Facing the Shadows

My mother’s favourite author was Ursula K. Le Guin. After many years of dreaming of it, she finally wrote a letter to ‘her Ursula’, expressing how important her writing had been to her, and she received a brief but delightful, and heartfelt, reply. I stumbled across it when I was back in South Africa for my mother’s memorials (there was more than one event) in June, as she kept it on the board above her work desk, and it was one of many moments that made me feel both tearful and joyful – tearful because she would never write another letter; joyful because she did eventually write that most important letter, and both the writing and the response were such positive and empowering experiences.

Birthdays

Cate celebrating her 28th birthday with Chocolate Pecan Chocolate Chunk Pie

My best friend, Cate, turned 30 today, and suddenly my thirties seem less intimidating. It has reminded me that we don’t change on our birthdays, no matter how much we use them as milestones. On each birthday, the only thing that feels different from the day before or after is my excitement about cake and a party! My mother was an expert on creating special birthdays, without fail, and making amazing birthday cakes, so birthdays have always been the cause of much excitement in my life. But we don’t change our character noticeably when we become a year older because a year is, obviously, spread out over a year, a little bit each day. It is incremental, gradual, and thus gentle. In addition to this, it is not merely the passage of time that changes us, it is the experiences within that time – I learnt and grew more in the few weeks following my mother’s death then I had in the entire year before.

Timelessness

Yesterday, I went for an 8km run to start picking up my distance again, which I need to start doing fairly promptly as the clock is ticking for the Amsterdam Marathon in October. I just took it really easy, felt good – much better than I expected, in fact – and now feel that I should be ready to start reorganising my training plan to account for the two months of training I’ve missed. I should be ready, but every time I’ve opened my calendar I have merely looked at it blankly for a while before closing it again. I’ve been struggling to look forward since my mother’s death – time seemed to freeze, and it didn’t feel like it mattered too much that I had lost track of days, weeks, and eventually months.

Thoughts from an aeroplane #1: London to Cape Town

Tuesday 21/06/2011

I am sitting in Heathrow airport, as the evening of the longest day of the year draws in, the sky a hazy and sun-splashed blue. Today has not been a good day, and I feel somewhat torn between looking back over it to try and analyse why, and simply looking forwards to the challenges of tomorrow.