This week, as is every week, was full of little moments.
I never usually stop and really take them in, I think it’s an addiction to dopamine. Fast paced life. Although life seems a lot more slower, less stressful, now that my kids are out of nursery and my job has… vamoosed. Less money… more time. Ahh, life.
Here are some little moments.
My mother sending me a selflie. A mirror selfie. Not for any other reason than to show me a beautiful dress she got for my sister’s upcoming nuptials. Her hair – always something my curly-haired self deeply admired – black and thick and framing her face. The way she held her phone in her left hand, her right index pointing at the camera button, mid-click, her pinky out. The pose of a generation allowed to grow up in the freedom of a lack of surveillance. Not used to taking pictures of oneself. It moved me in a way I can’t describe. My sweet mother. I thought. I don’t think that often. I think, my hardworking mother. I think, mother who I love.
Nettles. Long nettles as tall as my shoulder growing just beyond my back garden. Behind the trellis fences we put up because ivy had taken over the previous ones and rendered them a ruin. To keep the ivy away, we put trellises, so we can catch them the moment they start snaking up the fence posts. So now nettles have taken over, growing over and through the carpet of ivy at the back of the back neighbour’s garden, behind the huge trees they have covering their house. Well. it’s an old man’s house. He was taken ill and carted off to a nursing home last December. His garden a beautiful memory of 40 years of life and love and family. Ivy and conifers taller than the houses now, but which must have been small when he planted them with his wife – in a bygone era.
My moment was that I went into the back, pulled up all the nettles using a pair of rubber kitchen gloves under my usual gardening gloves. I picked each leaf off, while my kids watched from a safe distance. My boy ran inside to collect his scissors, and started snipping at other foliage, emulating me. My daughter pushed her babies around in a little pram, stopping by me every so often and putting a small chubby hand on my shoulder.
I picked all the nettles, we had nettle tea. A nettle rinse for our thin curls. Some nettle soup with toast.
Slowing down.
Screens off.
Rain on our faces and down our necks.
Appreciation of love.
Ocean Bream 