Year 2...

So, do I wait until January 1st to make some resolutions for the coming year or do I use the first anniversary of my blogging as an excuse to sit down and outline any lessons I have learned over the past year so that those lessons can inform my actions for the coming year?  Good question.  Better still is the question as to whether or not I have actually learned anything over the past 365 days.  I think the only way I am going to be able to come to any meaningful conclusions is to re-read about 350 pages of text to see what I can discover about myself.

I just went through all of these old blog entries and I've been able to establish a definite pattern.  I am obsessed with food.  No wonder  I have such a battle with my weight, so much of my writing is about what I've eaten, what I'm going to eat, what I've been cooking or what I intend to cook.  In the past year I have eaten my way through mountains of food and what I have learned is that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

I see that there is a problem being married to a man who never gains weight.  I bake my speciality items and proudly present them to him, my beloved husband, just as a good little housewife should.  He umms and ahs and makes all the right noises of approval and even deigns to taste my offerings.  And then, well, he forgets it's there.  Forgets completely and maybe four or five days later will come to me and ask for a bit of cake or a portion of that dessert.  Of course, by then I will have scoffed the entire lot.  In my house, as I was growing up, sweets never lasted more than the day of their making.  No one thought about tomorrow or saving the best for last. There had been too much of that in our lives.  I even used to eat my dessert first sometimes, being someone who never liked to delay satisfaction.

The next morning... early Sunday

I didn't finish writing last night and something felt off about what I was writing.  It was all true but not filled with me, if that makes any sense.  This morning (5.30am) I am awake and sorting through old photos and papers and filled with a different self than the self that was on paper yesterday. Less frivolous, more serious.  Listening to the wonderful
Yo Yo Ma playing Ennio Morricone with the dawning light just beginning to creep through my windows I am surrounded by piles of old photos.  Most of them taken more than 25 years ago.  I was young and tanned and unlined.  Most of the photos were taken in Italy during the many summer trips we took to see our dear friends.  There are a number of photos taken in Umbria and Tuscany that record Ralph, our daughter and myself in the summer following the death of our son in 1984.  The photos are often pensive and even sad, but so full of feeling.  I broke down in tears at one point and sat back and took a breath and realised that as healed as we get, as much time that passes after the death of someone we loved, there is still memory and memory in order to remain alive must also encompass the sadness.  How difficult this sometimes is for me.  I would like to carry on remembering my son, my mother, my aunt, my uncle and some dear friends, but I would so like to only have the good memories.  That's not 100% true - the child part of me, the small person inside who misses those people I so loved, would like to never feel sad or hurt, but my adult self knows that all the joyous and the painfully sad feelings make up those wondrous, alive, fulfilling memories. As I look at the photos I remember so clearly I feel like a time traveller. 

And now I come back to what I have learned over the past year.  I have deeply and fully learned that who I am is exactly who I am meant to be.  There is no further potential to be filled, no other path I need to be on. No ideal weight I need to be. It is all and I mean all, inside me.  I bring it out to display at times and then it dazzles like a mirror reflecting the sun, not just me, but also those around me.  And sometimes, most of the time, I keep myself in my heart and it nourishes me in a quieter private way.  I have learned a little bit to listen, not to others (I am not so great at that) but to the self that wants to be heard and deserves so much more air time.  I continue to appreciate and value my loving heart, the heart that yearns for more of everything and wants to grab the world close in a huge warm embrace.

I have learned also this year that I am a bit of sentimental old fool, weepy and maudlin and wallowing in lachrymosity.  I am overweight, I am beautiful and I am spectacularly perfect.
Yesterday a friend quoted something on the lines of

'It will all work out in the end and if it hasn't worked out, you haven't reached the end yet.'

This is a good a place to stop for now. I wish you all the dawn of a peaceful day filled with love.