“Friends, even passionate love, are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening.” ~ May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

The quiet reflections of yesterday’s Sunday Scribblings have left me in a thoughtful mood. My hormones and the moon usually batter me like a ship at sea, and today is no different. At the risk of this blog turning into melancholy ink on my fingers, here’s what i wrote this morning. Tomorrow I will endeavour to lighten the tone, if only for my own sake!

When I moved into this flat I was drowning in my grief.  Most of my time was spent in bed, though sleep was not a friend back then. Mundane tasks such as brushing my teeth were not worried about; food was begrudgingly eaten, though I could not see the point. It was as if his death had struck a bell in my head, and the sound reverberated in my ears, deafening me, razing the old me to the ground, clearing a space, my blackened insides barren for so long. Yet today I must acknowledge the new shoots that have grown. Four seasons have passed since I arrived here, and this morning I woke to the sound of the pigeons that are nesting in the roof. They walk along the ledge outside my kitchen window, a courtship so sweet as I watch them pecking at each other’s head, the male puffing up his feathers, peacock-like, the female coy and running out of his reach. They have been doing this for a week now, but I fear their cosy existence is being threatened by a new arrival. My new visitor is a seagull, majestic and curious, a tuft of feathers on top of his head, so I know that it is always the same one. He peers in through my windows, though I think he is more fascinated by his own reflection than me typing at my desk. Yesterday afternoon he brought a friend by for Easter tea so I threw old bread out on the ledge for them. A magpie stopped by too and the grey clouds mirroring my ambivalent thoughts about my father broke open and I became an ornithologist for a while, watching the theatre taking place a metre from my face.

Last year I wouldn’t have seen these birds, but today they make me smile, and inside that moment there is peace. I no longer live so violently in the past, the future a mystery but not one I fear. Life carries on, and for so long I didn’t want it to, but it has cajoled me and courted me, and while I may not be ready to spread my wings and fly out to find love again, there are two buds on my back: the wings are sprouting, and that doesn’t make me feel so guilty any more.

** Above is one of my favourite paintings by my beautiful sister, the woman with paint on her fingers…**