Quotes

And she felt so warm and so loved and so ... what? Done. Completed.  She felt like a symphony that had written itself and now, that the last note had been played, she could finally rest.

-- Of Starlight and Plague

The all-consuming fact of death. It is so dark and wide and tall that when we lose a loved one, it is all we can see. The name of the deceased becomes synonymous with the word "loss" and the most prominent details of that life -- the clear points of light that dot the blackness like stars -- are the details of death. What was the cause? How much did he suffer? What were her last words? The waxen face, the slack features, and our own keening sobs are burned into our memories forever. Such is death.  The ironic thing is that someone can bring joy and love into our lives for decades and yet, when we lose them, every recollection of them is tainted with loss and pain. I say this is ironic because one year of life is 365 days. Death occurs on one day. Think of someone you lost, grab your calculator and tally up the number of days of his or her life and then stack it up against the one, final day. Surely, logically, all of those days of life count for more than the dying.

-- Keyring

As I glance around my study, I see a whole range of books that offer different perspectives on dying. And I think, whatever view we take, to dread death is to harm ourselves, to do ourselves an unkindness. If it is inevitable then the only sane choice is acceptance. Accept that we have a limited time here and realise that we must do something with that time.

-- Keyring

I've spent so many years teaching my children how to live.  And one day, as a final act of kindness, I will teach them how to die -- with a little grace and courage and acceptance.

-- Keyring (draft)

In world where there is always pressure to fit in and things like success and beauty and worth are often given ridiculously narrow definitions, we should love and praise the quirky, the misfits, the oddballs and gentle crazies who make this life interesting and entertaining.

-- Bailey's Blog

I joined a gym. I signed up for a “Dancercise” class and showed up in a ratty pair of sweat pants, T-shirt and support bra. Virtually every other woman in the class looked as if she had just stepped off the pages of Cosmopolitan Magazine in lycra leggings, little exercise crop tops and gleaming trainers. One of them was even a professional dancer just along for a bit of “fun.” I lined up next to these visions of loveliness looking like a whale in a sea of plankton.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

Even people of great faith are allowed their moments of trepidation when the end comes. 

-- Of Starlight and Plague

If you take emotion out of a brain, you banish morality as well.

-- Good Neighbours

I am the woman seated across from you on the tube or queuing behind you at the supermarket till. You’ve bumped into me on a crowded sidewalk. You’ve caught a glimpse of me as I sat in a restaurant window watching the people pass by – so many of them and each like a separate instrument of an orchestra playing the same melodies that we have sung since the dawn of man. The question that I would ask you, if we should ever share a bottle of wine and in the mellowness of the grape fall to discussing the big, philosophical questions of this life, is this:  What are you an instrument of – good or evil?

-- Good Neighbours

If you had asked Lludd then “Will you remember this always?” he would have answered with an emphatic “Yes.” He would always remember what it was like to be eight or nine or ten years old; and the world of his childhood would always be with him.  But those of you who have grown up know that this is not possible. An ever-widening ocean of years and experience pulls you in its current further and further away till the land of your youth seems so distant that it might as well be a point on the other side of the globe. The child you were becomes a stranger (a wholly different person to who you are now). This is why generation after generation of children insists that their parents “just do not understand.” And they vow that they will remember what it is like to be young. But they do not remember, because in the end, they can’t – not really. Inevitably, their own children will one day make the same complaint and the same vow and on and on it goes.

-- Good Neighbours

Here we hit the reality gap, the chasm between how you think it should be and how it is.  

Frankly I think this is the single most prevalent problem to face our generation. Modern women are bombarded with messages that encourage them to reach for the dream, the ideal -- to do it all, have it all and be it all. Millions of years of evolution have left us with the biological imperative to reproduce. Centuries of struggle have made us insistent on our right to fulfil our potential and have careers. Since early childhood, fairytales have assured us that all of life's trouble ends when you meet your one true love and arrive at that magical destination known as marriage. Decades of advertising have told us that we can buy now and pay later with three years no interest credit. Magazines have given us a concept of physical beauty that never ages. And hundreds of episodes of Friends and Sex in the City have told us that we should have raucous sex lives and the leisure time to “do lunch” and hang around in coffee shops being witty.  I have just one question: How? Because by my calculations, I do not have enough strength in my body or hours in my day to “have it all.”

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

Love, true love, embraces all of you. It is deepened by what makes you unique. In short someone who loves you, loves your crazy-ass self.

-- Bailey's Blog

Love, at its best, is the freedom to be exactly and completely who you are. Anything that requires the abnegation of the self, the need to be something less, is not love. 

-- Of Starlight and Plague

…Aristotle … he once said that melancholia plagued men who were really, really smart. It was the price they paid for all that insight and intelligence.  So … good news! Apparently I’m a fucking genius.

-- Good Neighbours

Parental love is the most intense, desperate, fiercely defensive love on earth.  All that mattered was that Brutus was his son – a simple phrase that held within it a galaxy of hopes, dreams, prayers and fears, insecurity and frustration, warmth and joy unlike any he had ever known.  

-- Good Neighbours

As a parent there moments when your child asks a question and you know you must get the answer right. The future could well hinge on the next words out of your mouth. So you speak carefully, and after contemplation.

-- Good Neighbours

In that moment I took that last step toward parental insanity that eventually comes to us all:  I started ranting … to myself.

-- Good Neighbours

I can only speak from personal experience but pregnancy brought me such beautifying things as stretch marks, swollen ankles, hair the consistency of straw, bleeding gums and spots. Add to that the bags under my eyes and weight gain and I looked like a frickin troll.  It wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t constantly surrounded by images of flawless women. I keep thinking of all my favourite TV programs and there is not one that stars an ugly woman. There is no flab, acne, smudged makeup or the possibility of a bad hair day. In the wonderful world of televised drama, a woman can drag herself from the twisted hulk of a wrecked car, sprint away to avoid being caught in the resulting explosion and be flung by the force of the blast into a nearby lake – and I guarantee that she will emerge from the water looking like Bo Derek in the movie 10. I have only to spend a few hours with small children and I look like a convict in a Turkish prison.  

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

As parents we expect ourselves to perform our duties flawlessly. Even when we are ill or worried or stressed. Even when our hearts are breaking. In short, I want to be Wonder Woman for my kids and in those moments when I fall short of that goal, I don't recognise it as reality simply reasserting itself. I see it as failure.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

Parenting is the slow, quiet, patient work of clean bottles, bandaging skinned knees and helping the children with their homework. It is pattern. It is routine. It is cooking and cleaning and hugging and scolding. It feels at once amazing and entirely unremarkable. And in this cycle of cooking, cleaning, teaching, loving, I sometimes crane my neck and peer above it all and say, “Hang on a minute. I had plans. I had dreams. I had things that I was going to do and be.”

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

Teach them the best lesson we can impart -- namely, that as human beings we can do wonderful things. But we do them while struggling through the chaotic and aching days of our lives. That is what makes our work so special. When children are well cared for despite their mother's grief, that is a true success. When they feel loved and valued, despite their father's stress, it is a triumph. That is why I say this to you: If you try your very best for your children despite all of the crap in your life, then you are more than an anonymous nursemaid and more than a kitchen drudge. You are a hero.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

I tried to have a phone conversation with a friend the other day.  Unfortunately, it is forbidden. Under the Baby Code of Rights, Section 7, Articles 19-24, it clearly states: At no time are you (legally defined and hereafter referred to as "the carer”) permitted to divert your time and attention to anything other than your charge (hereafter termed, “the child”). Should illegal infringement of this statute occur, “the child” is entitled and legally obliged to inflict a range of penalties upon “the carer” which shall include but not be limited to breaking things, falling over and hurting herself, standing in front of you while singing loudly, and asking the same questions over and over and over again. Failure on the part of “the carer” to redirect attention back toward “the child” will result in an escalating cycle of misbehaviour until “the carer” has no option but to obey this statute in its entirety.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

On the subject of tantrums, I have come to realise that they actually do serve a purpose: they remind us of how very, very much we love our children. We love them desperately, with all that is in us, and never is that more apparent than when they really piss us off. Honestly without a love of such magnitude, I think the human race would have died out a long time ago. Think about the last time your child had a temper tantrum and ask yourself, "Would Cro-Magnon man have put up with this shit?"  I can see it now, he returns to his cave after a long day of fighting off sabre-toothed tigers and there is Cro-Magnon junior throwing a hissy-fit because he doesn't want to eat his nuts and berries; he wants mammoth nuggets instead. The cave man looks at the child, looks at the blood-stained club in his hand and considers his options. Now what is to keep him from opening up a 40,000-year-old can of prehistoric whoop-ass? Love, I tell you. That love has saved my own children's lives on many occasions.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

Parenting is not for the feint-hearted or easily nauseous.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

Epidurals sometimes cease to work. Mine did a good three hours before my son was born. It was at that moment that I handed in my membership card to the human race and transformed into something the villagers should be chasing with torches.  

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

My kids went through this interesting phase: they would come up to me frequently, bury their precious little faces in my shirt and snuggle. It wasn't until I wore a navy blue top that the penny finally dropped -- apparently, whenever the little blighters gave me a hug, it was really to wipe their noses on my shirt. I had so many suspicious white streaks across my blouse that I looked like I had been attacked by an army of belligerent slugs.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

In order to truly know and understand our children, we have to be there through all of it: the good, the bad and the ugly.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

I look back now on all the ideas I had before I had children and can reach only one, inescapable conclusion: I was a moron. I'd read all the baby books, thought long and hard about it, formulated my parenting philosophy and waited until I was "ready." However, the truth of what it means to be a parent only reveals itself when you become a parent. How can you be equipped to do a job that offers no training, no pay, no holidays and no sick leave? And yet, fool that I was, I was convinced that I would handle it all with a sense of organisation and poise.  Yeah, that did not work out. To give you an example of how masterfully I have coped with motherhood let me recount the day that, while trying to apprehend a wayward toddler at a bowling alley, I crossed the line. You know the one: that magical line that you are not supposed to step across while bowling. Long story short, while the child who had only been walking vertically for a few months sprinted off with all the agility of Usain Bolt, I hit that highly polished, super-slick surface and became airborne. I landed with an ungainly thud on my ass and lost one of my bowling shoes which careened down the lane and hit the pins. They later found it mangled in the ball-return mechanism. For all of that, I didn't even get a strike. I did, however, get a lecture from a spotty seventeen-year-old on the importance of the magical line and why it should not be crossed. Oddly enough, as I stood there rubbing my throbbing buttocks, I'd already figured that out.  I'd like to tell you that that incident is unique in my experience as a parent. I would like to, but I can't. I have landed on my ass (literally and figuratively) more times than I can count. But that's parenting for you. It's trial and error and getting it wrong and waking up the next day and trying again. It is wonderful and terrible and I wouldn't trade it for the world.  

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

There was the Triop Christmas:  Triops, also called longtail tadpole shrimp, are freshwater crustaceans that, as a species, haven't changed in 70 million years. For this reason, they are like living dinosaurs and you can hatch a few in your own aquarium. And so, one Christmas holiday, my son hatched four bouncing baby shrimp. We fed them and looked after them and watched them grow. Then one day, when we looked into the tank, there were only three.  Now that was a puzzle. Could triops crawl up out of the water? Could they escape from their aquarium? That night I fell prey to unquiet dreams. I dreamt I was lying in bed, unable to move. It was then that I became aware of the triops on top of me, inching their way up to face. For what purpose? I'll never know because I jerked awake and within minutes was downstairs weighing down the lid of their tank with a cast iron skillet.  The next morning, however, there were only two triops. Now there was no freakin way that they shifted my frying pan in order to escape and so a new idea began to creep into my mind. I looked closer at the tank. There were little bits of shell floating in the water. They were eating each other. Delightful. In the end, as Christmas morning dawned bringing with it a message of "Peace on Earth, Good Will To Men" we were left with one hulking triop swimming in the primordial soup of its own siblings' remains. Thoroughly disgusted by all of this, my daughter steadfastly ignored the aquarium. My son, on the other hand, lamented the fact that the "Triop Cage Fight" had now come to an end. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

-- Memoirs of a Frazzled Mother

On fearing death: I went through this too, right after the birth of each child. In some sort of cosmic twist of irony, there is something about new life in all its brilliance that makes us contemplate its opposite. There is a moment, I think, for most parents when they look upon that child, that most precious of gifts, and fear that they might lose the baby or be forced by their own demise to abandon her. It is all very natural.

-- Keyring

Just what were you supposed to do with a mess like this?  Over the years Louella had developed a theory; she called it the Delta Theory of Life and it was a pretty good one. People had a tendency to get obsessed with big moments — it was that 1988 Summer Olympics “One Moment in Time” vibe. And don’t get me wrong, those moments are important. Take motherhood, for example. After giving birth, when the doctor delivered her babies right onto her bare stomach — those were two of the most powerful, shining moments of her life. Even now the recollection took her breath away. But the relationship with her children was not made and set in those brief minutes. It was cemented by thousands of days, millions of tiny actions and words and hugs and kisses. These built up like the silt that forms a delta giving them firm, dry land to stand on. And it was fertile ground; it had produced a lifetime of good memories and of love.

     And so, if the big shining moments were not the be-all and end-all of life, then neither were the big tragedies. They could rise above this and the simplest way to do it would be to silt it up with something else — something better. That was her theory, anyway. Not expertly wrought, but solid. L.R. Knost put it much more eloquently when she said: “Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”

-- Of Starlight and Plague

Generally speaking, I am not known as a philosopher. In idle moments, instead of contemplating the big imponderables of life, a lot of crap flits through my head. Where, for instance, would I flee with my family in the event of a zombie apocalypse? If I won the jackpot on the lottery, would I build a mansion with its own shark tank like in the movie The Spy Who Loved Me? And how, despite the fact that I haven't done anything remotely athletic for the last decade, did I manage to get athletes' foot?

       But just occasionally one of the really tough questions will present itself and refuse to go away until it has been properly addressed. These are the questions that challenge my faith. These are the questions that keep me up at night until I read and study and ponder -- until, at last, I am able to formulate A THEORY. It is at moments like this that we all become philosophers, because waxing philosophical is the only alternative to repeatedly banging our heads against the locked doors of life's puzzles. 

 -- Keyring 

In my experience there comes a point when, under terrible duress, something in the mind gives. The thinking or reasoning part of the brain, overwhelmed by the influx of pain and fear and rage, seems to temporarily sever its ties to the parts that generate emotion. And suddenly, inexplicably, I go numb.

-- Good Neighbours

Odd really – regardless of how old you are, when you lose your mother you become a child again. I felt orphaned and lost. Do you know the worst bit? I could feel her for days and days afterward, in my flesh and in my bones. It was her flesh after all. And it drove me half-mad. 

-- Good Neighbours

Hardship in our lives is like a blacksmith. Our metal is heated so that it can be recast then it is hammered into a new shape. Our trials are like that: blow after blow of the hammer … wait a bit and see what new thing you become.

-- Good Neighbours

I took great comfort in the writings of Boethius. He understood. He too had enjoyed great earthly prosperity only to have it ripped from his grasp. And yet he was not bitter. He had intelligence and a good heart; and in The Consolation of Philosophy he came to this conclusion: “The wise man ought not to take it ill, if ever he is involved in one of fortune’s conflicts.  The time of trial is the express opportunity to perfect his wisdom. Hence, indeed, virtue gets its name, because … it yieldeth not to adversity.”  I came to realise that even our tragedies do not arrive empty-handed. They come bearing gifts – of experience, of strength, of wisdom. And I resolved to put those gifts to use.  

-- Good Neighbours

Big events are not heralded by a rain of toads. They have simple beginnings and we often find the germ of great horrors in the ordinary and the small. There is the tiny air bubble in the vein, the microscopic not-quite-alive strand of viral RNA that causes Ebola, that last shot of Captain Morgan before getting behind the wheel. After all, mighty oaks from little acorns grow. 

-- Of Starlight and Plague

Louella knew that she should be crying too — hell, screaming into a pillow right now would not go amiss. But she was so tired. She’d had moments like this before, when things were so bad that it felt as if something in her head had ... blown. It reminded her of the way that an overloading surge of electricity can blow a fuse. And then everything goes quiet and dark. In those moments she did not have the strength to cry as she should.

-- Of Starlight and Plague

Many people cope with tragedy by taking up a crusade. It is a way of proclaiming: ‘See! Something good can come out of this!’ It allows us to take all that anger and pain and despair that might otherwise destroy us and funnel it into something positive. Doris Tate, mother of murdered daughter Sharon, founded COVER (the Coalition on Victims’ Equal Rights). Candace Lightner, whose thirteen-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver, started Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Whether we start movements or establish scholarships and memorial funds, we all try to find some silver lining in that grief-laden cloud. “In some ways,” Viktor E. Frankl wrote, “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

-- Of Starlight and Plague

It never seems to rain when it should.  The most tragic moments of my life have all been bathed in glorious sunlight and when I'm counting on that sunny weather?  That's when the clouds roll in.  Case in point:  every time I buy garden furniture, it is followed immediately by months of rain.  Every.  Single.  Time.  I have often thought that I hold the solution to famine in dry countries like Ethiopia.  Send me there, I'll buy a sun lounger and lo, the heavens will open, the rain will quench the thirsty earth and crops will grow once more.  I could single-handedly end world hunger by buying a picnic table.

-- Rain Goddess?.

So go.  Write and read what you've written and ball it up and throw it in the bin and try again.  And keep trying until that spark of inspiration fires and you create a thing of beauty.  In a world where there is so much ugliness in our news feeds every morning, any act of creation is an act of defiance ... and a celebration of life.

-- Blog (Poetry, Part One).