Quiet on a Sunday afternoon.

The world around feels very slow today.  The energy in my house is subdued.  Ralph is busy in the next room writing reports and is totally immersed in the hundredsof assessments he has to compose.  I have been napping and then sewing.  I love sewing.  It is a quiet, meditative thing for me to do. There are times when I just want to sew, in the same way that I want to pick up a pen and write or go into the kitchen to cook something - not for the end result, but for the sheer enjoyment of the doing.

When I was younger, I would watch my father sew.  He was a tailor all his  life and never had to think about how to sew things.  He just knew.  He made wonderful high fashion couture coats and suits for me when I was a child, but of course all I ever wanted was a cheap nylon anorak.  What kid really wants to wear cashmere coats in the playground?  My father could never understand this.  To him I was just an ungrateful nine-year old who didn't want a camel-coloured, double-breasted cashmere and vicuna coat that any 50 year old woman would give her eye teeth for!

Regardless of my childish ingratitude, he continued to make me clothes until I was old enough to be delighted with the designer garments he made.  I watched as he brought things home for my mum and fitted them out on her.  He would tear off sleeves with careless abandon, draw big white chalk lines on seams and pin buttonholes in the right places.  He would thread a needle so quickly that I could never even see him do it and his hand would fly across a hem as he sewed furiously. 

I used to watch mesmirised. My father was rarely still.  He was a restless man and was always running somewhere, so those odd moments of stillness, when he was sewing, were rare and special.  I learned to sew from him.  I don't remember him actually stopping and teaching me how to sew, I just sat at his elbow and watched. It was the closest thing we had to doing things together.  I have absolutely no memories of my father taking me places or actively doing things with my brother and me.  He would happily bring us somewhere - the the country, on a barbecue, to relatives' houses, but then he would disappear into the world of adults. This was pretty much the norm for the Eastern European refugee families we mixed with.  The fathers were a presence, but not an active one.

Quiet times always bring memories and a softness to the day. Sunday afternoons in this house always have a lazy, timeless  feeling that I love.  When we have no social arrangements and there's no shopping to be done, I love being able to lie in bed in the morning, having a leisurely breakfast and watching the day unfold. I love having no time pressure or a list of things to do. 

Days like this make me very happy.  The quiet, the sense of warmth and love I feel in my home, the knowledge that I don't need to say anything and Ralph feels the same. No shouting today, just whispers and lots of hugs.