How to be A Gap Year Mum.

48 hours... that's how long it is until our daughter, Mia, steps onto a plane and into the biggest adventure of her life. 
5 months of travelling the world.
5 months of no work, no studying and, best of all, no parents.

" How do you feel?" my friends ask, " You must be worried. Are you sad? This is it, isn't it?  She's leaving home. Does it feel like the end of an era?"
And I pause for a moment. 
I need time to think about it. 

Because I suppose I should be feeling all those things. 
I suppose I should be preparing myself for impending heartache. 

But the truth is, I'm not sure how I feel.

As a parent, I have spent much of my life full of the uncertainties that are inherent to a job that has no description, a role that has no rules, cares that have no end. 
I spend my days worrying about whether what I have said or done is right or wrong, whether what will happen next is going to be awful or incredible, whether what I believe to be true is actually a threadbare fabric of misconceptions.
Our daughter spreading her wings, floating freestyle through the world for a while, that's just another one of those things not to be sure about.  
Today, like every day since our children were born, I grasp at rags of emotion and wonder how they fit together.
Like every day since they were born, I feel many things a little bit and nothing quite completely.

On this grey, rainy morning, sitting in our little kitchen, in a tiny city, in small, unsettled England, it's easy to imagine taking flight. 
Who wouldn't rather be heading towards sunshine and dreams-come-true and days of carefree wandering? 

 And, of course, I can't help remembering how it felt to be that young.
To feel the breeze of the future ruffling my hair.
To dip my toe into the ocean of tomorrow and wonder which way the current will pull me. 
To feel the intensity of almost perfect moments in almost perfect places. 
I remember how that felt.

 It feels as though it was just yesterday...it feels as though it was so very long ago.

And now it is our daughter's turn.

I picture her walking through the departure gates and away from me.
Walking through the departure gates and into the next part of her life.
The painting we have been creating together is almost finished now, the last few strokes beginning to dry, the lines almost, but not quite yet, blurring into memories.

It's time for her to start creating a new canvas,  to be guided by a new map, with new co-ordinates.
Time for her to follow the beckoning path of the future she has been waiting for. 

And she is ready. 

I hope that I am.

I picture her walking through the arrivals gate into an airport full of light and noise and colourful confusion.
I picture her, hopes and dreams stuffed into her turquoise ruck sack, stepping out into a hot and steamy world that is too far away for me to touch.

And I hope that it will treat her well.

I hope she returns wearing the stories she lives and the stars she touches like invisible pearls around her heart.

I hope she has the time of her life.

"How do you feel?" my friends ask.
And I can't answer that.
Because in the end, that is not what matters.
What matters is what we share. 

And what we share, is, and always be, love. 

Go well my Mia. 

Fight the Might - March Against Prejudice

This is not one of my long, rose-tinted meandering blogs
Not words full of hope and all-that-is-good-in-the-world. 
This is a short and cloud-tinted blog.
Because right now I am scared.
And not just because the world is being held precariously in the hands of an egocentric, thin-skinned reality TV show host 
Not just because the BREXIT vote has divided a nation and burnt the bridges for our children's future.
Not just because hate crime is rising and the weak and young and vulnerable are left voiceless and weak
.
I'm scared because of the little things
.
While our politicians discuss the big things:  how to live in a "post-truth," world, international policy, global warming, state visits, while they discuss all those things, every day, right on our doorsteps, the little things are destroying the fabric of our communities.
While politicians debate and discuss and negotiate, swaztikas are being sprayed on walls, our daughter experiences "soft," racism on a daily basis  and just today I watched a video  where a local Parish Council (composed of elderly white men and women) reject the development of a skate park for teenagers at the same time as expressing racist views
.

How can any of this be ok?
These small things....they're not small.
This local politics.....it's not just local.



This is a short blog about being scared.
And the thing that  scares me the most, is my own cowardice.
The thing that I am most frightened of, is doing nothing.
Inaction and apathy are as much to blame for the wave of fear and hatred and prejudice that is washing over us as the actions and words of our leaders and politicians.

I spend my days finding a million excuses to do nothing.
I convince myself that I am too busy, that I already do enough, that I am just one person so what difference can I make.
But those are no longer good enough excuses.
.
I'm not sure what it is that we can do, but I am sure that doing nothing is no longer an option.

My parents, like many others, are the children of refugees who fled war-torn Europe.
It's not so long ago that "hate," almost won. 
We cannot risk that happening again.

And we can sit here and discuss how terrible it is and how wrong everyone else is, or we can do something about it. 
And we can say these things are too big and too complicated and too-out-of-our-control to  or we can start trying to stop them from happening again.
We are the grassroots.
Grassroots is where it starts.
There is power in numbers.
Power in the knowledge that we are not alone.


So...people of Chichester (or close-by).....how about it?
How about we show we care?
How about a March Against Prejudice? It would, at least, be a start.
Parents- we are fighting for our children's future.
Grandparents - we are fighting for the future you used to dream of. 
Everyone, we are fighting for a safer, more caring  and better tomorrow.

If you want to be part of this, leave a comment or a message...and perhaps, just perhaps, we can make it happen.

Pearl-Searching and Sock-Matching

I have to say, I'm not enjoying this working-very-hard-again thing.
I'm not enjoying spending my nights and weekends at the computer, head in work.
Not enjoying never being fully in the full moment with my family but instead, filling my life with an ocean of incomplete and unfinished moments that just make everyone grumpy.
The year that I spent writing and being a mum seems like a long-ago dream, fading into the that-was-so-nice-puddle of "things that used to be fun".
And it's a shame because I think I was particularly talented at not working.
Waking to the knowledge that my days were endless sea of beckoning potential. 
Without practicing or panicking in any way, I drifted happily  from working too much, for too long, far too often...... to not working at all.
It was a seamless transition.
At 50 I feel it should be time to start working less, not more.
"But what did you do all day?" friends ask me, when I explain that I feel a return to joblessness is definitely a day dream of mine.
And I try to remember.
Our house was definitely tidier than it ever has been before or since.
We had more pairs of matching socks.
I was always here when the kids got home from school.
I had time to sit down and really talk to them if they wanted me to or, at the very least, provide them with an unending supply of almost healthy snacks.
Dinners were unburnt and mostly ready in time. 
I caught up with friends -not just a rushed meeting but with time to talk and, more importantly, to listen.
I wrote and wrote...and laughed and laughed..
I did things because I wanted to, not because I had to.
I did what I thought to be right, not what I knew to be wrong because the powers-that-be told me I had to.
I said what I knew to be true, instead of conveying a twisted version of the truth.
I felt complete and in control of all that matters to me.
"Ok, ok," my friends say, backing away from the wave of almost desperate determination that they can feel washing towards them. " We were only asking. Stop working then....if it's so important. Don't explain it to us anymore.  We believe you."
And so I stop talking.
But I can feel them still.
Those dreamy days so full of possibility.
I do know how lucky I am.
I know there are people forced to stay at home through illness or redundancy or injustice.
I can imagine how they must long to be part of something bigger than themselves, how they must feel that their four walls have become a prison., that they are losing their identity in a career-oriented world, that what they do has no value. .
I understand that it is easy to feel that you have been forgotten.
But what is important, is that we do not let our jobs define us.
What is important, is not what we do but who we are.
What matters is not whether we get promoted or follow a career trajectory that was planned by someone else but that we care enough about each other to make the world a better place.
We are, each of us, the carriers of a hidden pearl.
They are our certainty and our hope.
They are all that we believe in and know to be true.
They are what makes life worth fighting for.
In these times of swirling confusion and fear, when all that was certain yesterday seems uncertain today, those pearls are the potential we have been reaching for.
And we don't need to wear suits or ties  or high heels to find it, we just have to let go of our vulnerability and open our protective shells.

Whatever we do, whoever we are:  worker, dreamer or just be-er, all that matters is that we find our hidden pearl and make it glow.
And if you can do it, so can your partner or your children or your neighbour
One glowing pearl might not be enough, but a whole string of them.....that might just be indestructible.
So, perhaps today, instead of sitting in front of my computer, I will start the search for my inner pearl- I wonder if I can find it while I am matching socks!