Half-term hiatus

Thank the Lord for the British system of half-terms. An outrageously busy Michaelmas/ Winter term (14 weeks in the state system) is hardly the best introduction to the next 14 years of your life in education. My poor 4 year-old is worn out. And so is his poor mum.

Parents-evenings, PSA (Parent Staff Association) meetings, cake-bakes, harvest festival, school Mass (a Catholic addition), swimming lessons and a new weekly ‘Forest School’ invention. This is nothing. Not compared with what is still round the corner…

Mostly circumventing Halloween and Bonfire Night (they are, after-all, not very Catholic), we are already in the throes of Christmas preparation. Still to come: the Junior production, the Infant production, the Infant assembly (something separate apparently), Advent Mass, Carol Singing, another PSA meeting, a PSA cake-bake, a Christmas cake-bake, Christmas bazaar and new for this year – a Year 2 Parents Lunch. Apparently we get treated to a culinary feast in the canteen as prepared by our 6 year olds. I’m salivating already.

The week-long holiday that you get in the middle of term is to enable one to re-charge the batteries. It is eagerly anticipated after about the second week of term.

For me, I love the slight relaxation in evening duties. If I had had to make another packed lunch I think I would have had a melt-down. Every term a new something that we can’t put into the lunchbox is added to a list as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall. This, along with competing with the variety that school dinners can offer (which I can’t afford for both of them) and appeasing their already individual preferences has made this my least favourite chore. I long for the day they can make their own.

And let’s not mention the dreaded school run.

So frankly I’m shattered. Having one in school was tiring enough. Having two in school seemed idyllic with a new baby. I’m not so sure now. Pre-school seems remarkably calm by comparison. I never thought I’d think that about a bunch of two and three-year olds, but wonders never cease.

For now, I am revelling in the delights of nostalgia. I have abandoned my husband for the week and brought my boys home to my parents’ house. To the place where time stands still and memories are woven into the very carpet my little ones are running on. To the place where I can share the burden of laundry and cooking in exchange for the delights of grandparenthood.

And to the place where, for a whole blissful week, I don’t have to make a single packed lunch.

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Life begins again at dawn

Every day, when you wake, imagine that this is the last day of your life – the day you are going to die. And try to live that day well, as if it was your last. Because one day you will be right.

A week ago a German woman I have never met pulled on her leathers and set off on her Harley Davidson to her destination. Perhaps she was meeting friends, going shopping or simply taking in the beautiful Alpine scenery of her native country. My father and brother were travelling the same road a few miles behind.

She never came home.

By the time my brother and dad caught up to her, she was lying crushed under her bike and a car on a slip road. Her foot was missing, her head shattered. My brother (E) – a doctor – did all he could with the assistance of the paramedics and air ambulance but in vain. Until E arrived no one had even dared go near her. She died in the arms of a stranger.

Two years ago I was travelling a dual carriage way in Morocco on my way to Tangiers. We had only just swapped the dusty roads for tarmac when we were flagged to slow down. In the distance we saw a body on the carriageway. It was way, way too small. I realised in that terrible instant I was looking at a child. He died alone.

In both cases, mercifully, they were most likely brain-dead instantly. They wouldn’t have known. But neither would they have known this was their last day, last journey; last moment.

Is it morbid to talk about death? Until you reach a certain age, or until death or perhaps illness brushes up against you, it can appear so. But the one thing we can be sure of, and the one leveller of all differences, is the one thing we all have in common; our finiteness. To deny it would be ridiculous, to avoid it, impossible. And to ignore it, unwise.

You may recognise the words I opened with as the late Steve Jobs’. Talk about capitalizing on the moment. Perhaps we aren’t destined to make as great an impact on the world as he did. Perhaps we won’t have any tangible effect at all.  But one thing we can be sure of, as instinct teaches us and natural law intuits – life is precious. Each moment is a chance to live well, to prepare for all that our faith teaches us is still to come, even when our reason struggles to focus.

It’s so easy to forget how beautiful life is when we feel knocked about, bruised or just plain weary. But we don’t know how much sand is left in our hourglass. Remember that each day, and maybe we won’t let the glass get dusty.

Have you ever stepped outside at dawn and smelt the pure vitality of a sunrise? Whether it is a stark, frosty horizon, a dusty, shimmery haze or the unbelievable beauty of a soft summer mist over the fields as the sun awakens – life begins again at dawn. Another day, another breath, another chance to give and receive, work and rest, love and be loved.

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