Seven

As, you proudly announce that you are seven, the golden autumn light dances in your blue eyes.
You are generous, loyal and brave.
You are funny, clever and cautious.
Like your Father, you run and climb like a fearless cat.
Like your Mother, you love the still escape of reading.
Yet, you are completely your own independent little self.
The world belongs to you and you will run to meet it.
You cry easily, love easily and dance spontaneously!
Everyday is still full of wonder.

Morning Song

  by Sylvia Plath

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.  The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

 

                       

 

 

Working Mothers: How do you do it?

When my first child was born nearly seven years ago, I had assumed that I would return to work eventually and my child would be looked after by either a lovely crèche or a saintly child-minder. I had already travelled for a few months and then moved from the UK to Dublin. On departure from the UK I found myself unexpectedly in early stages of pregnancy and almost as soon as the blue line showed positive I began to experience frequent 'morning' noon and night sickness.

Mr S was lucky enough to find a job quickly so I settled down for nine months of profound nausea, extreme fatigue, facial eruptions and constant heartburn.(Which the Doc assured incredulous me was perfectly normal.) So when E was eight months old I had already been out of the job market for ages so off I went to find her that lovely crèche...

...six years, two kids, three house moves and one big dog later I am still 'just' a 'stay at home' parent. Now with both E and O at big school, I have sometimes been asked "so what do you do all day"?? and "How are you enjoying all your free time?" as if my life is one long round of conspicuous consumption, beauty appointments and having coffee with my yummy mummy friends. Right?

This is what I did yesterday:

• kids wake up
• fight way into bathroom
• make tea
• feed dog
• feed kids a snack
• reason with O that I do not have to watch him butter his rice cake
• persuade them to get dressed
• make breakfast
• put shoes on correct feet
• organise school bags
• brush teeth
• stop child from running into road
• put kids on school bus
• intervene in the great seat choice battle
• close front door and breathe
• eat banana
• hoover
• hang laundry
• fill washing machine
• clean garden of dog offerings
• take dog for walk
• dog finds great rotten bone and wont get back on the lead. Walk off and hide behind tree. Relived dog finds me and gets back on lead. Smile ruefully at man who has witnessed this.
• coffee and toast
• run to get in laundry in before rain
• let builder in
• commiserate with builder that my house does not conform to 'normal' building standards.
• builder fixes hole that he made accidentally.
• make soup
• think about opening my college books
• clean bathroom
• tidy kids rooms
• stand on lego and scream
• find some lovely drawings by E and smile
• put ironing away and do washing up.
• shout at the radio
• make builder tea
• prepare a sourdough starter
• pick O up from school
• buy milk
• E arrives home
• make snack for kids
• help with homework and music practise
• start dinner
• almost burn dinner reading The Great Gatsby
• kids have dinner and I eat a sneaky biscuit in kitchen
• feed dog
• bath-time for kids
• story-time and kids bedtime
• start dinner for Mr S and me
• Fall asleep watching The Great British Bake Off

I sometimes wonder if I do return to the world of work after finishing my OU degree, how on earth will I manage to do all this and work and sleep? How much does a housekeeper/chef/chauffeur earn these days?

Digging.

The light is low and mellow and the children have returned to their lives of structure at school. The house is still and in the mornings of this Indian summer, I walk the dog through fields of great golden  bales of barley straw. The hedgerows are laden with berry jewels, rosehips, blackberries, haws and one bent blackthorn adorned with her sloes. Next year, I might make some hedgerow wine. Instead, I throw some rhubarb and strawberries with honey under a crumble.

Seamus Heaney died and my Dad phoned me to tell me that one of his friends died. My Dad speaks to me of his friend in a manner that suggests that I know this person very well. However, I only have a vague notion of whom he is speaking. He forgets sometimes that this person was a greater part of his life only when he was a teenager before myself and my brother arrived. He tells me a story of how when he was this young man, he would linger in the moonlit garden listening to and avoiding his father leading the nightly rendition of The Rosary. A small silent rebellion. 'I would sure go in now', he says firmly, nostalgia is memory tinged with regret.

I wonder if I will look back on my own rejection of some of my familial beliefs and values as a flash of youthful arrogance instead of a part of some natural evolution into individualism and adulthood. The only poem of Heaney's that I ever read was 'Digging' in GCSE English Lit  and I remember realising that poetry could elevate the ordinary into something exceptional. That reading in and of itself was something essential, something important. "My Father digging...", my Grandfather was also man of the earth, of turf and floury spuds and of coaxing little seeds to grow. Granda grew strong, eye-stinging onions in his garden and delicate sky-blue iris and midnight scented sweet-peas. Today, he is gone and Dad grows the flowers and I grow the onions and crave the odour of alliums and damp purple soil.

 

 

 

Grow, Eat, Make, and Read

This week, these grew in the allotment:

 

There are not very many veggies this year but the flowers are abundant.

 

We baked these yummy peppermint squares:

 

 

They are a little bit crumbly, a wee bit misshapen and they need more minty icing but for a sheer taste of my childhood they cannot be beaten. My kids have great smears of chocolate across their grubby little faces.  For me, these retro beauties have a wonderful Proustian quality, they transport me right back to my Granny R's fragrant kitchen. I found the recipe in an old recipe book also from another lifetime but there are a myriad of recipes to be found online.

 

I have been reading:

 

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier's delicious gothic novel is next months book club choice. I am looking forward to our discussion already. I know he has a lovely mansion in beautiful Cornwall but isn't Maxim De Winter a useless husband! I treated myself to the wonderful Hitchcock film adaption too and had always thought the book was a treatise on the difference in class and age between Mr and Mrs de Winter (II) however now I suppose Du Maurier is writing about identity and the consequences of the absence of a strong sense of oneself.

 

I have been trying to teach myself moss stitch:

 

 

Moss stitch continues to be a mystery to me, I think I have managed somehow to knit in seed stitch. It is supposed to be a wee pair of slippers for my daughter from this pattern. Anyways the type of stitch doesn't matter so much. More alarming is the fact that I started off with 6oz of wool and have nearly knitted the whole amount. What the other foot?! I have never tried to knit something before, only a patchwork of knitted squares. I think I will keep going to see what emerges...is that a good idea?

 



In Search Of Amhairgin

This week, I went to a compelling lecture by Kevin Barton from Landscape and Geophysical Services and Conor Brady, Lecturer in Archaeology at DKIT. (Dundalk Institute of Technology). This was hosted by the Old Drogheda Society, in the Governors House on Millmount, explaining the exciting new 'geophys' project which seeks to uncover the secrets of one of Drogheda's most striking landmarks

Known colloquially as 'The Cup and Saucer' Millmount dominates the skyline of Drogheda and its strategic position has led to almost continuous use since the twelfth century as each generation reinvented and rebuilt the mound to their own specific requirements. It's romantic history plots significant points in Irish history from the Anglo-Norman invasion when it was a motte- and-bailey attributed to Hugh De Lacy; in medieval Drogheda it was the site of the newest technologies - a windmill. In 1649 as Cromwell led siege to Drogheda, the stone fortifications on the mount were an important part of the towns (albeit unsuccessful) defence strategy.

The British also appreciated the strategic importance of Millmount and established a military barracks there, and the present day so-called Martello Tower dates to this time. During the Irish Civil War, the tower was heavily shelled and was beautifully restored and opened to the public by the Drogheda Corporation. The Tower is open to the public and the other buildings on the site include a museum, artists studios and The Tower restaurant (hopefully next week I shall be trying out the hospitality of 'The Tower' and shall be able to tell you all about it!).

The significance of the mound is strongly reflected in folkloric and the oral histories of Ireland, said to be the burial place of the legendary Amhairgin inventor of music and song. It was said to be a fairy-hill, a handy place to chase the fairy changeling found like a cuckoo in your baby's cot. Some of the older generation of Drogheda remember playing in tunnels underneath Millmount. Local historian Brendan Matthews has written a lovely book detailing all the history of the complex.

Given the situation of Millmount within the wider context of the incredible Megalithic landscape which includes Bru Na Boinne, Knowth and Dowth, The Hill of Tara and The Hill of Slane; any new discoveries which could unearth a Neolithic context could be enormously significant for the area and indeed for the pre-historic narrative of the whole Island of Ireland. This exciting project is running for a year and the results will be highly anticipated. (Thanks to Mr S for the final photo!)

Beautiful Blogs

This summer I have fallen in love with some beautiful blogs and very soon began to covet one of my very own. The blogs I follow are hopefully listed under the appropriate section and I would like to thank every one of these authors for their inspirational writing. For my own blog, I hope to find my own voice and capture a snapshot of my life and interests at this time and to take a moment to pause and appreciate on all the good things that come my way.

As this week is the last full week of holidays, we were supposed to have an adventure day. This involves packing up a picnic, grabbing the dog and venturing to parts of our town as hitherto yet unexplored. However, the postman brought delivery of a big cardboard box and my children disappeared into the Land of Imagination, blithely ignoring me thus leaving me to happily construct my blog. I hope you will enjoy. x