All Fingers and Thumbs

Day 57 - 09:55am, 26 February 2019

I struggle to get going this morning. A couple of late nights and my brain and body have gone to mush. So I tell myself I only have to make it until lunchtime. Between Bodybalance and the online grocery shop arriving, I will have a lie down. Of course, I don't, but it's enough to keep me going in the meantime.

We walk home from school. Little Miss is expressing her annoyance at not getting her own way through interpretative dance and over-exaggerated stomping down the road. Despite this, with the sun streaming on our backs, I am having one of those all is well moments, especially as I see the kids' interacting. Her oldest brother is trying to cheer her up. He puts his hand on her back and gives it a rub. I don't know why I should be surprised, given his height, but I realise that at nearly 12-years' old, they are the size of adult hands. He is growing up.

I rub her ego by offering to teach her to knit once she gets back from her gymnastics tonight. Suddenly, I am back in favour. Little Miss becomes my shadow until I get the needles and wool out. Her eagerness exceeds her abilities, as you would expect, but after five minutes of, "where do I put the needle/the wool/my hands?" her keenness has evaporated. She puts down the knitting and floats off to do the next thing. This may take some time.

Things Hardly Seen

Day 56 - 07:37am, 25 February 2019

On the hottest winter day on record, there are definite signs of spring on the riverbank. There are little buds of green starting to unfurl on some of the trees, but you have to look hard to see them. If you'd skimmed your eyes passed as you would normally, then the new growth would have remained hidden, crowded out by all the brown that surrounds them. But then I wonder how much of the water I will actually be able to see when all the trees have leaves on them and open.

And talking of things you cannot see, nearly two months in and I am finally rewarded with a train crossing the bridge while I am there and so in time for me to take my photo. It is just a little two-carriage train and from its lack of speed, it is obviously about to pull into the station. No matter, I'll take it, a big tick on the checklist.

Reading the Label

Day 55 - 3:27pm, Sunday 24th February

I read a social media post which questions whether or not it's a good thing to label special needs kids. It gets me thinking about Little Master's diagnosis. I've never really thought of it as a label. It's such a loaded word, but it shouldn't be. It should be neutral, and the fact that it isn't says more about us as a society and our inability to accept people and love them as they are than it does about the word itself.

In the same way that an axe is a tool which can be used for good (building a shelter) or bad (killing people), diagnosis is a tool and it is what we do with that tool and how we use it that is important. If we see labels as a limitation, as a means simply to point out areas of difficulties or worse still we use it as a mask where we see the label and not the person, then labeling a child with a diagnosis is a bad thing. But it doesn't have to be, and I suspect for most, it is not a closing door, but an opening one.

For me, diagnosis was a positive, a way in. It brought with it strategies and professional support, a way to open up my own limited understanding of what I could do to help him and hopefully has made me a better mother to him because of it.

Is he more than his diagnosis? Absolutely! Labels are there to guide you, they are not the final word: a jam jar label will let you know what kind of jam is inside, but it won't tell you how it will taste, you're only really going to know that when you put it in your mouth and experience it for yourself. And knowing his diagnosis, doesn't tell me who he is, it just helps me get to know him a little bit better.

Only Human After All

Day 54 - 10:19, 23 February 2019

Little Mister loses his mobile on the way home. It's his first phone and he's had less than two months. PANIC!!!! For someone who is the epitome of calm, Mr Rock Steady, everyone says so, he goes to pieces pretty quickly. I am less worried. It is locked and in all honesty is nowhere near the latest model. I can't see anyone going out of their way to steal it, so I expect it will turn up sooner or later. But as his desperation increases, I begin to wonder at what point I will be able to get him home, if we don't find it. By this stage, he is practically on his hand and knees searching through the long grass to find it.

We find it eventually, and it must be pretty close to the point where he discovered he didn't have it. It is a red phone case sticking out of the green grass. It's actually quite hard to miss. He sees the phone and runs to it, lovingly scooping it into his hands, like a grateful father being reunited with his missing child. He is still visibly shaking, sweaty and close to tears as he types his pass code in. He tries to play it cool, but now we know he's human after all.

Feeling the Cold

Day 53 - 08:15am, 22 February 2019

Hubby has passed his cold back to me. I say passed back, because it was me who gave it to him in the first place. This time, it's more of a serial blaster of a cold than my usual choked up version, full of sinus and sore head. My eyes are watering too. I find it hard to concentrate, I feel like I am wading through treacle. And for now, for once, I am not going to fight it . . . Early to bed.

Splitting Up the Day

Day 52 - 5:11pm, 21 February 2019

It was cutting it a bit fine this morning for getting into work on time, so no photo am. Instead, I take my picture on the way home. Luckily, the days are beginning to draw out and now I have the option of taking my daily photograph on the way home. It's refreshing to hear the water rushing over the stones after a long day. Like pressing a reset button, the water clears the stresses of the day away and I go home feeling refreshed. A clear split from work to home.

The instructor at Bodybalance has mixed up the tracks again. Nobody seems to like this release much. She warns that it's going to be a tough one but it'll be worth it. We get to the final track, which she tells us is all about the hamstrings. But turns out it's not just about the hamstrings, but about establishing a baseline as to how far we can go in the splits. I'm impressed with how far I go, although I do wonder how I will recover from my attempt at the box splits. I say attempt, because the floor is still some way beneath me, but it's going to be fun trying to get closer to reaching it in the weeks ahead, and I look forward to surprising Little Miss with it, once I do.

Keeping Our Heads Above Water

Day 51 - 09:23am, 20 February 2019

I guess I just assumed that the primary school years would be relatively straightforward, a welcome interlude between the sleepless nights of the early years and the turbulent times generated by the teenage brain deleting synapses and forging their self-identity; and, for the most part, they have been fairly smooth sailing, but sometimes a storm comes upon us, and catches me unprepared.

Today was one of those days. Little Master is due to go swimming with the Cubs on Friday and it turns out it's not a recreational swim, but swimming races - breaststroke, front crawl and backstroke. The trouble is that Little Master's only style is doggy paddle. He can swim: it just isn't pretty. My instinct is to say no. I want him safe and I am not sure that going swimming is the way to keep him and others so.

I admit it. I begin to panic. I imagine him in his most distracted, unfocused state. I see him jumping in, getting out of his depth, getting drawn into frivolity, and then unable to keep his head above water. Not so much scenario analysis as serial panic.

I consult with hubby, telling him my fears and then some. He is relaxed, thinks all will be good. As ever, hubby is sensible and measured, pointing out all the times when Little Master has got it right in the water, but acknowledges my fears and where they spring from. This just makes it worse. I want him to laugh in my face, make me believe that I am being completely unreasonable. We agree to leave responding to the email invite for a while, while we decide the best way to proceed.

I return next door and brood. When I next go through, I say sorry to hubby. He takes it that I am sorry for making such a fuss, whereas what I actually meant was that I was sorry for disturbing him when he was studying. We hug and he tells me it's okay, it is just me being a mother tiger protecting her cub, so why then do I feel less tiger and more scaredy cat?

Standing at the Foot of the Rainbow

The rainbow has long been a symbol of hope. The fact that there is not a pot of gold at the end of it has never stopped me from scanning the horizon to try to pinpoint exactly where every rainbow I have ever seen ends (or is that begins?) You want it to be magical. Perhaps, because you can only see one if the sun is behind you and the rain is in front. So a rainbow's magic is in reminding us that even when the rest of what we see is grey and we're not aware of the sun, a brighter future is all ready there, even if only in outline.

I'd like to think that our lives are one big rainbow, incorporating good and bad, dark and light, melding together the various character strands that shape the roles we perform in our daily lives; a symbol of hope. Sometimes, however, the edges appear a little frayed or overstretched, that's where "thrums" comes in. It's a word I first came across at university, starring as the fictional village setting of J M Barrie's kailyard fiction, thrums being the loose ends of thread in the loom.

It's a word that resonates for me. Life gets messy. There are lots of loose ends. Sometimes, things, people and even the stories we tell ourselves can get in the way of who we were meant to be and the life we thought we were supposed to lead. We can't see the beautiful rainbow our lives are weaving, because we are so tied up and consumed by fretting over the individual thrums that are closest at hand. But it is the ends of the rainbows that have the most potential. Its the place from which we start to weave our own rainbows.

In recent years, in my own life, I have been overwhelmed by the threads and unable to see the rainbow, let alone feel I was living it. This year I a going to make a conscious choice to weave my own rainbow and live the strands, rather than try to resist them.

Day one - 10.30am, 1 January 2019

A Personal Challenge for 2019

One part of doing this will be to take a photograph of the same spot on the Water of Leith every day for a whole year and use this as a moment of daily reflection, which I will share here. I hope that in seeing the seasons come and go, acknowledging the minute changes that occur almost imperceptibly from day to day, it will help me to step back and appreciate the full ridiculous beauty of my life.

So today, while the family either dozed or lived vicariously through Youtube, I took my first trip down to take the slimmer's equivalent of a before photo. It's a short walk; the quiet of our street, quieter still because it is the New Year, followed by the steady burble of traffic on the main road. And yet here on that self same busy thoroughfare is the Water of Leith, where turned one way you are in the heart of nature (albeit framed in the photo by the canal and railway bridge), turn around and it is a busy city street. 

Such is our life. It holds so much. Stillness and chaos in every moment. Until tomorrow, then . . .

Let There be Light!!!

Day 50 - 10:06am, 19 February 2019

As I walk down the road today, there are workmen upgrading the street lights in the Crescent to fit the new LED bulbs. As I get closer, I see that they have already been to the Drive to the left. It seems that they are re-purposing the existing columns. so only the lantern and hoods of the old street lamps are being removed and they are being replaced with what looks like an LED flat cap, or bunnet, as we say in Scotland. Apparently, according to the council website, all it takes is 15 minutes per light to bring us into the energy-efficiency age.

As I see this, I wish I had paid more attention to the streetlights last night so that I will be able to compare the lights tonight, assuming they maintain that tempo and move into the Road by evening. Coming back from the Water of Leith, I am trying to determine whether or not the lamps have already been changed on the main road, but it's not that easy to tell in the daylight. The LED caps appear thinner but not dramatically enough so as to draw attention to them.

The council website explains that the new light will be whiter and clearer and that they have chosen a neutral white light, to be like moonlight. Streets will feel safer, the street lamps will be less damaging to the environment and the new lanterns are cheaper to run and maintain. All well and good, but it wouldn't be Scotland,  however, if we couldn't shoehorn in a dig about the Scottish weather - so listed under benefits, we are advised that the new lamps "are ideal for Scotland's climate as LEDs work better in cooler temperatures." A real appeal to the Scot's heart!

The Spy Who Cracks Me Up

Day 49 - 08:18am, 18 February 2019

Family movie time, and we have just finished watching the third Johnny English film which came out on DVD today. I can't remember the last time we all laughed so hard. On Little Miss' request we watch scene 11 over, in which see Johnny English runs amok in central London with a virtual reality headset on, oblivious to the chaos that he is causing. I am not one for physical comedy, but there is something both ridiculous and lovable about the spy who gets it so wrong and yet, in the end, always gets it right.

When the kids go to bed, we watch the recording of the final programme in the latest Cold Feet series. It's a different sort of comedy. Like an old friend returning that knows the absurdity of life, but  whose gentle humour allows them to steer a way through the inevitable ups and downs, and in doing so makes you believe that with the good friends alongside you, you can get through absolutely anything. So while raucous laughter clears the cobwebs away, the best medicine is almost always laughing with those who know and love you best.

When a Tree Falls

Day 48 - 3:35pm, 17 February 2019

Weather-wise, it is a day of two halves. The first half is grey and wet; the afternoon is bright and summery, albeit with a little wind chill thrown in. I take the two youngest to the park and leave them to play while I aim to finish off a poem that has been neglected since the beginning of the year.

I re-write the first three lines before I am interrupted. The first request is that I take a photo. I put my pen carefully on top of the notebook to make sure I don't lose any of the pages. I take the photo and sit down, once again putting pen to paper. The second request, take another photo. Once again, I take the photo, I try once again on the poem. Next, Little Miss wants my help to navigate from one section to the next on the climbing frame. I stand back and try to talk her through it, where to place her foot, how to swing her bum round . . . she panics. So I physically manhandle her into the correct position and she slides over. 

I give up on the poem and put the notebook away, and watch her do it a second time as if she had done it every day of her life for the past seven years. She is delighted, hugs me and begins to play with her brother again. Take a photo they demand as they stand side-by-side on the two swings. 

I try to remember back to when I was a child. There were lots of photos, but I don't remember expecting to have my every move recorded. Its as if something only has any worth if it is photographed or filmed, ready to be shared with the world. It's the modern-day equivalent of if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Except it is now, if a child does something during the day and no one is around to film it, has it really occurred?