Well I am blessed with two wonderful sons, who even now when they are all grown up and so many miles away still cause me in any given moment to gush with joy and love. I’ve loved them forever, and they have given me so many moments of sheer wonder over the years. One of the unexpected joys that came with being a father was discovering my second childhood, and as Regina Brett has written;
‘It is never too late to have a second childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.’
Well I made the most of mine. Once I realised what a gift this was I grabbed it with both hands. I LOVED it!! I loved being a kid again – being with my sons on the floor constructing amazing random things first out of duplo and then graduating to lego. Playing in the park, playing with the dog, throwing frisbees and flying kites. Reading comics, playing computer games (until they started getting better than me) and watching children’s television. Wonderful!!
Ahhh too long in exile. I just lapped it up, and this was DEFINITELY one of our favourites shows.
Toby, Max and I LOVED the Muppet Babies. They made our dreams come true, they urged us to use our E-MADGE-E-NA-SHE -ONS. Fantastic. And we did. I remember Max, not even old enough to go to school, unable to sleep (an insomniac even back then), still wide awake late at night as I was falling asleep in my chair, and I would put an illicitly taped recording of the Muppet Babies on the tele and remind him to switch off the TV before he went to bed (does that mean I’m a bad dad?)
Thank you Kermit and Miss Piggy, Rowlf, Fozzie, Gonzo, Beaker, ANIMAL and the rest of the gang. Thanks Tobe. Thanks Max. I LOVED my second childhood more than my first because I got to spend it with you.
Another in the occasional series paying homage to animated tv shows from my childhood. This one is one of the earliest I recall. I remember being simply awestruck by the way Harold could create his world. I LOVED this stuff – couldn’t get enough of it.
As I watch it again I am reminded of Max and the Wild Things – Max who created his own world right there in his bedroom. Max,who of course was much braver than his predecessor with the purple crayon, found wild things in his special place.
I love Max. I love the things he creates out of darkness and light.
Today I went to bed. Pulled the covers up over my head and let myself slide into the dark. After a phone call to my son I felt too distant, too far away. So I went to bed. Safest place, as I have learnt from years of practice. I went into my cave, and rested. Quietly and calmly abided in my self, in my cave.
Perhaps there was no reason, or perhaps there were lots of reasons, it didn’t really matter. While in my cave, in the dark, the quiet, I slipped through a gap, and was very still for a long time, almost unconscious.
– the name doesn’t matter. For whatever reason(s) I was through the gap and once there I found myself, and when I came back, when I awakened I had a little part of me with me. A little ‘i’, there in my consciousness, in the back room, safely asleep, tucked up cosy with a soft night light on it’s face. And I gently woke that part up, ever so gently. Just came into the room and saw it so quiet, so still, eyes closed, face relaxed in a smile. So sound asleep. I just stood there and watched and waited. Waited patiently soaking up the love I felt. Waited and gloried in the moment knowing that it would change, it would open it’s eyes. I waited until that little sleeping part of me felt me there and opened it’s eyes.
And in my eyes that newly awake glorious part of me saw something. It caught a glimpse of things. Things that that wee sweet wonderful part of me was unable to comprehend. Yet it recognised in those things something that it was. We had something in common. It saw itself in me, and me in it.
And what it saw, it showed me.
It showed me this:
And there i was in the audience. For a fleeting moment, before the song even started, there i was in the smile of a little girl. In the wide adoring eyes of a little boy. There was my joy, my laughter, my innocence.
And when I saw Peter, Paul and Mary I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps this was not me. Peter and Paul and Mary looked too old. There was something wrong. Rationally I knew this was not me, yet there i was.
I didn’t panic, which I have done on other ocassions. I didn’t simply dismiss this whole episode as a wacky dream or fantasy, as I was once wont to do. I didn’t judge at all. There in the gap, in the cave I was able to simply wait. Wait and watch as that little beautiful part of me fell back to sleep. And I knew how still and calm it was. I knew how it dreamt, so softly. And in it’s dream it showed me this:
And there i was again. So much more quietly know, so much more softly. i was just a puff of smoke myself, faint, drifting off. And I saw myself in my mother’s eyes. There she was in the audience. With that faraway look on her eyes as she ever so timorously sang along. She was there. 1966.
I was 9. She was 49. She was a wild woman of the 1940’s. A witch of the south, who had travelled to the other side of the world, to a faraway place, where she had taken off her witch’s cowl, her orange and purple wild woman clothes and had lain naked in the sun. From this faraway land in the sun she heard this song and it awakened something within her.
She would sing this song as she baked. She would sing it as she painted the walls around her orange, as she painted the car. She would sing it to me as we towed the caravan behind that orange car away towards the sea. She would sing it to me as I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I saw into my eyes, and I saw this:
I was a little older now. No longer just a mummy’s boy, I was still my mother’s son. A mother and son with a faraway look in their eyes. A double act full of double meanings. A mother who holds my hand as we look into my father’s dying eyes, as we look into the sleepy eyes of my sons. And before we all fall asleep we make myschief and sail off, through night and day, in and out of weeks, and over years and years.
I am watching my sons now, as they slept. I am only a child myself. This is the magic my sons. And now you are all grown up do not forget the wild things, do not forget the magic dragon. I watch them as they sleep and I feel the love. I wait for I know it is only a moment and we will awake.
And once awake we all will visit the cave, we will tame the wild things and release the dragon. We all will once again play with the magic dragon.
… and the feeling remains the same. So does the sentiment.
It’s been 12 months since my first post – called rather dramatically ’the beginning’. And having just revisited that post, that place called the beginning, I want to say it all again. I am saying it all again right here, right now. Twelve months later and the song remains the same.
gratitude
thank you
thank you
thank you
I’m still in London, still with Cari and Tilly, still loving every minute of it. Twelve months have passed and it no longer seems longer – it seems like, and it is, simply a moment, that has been filled with so much joy, so much excitement, so much wonder, so much documented in my words and images here – and so so much that isn’t.
I continue to be well looked after, well loved, and feeling so very very happy and free all the time.
Thanks Cari – I love you dearly xx
I am free to walk, although nowadays I tend to ride. I move a little faster than a year ago – the pace of London has pulled me along a little and now I ride. Everyday, I continue to enjoy the beauty and tranquilty that is London – and I am learning to enjoy the bustle and busyness as well.
Buses and trams, trains and planes. Public footpaths and dual carriageways. Commons and heaths, greens and parks. And the quiet and sanctuary of Cari’s home and garden, both growing around me. It has been a wonderful gift to be part of her creation. To watch the house become a home, to watch the garden grow. To reap and sow. To love and be loved. To be part of her wider family – Tilly, and Emily, Ang and Daz, and little Bennie (god bless em).
And I miss my sons, Toby and Max – it has been a moment apart and I am looking forward to being with you again – I think within the next year or so. And over our time apart I have felt you grow – that has been a joy. Once again thank you for letting me go. Thank you for being there with me when I needed you most.
Thank you to all my friends, to all those in Aotearoa and Australia. Thanks Kate, Garry and Nga, Marney, Jim, Karen, Telisa, Don and Caleb, Lendl in India, Lou, Buck, Ruth, Niuia, Trev and Lyn, Andrea and Andrea, Jackie, Colywn and Chrissi and all the others who have keep me close to them. Thanks for all your loving kindness and concern. Thanks to my UK family – Sian, Penny, Aunty Pat and Fred, Leslie, Vicki and dear Frieda. My friends – Phil and Debs, thanks for making me feel welcome, feel loved.
And finally - thanks mum.
May you ALL be free, may you ALL be happy, may you always share in my dharma.
Today is the 7th January 2009. Mum passed away a year ago today. She just slipped away so peacefully, so quietly, gently gently did she go into that good night. It was wonderful. It was what we wanted, my family and I, for her to simply pass away in her sleep, in her own home. Without fuss, without drugs, without pain, without fear, with love. That is what she did. Bless her.
And once again, thank you to my sons, who stood by me, and stood by their nana as she aged and died. We came to know her death as her life. We came to understand that the two are one, the distinction false. We live and we die – at the same time. If we fear one, we fear the other.
Every moment with mum in those years that we cared for her, was one of life and one of death. That was one of the gifts she bestowed upon my children and I. She showed us that dying IS the process of living. She showed us that death never really comes – as it is always here, and always has been. It is in every moment. It is never absent. Death and birth and death and birth occur over and over again. Beginnings and endings.
The distinction is false. The two are one. To end is to begin. To begin is to end.
Thanks mum. Thanks Max. Thanks Tobe. Thanks for being who you are. For being with me, then and now.
