Wednesday 9 November 2011

13 years

Today I feel…so so strange. My solar plexus is doing cartwheels. In fact all my chakras are spinning weirdly, every which way, like I’m being teased apart, unravelling, dissipating and then being crashed back together.  I take a deep breath and everything spins again. Lurches like sea sickness. Just the most massive psychic disturbance. 
Is it because my boy is 13 today?  I dunno.  Thirteen years ago I became a mother. An archetype I never thought I’d constellate.  Thirteen years ago I was in a hospital bed in Taunton squinting in disbelief at a helium balloon with ribbons dangling from it that a friend (who worked in the mortuary at the hospital) had placed above the bed while James and I slept, exhausted (the pair of us) after our severing.  
I couldn’t believe anyone could be so feckless as to allow me to be in charge of this being; this precious person.  I knew then, with total certainty, that I would lay my life down in a nanosecond for him. I still would. I’m pretty sure I always will.  When I feel as if entropy is tugging me, when the dissipation becomes almost too unbearable, he tugs me back. My lodestone.  And then I worry because I don’t want him to feel pressure from the enormity of my love; don’t want him to feel in any way responsible for my happiness.  I suffered the weight of immense parental love. Isn’t that a funny thing to say?  Most people complain they weren’t loved enough – and lack of love is a terrible, terrible thing.  But too much parental love can be onerous too.  When expectation is so high that you cannot bear to disappoint.  And I hear my mother’s voice in my head soothing, ‘Never, never.’  And Erik the Viking. ‘Don’t be bloody stupid; come here, Trollop, and have a hug.’ Yes, he called/calls me Trollop. J And my birth father?  He just holds me close to his cable-knit cardigan, the one with the leather buttons, that smells of pipe smoke and wool.  He never said much. I can’t hear his voice. No. I’ve tried again but I can’t.
Anyhow. I didn’t expect to be writing this.  I was intending to go to the gym, to see if my body had mended enough (a sneaky attack of the bloody palindromic rheumatism thing I thought I’d kicked into touch) to let me stretch my limbs but the gym was shut and so I’m sitting here going back in time, projecting forwards in time and here, right now, my solar plexus is still spinning wildly and my boy is at school and my dead parents are dancing in my head and life is so very very very strange. 

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

People have this amazing ability to create more emotions from their thoughts in mental meandering than they do in what they believe to be the real and apparently solid world they manifest around them...both dreams, but how many choose to create destructive emotions in their little mental adventures and how many realise that it is just as easy to create constructive as opposed to destructive thoughts that lead to the corresponding emotions?

We each are unique pieces of an apparent jigsaw that manifests from a suingle point of observation and only exists because it is observed.....Ha! Ha ha ha ha.....

Exmoorjane said...

I choose to create weirdness because otherwise I get suingely bored with the unreality.lol

Anonymous said...

Did I just invent a new word? lol

Anonymous said...

I'm sitting listening to The Beatles Love album that is emanating from my daughter's room. "Blackbird" She is 31 in a coupla weeks - a real firey Sagittarian, she is home from Oz for Christmas. We're off out soon. I'm going to surprise her by manifesting a laptop she's after. I remember when she was 13....my nerves were in shreds.....HA!

DD's Diary said...

If only there were a recipe - how much love, how much distance, how much hovering .... so difficult to get it right. But I'm sure you do. Happy Birthday James! x

Annie @ knitsofacto said...

Yesterday my youngest (of four) turned 21 ... I'm spinning too!!! They're turning out okay, my lot. I know I got bits of it wrong along the way, but they tell me I got the important bits right, and I think that's all any of us can hope for ... that we won't make the same mistakes our parents did, and that our children will forgive us for the mistakes we make instead.
Happy Birthday James x

Anonymous said...

Mine too have turned out great. Nice people, I haven't got a clue how that happened....maybe it was something in the food....lol

PS: Happy birthday kid....follow your heart and you'll be fine.

Anonymous said...

Which brings back a memory. Up until I was 7 I never spoke - not a word. My parents thought I was mute then one day I banged my fist on the table..."There's no sugar on these cornflakes!"

Mum and dad nearly passed out and asked, "How come you've never spoken until now?"

I reached for the sugar bowl, "Because up until now, the food's been ok."

Rachel Selby said...

Bud Jazzman - amazing that you and Albert Einstein had almost identical experiences with speech.

I can't believe that my DD is 3 next month. That's 3 years without one minute of not making sure she is teken care of before I do what I want to do. Three years fo getting out of bed every morning to give her breakfast. I didn't think I was capable.

Piglet33 said...

Severence physical may have taken place but I believe there is, and will always be, a spiritual/emotional umbilical cord linking us with our offspring. I don;t know how to explain it in terms of parents who appear not to love their children enough - I can only think the connection is weak but I still believe it is there and endures. Happy birthday to your boy! x

Zoë said...

Happy Birthday James! 13 eh?

God help you Jane! Teens - eeek.

You will be glad to know it is survivable - mine are 22 and 23 now, and much as I can empathise with how you feel now having got to this milestone, I am having similar lurches myself between sadness and joy, but mine is empty nest syndrome.

I wouldnt call it weirdness - more self awareness? xxx

Tee said...

Love this post, Jane! It's beautiful! ♥

Fennie said...

Hi Jane, Happy birthday to James. Glorious, isn't it, what most of us feel for our offspring! Never had a problem with too much love, giving or taking, though knowing when to let go - or how to let go - isn't always easy. Still it's second time round for me. Theo will be three in February. What surprises me (has ambushed me) is the amount of love that I feel for the little fellow and the very great pleasure I get on the day a week when I have charge of him. This was unexpected.
All being well there'll be another one arriving next year. The old parenting skills are becoming well and truly honed. Prepare your solar plexus for this in 10 or 15 years time! Always a great read, your blogs!

Alison Cross said...

Honey!!!!!! *extends a bit squeezy hug* It's a hard balancing act, isn't it - loving and letting go.

I adore every fibre of my son's being. Even the farty ones. And I look at him poised over some computer mag and wonder just how I could ever have created something so beautiful.

It's all so terribly fragile and I dread the day when he turns outwards, as he should, and away from me.

Ali xxxx

Cait O'Connor said...

Lovely post.Nothing stronger than a mother's love Jane.
Hope your chakras settle soon - could it be the Full Moon?
Happy Birthday James.....

The bike shed said...

I thought I'd dread the 'teens' and in as it turns out I haven't at all- better in fact than 11 to 13 (pre-teenage incompetence). There's great joy in them becoming young adults too.

Dylan however (who was 7 last week) is not allowed to grow any older!

Frances said...

Happy birthday to James...and it's a gorgeous full moon night, too!

xo

Exmoorjane said...

Thanks, y'all. Wasn't that moon amazing? It's a delicate dance, the parenting thing. I've loved James every step of the way - even when at his most challenging - so I suspect the teenage years will bring their own joy. :)
He had a great day. Got punched thirteen times by each of his mates (in one of those weird rituals they do) and then we took him to the cinema to see Tintin which he loved. I slept right through it so don't ask me what it was like! ;)

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

Happy Birthday to James. Learning to let go is, as Fennie says, the hardest thing. But I loved my children being teenagers,as I love them being adults. Watching them grow and challenge and be just so damn funny was utterly fabulous. I was way better at that than I was at looking after a small baby. It doesn't change though. I am still ambushed by astonishment from time to time that I created such fabulous, funny, loving and intelligent people. I would still lay down my life for them.

Emma White said...

My eldest is 12,Its shocking how quickly it's gone.It only feels like yesterday that I was handed my bundle of joy.

Your post is lovely huni Happy 13th James x