Things aren’t right. I have that horrible sense of life sliding away in the wrong direction. As you know I look for signs all over the place. A dear friend, a Jungian psychotherapist and dream analyst, once told me that you should keep a beady eye out for the things that flirt with you – things that pop up and catch your eye. Sometimes they will be subtle – a colour, a shape, a pebble (Lixtroll!). Sometimes they will hammer themselves into your head as if you’re a stupid child who refuses to understand. However they arrive, they have a lesson to teach you.
The last few days it’s been a woodpecker. James and I were sitting in the living room chatting when we heard this strange tapping.
‘Is it Daddy?’
‘I don’t think so. Daddy doesn’t do DIY.’
‘Good point.’
‘I think it’s coming from the garden.’ And I walked towards the window to see a flash of black and white disappearing.
‘I think it was a magpie, tapping on the wheelbarrow.’
A few minutes passed and it started up again, more insistent this time. James crept over. ‘No. It’s a woodpecker.’
And so it was. A large one with bits of red. The wheelbarrow is leaning against the picnic bench and – don’t ask me why – but the daft bird is pecking it. Not the table, which might make some kind of sense, being wood. No, it’s the wheelbarrow, made of whatever it is that wheelbarrows are made of – some kind of metal for certain.
So, this woodpecker obviously had some kind of message and, as I do in these situations, I pondered what it might be. The woodpecker is associated with storms and thunder – it is said to give a particularly shrill call and become very active before storms and so can be an indication that a storm is on its way. Woodpeckers don’t only drum or hammer for food, as is commonly known, but they also use it as a form of communication – to tap out their territory, to attract a mate, to keep track of one another.
So I felt it was warning me – possibly of storms to come. And come they did. First we had shenanigans with James, not wanting to go to school, playing up, feigning illness. He loves his school and is very happy there but I do wonder if the uncertainty of the move and all is starting to get to him a bit. Or then again, maybe he just fancied a day at home. But when you balance your entire life like a pack of cards, it’s tough when one falls out of place. Then we started getting nervous about the move. Our buyer promised it would take a maximum of two weeks to sort out the issues that are holding up his own sale. Eight weeks have now passed and still no resolution is in sight. We are beginning to wonder if, once again, we have been suckered by this guy. Adrian has been uncharacteristically irritable. He’s been yelling at Jack (not so uncharacteristic, come to think of it) and stomping round using the Hoover like some kind of weapon (which is more unusual).
We had hoped that we would get some decent news today but no, nothing, nada.
I was so cross that I wrote a stiff email to our estate agent, warning that if he didn’t honour our exchange deadline (two weeks away now), we would pull out. In the past we have rolled over all too easily – this time we have to be tough.
Woodpecker can bode that we’re out of sync or out of step. I hope that’s not true. Sometimes its message is that we need to rest up, to pull together our strength. I know that’s true but it’s just not possible right now. At other times it – interestingly – is said to call people to the shamanic path. I have been fascinated with shamanism for many years and have done several trainings in it, including soul retrieval which is truly intriguing. I’ll tell you more about it another time as it’s quite involved. I based my children’s book Walker Between Words (which some of you are so kindly critiquing for me) on its practice – all the shamanic practices described in the book are based on fact. But in the last year or so I have stopped journeying (the shamanic technique for travelling to other realms for guidance and healing) so maybe the woodpecker is urging me to get back to that (it is supremely soothing, quite apart from anything else).
But then again, and I am clinging to this more than anything, Woodpecker can mean an uprooting, a change of abode.
