I have seen my mother safely to the airport and am now on the brink of two whole days all to myself in her lovely, empty home by the sea. I should say ocean, which is a short bicycle ride away, but if I call it the sea, it is easier to imagine I am in England. And I have the bay right outside the window and shall soon be hearing the lap of the gentle waves as I fall asleep. I have a little store of good food-some healthy and some just yummy. I have a basket of papers, scissors, paste, vintage ephemera, and lots of ideas that I hope to bring into being over the next few days……as well as lots of planning and organizing to do for the holiday show season that is swiftly approaching. I feel so grateful to have this little window of quiet and space. And I hope that I can resist the cable television!
By the sea
It began yesterday at tea-time….
when the boys turned down an offered video and suggested we have a “reading” tea-time. We often give into this at lunch-times and supper-times when my husband is at work. And I often say “but shouldn’t we be talking about things to each other-great and small?” But they know I am not serious and we grab our books and get lost-each in our own bookish worlds.
The sun was shining and a cool-ish breeze was tossing the cherry tree branches outside the window as we enjoyed dried-cranberry scones and English Breakfast tea with milk and sugar. I surfaced for a moment to savor the beautiful scene I had just read in The Half-Crown House by Helen Ashton. It was full of all the best delicious, cosy ingredients-an old English house, a little boy heir tucked up in bed with a hot-water bottle, a comfortable Nanny in the next room, a rumpled young owl coming down the chimney and being let into the star-dappled night, a porcelain castle candle night-light, a kettle on the hob and mugs and warm drinks. Oh my! And there were my sons, deep in their own books.
I took this picture after we had forsaken our perfect half-hour….eldest son to the sofa to finish his book, youngest to his room to tidy it and me to my studio to fill some orders.
When I finished in the studio, I filled the kindling basket with the twigs I had gathered outside the day before. And my sons filled the woodbox. We knew that rain and cold were on their way. Hooray! But that is the last bit of industriousness I have managed since the spell began to weave around us at the tea-table.
We were blessed to awaken today to the sound of heavy rain…and I allowed the boys to sleep in just a little bit. We love to lay in bed on rainy mornings-just listening and feeling grateful that we don’t have to go outside. Poor Douglas did have to go to work this morning. But the rest of us had a leisurely breakfast while the rain came down constantly, heavily, windily. A true blustery day.
We will have light day of studies….math and some history videos and then whatever delights my sons. What will delight me, will be to sit at my desk in the studio, looking at this view all day long. I will take care of filing and paperwork and the ordering of all the supplies I need to prepare for Holiday shows and try to organize my ideas for new paper creations…and stare at the rain-alot. I will hope that the rain will keep pouring and that I can keep giving in to its calm, slow mood. Even as I have been trying to publish this, the rain stopped and I began to fret that my plans for lovely inertia would be thwarted…..but no, it is raining again and I can be happily sluggish.
