the friendship formed

As our due date gets closer we wonder what sex TT will be, who TT will look like, what their and our hopes and fears will be together.

'... she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.' Gabriel Garcia Marrquez Love in the Time of Cholera

children

These are the hands

As the bride stood with her father waiting to walk down the aisle on Saturday's wedding this was read.

These are the hands of your best friend, young and strong full of love for you, that are holding yours on your wedding day, as you promise to love each other today, tomorrow, and forever.

These are the hands that will work alongside yours, as together you build your future.

These are the hands that will passionately love you and cherish you through the years, and with the slightest touch, will comfort you like no other.

These are the hands that will hold you when fear or grief fills your mind.

These are the hands that will countless times wipe the tears from your eyes; tears of sorrow, and tears of joy.

These are the hands that will tenderly hold your children.

These are the hands that will help you to hold your family as one.

These are the hands that will give you strength when you need it.

And lastly, these are the hands that even wrinkled and aged, will still be reaching for yours, still giving you the same unspoken tenderness with just a touch.

Traditional Celtic Handfasting Ceremony

hands

Our greatest heart treasure

I'm still mulling on Someone at a distance. Would this passage fit in with Ellen's thoughts and beliefs?

'Our greatest heart treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary - some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two. And who can this be but a husband or wife? Our parents have other children and themselves, our brothers and sisters marry and have lives apart, so with our friends; but ones husband would be different.' Miles Franklin My Brilliant Career

husband

One can imagine

We recently visited the Royal Academy. I'd saved this quote for such a time.

'It's so important,' the new Isabel had explained, 'that they should like the right things from the very beginning. It saves so much time later on. Really, if the poor pets have to spend their infant years staring at these horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to be taken to the Royal Academy.' Katherine Mansfield Marriage a la Mode in Something childish but very natural

wall

I'm intrigued as to what they saw in their infant years to want to visit the Royal Academy and 

why Isabel dislikes it so much.

sad Andromache

Yes the boxes of school files keeps coming. Scribbled in the corner of an 'A' Level Classical Civilization file was this poem. I remember it and so am now storing it here for safe keeping.

Parting in war time Frances Cornford

How long ago Hector took off his plume,

Not wanting that his little sons should cry

Then kissed his sad Andromache goodbye -

And now we three in Euston waiting room.

goodbye

My Mark

Today is Granny's birthday. Our first without her with us. Granny had asked for this to be part of her funeral and it seems fitting to post it today.

'My daughters, I am written into you forever.

When you have children I'll be written into them too.

There will always be a genetic inscription that reads - MY MARK.'

Morris West - Eminence

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Round About a Pound a Week

I haven't finished Round About a Pound a Week yet but I'm already finding it fascinating.

"Had they been well housed, well fed, well clothed, and well tended, from birth, what kind of raw material would they have shown themselves to be?" Maud Pember Reeves Round About a Pound a Week

This was first published in 1913. Polly Toynbee's 2008 introduction to this book.

'Social mobility has ground to a halt in the last twenty-five years. Birth is now almost certainly destiny. Some people may escape - but only in the same sense that some people may win the lottery....Britain now has the same distribution of wealth as it had in 1937 - and it's going backwards. At the present pace of growing inequality, we will return to 1913.' Polly Toynbee

The Twinkling of an Eye

When Rachel wrote about how she was 'slowly making my way through' Gilead, as she was relishing it so much, I was prompted to find my copy with all its turned down pages.

'...but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. I'm about to put on imperishability. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.
The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humour of it.' Marilynne Robinson Gilead

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Do go and read Rachel's brilliant review.
Thankyou for reminding me to re open the book and read my favourite passages again.

Book Gifting

A small post about the books given and received this Christmas.

Gifted
For Warmth Carol Ann Duffy Another night before Christmas

and her 12 Selected Poems, Tim Burton The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, Wisden Cricketers Almanack 1986 and 1999
For Twin Mrs Dalloway's Party Virginia Woolf
For Brother in law The Flavour Thesauraus
For Pops John Le Carre Our Kind of Traitor
For a dear friend Hatfields Herbal
For Godchild Ted Hughes The Iron Man
For another Godchild ABC in Animals


Received
From Warmth Carol Ann Duffy Mrs Scrooge and 12 her Selected poems, a beautiful diary, A World History of Art (having mentioned once that in hindsight sometimes I think I'dd quite like to have read History of Art at university.)
From Parents Vogue covers

From a dear friend Sarah Broom Tigers at Awhitu.
Persephone Secret Santa Miss Buncle DE Stevenson

What books did you give or receve this Christmas?

Forming People

So, the start of a new academic year. I've always liked this passage and today as we look ahead to our hopes and dreams for the next year it seemed appropriate. Who knows where this year will take us, what changes will happen. (I feel those who are making those decisions should read this passage.) This is what education means to me and why I'm looking forward to the year ahead.

'Education is about forming people who have the moral strength and spiritual depth to hold a course and weather its ups and downs.

It is about forming people who know that economic competition is not more important than family life and love of neighbour, and that technical innovation is not more important that reverence for beauty of creation. It is about forming people who. however academically and technically skillful, are not reduced to inarticualte embarrassment by the great questions of life and death, meaning and truth.'

Archbishop of Canterbury quoted in Lord Dearing's Report 'The Way ahead' quoted in The Daily Telegraph 31st July 2002

.'

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We need to talk about....

I shall also remember this summer for the books I read. The one which will place itself most firmly in summer 2010 is 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. When it was first published it just did not interest me. Over time, mainly through reading interviews with Lionel Shriver I've thought that perhaps I would like to read it. I'm so glad I have read it and I'm so glad that was when I was ready for it, not when there was all the hype. I especially liked the beginning part of the story where she and her husband are thinking about whether or not to have children.

'"I love to talk about other people. Not peoples. People I know, people close to me - people who drive me crazy. But I feel as if I'm using my family up... Honestly Franklin, maybe we should have a kid just to have something else to talk about."
"Now that... is frivoulous."
I stayed your hand. "It's not. What we talk about is what we want to think about, is what are lives are about. I'm not sure I want to spend mine looking over my shoulder at a generation whose lineage I'm personaly helping to truncate."' Lionel Shriver We need to talk about Kevin.

What did you think about this book/story?

ps. No picture today - I'm not sure what image would be appropriate.

and yet each day she did

I've just finished reading Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman. It fits in quite well with all the Mad Men we've been watching as it's set in America at tail end of the '50's very early '60's, however it's small town.
Nora is trying to settle in there with no husband and a young family. I loved this thought she had one day.

'Whenever he stumbled into Nora's arms she would think it wasn't possible for her to love him any more than she did, and yet each day she did; she loved him so much that she discovered that her hands and feet had grown a little larger to make room inside her for all that she felt...' Alice Hoffman Seventh Heaven

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Falling

Seeing this image on NOBODY AT THE WHEEL reminded me of this quote.

'He noticed that there was a moment, before the pain of a scraped knee or knocked elbow assailed them, just before they burst into tears, when their faces assumed a look of utter confusion and bemusement, as if asking: 'Why is life doing this to me?' Time Pears In the place of fallen leaves

Looking back at my quotation book I read this novel the first summer I'd been teaching and it so rang true. I'd spent the summer seeing that face everytime they tumbled on the hard ground with their bare knees...

This matter of parenthood

Sorry, this is long but I hope you think it's worth it.
'...we approach this matter of parenthood with a kind of fascinated reluctance. In a way the idea certainly attracts us, and though we resent it being put in that way, we have every intention of ultimately doing our duty... But not just yet, if you see what we mean. For after something like a quarter of a century when we have incessantly wanted it to be next week, we have suddenly reached a stage where all this impatience has left us. We want Time to stand still now; we have found what we have been looking for, and intuition tells us to avoid any experiment which will so inevitably start him off again. We have an impression, too, that everyone is watching us; that they are expecting us to have a baby, and that they won't leave us alone until we do. This puts our backs up. What has it got to do, we ask, with anyone except ourselves? We know perfectly well what we're up to, and we're not going to be hustled by any amounts of hints or questions. It is, we repeat, entirely our own affair.' Denis Mackail Greenery Street

Oh how true this is - and will it ever change? Will we ever stop trying to hurry life on for others? We meet someone and it's 'Is this the one?' We stay together and we're asked 'When will you get married?' I couldn't believe how soon after the wedding the question of 'children' is asked. And then I guess when you have one child you're asked about others. What will be will be.

And there ends Persephone quotes. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Roots and Wings

So, posting this from work - where yes I have a work quote book...

'There are two lasting bequests we can give our children.

One is roots.

The other is wings.'

Hodding Carter Jnr