finally...summer!

A life without love is like a year without summer. ~Swedish Proverb

Here in Switzerland we have had weeks and weeks of endless grey skies and rain. It has been a dull June and we have been eagerly anticipating the blue skies and long, luscious days of summer. This weekend our wait was over. Summer arrived resplendent and glorious...it did not disappoint.

When we woke up and saw the sun, we fairly ran for the lake. It was glorious to feel the warmth of the sun on our skin and, as I looked out across the water, I got a little bit teary. I am always dazzled by the beauty of where I live but perhaps due to the dreary weather we have been experiencing lately, I was especially moved by the magnificence around me. It was sublime.


We stayed for hours. We read books and chatted but mostly, we just watched our children play. Ah...the long, lazy days of summer. Each one stretching out before us, endless with possibility. I am filled with gratitude!

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. ~Celia Thaxter

The Grandma I Never Really Knew

I never really knew my Grandma Gibson, my Mum's Mum. She died before I was old enough to collect many memories. Mostly, I remember the day she died. It was the first time I had ever seen my Mum cry. I remember how she gathered us in her arms and I remember being scared. I remember the big, checkered, green armchair that we sat in as she held us.

How horrible it must have been for my Mum. She was so far away from Scotland when she got the news. She must have felt so alone.

I have seen lots of pictures of her...Jessie. Jessie Gibson. She looked liked someone I would like a lot. She had a genuine smile and looked like a grandma who would give lots of cuddles. I remember in one photograph, she was wearing the coolest cats eye glasses. We were playing in the paddling pool in her back garden. In that photo, I am younger than Isla is now. How much she has missed. How much I want to talk to her and tell her about my life and ask about hers. I want to know about my Mum from her Mum. I want to hear stories. So much is lost.

She had cancer. When I was little they told me that she died in her sleep, just never woke up. It sounded so peaceful that I never gave it a second thought. Now though, now when I think about her death, I think about how she must have suffered. How she must have worried about her daughters, one in England and one in Canada. Both far away. She must have longed for them to be near. How hard it must have been for my Mum to grieve so far from home. To get up and put on a brave face. We didn't know. We were too young. She didn't fly to Scotland for the funeral. She didn't get to say goodbye that way.

So much about my Grandma Gibson seems cut short. My information about her doesn't do her life justice. I must find out more about her so when Isla comes to me and asks about her Great Grandma Gibson I can sit her on my lap and tell her some stories. Stories about a good woman who died too young but left a legacy of love behind.

My little snail...my aching heart

Max has taken to "reading" before he falls asleep. He piles oodles of books in his bed before we tuck him in. I usually find them hanging precariously on the edge of the bed when I go in to turn off the little light. Tonight, I went in and he was sound asleep in the middle of the bed, curled up like a little snail shell. It made my heart skip a beat as he used to sleep that way when he was a newborn. I have pictures of him at the bottom of my hospital bed, curled up just so...

How sneaky time is...giving me day after luscious day with my family and then smacking me across the face with how quickly it has past. I don't feel my life rushing by. I savour the moments, I appreciate what I have. And still time comes, giving with one hand and stealing with the other.

I scarcely notice it but every now and then I will catch a glimpse of the past that I have forgotten and my breath will catch and my mind will reel...

I am so grateful. I am full of joy and full of praise for what I have been given. Is it possible that a heart can break from being too full?

I Just Called...

Max has a toy telephone. There are two receivers and they are like walkie talkies. You simply push a button for the other phone to ring and when the person with the other receiver picks up, you can talk to them! Simple but HOURS of fun have been had since I picked them up at flea market last weekend.

Tonight, after the kids were tucked in, Josh and I were relaxing. He, on the computer and I, reading my ESL homework for a course I'm taking. In the background we heard a phone ring. I smiled. I knew who was calling me. I picked up Max's phone receiver.

"Hello?"

"Hi Mummy, it's me"

"How can I help?"

"I forgot to tell you something Mummy. I forgot to tell you how much I love you. I love you." "I love you too... goodnight sweet boy."

"Okay, bye!"

Do I really deserve this gorgeous creature in my life?

Lx

5

What a beautiful thing that happened, 5 years ago.

You changed me so completely.

I love you.

Across the Universe

As I take a moment to gaze in wonder at the night sky,

I think about the universe and

Feeling so small

I delight in the simplest of exercises, long practiced in the school rooms of my youth.

My pen veritably dancing and seductively drawing me in.

Letters are formed out of habit, flowing like waves out of my fingers,

Filling up the paper, transforming it from cellulose pulp into

A defining sense of self.

Lesley Armstrong

Easter sweet things

We got up very early in the morning because, as I have explained in previous posts, my kids never, ever sleep in. Max padded into our bedroom and whispered in my ear, "Is it morning? Can we get up? I saw a trail Mummy, he's been!" And so, it began. Easter morning.

Max took his basket with purpose and began to pick up each sweetie as if it was a race to get to the end. Isla looked at each and every choccie as though it were a present in itself and exclaimed, in a very surprised voice as she dropped them in her basket and looked down, "Mummy, NOTHER one!!!!!" Over and over and over.

I am very reflective at this time of year and I couldn't help but look at my two gorgeous ones and consider the way they approached their Easter trails and relate it to life in general. Do I race for the big presents? Do I, like Max, take the sweeties for granted? Just pile them up and look at them as the means to an end? Or, like Isla, is each sweetie admired and adored? Am I grateful and filled with wonder as the sweet things just keep on coming?

How much I can learn from these two lovelies!