One word? When seven would do…

it’s another in a totally random series of Nic goes all dreamy and rambly 🙂
I warn you in advance – this is going nowhere, it’s a totally random collection of thoughts which I just felt the need to get down in writing and here seemed as good a place as any!

Lots going on in my head at the moment – for once it seems to be because pretty much everything else is going OK or seems sorted that I am focusing on me. I am really happy and content with the way HE is panning out for us, confident that it is the right path, I ‘feel’ like quite an established Home Educator (although I know it’s only been 2 years since we made the decision and the children are still very young – I am getting on average one email a week from people who have either moved into the area and are looking for local info or local people who are thinking about HE as a possibility and if I can’t help them myself I am able to point them in the right direction – all very satisfying!), I feel like I am finally grasping the nettle with regard to finances and we are in the middle of planning various redecoration and home improvement type stuff which for now at least, makes us feel settled here. So inevitably for someone who thinks about ‘stuff’ as much as I do I move onto giving head space to something else.

As a result of various conversations at HESFES and a gradual move towards the children needing me less on a constant, physical level all the time I have begun to think more about what I would like to be doing with my life, what my hopes and dreams for me are and what it would take for me to feel fulfilled over and above the children and my role with them. I’m not going to blog about those half formed ideas just yet. I don’t think I’m ready for comment on them and I think they need to remain private-ish for a little while longer but it has put me in a very ‘deep’ frame of mind.

Various other things have happened of late to bring me back to my childhood in lots of small ways and I am also riding a bit of a wave of nostalgia right now.

I chatted with a few people at HESFES about school and playground behavious type stuff, which always reminds me how much I have changed from the serious, quiet, fairly friendless little school girl I was to the woman I am today. I worried about what everyone else thought of me, fretted about not having a best friend or someone to sit next to in every lesson, I was always always the outsider looking in and wanting to be part of that elusive inner circle, invited to all their parties and sleepovers, to their houses for tea, down to the town with them on a Saturday to go round Chelsea Girl and so on. I was pushed towards academic pursuits and although looking back I probably showed equal if not more skill in creative areas no one ever inspired me or encouraged me or nurtured those skills. Except one teacher – Mr Volke who was a very creative man. He was very funny and wrote for the Beano and Viz in his time. He used to set us excellent and really exciting lessons like writing about 12 different story titles on the blackboard and getting us to choose one and write the story to go with it. He used to finish every day by reading aloud to us and issued us all with a plain exercise book to do whatever we wanted in while he read – draw, write ourselves, scribble, whatever. He never collected them in or marked them or even looked at them, just encouraged our creativity and tried to inspire it by reading to us too. I would have been 10 or 11 then – that’s 20 years ago but there’s many a day I would love to be back in Mr Volke’s classroom tasked with writing a short story or scribbling in my book while he read to me.

I recall that Mr Volke thought I was talented in comedy style writing – I could probably even dig about in my parents loft and find some of the writing (and illustrating) I did and his positive and encouraging comments on my work. What a shame I was never pushed further in that direction, or my parents didn’t see that it was a genuine passion and germination of a skill which could have been developed further. I imagine Mr Volke would be retired by now, I wonder if he’d remember little Nicola Davies? One of the reasons I want to HE Davies and Scarlett is so I can try and glimpse those specks of promise within them and help them to grow. Another is so that they might just one day talk about and remember me as someone inspirational in that way.

Today I have been putting together a bookcase for Scarlett’s bedroom. I had a bookcase full and brimming over in my bedroom probably from a similar age, Frazer never did. Books were not a big thing in our house and you could fit all the books in my parents house onto one of the many shelves in my house now. I’m so pleased that both our children share my passion and love of books, I hope they continue to be thrilled at the prospect of a brand new book to start reading, I hope they get that same frisson at being whisked off into another persons world, meeting new characters and experienving new things through the written word. So sitting there today infront of Tarly’s new bookcase I was transported back 25 years or so in time to sitting infront of my own as a little girl, I checked my emails and Jax had posted on MP about string art pictures one of which used to hang above the bookcase in my bedroom, made by my Mum when she was pregnant with me!
Later tonight Ady came home and as he was bathing the kids he put a cd on which just so happened to be The Carpenters. Now, if there is one band who can put me straight back into the 70s with the opening bars to one of their records it’s them. My Mum used to have their songs blasting at full volume when I was tiny, she’d sing along as she did the housework, I’d play with my toys and baby Frazer would be sat in his bouncy chair or playpen. Tonight as we were putting the kids to bed Nick jr finished and turned into Noggin – which brought on The Wombles and Paddington Bear – my whizz back in time was complete and there to compliment by whizz into the future from earlier today!

All of which ties back into my other pondering which is about memories of people and how we see people and relationships so differently to others, even when they are the other part of that relationship. Reading Merry’s diary entries from Fran’s birth and early days and weeks, reading the terribly sad but somehow positive blog posts from Sarah’s friends about the tragic loss of their daughter and remembering my perception of my Mum back as small child, to how I viewed her as a teenager to how I view her now, and perhaps even looking ahead to how I might one day remember her in many years to come and keeping in mind how she would actually like me to remember her makes me wonder what memories Davies and Scarlett will carry of me both now and in the future. I’m not even sure what I want them to think of me, I wouldn’t contrive to make myself something I am not but I’m aware that their perception of me won’t necessarily be how I view myself. I am also aware that by removing the possibility of other key adults in their early years by them not having teachers etc will also change their view of me one way or another.

I’m always slightly suspicious of parents and or children who claim to be ‘best friends’. That is totally not what I see my role as for my children. I don’t to be a dictator and I hope that one day, when they are grown we will see each other as equals. I hope we love, respect and admire each other. I hope and aim to be the facilitator of aiding them to be the very best they can be, reach for the stars and beyond, articulate, strive for and achieve their dreams and be proud of and love themselves. For all their faults and their human failings I think my parents did achieve that for me. Maybe for that I should thank them more.