The Song of the Blackbird

It's only me!

Well, what a first day to the holidays it has been. The boys and I finally made it to Poachers' Pocket where we had a slap up meal, thanks to a parent who provided a voucher. We laughed and chatted and giggled about everything - EVERYTHING. From new schools, to the future, to memories past... when I am with my sons, time just flies. It is just these moments, moment after moment which not even gold can buy. There is something sacred about being with them, about trusting the universe, about allowing a flower to bloom. A bird to sing. This minute to be. When I am with them and they are with me, we have nothing to prove. We know that bond, unbreakable, honest, pure. If i have given my sons nothing else, except that blueprint of what it is like to love someone honestly and utterly and completely, then my life would be entirely worth living. But I know I have given them more than that. I would have loved to have given them much much more, but somethings are beyond my ken, beyond my sphere of influence. So within what I can manage I give everything I have got. Sometimes, quite often in fact, imperfectly, but I still try my very best.

I love this photo of me. I am now 47 and a bit. It is me without make up, without even moisturiser. It is me unvarnished. I have learned to love the way I look more and more the older I get. I think I look better than when did ten years ago, even. Five years ago. I think it is the patina which one collects - the way a well seasoned pot gets better with age, like the way wood becomes a deep honeyed brown, or a tree becomes full of character the older it gets. I think my face is like that. I also love the suffering. I love having had suffered. OK, I haven't suffered as much as 99% of the population, but I know now that it was important that suffering touched me. That is opened me up. While I was going through it, it was heck, but man has it made me more resilient. It has - dare I say it - toughened me up. I have always fancied myself tough, but I wasn't really tough. I was more brittle. I had this hard exterior which when it cracked, man it cracked. It exploded actually. But now - now - I am good. I would not like to be put to the test, please god, please don't do that - but bloody heck - yes, it feels good to have been through the crucible.

And now I AM stronger. I can stand up for myself, against dickheads and bullies, I don't take things to heart the way I used to, I don't let it affect me in the way they used to. I can tell the difference between someone else's problem and a real issue I have to deal with - when something is my responsibility. I think it feels like I can feel, I can really allow myself to feel things, get involved and entangled with them completely, but still not lose myself. It is like on some level I now can enter the labyrinth and find the beast and wrestle with it and then leave - with the beast, still alive, but also claiming victory for myself. I don't know if that makes sense. Well, it does to me.

This is why I love this photograph - i think it captures everything there.

I also don't really care what people think. I know that I have never really done this, but when I was younger, it was this blaiseness of youth - that fuck them, you know. But now when I am almost 50 it is more like, I have earned my fucking stripes. Who cares what other people think? There are so many ridiculously cute birdies at my feeders now. In addition to all the tits, except bearded, of course, I also have goldfinches and goldcrests. Chaffinches and greenfinches and there are two male blackbirds which fight it out. I saw them today doing that flying in the air thing and then one of them hopped out of the garden, disconsolate.

Who wants to stay young forever? To have your life unmarked by life itself? That would be mad. To be a teenager forever? To fall in love for the first time all over again? No. Never. Life your life properly and you won't have to live out of time. See the world, make glorious mistakes, seize failure with both hands, learn to ask and give forgiveness, have your heart opened and let it stay open, with no fear of anything which could ever come your way. Enjoy your body - I remember when I was in my twenties I wore binikis and sexy clothes. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. I loved my  body then and I loved showing it off. And now I have no regrets. Do I wish I could still do that? No, of course not. That time has passed. I enjoyed it while I could do it.

I now love running and dressing comfortably and still reveling in my body - but in a different way. It is a body which has seen two pregnancies, which has cleaned houses, which has been a teacher, which has been up mountains and down rivers. It is a body which has been through hangovers and cried itself to sleep. A body which wakes up in the middle of the night to make sure my sons are feeling well, which has breastfed, which has read many books, taken photographs, painted, played waltzes, which has wrestled with gardens and gone on marches, and protested. It is a body which has said more, please more, and then, that's enough. Why would I imagine that it is the same body which I had when I was 16? A body which had not yet lived.

I don't know what the rest of this year has in store for me. I really don't. Right now it is all about school and running and cleaning the house and making sure my sons are number one. And after that... who knows. All I know is that life has shown me that when the time is right, that which was meant to happen will happen. That must be the greatest gift of having lived. There is no urgency for anything anymore. Life unfolds more and more like a song, a tune well played. And You can just sit back and listen to the music, be part of the orchestra. It is the song of blackbirds on an early spring evening. And it is just ridiculously beautiful.