family

Savoury Life

Ocean Bream motherhood, musings, The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

I don’t know if my brain is becoming smooth.

Ideally it should be more wrinkly, the wrinklier the better, I am told.

AI usage, mental convenience and delegation and short-form content on the regular are making my attention span shorter.

I feel any information I do consume stays in my short-term memory box, and I am left on a weird intellectual loop. Saying, thinking, planning the same old things month in, month out, year in, year out, with no significant change occurring.

This is where I say it will all stop but I guess I am just fooling myself. At the very least, I am aware. Being aware is one step closer to making a change, is it not?

I am based in the Middle East currently. Since the 11th of May, 2025, actually. The situation here is stable but volatile. People are going about their daily lives while missiles are being intercepted every day – sometimes you hear them and the house shakes, and alerts go off on your phone that you can’t turn off saying to head to a safe space… except there are no safe spaces. No basements or bomb shelters, so you have to think where is the safest place in my house where I won’t get crushed? I am more worried for my kids than myself. If this war escalates to something nuclear I think we are all screwed, no matter where we are in the world. And I think it’s safe so say we all know this is a war fuelled by ego, Epstein file cover up, the US being in Israel’s pocket, Israel furthering it’s Greater Israel agenda and keeping Netanyahu out of jail… the US is ruled currently by an illiterate madman. But hey, are we surprised? No. We just hope to be safe, I think we can all agree on that. I am just really sad and shocked and worried for my kids’ future. The world we seem to be bequeathing to them is chaotic, frightful and full of smoke and mirrors. What is real, in this age of AI and corporate lies?

I shall try my very best here, in this torrid place. Summer is creeping back in, for there is no winter here, no spring and no colourful autumn.

Just summer, hot hot burning summer, and then… gentle summer, or what people here call winter. I used to dream about this place, for it is where I grew up, but I am back now, and I long to escape once more. Just as I did as a child. Rose-tinted glasses, folks.

We are at the mercy of electricity here. If it goes out, the cool air goes, and we are left to bake in an aching dryness that feels like death. It is death, it’s death. How can I raise my children in death?

Like I was raised in death?

Taught to fear everything, never to feel secure?

But I see people here and they are so secure. They are secure from the bombs falling, not even gasping or running when the shopping mall booms and shakes from interceptions above. Swishing around in their expensive clothes, heels clicking on polished floors, they feel secure. Their children are secure, no anxiety, nannies running after them, adhering to their every whim. Why then, am I insecure? Why are my children worried, afraid to fall asleep because a plane sounds too loud, afraid to go on a school trip because they may be left behind? Are they swallowing my insecurities? If so, that is very very bad.

I long to be back in a nature that envelops me and does not seek to devour my moist flesh.

I long for my children to run in fields again, to climb trees, to fish for frogs in puddles and to collect the sweet scented roses that are abundant in my garden. I long for my little girl to pick up worms again, kiss them fondly and name them, to cherish the ladybirds that infiltrate our house through the seasons, hibernating in the corners of the ceiling for months on end. I miss the old oaks, the spring explosion of magnolia and cherry blossom.

But I don’t know what this future holds. And perhaps seeking financial stability that comes at the cost of health and happiness and a cool breeze is just… not… worth it.

That Golden Brown Butter

Ocean Bream Oatsies. Tags: , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Today I fried samosas in ghee. I didn’t know I could do that, but given my newfound knowledge about the inflammatory effects of refined oils and seed oils, and the fact we only ever use olive oil, butter or ghee for cooking – I was so averse to frying samosas in the only way I ever knew we could fry them; in sunflower oil.

So I avoided ChatGPT, and went straight to Google, to ask if I could fry samosas in ghee. Google gave me the AI answer, but I bypassed it and scrolled down to an article written by a Pakistani lady who said frying samosas in ghee was better because it results in a deliciously nutty flavour.

So we did it. We made a spicy potato filling, just like my mum makes – all my samosa-making skills come from my mum, who is the queen of homemade samosas, and has had us trained from childhood in the art of wrapping them to form perfect triangles. We fried them till golden brown and crispy. We dipped them in ketchup (because I am not skilled enough to make a chutney of any kind, and my mum always gave us ketchup). We ate them together, me and my two munchkins, who are on a two-week holiday from school, so it really did feel like our old home-schooling days.

Did you know you could fry things in ghee?

My Sunshine Girl

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Daily writing prompt
Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.
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You know, I always tell my daughter that she is my sunshine girl. The sun shines out of her large beautiful eyes and beams out of her gorgeous big smile. She always thinks good of others, even the mean little four year olds at school who say hurtful things to her. ‘I think she forgot she was my friend Mama,‘ she says, ‘or I think she just didn’t know I liked her.‘

‘Did what they did to you hurt you in your heart?’ I ask gently, and the little half smile vanishes from her face and her mouth turns down against her will. ‘No Mama,’ she says stoutly, ‘in my FEELINGS.’

Okay okay. She is such a sensitive little soul. If you tell her off she backs away with a big smile on her face but when you inspect it further her eyes are brimming with tears that are on the cusp of falling over the edge of her lashes, and her smile is wobbly. I ask if she is okay and she nods and if pressed about it the little tears pour down her cheeks in tragic rivulets.

But she is my sunshine child. Her laugh echoes through the house and if she wonders off in a supermarket her high cheery little voice is my beacon to her. She is loud and clumsy and full of ringlets and chubby cuddles. Whenever I looked at her when she was a baby her fat little legs would cycle into a frenzy and her smiles became little squeals of excitement. I never saw such happiness in someone when they looked at me, my heart would rise up with my own joy to meet hers. She is still this way when we have visitors, when she spies me after her day at school, when I surprise her while she is out shopping with her dad, when her grandma comes to visit – little dances of joy and rapture, hugs galore, never stingy with her affection. I missed you! You’re my favourite person in the whole whole world… everyone is her favourite.

People say about her – she is the spreader of joy. Where is my happy little girl, my mum always asks. We named her after the night, a night of sparkling stars and a glorious moon, only made so because of the generosity of the sun.

So when I think about what I hope people say about me, I think, I want them to say ‘she appreciates the good in others’ – and only so because my daughter taught me when she came into this world 26 years after I did, to only seek the good in others.

That is how you be a sunshine girl.

What on earth are you good at?

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I have had to ponder deeply on this because, like many of the folk who grew up with dysfunctional parents, I can’t seem to think of things I am good at.
It’s a thing some like to call ‘low self esteem’. When I was a teenager, I used to call it my ‘inferiority complex’ and I nursed it like one nurses a scatty pet that they are ashamed of but cannot live without. I made jokes about it to my friends and it was almost like a shield disguised as a badge of honour behind which I shoved all my insecurities like dirty laundry.

I am good at cooking. Mostly because I love to eat. Flavours and ingredients, I was told once by a dear old friend of my mother’s, are like paints on a palette. It takes a true artist to weave them together to make something that truly inspires emotion in the people who eat it. She told me this one day when she brought a box of spaghetti bolognese over. My mother had been hospitalised for three weeks because of a retina detachment – the horrendous result of yet another dysfunctional altercation with my father – and so this friend of hers would pop by everyday when we got home from school and bring us some of her delicious food (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!) and check in on us. What she said that day, about cooking being like art, really stuck with me. I like to think I am a creative, and some of my best creativity has come through in delicious meals I have prepared for people. My favourite thing is when people eat food I have made and are in raptures over it. Yes, I think to myself, this piece of art was well enjoyed.

I am good at drawing – I used to wake up at the crack of dawn before my family. Reflecting on why I did this – being around my family wasn’t a restful experience. I always felt some sort of discomfort or urgency. Discontentment from either of my parents that I wasn’t working hard enough or I was reading too much and neglecting my school work, or I ought not to be sitting around I ought to be doing a chore… So I would wake up at the crack of dawn before anybody could bother me and I would get my paints out (someone had gifted me a set of acrylics – real artist acrylics – and I truly felt I was a renaissance painter!) and paint away on the balcony for a few hours before it got too hot to be outside. I moved onto pastels after that and then discovered a love for watercolours. Then I grew older and became depressed and stopped all that for a while. But whenever inspiration hits me and I take up a brush, I am always pleased with the result and I know I can do it really well.

I am good at writing – but I don’t often make time for it, and that is on me.

I think I have good intuition and am good at deciphering people’s emotions – but I am not certain of it. I think I am good at analysing a person and understanding them on a fundamental level. Their whys and wherefores, so to speak.

What are you good at?

[23]

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano2025 Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

Ten years ago, I lost myself.

I turned sixteen, you see. All kinds of things were happening to me. My mind was foreign, alien. My body was a trap. It was a tumultuous time. When one is sixteen, one’s senses are heightened. Sadness is multiplied and happiness is mountainous.

I chose to let someone in my life when I was seventeen. I say chose, because I did choose. I chose to contact. I chose to text. I chose to call. I chose to visit. I chose to allow someone to violate me. Mentally. Physically. I chose to let them into the most vulnerable parts of my brain. My self. I let them rearrange my mind as they saw fit.

I became sparrow-like. Withdrawn.

They told me I was naive, and I acted so.

They told me I was not intelligent, and I became dumb.

My bubbly self bubbled as I was submerged in a water so murky and black that I could not see my hands when I stretched them before me.

I rode on waves of anxiety, and sailed down roads of relief.

When I finally disentangled myself, in a moment of sudden clarity, the world suddenly became black.

I stood up, in that moment. I remember. I stood up and I shouted, ‘Who do you think you are!!!???’

I was shaking in fear, but I did do that. And all those years (2 years) melted away from me, and I woke up, groggy, shocked, and astounded that I had let myself wonder so far. So far from the path. So lost in the woods.

I told myself I was brought up properly. I told myself I had a healthy and happy childhood. I told myself, all of this, was my own fault. And yes, of course it was.

But I am 31 now. And my mind is more clear than it was even 2 years ago. Things that would have terrified me even three years ago – a phone call, an email, a letter, a message. A ringtone. A dream. A hacking laugh… These things only make me angry now. And sad.

I am so sad that I let that young, innocent, bubbly, happy little girl into the hands of a devil.

I am so sorry and sad.

I wish I was taken care of. Listened to. Heard. Protected.

I wish I had a better story to tell.

If I had been my adult, I think I would have hugged my little self. Held her. Told her she was worthy and important. Not told her it was her fault. And she should know better. Sometimes at 16, you don’t know better. You can’t.

And if he reads this – ever, I hope he knows that I wish he would die. I would revel in his death.

[8]

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i have idealised a porch, I fear.

I have visualised it so vividly that the image I have conjured up for myself gives me a heartache.

Let me paint the scene for you.

I see pillars supporting a porch, wooden floorboards, fencing all around made of wooden beams, and then wide, wide steps leading down onto the lawn. Hydrangea bushes grow thick and luscious with baby blue flowerheads, tinged here and there with purple, flanking the steps. There is a large swing seat, where a granny sits to do her sewing while she watches the neighbours. They also sit on their porches, mow their lawns, watch sunrises and sunsets, gather together and talk, reminisce under the starry sky.

I see myself there, I see my family, I see laughter and stories, I see the warm orange glow of a house filled with life spilling out onto a garden of shrubs that harbours secrets, excitement, hope for the future and trysts.

I see the dreams spoken out into the night on cloudy breath, and long summer evenings with sips of tea or cold home-made lemonade, children rolling about in front of the porch, adults discussing the depths of humanity as they watch their progeny grow up together.

I see togetherness, in a porch. Community. Something more.

Have I romanticised the porch?

Image Credit

November Challenge

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano2025, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I am doing NanoWrimo – but the blogging version, again. NanoPoblano – right? I didn’t sign up properly this year. But this has been the hardest year in my life so far. I have moved across the globe – which is stressful in itself, trying to settle in a new country. And now my mother is going through something so shocking, terrifying and confusing for us all. It’s taking a toll on us mentally, mainly because we just don’t understand it and don’t know what to do. Normal illnesses are understandable because at least the patient is coherent, and not saying awful things or wailing or in a pit of despair. Mental illnesses are ugly, and it’s so difficult to watch your mother become alien.

I would usually call my mother up and ask her what to do in this situation, but I can’t do that, because she IS the situation!

And so in order to achieve something, and to distract myself, because Lord knows I need the distraction right now, I am going to write a post every single day in November.

Let’s go.

Pretend that

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“Pretend that this is where we’re meant to go but you think it’s not where we’re meant to go“

“Oh, this isn’t where we were meant to be. We went the wrong way!”

“No, it is the right place. We are meant to be right here!“

“Yes. Yes yes yes you’re right we are meant to be here.”

– An older brother, appeasing the imaginative wishes of his younger sister.

On Spinning Joy

Ocean Bream musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

I begin this post with a quote: “I could not read, eat, sleep, write or do anything unless I drove myself to do it and then I felt as if I were trying to do it with somebody else’s hands or brain and couldn’t work very well with them. I feel lustreless, dowdy and uninviting – I even bore myself. I shall grow mossy in this existence!“

This was written by Emily, from a book in the Emily of New Moon series by LM Montgomery.

Never have words felt truer to my soul. I have moved across the globe, twice. I have lived under the perpetual dampness of a February chill, grey skies and a sun that was never to be seen save for a few snatched glorious cold steely moments where she deemed us worthy to sprinkle her rays weakly at us. I have lived in a torrid desert, every breath laden with the fine dust carried over the sand dunes. Artificial light, artificial skies, artificial wind…

And yes, this dowdy, lustreless feeling chases me wherever I go, ripping away my inspiration and making me bow before it.

Yet every day I wake up with new resolve. I am determined to find my nature. My joy. A way to smile and truly feel the happiness in the pit of my stomach.

Home is where the family is. Joy is in the heart, not the location, and peace and happiness come from within.

Lombardi poplar trees. There is a row of them in Nantwich, and they always decorate the skyline with a gorgeousness that aches the heart.