There is a bridge close to my house where tantrums melt and calm proceeds. I’m not quite sure what it is in that place that pacifies difficult feelings and makes more reassuring communication possible. Maybe it’s the joy of reaching a destination that does it or the task of feeding ducks or just being surrounded by nature or maybe all of these things taken together. Life just seems to float there. Just like the water under the bridge.
It’s not only the toddler who needs the bridge. I need it too, to quieten my internal communication with myself. August has been quite intense for me as the next few months are likely to be. When the pressure is high, I really appreciate open spaces more than anything. Perhaps I also have got a kicking and screaming toddler in myself who can only collect herself when out in the wild.
When I used to work in my dad’s orchard, my sister and I would spend a lot of time just looking into the sky, watching the passing clouds, connecting with the heavens. I noticed that my son loves doing it too. Looking up, breathing deeply. It’s reassuring, isn’t it? That under the clouds we are all small people.
Have you ever heard about the philosophy of edible cities? In the name of this ideal, owners of small flats and houses fill their windowsills with pots of chives and parsley, change their lawns into vegetable patches and fill their hanging baskets with tomato vines. It’s a great and straightforward way of bringing back THE REAL FOOD to your doorstep. No foil. No plastic. No packaging. Just the pure food produce pulled from the soil, your soil, and as organic as you can make it.
To me, a girl who grew up in a village with a big vegetable garden in the backyard, orchards and cold stores full of plums, apples and cherries, there is no other way of living in a city than making its surroundings edible. I need nature to feel grounded and I need contact with soil. It’s humbling and enabling at the same time. Humbling because the growth does not always happen, enabling because often it does and then you feel that you are more than just the manager of your pantry.
Thyme in winter
We’ve made a few changes in our garden this year to grow food, we have made a raised bed out of a tree that had to be felled due to its trunk forking out and we planted two small apple trees and blackcurrant, raspberry and blueberry bushes. Cherry tomatoes and small chillies are reddening in the sunnier parts of our garden. Some of our beetroots and broad beans are ready for collection and consumption. Herbs are abundant.
We had our problems. Things dried when we were away. The cucumbers just refused to grow. More than a few leaves have been eaten by slugs but to me this is an insignificant obstacle. Living in a city is not a problem either. I don’t see myself as limited by location. It’s just about getting the timing right and then learning as it all grows.
Thyme in Summer
My son is a very eager grower and an absolute real food lover. He loves helping around the kitchen and the garden. He likes to play with food too, e.g. by taking broad beans out of their shell and then putting them back. And these broad beans… wow… once they are lightly cooked, they are divine. And the smell of the herbs in the kitchen is just wonderful. Just when we cooked some of our vegetables for dinner this evening I thought that one of the reasons for growing your own food is to remember what fresh produce should smell and taste like. It’s partially to have a benchmark against which you can assess the quality of food. Personally I am not enamored with supermarkets and I hardly ever shop there for food. Human contact is too precious for me and so we shop at the market or small independent stalls and stores. We rely on my greengrocer’s great fresh food produce.
It’s my greengrocer, some of you fellow bloggers, and my parents of course who remind me that we are not only consumers, but also growers and creators, capable of influencing our surroundings. If we always choose convenience, we become so one-dimensional, so plain and flat in knowledge and experiences that we are no longer… interesting.
Say no to convenience. There is always some space between flowers for some lovely food. I am happy that I didn’t get discouraged by last year’s garden failures. We’re definitely are going to grow more from now on. It’s just really really rewarding. I hope you’ll try too, will you?
We talk a lot about how to best bring up our children. We talk a lot about their diet, about their clothes, schooling, meaningful playtime and sleep patterns. We are continuously preoccupied with their self-esteem and skills development but we hardly ever address their spiritual side, hardly ever ask questions about it. I sometimes feel that it is almost a taboo to talk about spirituality for the fear of being recognised as a potential or practicing believer.
I am a practicing believer. I go to church. Once it was part of my cultural practice and upbringing (being brought up in a Catholic family with Catholic values), now it is my choice. I don’t feel constrained by my religion, I feel guided in some manner but not constrained. In fact I am often plagued with doubt but a few years ago a solid seed has been planted in me and now there is a tree growing there, a very healthy tree that supports my core and blossoms with my regular visits before God.
I belong to a gentle and a very balanced community built from people from all over the world: Europe, India, Nigeria, Brazil and the States, to name just a few. We are all there sitting in one church, connected before God, equal before God. It is a very powerful sensation. It is a very powerful understanding. I take my son to church and I think he sees what I am seeing. He sees and breathes this so powerful a statement of equality – for him there is no other world, no other world than the multicultural one, no other than the equal one.
I have got friends of all religions and persuasions, in fact my best friends are of different persuasions to mine but it does not prevent us valuing each other’s friendship or having deep conversations on the topics related to believing, disbelieving and non-believing. Our ability to develop different views and feelings related to the metaphysical is what makes us so wonderfully multidimensional. I want my son to be able to position himself towards the metaphysical with as much knowledge and experience as he can get himself, and as much understanding as I can offer him and so I take him to church (I know that there are other ways, but that is mine). Someone told me once that they stopped attending church because church should be for the people and not people for the church. The main message that I get from the place that I go to is not that people are for the church but that people are for the people. That people are for the people. This is what I would like my son to take with him.
We are very fortunate to live in a multicultural and multi-faith city. The city which totally overwhelmed me when I first arrived here, the city which I am totally indebted to for making me open-minded and curious of differences, and as many British cities this one is also great at coexistence but would definitely benefit from more face-to-face dialogue. I don’t know how it is in schools these days, but I know what it looks like in playgrounds and play spaces. Mums gravitate towards those that look like them. How about breaking that habit? How about initiating conversations that join us together? Getting to know that lonely-sitting, iphone-flicking everymama? Where she’s from, what she values and most importantly why she is alone.
Not many people read blogs during the summer so it feels like I’m going against the grain here by coming back from my break in writing. A lot has been happening over the past few months and part of me wants to take a good stock of it. So I’ll be holidaying in this space and a few posts will appear here this summer.
This is a simple list of thoughts and experiences that I just wanted to log that are not only about today but also about the last few months.
Making: sense of my multicultural experiences on the pages of my thesis Cooking: simple chicken dishes with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil Drinking: jugs of water Reading: once again The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck; Masterpieces of literary reportage by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Last Child in The Woods by Richard Louv Wanting: what I have Looking: at the growing man on my side Playing: shake, shake, shake – it’s just about shaking pretty much everything these days Wasting: perhaps a bit too much money on books these months Sewing: is about to be outsourced to a tailor – winter coats need mending Wishing: well to people nearby and afar Enjoying: gluten-free diet Waiting: no more, there is no time to waste Liking: this video about self-compassion being even more important than self-esteem, Jesper Juul, Hozier and Gipsy Kings Wondering: what to write in this space Loving: English charity shops Hoping: to complete this list Marvelling: at my son’s strength Needing: stronger backbone to lift the pre-school attendee Smelling: blackcurrants Wearing: summer Following: you ;) Noticing: how much can be gained through a face-to-face dialogue Knowing: myself much better than 4 years ago Thinking: a lot about languages, cultures, modern families, nutrition and growing broad beans Feeling: optimistic Bookmarking: quotes on patience and perseverance Opening: many packs of raisins for my little boy Giggling: every evening when the summer heat subsides and the air cools down
and one addition:
Missing: I was missing writing for this space. I think I have grown quite a lot through my previous blogging experiences and it has always felt like a privilege to be part of this creative community. It’s great to pop in for a while.
The taking stock list and a template was made by Pip at Meet Me at Mike‘s. Go and visit her lovely space.
Where do you go to escape from the turmoil of the world? I go home. Childhood home. Of course it boils there too. But it boils in a different language, about different matters although with familiarity from the past. We know our childhood homes so well. We know what to expect of them and, who knows, maybe it is this predictability of the place and language that makes it easier for us to truly rest and listen.
I tend to find myself when I’m in the unchanging landscape of my little village, in its stability. The fields, the trees, the meadows, the orchards, the forest nearby – they are always there ready to embrace me as I am. Ready to welcome me as me.
It’s a powerful sensation. Me as me.
In a world that demands constant change. In a world that asks for continuous development and seduces us with better versions of ourselves it is really difficult to appreciate the people we are and have always been – with our personal dreams, perspectives, and qualities.
In fact, it is even difficult to love our own core dreams when so many things around tell us that there are other, better dreams to dream.
When you feel like this think of the time when you last were dreaming with confidence. Big dreams, small dreams but with ease, no noise in the background. I have realised recently that I was at my dreaming-best when I was 14. I don’t know what I was doing ever since, but it was the time when my map of dreams was the most personal to me, no fears, fads and fashion. In my little childhood village there are cereal fields next to my dad’s cherry orchard. Walking along the fields, I meet the 14-year old. She’s cheerful, hopeful and determined. Where were you when your dreams were unfolding? Maybe you can visit this place? Or create a semblance of it where you are now? To allow yourself to be you, maybe with fears but without disabling judgements.
Postcards Without Stamps 