نزاع مع ابني 11

أمس

نزاع مع ابني لانني متعبة جدا

اليوم

الشمس ... الرياح ... الحقول ... سرعة

غدا

لا أعرف

...

من قبل ايام

nuit blanche, almost / pretty much / as near as makes no difference

Nuit blanche

Going onto Twitter gave me some photos I had never wanted to see. 5 year old children in clear water, over smooth looking sand, a foot deep.

This morning I sat with an acquaintance and we said 'Palmyra' to each other.

Things aren't all bad - I introduced my younger son to his little cousin in Oxford today. She had made ice cream mice for us. The little ears were pine nuts and the beady eyes were chopped up bits of raisin.

She read out the first page and a half of The Railway Children to us. She has the advantage of speaking English fluently. Some wonderful guesses at pronunciation. I hope I can make someone giggle with my Arabic one day.

We compared the sizes of our feet after I said hallo to her with my left one while she was lurking behind her mother :) It's so, so lovely to be able to relax totally with my beautiful family.

Friday was a wonderful day too, T and I spent hours talking in and around the small room he has and the furniture in it. Eventually he had a brain wave while we walked to get food and we had further strokes of luck in a furniture shop and in a mini industrial estate when I needed a delivery driver.

To top it off we made an unplanned family visit and were welcomed so warmly, taking a photo to celebrate. So that was my Friday Evening for this week :)

Peaceful --- In the house --- No noise --- It's been so long --- All these months of rushing around --- It feels unreal

No more rushing - We have time to talk to each other

Moving slowly - We can ask just one question at a time

Taking my time - We wait for the kettle to boil

One thing at a time - We went and did some digging in the front garden

Time to take photos - Let my sore feet rest after hours dancing

Road Trip!! - Barnacle

Road Trip!!

My son T's shout when we all decided to jump in the car with him to take my mother in law, their grand-mother, to do useful things at Tesco. I think she was surprised to have such a crowd wanting to come along for the ride.

We went in the wrong direction, chatted to a neighbour their age at the village shop, saw that there are hand-car washes in the Tesco's car park and took care of her box of eggs on the middle part of the back seat.

Barnacle

Last night I saw my son H happily reading a dictionary in the kitchen. This morning he greeted me with the word 'barnacle', which made me giggle. So we worked our way through some other words on that page and had a fun time.

I told him that my Arabic dictionary had never made me laugh at all, so he said that eventually it would. I am not so sure, humour doesn't seem to live in between those pages. It's all very deep and meaningful. None of the parallel meanings have been remotely funny, and it doesn't take much to set me off.

Tove Jansson - The Listener

Over the past couple of nights I have read through this collection. The atmosphere starts off fine enough in the stories, but there is a particular point in each one where it swerves off the rails and I become concerned, aware of my discomfort. The writing is so calm, yet describes such isolation from other people.

'The Storm' was my favourite story, for the long night with the wind howling round:

'It no longer came in gusts. Now the wind pressed in on the city from the sea in a continuous roar, a rising and implacable sound.'

The strangeness didn't help my mind, as I was not sleeping, constantly waiting for a problem from one of my sons and in myself...being a mother isn't easy...I thought of those with more than 2 children and with younger ones. Better than the alternatives though.

Being a vector

Prime vectors of disease: the father who goes out to work while the rest of the family is prone, and the mother who goes to the supermarket to stock up on crisps and washing up liquid as soon as she feels well enough and both the children are well enough to leave behind for 40 minutes.

2nd childhood

From what I have glimpsed of it,
it explains many things about being the mother with a small child.

The arrival of body functions at frequent intervals,
no delay, the sun suddenly comes out, or goes in.

The near complete absence of relationship to me,
it's a one way black hole. Protect myself. Also give.

The breakdown of my own life within a few days,
split into moments of this and that.

The ever present present, I stand there saying:
what was I doing, what am I doing?

My swift development of ruses to escape from a world where
requests pile on top of requests.

The pleasure of 5 minutes staring out of a windscreen at
steady hills in the distance.

The impossibility of putting any of it into words,
it all sounds vacuous, trite, plain wrong and misses the point.

The person changes from interaction to interaction,
no description is fair or true, just a bad attempt.

These are my reflections now on how it felt a few weeks ago,
not pretty, but real, intense, unavoidable.

When I had small children I was unaware of all this
and how it is the way things are, I see that now.

I bounced back quickly this time, but it was only a month,
not long years of night and day.

...

I have now given this a good edit. I am still uneasy with it. I'd written in single lines across the post window, but the published window is narrower, so I had to change it all into pairs of lines. Each long single line was meant to stand alone from the next. I could copy it onto a text edit file and print it off for myself as I want it to be.

...

From what I have glimpsed of it, it explains what being the mother is.

The arrival of body functions at intervals, no delay, the sun comes out.

The near absence of relationship to me, a one way black hole. Give.

The breakdown of my own life within a few days, split into moments. 

The ever present present, I stand there saying: what am I doing?

My swift deployment of ruses to escape from a world of requests.

The pleasure of 5 minutes staring out of a windscreen at steady hills.

The impossibility of putting any of it into words, I miss the point.

The person changes from interaction to interaction, no description is true.

These are my reflections now on how it felt a few weeks ago, unavoidable.

When I had small children I was living it, not seeing it.

I bounced back quickly this time, but it was only a month.

...

I like having to chop words out quickly, replacing them with shorter ones, making quick decisions. No version is final, all of them could be played with to make something else entirely.

Crisis night and day

Not so fun. My mother was ill. Not very. I checked on her each hour for a while, then judged she was sleeping pretty soundly. I did not sleep soundly at all.

No clear thoughts, just an anxious jumble. Decided I would not drive anywhere on Friday. Fixed a taxi for H and cancelled my 2 appointments in Oxford. Slept and sweated and dozed for 6 hours in the day. Didn't help my mother at all.

Better evening. Dressed, went to Sainsbury's, called in at shop where I used to volunteer, felt more human again. Listened to some poetry videos, clicked to let someone to be a member of a Facebook group I am on, submitted 2 poems.

...

That was Thursday night and Friday daytime.

Well, well....weight lifting to all sorts of music

Our household has turned into a centre for weights. H has even got me involved. Prior to this there had been some discussions starting and ending with 'No' and 'I insist on another adult taking responsibility for all this, preferably your father.'

One independent credit card transaction later and things moved ahead, the way they tend to!

So now H's weekends are spent partly at the gym with S and we have been listening to music and doing reps in the kitchen after school and our good cooking times. Proof is up there.

My grandfather was a boxer and had those metal rods with the metal discs under their bed. The genes will out.

Last night before leaving home for uni

i just ate hughs last tictac showing me the empty packet
just dont shout too loudly hugh was asleep on teh sofa next door


I need more pillows
Take any you like

I need to do a reconciliation
Its 100£ im not going to get my card until the amount seeetles
its 110£
its 150£
I think I will go and get my money card now

I am wondering whether I should go to bed tonight or not. It's a bit like Christmas Eve or being in labour, sleeping is just not relevant. We need to drive off at 8am tomorrow anyway.

---

I like this because it is just typed in quickly, typos and all.
I did have a proper night's sleep after all.
The trip went well, we are now two households, one here and one there.
A first labour brings a presence, this time it brings an absence.
I haven't been skyped yet.

Remote cafe visit with my mother

I called her while I was walking along the street
She agreed to chat a few minutes later once I'd found my cafe
So I found a table in the sunshine and we talked until my credit ran out

This 3 line business is getting wearing. There's something a bit false and prissy about it. We talked about this and that. I wasn't too sure about one of the stories she told me, but had no evidence at all to decide that it was a mis-remembering. Just because I had never heard that particular story doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Apparently she had taken a taxi with me at 2/3 days old, to get home from hospital. The house had been cold and empty because my father was still driving my grandmother all the way North to Lancashire from London. I can't believe he drove all the way there and back. That's crazy. But who knows, maybe that is what happened? March up there must have been perishing. How did they survive?

If you *had* to learn something new, what would it be? - Films - Elia Suleiman

I was out at a party this evening. We asked each other this question. One person wanted to learn to play the piano and I confessed to wanting a structured group working on taking photos. Then I realised I adore watching film of people talking about their passions. So learning to make short films would be wonderful.

A few weeks ago H and I filmed each other being ourselves in the kitchen late at night. It runs for 10 minutes and is exactly what goes on. I am washing up and half listening to him, then he says something which gets my attention and I immediately pay close attention! Then he sits leaning right back at the table and we chat idly for a while. It's such a lovely glimpse of something which is normally transitory, beyond precious and never captured.

The film I have been watching has a long interview with the director Elia Suleiman. I have watched it twice now. I am fascinated with being able to just gaze at a person sharing their love for what they do and sharing their thinking. By searching for good links I have found out about his latest film 'The Time That Remains' and have ordered it.

Calling the paramedic

Am I grateful for the men being around today?

The builder suggested calling 999 before I would have thought of it. The surveyor made the call for me, then handed me his mobile. I was able to keep in physical contact with my mother in law, rubbing her shoulder and keeping my knee next to her leg.

The paramedic was so calm. At one point he was sitting on the floor carefully filling in his assessment forms, radiating 'It's ok-ness'.

I felt so much better each time my mother in law smiled. We are both going to have a few days with lots of rests to recover.

Sofa time

My parents are watching tv. I can hear the little clinking noises my mother is making as she eats from a china plate. I am just surfing on their sofa and resting after a busy day.

My mother said that a family home ceases to be so once the parents are dead. Hmm, so spending time just being here on their sofa in their drawing room is the best thing I could do. I sat in their bed earlier and had a heart to heart with my mother. She gave me a jumper to wear and a fleece to have over me too.

Earlier I pinched my father's sheepskin coat to go out in, so that has seen loads of short films at the new Tate with me.

On the Millenium Bridge over to St Paul's I could see the Nat West tower, close to where my father, S and I used to work, and the fairy tale turrets of St James's, 2 tube stops from this house. Every way I looked I could see buildings from different parts of my life. Going by bus was the same, here where I joined a demonstration, there where the wedding reception was.

Musical evening

I was trying to listen to the Prom from my spot on the sofa.

Then I was needed to do things to pizza in the kitchen. I cut a deal which was that I'd do those things in return for a chess game with H in the drawing room. This led to me putting T's Daft Punk record on. There are new big wonderful speakers standing there in the middle of the rug in front of the fireplace. So that meant the Proms plus Feeling Lucky all at once.

Then the church bells started because the ringers practice every Tuesday evening. The icing on the cake was the beeper from the oven in the kitchen.

So there is a snippet from the heatwave of 2013.

Gestures for Valentine's Day

I bought a bunch of 12 red roses for our households. So our table has 6 in a vase looking lovely and my mother in law has her 6 in a different vase looking lovely in a slightly different way.

We shared some fish and chips in the shade of the red roses. H has been paying close attention to Top Gear from a cosy spot on the sofa. I have put a redundant drum to good use as a side table for him. T is out extremely late tonight watching a school show.