Letter to Alannah

This article first published in Elephant Journal yesterday...

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/10/letter-to-alannah-catherine-wilkie/

Alannah…..a leanbh, from the Gaelic phrase for dear child

Dear Alannah

Today you are all of 6 weeks old, and this is a benchmark day for both of us. For you, it is the magic marker where all the experts say that you are settling into ‘yourself’ and ‘settling down’ – settling into what I wonder? I assume this means growing accustomed to life outside the womb - the power house of all human life; getting used to life beyond the selfless placenta and the clever umbilical cord that kept you nourished and sated for the 40 odd weeks that you were a passenger in my body. It’s only now that I can begin to appreciate the huge changes that you’ve experienced already in your very short life – from unborn to shell-shocked newborn and now to cradle-wise six week old, feeling your way in a brand new world. Sometimes I wish that I could ask you what you see and how you feel, but it’s enough that you trust us to guide and guard you through this time, this becoming.

Keeping a tight grip on the world 

When you were born, I watched you tumbling out of me and all I could say in response to those midwives frenetically commentating around me – to register my awareness for them and assure them that I was with it - was ‘oh my god’. The words were spoken softly and quietly, almost to myself – a dramatic contrast to the cries of the mother seconds before that had accompanied those last, desperate pushes. There was no more crying after that; all the tremendous pain was forgotten - straight onto the next chapter. I watched the scene as they presented you to me as if it was an out of body experience and I remained outside. There you were, part covered in sticky white vernix and the rest of you underneath all pink and wonderfully alive. I was stunned, shocked, silenced, the sound box muted.

What was next? After all that time getting through pregnancy, getting from one week to the next, psyching myself up for labour, getting through the shopping list of must-haves and basic needs to see you through those first few days, and most importantly - staying calm (daily pranayama and meditation without breath retention was a powerful aid).

And then you were there.

They – the heroic midwives - left us alone together, all bunched up on the delivery bed, our first meeting together – you, your father and I. We gazed into your bright blue eyes gaping wide as they took in the light for the first time. What was that like Alannah? Your first breath – your first gasp of air? The first sensation of cold versus warmth as they weighed you naked and checked to make sure you were perfect and then brought you shivering and crying to my chest. Nestling there under soft pink cotton shirt against my skin that was warm and tanned from sitting in the garden while waiting for you all summer long - you lay there and took it all in. You, newborn warrior - no fear, no worry, no concerns despite your complete and utter helplessness and dependence upon on us, the newborn parents.

Those first few days in the hospital you kept a firm grip on both us – your father held you in his arms for as long as he could and then in the night time when everyone was sent home, we got to know each other. We sat together, we lay down together, we walked around the room together and mostly we had cuddles together – both of us learning about a closeness and a nurturing that neither of us could fathom the depth of in that brief and magical first few days. We were both just following instinct, as we still are.

Since that time you’ve never been more than 50 yards from me – just about the distance from the kitchen to the bottom of the garden or from one end of the shop to the other, safe in your loving father’s care on our brief excursions to the outside world. You have met the rest of your family, and some of your neighbours too, and you have enraptured them with your alertness and those eyes that hypnotise the beholder and slow time as you work your newborn magic.  From early morning, hunger takes precedence and that must be satisfied. But feeding is followed by quality ‘you time’ when you are enthroned in your chair to watch white and steel gray clouds move rapidly past and cover the great glowing fireball in the sky in this very wet and very Irish October. This is the time when you explore your own ability to make sounds and I imagine you are matching them to the abstract paintings that the sky has gifted for you.

Your newly developed smiles are enough reward for the fragmented sleep sessions and the constant care that you must receive these days. The constant demands don’t bother me. Time spent before is left in the past, and what will come will come, but this is my job – my only cause for attention - for now.

And other rewards? There is the utter peace and calm when you are latched on feeding with such naturalness and sheer infant grace that all I can do is gaze down into your eyes hypnotized, while allowing your fumbling fingers to wrap around my own giant sized thumb. When we are like this, I say to myself and to you that this is only the beginning, that in some shape or form I will hold your hand all the days that I can – for all the days that are left of my life. Because I am yours and you are mine – not in some crazy psychotic way – but in the only way that matters for a mother and a daughter. Because that is what we are now – I am mother, and you are daughter. I wonder sometimes did my own mother feel the same or did she have that luxury in her world where there were already three that came before? I doubt it.

And what of me? Today is the end of the six weeks and I ‘should’ be completely and totally ‘healed’ of the whole experience of pregnancy and childbirth. The obvious external wounds have healed, all thanks to the powers of the human body’s ability to self-heal. The internal changes I will assume to have been undone and all has reverted to the norm – all organs back in their place and squeezed intestines reverting to previous un-pinched strongholds. I still can’t believe that you were in there, living and growing inside me. Out of sight, yet presence made known by precious and intense phases of kicking and hiccupping – mostly at night, but enough assurance to send me to sleep smiling.

In these first six weeks it has been take it as it comes – the newness of it all. It is a case of focusing on the things that you need and what I must do to provide. Instinct has dictated so far, and I will continue to go with that. Sometimes it may be useful to call on the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before, but this is our journey and I have to trust that everything I need is in me, and everything that you need, you will tell me – in the only way that you can, and in the only the way that we will understand.

At some point in the future I will look back on this time and appreciate my own changes, my own becoming, my own journey as newborn mother. But for now, my gaze is held firmly in the present and my mind totally in this moment. As the days pass and turn to night and back again, as you feed and grow and become aware; as I listen, and learn and surrender, we are mindful together, mother and daughter. It leads me to wonder who is the student and who is the teacher?

Le míle grá a leanbh

Do Mhamaí

Life's Expectations

Summer's-end bouquet

This is a post that's being brewing for a while - I guess you could say almost nine months but in truth it goes back a little bit further than that. I think that for any woman, the moment that the switch goes in her brain and she accepts that she just might be ready to start thinking about being pregnant, having a baby, starting a family - all those commonly used expressions to describe an event so utterly life changing and gob-smacking - that everything changes. Life certainly doesn't appear the same anyway - of course that's despite nothing having changed around us, but the change in our minds. 

When I was a zoology and botany student back in the 1990s, most of my reading was Lovelock, Darwin, Dawkins, Huxley and the array of evolutionary thinkers that really crystallised our place in this world for me. The science is fascinating and still unfolding and revealing awesome detail as to the workings of our universe, the origins of life on our planet and the possibilities of life in other galaxies within our vast universe. And I accepted the thinking behind the selfish gene, the urge to leave our genes after us, the finding of the right partner etc etc. and that it wasn't necessary really to do that to have a fulfilled life. There is so much to learn and discover as it is. 

Of course all that science and rationale goes completely out the window when you fall truly madly deeply for a sexy man that basically sets you in a spin, and you give in to the human condition and suddenly you start wanting to have a house, home, ten babies (only exaggerating) and a small farm in an idyllic Waltons-esque manner on a hillside somewhere where everyone is blissfully happy together - no stress and no driving crazy hours to deal with awkward people (you know they're out there!). 

And so, given that the puppy that became Holly has survived three years with us and - despite her own issues in relation to never ever having enough food and always wanting to be in clear sight of us - she seems to be relatively happy and balanced, it was time to start thinking about getting real about having our own babies. Ten is a big number after all and even one would certainly take some time :)

And we did - start thinking about it that is and getting our heads around it - and then we just decided there is never a right time and we should just shut up and went for it. 

Holly and 'bump' - chilling

That's when you realise that it's all a little bit more complicated than just deciding yourself, and everything just happening as you would have it in your own mind. And why shouldn't it? Well, I guess sometimes we are too used to everything happening as it should - like water in the tap everyday, food on shelves in a supermarket and power at the switch of a button - it's all so easy and so controllable really, if even we don't particularly appreciate it for what it is. 

And so as we arrive at the near eve of labour and delivery of the tiny baby girl still growing and wriggling inside me, the past year seems like a dream. 

In June 2012, after a hectic month of traveling and conferences, we found out we were pregnant. I say we, because obviously it it a team effort ;) That was a very exciting time for us. We got as far as the stage when I could feel myself stretching and growing to accommodate this tiny person inside me, and nearly to the point of sharing our news with the rest of the world. But it wasn't to be. At 16 weeks, we lost our little baby 'in the making'. In medical speak they call it a miscarriage. 

I pause here because, no matter how strong you are, how able you are to accept and reason with the loss, the sadness and the memory of what followed is the most difficult I have ever had to bear in my life so far. Fortune and the timing found us surrounded by family in a beautiful place for a couple of weeks immediately after, and in truth it was the kindness of others - parents, brothers, sisters, faraway friends at the end of the phone and amazing nursing staff - that softened the sharp reality of the loss. That little baby turned out to be a girl, and she was delivered on September 13th - her tiny body is buried with my grandparents in a nearby village. We called her Anna, after my godmother and aunt whose memory is an inspiration to me, though she died when I was only aged four years old. And Baby Anna  won't be forgotten, for all the best reasons in the world - like realising how precious life is, how vulnerable we are and what a gift to be able to talk about it and experience every precious breath of it. 

Three months later we came to the shortest day of the year and while it was the shortest, it certainly brought it's own adventure. We were lucky, we had left it to fate and weren't expecting things to happen so fast, but they did. I put it down to all those yogic contortions in Austria, but himself might have other ideas ;) Anyway, to cut a long story short - the test was positive and it was a merry - though just a bit anxious - christmas!

I didn't feel any different for the first week or so, but once I passed week 6 - well, that was when the same nausea returned, as before. From week 6 to around week 15, there was no great pleasure in food. Or anything really - I was just tired and probably a lot anxious despite being positive and ready to accept whatever might happen. The visit to the GP at week 16 was the most worrying, but the heartbeat was there - not like before, and there were signs of  a new person growing inside of me and no reason to expect anything other than good things to come. 

After that, it was fairly uneventful - I didn't start to 'show' until at least 26-28 weeks and we could continue blissfully incognito with a pregnancy that seemed so smooth and carefree, that it seemed unfair to reveal it to the wider world. 

Flash forward to the middle of August and we're on the final countdown. The last few weeks have been challenging - no headstands or shoulder-stands since about week 36, but you really are glad for gentle twists and stretches, and breathing and meditation to calm the mind and body. And so, restricted movement - though a problem to the ego - is really not a problem at all. Heartburn and an assortment of gastric symphonies are my daily companions - ladies, need I say more? And a pressure that bears down on heretofore unappreciated pelvic muscles that can be totally debilitating at its worst. 

Pregnancy means that pretty much your body is teeming in a hormone called relaxin, which basically relaxes every muscle in your body in time for the main event - hence the food coming back up and unfortunate 'accidents' when one sneezes, coughs or laughs. It is certainly not a glamorous time for a woman. And I think it's something that is experienced differently for every woman. Again I've been incredibly lucky - no swelling, can still walk, can still sleep, no gestational diabetes or major emotional breakdowns. 

Despite all of these challenging side effects - the journey is truly is amazing nonetheless - despite the restricted movement, the intestinal challenges, the headaches, the tiredness and the waking up four times in the night to pee - it's absolutely amazing. Your body does it all on its own - you just have to feed it the right stuff and of course avoid the bad stuff. No training required, no diploma or certification necessary - simply an absolute wonder and brilliance of nature. And each one of us started out that way - an embryo dividing rapidly into placenta and person, then body parts, towards a self-sustaining system that once successfully delivered can live for over a hundred years. Wow. Something that is so everyday we might take it for granted. But after the experience of the last year, we certainly don't. 

And it will be a wonder of nature, especially once we break the pain barriers of labour and delivery for the first time in the next few weeks. To be honest - I can't really think beyond that phase - even though I know, and I've been told, and we've been warned on every turn that life will never be the same again. But, after over a year of ups and downs, happy and sad moments, and sudden endings and unexpected beginnings, I think we're ready for that. 

Just a few things to do in the garden before all that of course - peas podded and frozen, beetroot mashed into another amazing beetroot chocolate cake, early spuds almost gone and peppers, tomatoes and sweetcorn yet to be feasted on. Still plenty to look forward to....

Forever Begin

Every beginning is a promise

born in light and dying in dark

determination and exaltation of springtime

flowering the way to work.

Holly Cottage's entangled bank

It's a quiet Sunday morning in the Holly Cottage, just past 6am and a soft and cooling mist is lifting from the garden and resting on the trees that line the estate wall of Charleville. Another few minutes and it will have disappeared, witnessed only by the later night revellers and the early risers. The last few weeks of sunshine and heat have been a gift to the people of Ireland - who would have thought that the long, hard winter would give birth to the long, hot 30 degree + days and the quilt defying heat of the nights. All that heat coupled with seemingly un-darkening nights and eternal days. And even though at times stifling, no one dared to raise a voice to complain or to bemoan the heat, the dry earth or the sleep challenging nights. A touch of grumbling from the farmers perhaps, but you couldn't expect them ever to be completely happy!

Here in the Holly Cottage we duly surrendered to the lazy days of summer - shorts and flip flops took over from the combats and wellies of last year, and even the bikini got exposure to  the Irish sun and was dipped in an Irish midlands lake with the wearer for good measure (a note on swimming with your dog - it's a lot of splashing and pretend throwing of sticks and can cause quite a splash ;) so maybe best to do it far away from the company of other bathers!). 

Strawberry thirst quenching delight
- awesome

The garden has been delightfully, almost free of slug damage and the days of harvesting are well underway. We had to buy a new freezer just to store the abundance of broccoli, strawberries and rhubarb. Peas are packed in there too, but again never quite reaching the brilliance of 2011 when we really must have overdone it on the chicken manure! We left most of the raspberries to the blackbirds and the few lingering strawberries have been picked over by the stealthy work of Holly the dog. She also managed to sabotage a number of pea plants - can't blame her really for munching her way through several pods to get to the sweetness of the hidden delicacies. However, she won't be getting her pearly whites on the next batch and number one gardener spent a lot of yesterday securing dog proof netting about the next crop. We shall see - Holly has a way of getting what she wants though and she does love her peas...

Yesterday was the day to clear out the old pea plants, cut back the raspberry canes and trim back wandering rocket and seeding turnips. The early spuds have already been eaten halfway through and it can only be a week or so before the onions and beans are ready to come out of the ground. No tomatoes yet, although cucumbers are lengthening by the day and there are first signs of sweet peppers and chillis to come (they already had amazing melon and sweetcorn in beautiful Donegal - wow!). In lots of ways we have reached a new chapter for the garden and now we must plan for the late winter and spring harvest so that will require some thought, and also that summer is rapidly moving onto to autumn. Suggestions are curly kale and spring cabbage, and we will try to make the most of the greenhouse this winter, despite our failed yet best intentions of 2011 and 2012. 

Holly proof pea defence

It's been a busy time on the inside of the Holly Cottage as well, and while some might call it nesting, I think I prefer to call it catching up on all those jobs you never quite got round to and the prospect of a small baby in the house that will make this near impossible probably until it is feeding itself and writing its first paper on cosmic theory'. This work involves painting the last of the rooms left since moving in three years ago, chasing patches of mould in the bathroom, getting rid of un-wanted furniture and that most difficult of jobs - clearing out presses and shelves of the accumulated nonsense of stuff that lingers purely on the grounds of nostalgia and it might come in useful or be worn again. But you need to make space for the new to begin and this is the cycle that runs through our lives, from birth to death. Of course new beginnings are not without their own share of pain or uncertainty. That's what makes them so memorable and adrenaline fuelled - be it the joyous ones or the sorrowful ones - and discerns them from the hum drum of normality. 

Yesterday I had a painful morning reciting the history of every item of clothing hanging in my wardrobe to a very bored man and dog - I was struggling to justify their secure place in the wardrobe of the future when space will become even more limiting. Thing is, I could write a book on some of the shoes (oh remember!) and old jeans, tops worn once and dresses that almost sing the memories of themselves dancing in near and foreign halls and still carry the scent of perfume worn for a while and then passed over for another as tastes and preferences changed and developed (I'm reluctant to say matured!) over the past 20 years. Yes, even the catalogue of near empty perfume bottles and Body Shop body butters tells a story of growing up and changing and coming to increasing levels of balance (still not 100% there yet - but then, all that balance could be imbalance?). Of course, this level of nostalgia is often associated with the annual birthday reflections - and list making for the future of which myself and Michelle Quinn of Clara House were expert!

Sweet pea perfume

However, it's sweet pea scent coming from the flowers from Mornington House that the beautiful Katy O'Hara brought over last night that are filling up my senses as I write this morning, and their renewal brings me back to summer days working with my mother in the garden, collecting the flowers for the summer altar in the local church and helping her work her magic bringing a cold and dim lit church every July to blissful pagan outdoors beauty and nature's summer standard. Every scent and sound of summer brings with it a memory of a seemingly past life lived in my short time living on this most generous of planets. This year in particular - those sensory stimuli seem stronger and more urgent in their gaping absence from the four wet summers gone by. It's the smell of hay, the sounds of people laughing and joking while loading big bales on enormous trailers, the endless loads of turf being saved and carried home by bouncy tractors of all makes and eras, the hum of the bees in the lavender, the armies of butterflies along the paths in Boora, the taste of a 99 on a hot Monday afternoon and the sound of children playing long after their normal bedtime into the late hours of the longest days. 

And this - the collection of joyful and comforting memories of childhood summers and rose tinted reflections on the trials of growing up (this growing up lark by the way goes on until our deathbeds  - just so you know), and the setting down of new memories linked with new places, new experiences and new awakenings of ideas and feelings within, that gives us the strength and the want to begin again, and again, and again, and even again. To take up new challenges, to brush off the cobwebs of the wet summers and long winters, and long nights and begin each day with renewed vigour and expectation. For me, this generally comes in the morning time - and sometimes it is such a strong feeling that I actually have a knot of excitement in my inner being and a feeling that anything can happen. Now, truth be told, this rush of excitement generally fades after mid morning when my levels of creativity ebb and give way to a much more sedate and calmer woman, and as always tiredness and fatigue can dampen any level of excitement. The moral is - try to quench these deathblows of excitement before they quench you (yes, I am psyching myself up for sleepless nights). But overall and in general most times and most days, the excitement and anticipation of what may come in any new day is there - however small yet oh so powerful in all its guises, it is a faithful companion and it certainly adds a whole lot of spice to my living ;)

To pull all of this ramble together, the words of the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly are ringing in my ears again and again - I hope you find resonance with their clarity and resounding perception.  

Begin

by Brendan Kennelly

Begin again to the summoning birds

to the sight of light at the window,

begin to the roar of morning traffic 

all along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

born in light and dying in dark

determination and exaltation of springtime

flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls

the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal

bridges linking the past and future

old friends passing though with us still.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

begin to wonder at unknown faces

at crying birds in the sudden rain

at branches stark in willing sunlight

at seagulls foraging for bread

at couples sharing a sunny secret

alone together while making good.

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending

that always seems about to give in

something that will not acknowledge conclusion

insists that we forever begin. 

Standing to a Rain-Still

Before the rain - Holly on the go-go

It's a quiet and calm Sunday evening in the Holly Cottage. Quieter and calmer than the usual mellow Sunday as chief noise maker - Holly - has gone to visit her cousins in Cork. She's a bit of a wandering dog and seems to love nothing better than leaping into the back of the jeep or the front of the noisy van to head off out into the unknown. As long as she knows the food has been packed as well of course ;) She's never been beyond the island's limits in her tender three years, but she's probably been in more counties than some proud Irish natives. I guess it comes from her pair of nomadic guardians who seem to be rarely in one place  in any given week apart from those cherished non-driving weekends. 

During - somewhere between
Nawlins and Memphis it rained...

And so I am guardian of the cottage and it's stately 0.25 acres of (now) tamed front garden and flourishing vegetable patch out the back. And somehow, with Holly's departure, the sunshine has faded and I am banished to the indoors as the rain has come and put a stop to all my dry weather plans. Oh well! I can't say I'm that disappointed really, as my knees were starting to rebel against the endless  weeding and transplanting, the thinning of carrots, turnips and beetroot seedlings, the tying of wandering peas and beans and the general tidying and admiring that one tends to do when the sun is browning our Irish necks. 

When the good weather was with us (I won't say when the summer was with us, as there is still a future in this summer of 2013), we were flat out with all those jobs listed above and then there was the sheer joy of seeing the sun that we just had to make the most of every moment. The BBQ was out every evening for all sorts of delicacies marinated by the Holly Cottage head chef (also sorely missed this evening), the lakes were visited, the woods explored and ice-cream finally tasted as it should - think 99 with syrupy raspberry 'stuff' and other treacly green 'stuff' topped with 100s and 1000s and the prime seat of that stunted piece of Flake chocolate - WOW! (I've provided a link for non aficionados of the 99 phenomenon...nom, nom, nom, nom). 

And so, the rain has come to remind us that there is also a time for indoors. And a welcome chance to catch up on all the words that have been rattling about in my head as the sun lulled us into any other activity than that of writing indoors mode ;)

During - handy to have a spare shoe
in case it might rain in Catalonia...

The Irish rain of course is not for the faint hearted or the weak of spirit. It is different than any other kind of rain. Different from the downpours of Barbados and Madagascar that can wash entire roads and hillsides of exposed soil away in a couple of hours; different from the pounding rain in Cuba when even our acclimatised horses had to take shelter in a friendly farmer's shed out in the tobacco fields; different than the warm rain of New Orleans where you could even call it pleasant to stand in a heavy shower for a break from the summer's heat; different from the blocks of ice that fell from a Roman sky in June; but similar enough to the rain in May that fell far from the plains of Spain...just to remind us of home as we splashed our way (in flip-flops) through the streets of Girona. 

The rain in Ireland is different from the rain in all those other far and exotic places around this blue green planet. Different because unlike all those other demonstrations of nature's prowess and force, the Irish rain is soft and steady and certainly lasts longer - think Duracell bunny but multiplied by a factor of 1000. I often wonder how the streams of tourists cope - as they bravely manoeuvre the narrow roads of the Burren in the the soft Atlantic mist or the bogs of Mayo in the horizontal pounding of a July's rainy day. What must it be like to them? Of course there's half the rain in Dublin city so that makes it easier for them and the locals to enjoy a cappuccino on a busy cobbled alleyway off Grafton Street. Even the capital is not without its 800mm of water falling out of the sky in any given year and/or in any given season. But, double and sometimes triple that amount and we have the western shores....and somewhere in between is where we lie - here in the Holly Cottage HQ, and it certainly feels that we are more western than eastern, most of the time. 

But what would we do without it? When would the stories get told, the songs written, the analysis over the late pints attended to? The great literary works written or the great humour and wit unfolded? Or the  chocolate made or the designer fashion crafted? I'm far too easily distracted by the sunshine to bring my pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and I'm sure I'm not unique on this front. 

So, I welcome the rain for what it is...a chance to slow down and grind to a physical halt. A chance to empty the thoughts onto the pages, and document the time unfolding and rapidly passing before our eyes. And lest we forget the rainbows...

...And after -  Galway painting al fresco

We come to the longest day next weekend, and really - where did the time go since we celebrated the passing of the longest night? Time to slowdown, time to be rained to a standstill after all that running. If it brings a need to play one of your more preferred songs by U2, then you and I are in the same boat - Running to a Standstill has been the theme to the week - the theme to the arresting force of the rainclouds when we were forced to stand in the stilling power of the rain, when we did what we could between the showers, and the welcome reminder that music at anytime - even just the melody playing in your mind - can ease the restless hurry of time. And when you're six and a half moths pregnant and there's less and less time between you and that impending event they gloriously call labour, well - you're certainly happy to slow it down anyway you can...