Day 41

Snow again so shovelling for an hour was my exercise.  For some reason I was careful of the snow mermaid and shovelled meticulously around her and so she lies there still, yearning for the sea, wondering if she will ever see it again.  I want to reassure her, because after all she is a version of water, and the snow-melt all plunges into the river around the corner, which flows lazily to ebb and flow with its mother, the vast Atlantic ocean.

Every morning I wake up, realise who I am and where I am, get my bearings.  Some days this is easy and virtually instantaneous and other mornings it is like crawling out of a foggy sheer-walled pit.   I think it is dreams which do this, because you are so far away in another world that you have to give your mind and your body time to come to terms with reality, you have to realise you are in your bed with the elephants marching over the blue and white duvet cover, that there is the soft beginning of light through the orange kikoi curtain, and yes, there is your husband lying with his arm flung over you, your fellow sailor on this nightly trip across the sea of dreams.

So once I know who I am I think of all my children, and wonder what they are doing right now.  I can picture them all, Nick walking through the dawn light of the city, past mounds of snow, going to work in the flower-shop, where he will arrange flowers, and fold paper around small bouquets, and be very charming, and smile his big friendly smile.  Matthew far away in Senegal, probably at the Research Centre trying to make his mind help his fingers write as well as he speaks French, absorbing all these new experiences, revelling in them.  Jess getting ready for work, dragging herself away from her darling babe, looking elegant and lovely and a little harrassed.  Emma having lunch with the other mothers and babies, keeping her busy baby in check, looking gorgeous, laughing with her eyes.

So when I have done all this wondering, I can get up out of the bed, and begin my day.

Wonder is what makes education happen, what makes experiments eventually work, or prove something.  It is why we explore continents and our brains, why fossils were discovered and why they proved how life began all those eons ago.

When we meet someone, we wonder what they are like, what they think of us, whether they read books, love dogs, play music, know about history, whether they are good in bed, whether they are creative, if they are faithful, promiscuous, cruel or kind.

When we are little we wonder about everything, and ask many questions until we find out what we wanted to know.  And sometimes it is what we wish we didn't know, because once you know something you can't un-know it.  And if it is shocking, like the Nazi concentration camps, or the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or how they make paté de foie gras, there are images burned indelibly into your brain, damaging it forever.  

Tim brought me a beautiful pot of tulips, which are slowly opening their crimson petals, standing straight and tall on their stems, rooted in the pretty ceramic container with a Delft pattern.   And then about a week later he brought me flowers, cut flowers, which I put in my exquisite elephant vase which my daughters gave me many years ago.  They have ended up together on the table, almost touching, and I wonder if the flowers are jealous of the tulips.  Perhaps the tulips mock them, saying, look at us, we will be alive when you are dead and thrown on the ash-heap!  Or perhaps the flowers stand sadly in their vase of water, and the tulips, feeling sorry for them, tell them they look lovely. 

My plants are all inside for the winter, where they have to endure cold and spider-webs and the occasional infestation of some weird house-plant pest or other.  In the summer they go out on to the deck where the chickadees fly to them with greetings, and the rain wafts gently over them, and the summer sun beats down relentlessly, and all about them is life and air.  I wonder if they miss the world on the other side of the glass, and long for the little birds. 

I wonder how my little granddaughter will react to me in a few days time, where I will be suddenly three-dimensional, instead of the flat granny she knows who sings and claps with her on Skype and Facetime.  She is almost a year old now, but this is how young she was when she came to stay with us last summer.

then

and now.

 And I will probably only see my other little grandie when she is nearly a year old. 

then

and now.

I will choose a work of art for today, because I am too tired to investigate something else now, late at night, so here is a piece from a long long time ago, before writing and farming and cities and all the other things we call civilization.  It is a beautiful painting of a bison, from the cave of Altamira, in Spain, about 40 000 years old. The artist is unknown, the purpose is unknown, only supposition tells why the people of this time made these images.  But Art made the world, after all.