Inner warmth and woolly hats

She and I ran around a field excited by our newly wellied feet. We climbed to the top of a hill liberated from tartan skirts and white socks. We went "skating" on a frozen lake in our first corduroy jeans. She fell through the ice. I brought her home, shivering.

She and I went climbing trees. We were swinging from an old Elder, hanging upside down from the branches. I fell onto my back, winded, unable to speak. She screamed the place down and ran to get help.

She and I were wrapped up warm to go on a train somewhere. I held her hand and carried the suitcase. We went out through a gate bewildered, no clue what was happening. So we made pink and yellow tissue paper people and chatted to them for hours on end.

And here we are with woolly hats, crunching around in our boots on the shaley strand. Bonded by our shared youth, forever.

She points her camera everywhere. Look at this, look at that!! She especially likes a harp shaped hole in the cliff, her own unique take on the world, a great eye. She takes a picture of me and I take some of her.

It's never long enough and after a few days she returns to her life in the icy northern city of Stockholm. The woolly hats and her inner warmth must come in very handy up there in that freezing cold archipelago.

Sisters and summer light

Have just spent 5 wonderful days with not one, not two, but all three of my beautiful sisters. During a grey rainy July they brought such a blast of summer light into my life. Not that there was much sun (!)  it was more their own warm glow, their laughing eyes, those common intertwining threads all the way back to our shared childhood stories. 


My sisters have a "mothering" energy about them. Our mother passed away when we were small children and I think we have retained some of her qualities for each other. We are on the same team, we are cheering each other on, we are each unique and different but at the same time alike as peas in a pod.


We have shared very hard times especially recently, and live apart, but this summer it was light and laughter all the way. Here's to you my precious sisters, each on our individual journey, until we all meet again..........





The Journey


One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.” 
― Mary Oliver



Sets of Monbretia summer light prints available here