Dear Alex, Ivy, my rockery.

Dear Alex,

I think, gauging by tonight, you are not all that well. Just a cough, nothing serious, but maybe that is why you slept for several hours today, and were quiet the rest of the day.

Whatever the reason, I managed to get out into the garden. It is overridden with ivy and many brambles. I don my gardening gloves, and pull endlessly at roots. An hour-and-a-half I pull out ivy roots, small and large. I stand back, wipe brow, look, I have barely made a mark. It feels like a good metaphor for life, I think. As I pull at the roots and strings of ivy, I allow negative, angry thoughts to rise, and tug at the roots, tearing them out of the ground. A sense of relief. Only to discover there are more, smaller roots pushing up their heads. I have to pluck at those, painstakingly.

It felt like performing very tangibly what I feel I am going through. Whilst I am tugging at the big roots, getting satisfaction from the resolving of big things- House, School, happy kids, I then look under this to see the tiny masses of chores and things I have to achieve to make sure the big things don't come crashing down, or regrowing. It's like plucking at the small negative things which niggle, hurt and irritate. Whether it be something someone has said, something someone hasn't done, or a bill, a parking ticket, a couple holding hands, a dad with his child on his shoulders, all these small things which keep me constantly occupied, draining.

Then you step back from what feels like a mammoth effort for two years, and find that you have covered but centimetres of your life, and before you get to sorting the rest of it, as it is ticking away, the ivy will reroot, replant, and none of the effort you put into the rest will ever be fruitful...

At least that was my interpretation today.


Ivy is a weed, bad things in your life feel the same, strangle the good things too.

So I do what?

Get a gardener?!

Burn the whole thing?!


Or make sure you spot the ivy before it overtakes, get it whilst it is beginning? Or is that too late?

I feel you slipping away like the overgrown ivy rockery, I need a gardener...

And I suppose time, that age old expression that makes you want to throw someone out the window when they say that to you!

Time.

It's precious, it is a healer...

We just have to keep going, keep uprooting the ivy till there is no more, and we can plat the new flowers, new memories, and grow as we need to as a family.




me xxxxxxxxxxx

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