Shaking off silence

An hour and a half when I was intending to be at yoga, given back to me because there is a lorry and trailer stuck on our hill blocking us all in.   And suddenly a revelation, write.  Just write, right now.  My God, how many procrastinations I have been finding: some great and glorious like our family's new babies, some worthy like my OU course and some self indulgent like knitting and reading.  And a great sense of being stuck blocking my own way out, of having both too much and nothing at all to say.  My lovely and extremely talented niece is an artist and she was musing on her website the other day about things which help the process of making art and one which spoke strongly to me was about just doing it.  So here I am.  Right now.

What is on my mind?  Fitness and health.  I have had a fairly rubbish winter, not with anything serious and even writing it makes me feel faintly guilty knowing that others have real struggles with major health problems.  No, mine has simply been a winter of colds and a racking cough which I could not shake off for weeks followed by a period of a fortnight or so when I could not hear.  I was amazed at how much I struggled with the hearing loss.  I am generally quite good at being stoical and cheerful when I am not so well but not being able to hear made me feel extraordinarily low and very lonely.  I lost the sense of connection with those I loved.  Even the minutiae of the day to day life which Ian and I share was rubbed away.  So much of conversation is not the important, hugely functional or significant stuff but the passing comment, the quick joke, the flying thought.  They go unspoken when the effort of being heard is too great.  I felt as though I was living in a bubble, unreachable, untouchable.  It's fine now (thank you Jayne!) but I won't forget how it made me feel.  And then a stomach bug which we both had.  None of these things are a big deal in themselves but they all remind me how much the enjoyment of life is affected by good health.  I was going to say depends on good health but then I see in my mind's eye my father, crippled by Motor Neurone Disease, enjoying being pushed in his wheelchair in the sunshine and fed a small piece of coffee cake.  That's a lesson.  But yes, good health, being able to walk and talk and have the energy to engage with the huge and beautiful world is a help.

So here I am with a new energy for looking after myself.  All through this muddy, murky winter I have tried to keep up my yoga and I have started Pilates as well.  And now a new dance class has just started in the village.  I went last week, more because a friend had asked me to come because the numbers were low than because I particularly wanted to.  To my surprise I enjoyed myself.  I used to love to dance but life at sixty three doesn't throw a lot of chances my way.  And then I saw a television programme about fitness which said that dancing improves not only physical fitness but mental agility because of the demands of putting steps together so I will certainly have some of that.  The older I get the more struck I am by the pleasures of movement: dancing certainly felt joyous but walking too makes me feel good.  We are made to move I think.

And the other big thing I am going to do is to drink less.  I didn't do dry January.  I am not very good at doing things when everyone else is doing them (must be mildly contrary) and I don't want a big hit of abstinence.  I like wine.  It is one of the great pleasures of life and mine would be sadder and poorer without it.  But I have over the last few years got into a habit of having something to drink every day and often drinking quickly, mindlessly, without really tasting it.  I think wine blurred the edges of the grief of the loss of my parents and I am not sure that there is anything wrong in that.  Anything which helped me cope with my father's last year was fair enough I think.  I am not talking about gallons of the stuff, just a persistent, gentle, something every night.  And now I think I don't need that blurring any more and I would enjoy the pleasures of wine perhaps more if there were less of a habit in it.  I wonder how easy or difficult it will be to stop doing that as part of my daily  pattern.  I suspect it might be more deeply woven into my life than I would like to admit.  But I want the clear head and the steady gut and the sense that I am looking after myself.  I also want wine but a bit of rebalancing is in order I think.

And what else is on my mind?  My daughters and daughters in law and their husbands as they raise their new babies or wait for the one still to come.  And babies of course, lots of babies.

 And springtime, surely not too far away