Birth: Welcome to girly memoirs*: Inspired by a dear friend of mine who has taken to writing her emails this way, I thought it was a fabulous method for some short, sharp, and fun postings. Maybe even some moving, spiritual and thoughtful ones too? Who knows - but for someone like me, whose mind cannot seem to settle on any one topic long enough for me to make a remotely insightful or eloquent posting - it was the perfect solution to make sure I at least post something!
Shivering: partly with excitement (I always get a rush when I feel inspired by a project or idea) and partly because I am bloody freezing! Too lazy to walk upstairs and turn the heating on because I always forget to turn it off! Seriously, and then it pumps all day - and I feel terribly unenvironmental - and that sets me off down a track of guilt about how little I actually *do* about the state of our planet, and how I should be more disciplined and put my fabulous mind plans into earth action... Honestly. In my head I'm bloody Sheherazade Goldsmith! Yes, gotta stop thinking and start being the Green Goddess.
Venus: more Willendorf than Goddess at the moment. I am obsessively addicted to cantuccinis. Scarily so. They are SO moreish! And surprisingly low in calories (supposedly only 130 per serving, and each serving is about 4 pieces) which doesn't really make any difference when I'm eating at least 2 servings a night - those calories are going to have to embed themselves somewhere on the body! Worst yet I've stopped swimming recently. The pool has closed for 'essential maintenance'... although er yes, I could go to the gym...
Mother: I was impatient with her again today. It worries me sometimes when I don't feel the compassion I feel I should. I want to be the daughter I see her desperately yearning for me to be. She deserves it. She was the best mother she knew how to be. Still, it blows my mind to think I used to call my her my best friend, I can't imagine ever having that connection because I feel so distant from her these days... But I know we did. And it makes me sad when my mother grasps at these memories, hoping they will reignite the spark that was once our relationship. I want it too, but we are so different now, I don't know how we will ever bridge that gap. I don't know how to share myself with her because she wants to recapture a time that has gone as opposed to create a future that is now. She doesn't wish to speak about growth or change. About future or possibilities. She's not even that interested in the present! She just seems to focus on the past or on all that is negative in life. She lives in such a lonely world but it seems your only options are either join her or leave her. And that makes me mad. But then I try to remember that she has been through a lot, she has lost a lot and after the events of the last few years concepts and words like future or hope must seem like remote ideals to her. So each day I keep renewing the possibility that today is the day she will wake up feeling hopeful... or maybe just that I will be more patient.
Tribe: One of the things I've really missed and been craving for the last five years is friendship. Proper deep open loving honest fluffy magical profound and gorgeous girlfriends. I was hurt and betrayed badly a few years ago and unwittingly barricaded myself in the easy comfort and security of my husbands arms. But since reading about the power of friendship in some of these blogs it's made me realise how much I am missing. I think part of the reason I started blogging at all was to make this tribal call. (And I'm lucky that one of the first people to answer it is someone so gently nourishing). I am so ready to fully embrace the wonderful female friends I have in my life and I am excited about sharing our life journeys ahead.
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Choices: I learned a long time ago the importance of viewing things from different perspectives before forming an opinion. We say true friends are hard to find but when I look back at my own life, I’m unable to count the number of wonderful passing friends I’ve lost touch with simply because I either didn’t have the experience then to understand them or something went wrong; for that reason, I subconsciously chose not to keep them with me.
Getting older: As I’ve gotten older and wiser (and in fact, reacted in that same incomprehensible way to the same life experiences that I watched those past friends mess through), the memories of those lost potential great friends come back to me….and it makes me wonder about what could have been had I been who I am now during some of those friendships. You see, I understand more about life now.
Bestest Ever Buddies: I hold the best friends that I now have very close as somehow they’ve often been better placed than family to help me through the hardest of times. The creator of this blog in fact has been like a life support machine to me for many years. If she pulls the plug, I’ve had it so I’m okay with her total honesty and with her telling me things I’m avoiding acknowledging or am refusing to hear because she just somehow understands me; so I’ll always *need* to talk to *her* about my stuff.
Men & Women (my view): I think men are better than women generally on the friendship front simply because they don’t crave the same depth from every single friendship. Just sharing a pint forms a bond. They can generally let friendships be whatever they are supposed to be. We women seem to crave the deep meaningful conversations and are drawn to those who understand and can converse at the level of depth we’re currently at. Although the latter can form some of the most expressive and closest friendships, I’ve also become just as drawn to the more simple, less detailed, straight to the point conversationalist friendships that are still on the same page as the expressive ones e.g. like my mum’s conversations with me.
All About Our Mothers: Your mum is cool. From a best friend perspective, your mum is wiser than Mr Myagi and is incredibly intelligent, elegant, attractive, caring and tells it as it is in a very wise way. I love her calming counsel. Your mum and my mum to quote Mr Myagi are “same but different”. I love my mum wholeheartedly and worry a lot about her even when I don’t need to worry. It’s probably my job as a daughter coupled with the fact that I had to go and be a Virgo….My mum is clever, beautiful, sweet, giving, silly, lovable, very capable and humble but she’s naïve by nature of the fact that she lived her main experiences in a very different world to the one we became adults in. She could never understand some of the experiences I’ve been through just as I can’t ever imagine the struggles and experiences she’s had in her time and generation. It’s hard to try to express these as our conversations have always been based on the more simple, less detailed straight to the point ones.
What do we really know?: Surprisingly, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned most of the most amazing and incredible things about my parents’ lives and experiences through conversations with members of their families and friends.
Definition by Role: My mum cares about the important things; are my husband and I okay? is my health okay? am I happy? Am I eating? Do I need anything? She always tells me she loves me and we natter and make each other laugh with new stories over a *lovely* cup of tea or whilst going for a wander. I think my mum loves being a mum to me. She knows I’ll talk to her about stuff but she doesn’t allow any wallowing or feeling sorry for myself. Maybe that’s why the long deep drawn conversations don’t work for her. I’m still a kid to her. She always makes me family sized plates of pasta when I go home and see her because I’m apparently too thin even if I’ve already eaten during the drive home. She still checks my ears. Best of all though, she stays up until I’ve made it home and makes me crumpets with cheese when I wake up in the morning. I’m 36 by the way….
My point? I hear you asking: It must be difficult to adapt a lifetime of how you interact with someone in a defined role to a totally different one. Doesn’t a role define your identity and way of being towards another person? I mean, is it easy to stop acting like a mother, grandmother, daughter, wife, manager to that relevant person and suddenly become just a friend despite all the history? Wouldn’t that be like developing a whole new personality towards that person? Maybe we should be grateful for those occasional sometimes fleeting moments when we find ourselves deeply in sync and connected with our mothers and even others. Do our mothers see us as women in our thirties or do they still see a little girl’s face when they look at us?
Probably a good thing: My mum adores me and is super proud of me. She loves listening to what I’m up to and what I’m doing but all she needs to be able to sleep at night is to know that those select initial questions listed above have all been answered positively. I honestly believe that I’m the only person in the whole world who she allows herself to get impatient with and expresses her real negative emotions with. I do talk to my mum but I talk more intimately with my husband, brother and best friends as they’re my generation and to a certain extent, there’s been a role reversal over the last years whereby my brother and I tend to protect my mum as she’s the only parent we have left. Apart from getting her to venture out just a little more, we wouldn’t change her for the world…..
Nothing to fix: My mum’s my mum and I can’t love her any more or any less if she did become my best friend mum. Nothing’s too much for her when it comes to me but I don’t think she needs me as her best friend as such as she loves being my mum and won’t let go of me as a daughter. I think there’s a bubble of protection in that and it seems to work for me having my mum as my mum. I feel lucky in being able to call myself, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend and a soon to be Godmother. They’re all roles that give me great pleasure and direction and the whole range of depth of expression.
Expression: I notice that we tend to lose our depth of expression and spirituality depending on who we spend time with, where we are at in life and the unavoidable stresses of work and everyday life. I can therefore understand why there comes a point where we long to express and lose ourselves again in those deep conversations contemplating life and increasing our awareness through each other’s experiences. It’s an amazing connection when you can openly and spiritually converse with someone, open up their thinking or have your thinking opened up by them. Your mum is one of those rare highly intelligent self aware people that understands spirituality to an unimaginable level. However, having reflected on my relationship with my mum, I can imagine your mum’s above-mentioned qualities coupled with the separate role of being your mum must be a very powerful combination to argue back to depending on both your moods of course (a bit like having a conversation with my dad). Don’t you think it’s funny that our mums can really annoy us on the one hand but be completely inspirational to other people on the other? And isn’t it weird how they can remain so composed with others but have a much shorter fuse with us? I get really embarrassed when I feel like a little girl in front of my husband because my mum’s just lost her temper with me.
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