Day 40

Tonight I am missing my daughters who live so far away, too far.  They are both going through challenging times in their lives and it would be lovely to sit down and have a calming cup of tea with each of them. 

I remember having these two beautiful, dainty little daughters, long blonde plaits on heads brimming with imagination.  I had a friend who had two sons about the same age, and I thought she was not such great shakes as a mother because her house was always a wild rumpus of noise and mess, with broken branches in the garden and something likely to fall on your head if you ventured further than the front door.  And then I had my own boys and suddenly understood everything.

This is a little screech owl Tim and I saw at Hampton Beach.  Tim took some beautiful pictures of it which can be seen at his Flickr stream. 

I am cheating again because I am so tired.  We are expecting 8 - 12 inches of snow tomorrow, so I guess I will be extremely tired tomorrow night too, from all that shovelling! 

I did this watercolour last year from a very old pencil self-portrait of myself, so here I am young and beautiful, as one always is in paintings, with the lips of Angelina Jolie (?) with an owl on my head. 

When I was younger I was fascinated by owls, and made many ceramic owls, big and small, some of which rest in people's houses in Grahamstown and East London, and some of which have finally found their way to America and live on my mantelpiece and remind me of Emma, who as a small girl had a flock of them with which she would sleep, along with her teddy bear made by Granny.  Halfway through the night she would come into my bed, first plopping in her little family of 7 or 8 cold hard ceramic owls which poked me intermittently all through my restless sleep, while she lay snuggled against my other side with the teddy.