Ever After

It’s the first day. Whatever wasn’t achieved or accomplished last year won’t be. Not now. Scary isn’t it?

It’s been great to have the family home over the holiday. Christmas for me is about key moments: my son-in-law making parsnip soup with veggies gleaned from the field beside us now scattered with the yellow trumpets which were abandoned by the farmer hurrying to keep ahead of the encroaching snow; my daughter suggesting that we pause to recount memories of granny who died this time last year; me standing in the dining room with my arms raised in worship as James Taylor sang his hauntingly beautiful version of In the Bleak Midwinter:

Heaven cannot hold him

Nor can earth sustain

Heaven and earth shall fall away

When he comes to reign

The best Christmas moment was when my youngest daughter’s boyfriend arrived on Christmas Eve with a big present for her – a pair of Hunter wellington boots. In them she strode with him up virgin white Scrabo Hill where they had their first date five and a half years ago. At the exact spot where they sat then he drew her attention to a hamper containing a champagne picnic hidden behind a rock. When she turned back in surprise he was on his knees in the snow with the perfect ring. Romantic! She is our precious ray of sunshine. We’re delighted and wish them a lifetime of love and laughter.

Getting engaged is an act of hope and optimism – like gardening. After a frozen Christmas the thaw has turned everything to mud, but at least you can dig. My husband planted a beautiful Acer Tree this week and lots of bulbs. It’s a statement that there’s life after winter.

One of my favourite presents was a copy of Seamus Heaney’s latest collection Human Chain. Through his poems he explores the natural links between husband and wife, life and death, the past and the present, then and now. We are all part of this great chain as we spill over into another year.

Sometimes when I’m really busy I disappear into a soporific state when I do what has to be done without much feeling or enjoyment. I hate that. Life is for living and loving and noticing the people and the wonder around you. I’ve just been for a jog and watched swans in flight and the Brent geese standing guard by the roadside. If we don’t pay attention we miss things. My New Year’s resolution? To keep awake.

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then
Lasped ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.

(Seamus Heaney)