avalon_storm

I love my mother a whole lot. 

It can be confusing, because of course she is not a normal mother. Her role in her religion has made things hard for me in the past and in the present and sometimes I am angry about that or tired of it. I still don't know what I believe about those things and I don't know if I respect all her beliefs, but I respect that when she does believe something, she acts on it. 

But what makes her a special mother about it is that she does listen to me about it, and sometimes when she understands something new she will apologize about it. She doesn't pretend that she has been perfect and she is always willing to listen to me even when I am really mad at her or I disagree with her. She has really tried to make sure that I am okay. She helps me to get time to do things I love, and she is there when I want to ask her things or tell her things. It is hard to explain, but it is like she comes from a different country and culture, and it isn't just that we get along in spite of the gap that makes her my mother...it is that she makes all the effort of crossing the gap every day just to be with me, that makes her my mother. 

As I have said before it is kind of strange that I have ended up living with her and being so close in so many ways. Growing up my father was more there and she was more involved in her work. But right now, I don't know if he would even know me. And my mother knows all about me. 

So for Mother's Day, which is always both good and hard for my mother because of the daughter she lost and also because in her religion being a mother is not a very good thing, I just wanted to say: Magdalynn Stormsworn, I am glad you are my mum!

I do think about more than food, but I am going to talk about three yummy meals I had this week!

One was at The Ballroom which has a very comfort-y food menu as you can see. It was very tempting to get macaroni and cheese with extras in it, but we stayed healthy and got the vegetarian burger with a salad. The burger was not the horrible frozen dry ones you get, it was nice and fresh based on chickpeas and lentils and with very nice spices. The bun was soft and fresh and the toppings were yummy, including a kind of chutney. 

The second was a full high tea at the Windsor Arms Hotel and all I can say is, if you have a chance to have that, have that! The scones were so good it was like they were a completely different food than regular scones, and now we want to learn how to make them that way. I had clotted cream for the first time and it is really lovely, nicer than whipped. And the petit fours were delicious. The sandwiches were fine; we make tea-type sandwiches at home and although these were fancier they were in the same family if that makes sense? So that part was nice but it was the scones that were so good. I drank Darjeeling tea. 

The last was today at lunch and was our Mother's Day special meal; we went a day early so there was no hurry. It was at the Magic Oven which is both aunt Lyria's and my favourite, and we got the Prana magic pizza we always get which was rosemary roasted sweet potatoes, caramelized onions, gorgonzola cheese, and figs, on a lovely crust with olive oil (no tomato sauce). As usual it was very very yummy, and aunt Shandra got her organic Nickel Brook lager. 

Happy Mother's Day! I will write tomorrow about my mother. I hope! =) 

I thought I would read my father's journal before anyone but my mother did. I actually missed most of it, but I did learn that my father probably did love my mother really. Actually I think I knew that they loved each other.

It is pretty horrible you could love each other that much and still be like that. I hope that does not happen to me and David! In a way I am a little worried that he is my first love, a lot of people think your first love is never the one where it really works out. 

But I have to say very little about me is traditional, so maybe this is a tradition I can break. =) 

Since Easter I have been dreaming a lot of things. Some of them I think are just nightmares but a lot of them I also think are the little ones in my mother's system showing me their memories (we are connected). They are awful things. Not all of them are things that happened, some of them I think are things that the Lynns thought might happen, like if you don't do this this thing will happen. That kind of thing. But I don't know. Mostly I know that I am dreaming them and they are terrible. 

When I was younger I used to study with Maelynn about things in Lynn. Not just the rules and the language but also things like...if this happens do this. At that time it didn't really make very much sense to me, but I listened because well, that was what my brother and I did in the day! It was all very calm and kind of beautiful like poetry, or a picture. I will say it was like Guernica actually. You see the picture and you see all the colours and shapes and you admire the picture. And then slowly, this is what is happening now, you realize that it was a massacre and people died, not just in a picture way, but real people really died in horrible ways. 

It is like that. 

But one of the hard things is realizing that my mother lived a lot of those things and to her they are not awful. Well I think she understands some of that, in her mind, and a few even in her heart. But she can't feel how awful they were mostly, and definitely not that they were awful to her and everyone that was there. Partly because people that she loved and trusted said they weren't awful and you know, that is how it works when you are small. I have little kids here outside and they check everything out. Their bodies tell them things, but then they ask still, like the baby will fall and cry and then he says "ow?" and we nod and say "ow" and then he says "ow!" (He doesn't have a lot of words yet.)  But even our older son will come home and say someone said something. And we will say how do you feel about that? And he will say it hurt his feelings. But he is watching us to see if it should. And you know, every now and then he needs help to understand it hurts but is not bad, like a friend says "I want to play by myself this recess," that is not mean even if it is disappointing. 

So all these things together make me realize that my mother doesn't even know those things were supposed to be awful for her. I don't know if she ever will. And that is okay, but when I dream about them and they are awful and she just looks at me like she is very sorry it bothers me but she doesn't quite understand why, like I was upset about raisins spilling or something, it does ache. It aches for me and it aches for her. 

I used to talk to my father about these things but as everyone is probably tired of reading, he left me. =( 

Anyways the nice thing though is David understands. I don't like to tell him all the things because it is a lot and probably one reason my father left me in the second place, he didn't want to read my email or have any contact with me and I think in part it is because he knew I would talk about my mother. I try to trust David not to leave about it but you know my father is supposed to be my father and stay no matter what so at times I think it just must have been that much. 

So David said anyway we could sleep in the same bed and when I have nightmares I could tell him. I don't always tell him the things but it does make the nights a whole lot better, when I wake up someone is there and it is warm and cosy and I am not alone and then I can breathe and get back to sleep, good sleep, and not feel like everything in the world is that bad and hopeless. And disgusting, in the dreams there is a lot of physically disgusting things. 

Oh but I do like the sleeping thing. A little too much sometimes. =) Like I would like it to last and last. 

I knew when I made my decisions this Easter that I would hear things but I did not know I would dream them quite like that. It makes me feel very sad for everyone who had these kinds of things happen to them as little kids, it is hard to see how hard it is both ways. To be the strong grown up about it and to be the hurt little kids about it. 

I met a tea sommelier (I don't know if I spelled that right) today, for work. It was so much fun and so lovely. I learned lots and lots about tea, growing and making, and the types, and infusing, and pairing tea with food, and the history of tea and of the afternoon tea tradition in Britain.

Also she was really nice and like my aunt Lyria, except maybe a little - okay a lot! - more methodical. Kind and warm and thoughtful. And like she had some light lighting her up from the inside. Aunt Shandra says it is living in line with your passions and in this case I think Aunt Shandra is very right. This woman loves loves loves tea, and she was sharing that with us.

It is astonishing me how many lovely and present people there are in the world. This woman was one of those. She was not rich like oh, you think of rich (we were at her house) but she very clearly chose things with care, and did things with care, even if they were simple. That is a different kind of rich. I really like that.

In our system there is sometimes a lot of rushing, not just because we have a lot of business in our life right not - not hectic too much but busy - but also because sometimes it is easy to feel like we have to do things before the opportunity goes away. And of course we have little kids and that means bedtime has to be happening on time and so on. But at least we know what it is to have feet on the ground, and it is very very good to be reminded to do that.

There is time for tea!

I feel like I want to remember more who I am that is not Lynn and not this side of the family. And also I have been wondering how my father is. I almost looked tonight but I didn't. I have been discussing it a little bit with David, promises and ethics and things, but the talk is not keeping up with how I feel. I feel very very sad. =( It is just a sad, nothing darker, but I do feel it. 

Easter is coming and I still have decisions to make about whether I will - well I guess the simplest way is to say whether I will go to my mother's ceremony or not. I have talked to David about it and he has told me what he thinks and worries about, and sometimes that is hard to hear. Not because he is wrong (or for that matter because he is right) but because sometimes I find it hard to talk about these things without getting scared that he will not like me if I make the wrong decisions.

I wanted to know if I made one decision if that would mean he couldn't be with me. I have to say though I ust wanted to know, it wasn't that then I was for sure not going to choose that. I still haven't decided.

He reassured me about that anyway which - oh - is so nice. It is so nice and I could say more but I am not writing a love-letter! Actually I have been trying to write one of those but it just comes out silly. Really someone needs to invent new ways to say things. Okay back to the point.

The point is I am not talking about the facts of the talking. =) I am just saying I find that I get in my own way because I get distracted. We were having a good conversation about things outside of us,  but I got worried and started asking about us and that kind of ended the talk about the things.

Some people here were saying that makes me like my father which might be true. I mean I know what they mean that way. But I think too it comes from being with my father's family and system in the past. And then some of it is just me. Aunt Shandra says a lot of it is fourteen but honestly!

I really don't know what I think about whether you might call moral or religious choices. I know when I did Easter things last year they were awful and I would not do those things again, but I did not come away from them with either a strong idea about whether they were meaningful or meaningless.

What David was saying is that when we choose things that defines us as people and he is worried if I make the same kind of choice over and over it will put me down one path, maybe further or in a bigger way than I know. I thought that was silly because I know why I would do it and it wouldn't be for bad reasons. But then I remembered that was sort of what I thought last year, and it did change me a lot, and it was very hard and I am not the same as I would be if I had not done those things. I think I like who I am, I mean enough anyway -- it is funny how hard that is to say, why should it be? -- but I remember I thought it would not be that hard and it was more than that hard.

Today at work I had lunch with a group of young women that my aunt calls junior staff by which she means in job but also in age and experience, although really they are not exactly junior, and that is my aunt's way of reminding me not to forget we are at work. Well they had lunch and I had a latte because someone had already eaten our lunch (that happens when we start the day at 5:30!). We sat in the sun -- it was so warm here!!! -- in the park and we talked about everyone's names, what they mean and how they got them and whether they liked them. I felt a little sad I could not really talk about my real name, Avalon, since I had so many thoughts about its meaning and wondering why my father chose it and how it worked with my mother's ideas last year. I could only think the answers.

Then afterwards upstairs something came up about the 80s and hair and aunt Shandra said she had big hair and one of them said to me something about forgetting I was old. She sounded so shocked, like she had really forgotten. =) =)  =) I never had hair like that either!

A great pair of boots!

There are SO MANY good things I almost can't list them all.

I met Jully Black and Divine Brown! I LOVE them as singers and it was soo nice to meet them. My aunt is rolling her eyes but oh! It was lovely. I have a picture of me and Jully but I will not post it because our body looks tired (well it was!) She is a warrior queen like my aunt and honestly I think they would get along. =)

I have been getting to do so many amazing interviews at work. And some silly ones. But one was about being who you are and if that is a quiet kind of person to have a quiet strength. I am not exactly a quiet person but sometimes I keep to myself and this woman just...I don't know. She made me feel like whoever you are is whoever you should be. She and my aunt Lyria got along. And me. I wanted to talk to David about it but he could not come today. =( But it is all right, I will either write or tell him the next time. Oh yes David is a good thing even if he riled Maelynn up...it does not take very much to rile her up though. =)

The next person I am interviewing is a tea stylist. Can you believe that is a job? I don't know very much about that job yet but tea is a big thing. Maybe I will become a pizza stylist. =)

I really like people. =) I am not sure I like interviewing them so much but it is a chance to talk to them. I am hopefully starting my class soon and maybe I will make some more friends there. My class is in death studies, I know it sounds strange but it is about different cultural beliefs around death and that kind of thing. Thanatology.

Picasso is coming here! Well obviously not the PAINTER but his ART and we will be going to see it for sure. I am so excited! Last weekend we went to the zoo and I liked that too..not quite as much as art galleries and museums in some ways but the fresh air is nice and oh Liam and Noah are so funny there. Liam saw a toddler orangutan nursing and he went wild! Then he found out he could walk outdoors and that was mostly what he wanted to do. I think seeing turtles swim was his favourite though he laughed and laughed. Noah is more thoughtful now and he went to look at the skulls and touch snakeskin and see how the scales grow and all those things. He got his second stripe in martial arts this week and everyone was very proud.

And we ordered pizza. I had ham and pineapple, not by choice. Noah got the pick since it was his stripe. =) But it was very good, and we have been really cooking at home so eating something takeout was a very nice treat.

I worked on making some pictures brighter today and I got a very lovely compliment from our boss. On March 24 if there is still room we are taking a video class and I am kind of excited about it. Caprice is really excited. It is only 4 hours and we still have to register but if it works out it will be really great.

The strange thing is, Livejournal showed me an ad for the cemetary where my aunts' baby is buried. And the sad things...the biggest is that today was her deathiversary. We went to see her on her birthday and today and on a website I am not linking to my aunt wrote a long thing about her to help women make good choices in labour. My aunts get very sad and I do a little too although I did not actually know Emily. And the second is that my mother is having a hard time. It is Lent which is always a hard time for her and even though she loves Mikael she misses the person she thought my father was.

More than that her religious duties are weighing her down a little right now but I guess I can help with that!

My aunt Shandra's website mostly blew up and we hopefully will have time to fix it this weekend. Last weekend it was the zoo, and then finally we got some answers, and then people were too frustrated to do things and this week is always a bit like that, wobbly, so they just decided to wait.

This post made me sad. For those kids and for all us kids whose dads would rather not talk to us than have to deal with our moms.