Anchor.

We never stop seeking our parents approval. Their vote of confidence for our choices and our lives, remains consciously or unconsciously very important to us. So you can imagine how pink with joy I was when this year, on my 38th birthday like every year, that one travel worn birthday card, yet again, made the long journey across continents to my mail box. 'I'm so amazed and proud of you' it said 'that I want to shout out, "That's my daughter!"

And no, I am no nobel laureate. My accomplishments are nothing out of the ordinary -which is another way of saying I have none to boast of. I went through a decent education, work at a decent job, raise 2 kids and some fish.....I live an average life and grow some flowers in my garden. My biggest accomplishment is to keep physical and mental stability -when I do accomplish those, that is. And yet she wants to shout out with pride "That's my daughter!"

I was one of those delightfully charming rebellious adolescents. I raged a constant battle for justice, equality and freedom that I believed was enjoyed by my 3 older brothers in different measure and means than I was allowed. Swaraj was my birthright, and I wanted to have it too! (My own daughter is now 8 going on 16, payback time is around the corner I fear!). My mother's soft nature belies her steely strength. A clever camouflage that several sorry people made the terrible mistake of misjudging. My Dad, bless his heart, to this day is clumsily misjudging, perpetuating his learning process. It was a credit to her temperament how she deflected most sparks I flung her way, leaving the fighting up to me. I took it on. Someone had to do it! Although quite the opposite in character herself, shying away from confrontations, she patiently bore my renegade spirit without stifling it and sat out my rather tiresome effusions. If today I'm given to unabashed toughness, woman or not, it's because this gentle lady let me.

Of weaknesses, the greatest of hers are us, her family. Each time any harm comes our way, her otherwise calm composure receives a proper buffeting leading to a loss of control. Since I am a living germ-meter, I catch every bug there is to catch. Her worried brows have spent many a long hours, all summed up perhaps even years, watching over me. 
A child's perspective is so wonderfully absolute. The world as they know it, is the world as it is. There are no other versions. I believed that's what mother's do. Their lives consist only of a string of opportunities to support and protect their children. What else do they have to do? She is here for me. For a child to know that with unappreciative detachment, is to know with complete and total certainty that it has unconditional, selfless, secure love. A standing invitation to take it for granted, to be reckless. Because it will never wear out.

She is funny too, with her fears. I remember the time, one of the many times, I lay in a hospital bed spent from some sub-tropical disease or the other I had merrily contracted. Exhausted, I had finally found sleep after restless hours. All the time, with her by my side. Watching me closely. No sooner had I floated into peaceful slumber than I was shaken awake vigorously with someone repeatedly yelling  my name. 'Sorry, were you sleeping?' she asked into my aghast face. What she didn't say, but had splashed all over her face was 'I thought you were dead!'
The other time, at the spectacular end of a very challenging twin pregnancy, I made for a worrisome sight as my body kind of went on strike at the most crucial juncture, trembling violently with a rising fever. She was there too. She's just always there. The rock that we are all anchored to. The doctors decided on an emergency C-section. Everyone around must have spoken german and looked quite grim when the decision was pronounced. The next instant, my husband tells me, she was gone, had found her way to the hospital chapel and was deliriously explaining to a bunch of blank faced Turks, that spoke neither English nor German, that her only daughter was probably going to die giving birth to twins and there was nothing else she could do but to storm heavens! 

There were times I observed with some amount of annoyance how thin she spread herself for us, wondering where the self-respect was. Provocatively I dug and poked, testing for the limits of this dedication. There were none. She always knew, with vivid clarity, which side of the fence she was on. She knows what she cares about and she could weather every storm for it. Fiercely independent, intelligent and hardworking, she taught me a women can raise (4) kids, run a home, hold a job and be her very own person. With her many faults, she still mastered motherhood flawlessly, by her own convention, giving effortlessly, naturally, unendingly. 

In a place rife with mindless female infanticide, when asked why she had 4 kids, she has always answered (I love this part!), 'I was waiting for a daughter'. 
For this and many more reasons, I'm so amazed and proud of you, that I want to shout out, "That's my Mother!!!"

Walking with dinosaurs.

Oh sleep........thou art everything to me! Whatever happens in between, only assists in the passing of time from one sleep unit to the next. Some mornings I feel a great magnetism pulling me back to my cozy duvet and plush pillow, and there is only so much I can do in my humble strength to resist it. And when I do, it's with the single ambition of being reunited with both, that I go through my waking hours. My sacred sleep. It's one of the first things I taught my twin babies to do - to fall asleep and stay asleep until daylight was well underway. They cooperated - well, mostly.

They aren't babies anymore, and you know kids and putting to bed routines! It always includes any number of stalling tactics, sometimes old and unimaginatively lame, often creative clever ones that warrant bonus stay-awake minutes - no, you can't do away with those, it's what good parenting calls for. Though be on your guard parents, pay close attention. These negotiations are prescient warnings of things to come. The little sneaky tykes are way ahead of us in the game of dodging bedtime! I'm not yet ruling out the possibility of a secret bedtime-terrorist outfit of little brats thinking up new sabotaging strategies for their bratty followers to implement. Ha! But I am on top of this. There will be no dinosaurian approach here, careful balance will be struck between setting fair limits and authoritarianism. Nothing happens by chance - I've read 'How to raise resilient children' cover to cover. Also, I happen to have a knowledge bank that cunningly files away every trick up every sleeve I have ever seen - I don't fall for the same things twice! Seriously, how many can they have? So let it be known, I am the adult here!

'Wait Mummy! STOP! Don't put down the blinds!!' he shouted, his eyes sparkling with excitement. Bored me goes, 'Why not?'
'Didn't you see it?', eyes still sparking. Still bored me 'See what?'
'A shooting star! I saw a shooting star!! quickly pull the blinds back up again, Hurry!" he urged. My daughter runs into the room 'Did he see a shooting star? I want to see the shooting star too! How come I never see shooting stars?'
'I'm sure you were mistaken, it couldn't have been a shooting star' I said patiently, but ever increasingly more bored. 'Off with you Aurelia, back to your room and into bed. And you Ewan, into bed!'
'Why not?' he persists, 'Don't shooting stars exist? You said shooting stars exist!' his sparkle turning to disappointment.
'Yes, of course shooting stars exist. You couldn't have seen one though.' I said as kindly as I could.
'If they exist, why couldn't I have seen one? ' sparkle turning to disappointment and hurt. Remind me to chuck that lousy book!
'Because honey,.......   Oh well, it would be gone by now anyway. Shooting stars shoot away you know. Why don't we just roll the blinds back down and crawl into bed ' I said in a weird friendly stern tone.
'Well, I saw the shooting star and you didn't' he said resiliently (perhaps the book isn't all crap). Aurelia's back again, 'I'm sure you just imagined it' she says huffily.

'Good for you Ewan, I'm happy for you if you saw a shooting star. Now lets get to bed, both of you' I said, reassured about my parenting skills.
'I made a wish you know, I made a wish upon a shooting star. It's going to come true' he said smiling, and I smiled a fake smile back. 'Don't you want to know what I wished for?' he asked.
I've got this one! I reply 'They say if you tell me, it won't come true. Lets say our prayers......Good night honey.'

Lights out, in bed, at last! Clear up dinner, check! Tidy up kitchen, check! Should be catching up on work...ah, what the hell, no check. The laundry is pouring out and ready to crawl......nah, tomorrow's as good a day as any. Will just call it a day and crash.

I hear a soft whine. I'm sleep drugged and trying to place it. I look at the clock. It's 12:33 a.m.  I hear it again, I'm trying to move. It's that magnetic force again keeping me in bed. The whine gets more distinct, now he's calling for me. Heroically, I break through the force, bringing up my protesting body, moving my legs of lead. I trudge over to his room, he's sitting up in bed and crying. Wide awake. 'What's wrong honey? Did you have a bad dream? Why don't you try going back to sleep?'
Between sniffs and snorts, what I can decipher is, 'I'm gonna eat you all, carnivores eat....gonna eat you all, my whole family and......and everyone else'
I'm blank. 'What? What're you......why...come, come, go back to sleep honey, no one's eating anyone.'
Quite frantic now he says 'No you don't understand, I wished upon the shooting star to turn into a Giganotosaurus when I wake up tomorrow. They're carnivores, MEAT EATING dinosaurs. I don't want to be a Giganotosaurus!'
I'm waking up. He goes on 'Now I can't go to sleep! If I do, I'll wake up as a Giganotosaurus tomorrow.'
Oh, for the love of God!!!!
'Don't worry honey, that won't happen. It'll be fine. You won't..um...er.. turn into a Trex. I don't think you saw a shooting star.....' I'm trying here.
As if it would matter, he says even more agitatedly, 'Not a Trex mummy, a Giganotosaurus.' Then he draws a long breath, and bellows, 'AND I DID SEE A SHOOTING STAR!!!'
'Ok, Ok, you saw a shooting star alright! You saw a ***$%&!!#@ shooting star!'
Seriously, I'm going to burn that book!
I tried again, 'But...um..... wishes on shooting stars don't always come true.'
'They don't? I thought wishes on shooting stars come true? You said so.'
Focus on the greater cause here my child!
'Well, think about it' I said, 'you couldn't hurt us even if you were a.. um.. a.. T.. Giganotosaurus. Dinosaurs didn't live alongside humans.'
I'm awake now, good and proper and I can see him thinking 'Then when I wake up tomorrow I'll be alone, a lone Giganotosaurus. I won't have you or daddy or Aurelia, I'll be alone in the Cretaceous period making a meal of everything that's slower than I am.' Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
'The Cret...what??'
Well MAYBE you should have thought about that before ??!!
Aurelia is awake now and wants to know why Ewan is yelling about a shooting star he didn't see in the first place.

I'm outdone, I give up!

Creatures of habit.

The winter that never came will soon pass. The winter road services, hundreds of tonnes of gravel and salt put away without ever being put out. The one year we changed to winter tyres on time, cost us more fuel and no additional safety. Central Europe is having the anti-thesis of the American winter. There are even theories flying around about one causing the other. I personally, am suspicious of the weather God's ulterior motives for sparing me its winter wrath.

We in Munich, have had virtually no snow, apart from some soggy, half-hearted flakes that briefly lingered on the ground in little white piles of mush. The temperatures have been mild at best. I can't even remember when it was unpleasantly wet and windy last. Nature in it's great wisdom seizes the opportunity wherever it can and adapts quickly - trees and bushes are already swelling at their tips with new life. Chirping birds tell of a change in plan, the effort to migrate to the warmer south just didn't seem justified this year. The Great Tit and the Nuthatch are already going about the business of finding a mate and starting a family, or perhaps two, with all the additional time on their wings! Toads are migrating earlier, rabbits and hare are already on the scurry hop, squirrels aren't worrying about their winter stocks not lasting. It's still February, but who's to point that out to nature.

On the tube this morning I noticed most everyone, myself included, is still wrapped and mummied in heavy winter coats, steaming beneath them, complete with wooly hat and scarves, some even wore gloves - at almost 14°C! It is winter and that's a fact. There won't be any cheerful spring colours sported yet, NO NO, the dark grey and blacks and heavy blues will have to sit it out through the official end of the season and no earlier! Why??? There is an odd stubbornness about the way the humans go about it, with an unyielding inflexibility. Unwilling to accept that things are different now, things that we have been instrumental in changing - changes that we can't have. The fur lined boots trapped in sweaty feet in heated rooms. Drippy sad snowmen get built by eager desperate little hands. It IS winter!

Spring is a reward that's earned well after a bitter cold winter. There is even a sense of guilty privilege, not having gained the right to the warmth of Spring. Perhaps humans are simply domesticated creatures of habit and routine - needing to do the same set of things over and over again, for security and reassurance and safety. In the German national service, winter was commanded from November to March. During this period the soldiers had to pack themselves in furs and winter layers - T-shirts were forbidden, whatever the temperature. From the 1st of April, summer was commanded, all winter paraphernalia had to go - only T-shirts were permitted, even if it snowed. China has a neat border demarcating the north - with what qualifies as a winter hence deserving central heating, and the south - with what doesn't qualify as winter, hence by policy, having summer all year round. It's pure fate for the poor freezing unfortunate that live on the wrong side of the border in the same weather conditions without central heating.
Even when we do have the choice, we rigidly stick by the routine we know. Determined to maintain a sense of control. Making things exactly the way we want it to be. So It's woolies and warm clothes and hot cups of tea and long sofa snuggles wrapped in cozy warm blankets.

 An officious looking rabbit hurry-hopped across my path. He jerked a look at me - not of fear, more incredulous, curious sympathy at me carrying my own weight and that of a dark black bulging down coat on my back. He seemed to be daring me to embrace the change, showing me how it's done.