cliodhna’s wave

I am sitting in montana in snow country for my first White christmas ever! Its so cold here, a big drop from Chihuahua where when the sun was out it could actually be hot and then at night it got a bit nippy. There is a big mountain straight out the back window and the snow flakes are gently gliding their way downwards. I bought a North face coat yesterday, the big buy of the year, I have wanted one for a couple of years now so took the plunge and went for it. It was expensive but it is an investment, I have found in the past that sometimes its worth it to buy something expensive that is well made and actually works. Years later I expect I will still be wearing this coat and still be warm and cozy. I feel the cold and I am tired of coats that look amazing but when you go outside you are still cold.

In about two hours my boyfriends daughter is going to take us up in her helicopter. She is training to be a helicopter pilot and I think that is the coolest thing ever. I always wanted to do something like that but just never really went for it and now she is totally intent on this. She has found her passion and she is focused and happy and going for it. Working her brain too, studying flight trajectories and weight versus fuel ratio and lift and all sorts. Good for her.

What else, it seems a while since I have actually sat down and wrote something. Oh yes Ariana and iron man. Ariana is at a wonderful age of three years and is adorable, she is obsessed by Iron man and Paul got her an iron man costume and play figure. Its wonderful being around small kids, even on the flight over here there were a few really cute children on the flight and it surprised me that they were on quite happy and cheerful and only cried when we were landing and the air pressure started making our ears hurt. It makes me broody actually, I want one of my own. Sitting at three in the morning stuck in seattle airport watching people go by and being at one with the universe and all I saw a woman pass with a child about that age, a girl. There was a man sitting opposite with a tired stressed look on his face (weather was delaying and cancelling loads of flights so there were a lot of strays lying on floors and wandering around with lost looks) and when the woman passed the girl waved at him and then blew him a kiss. It was so beautiful, his face lit up and he waved back at her and when she had passed and gone with her mother he was still smiling. It was a gift of innocent love and it changed everything around it.

That’s the lesson from children this age, how to be innocent and open and see love everywhere and have it reflected back to us, before we teach them to be afraid of strangers and instill them with our fear of what might happen if they live that way always. I don´t have children but even so I can feel the struggle I would have between wanting to teach them how to be careful about the world and be wary of strangers because I know they would cheerfully wander off with anyone and then not wanting to spoil that wonderful innocence and love.

On the flip side of that Ariana woke us up this morning screaming her head off and when I asked Rachel later what had happened she said she (Rachel) got out of bed and Ariana wanted her to stay there longer! That is the other lesson for me from this age, that the world doesn’t comply to my wants, it doesn’t stop turning just because I say so. My mother is not attached to me by a remote control held in my hands and she has a will of her own. I suppose there must have been fear in this realization (I don’t remember but I am guessing) that I didn’t control my surroundings. How was I to make sure I had enough of everything if I wasn’t in control? I guess at this point in where the manipulation starts, who do I have to be to get what I (think I) need to survive?

It is this manipulation I am picking through now 36 years later. What agreements did I make with myself then that don’t serve me now? To not manipulate and control my world brought huge fear and a feeling of panic and resentment. Everyone else was doing it, if I didn’t I would get left behind and ignored. Scream for attention in any way I could. I am learning to see it and I have ditched a lot of it and it gets easier as it goes along.

It’s that dark time of year again. The Cooks put up Christmas lights on the dining hall and it looks so pretty twinkling red and blue and green. I felt nostalgic for Christmas, but almost for the Christmas that is portrayed in books and films, that Christmas of snow and huge trees and long lost relatives and home comings and personal healings and one big happy family and everyone gets their wish fulfilled. You know, that one, the fairy tale one. Maybe the Christmas of my childhood, before I figured out Santa didn’t exist and there was a real magic about the day.

I went through a while of wanting to avoid Christmas and came through the other side, teenage angst probably. Now I love Christmas, and the Christmas’s in my house growing up were full of love and sharing and all of the above. I love the present buying and the rituals and the lights on the streets in dark Nov and Dec and then getting up on Christmas morning and making the croissants (from the tin, the ones you roll out) and getting Eoin/Daire/Grainne/me (pick whoever) out of the bed because we want to start opening the presents. And I love the day before Christmas eve in Dublin, wandering around meeting people in pubs for a drink before getting the seven o clock dart to bray to continue on the Porter House with friends from bray (hence the need to get people out of bed the next day!) and home by twelve and ham sandwiches. My mum still make us stockings and will make a stocking for any friends who happen to be visiting, but know she puts them on the end on the bed in the morning when she wakes up instead of waiting until we fall asleep; that became an impossible task many years ago.

The thing that has always struck me about Christmas though is the first Christmas I was nostalgic about, the one from the media, the perfect Christmas, is that is belongs in the same box as the perfect nuclear family, it doesn’t exist but it is the measure everyone uses to construct their own personal perfect Christmas. This of course is not a problem but where it falls short is when for some reason someone can’t have that perfect Christmas or doesn’t have the money to buy their children the perfect present and how we portray it as a shortcoming if it doesn’t happen, a failure, poor them, how sad, god love them, and then in the media someone comes to the rescue (Santa Claus or a rich relative) and fixes the problem.

It’s like we are trying to be perfect for one day, be perfect people, be a perfect family, be a perfect mother, father, child, a perfect society, peace and love for one whole day on earth. It is like we have taken this day and pinned all our hopes on it, make this day perfect and we will be ok.

I like the original reason for all the lights and trees better than the catholic one, seeing as Jesus was actually supposed to have been born sometime in late Feb early March. The pagan celebration was the death of the old sun and birth of the new sun, the darkest day of the year when the world started slowly turning its face towards the light again and the sun began to recover and get stronger and stronger. This makes more sense to me growing up in a country where there was barely 8 hours of daylight in the winter. Put light in the darkness, light up the streets and be happy, only in the dark winter do the fairy lights have the full impact.

My relationship with Christmas changed when I decided I liked it just for the excuse to have a party and celebrate life in the middle of death and put lights up in the darkness and think about the people I loved and what could I get them that they would really like for Christmas, depending on budget (and some years we had a family agreement that we couldn’t spend more than 5 euro on each other, which only made the present picking more inventive) and then it is just as much fun to see them open my present as it is to open theirs to me.

I am going to Montana this year to visit with Paul’s family. Paul’s relationship to Christmas is to give any children around everything they ever wanted o make up for the lack of his own happy Christmases. He admits this himself. He is already planning the shopping trips to the toy stores and I have overheard conversations with his daughter along the lines of We can get her (her being his granddaughter) this or this! And the reply Dad, she’s only three. He doesn’t care though; this is his particular perfect Christmas and the kids treat him like their own personal Santy Claus.

What do I want for Christmas? I want a down duvet, a big huge one, like a queen size or king size, one with really warm down fill. Can’t find them here in México and its COLD right now in these mountains.

My head hurts. I have had a headache for 24 hours now and following my usual pattern I will have it for 24 hours more. Pills don’t work on this type of headache, paracetamol, aspirin, dispirin; none of them have any effect. Just have to live through it and move slowly and carefully.

It is a learning experience living with pain and I have had little bouts of living with a sore back and a migraine headache every now and then but nothing big, nothing life shattering (though some of the migraines have felt that way at the time). Pain saps my energy and my enthusiasm, makes me want to be still and quiet and wait for it to go away. It makes me feel disconnected from the world and any attempt I make at creating or writing falls flat into cheerlessness and what’s the use. Particularly this type of pain, this restless ache in my head and feeling of unease in my body; of course my period is on the way too and this also shifts and turns my perception.

Other times I can feel the pain on my body as a direct link to my frustration and want to control. When my shoulder hurts really badly and nothing I can do will shift the knot of frustration and it sits there and sits there and I feel like sitting down and crying. The urge is to go faster, try harder, do more extreme yoga, pull the muscles this way and that way when they are crying out for gentleness and a little attention. It makes me want to pick a fight with Paul, be sulky and moody and blame outside of myself.

I can use the pain as a flag of attention and time needed. TLC instead of fighting forward against the current, learn patience when my hormones are shifting and I don’t feel ‘myself’- I will return to the connection with information gathered along the way. I am grateful I don’t have severe injuries or illness in my body which some people have to learn to live with, I am reminded of the strength of the human spirit and resilience when I do meet these people, if they can live with their lessons I can certainly learn from a headache.