Coming Up For Air: A day like any other?

Sometimes it feels good to dump down the activities of the day in words. To let everything go like a leaf at the mercy of the autumn wind or blossom raining down to carpet the ground in a spring shower. To come up for air.

To appreciate the two forces at work in a strong marriage. To coexist in harmony and balance one another like the continual turning of the seasons.

Not to compete or claim superiority, but to see the value of one another like the seedling needs the sun and the rain in spring. To appreciate one another like the soil thanks the earth worm for enriching its mix, stirring the decaying matter of autumn and recharging it through the harshness of winter to bring new life in spring.

I started this post with a need to write away the past hour. What you’ve just read was written after I’d hastily let my thoughts go in a hurried tumble of words, like bees disturbed from their hive. I feel a calmness now that I didn’t feel when I first started writing (tapping with one finger on my iPhone). I feel released and fresh like the air after a summer storm; when a hot muggy day, oppressively humid and sticky, builds up the pressure till it needs to be released. Sometimes writing is like a cold pressure front moving in to release the build up of high pressure. To bath away the sticky mess of the day and leave a clean slate.

When I wrote the following Alice was drifting to sleep, letting go of the day and settling down for the night. Now she lies peacefully at my side.

As I hastily let my thoughts out I also felt a letting go. Leaving the tension in my shoulders to blow away like the smoke hanging in the air from a spent firework.

Are you ready to feel exhausted… and then refreshed…

‘Phew! Yah for team work! Hubbie keeps 3 children happy, bathed & ready for bed with p-jays & clean teeth, whilst I spend an hour…

washing dishes, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning kitchen surfaces, a toilet, a bath, move a plant pot that Alice keeps digging in, clear away many miscellaneous toys & put in rightful homes (pause to deeply inhale oxygen)…

Empty the bins, get myself washed & ready for bed, provide warm milk & cut up apple for children in p-jays, pour a glass of milk & down it in one to replenish my calcium levels due to breastfeeding…

Put away laundry, chuck the dirties in a basket ready for the morning load…

Then, take my baby in my arms (this is the good bit), turn on our favourite nighttime music CD, say goodnight to big sisters, snuggle up on futon, and quietly, calmly bubs drifts to sleep in my arms whilst having a feed.

Ah, sigh! The house is calm, clean (parts of it) & quiet. Charlotte is tucked up in bed reading. Dan is with Sophie reading her a story. The cat is sleeping on a rug in the quiet living room and we can all recharge ready for a family day of togetherness tomorrow.’

And now…

It sounds like everyone is asleep in the house, apart from hubbie and I. Outside it’s dark and the random sound of fireworks fill the night air. It’s spring here in New Zealand, but on the other side of the world the air is crisp with autumn. In England the fireworks echo off the hills too. I find it somehow comforting and yet bizarre that the country I have found myself living in, so very far from where I grew up, also remembers the tradition of Bonfire Night and the foiled attempt of Guy Fawkes, in 1605, to blow up Britain’s House of Parliament, kill the King and end the long-time persecution of the English Catholics.

It’s been a day of fun (ten pin bowling this afternoon and a Birthday party for Charlotte); a day of necessary chores (running old school monitors and one of our own to an eDay collection); and a day of naps for Alice and play for her big sisters.

A morning that started with wild, wet weather thrashing the house. A morning that called for reading and games. Laughter as we sang and danced to Sing Star Moves and worked up enough heat to switch off the heater.

Tomorrow we have sketched out in our heads. An overgrown spring lawn in need of a cut, two fish tanks that need to be cleaned, a swim to fit in for some family fun and a trip to the garden centre. Charlotte and Sophie like the idea of checking out Venus fly traps, whilst I’d like some colour to pot in my hanging baskets.

I look back on today and am conscious of how this rambling is so indicative of this time and place: The talk of an e-day, writing on an iPhone, cleaning with a vacuum, playing electronic games, listening to the crackle of fireworks and music on a CD. If Jane Austen could visit for a day what would she make of it all? I wonder what future generations will write in 100 years from now.

Seasons come, seasons go. A continual cycle like that of life itself. Through the ages, the seasons keep on turning. Watching over us in all our changes. It feels good to write. To come up for air.

Just an ordinary day in 2010, but so extraordinary in so many ways too.