Children

There is something just so wonderfully beautiful about children, their innocence, their naievity.  When I was eleven my older sister had her first child.  Georgia Naomi.  She was, and still is, one of the lights of my life.  I remember pushing her into the hedge in her silvercross pram with bouts of laughter.  That is one of her first memories funnily enough.  But I loved her, even if I were mischievous.  She used to sleep over our house, in my bed and she was my first ´daughter´.  

Then came two nieces and nephews from my other sister, Chloe, Maddison, Sam Ben and Sonny.  I used to love getting them to sleep.  Holding them in my arms.  Sometimes dealing with the sickness bugs that went round and round.  Cleaning tremendously full nappies.  I was amazed that so much could come out of a small bottom!!  I was more mature and less mischievous, although I remember doubling over with laughter after cutting Sam´s hair with the clippers and forgetting the guard.  He had a nice bald patch on the side of his head.  My sister Laura was sort of laughing but trying to contain her horror at the same time.   

My twin Charlotte had her two.  Sebastiaan and Theo.  Sebastiaan was born in Germany.  I never forget the time I had to leave him the first time to return to England.  It literally and physically hurt my heart.  I guess that was coming closest to feeling what it is to truly love a child like a mother does.  I had been with him for the first couple of months of his life and was very very attached.  Then Theo was born on the kitchen floor, in Charlotte´s home in Bristol.  It reminded me of the story Like Water for Chocolate where the protagonist was also born on the floor and they swept up the salt that had evaporated from the maternal waters.  After being very present in their lives, I had to leave my boys to start my life in Chile and it hurt tremendously once again.

What I guess I am trying to say is I have always been maternal.  It has taken me a long time to find the man I really want to make that journey with.  It took me a while to convince him into the path of parenthood.  Unfortunately I had a miscarriage in January.  It has been so hard trying to get my head around it.  Imagine something you want most of all in life, someone offers it to you, you have it and are so happy, then as quickly as it comes, it is taken away from you again.  I was devastated.  You spend so much time questioning youself, feeling a failure.  Pregnant women seem to be everywhere, people due at similar times to what you would have given birth.  It hurts.  But I would never begrudge that most precious thing of anyone. Unfortunately miscarriage is not spoken much of, but it is more common than you think.  I confided in a friend who had gone through the same.  I also have two friends with fertility issues, and they are the most beautiful and deserving people you could think of.  The fertility lottery seems so unfair.

Before my loss I had been having dreams of a child for some time.  I didn´t recognise the face, but the child was just ´there.´  A baby bird died in our dining room, scared of fright being cornered by the cat.  I guess the signs were there that it just wasn´t meant to be.  I had a dream the other day of my own baby.  I know it was mine because it was in my arms and I was trying to breastfeed it.  It gives me hope for the future.  I yearn to have that closeness.  The warm embrace of a child.   I have so so much love to give.  For now though I am engaged in a different project while my heart, body and soul heals.  My work life has suddenly taken off in the area that I want it to.  But I know motherhood is in my destiny, somewhere in the future on that twisting path of fate.  

For my love

It was so wonderful to be in your arms, listening to the rain tapping the tin roofs as you stroked my face.  I felt happy again, a happiness that has been absent for some time.

The boats bobbed up and down with the tide, in the light of the moon.  The water washing under the houses on stilts that I dreamed of many years ago.  Our destiny.

  

How divine to share the week with you, the moment seemed like forever as time stood still, and it was just me and you.

Our love flowed freely again, and nature approved with heart shaped puddles and hummingbirds celebrating our kiss.  

Life is the wheel of fortune, what goes down must come up.  Life on earth is short, the physical may cease but the soul lives on.

And so our souls continue to dance with the stars, our love so strong that our spirit becomes one.  She is born of the sea, rises with the wind and rains back down into the earth.

She, like our love, is eternal.

The birds by Kate Morton de Escobar

 Squawking gulls o´er the sea shore,

Pigeons walking clumsily on the floor,

Graceful swans in unison glide,

Pelicans bobbing along with the tide.

Dove symbol of peace for which we pray,

Robin with memories of Christmas day,

Cuckoo finding refuge in the trees,

Swallows building nests in the eaves.

Birds migrating and gone to soon,

Owl twit twooing by the light of the moon,

Rooster crowing marking a bright new day,

Oh how I love my birds in every way.

But the hummingbird is the favoured one,

She brings me hope of better days to come,

She brings me messages from those I miss,

With her delicate warm embrace and kiss.

Lucho, another abandoned dog, another member of the family

Chile has a problem of epidemic proportions when it comes to abandoned dogs.  Driving down into Laguna Verde, or in fact any Chilean town, the amount of unwanted dogs left to fend for themselves is shameful and shows an urgency for educating the masses and highlighting the widespread scale of the problem.  Would it be o.k. to abandon your children because of thier colour, because they were no longer small or cute, because they became to expensive or too much of a burden?  A child is for life, not just for Christmas, and so is a dog!

The reasons for abandonment here in Chile mirror how discrimination works in wider society.  Black dogs are rarely wanted, the more European and blonder the better, your face must fit, and if preferable, you must fit into a Gucci handbag.  How heartbreaking to see dogs running into the roads, with little food, and even worse, mistreated and kicked by uneducated yobs only because of an inquisitive sniff.  

Luckily there are many groups who are trying to make a change here.  There are many people who love animals and try to find those abandoned ones homes.  They leave food and water in the streets and knit them clothing for the cold.  Which brings me to the story of Lucho.

Lucho is a mongrel who has recently won our hearts.  A month or two ago, our poodle cross Pelusa went missing.  Naughty little girl had escaped and was looking for mischief.  We were delighted as she appeared two days later, but she arrived with a flea bag in tow.  For several days, Lucho stayed outside of the gate, waiting for Pelusa, to shower her with howls of love.  Finally we caved and let him in, hoping the dynamic with our other five dogs would work.  We gave him the name ´Lucho´ because he fought so hard for Pelusita´s love and didn´t give up.  

Lucho is rather a strange creature, with almost human eyes and a human sounding gruffy voice.  He is ridden with fleas, but who could not love him?  Due to the amount of abandoned dogs in Chile, there are some strange mixes of dogs, whippets with labrador heads and sausage dogs with chihuahua ears.  He surely was abandoned because he has a big head and probably was too large for his owners who wanted a purse size pup.  But we have grown to love him just as he is, even if he does cause tremendous mischief with Pelusa, he is now part of our family.  And our story is one of many which gives me hope that things are starting to change, that it takes just but one person, and one dog to make a difference.  Love and kidness is everything.

Today

Today brought some closure in one of the saddest chapters in my life.  I have lived some of my darkest moments recently.  The one thing I wanted most of all in this life was taken away from me and left me heartbroken.  Margarita said that when you are sad, look into the trees and see their beauty, but I found it so hard, all I could see was darkness through my tear stained soul.  Now I will go to my favourite place to recover, to be at peace with my animals, so that the hummingbirds envelop me with their love and light so that my heart finds happiness again.

Anon for a friend

Life sometimes appears to pass us by so quickly, a whirlwind scoops us up and spits us out.  We are confused and dazed as to how time has slipped through our hands.  A feeling of emptiness engulfs us as the colours of the seasons flash before us and the cruel winter envelops us, permeating our bodies, freezing our souls and hearts.  The cold lingers, it gets into our bones and negative emotions amplify tenfold.  But hold on! Spring is around the corner.  She will warm our bodies and defrost our souls and hearts.  She will fight the cold and be victorious.  

We must learn to grab hold of time, to slow it down by appreciating life, in spite of how cruel as she can be sometimes.  We have a lot to be thankful for, we just need to search our hearts.  We must learn to embrace the good and the bad.  For when the bad can not get any worse, the good is lingering on the horizon, like a rainbow waiting to burst its colours all over our being.

So dry your eyes.  Let go of your fears.  Let all of the negativity leave your body, pour her back into the ground and let the earth´s crust swallow her whole.  Breathe in hope and love.  Shine like a beacon.  You have the power over your own destiny.  You will be victorious!  Hope.  We must have hope.  She is personified in the people that love us.  There are people that love you.  Remember, always, that there are people that love you.  

Margarita

Having worked at the soup kitchen for various weeks now, I have come to have a great amount of affection for one of the ladies there.  She has the same name as my grandmother (I am a great believer in coincidences).  She is 79 years old and has been working at the kitchen for several years making the lunches.

We have a great time talking together while we prepare the food.  I do as I am told as I have learned two things here in Chile.  One is to never talk politics, and two is to never try and take over a woman´s kitchen.  So I do as I am told while she spills the milk and hot water goes everywhere, and I slip in seasoning to the stock to make it more tasty while she isn´t looking.

She is a typical Chilean woman of her generation.  Bleach is king and she keeps everything tidy as she goes along, I on the other hand am used to working amongst pots pans and barely any space on the sideboard.  Margarita has taught me many things, but three of them stick out as a must have piece of advice for clean living.  You must always keep your bedroom tidy, as you sleep there and must breathe in fresh air.  You must always keep the kitchen tidy as you prepare food there that will go into your stomach.  You must always keep your bathroom clean, and always have soap, and you must rinse the soap afterwards to keep it clean in the soap dish.  Ah I feel like I am a youth again, learning things that I somehow should have learned before.

Margarita has told me the story of her life, and it makes me nostalgic.  It takes me back to sitting in my grandmother Margaret´s house as she repeated stories of her sad, but sometimes fun childhood.  Margarita is like many of the older people that come to the soup kitchen for lunch.  They often have no family and rent rooms as that is all they can afford.  They have had a tough life, especially having lived under the shadow of dictatorship during the 70s and 80s.  Margarita came from a more wealthy background, but due to cancer, she had to sell her house for treatment and was left with nothing.  Although she told me she prayed to God for her health, and she overcame the cancer and is now a spritely, joyous lady about to turn 80, in spite of having nothing material wise and no family left in Chile.

Stories like hers hurt my heart.  She is one of many with the same story here.  I have to admit the first time I came back from the kitchen I wept into Mauricio´s shoulder at the thought of these old people being left alone.  Life really seems so unfair at times and it really broke my heart.  It also made me very grateful for everything I have.  A roof over my head, a partner that loves me and looks after me, a family that loves me that I left behind in England.  It also reinforces and strengthens my feeling every day that money just does not have the value that people have seem to put on it.  It is just not on my list of priorities at all.  O.K. I am blessed that I have a place to live and food to eat, but I don´t have luxuries, and I have never wanted or needed them.  

These old people, although they have little, come to the kitchen happy and leave happy.  I take time to hug each one of them, to ask how they are, to give them a bit of affection.  To put all my love in trying to make them a tasty meal.  With every week that I go there, it eases my sorrow about their situation, by knowing that I am trying to give the best of me to them.  As for Margarita I am learning new things with her every day.  Destiny has guided me into her path.  She is just like the grandmother I love and miss in England and I embrace every moment with her.