the shopping and all the other obligations, thoughts are crowded out. That’s why it’s important to be bored from time to time and let the mental goldfish swim.
I feel a little emotionally drained tonight. My lovely space cadet child has returned from Andalusia and departed for Normandy in the space of less than 24 hours. I miss her. I missed her last week and I’m going to miss her cheeky anecdotes and posturing this week.
Her absence is a reminder that her brother will be off in just over a month and that’s upsetting too because they are side effects of all the thought and care that has gone into nurturing them so that they can eventually stand for themselves, independent beings with their own opinions and their own lives. I find myself wishing that they were still toddlers: the BW the sunny temperamented singer of Sinatra and the far more serious MsDD, their soft skin and chubby little wrists. Full of promise, of my ideas for them. They’re still full of promise of course, but with their own ideas. Which is how it should be but it propels them away.
Ah wistful thoughts. Time for bed.
I love your phrase, “That’s why it’s important to be bored from time to time and let the mental goldfish swim.”!!
Regarding the trauma of children growing up, I am always reminded of Kahlil Gibran’s poem on the same theme. Do you know it? I first read it as an adolescent, when the first ten lines represented my struggle to be free of the constraints of my parents. Now I love it even more for the four lines; I love the imagery of myself as the archer’s bow with my children soring forth along the “path of the infinite”. You are a great bow Gita! x
“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
Thank you Sarah. *is a little teary* x