Slow Sunday, memories, joy dots & a recipe
Kanji with leeks & mackerel
Still; inside and outside. One of those autumnal days where trees, start to show the sky, and leaves cover the ground. Copper crunchiness. It’s a long autumn this year because it’s been so warm. But today, the colder weather meets my cheeks and I’m thinking, hats. Except, I’ve never found a hat my face likes, so will probably stick with scarf and gloves.
Last week I wandered down to the harbour, silvery skies and big sun in the sky, boats swaying as the water bobbed, and ripples glittered from harbour wall to harbour wall. It was a shimmering kind of day.
Yesterday, a gathering for a friends 70th. All generations. A warm affair. Tiny tots ran around the open plan downstairs areas, tripping, laughing, suddenly stopping for important conversations, or to disappear into their own games, clunking the piano, playing the guitar; utterly adorable. Friends chatted, in little groups, moving this way and that. Food tasted good, drinks to be had, all sorts; everyone catered for. And the birthday lady looking relaxed, settled, happy in her bones. The whole place a mosaic of warm humanity that you could fade in and out of, as kind hearts patterned the slowly darkening autumn day.
Remembrance Sunday
I’ve been thinking about trauma, for obvious reasons. Trauma comes in many packages. The memories don’t change over time, they get stuck, unprocessed in the survival brain, and from there get triggered—PTSD. And it can get passed from generation to generation. There are ways of addressing it. One is a course of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy with the rewind technique.
This got me thinking about my grandad. He was in WW1 at the tender age of 15 (he lied about his age to sign up). He spent the entire war in the trenches on the frontlines as a sniper, and he survived; but never told the story. Instead he drank. A happy drunk. My gran sent him packing when my mum was 3. He was allowed back for Sunday lunch.
During WW2 my mum, pre-school, was on her own at home because no benefits in those days and my gran was out at work. My mum said it was okay because she had the dogs, and knew when the sirens went off that she had to sit with the dogs in the cupboard under the stairs until the sirens went again.
When my mum was 8, her dad was banned from Sunday lunches too. She didn’t see her dad again until, I was 8, we went to the local post office in Charlton, London, and there he was! Sitting in the corner. He spent the last few months of his life coming to us for Sunday lunch.
When he came to Sunday lunch with us, he liked to sit in a chair in the corner of the room. I’d sit next to him and he made a mouse out of a white handkerchief that ran up his sleeve. Memories.
Today; golden, copper scrunchy morning, where wood pigeons are flying into the tree out front, and 3 black crows walk across the tarmac road. Leaves the colour and shape of lemons lie across the ground. And the sky has hints of sunshine.
I remember, in my 30’s, learning that you could hold hard things in the palm of one hand, while holding peace in the palm of the other, at the same time.
Joy dots
Copper leaves
Lemon leaves
Scrunching across the ground
My allotment
The earth
Friendship
Humanity
Warm smiles
Candlelight
Being kind
Recipe
Kanji with leeks & mackerel
Comfort food. I make a batch of rice porridge up in the slow cooker over night. Ate a bowl for breakfast with salt, lemon juice, black pepper, little bit of turmeric and grated ginger root, with a soft boiled egg. Then for lunch this week, I sautéd a mackerel fillet, in butter, adding in capers, chopped fresh herbs, lemon juice, and seasoning. Sautéd the leeks, and put them all together. Yum, and cheap nourishment.
Sunlight
Did I tell you about, back when my children were young, how there lived a red furry fox who I met. He lived on our allotment site and stole the apples, but for some reason he never stole Ted’s chickens. Unlike Roald Dahl’s Mr fox, he never tunnelled his way in and Ted got to enjoy a good supply of fresh eggs. Well, I noticed on the new allotment site I now have in my older years, another fox. This one the shade of soft ginger, very thin, carrying an apple in it’s mouth. I never new, growing up, that foxes liked apples.
There’s a man in my city who feeds foxes. He’s in his 80’s and spends his time walking round the city feeding all the foxes. Some people think he’s odd, but I just think he’s lovely.
Photo by lougeerling—pixabay
Wishing you the warmest,
Lucy x
Thanks Lucy, that calmed my mind and I needed that today.
Loved the description of your friend's party and times with your grandad 💜
Love this Lucy, especially your reflections on war memories and trauma. This is a subject close to my heart, as both sides of my ancestral line were deeply affected by WWII - including my grandfather who came back from the frontlines of Europe, never speaking what he had witnessed, but drinking presumably to numb it all out. I strongly feel how this trauma lives on in my family line and inside my own body to this day - and how it informs my passion for trauma healing in my work.