It's a new year. Already 7 days in, .... Already 18 days in, .... Already February now! I keep restarting this blogpost, which seems like an inordinately difficult thing to do somehow. It's the new year and already I am behind on so many things I wanted to do. I am also behind in this blog, supposed to have 52 by the end of August, so I'm way behind with that. And so what?
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| Amaryllis bringing light |
The year has had an awful start for so many people in the world.
So, believing that we should eat, drink and be merry, to counter all the negativity around us, we were supposed to spend New Year in Madrid with my forever-friend Cindy, but I picked up a virus from a coughing child on the aeroplane coming back from England to Portugal, and you can't really be much fun when you feel like you've been run over by a bus and can't breathe very well either. I really really looked after myself and went actually to bed for 5 days.
I ended up coughing and wheezing for 25 days, but then gradually it all petered off and I DID get better. I still feel like one of those TB patients in a home in the alps, sitting out in the sun with a blanket over my knees. Fragile and a little weepy now and then. The older I become the more I am prone to these illnesses that drag on and on, it would seem.
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| Foreverfriends |
However, I managed to see Cindy in Sevilla, just before she flew back, just for one perfect amazing and wonderful day. She is one of the best people in the world, I think, so warm and kind and interesting and deep. I have been friends with her for 32 years, and even though we live on different continents now and don't see each other very often anymore, we do the proverbial picking up where we left off.
What is it about friendships, what is the glue that joins two people so powerfully, such a connection that you know will last as long as you live? I would have liked to stay with her for a week or more, to have all the conversations, to eat all the delicious food, to laugh and walk and wonder and understand everything together, two women who love each other.
We managed to see the great Catedral de Santa Maria. which Cindy and her sister told me would (temporarily, probably) change my religious views!
It is the most astonishing edifice. It is the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world. Of course it was first a mosque, built in the 1100's, during what is called here, on the Iberian Peninsula, "The Occupation", although it was a pretty long occupation of nearly 800 years!
The Royal Chapel holds the remains of the city's conqueror, Ferdinand lll of Castile, his son and heir Alfonso the Wise, and their descendent, King Peter the Cruel. How awful, to be remembered forever in historical documents as "The Cruel". What a horrible person he must have been. Also Christopher Columbus and his son are buried there, who were also horrible people. I have no time for these relics, these nasty old men. Where are the women buried, where are those who achieved wonders, the women artists and poets and makers?
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| My lovely big strong sensitive dad. |
Even though the world seems horrifying right now, I am so glad I was born in this time, in that place, where my dad believed in girls, in their great brains, their powers, their capability for anything, and pushed his daughters to read and learn and study, not just know how to do the washing and cooking and all those boring things which women all over the world mostly do. Where he supported our independence, our agency, even our wild emotions.
This time where modern medicine assures my life, enables my lungs to breathe, removed the cancer from my breast, gave me new lenses when I was going blind with cataracts.
This time where I have an equal partnership with my husband, where we share cooking and cleaning and all those boring bits of life, as well as all the good stuff.
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| Only one missing! |
My daughters came over in January for 4 days, to say goodbye to their baby brother, (still their baby, at 32) who was leaving for Mexico. It was the loveliest time. I don't think I laugh with my children how I laugh with anyone else. It's a deep laughter of my whole body and soul, sometimes it hurts we laugh so much, falling on the floor laughter!
I think what families (and friends ) do is to mend each other when we are broken, when we are hurt. I think that is our purpose. We weave our people whole, again and again.
I wrote a poem about this, about Tim, it's called The Weaver, but I can't reproduce it here because there are some rude bits, the in and the out of it all.
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| My lovely clever complicated mother with her three children. |
I am so glad to have all these weavers in my family. I think it is in our blood, as my mother's last name was Webster. And she taught me how.
