Your daughter is one
Posted: May 4, 2013 Filed under: LOVE | Tags: Births, deaths and attempted marriages, English female Victorian writers, female writers with male pen names, friendship, friendship is one of the great joys of life, George Eliot, girl gangs, girlfriends, long friendships, Marian Evans, May the fourth be with you, Robin Johnson, Sleaze Sisters, Times Square Movie soundtrack, Trini Alvarado, Your Daughter Is One 2 CommentsToday my kidlets and I are heading to the dark side, visiting my oldest friends in the place I grew up. My visa came through and I’m leaving the single mother ghetto to return to my old hood, the leafy tree-lined streets of my youth. I am reminded of this George Eliot quote:
“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
Today I will eat and drink and talk too much and argue with the gals who share my outspoken, feisty view of life. I breathed every minute of my angst ridden teenage years with them. 30 years later I realise I had no idea how much their laughter would sustain me through births, deaths and attempted marriages. Love is basking in the shared joy of old friends on a warm, sunny afternoon.
Share this:
Champion Mothering
Posted: May 1, 2013 Filed under: Clown Doctors, LOVE, Parenting | Tags: champion mothers, childhood illnesses, children's hospitals, honorable professions, mother goddesses, nursing, resilient motherhood, selfless mothering, Sinead O'Connor - 3 babies, the love and toil of motherhood, unconditional love 6 CommentsI’ve just been overseas on holiday. I had a break from the hospitals I work at which really helped me understand how lucky I am. I have a great job, my health, three well kids and tons of friends. The mothers I encounter in the hospitals where I work aren’t so lucky. These women are true champions. If there were a parenting Olympics they would win every medal and no one would question whether they were on performance enhancing drugs. Their events are the unglamorous side of mothering. Aiding your child in hospital is not something they do to gain kudos or attention or to show their children off in public.
These women daily win gold medals for most hours of sleep deprivation, after months spent on fold out chairs beside their children’s beds.
Their silver medals are for enduring what most parents avoid. Watching your child in excruciating pain and not being able to do anything about it except buzz the nurses and doctors for more pain meds is an event I don’t want to be a part of.
They gain bronze for leaving the hospital at all hours, early morning to late at night to find something else for their child to eat or to go shopping for toys that will distract their children from pain when they could be resting.
Some of them even manage to have a shower and brush their hair or put on a bit of lippy. I can’t manage that some days.
They could whinge all day long (I would) but they don’t. They are funny and resilient and strong and they sing and laugh with us when they could be crying in a corner. I feel humble in their presence. They are goddesses walking the earth. I will start a new religion to worship these ladies, and the nurses who serve them day and night.
Share this:
Happy birthday
Posted: April 24, 2013 Filed under: LOVE, Parenting | Tags: April 24 birthdays, Bob Marley - Three Little Birds Live, Don't Worry Be Happy, Happy birthdays Leave a comment11 years ago today I was hanging out the washing at 7.45 in the morning, by eight I was in hospital. By 9.30 a specialist turned up the volume on my drip, and an hour later she broke my waters.
“In pain, give me drugs now,” I howled as they ramped up the oxytocin. This labour was a harsh, hot, fast hell.
In a few hours my second beautiful princess was born, a little blue. After a four-hour whoa-to-go rushed induced labour, my five year old had the little sister she’d ordered. She rushed into the room as I sat in a pool of blood on the bed. When the midwife handed my baby back to me after clearing her airways, her big sister held her like she was a doll and looked at me with cocker spaniel eyes. Of course the nurse took photos. I had blood on my hands, a bird’s nest hairdo and wore an old bra. I look like a dopey possum in our happy family shots. Happy birthday beautiful girl.
Share this:
Don’t Dream It, Be It
Posted: April 19, 2013 Filed under: ART, Birthdays, LOVE, SONGS, Theme Songs | Tags: April 19 birthdays, don't dream it, English actors, great English films, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tim Curry, Tim Curry Birthday Leave a commentWhen I was 15 I used to sneak out late at night with my girlfriends to watch the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We dressed up in tutus and high heels, we sang, we sweated, we laughed and we danced. And my mother never did find out. Until now. Years later I was working in London and the phone rang and I instantly recognised the voice on the other end of the phone. It was Tim Curry. I couldn’t speak so I passed the phone to a colleague who laughed when she realised who I should have been talking to. Thank you Mr Curry for the joy you brought to my teenage years. Rose tint my world, keep me safe from the trouble and pain.
Share this:
Cursi
Posted: April 6, 2013 Filed under: LOVE Leave a commentI love this post, especially the last paragraph.
I went to a party the other night, and we were all having a merry old time. One of the guests started playing the guitar, and someone asked if he knew any songs by Ricardo Arjona. No, not Arjona, I pleaded. ¡Es muy cursi! Judging by the immediate chorus of indignant gasps and protestations, I had touched a nerve. More than merely defensive of the singer, they took issue with my epithet of choice. ¿Y qué tiene de malo eso, ser cursi? I didn’t stop there. Es más, I said. I’ve found that Hispanics on the whole tend to be much more cursi than Americans. Well, that was it. Se armó la de Troya. The women were then up in arms. Oh, what does she know about love? She’s just a cold, heartless gringa. How could she ever understand the way we Latinos feel and express ourselves? No…
View original post 1,110 more words
Share this:
Naughty Forty
Posted: March 15, 2013 Filed under: LOVE, Self improvement | Tags: 40 years old, dancing with friends, friendship, grey hairs, growing up, naughty at 40, reading with friends, The Ides of March, wisdom, you gotta have friends 8 CommentsI love being in my 40s, there’s a wisdom and a new found I don’t give a fuck what you think of me attitude to how I live my life, which wasn’t there in my 20s (and certainly not in my teens). I’m still young and fit enough to enjoy life even though wrinkles have started their long march across my face. But forty is also when you realise you’re not immortal and the friends you’ve had for 20 or even 30 years don’t last forever. That parents get sick and die, and being a grown up is really responsible. I’ve realised I’m now the same age that my parents were when I first made beautiful friendships that I thought would last forever. Some of those precious friends have vanished. And I thought I’d find other friends who shared their humour and energy and spirit, but those people are rare. And my darlings have gone forever. Sometimes I hear a piece of music and I think of lovelies I shared my life with. I think of my friend whose name is now on the AIDS quilt, he died so young. And I think of the times we spent lying in his bed reading to each other, sharing authors we thought were fantastic. And listening to music that we loved. And sending postcards to each other from far away places because the internet wasn’t invented. And I realise that when you’re 40 you really do understand that life can be a bloody bitch and that is why we must laugh and dance and joke and sing and be as mad as cut snakes and tell each other again and again that we love each other before it is too late. Because love can’t wait.
Share this:
We got married in a fever
Posted: February 14, 2013 Filed under: LOVE, MARRIAGE, SONGS | Tags: 14 February successful marriages, Carol Brady, Florence Henderson birthday, Jackson, Lee Hazlewood, Nancy Sinatra, On this day, Valentine's Day 3 CommentsBeing the true romantic single lady that I am, it came to my attention that February 14 was a really bad day for a lot of mature people who are only five cats away from a sad and lonely life. The last time I gave a Valentine’s card was back in the late 70s when I ran to the house of a beautiful blonde boy I had a crush on to deliver my card featuring my carefully disguised handwriting. After I dropped my love note in his letterbox I set a personal best time running home from his house so he wouldn’t know it was me who’d sent him a declaration of undying love (that lasted about 3 weeks).
Apparently condom manufacturers love Valentine’s Day but for those of us who would like to forget this commercial celebration of romance, please remember that some highly successful marriages commenced today, including Elton John and Renate Blauel, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid and Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.
Share this:
Great Expectations
Posted: February 7, 2013 Filed under: LOVE, Self improvement, WRITERS | Tags: brilliant fictional characters, Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens' 201st birthday, Estella, Favourite authors, Great English writers, Great Expectations, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Pip, Victorian England 3 CommentsWhen I was a tortured angst-ridden teenager (a few weeks ago) I had a crush on a boy and it didn’t work out. Then I read Great Expectations and I wanted to be Miss Havisham, dressed in cobwebs and gothic wedding finery. 30 years later here I am, a single mother style icon, dressed in tattered clothes, lying alone in my bed reading Charles Dickens.
“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day,” said Miss Havisham.
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
Thank you Mr Dickens, we are never alone when we are in the middle of a great book.
Share this:
Hooray for Dollywood
Posted: January 19, 2013 Filed under: Birthdays, LOVE, SONGS, WRITERS | Tags: country music, Dolly Parton, Dollywood, female songwriters, jolene, Pigeon Forge Tennessee, US female country singers Leave a commentToday is Dolly Parton’s birthday. I have loved her since I could sing. I love her wardrobe, her lyrics, her accent, her hair and her au naturale feminine charm. One day I will go to her theme park Dollywood in Tennessee. Right after I visit Elvis in Memphis.
Share this:
Nothing compares
Posted: December 29, 2012 Filed under: FEMINISM, LOVE, Thought For the Day | Tags: be kind to each other, compassion, End violence against women, Jyoti, kindness, mindless violence, RIP Jyoti, Sinead O'Connor, women can change the world 1 CommentI’m so sad about Jyoti, the poor woman who was attacked by six men in India, what a terrible way to die. Jyoti was a medical student, I wonder at the good she would have done in her country had she lived. I hope her death makes us change the world and bring an end to assaults against women. Like the shooting of innocent babies in Connecticut USA, may her violent shocking death make us wake up to change. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan tweeted, “Her body has passed away, but her soul shall forever stir our hearts.”
loupollard 