MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
Fairies in Raindrops
“He walks like it’s the start of the world and nothing needs to be done.” My 10 year old daughter observing her 12 year old brother.
My youngest of four children just turned 13 and I’m both relieved and grief stricken. How did that happen so fast, and thank goodness they're all getting older. I’m happy to see the young adults they are becoming, yet heart broken for the little children they used to be.
Each milestone is met with emotional contradictions, much celebration and yet a sadness we will never pass this way again.
I feel myself letting go against the back drop of wanting to hang on.
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.