Morning Noodles,
(Maybe Elizabeth will get mad if she sees I’m also calling you ‘Lovely Ones’. I think from hereon, it’s going to be Noodles. It doesn’t mean anything sinister. It’s just like a term of endearment)
It’s like when the kiddies were little – and even today if I think about it- if I’m feeling upbeat and all when I wake (no-one ever knows how they’ll feel when they’re awake do they?) I sometimes ask them how they’ve slept in a sort of childish way. “Did you sleep like a fish, a banana or a potatoe”, I’ll ask and my kids know what to answer. It’s a little stranger for the new boyfriend but sometimes I ask all the same.
Back now. Got a nice hot cuppa tea (with milk no more of that lemon and water for now.) Enya the boxer came in and snuffled into my gown like a pig would do and I wrapped my arms around her solid brown furry body. Ooh I do love that dog. And she can’t talk to me but I know she loves me too the way she sort of snorts and breathes loudly into my body and wags her tail wildly.
No alarm today. Weekend and all which means I’m a little later at this screen today and anyway the weather has turned, and the clouds are hovering and not omnimous but just more present shall we say. Soft and enveloping. But I don’t want to talk about the weather and the birds every time I pitch up here, looking for the best description for what it is I’m feeling. This is a blog after all. Short for web log (I googled it a few years ago if you don’t know) which means that it’s not your best writing. It’s not polished or edited or anything. I really just type away, whatever I feel, pop in a pic and whoosh it off to whoever sees it…
And I know they say your stuff gets more attention with a pic. Like posts on FaceBook or whatever but I don’t always like to find the best pic and make the whole thing all contrived if you know what I mean. And anyway, I’m not a great photographer. And the reason I blog is to write. So, sorry about the lack of images at the mo. Maybe that’ll change. Who knows? Who knows anything for certain? Especially now.
Had a really good day yesterday if have to be honest. In fact, in terms of emotions, it was quite a weird day. I fluctuated between euphoria and excitement about something, and then a dull satisfaction of sorts, and then a sense of underlying doom. That wave of panic and anxiety that lies beneath the surface during this time and surfaces when you least expect it. Like a freak wave I suppose. The weather was completely co-operative and perfect for outdoors and we utilised it for a family tennis tournament which was fun, with all the other attachments of competitiveness and family dynamics that arise when you put us all together. We seem to all have a pretty good ball- sense so it means that we’re constantly all trying to prove that we either were pretty good at sport in our youth, or never focused on it sufficiently to excel at school, or haven’t played in years, or focused on another sport which was preferred or whatever. The strongest of us was the winner of course. And what a beautiful game he plays. Actually I was impressed by the whole damn lot. It’s a treat to watch your children play sport. (Another thing I realised that must be unbelievably and unbearably difficult – the professional sportsmen who are sitting around, the tournaments that are cancelled around the world. My dad reminded me of this when I chatted to him and he said he was missing his sport on TV. Ah bless you my dad.) I was told years ago by my husband that I had obviously lost my killer instinct ( I don’t think I ever had it to be honest! ) when we first played a game at a club in Cape Town – which was incidentally known as being anti-Semitic in the old days – one of our first dates as it was.
Which brings me to this whole thing of antisemitism actually which is something I need to explore a lot more in my research. I haven’t really read up enough to know what, why and how. We can never read enough.
But I want to end off now. I didn’t really intend doing another online diary today because I’ve already scheduled some future blogs to go off in case I lose my interest here. Doesn’t look like though, this lockdown blogging thing. Seems like my one constant.
Though, before I do, I want to share with you something else I learnt from The Choice. Edith Eger. Yes, I know. I keep chatting about it but this book is taking me far longer than usual because I’m fascinated. And I sit and think about it for hours and then return to it. I promise I won’t share anymore after this because I’ll finish it after posting this I think, and you can read the end yourself.
Here’s something from page 314:
Edith was treating her patient Jason (the one I mentioned before who wanted to kill his wife) and said that :
“I taught him a mantra for managing his emotions: notice, accept, check, stay. When a feeling started to overwhelm him, the first action towards managing the feeling was to notice- to acknowledge- that he was having a feeling. He could say to himself, Aha! Here I go again. This is anger. This is jealousy. This is sadness. ( My Jungian therapist taught me something that I find quite comforting- that although it feels like the palette of human feelings is limitless, in fact every emotional shared, like every colour, is derived from just a few primary emotions: sad, mad, glad, scared.”
I hope that helps us when dealing with this lockdown. To understand that our emotions (just four of them) are likely to be all over the place at the moment. A little like that tumble drier of mine that kept going around and around.
I wish all of you peace, acceptance and love over this Pesach and Easter period. (And I hope that the Easter Bunny remembers to brave the shops today if he doesn’t have a supply of Easter eggs for us yet – he doesn’t. )
‘Til tomorrow,
xxx
Stay safe, stay sane
Niki Malherbe 