Breathing Just a Little

My secondborn daughter moved out of home to a rental flat yesterday - the first of my chicks to leave the nest. I have so many feelings about this, and, as always, poetry is my access point to emotion and reflection. This poem is an English Madrigal. Moving Day When you were small (which feels like yesterday) you used to curl against me as I read your green eyes soft with wonders in your head. The movers came and took your things away your room left blank, with just your bare-stripped bed. Once all we five lived here, til yesterday; now the page turns, to stories yet unread. The days will pass, and we will find our way and learn how, at remove, to hold the thread to draw from what's behind for what's ahead. Forever lit with stars, our yesterday: the greatest story my life ever read the lines in which I read the true godhead.

On Fridays, I plan to refresh a post from one of my older blogs that still seems material or relevant. I'm calling it "Everything Old is New Again Fridays", because why not? This piece appeared on my blog Too Fond of Books in December 2015 (nine long years ago now). Although my circumstances have radically changed since then, I stand by the ideas. ---------------------------------- The Guardian is re-running links to some of its more popular pieces from 2015 as the year wends to an end. They've just relinked one about working mothers, which I remember well as it was published on my very last day of salaried employment - the very day, some would argue, that I ceased to be a role model of working motherhood to my three girls. As luck would have it, I have been able to build up a good freelance clientele since then and am close to fully employed (I average 4 days a week) in my own business. I didn't know that this would happen when I left my job, though, and I took t...