Links in a chain

We create in small acts. Every day. They build into something bigger. Even in the "dry" periods, you can trace these acts and see how they're all linked.

It struck me as I walked across a frozen field this morning – over brittle grass like sugar-frosted, glittering anemone tentacles – that so much in our lives is an unacknowledged series of small acts of creation. Links in a chain…

This was my thinking, as I paused to take a photo, which I do almost daily. I had to stand on the dog leads and fumble off my gloves. My breath puffed in the cold. And I took my shot.

I realised there and then, this act of stopping and framing is another creative fragment. Because I’m worried that I’m not “working” at my art and writing much at the moment, this reassured me. And each act is contemplative too, a meditation on what I notice, what draws me, what sparks ideas.

Repeat after me, notice what you notice.

Admittedly, these are mere moments of reverence, triggered by big or small views, a glancing of the light, cloud shapes or a pattern that draws me in and stalls progress. Much to the dogs’ frustration.

Glancings

Then there’s an urgency because these ‘glancings’, as my term suggests, are mostly fleeting. Light hitting selective branches, highlighting a vivid patch of lichen, or sun rays lining the peripheries of a cloud mass, revealing a pewter, gold and sliver colour scheme – precious metals.

Sometimes I’ll see an attractive ‘space between’, an echo of tree shapes on the liminal edges of fields, or a particular relationship between land and sky that appeals. And if my eye has been caught, I absolutely must stop and frame.

I know there are people who feel that the camera displaces the immediacy of an experience, or sucks away the soul, if that isn’t a cliche. But for me, each photo is an affirmation – the (phone) camera is a very handy tool that gives insight into my inner curator, pointing to my instinctive response before my analytical brain barges in and takes over, like the overbearing bully it is.

That’s all.

Hers and mine

Then of course there’s creativity in how we manage our relationships. I’ve been thinking about this a good deal too. Probably because my mother is very ill in hospital, and I’ve been making long journeys through Wales to visit her. Everything feels acute, as she’s proven difficult to diagnose, and she’s nearly 83. So my noticing of this world – life continuing, oblivious to her life story – seems very intense right now. And has triggered reflection on mothering. Hers and mine.

When I last visited, I managed to get her talking about how she met some of her friends. She started grown-up life as a children’s nurse. She must have trained or worked in Alder Hey hospital, Liverpool, where she met my father, her first husband. They had no real bond, but she was convinced she was pregnant (although wasn’t) and that was that. Twenty-years old then and two children born before she hit twenty-three. (Plus a post-script baby, me, at 29.)

My two babies were born either side of 40. Yes, how the times have changed.

Ziggy Stardust cookies

My daughter recently had two friends over. They had fun doing theatre make up, wild-coloured eyelids and cheeks – think Ziggy Stardust. Very cute.

Then I got them baking big colourful cookies and they sat in a row on our long, wide garden wall – faces to the winter sun, munching. I felt involved and tender towards these kids. I wanted them to flourish creatively and socially. And get off screens, which are such convenient babysitters for my parenting cohort.

For my parents’ generation it was all benign neglect, which sometimes bordered on bewilderingly absent. But then I recall the trips to the library, a few creative workshops for kids, the swimming pool birthday parties and money for horse-riding and piano lessons (even when, as a single parent, there was very little money around). This was her love, just not given with obvious involvement. Somehow offered at arm’s length, a common practice then. Emotionally safe perhaps.

My feelings on this? Either style of parenting seems defined by its generation. Both manage to create links in that chain, each time building confidence towards becoming creatively articulate adults.