For My Daughter (on the occasion of her turning 13 and a half )

In a discussion yesterday about the sudden lack of certainty about parenting brought about by having a newishly-minted teenager in the house, I was introduced, by a friend experienced in these things, to a poem by Alan Paton. It has been churning around deep inside me since:

I Hold the Bandages and Ointments Ready

Alan Paton

(from "Knocking at the Door" - 1975)

I see my son wearing long trousers; I tremble at this.  
I see he goes forward confidently, he does not know so fully his own gentleness.  

Go forward, eager and reverent child.  
See here, I begin to take my hands away from you.  
I shall see you walk carelessly on the edge of the precipice, but if you wish, you shall hear no word come out of me. 
 My whole soul will be sick with apprehension, but I shall not disobey you.

 Life sees you coming, she sees you come with assurance toward her.  
She lies in wait for you.  
She cannot but hurt you.  
Yet go forward.  Go forward.  I hold the bandages and ointments ready.  

And if you would go elsewhere and lie alone with your wounds, I shall not intrude upon you.  
If you would seek the help of some other person, I will not come forcing myself upon you.  
If you should fall into sin, innocent one, that is the way of this pilgrimage.
Struggle against it, not for one fraction of a moment concede its dominion.  
It will occasion you grief and sorrow, it will torment you. 

But hate not God, nor turn from Him in shame or self-reproach. 
 He has seen many such, and His compassion is as great as His creation. 
 Be tempted and fall and return.
  Return and be tempted and fall, a thousand times a thousand, even to a thousand thousand.

For out of this tribulation there comes a peace, deep in the soul and surer than any dream...

I, of course, must needs exchange "daughter" for "son", "she/her" for "he/his" and "high heels" for "long trousers".

The message, however, remains the same. 

Love in this season is expressed less by the tight embraces of her childhood and more by my willingness to expose myself to the terror and inevitable pain of letting her go

 - by holding on to my love, but not my child.

A Month In The Life Of A Wooden Man

[What DOES one do when one neglects one's blog for more a year and wishes to (possibly) start blogging again? Give up and start a new one?

There are many things I find amusing about cats. (Stay with me - I'm going somewhere with this. Plot not lost). In particular I love the nonchalant bottom licking that happens immediately after a failed landing.
I think I shall approach my neglect of this blog in the same manner: by pretending it never happened.

What are YOU looking at?

Groom...groom...groom...]

My Grandfather was an artist. I remember sitting, as a little girl, in the shed in the garden that he used as his studio, perched on a stool watching him paint. It was a magical place. The smell of linseed oil always takes me right back there.

One of the objects he had in his studio was a jointed artists' mannequin which I now have. It (he?) stands on a cabinet tucked away in the back of our living room next to the piano, together with some lovely old tins also inherited from Grandpa.

I, being one of those people who have an inability to see an object that has not moved for any period of time, don't usually pay him much attention.
Until recently.

Recently I realised he was actually catching my eye from time to time. It dawned on me that this was because he was quietly, but regularly (every few days or so), changing position.
And so I decided to keep a surreptitious photo log of his "movements" over a month or so.
Here it is.

1. Man carries his own stick and stand.

2. Man reclines as if sunbathing on conveniently placed black box.

3. Man doesn't want to look at whatever that is he's pointing at over there.

4. Man is distraught when he notices degree of hair loss in the mirror. (At least that is my interpretation of what's happening here).

5. Man has an emergency of the bathroom variety.

6. (Here I'm really not sure) Man is halfway through a pike dive? Man tries Parkour?

I knew immediately who the "artist" was - exactly because I did discover the artwork myself.
Unlike his mother and sisters (but not unlike his father), SirBiggs creates entirely for the pleasure of creating. He appears to have little need for his work to be acknowledged. He shows me some things, but mostly because I've asked what he's doing, or because he thinks I'll find what he's done amusing. It seems he lacks the need (a need I, and I'm sure most of us, have) for approval.

It makes discovering what he's learning (skills and knowledge) tricky. I have to stumble across things he's left lying around, or wait until a sibling shows me something. Sometimes he'll pipe up with a thought on a car drive which reveals a huge body of underlying knowledge he's absorbed and somehow processed. 

If I ever have to quantify what he knows I am positive I will underestimate.

These little clues do, though, reassure me that learning is happening, and happening well, albeit in a way that seems strange and dangerously haphazard to a very structured, systematic learner like me.

His private nature can have lovely outworkings. Sometimes he will deliberately embark on a little secret project just to surprise me. I woke up a few days ago to find this little note quietly tucked in next to a drawing I'd left on the kitchen table:

"Mom I think your pictures are brillient and < I don't know how to spell it>  butiful and perfect". [With a drawing of a hand in thumbs-up position and a stop sign saying "Don't STOP drawing"]

So now I know he knows he doesn't know how to spell "beautiful".
Yet.

The Mysterious Exploding Floor

On Saturday night ZooDaddy and I were disturbed by some mysterious creaking noises in the other end of the house. These then developed into louder more crunchy sounds and so ZooDaddy got up to investigate. When he reached the end of the passage there was an almighty crash (I initially thought he had knocked our huge display mirror off the wall). I waited for a bit, not quite what to do, but he soon called me to come and look.
Essentially what I saw was our kitchen floor exploding in front of us. It really was the most bizarre thing! We couldn't work out what was causing it. Obviously we were scared of subsidence or shifting of the house, but there was absolutely no sign anywhere else of movement - cracks or displacement.
We took some photos and, not knowing what else to do, went back to bed.
On Sunday all seemed stable. MrTepps was initially very distressed: "Look what happened to the floor! What a mess! It's broken, the floor!" For a while he presented us with broken tiles, saying sadly, "Fix it". Thankfully, however, it didn't take him too long to get over it.
After a quiet morning (including hosting the church meeting) it all started happening again. This time ZooDaddy was ready with his phone and managed to capture it on video. Here it is.