What a good year for the roses

Is it too late for looking back on 2013? Probably for most. But not for me. The year lingered on as Christmas lingered and there was no rush to hang up the boots of 2013. Today, however, was the day that we hung down the Christmas lights, packed the tree away and took the last of the cards off the shelves and windows - the last of the 'welcome Alannah' baby cards too. The end of an era. And so today we finally put 2013 to rest. 

All in all, an exciting year. Anticipation and expectation mounted through the cold and painful months of January, February and March and finally Easter came and brought some warmth and sunshine to the Holly Cottage. In May we went tripping around the north east of Spain - Catalonian dreaming - sweet. All that seafood and Costa Brava sunshine, reminding me of what summers used to be like in Ireland before the country seemed to become permanently shrouded in grey and mist. 

Things were well on their way then in terms of baby growth but it was really only in June that people started to suspect that I was either going too heavy on the scones at tea time or that I actually really was expecting the pitter patter of tiny feet. I did have my own share of scones too mind ;) But I left them guessing for as long as I could - it was easily in the sixth month before people got brave enough to ask, and me assured enough to concur with their suspicions. It was easier to enjoy the sickness and the excitement in private for a while, but great to share when the right time came. And so uplifting to have the encouragement and support lavished on me from all quarters. Thanks to all. 

A rose for all seasons

The summer was beautiful - glorious. So rewarding to us poor Irish natives who had borne the weight of all that damp and heaviness since June 2008. We had a couple of weeks of BBQ bliss and long languorous evenings watching the sun as it barely left our view and dipped behind the majestic beech trees in the north west before returning to us in the east only a couple of hours later. Spectacular red sunsets and warm golden sunrises. A greater gift couldn't be asked for or dreamt of. There was a run on ice creams in the country. More of it I say ;) Seriously though - it felt just like the summers of childhood did, those days spent strolling around bee and butterfly busy fields and time at the beach when you never even dreamt of a phrase such as 'that feckin' water is freezing!'. Bliss indeed. 

And then September came. And ye know all about what happened next ;) What a beautiful autumn - warm and sunny most days with the occasional torrential downpour that led to the us calling the woods the 'rainforest' at times. All that walking and fresh air combined with bringing up baby. Flash forward four months to the day yesterday and she is shouting us orders and (still) dictating the pace in the Holly Cottage. I am glad she came just as the summer was fading as I'm not sure I would have accepted the restricted movement so easily when there was work to be done outside, drills to be weeded and seeds to be sown. No, I am certain that she arrived at just the right time - time enough to admire the view of the garden from the sunlit kitchen as we got to know each other, and time enough to reap the harvest of the summer sown at leisure, and time enough to walk in the lovely autumn air around the path that circles the bountiful vegetable patch. 

The darkest days have come and gone now and we have been lucky to share some warm and toasty days by the fire with friends and family, feasting on the fruits of 2013 and relishing in the memories brought to life by tastes and fragrances packed into jars and bottles especially for the festive season. Jams, relishes and chutneys are the most welcome at these times, along with the stores of tomatoes that make perfect heart warming winter soups. All in all it was the simple pleasures that made the winter and its Christmas for me - enjoying the delicious aroma and taste of good coffee and chocolate again (after nine months of nauseating at their prospect), sharing in the wonder of Alannah with my beloved, the miles walked in the woods, the storms enjoyed and passed, the antics of the bold Holly, the visitors from the UK and Germany, the trips to Mornington, Cappaduff and Cork and the visitors from Galway. 

Last of the summer roses

For sure, 2013 was one to remember. But let's park it there. For the new year has just begun and the dust of last year is now brushed away along with the wrapping and packaging that came with Christmas cheer. Time to move on, and time to look forward. Who knows what will happen in terms of seasons, travel, love and laughter, garden, walking, writing, music, friendships, family and the indomitable Holly. I look forward to sharing the stories as we walk and as they unfold. And just as last years sunshine brought pale pinks and blushing reds to the walls of the Holly Cottage let us have three cheers for a very fantastic and preciously good year for the roses. Thanks to Elvis Costello for the song in my head - Happy 2014! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtkboWw3Pnc

Giving thanks...for comets, and water, and other things...

Ison - as it was

It's the shortest day. Direct opposite of the longest day. How lucky we are to experience both - the preciousness of light on this the shortest day, and the splendour of the seemingly endless light that creeps towards midnight on the summer solstice, and all that glorious warming sunshine. 

I'm presently at home alone with the two ladies and my imagination is captured by thoughts of Comet Ison - a comet that was due to pass by Earth a few weeks ago. Comet Ison was to potentially deliver access to elusive information about big issues - such as how life on Earth began, where did all the water on come from? Basic stuff like that ;) Did all the Earth's water come from the water that is locked up in comets and then released on their impact with the Earth over millions of years? Or, are complex molecules - such as amino acids - created in comets? Scientists have proven in the lab that the nuclear energy created by the impact of a comet on the Earth is sufficient to re-organise the bonds and atoms in simple molecules, to form more complex molecules that require high energy inputs, and ultimately to form some of the basic building blocks of life...like amino acids, the stuff proteins are made of and the like. If they - all those comets - hit the Earth and that caused amino acids to be formed....well, use your imaginations. Life on Earth - sure, but life elsewhere? Why not - just not as we know it. Mind boggling. Check out details of the Rosetta Mission for your own learning. Sadly, Comet Ison burned out when it was passing by the sun and we lost the chance to study and analyse in greater detail. So be it - but so disappointing for all the scientists looking forward to getting their gloved paws on precious rare data that would - that might - answer questions that are fundamental to the origins of life on Earth. 

It's tough being a scientist - first of all you're expected to know everything, when really your doctorate degree only qualifies you to understand how very little you know about even the most simplest and fundamental of questions about life. And yet we see it all around us, unquestioning in its being - we see it as we know it: life. It's there in our varied cultures, traditions, Christmas, seasons, families, love, beauty, nature, music.....it makes one feel incredibly small and incredibly insignificant in a vast universe, in a less vast galaxy, in a small solar system and on a beautiful yet (relatively speaking) teeny, weeny, blue green planet - Earth. It certainly makes me feel incredibly small and incredibly grateful. Grateful for the big things - like the Earth itself, and the water and the air and all those things we take for granted everyday - and grateful for the small things - the small things like....

• A fleeting glimpse of the sun on a solstice morning
• A bright blue sky tinged by pink on the distant horizon
• The rain falling
• The smell of fresh bread baking 
• Alannah's smile
• An unexpected kiss on the back of the neck from the one you love
• The wagging tail on a very happy Holly dog when she can't contain her excitement at getting to go for a run through the woods
• Christmas lights
• Time with dear friends that you only ever get to see at Christmas
• The warmth of your kitchen as you listen to the wind blow and the rain fall outside
• And most of all, the promise of more to come...

Happy Solstice and of course Happy Christmas everybody!

The Darkest Days

And so we have come to the darkest days. It happens every year and yet it always amazes me - all that uncompromising and dependable cyclic nature of the seasons (that is of course ignoring the impending prospect of ongoing climate change, but no doom and gloom in this post!). It's a harsh beauty - all that distancing from the sun leading to a dark and cold time, counter balanced by Christmas lights and beautiful frosty mornings...but all to be reversed come Saturday and the winter solstice (yay). 

'tis the season to be Holly

And why so harsh? Harsh because there is a stark absence of green and yellow and orange and red - the palette of the autumn that we love to watch in the easy days of October and November. Now there is only brown, grey, green and a tinge of blue - brown on the ground, grey on the trunks, some green in the trailing ivy (deceptively widespread in the woods and welcome shelter for blackbird and smaller woodland bird species) and blue in the sky, but blue only ever for precious minutes when the sun peeps over the horizon and the sky is refreshingly clear of grey clouds.  The storms of the last few weeks have completely stripped the oaks and the beech of the Charleville woods and the leaves are rapidly disintegrating back into the earth - the very fabric of the stuff that will bring forth next year's pale green recruits. Fresh faced leaves that will be ready for a season of turning light and carbon dioxide gas into food for the colossal stems that support them - the giant wooden towers of beech and the king oaks. I know - amazing really. Those small and unassuming power houses of green energy that turn light into sweet sugar. And all because of chloroplasts....but, I digress into the minutia...

It's also harsh because we have to wrap up in warm clothes and blanket-like scarves to shut out the cold and the damp. Sandals no longer work and wellies are de rigeur. Holly doesn't bother with either of course - she is an all-weather and all-functional kind of girl. And Alannah is amazingly immune to the cold - she is wrapped up of course but these days she stays awake on our winter walks, staring up into the broken canopy. What is she thinking? She is obviously stunned into silence because at all other times she is cooing and gurgling and 'talking' in her own sweet way. I try to talk to her about the trees and the birds, and the red squirrel that we've met three times now - always scarpering up the same tree - but she is blissfully immune to my breaking the silence. And all the while she just stares with those beautiful blue eyes - her, silent. It's all waiting for her to discover. 

And what about the beauty? Well, apart from Alannah and the bold Holly, the beauty is in feeling the biting cold breeze as we walk through the open fields, the warmth of the blinding winter sun when the clouds break and the feeling that spring is beckoning already - it's there in the knowing song of the blackbird - waiting beyond these darker, damper days. 

And what else do we do these days apart from get into the thick of it in the wintery woods? Very little I'm afraid. Bringing up baby is very basic - feeding, changing, bathing, coaxing to sleep, entertaining, distracting and then a bit of writing and emailing for me when I get a chance - laptop balanced on a cushion and writing with one hand over a sleeping baby. Some highlights of the past few weeks - the walking in the woods and the hinterlands of provincial Irish towns of course (over 100miles of the 1000 target), a successful heart saving exercise for Alannah's granny (my mother), various jaunts into town to catch up with friends for pre-Christmas coffees, the launch of Paddy Woodworth's great book Our Once and Future Planet (more of that again), and meeting up with work mates at the annual Biodiversity Action meeting. 

Holly is such a kidder...

I guess the greatest highlight of all is being a passive onlooker to the wonder that is a child's pace of growing. She is standing, rolling, watching, giving orders and basically, increasingly, ruling the roost. However, I'm reminded by the experts in the field of mothering that this status quo must change in order for peace and balance to reign. And so once Christmas is over, we must all - Holly and No. 1 Dad included - develop the elusive and all important baby routine....we shall have wait and see. In the meantime we'll stick with the policy of going with the flow, however chaotic that is. It always seemed to be so much more fun to me...

Autumn's Fall

Holly Cottage roses

It's the last day of November. This is the day - for me - that hails the end of autumn and the true beginning of winter. And what a beautiful November it has been! We've been watching the leaves tumbling down from the high tops of the beech and oak trees that line the Charleville estate wall from the warmth of the Holly cottage kitchen. Some of those same leaves find themselves floating onto the Holly Cottage garden - leaf litter to add to the soil for next year's harvest. The few small tress that we have in the back garden - probably more like shrubs to tall people ;) - provide a hint of autumnal colour too but one more blast of wind next week and all the leaves will finally have tumbled down. And then the long wait begins, again...autumn falls as winter calls. We already had a taste of snow, but that's always lovely, for a day...especially against the backdrop of a red rose...

News here is pretty scant. It's sleep, walk, feed baby, change baby, walk baby (and dog), and then do that all over again and then finally get some downtime once herself conks out for the night - usually around 9:15-9:20pm most evenings. How does she know that it's the same time every night? Baffling really.

Holly on her leafy way

The walking is good - beautiful even. Some days I find myself walking over the fields and wishing that 'it" would never end. 'It' = this time, this phase, this life - you get the message. And the days are so dry  that we get out and into the woods with barely a splash of mud on our leaf kicking boots. The leaves are piled high and Holly is chest deep - she's having great craic altogether sliding around and sprinting up and down the leafy paths. The pictures really don't do her wild spirit justice to be fair - she is a canine force to be reckoned with, especially on the sprinting u-turns. Apart from our usual woodland Charleville haunt, we've made it as far as Dublin's inner city (in a car mind), Belvedere House outside Mullingar and a short stroll about Middleton in Cork - showing herself off to the gran-aunts and cousins. We find different views everyday, different ideas, different perspectives. At this point we're up on 64/1000 miles...what adventures yet to come?

It's been extremely quiet on the garden front and for the first time in two months I made it out for a (blissful) hour yesterday while herself was carried away and comforted by the lull of the car's engine. Jobs done included - pulling dead leaves off cabbages and sprout plants; turning compost; pruning apple and roses back; pulling up sunflower plants (seeds good for the birds); cutting back last of the pepper plants and a an overall general tidy up and sweep. There's still a lot of food out there, and an equal lot in the freezer. The frozen tomatoes are a gift - add garlic, onion, fennel seeds, chilli and a couple of carrots and a delicious soupy treat is at your fingertips.

The other development here is that we've been baking our own brown soda-bread - no more shop bought convenience stuff. It's so easy and it's probably a bit embarrassing not to have been making it regularly before now, although the day job sure can chew a lot of energy and time - the joys of being at home nesting for the winter eh? Anyway, take 400g wholemeal flower, add 50g oatmeal and 50g of whatever you like ;) for example wheat bran, or other 'roughagey stuff', a teaspoon of baking soda and teaspoon salt - mix all together with a pint of buttermilk and one egg. All goes in a loaf tin @ 200deg for an hour or so. Lovely crunchy crust emerges with deliciously wheaten goodness - great with the soup - and we add pumpkin and sunflower seeds when available in the press for more crunch. Beats anything shop bought and freezes well too. And I'm afraid to say it might just even beat the bread my mother has been making for the past fifty odd years...

As for herself - it's smiles all around and plenty of chat. Nearly, teasingly, sleeping through the night. We shall have to see how we go. Twelve weeks yesterday and truly, truly the new boss of the Holly Cottage...not sure who was the old boss.....but I guess that really doesn't matter anymore now ;)

A Journey of 1000 miles

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Lao Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

The first step marked by blue skies,
not North American but Irish Birch

I must confess my ignorance on this one - I had no idea that this quote came from Lao Tzu, he being  of Chinese philsopher and poet renown. An alternative translation from the Chinese (Bynner 1944) would read as here at your feet a thousand-mile journey have birth. It's an apt saying for all of us taking on new projects, new challenges or setting about making a change in our lives. The first step is taken with the idea in our minds and then if the idea is to come to fruition, feet begin to move step by step forward, onward and onward, inching closer and closer to the goal at the end of the proverbial 1000 mile mark. 

Most of our days here are defined by walking -  walking to the woods, walking up the town, walking around the garden. One of the main reasons I was attracted to this house all those three years ago was its proximity to the woods - a place where a walker could go everyday with a boisterous Holly and always see something new. Or see something that is the same thing yet completely different from a change in perspective depending on my own outlook, or my own frame of mind. So when a call to walkers was issued by a colleague in Chicago to embark on a 1000 mile journey, well of course my interest was piqued. The call comes from Liam Heneghan - ecologist and writer - of DePaul University, Chicago. Liam draws inspiration from the walking of Robert Llyod Praeger. Prager (1865-1953) - for those outside of Ireland - was the veritable godfather of all Irish naturalists and an inspiration to all of us who passed through the Botany Departments of Irish Universities since the 1950s.  You can read all about him in Liam's article. Liam's call is to all interested in walking and those with a keen naturalist's eye - no expertise or qualifications necessary. The call is to walk in the spirit of Praeger in your chosen area - it can be urban or rural or somewhere in between - and marvel at the small things you might otherwise have overlooked in a less attentive mode. There is already a growing community of walkers that can be followed under the #1000UrbanMiles on Twitter. 

Through a portal of Hazel
12/11/2013

For our part, it will be a matter of walking where we can, when we can. For the most part it will be Alannah, Holly and myself but I do hope to rope others in along the way. We consciously became part of the #1000UrbanMiles community last Tuesday, and in the interest of accuracy I have added the #1000IrishMiles to make a clear distinction between the urban streets of Chicago and greater USA cities and the highways and byways of my own Irish countryside. I confess that I am no Praeger and I don't find myself  stopping to identify every last moss and liverwort as I go, despite my great training under the UCD Botany and Zoology Departments (when they existed back somewhere in the 1990s). But I do appreciate everything I see, and I hope to meet others along the way that can point out the more subtle minutia of interest that my macro lens overlooks. And 1000 miles is nothing really - nothing over a year. And walking is such a transformative process, beta brainwaves turning into alpha brainwaves and all that stuff. That is of course once you remember to switch the mobile device off so the ringtones don't upset the perfect wave forms. 

Now if we were to run it, well that would be another story altogether....

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning, brings the dawning

It's just a restless feeling by my side
(Reed, Cale) 

And here we are. It's a cold Sunday morning and we awake in the dark. Nothing new there - the dark still reigns supreme at 6.30am, only beginning to lighten when the hour of seven is well established. Alannah is an early riser and as a perk of being mother, I get to watch (with her) the sunlight coming back around every morning. Some days it is bright and golden, with the light reflecting off the amber coloured beech trees that line the Charleville estate walls, and some days it is dark and damp with light barely making an impression behind heavy grey clouds that block out life-giving-sun's light. How different from the summer when light was barely gone for more that a few hours, and when getting up at 5am seemed like the wisest thing to do to ensure we didn't miss an ounce of all those glorious June mornings and hot afternoons.

Woodland winter palette awesomeness

But best to stay in the moment, in the here and now. Best not to linger in the past summer months or waste precious winter wishing for the brighter days to come. Best to embrace the dark and welcome it for what it brings. For this is the dark time, the winter dreaming. Time to think, time to read and time to process thoughts and ideas and images of the year gone by. Time to rest the body but feed the mind. Time to kick up fallen leaves and enjoy the winter silence. 

Here in the Holly Cottage, the pace of life has slowed down by a level or ten. We wake early and pull the blinds, waiting and watching as the light comes back to illuminate the now very quiet garden. The winter garden is now the stronghold of bold robin, brave wren and stoic blackbird, as we - less graceful humans - step back and leave  them to it, letting the soil breathe its heavy winter sighs and yield whatever sustenance it can to our hungry feathered friends. Green manure has been sowed on bare soil to hold and nourish it in the springtime; half the spuds are out of the ground and hardy brassicas and root vegetables are left to wait it out. The Setanta spuds are sadly, but surely, widely and badly damaged by burrowing slugs, who found a nice damp  home inside the nourishing starchy homes in an otherwise un-slug friendly summer. We think - we hope - the Sarpo axona variety fared better - they are much smaller in size but seem to have been less attractive to the cunning slime-mongerers. There are still some beetroots left in the ground, along with parsnips and turnips ripe for the stewing and roasting. But the most beautiful of all things green in the garden at this time are the bulging winter cabbages, sown early last spring and almost completely forgotten about under a wire net until a few weeks ago when we started looking round for what was left to eat. We won't go hungry ;) 

Most of the day is spent in the Holly Cottage kitchen now, escaping to the leaf littered woods when we can. Holly is making herself sick on acorns but I can only hope that someday she will learn. While  Holly forages, Alannah is beginning to take a peek at the world outside from the safety of the baby carrier. Sometimes I look down to check she is still with us and I see her bright blue eyes watching the scene as we walk past giant oak and tumbling pines. What must she think of it all? What impressions and what cascade of neural networks are becoming established as her brain is processing all this new information?

All this got me thinking, more. And so the last week I have been delving back into old philosophy books and trying to re-assemble thoughts and theories that get squeezed out of focus when the mind is in work drive. The work of Socrates, Buddha, Descartes, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche - not to mention Darwin - all these names and ideas are buzzing around my head as I distill and decant and try to see the world from their perspectives, making sense of my own. It's fascinating how thinking changes through the centuries, and yet I find that the fundamental truths and realities stay the same. Each one of us must make our own sense of it, and this is one of the most exciting and sometimes frightening aspects of being human - that we can make sense of it, or at least that we can try and wonder in awe at the whole thing as we do.  Like Lou Reed and John Cale's poetic reflection of a Sunday morning. 

Sunday morning girls

She is thriving of course - two months last Wednesday and grown out of her newborn wardrobe completely, filling the three month sleep suits more and more.  Pink is her favourite colour at the moment, mixed up with white and purples and lilacs. A marked contrast to the yellows and greens of the wood, she strikes a defiant pose as bright pink bundle as we stroll through that earthy palette of autumn-come-winter temperate woods. 

Time to get back out into it, this time with Lou Reed's voice echoing in her ears and in my heart. Thanks Lou (1942-2013) - how beautiful you are. Play it loud ;) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnGoIF5N_-Y

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