May 2013 – All together now!

My family and I went to the annual Parish Lunch in the Church Hall yesterday.  As I looked around the room at people enjoying good food and each others’ company, it struck me that one of the best things we have gained from living in Winwick is the sense of belonging to a community.

‘Belonging’ is very important to people, to their sense of purpose and position in society and their overall wellbeing.  It doesn’t matter whether you belong to a church, a golf club or an online forum, the point is that you have a place within that community and an opportunity to listen and be heard.

A close friend was telling me recently about her Mum who has just returned home from working abroad for many years.  Although she is back where she has always lived, she is finding it difficult to rediscover that sense of belonging and my friend thinks it is because she hasn’t yet found a community that suits her.  She has encouraged her Mum to join a gym, take up some voluntary work or perhaps even get a dog as all of those activities bring you into contact with other people with whom you can form connections.

Small daughter went for her first visit to the Brownie pack last week.  Big daughter, reminiscent about her time at Brownies, came with me to drop her off and to say hello to Brown Owl.  Brown Owl was delighted to see big daughter again and was keen to encourage her to help out at the pack, something that big daughter is now seriously considering.  Communities aren’t just for grown-ups; our children also need to experience that sense of belonging and whilst we might initially encourage them to join clubs and societies to make friends, they build a framework for later life.

For me, it’s interesting to see how my girls deal with joining communities.  Big daughter has always been quieter and more reserved, preferring to wait until people approach her.   It’s not made any easier these days by the fact that most teenagers are overly self-conscious and feel awkward making the first move at anything.  Small daughter is quite the opposite.  She’s much more inclined to walk into a room radiating confidence and finds that people quite naturally gravitate towards her.  It’s not uncommon for her to leave a playground having made three new best friends!

I don’t think that the style in which you join a community actually matters; confident or reserved, my experience is that people are generally glad to see you and will make you welcome.  If they don’t, then there are plenty of other communities out there that will, and as belonging to a community is all about your own wellbeing, then there’s no point in spending time with people who don’t make you feel good about yourself.  I know it’s just a matter of time before my friend’s Mum finds that out too.

April 2013 – Music to my ears!

I took big daughter to a pop concert at the weekend, along with some of her friends.  It wasn’t really my thing, to be honest – I like my music to involve real guitars and real drums but it was all right in a boy-band sort of way and big daughter had a fantastic time.

Music has always been very important in our house, whether listening to it or playing it.  My husband says that he’s the only one in the family who doesn’t play a musical instrument but he’s very good with the CD player!  Our combined collection of LPs and CDs range from AC/DC to Wham with plenty of interesting bands in between, and both of our daughters can often be found rifling through to see what they might like to listen to as a change from their own CDs.  There’s always music playing somewhere in the house, and I like that.

Music is one of those things, a bit like a cat’s purr, that makes you feel better and in some cases can have dramatic healing results, but no one really knows why.  Perhaps it’s the way that there is music for every emotion and occasion, whether you need to dance like a mad thing around the kitchen or sit quietly and relax.  It doesn’t matter whether you give it your whole attention or it’s just on in the background.  It evokes memories and sentiments that might have been hidden away for years and brings them flooding back within seconds; it can help you study or sleep, can lift your mood or bring tears to your eyes like nothing else.

There are times when the music gets too much in our house – at the moment, small daughter’s favourite song is ‘Gangnam Style’ which I can only cope with for about thirty seconds, and big daughter likes to have her music on in her room so loud that I can sing along from downstairs.  My husband has music that he plays in the car because nobody else particularly appreciates it – but that too, is the joy of music.  There’s so much of it that we can all have different preferences and still find music that we all enjoy together – which is why in a few weeks big daughter and I will be at a McFly concert listening to a boy band (with real guitars and real drums!), and then listening to the classical pianist Ludovico Einaudi.  Small daughter is still developing her taste but I’m sure it won’t be long before she too wants to go to concerts, and as big daughter won’t need me to go along with her by then, I’ll still get to listen to the boy bands.  Not that I mind, really, but I feel that it’s my duty to grumble just a little bit about today’s commercial pop music.  Just don’t tell the girls that I play their CDs when they’re at school!

 

March 2013 – March into Lent!

For the first time ever, everyone in the house is doing something to mark Lent.  Big daughter has given up chocolate (I think she must have chosen the hardest task!), small daughter is doing her best to say, “Muuum!” less than 3,000 times a day, and my husband has given up the glasses of beer that he enjoyed at the weekend.  I decided that I wouldn’t give anything up (I gave up sugar in tea in January and I’m still working on that one) but would instead focus on something new.

It took me a while to decide what I could do that was new; I like to think that I’m already aware of my surroundings and other people.  I try to help others when I can, and I also try not to be too helpful, which sometimes defeats the object.  I think about the environment and turn off the lights at every opportunity (sometimes while people are still in the room!).  I’ve learned to meditate so that I can have a moment of stillness to carry me through the rest of the day.

So that’s what I’ve done that’s new.  I’m trying to make my moment of stillness last as long as possible through the day.  Aside from not turning into screechy Mum when we get to the school gates and small daughter has forgotten her coat again, or the dog has needed to be fished out of someone else’s ornamental pond because he fancied a swim, the family have noticed that it’s as if the whole house is experiencing that moment of stillness and whatever the trials of the day, home is a calm place to return to.  I like to think that I’m pretty organised anyway, but I’ve pulled my forward planning forward.  I’m a month ahead with my university dissertation.  I’ve made a start with the vegetable plot when I’d usually leave it for another month to see how the weather improves.  I’ve even got our summer holiday organised.

At the moment, it’s all going well.  Big daughter is surviving without chocolate, small daughter only said “Muuum!” 2,547 times yesterday, my husband isn’t really missing the beer at all, and the house and I have been remarkably calm – but we are only in our first week!  The rest of Lent stretches a long way ahead of us, but at least it’s a finite time so we can mark our achievement with the celebration of Easter – which, this year, will be quite a celebration for big daughter if she can eat chocolate again!

There’s just one member of the household who’s not doing anything though – and that’s the dog.  Do dogs mark Lent in any way?  Probably not, but I can think of a few things I’d like the dog to give up, not least opportunistic swims in ornamental ponds!

February 2013 – Love is Strange

“I’ve decided that I’m going to marry Leon,” small daughter announced as I picked her up from school the other day.

Luckily, as they’re both in primary school, there’s time for all concerned to get used to the idea.

“Oh right,” I said.  “What’s so special about Leon?”

“He’s very good at pretending to be a wolf.”

Now I don’t know about you, but when I met my husband, I don’t remember having wolf-impersonation skills very high on the list of attributes I was looking for a future husband, but who am I to question small daughter’s priorities?

It did start me thinking, though, about what it is that attracts us to another person.  For me, it was my husband’s confidence and generosity of spirit that attracted me to him (and the fact that I fancied him like mad!), but if you were to ask someone else what attracted them to their partner, you would get a different answer.  I think it’s a highly personal thing and not easily quantifiable, based on what we think we often subconsciously need from another person to complete the picture of ourselves.  Perhaps that’s just as well when we’ve all looked at someone else’s partner at one time or another and wondered what they saw in them!  I’m sure my parents thought that about a few of the boys I brought home as a teenager, but fortunately they always got on very well with my husband, and now he has a great relationship with my Dad that’s entirely different from the parent-daughter one that I have with him – usually involving mutual shouting at the football on the TV or watching a ‘boys’ film’ about war!

It seems to me that spending your life with someone is like fitting two jigsaw pieces together, and whilst those pieces might seem the most unlikely of matches, the fact that they do fit together is what’s important.  And this theory applies equally well to friendships.  My three very best friends are all completely different people to each other and yet I fit with each of them perfectly and we have been friends for years.  Perhaps that feeling of ‘clicking’ with someone is the sound of the jigsaw pieces fitting together!

So, back to small daughter and Leon’s wolf impressions.  Would life be easier if all we had to do was howl at the moon to meet the perfect friend or partner?  Probably, but then the rest of life gets in the way and we need to know that people can support us in times of emotional and financial stress.  It may well be that one day, rather than becoming a son-in-law, Leon will be consigned to anecdotal history or, more likely, my husband will want to test small daughter’s boyfriends on their howling ability just to remind her that when she was in primary school, life was very much simpler.

January 2013 – No resolutions!

I decided that I wasn’t going to make any resolutions this year, not after last year’s fiasco.  Last year’s resolution was to step out of my comfort zone and experience new situations; simple enough, I’m sure you’ll agree, for someone who mostly looks after her family.  It all started off very well too, with dinner at Liverpool’s highest restaurant, choosing dishes from the menu that I would never normally pick.  Then it all started to go a bit wrong.

My Dad was diagnosed with cancer, had a complicated operation and reconstructive surgery, daily radiotherapy sessions at a hospital forty miles away and has had to learn to live his life in a whole new way.  Our neighbour’s house caught fire and we did our best to support the family whilst fire crews struggled to put out the blaze in the middle of the night.  A dead body was found in the fields just across from where we live.  Our dog became fascinated by  a cyclist in a fluorescent jacket and ran off across the fields to catch him – how he managed to avoid being hit by a car I will never know.

It would be easy to write the year off as a disaster, but it’s important to remember the other moments of the year, too; the excitement of catching a runaway horse, laughing – a lot – with friends and family, and enjoying some wonderful holidays, including a trip to see Father Christmas in Lapland.  Small daughter’s face was just priceless when she met him, and she was actually speechless which isn’t something that happens very often!  Even the smallest things have had significance, from listening to the endless rain on the windows whilst snuggled up in bed at night; a book recommendation by a friend that turned out to be one of the best I’ve ever read; watching the sun break through the clouds and turn them fiery shades of pinks and oranges.  A year isn’t made up of isolated incidents and events, they are all connected and even the worst day can contain a wonderful moment.

So does a resolution that we make, sometimes without really thinking, on the first of January really affect our whole year?  Of course there are times when it can, in the case of really life-changing resolutions, but for the rest of us, I suspect that what happens to us is just part of the rich fabric of our lives.  I might not want to go through quite a few of last year’s experiences again, but they certainly took me out of my comfort zone and made me look around at how life can be for other people.  They broadened my horizons in a way that was unexpected but I have learnt valuable lessons from all of them – perhaps not the least being “be careful what you wish for”!

December 2012 – Gifts without expectations

Small daughter has just handed me the first draft of her letter to Father Christmas, and it doesn’t take me long to work out that Father Christmas either has to have won the Euromillions and have a sleigh the size of a small country, or he has to make some adjustments.

Have you noticed that we encourage children to make a list and write letters, and we ask them “What’s Father Christmas bringing for you?”?  As adults, however, our lists tend to be of what we’re going to buy for other people, and whilst you might have a few ideas of things you’d like for yourself, they’re generally not going to require a juggernaut-sized sleigh to get them to you.

A wise man once said that it’s better to give than to receive.  Research has shown that this is actually true; people who give without expectations are less likely to suffer from depression or other mental problems and are, on the whole, happier and healthier than those who give only to receive something in return.  Christmas is an ideal time to think about this, because not only do we give material gifts to family and friends, but we are more inclined to look out for neighbours or those more likely to be excluded from general day-to-day activities – it really is the ‘Season of Goodwill’.

Despite the fact that small daughter needs to give some serious thought to her own Christmas list, one of the things that she loves to do is to give something to somebody else.  If we go to visit anyone and have presents to deliver, she always wants to be the one to hand over the gift.  Big daughter also loves to give gifts.  She makes fabulous chocolate fudge these days and all of her friends look forward to their birthdays when they know they will get a box of fudge that she’s made especially for them.  I like to see my daughters take pleasure in giving, because that pleasure lasts far longer than the momentary delight in receiving something.  I will never forget the story that a work colleague told me once about her little boy who unwrapped a mountain of presents on Christmas morning and then turned to her and said, “Is that it?  I wanted more.”  She was heartbroken, he was in the doghouse for the rest of the day and Christmas was spoiled for everyone.

So, this year, when small daughter is singing her own peculiar rendition of We Three Kings, I will think about those wise men travelling to give a baby gifts and expecting nothing in return.  The joy that they received from seeing Jesus was worth more than all the gifts that they gave, and there is the lesson for us all.  By giving without expectation, the rewards that we receive in return far exceed what we have given.

I wish you a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

October 2012 – Responsibility

I went on a course recently and one of the questions we were asked was “Who or what do you feel responsible for?”  It sounds easy enough, but if you take a minute to think about it, it’s more complicated than you might first imagine.  Why should you feel responsible for one thing and not another, or for one person and not another?  What makes you feel that responsibility?  It was tough stuff for a Saturday morning, I can tell you!

Responsibility, we were told, is an ability to respond in a way that makes things better.  I like that.  I like the idea of making things better, because there are many things about our communities and our lives that are unfair or wasteful or missing.  You hear people say, “It’s not my responsibility,” but actually, we all have a choice over whether we want it to be or not.

Small daughter was watching a TV advert for sponsorship for a snow leopard.  I think she was more impressed with the stuffed toy that came with the sponsorship certificate, but it was an opportunity to talk about how we must take responsibility for not allowing animals to become extinct.  Big daughter and I took part in the Race For Life earlier in the year, and stood in a crowd of 11,000 women all wanting to do their small part to raise money for cancer research – a huge visual reminder of what responsibility can look like.  If each of those women only raised £1, that’s still an awful lot of money to help people (like my Dad) survive cancer each year.  The dog came with us too and we completed the course in record time as he hurtled after a Border Collie; he may stay at home next year!

There are so many ways that we can take responsibility and it’s important to remember that it’s not the same as accountability.  Being responsible doesn’t mean taking the blame, it means stepping up to make things better.  Since I’ve really thought about what the word means, I’ve found that I haven’t felt obliged to take things on that I didn’t want to.  I’ve remembered that I always have a choice and that knowledge has allowed me to feel differently about many of the tasks of my day.

So what’s the answer to the question?  What or who do we feel responsible for?  You probably have your own answer, but on my course we finally agreed that we feel responsible for things that directly affect us, whether that’s somebody upsetting your child at school, picking up litter from the front of your house or campaigning to keep a bus stop.  And if we feel responsibility in this way, then so too must everybody else, and however small our actions, they do make a difference.  We all have the ability to respond in a way to make things better.