Finding Strength

Finding strength

On bad days like today, even harder when yesterday was such an amazingly good day, I have to try and find the strength to go on being patient with my son, who has fragile x syndrome.  As much as my family are brilliant at the end of the day it comes back to me and only me to keep things going at times.   My mother cleverly taught me about 10 years ago that I did not need to be alone at times like this.

Granny's vase with philedelphus and briar rose

10 years ago when I was going through a particularly difficult patch with Sasha my mother gave me my Granny's engagement ring which I wear most of the time along with another ring Granny left me when she died.   My mother said it would pass to me my Grandmother's strength of character and spirit.  Not sure I quite achieve what she did but nevertheless looking at it helps.  The living may not be able to help but the dead can, as their memories are always around and available.  

I painted the philedelphus at my mother's house.  The vase is one of a pair  that came from my Granny.  This is a photo of the set up.  I changed the background afterwards, much as I love my mother's curtains the vase and flowers all muddled up seemed too much.  Looking at it today I am thinking I would like to do something simpler with that background which was so much part of my childhood.


In an exhibition I did last year at The Exchange Library in Saffron Walden I used Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge as my inspiration as I do so often use them to keep my spirits up.  This is an extract from a poem by Wordsworth about a little girl who believes in the presence of her dead siblings paints such a beautiful picture of someone who absolutely feels the presence of the departed ones.  Strangely as I started writing this my son was shouting at me and continually asking for things but as I have started reading the poem and thinking of my grandmother the calm within me has passed on without me having to say a thing to him.

We are Seven

A simple child, dear brother Jim
That lightly drawn its breath
And feels its life in every limb
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She has a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad;
her eyes were fair, and very fair;
Her beauty made me glad.

Sisters and brothers, little maid,
How many may your be?
How many? Seven in all she said,
And wondering looked at me.

 The little girl goes on to explain where they all are and it transpires two are in the graveyard.  Wordsworth protests that means they are gone but the girls insists:

"How many are you then," said I,
"If they two are in Heaven?"
The little maiden did reply
"O master! we are seven"

"But they are dead: those two are dead!
Their spirits are in Heaven!"
T'was throwing words away for still
The little maid would have her will,
And said "nay we are seven!"



And as if by magic as I corrected the punctuation on the poem, Sasha has fed the cat and is now stroking me.