1. Here Comes The Son

2. A Long Cold Lonely Winter

3. The Ice Is Slowly Melting

Jackie Paper Came Back.  He’s got his Gormiti Egg and his Turtle Guy, so who cares about sticker charts? Into the Big Bed at 2am.  What a waste of wistfulness. Squashed between Son 1 aged 5y 2m and The Man, and boiling hot, I clambered out and went downstairs to the Double Bed.  The Man followed later. Son 2 aged 2y 2m cried in his cot. The Man went and got him, and laid him down next to me. He pressed his soft little toddler face next to mine and went back to sleep.  

Many hours and hundreds of miles later, The Man and I were at the Aged Aunt’s funeral.  Also there: Eldest Brother, Grown Up Nephew, Grown Up Niece and her husband, Elder Brother, Sister In Law and Teenaged Niece, and Younger Sister and Godfather 2.   Lots of elderly people, lifelong friends of the Aged Aunt and my late father.   Elder Sister has cellulitis and couldn’t go.  Nanna also couldn’t make it.   Eldest Brother, the child of my father’s first marriage, was brought up by the Aged Aunt.  Don’t Ask.   The vicar said we were Giving Thanks For and Celebrating the Life of the Aged Aunt. The churchyard was closed for burials years ago, but they made an exception for her because she wanted to be buried near her parents and her grandfather.  My father’s ashes are buried in our grandparents’ grave.  As are the ashes of Younger Brother, whose death, 10 days before my 30th birthday, wrecked everyone’s lives for years and years.   Don’t Ask. Again.  There is a lot of Stuff in our family.

Elder Brother, Sister In Law, Younger Sister, Godfather 2, Teenaged Niece, The Man and I lingered in the churchyard afterwards. The Aged Aunt’s grave was covered in flowers.  We wanted some for her, and for the Other Grave.  We walked over to a nearby florist, and everyone chose some.  Sea Holly from Younger Sister.  Cyclamen plants from Sister In Law and Teenaged Niece. Red Roses from Elder Brother.  Michaelmas Daisies from me - our childhood garden was always full of them at this time of year.  We laid them on the graves, and then walked across the town to Grown Up Niece’s house for tea and sandwiches.  We didn’t have much to do with Eldest Brother as children - yet more Stuff - and only got to know each other as adults.  I see much less of them than everyone else… I moved a long way away, a long time ago.  It was good to be there.  The Man and I drove all the way back again as night fell.  Heavy showers hammered down on the windscreen as we crossed  pitch black moorlands on the way home.  And I thought about the flowers on the graves, in the dark, in the rain.

1.  Signs Of Love

2.  Good Intentions

3.  Warning Signs

Son 1 aged 5y 2m and Son 2 aged 2y 2m were so wiped out at bedtime yesterday that I was SURE we were heading for a lie-in this morning. Nope. 7am. Son 1, was as usual, in the Big Bed. The Man had gone Downstairs to try to get Son 2 back to sleep.   Son 2 wanted his breakfast. We were all getting up.  Son 1 was knackered. There was a lot of lying on the bed/on the floor/on the comfy chair watching telly. Son 2 was raring.  As the morning ticked on, The Man took Son 2 outside to play in the garden while he pulled down our rotten trellis.  Son 1watched more telly.  I rang Eldest Brother. Aged Aunt’s funeral is on Thursday. The Man says he’ll come.  Eldest Brother has found a box in which Aged Aunt kept every letter I ever sent her.  I am strangely, completely undone.   Eldest Brother is missing her.  “She didn’t have a bad life,” he said.  “She spent her life surrounded, or being cared for, by people who loved her,” I said. “That puts her in the top 1% of old ladies in the World.” I put my running things on, waved at The Man through the window and off I went. 

It’s the morning of the 5 mile run I did last year. five miles Tra la la. Last year I thought it was the beginning of Big Things. This year, well, I’ve been out 8 times in the last 2 weeks. I’ve realised that the point of the 10- weeks-to-get-you-to-running-12-miles-a-week training programme which I keep starting, isn’t to get you running distances… it’s to get you running 4 times a week. So. Walking 2 minutes, running 4 minutes, when every other runner in Town was doing 5 miles. Chicago, Chicago, it’s My Kind Of Town. I mentioned my Chicago Marathon Daydream to a Mum I know who rows a couple of weeks back. She went running that day, and has been seen out running since.  I have 11 months. I can still Do It.

Son 1 wanted Eggy Pie for tea, much to The Man’s disgust.  Son 2 stood on a chair and washed the potatoes. Son 1 aged 2y 2m used to wash potatoes. Yes, there was water and mud everywhere, but that was all. Son 2 threw the vegetable brush at the cactus, stretched up to press the microwave buttons, stretched for knives and scooped water from the sink with a spoon and drank it.  These are, of course, organic potatoes, with the mud and manure still attached.  Neat e coli.  Yum.  Son 1 came down to break the eggs for me. He cracks them and put the shells in the box. We need 5 eggs. We had 5 eggs. He went back upstairs for Even More Telly. I poured the mix into the pan. “I usually have more than that,” I thought. I fished in the bin. There was a whole egg in the thrown out egg box.  I cracked it into the pan and stirred it up a bit.  They all stuffed their faces, even The Man, who also had Ready Meal chicken pieces and dip I found in the freezer.  At bathtime, Son 2 reached for a Nemo toy Son 1 had left on the bathside. Son 2 didn’t realise that he needs the bathmat which covers the floor of the bath, and stepped up the bath wall.  He slipped instantly, did a half turn, slid straight down, clunked the back of his head and zoomed on his back straight under the water. I was just walking back into the bathroom as he did it, saw it, fished him out, cuddled him and let him go back in when he wanted to.  Of course I have never left him on his own in the bath before.

1.  Three Good Things

2.  Bright and Beautiful

3. Moonrise

Son 1 aged 4y 2m is on holiday.  Hooray, no early morning chargearound to get to Nursery.  Wonder Nanny’s birthday, and we’d got balloons and cakes to celebrate.  And a visitor from HQ at The Office, nice to see them, seemed to go well.  So I had Three Good Things… but it’s been a hard day.  Son 2, after his learning-to-walk triumph, tottering confidently here and there for a week or so, has started to fall over again, or plop down on his bottom.  He did it yesterday, he did it today.  Wonder Nanny has noticed it too.  It didn’t happen with Son 1 and I don’t like seeing him do it.  The Man wonders about an ear infection maybe affecting his balance.  I am hoping it’s just stuff babies do.

This afternoon was the funeral of a colleague.  In her early sixties, cancer.  Someone who smiled and laughed always, who adored her family and who helped others the whole time.  She was fantastic to Son 1.  A simple service, hundreds of people there.  I walked back with another colleague and we were in adolescent mood.  It was so unfair.  She would have made so much difference to so many people if she’d been given another twenty years, yet there are people who do get those twenty years who do nothing with them.   We decided she would want us to be positive, and cheered ourselves up.  And then we went to the Wake, where the pub was full of people chatting, and her poor broken-hearted husband who’d given up pretending not to cry.  It was still unfair.

After the children went to bed I posted some Christmas Cards, just to go for the walk.  On the way back, across the river, I saw a faint light on the horizon.  Oh good, I thought, a moon rise.  I’ll stay and watch it because it’ll be quick and it’ll make me feel better.  The smoky cloud was just at hilltop level, and light spread behind it.  Then I realised that the moon must have risen already behind the cloud, because there was only light diffusing over a wider area, with no sign of anything causing it.  And then a molten gold ingot appeared on the horizon.  Fiery, far brighter than before.   A round orange face inched over the hill, a part golden coin gradually appearing,  It was amazing.  The water was still, the cloud was in charcoal smudges across the brightening sky.  Within minutes the gold coin had separated from the horizon, and was slowly lifting off into the sky.  The higher it went, the whiter it became, its reflection shimmering on the still river.  A last message from my late colleague.