The mini-tour before the main trek

So we have at last decided to make our news public, and I can now write about the one thing that truly matters - that I am pregnant.  Nothing in my life has ever been anywhere near as important as this.  There is a small and dependent human growing inside me, and soon I will give birth to this human and then be (with Davey) 100% responsible for their continuing life.

There are arguably more important jobs in the world.  By dedicating myself to raising one human, I am giving up time which could be spent helping many.  By giving in to our genetic urge to create our own offspring, we have chosen to add an unnecessary extra human to the world instead of taking in a needy one who already exists.  But having taken this path, I cannot help but take it profoundly seriously.

Perhaps technically it is selfish to make a new human for ourselves; but by being an intimate witness to the miracle of life itself, I feel deeply connected with the specific life which I have already helped to nurture for 7 1/2 months.  Perhaps technically it is indulgent to spend our time giving an overly-nurtured life to a single human, rather than helping the masses; but I can't help but feel that doing so is still one of the most necessary jobs.  I argue this: imagine a world in which every individual human were raised with maximum love, support and care - wouldn't that be a wonderful world?

I have always believed in doing our best for the world in which we are priviledged to live - to help others, to nurture the planet, to act with both knowledge and goodness.  But just as passionately I have always believed that we must do so within our individual capacities and strengths.  I am, for example, very passionate in my political beliefs; but I am not the person to fire-up a mass of people towards my viewpoint, or even engage in any level of genuine debate - these are simply not the ways in which I can personally help the cause.  I can, however, be a good example in my personal actions, a willing foot-soldier in any worthwhile crusade, and a sweetly-smiling advocate for the beliefs I hold.  I can support my husband in his career in which he does change minds.  And I can raise a child (or a few) with my own style of leading-by-example and gentle advocacy for leading a positive life.

So here I am, about to undertake the job for which I have pined for much of my life.  Ranty feminist values notwithstanding, I have always hoped to be a mother someday; I'm just one of those people who has always wanted children of my own.  Yet I have also felt that whether or not I were ever to be in a position to have them was beyond my control.  So one of the many overwhelming emotions which I have been experiencing is awe at my luck - luck that I have been granted the opportunity to be a mother, and luck that I have been granted this opportunity in the circumstances of my choosing.  This awe manifests in extremes between almost unbearable joy that my dearest wish is coming true; and bouts of terror that I will not be as good at this job as I hope.

But mostly I find that pregnancy has brought with it a sense of optimism and self-assurance.  I feel that I know myself better than ever; that I am the pragmatic part-hippy, ready to be both technically effective and warmly nurturing as a parent, ready to learn yet ready to be fearless in the face of opposition to my parenting ideals, ready to balance scientific knowledge and continual reading with intuition and flexibility.

Most importantly I realise that all of the emotions and revelations which I have experienced over the past months have been before I have even given birth.  I am bracing myself for a lifetime of learning on a new plane of existence.  Pregnancy has been a journey in itself; soon we are to take on the grand, unpredictable and ever-changing adventure of parenting.  To answer the constant question "are you excited?", I present this post.  Excited is far too small a word.

Growing Pains

This blog is founded on an idea of 'self-sufficiency'.  Generally, I have focussed on emotional self-sufficiency (and the illusions I have of this being something attainable), but I also meant it quite literally - as in, growing-ones-own-food.  For environmental, lifestyle, and something akin to 'spiritual' reasons, hubby and I have always planned that someday we will be semi self-sufficient.

I come here today to announce to you all - this will not be taking place.  As you will learn, the dream is over and reality is being accepted.  To follow is a full history of how this has occurred.

It all began, I suppose, with The Good Life.

Husband and I grew up with re-runs of the quaint 1970s fantasy, then returned to it together whilst in the initial throws of 'in-love'.  It subsequently became part of what I term 'the mythology' of our romance.  I believe a relationship has two dimensions - the reality, and the mythology.  The reality includes the day-to-day living and loving; the life we make together, the things we say and do that build up to form the nature of our lived love-affair over the years.  The mythology is like the founding myth of any religion - it is the great story of why, the crucial circumstances surrounding how it all came about.  Ours includes the sleepless nights of obsessive conversation, the alliterative text messages, the poem I wrote on our 'Autumnal Romance' (so much deeper and more perfect than the common-place Spring setting), the books and jokes we shared (with the one person who finally TRULY understood them)... and, The Good Life.

Yes, we like to believe we ARE the Goods.  After all, we, like them, are a damn-cute couple, who love and tease each other in the most gorgeous ways possible.  Most importantly, we, like them, are hyper-idealistic, ranty, political semi-hippies.  What could be more perfect than to embrace our love for one another - and our love for the planet - by living the ultimate down-to-earth lifestyle?  I, like Tom Good, have never been a great fan of the 'day job'.  And who could not agree that it is a ridiculous system to spend most of my waking hours working to pay for life's necessities, when all I really want to do is potter around at home - where I could be directly creating those life necessities for myself.

We were realistic.  Unlike the Goods, we do not yet own a house; and, unlike the Goods, we will have children to keep.  We are also both of us blessed-and-cursed with the incurable 'travel bug', and must be able to afford the occasional flight to somewhere entirely foreign.  Oh, and, yes, we also like to entertain, and have been in the habit of merrily whipping out the credit card in the name of good times with friends.  But aside from these minor details (the cracks are already showing, aren't they?) we were ready to forgo some luxuries and make a plan that worked for us.  Husband would continue in his career - which, unlike Tom Good, he is actually passionate about - and once we could afford it, I would justify and pay for my indefinite absence from paid employment by growing the majority of our food.

Dear reader, we are just about in that required affordability position.  There is really no reason we can't pay for a house, and future-children's needs (and perhaps even those flights and parties) on husband's salary.  Therefore, there is no further reason we can't take up the plan... well... NOW.

No reason except, of course, the fatal flaw in the plan - that I have absolutely no talent for growing things!

Despite all my fond fantasies of myself as a natural, nurturing earth-mother, instinctively in-tune with the web-of-life of which we are all a part, I am in reality a black-thumb.  Despite my shelves of beautiful books and magazines on all things gardening and all my attempts at research and a scientific understanding, I have not learnt anything of use.  I am simply not meant to grow things.

On my facebook page are arty photographs of my few successes.  But what are not included are the failures - and they hugely outnumber the wins.  I show the few green, sprouting seedlings, not the numerous sowings that never make it that far; I show the pretty new buds, not the dying flowers that never bear fruit; I show the vibrant new trees we have proudly selected, not the dry, sad twigs they become.

And now at last I have come to accept the truth for myself - were we to put our plan into action, we would starve to death.

Self-sufficiency of the type I imagined is not in my future.  While I will still attempt to keep a garden of some description, it will be purely decorative and never truly functional.  And I am having to take on board the inevitable side-effect - my life of continued wage-slavery.  Frighteningly, I am now able to write this piece and accept these truths because I am actually beginning to be okay with this.  Grubby notions of 'ambition', 'fulfillment at work' and 'career' are becoming less poisonous and indeed increasingly attractive to me.  I am even starting to enjoy it.

Am I entirely lost, or is this transformation simply realistic?  Perhaps the one thing I am adept at growing is my own mental development.

A confession, and a memory

So... where the hell had I been?!

It is hard to believe that I had not posted for so very long - more than a year!  Yet it is true.  So what happened?

For one thing, I notice that my last post had been just before I began my current job.  Hardly a coincidence; daily under-appreciation is not exactly inspirational.

But the main reason that anything I wrote felt false and inadequate, or simply too personal to share, is that I have committed what I consider to be one of the worst sins of all - I had out-sourced my self-esteem.

I could not be sassy or witty or clever, because I did not feel sassy or witty or clever.  I could not write about self-sufficiency, because emotionally, I was no longer self-sufficient.  I could not write about self-image, because I had lost my image of myself.  For an astonishingly long time, I no longer knew who I was.

But time has passed and somewhere along the way I found myself again.  After many tears, many hours of boring my friends, even more hours of pouring my heart out in my diary, and far too many words sent to the person in question, I have come out the other side.

And who am I?  I am who I always was, but with a loss, and a gain.  Lost to me is the notion of myself from a decade ago, the image of the "utterly irresistible" little sex-goddess that I had held close - even when it threatened my marriage, and even though really, it detracted from the grown-up woman I was now living the life of.  That little temptress no longer exists, and I have been forced to acknowledge it.  Lost to me too is the ability to look up to this person as a father-figure-lover (always intermingled, and always perfectly natural); to sit in awe of his wisdom, and to be petted and adored in return.  But gained is the chance to be a real woman - to at last truly take charge of myself and my sexuality - this time from within myself.

I once believed that he had taught me to believe in myself, but all I had learned was to believe in his opinion of me.  From now on, I will believe in myself for my own sake and for my own purpose.

And, I will write on my blog!  I will post the pieces that have lain in wait for too long.  Next time... my not-so-green thumb.  I advertise this now as a promise... to myself.


But before I go, indulge me please in a moment of nostalgia.  And nostalgia it is, now that I understand that I can never go back, and now that I accept that going back is not what nostalgia is for anyway.


Eleven years ago, life gave me a romance.  It felt like a dream, even at the time.  It took place in Scotland, amongst the rolling countryside surrounding Balmoral Castle, during a cool, misty summer.  For two perfect days around two perfect nights, I was given a fairytale.  A soft-spoken, sensual, older man flew me to his side to indulge us both in a time of pure pleasure.  We talked, we dined, we listened to Frank Sinatra, we bathed together, and we made love.  He escorted me from beautiful scene to beautiful scene: drinking sloe gin to a private view of unspoilt hills; kissing by a rambling stream; smoking and drinking and eventually making it to bed in our lodge by the loch.  For these days, and the further scattered days and nights I was granted back in London, I was always at his command, and it was always my pleasure to follow his charming lead.  I discovered that I could, if I chose, be a perfect fairytale princess to a perfect fairytale prince.

This I have had, and nothing can take that away from me.  And now this memory can take nothing from the life I have today.