Noticing: What I have in you

Posted on by Grace

written Feb ’19

I’ve been aware on and off for a while that it would be a very good idea for me to have a go at keeping a gratitude journal. But, when it comes down to it, it can be hard to think creatively on the spot beyond the obvious big, generic things in life, so I’ve decided to make a start by dipping into this post over several weeks and using it as a focus.

Interestingly, researchers who have studied the use of gratitude journals advise that focusing on people to whom one is grateful carries further benefits than focusing on things for which one is grateful. I’m so glad of my little car and the opportunity of getting out as and when I need it. But the car will never know that. There is a chance on the other hand that when I am grateful to, or for a person, my relationship with that person will be enhanced, and the two of us might both feel the effect.

I worry a lot about relationships. I worry about what people think of me, but also about how I feel about them. I can find myself trapped in a loop of critical judgement of others, when all I want to be able to feel is love.

It feels important to write about the two characters in my life with whom I spend the most time: my husband and my three month old baby. At work we have run a scheme in the past where every member of staff was encouraged to send anonymous notes to colleagues: those whose work, behaviour or presence had made a positive impact on them in some way. It is easy to go through our lives carrying out thankless tasks; easy but not, perhaps, necessary. If this is true at work, how much more important might it be to take this on board at home? And if I can practice noticing these things quietly, to myself, perhaps I will be better able to practice that awareness and appreciation in my outward actions and manner.

Here is a first attempt:

DH – He will often make efforts to put me first. He is insistent about giving me the option of being the first to have dinner while he holds our little one. He recognises me, and sees the ‘work’ that I have to do.

DD – She can stare at me for a very, very long time. No one else is so interested in my face! She looks up out of the pushchair, or from the floor where she lies relaxed. There is no question, or demand, or particular emotion in her gaze; it is just pure attention.

DH – His favourite job is to hoover the stairs, and he does it with pride. When I’ve spent the week logging the little jobs that need to be done as I track around the house, he comes home and does those he has spotted, without my mentioning it.

DD – Sometimes she yawns her tiny-lipped mouth into a diamond shape, reminding me of a little bird. Occasionally, as she’s feeding, she lifts off the corners of her mouth briefly to have a private smile to herself. But when she gives a big, open smile, her mouth widens into a softly irregular shape, testing all those corners, letting it in.

DH – He interests me. His developed opinions interest me. His knowledge, understanding and experiences interest me. I don’t have to work on tuning in (except when already braindead!)

DD – She is beginning to laugh. All giggling babies sound cute, but it’s not just cuteness that I see. It’s a little person coming to life, suddenly and just for a few seconds, but in an unmistakable way. For in that moment she feels independent from me: it is some quirk in her that has responded to what we are doing together – I haven’t made her feel it, as I perhaps do sometimes when trying to cheer her up.

All of this comes to mind slowly; I have to make a real effort to find room for it. This is the opposite of those feelings that fire up in the moment, which I can often find difficult to control. But it is the things that last that matter, and I hope in starting this record that I can make these observations stick, even if the things I am noticing are themselves fleeting and change from day to day. I certainly cannot boast of anything more than Piglet:

‘Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.’ – A.A. Milne

Image by kaboompics on Pixabay









All of a sudden

Posted on by Grace

written Jan ’18

Lying in bed, the image that starts to come to mind is that of tenpin bowling. In my own personal version of not incredibly proficient bowling, the ball drops and rolls slowly towards the end of the aisle: there’s some suspense as we watch it roll. When it finally hits the pins there is a loud clatter, as a number of them fall into each other and hit the floor, and this feels sudden, even though it was expected, even somewhat planned for. The contrast of the predictable rolling and the crash of pins in different directions is immediate, and stark.

I didn’t go in search of this image, but it came to me in relation to how I have felt about having our first baby. Life had been rolling on in its rather ordinary way for some time, with much of our energies going into the demands of our respective jobs and the renovation of our new house – both being projects that never quite come to an end. Once I became pregnant, we knew we were moving towards a big change, but much of this felt unknowable and difficult to imagine until it happened.

I was struck during this time by an awareness that however I felt, and whatever lay ahead, there was no turning back. In an era that celebrates and encourages self-determination, one can change one’s mind about most things. There can be opportunities to retrain, to have a second career, to move to another part of the world or even to find another partner and try again at establishing a mutually satisfying relationship. But my body told me I was now committed: as if I was entering into a new kind of commitment, with a new person who would exist beyond me and my wavering thoughts, even whilst she was inside of me.

This was only confirmed when our little girl was born. What I had expected was a rush of ecstatic joy, the kind that you read about, the kind of feeling that denotes a mother. But what I found myself thinking in those first few weeks was that perhaps I was learning a new definition of love. For me, before I could have that emotional connection, I needed to focus on doing those things that help a person to know they are loved. To begin with, it was all about doing. Getting out of bed, lifting, feeding, cleaning, washing, holding, soothing and singing to her. And it was only by staying close to her while we did all these things that gradually I began to feel something, and could at the same time allow our little girl to get to know who I was. Now, as she lets her little hand rest on my chest as she is feeding, I feel that we have started to get somewhere, that she has begun to trust.

Another Valentine’s Day is approaching, and I wonder what all of this means for my understanding of ‘love’. What am I looking for, now, in this new stage?

There is a thrill in looking forward to days like these which help to mark our shared experiences and relationships. It is a treat to be surprised. But what I am going through at the moment is teaching me, rather than longing for some sign or gesture, to recognise how much I have already been shown love: before I could reciprocate or know what was being done for me. I want to be able to honour these exchanges, which are taking place all around us more frequently than we know.

Birth is a shock, and it takes a while to recover, for everyone involved. But as soon as it happens a new path appears, one that I could never have found on my own. It is impossible to tell where it will lead. But this is where I am reminded of a Sheenagh Pugh poem:

What if this road, that has held no surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all;
… What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
…. across hills you must climb without knowing
what’s on the other side; who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story’s end, or where a road will go?












Needing a lift

Posted on by Grace

written Dec ’18

I’m aware that I need something, but I don’t know what. Words that will speak to me, a song that will tap into feelings I can’t honestly feel yet. A voice, a human connection. A motivating force, a point of interest. A hug, an inner jolt, a reminder.

I wake up knowing I need something, but not knowing what or where to find it, where to look.

I assume I need to look outside of myself for something to plug the gap; that I don’t have the thing that I need. It is a belief that places the stopper on the bottle of creative power. It keeps it all sealed in so that not even a hint of the scent can escape.

But in my new life as a new mum I have no choice but to use all the resources that are possibly at my disposal. I can’t afford to keep the stopper in. When my baby cries until I can bear it no longer, I throw myself outside so that we can go for a walk together. And halfway into our walk, I find myself looking up, and remembering: there is the sky, there are the upper floors of the houses, there are the branches that the birds get to rest in. I look up. It’s more like the beginning of a warm up than a move that might feature in an exercise routine, but it makes the biggest difference. Suddenly there is more than there was a moment before. And I am glad to be there to see it: as far as I know I am the only person presently looking at the things I am seeing.

There is unrecorded life at this level. These are quiet streets. I enjoy looking at the still life that each glance is able for a moment to contain.

The psalmist David probably dwelt within a quiet landscape himself, only he will have spent more time out in the open than I do. Nevertheless, he too was aware that looking up and looking around him involved an active, decisive step.

‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains –
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.’

The mountains are on a different scale to the man. The eyes have to lift up in order to see them, to see what the maker has made, what He has put in place even in the distance. And yet lifting up the eyes here is still only the question that prepares for the desired answer. Asking the question makes room for assurance: my help comes from the Lord. The rhythm itself holds a calm belief.

Sometimes, though, without looking, a lift can come out of the blue, as a wonderful surprise. The old woman walking towards me stops to talk, and then continues far beyond her initial comment on the weather. I sense her hunger for conversation, and the pleasure of being able to satisfy that hunger purely by giving in to it. Suddenly the day has expanded to include a perspective I was not expecting to find.

I may feel it pretty frequently, but I am not the only one who needs a lift. I notice the bored faces of certain drivers passing down the road. I listen to a friend speak of how the job she loves has worn her down until she has little left for herself.

My newborn is not yet at the stage where she will reach out her arms to be picked up. But already it is the thing that calms her most quickly: lifting her up so that she is at shoulder height, lying flat against your chest. Once she is there it is as though she doesn’t have to fight any more: she has a good vantage point from which to see, she can stretch out her limbs, and she can feel that you are there.

Sometimes it is this simple.

I love Wendell Berry’s poem ‘The Wild Geese’, which says of the birds:

‘Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.’  

from Selected Poems, Counterpoint, 1998

In his poetic wisdom, Berry places the example of faith in the geese rather than in the human witness. Perhaps the ‘ancient faith’ here is as basic and natural as the ‘way’ that the geese know to fly in. It is the way of clarity, that twice-repeated word, but it is a clarity that also brings comfort to human beings caught up in concern over various and sometimes unspecified needs, in that twice-repeated refrain: ‘what we need is here’.