Hey!
Every week I curate little moments Ordinary Magnificence and then lovingly fold them into a collection of words for you to open at your leisure. A variety of content, always sent with love, care, compassion and appreciation for all that you are.
A warm hug of a welcome to you one and all, a special hello-ha to my newest subscribers. It is marvy to have you here.
We are now a community of 100 subscribers strong; which is actually pretty darn magic. Thank you people.
I am on my morning teen-train drop and stilled at lights I spot a little boy walks along with his Dad.
Hand in hand.
He can’t be more than 2 or may be 3 years old; his little legs are working very hard.
It looks like a fairly new phenomenon to him.
Or perhaps the route is new, along a busy road with traffic and early morning commuters and generic school ambulation.
His legs are like little pistons. He is pistoling rather than walking. And he is really quite fascinated by the process. Entirely enthralled, gazing down with unabashed admiration, taking in the glorious leg action and the ground-in-motion below - with not so much as a glance to the journey ahead. It is joyous to watch.
It makes me wonder, when we do we stop engaging with the acts of wonder? We expect to be moved by the birth of a new-born, to feel entirely entranced with the cleverness of it all, finally meeting after a long incubation….. reeling from the sheer undertaking of cell upon cell into human form. Perhaps the Northern Light gave us pause, or the silence of the darkest of nights when the sky is lit up and it feels like it is a feast solely for our own delight. Camping in France, I’m on a 3am jaunt to the toilettes and momentarily forgetting the swell of my bladder as I stand in the abundant silence, torch in hand, a suggestion of collective nocturnal breath sliding amongst tents and vans. Alone and yet in community and gazing, staring, momentarily immobile as I drink in the sky in all it’s wonderful wonder.
But it feels like sometimes the wonder can leave us.
We are wonder-less.
Do we become expectant, or is it a lack of notice-ness-ness?
Yesterday, laundry basket in hand I am “florally-assaulted” by a huge yellow rose ambling out from our garage wall; it feel like it’s literally waving at me.
“Hello, it is I, the rose…. have a good ol’ whiff of this up your hooter”.
Admonished, I stop, smell and am immediately transported back to my Grandparents garden. I am a little girl once more, fringe too short, a gappy, toothless smile and I am gathering rose petals with concentrated intent. I’m taught the art of taking the blossoms that are near to falling; to leave the others to bloom in all their glory. My little sis and I are on our regular mission to make rose water perfume with my Grandma as chief facilitator. Jars laid out alongside their twin tub washing machine, home-made jam tarts cooling to one side; it is quite the assembly line. My Grandad appears with a rose for Grandma. They held hands until the very day he died; and showed simple acts of love like the delivery of morning marmalade smeared toast in bed and roses from the garden. I wonder what she missed the most after Grandad died; these little imperceptible acts that made the gargantuan whole of their love?
In fact I had to halt my writing to poodle out and back into the garden, swiping a rose from it’s stem and placing it into the very same vase that once had sat on my grandparents mantelpiece. A solo sitting, as it needs no added fuss to shadow its glory. There is a fairly hefty crack in this ancient, slender vase, but if anything it makes me love it more.
Mella Yella Rose: Whitcroft May 2023
My bot was on my yoga mat on Monday night in our local park.
Dog walkers and running club runners adding to the park milieu. Gazing up amongst the trees I felt such an expected and yet all encompassing longing for my friends from my home city. To have them lay their mats with mine; so that as I moved from pose to pose I’d see an outline of their arm, a lift of their leg or catch a smirk of a smile as they sway perilously in tree pose. We would lie on our mats in a web of togetherness and gaze (in wonder) at the blue sky shifting above us, awash in our shared history. It is absolute nonsense really, as none of them particularly engage with yoga - but in that moment they were there with me and the little pang of loss was as real to me as the grass between my toes.
This year will be ten years of living in our claimed home, and we are truly and completely settled, content and grateful for the life we have created here and the ability to visit our loved ones in our birth-home with relative ease. But every now again a little kernel of grief will nudge itself into my awareness and I’ll catch my breath with the ferocity of which I feel the waft of love and longing I have for those who are not within easy hugging distance. It is literally like a tug, tug, tug… interwoven tapestry of shared memories and living that threads its way into our life.
I’ve heard grief described as love-ungiven. Like we continue to have that love to gift and yet it has nowhere to be spent. In some ways this works, and in others not so much as I feel like that moment of love is then directed to that memory. Emboldening out the vision, strengthening the fuzzy corners of it held within our minds eye and the deep, eternal undulations of our heart. Also I feel it is given unto the wider world, the universe, regurgitated in those around us, gifted further in an embrace, a caress, a kind word that grows and strengthens in an abundance of love, care and hope. Redirected. Not lost.
A little OM….
My little moment of Ordinary Magnificence takes the form of a little BBC Sounds listen this week. I’m rather partial to earful of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live; they curate such a joyful blend of guests and it abounds with a warmth and curiosity that I find quite delicious. Whilst the guests are tremendous and I recommend a cheeky play-back to any episode - it is the section on Thank-You’s that I find heart-fuelling. So varied and diverse, like a study of human culture in itself and each one of them tells a story of some sort of challenge or adversity where another human stepped up to help and didn’t hang about for a praise-fest.
I recommend it for a tour of human kindness. You’ll find it here
Photo by Vika Glitter: https://www.pexels.com
Until next time, dearest friends - can you find wonder in the ordinary?
Wonder-on I say…, wonder-on
Sending love and light from my heart to yours beautiful people.
Pam
p.s. If you feel you’d like to share my substack with other like minded soul, that would be most marvy. Thank you.
I love to hear your thoughts or insights - so please do drop a word or two down…. and if you click a cheeky wee “like” apparently it helps folks find me work…. so there’s a thing.
*All content is provided as general information and is not intended as specific health advice or guidance.
For more Pam here’s my: Ordinary Magnificence Website
So many beautiful things here to reflect on, Pam. I particularly connected to the image of your grandparents holding hands every day. It would be so easy to let those small gestures slide, but they are important and actually not small at all. The description of grief as love ungiven resonated loudly with me too. And well done on your 100 subscribers, that's brilliant! So happy for you! I hope the querying process for your book is going just as well, too! ❤️
Yellow roses - my Nan’s favourite 💛 Your beautiful description of being with your grandparents transports me right back to time I spent as a little girl with my Nan in her garden. Happy memories. Thank you for taking me there again ☕️
FYI on Substack earlier, I saw a recommendation for this book - ‘The Year I Stopped to Notice’ by Miranda Keeling, I looked it up and it made me smile. It’s certainly so easy to fall into the trap of failing to notice the small things. Every time I’m halted by a red light when driving, I make a conscious effort to avoid instinctively sighing and instead try take to opportunity to look around. The last time I did this, I noticed a patch of stunning wildflowers at a motorway roundabout. I hadn’t seen them before, were they newly planted, or maybe I hadn’t taken sufficient time to notice before?
Another enjoyable read Pam, thank you for sharing with us x