One day the tiredness of a busy life switched to the exhaustion of disease and I did not listen. I was too busy, the signals my body was sending too slight, too general, so easy to ignore and brush off – blaming the food we eat, working motherhood, living in London, and suddenly I find myself in a new neighbourhood.

On Tuesday morning E and I dropped Chi off at school and then walked to the hospital where I was seeing a gastro specialist who was going to give me the results of some tests he had scheduled the week before. On the way we talked schools, Singapore, the festival we had just brought tickets for and the potential for surgery I was facing. I had already planned to text the word “benign” to all that were waiting to hear, so when we sat down opposite the doctor and heard “malignant” “spread” “lymph nodes” “liver” life was temporarily put on pause.

Tuesday was not the greatest day.

It feels like a year has passed since then, a blur of meetings with doctors, nurses, counsellors, family, nonstop telephone calls and texts and I have enough flowers now thank you.

Tuesday is chemo day 1, I have no idea what my challenge entails, only that I am going in feeling strong, and positive. I am a mother of a four year old sweetheart. I do not have an option.

I am surrounded by my awesome family and friends, humbled by the generosity of everyone I have come into contact with in the last 6 days and am inspired by my daughters sparkle.

Written in March and posted in June… just because!

It’s been winter. That’s it really, the reason I have not managed post a single thing for… i don’t know, months. Not that I don’t come to my couch and my lovely vaio every evening while QI hums in the background while E snoozes and the cat harasses.

And goddamn but this full time working mother things sure saps me of energy, leaving me with enough to get through the day, survive until the weekend and then whirl around to do chores, see family, do some yoga and maybe get a chance to get some down time.

But its the winter that froze me down. As though my mind too had gone into its winter fug, a mental settling down for a couple of months whilst storms raged overhead and now the sun is back in our hemisphere, and the warmth is creeping through slowly. I feel like I am waking up again.

But it’s an meta thing. My days have been busy. Demanding. Stimulated on all fronts I get up at 7:00 and from that moment on I am accountable and answerable to someone else. A mother, a sister a partner, a PA.

I have been riding to work every day (bar the snow and puncture weeks). It’s been months now and every day it is still a revelation. I still love the constant forwardness it offers, and wonderful ride through Hyde Park every day is a joy. Today as I rode the sun was still high off the horizon, and I was riding into the setting sun. A red gold high in the sky and deep grey green haze in the low shadows. The geese are still on the serpentine now as I ride past in the evening. One month ago my ride was in the dark and the only thing moving are the twinkling lights of other cyclists.

My Garden calls. Every day I peer out the window waiting for the days when the conservatory doors a flung wide, the lawn is lusher and flowers bloom. Already the buds are through and I have daffs and sweet smelling hyacinths to draw me out. Buds on the trees sheen and there is that wonderful sense of anticipation.

I need more time. I miss my friends and see less of my family than I want to, but into each weekend I need to concertina everything I am unable to do in my work week. I live in bigger cycles. Eight months between visits to people I adore. Two weeks between siblings. Almost no time for just us. Certainly no time for sitting on the couch just me and my fingers and my keyboard.

Time flew! 

my mournful confession is that I spent far too much of my precious alone time working extra hours at work, hoping to get ahead before Chi and E returned. The reality is you never really succeed at getting ahead. Not as a PA, when every day brings new small challenges. Death by paper cut, day after day!

But I did manage a 1.5 day yoga workshop - an “uber-california-feel-the-love-and-share”  type weekend that I thoroughly enjoyed, walking around with a sun warmed grin that stretched across my face for days. Somehow I also managed to have dinner out once with my girlfriends, I painted my daughters room the palest shade of pink, planted loads of flowers and herbs out, read three books and sleeped.  Amazing how much time you have when you are not locked into the daily treadmill of school runs, dinners, and bed time routines.

I went to the airport on monday morning with a song in my heart and when I saw my daughter and e again I had tears of happiness gushing down my face, within hours my quiet neat house was turned into a pink patterned playground and her laughter filled the quiet spaces.  She was home and life returned again. 

On Wednesday evening my little family boarded a plane to South Africa for 10 days leaving me alone in London.  For various reasons I didn’t join them, and here I am, day 2, and I am on the couch, the house is so tidy, so quiet, my silver cat is curled into my lap, a silly romcom plays in the background and I have just returned from a 2 hour yoga class.  I feel empty. I want to hear my daughters’ baby snores from her room, I want E sprawled beside me on the couch as he sleeps through some recorded episode of John Simpson.

At the same time I am so grateful for this short time to be really alone. Grateful not to have to rush away from my desk every evening with the phone still ringing and a million tasks left hanging.  Grateful not to have to log on to my laptop again at 10:oopm just to tie up lose ends and prepare for my morning.

And, if the cat eventually stops waking me up at fcuking 3:00am demanding food I may evening catch up on some sleep to tackle the darkening rings under my eyes. He never seems to do that when E is bed, why is that?

So, I have plans, to garden, to repaint chi’s room, to take each of my brothers out for dinner - separately, to have a facial, get a haircut and to do as much yoga as I can take but I am not going to knock myself out if all I do is hibernate under the duvet with any one of the 3 books I brought this evening. 

And each hour I miss my family, and relish the return of noise, laughter and non stop four year old demands.

yawn!

Perhaps in a former life I was a bear. Why else the winter hibernation?

ho hum!

In a concerted effort not to make this space a venting space for my day to day busyness, mundane ness, and altogether a summary of the semi boring reality of my day to day life I have effectively shut the place up.

But I miss the writing – and am battling the angst of shutting up shop altogether vs finding the motivation, and a reason to write.

I miss the beginnings of a community I was beginning to find online – writers who touched by and who went on to inspire me – whose lives and persons I caught slim glimpses of.

I miss giving my far flung friends and family a place where they can catch up on my thoughts – definitely easier then long newsy emails.

I feel sad when I think about pulling the plug on the almost two years of writing. I started this blog in the long lonely long days of full time motherhood – it was a way of expressing, recording and reaching out.

Now my days are so structured that by the time I hit the couch at about 9:30, my intention to write withers to slumped exhaustion. I barely have time to skim through my personal email and do the absolute essentials before bed and then the whole thing begins again.

So the next two months are going to be my litmus test. I need some inspiration to write and I am off to find it. I could of course twitter about an endless variety of things:

• The more amusing aspects of being PA to a CEO
• My first bicycle crash – me splayed out in the middle of High Street Ken – (still avoiding that back brake – I pulled hard on the front – Yes! Really!
• A couple of months of serial visitors who came and stayed and brought much joy – reminding me of what I love about this city
• My most awesome new Sunday night yoga class
• A couple of great girls nights out
• Endless conversations with my Chi – who seems to be always one step ahead of me
• The darkness of winter!

And maybe I will.

Wish me luck.

wanna ride?

I’ve been cycling to work every day for the last two months and am a total convert. I find myself trying to convince everyone to get on a bike. It’s liberating. It’s constant forward motion. None of that walk to a tube, wait for a train, squeeze on, shuffle off, then walk home frazzled and grumpy. It is just straight on and go. So what have I discovered?

• Lots of people cycle.
• I prefer to cycle than tube – even in the drizzle.
  
• Bikes seats take some getting used to.
  
• In the evening after I pick my daughter up we get home in 5min rather than 20 and I avoid the grumpy grizzles.
• It makes you hungry - big time.
• I love the physicality of it.
• I am never going to be a morning person.

This weekend was freewheel London 2008! Major roads in London were closed to traffic and 60 000 cyclists descended into the centre from all directions – to ride along the embankment between the Mall and Tower Bridge. It was great.

See the red & blue balloons in the picture? That’s us!

http://www.smileforskysports.com/album/RED_2pm/slides/RED_1-3_2121.html

Update on Wed, October 15, 2008 at 00:29 by lia

Oh, and if it suddenly gets harder to cycle to work every day and your thighs are burning…. it is a good idea to check your breaks as they may be locked on…! Sensitive things - breaks. Thigh burners. Uh Huh!

blue!

Two weeks ago I had seven days of this…

Not in London, obviously - because summer didn’t stop here this year. I need to keep reminding myself that this blue does exist, every day, above the low hanging grey. 

Today I rode to work in the rain. Drenched. I had to put soaked trainers on to come home - but it’s still damn better than the tube!