Countdown to 50 and remembering

This post is only 10 days overdue. I had intended to post on the 1st February as it's my birthday month, and 50 seems like a milestone birthday. At 40 I breathed a sigh of relief. That was the age my Mum died, and somewhere deep down I believed I might not live to see my fortieth birthday. Funnily enough, each one of my sisters had that same fear though we never shared it with each other. I am the baby and this year I am fifty. Well past time for growing up I think!

However here I am on the 10th already.

January and the first 10 days of this month have gone by in a blurr of activity. I've been doing a course for work, and my job is ever more demanding so that I fall into bed exhausted every day.

All my good intentions of creative activities have been put on hold yet again.

This week and the next few are going to be very full of exciting happenings for my birthday and for Mr Stayingawake's (he is also 50 this year!). Happy and busy times. I miss my blog though. I miss writing here. So I'm hoping to be here again every day if I can, to share happy times and memories.

This is me on the doll's house that somehow was at the bottom of the garden in the house that I lived in until I was just eight. Fairies used to leave me notes in the doll's house. In reality it was the older girl next door, Sandra, who would leave me the notes. In her outhouse she used to show me an ant's ghost train, carved in the brick work too! I believe she was instrumental in shaping who I am, and I would like to thank her and her team of fairy letter writers (and fun loving ants), for helping me first develop my inner life and imagination.

My next-up sister used to make our shared bed into a covered wagon, and we would ride across the plains and prairie to make a new life. She is seven years older than me, and has always been there to go to for a good telling off! Later in life when lying in bed alone, my bed would become a shelter; I would imagine I was safely hidden in a cave, as I listened to the rain pattering on the glass of the window and the wind battering against the house. There were one or two books in my earliest bedroom, though the rest of the house was empty of books. Rupert the Bear, and Heidi were two I remember from that first room. I think I have written before about hearing sleigh bells on Christmas Eve, outside that window.

That was a time of rich childhood imaginings, before life changed forever. I think it was a happy time, despite what I know now about my Dad's behaviour. Tomorrow is the day we lost my Dad, eleven years ago. It's sad to remember sometimes, remembering has been about the lack and the sorrow about the whole situation; but still there were happy times, and there has been forgiveness and compassion as we have all come to terms with our history.

When we get together, my sisters and me, the past has always overshadowed the present. The death of our Mum, changed all of our lives forever, and our Dad never recovered. He blamed himself and some of his children blamed him too. They were angry. We were all angry about something it seemed. And so very sad.

For a few years more recently, my next-up sister and me have been angry at each other. It has been unbearable to be in the same room as each other sometimes. Thankfully we seem to have worked it out now. I know it has been to do with the hurt she has felt at being left at fifteen to fend for herself, whereas I at eight was taken care of.  I have felt angry with her for being so unforgiving of our Dad, and they all have been resentful of me for the special relationship my Dad and I had.  None of us can speak about all this buried hurt, so it simmered away under our surfaces; only being triggered when we were together.

Lately, our get-togethers have been less overshadowed. All of my sisters are grandmothers now. We are all healing. In fact I think we may be healed at last. We are healed by the love that we are all now surrounded by, and the love that we give. We feel more peaceful. We have accepted our history, and can see the abundance, not only the lack.