I open my eyes at 6am to see the silhouettes of 2 shaggy heads peeping meercat-like around the doorway. Then they run and dive on top of me - a dwarf burrowing under each arm. 'We missed you Mummy. So much. We are so happy you're home'. The Lozenge gives me a card with a tiny chocolate brownie wrapped in silver paper on which he's written: 'Mumy.' There's one with 'Dady' on it in the fridge. The note reads: 'I rily mist you when you had gon'. J and I had left each other at Amman airport for another 6 weeks. I wanted to write J a similar note - it seemed all wrong not to be coming back home together.
Now I'm looking at my small handful of stones I collected on the beach in Oman: a pink one for the Pea - the colour of the rose red city itself; a perfectly rounded one with a small stone lodged in the middle for the Lozenge; and a beautiful piece of blanched coral like a miniature body with two outstreched arms, for Rashimi. But now I'm back in the thick of it, my own arms have an overstretched feeling from carrying our beloved human gnocchi yesterday. All around the crafts fair we went. The Pea kept pulling off all the necklaces and scarves from the table. So I hoisted her often onto one hip - saving the precious Palestinian produce from being dragged to the dust. We got chatting to a Palestinian man selling painted stools made by blind people. As he helped me walk home with some I'd bought, we got onto politics. I almost sobbed as we discussed the many woes. But the Palestinians are used to all that, and being let down time and time again by their leaders. So he was much more sanguine than I: 'As long as the sun comes up each morning, everything will be alright my dear.'
The sun did come up this weekend morning, and I spent it in and out of the bed between spelling help for the Lozenge's homework, who was finding dictionary explanations of words: 'excellent, explode, face, fact, fair,' and having to put them in order. I could use many of these words in a sentence about the state of the world right now, I think to myself. Rashimi prancing around singing: 'I wanna live in Ameeericaaaaa! I wanna live in Ameeericaaaa!' Though I'm really not sure I would wanna at the moment. His singing clashes with the Trump news; and a podcast on Leonard Cohen. The timing of great forboding: the departure of a wise man and the political ascent of a douchebag in the same week. But then the Pea pulls me out of my melancholy by performing a baby body-slam onto her brothers under the duvet.
A day with children. Our small boat dipping and rising on the crest of wave before dipping again, then some storm clouds. The weather never stays the same for long in dwarf land.
I've been having many moments of melancholy for instance when the boys look at the front page of a magazine and ask: 'Who is that nasty looking man with the angry eyes?' And we end up talking about Putin over breakfast. How do you explain a man who kills children, to children? And all night the Pea has been coughing, and all day she's been sobbing and holding her arms high, like that little piece of coral, wanting me to lift her up again and again. I put her in her high chair, I dance the hokey cokey to her while I wash up, suds flying. A quick little samba around her chair with the mop. It works for a while. Then we four leap into the car and drive up to the Mount of Olives. 'Louder!' shout the dwarfs from the back - now nearly 2 feet tall and hardly dwarfs, I can barely lift them without over-stretching my arms either. They're enjoying listening to The Obvious Child by Paul Simon. Rashimi loves the drum beat which stirs us all as we stream, hands clapping, up, up, past the golden Dome of the Rock below us.
Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost its bite
I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don't expect to sleep through the night
Some people say a lie's a lie's a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?
And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark
This time - this life, speeding by.
The foreboding gloom of world politics.
This is the age of miracle and wonder. Really?
It has got the better of me today. Along with scenes of two dwarves fighting over gold and silver spray paint with which we are decorating fir cones as it's really really going to be Christmas soon, this time; the Pea plucks the paint water jar from Rashimi's hand and quaffs the ochre liquid. Then she totters off and slips on a line of coloured pencils smashing the paint water jar. Wailing. Then more wailing, all day, over a new tooth or a cold, or who knows what. Maybe it is my punishment for escaping to the beautiful silence of the mountains in Oman with J. So I take it out on a pomegranate, and spank it until the seeds pop out. Then I feed my ruby spoils to the three critters, who gobble it jewel by jewel. Then they look deeply into my cross face, realise I mean business, and help me tidy the chaotic house to the Peatbog Faeries on LOUD. Even louder than earlier in the car. It is loud. And very Scottish. And I do a pseudo angry jig. 'Are you still cross?' asks Rashimi.
We do our nightly ritual of a few poems read by torchlight while they lie in the darkness.
Who's that tickling my back, asks the wall?
It's me says the caterpillar, I'm learning to crawl.
And by the time they are asleep in bed and the house is quiet once more, I love them again. Almost as much and also as much as I love their Daddy far away.
Now I'm looking at my small handful of stones I collected on the beach in Oman: a pink one for the Pea - the colour of the rose red city itself; a perfectly rounded one with a small stone lodged in the middle for the Lozenge; and a beautiful piece of blanched coral like a miniature body with two outstreched arms, for Rashimi. But now I'm back in the thick of it, my own arms have an overstretched feeling from carrying our beloved human gnocchi yesterday. All around the crafts fair we went. The Pea kept pulling off all the necklaces and scarves from the table. So I hoisted her often onto one hip - saving the precious Palestinian produce from being dragged to the dust. We got chatting to a Palestinian man selling painted stools made by blind people. As he helped me walk home with some I'd bought, we got onto politics. I almost sobbed as we discussed the many woes. But the Palestinians are used to all that, and being let down time and time again by their leaders. So he was much more sanguine than I: 'As long as the sun comes up each morning, everything will be alright my dear.'
The sun did come up this weekend morning, and I spent it in and out of the bed between spelling help for the Lozenge's homework, who was finding dictionary explanations of words: 'excellent, explode, face, fact, fair,' and having to put them in order. I could use many of these words in a sentence about the state of the world right now, I think to myself. Rashimi prancing around singing: 'I wanna live in Ameeericaaaaa! I wanna live in Ameeericaaaa!' Though I'm really not sure I would wanna at the moment. His singing clashes with the Trump news; and a podcast on Leonard Cohen. The timing of great forboding: the departure of a wise man and the political ascent of a douchebag in the same week. But then the Pea pulls me out of my melancholy by performing a baby body-slam onto her brothers under the duvet.
A day with children. Our small boat dipping and rising on the crest of wave before dipping again, then some storm clouds. The weather never stays the same for long in dwarf land.
I've been having many moments of melancholy for instance when the boys look at the front page of a magazine and ask: 'Who is that nasty looking man with the angry eyes?' And we end up talking about Putin over breakfast. How do you explain a man who kills children, to children? And all night the Pea has been coughing, and all day she's been sobbing and holding her arms high, like that little piece of coral, wanting me to lift her up again and again. I put her in her high chair, I dance the hokey cokey to her while I wash up, suds flying. A quick little samba around her chair with the mop. It works for a while. Then we four leap into the car and drive up to the Mount of Olives. 'Louder!' shout the dwarfs from the back - now nearly 2 feet tall and hardly dwarfs, I can barely lift them without over-stretching my arms either. They're enjoying listening to The Obvious Child by Paul Simon. Rashimi loves the drum beat which stirs us all as we stream, hands clapping, up, up, past the golden Dome of the Rock below us.
Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost its bite
I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don't expect to sleep through the night
Some people say a lie's a lie's a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?
And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark
This time - this life, speeding by.
The foreboding gloom of world politics.
This is the age of miracle and wonder. Really?
It has got the better of me today. Along with scenes of two dwarves fighting over gold and silver spray paint with which we are decorating fir cones as it's really really going to be Christmas soon, this time; the Pea plucks the paint water jar from Rashimi's hand and quaffs the ochre liquid. Then she totters off and slips on a line of coloured pencils smashing the paint water jar. Wailing. Then more wailing, all day, over a new tooth or a cold, or who knows what. Maybe it is my punishment for escaping to the beautiful silence of the mountains in Oman with J. So I take it out on a pomegranate, and spank it until the seeds pop out. Then I feed my ruby spoils to the three critters, who gobble it jewel by jewel. Then they look deeply into my cross face, realise I mean business, and help me tidy the chaotic house to the Peatbog Faeries on LOUD. Even louder than earlier in the car. It is loud. And very Scottish. And I do a pseudo angry jig. 'Are you still cross?' asks Rashimi.
We do our nightly ritual of a few poems read by torchlight while they lie in the darkness.
Who's that tickling my back, asks the wall?
It's me says the caterpillar, I'm learning to crawl.
And by the time they are asleep in bed and the house is quiet once more, I love them again. Almost as much and also as much as I love their Daddy far away.
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