New Leaves

Watching time

It's happening. Every day, every minute, a teeny weeny bit more green creeps through the filter of our winter eyes and widens the lens that will become our summer view. Phew!!! It's often right about this time of year that I am overwhelmingly grateful that we don't have to think about it - it just happens. Summer creeps into view without question, without looking for permission, without caution. 

The winter brought its challenges for sure. Here in the Holly Cottage reality kicked in and we downsized our vegetable patch for the sake of a species-rich meadow - one which is more conducive to the blondies being able to sit in the spring sunshine and ponder the wonder of ladybirds and honeybees just doing their thing. 

I must admit though, March was bittersweet. Paddy's day came and went in its flurry of hailstones but this year there were no spuds to be planted. No chitting, no watching through the dark days of February for heraldic sprouting. And though I mourned the lack of the pratie drills, I did rejoice in the glee of the wee man prancing through the establishing grass mat and hunting for worms. There's still space for a few meandering peas and courgettes, so it's not all lost. It's all a balance. And strawberry promises and fruit blossoms waiting in the wings. 

Balance is where it's at. Sometimes we lose it. Sometimes, when we stop thinking about it, we are trapeze artists. Pause for a moment to see the rope upon which our entire weight bears down on and alas, we can lose faith and tumble down gracelessly. Same when we grit our teeth and try to force it. 

New leaves bring new momentum. For me they bring a sea-change as I emerge from a long spell in a corporate suit and enter the realm of casual free-lance. I'm beginning to feel the difference as the weight of responsibility slips from my shoulders onto someone else's. It's time. Or so the dandelions tell me, and they would know - they double up as clocks don't they?

Other news, The Easter Snow is maturing to its launch date so watch this space. Time to celebrate the story contained within those leaves and begin new ones. Watch this space. 

The Easter Snow

Five years ago, in the week following Easter, I sat down at our kitchen table in the Holly Cottage to write a story. I had been enjoying writing my random pieces in the Holly Cottage blogspot – tales of ordinary life, gardening, changing seasons etc. But I had a story rattling around in my head and it wouldn’t let me go. So I sat down, I opened my Mac, and I let it flow.

The story revolves around a nursing home. Not quite rock and roll I hear you say, but it’s certainly a setting in which all phases of life pass through at some point and therefore perfect for this story.

And the inspiration? Well, my godfather – Paddy - suffered a serious stroke back in 2007. The poor man never recovered and spent half a year being cared for in the nursing home local to where I was living at the time. I went to visit him once a week. Sometimes he knew me, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes I was his sister who died when they were teenagers, sometimes I was a nurse. When I walked in those doors, all carefree and able, I walked into another world. And every week I left knowing my health, youth and freedom and how precious that is.

A few years earlier, the ashes of his sister – Lily - who had emigrated to the USA back in the 1940s were returned. Paddy buried her ashes in the graveyard near their home under the shadow of the Hill of Uisneach. I had met her in New York about ten years previous. She was a doll – pure New Yorker, twang and all - lover of cats and friendly neighbour to all who lived in the crammed-with-tiny-apartments building that she called home. She died on her own and after her leaving sixty years previous, they were never to meet in person.  When he collected the lunchbox that contained her ashes at the airport in Dublin, he stepped right up and he hugged it tight. They are together now, buried with two of their three sisters, and their father and mother.

Both of them were to the fore of my mind writing The Easter Snow. She died penniless, after working in a fashion industry that paid little enough. Though he must have thought she had made it. He died with those few of his family left around him that would hold his hand or wipe his mouth dry, when he drank from the strange plastic cup with built in straw that was filled with milky tea in the nursing home for him.

I guess I needed to re-unite them in a way.

And that’s the story behind the story. Five years later, after a few sincere attempts at getting it published the right way, I decided to just put it out there. I use Createspace. If you feel inspired, here's the link: go find it. And then tell me what you think. Does it make you smile? Does it make you think? That’s all I ask.

The Easter Snow is a tale of love and loss, regret and awakening, and finding ourselves where we are. It’s a simple story. Enjoy.

C xxx

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