Spring has Sprung.
The Sun is Shining.
Songs make me Smile.
I’m Stuck with SA.
Well, nothing’s perfect, but mostly things are Satisfactory. Sometimes they’re even Super and Splendid.
See you tomorrow with T for terrible… tragic… troubled. Or none of those.
Bye for now.
I know I have two more posts to go to finish the tale of my trip to Europe in the summer, but something else has been on my mind during the last few days. If the news is true, two sixteen-year-old boys started a fire that killed 42 people and destroyed wild life, buildings and some beautiful countryside.
In all likelihood, the boys didn’t intend to cause any damage at all. They just wanted to burn some rubbish. The fire was caused by their carelessness. Those boys will have to live the rest of their lives knowing what a catastrophe they caused. If they are decent people, the pain will worsen as they mature.
Most of us manage to get through childhood without causing such a catastrophe, without committing any crime at all. But we might well have done things in childhood that we’re sorry for afterwards – things that had consequences that, as children, we couldn’t envisage.
The things I’m thinking of are my decisions to hide my feelings and, later, to keep quiet. I harmed only myself, but I wish I hadn’t.
Are you sorry about any of your childhood actions?
Even I have happy memories of my childhood and this is one of them:
This post was inspired by fairyhedgehog.
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow. Hopefully.
…to say that I’m having a wonderful time in the old country and will try to tell you about it without boring you – starting in about two weeks.
Hang in there!
Once, Jenni Murray, talking about exercising, said that women over fifty tend not to run up the stairs. I think of that every time I run up the stairs.
She has also said (can you tell I like to listen to Woman’s Hour?) that women are good at multi-tasking. I can listen to the radio and work in the kitchen at the same time, but that’s as far as it goes. If you talk to me, I’ll probably stop what I’m doing to answer you. I hasten to add, though, that I can drive and talk, and even know when something on the road needs to take precedence over talking.
I’ve spent too long thinking there’s something wrong with me if I don’t conform to the stereotype. So what if I’ll never be the world’s best conversationalist? I can do things that others can’t. I can sing, and dance, and write, and run up the stairs. I can even give a prepared talk in front of an audience and enjoy it.
Just as we don’t want to read about stereotypical characters, we don’t have to be those characters. We are individuals. Hurray!
I have a special relationship with Britain. Any other country I visit is foreign. I’m fascinated by the way the people live and I love to explore the countryside. But it remains a wonderful experience of something else, something I’m not part of.
Britain – or, more specifically, England – is different. It’s the place where I was born, where I grew up. It’s a part of me, even though it doesn’t play a part in my current everyday life.
I haven’t lived in England for…. Well, let’s just say that when I was growing up, calculating money involved the factors 12 and 20, and my favourite music was provided by four boys from Liverpool.
Going to England isn’t like going anywhere else. It’s not a visit to a foreign country. It’s a return to a life I left – to the bad times and the good, to people I knew then and places that have remained. And that connects nicely to those four boys:
There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all
So I’m going back soon, first for two weeks with hubby in Scotland, then three weeks on my own in England. I’m starting to make plans. If anyone has any suggestions about what I could do at not too great an expense – literary of otherwise – for three weeks in August-September, do let me know.
I knew it was possible. If others could do it, why not me? It wasn’t as if we’d never separated before, but it
had always been when I was away from home. This time I determined to do it when the temptation was right there.
And I did it! Yes, I managed to stop myself from turning on my computer for fifty-five hours. It wasn’t easy – especially when I went into my office and saw it sitting innocently on my desk. It was as if it had a sign attached to it: OPEN ME.
I resisted all temptation. When I wasn’t at the supermarket or my daughter’s concert or cleaning or cooking, I sat in the garden and read.
It was lovely. I should do it more often.
You know what? Since we got back together I haven’t cursed my computer at all. Well… hardly.
Karen wrote this recently:
Too often we think we CAN’T do something. What we really mean is we can’t do it by OUR rules.
I can understand that. On our recent trip to Prague, for instance, we spent one day out of the city, visiting Karlstejn Castle. Following our tour of the castle (given by a young woman who sounded as if she was bored sick of guiding tourists) we decided to follow a path marked by a signpost pointing to Beroun, the next station along the line. 13.5 kilometres, it said. Fine, we said. Not having purchased a map, we didn’t know what to expect. The path went up and down all the time – mostly up, it seemed, although we expected to go slightly down overall. Maybe because we began the walk at 1 in the afternoon, or because we only had an apple each and didn’t find a restaurant until near the end of the walk, we found the walk a bit tough. But still, it was doable.
What if you’d asked me to do the whole thing running without stopping? I’d have said no, I can’t. Possibly, if I spent a long time practicing running, I’d be able to do it. That’s just not something I want to do. That’s what Karen means when she talks about doing it by our rules: I’d only be prepared to run those 13.5 kilometres if I could do it without working at it. However, I’m sure there are people who wouldn’t be able to do that run, however hard they worked at it. There are people who wouldn’t be able to do the walk I did. I don’t mean those who are too lazy to do it or just don’t enjoy walking enough to try. I mean those who aren’t physically able to do it. What’s wrong with saying CAN’T in such a case?
Once, I worked with someone who was brilliant at telling stories of things that had happened to him. When he told a story, people would gather round to listen because they knew they’d enjoy it, me included. And I thought, I want to be like that. I enjoy giving presentations, being the centre of attention, and I want that to happen more often.
One time, he talked about his youth, about wild parties that he and his brother held every evening at their house. I thought about my youth, which was so different from his and I realised I could never be like him. I missed out on the experiences that could have made it possible.
There are enough things I struggle to do without trying to do the impossible. I feel better for saying, not that – I CAN’T do it and I’ll never be able to do it.
Remember the story of Lot’s wife? She was being taken, along with her family, away from her town of Sodom, which was about to be destroyed. They were told not to look back, but Lot’s wife did look back at the burning city and was turned into a pillar of salt.
If I mention something about my childhood, particularly about my experiences at school, someone is likely to say, “That was a long time ago. Now you have a family, friends, life is good. Best to move on.”
But that’s precisely what I did for a long time. As soon as I left school, I put it all behind me and didn’t look back. The result of that was that I had nothing to say. When others talked about their childhoods, I kept quiet. If specifically asked, I’d mumble something short and feel left out.
Now, I think that was the wrong thing to do. Our past is a part of us. If we block it out, we lose part of our personalities, of ourselves. So now I try to talk about it. I try not to listen to the voice that says, “They don’t want to know. They think you’re dwelling on the past. They think you should move on.”
Guess what? I haven’t turned into a pillar of salt. I’ve become a bit more of a real person. Talking is hard, but it’s also rewarding. And there’s always the hope that by talking I can help others, because I believe that the things that happened to me didn’t need to happen and don’t need to happen to anyone.
What do you think? Is looking back good or bad?
Miriam Drori, Author