Great Christian Diaries

2003-11-11 - 1.30am (12th)  previous entry  next entry

My sewing machine works again. And AOL still sucks but at least now I know I need to get off my butt and buy a 10 metre RJ11 cable and fix it to our phone socket and run it through to the computer room and plug the DSL filter and modem into it, and THEN we should be able to start loving AOL Broadband as it ought to be loved. But knowing the solution is half the stress solved, so I am being lazy and plodding on with rubbish AOL connection just because I "know" what to do about it but can't be bothered. Bleh. Anyway, I'm online at the moment which is something.

I am so so grateful to Meg, Shelley, Laura-Ann, Helen and Leah for your guestbook messages. Thanks for your kindness and your encouragement and your honesty, and mostly for taking the time to say those things. It really lifted me up to see your messages when I (eventually!) got back online, and I feel less crazy for now at least! Thanks so much! *hugs*

I can't think what to do with my poll. My seasons question has been there for months now and it's kind of not appropriate any more! The vast majority of people are looking forward to autumn or wintery weather. But yeah, it's here now so, er, new poll question please?! But I can't think of one. I'll keep thinking while I write my entry, and hopefully I'll have one to change it to before I submit this entry to diaryland. I always write my diary entries in an untitled document instead of in the diaryland box, because I get chucked offline without warning a lot at the moment and I lose it all if I'm writing in the diaryland box, but not if I'm writing in this little document box. This much detail is irrelevant isn't it?

I should tell you how things are going, and then I wouldn't be waffling about RJ11 cables and document boxes.

Things are going okay at the moment. The weirdest thing is that it was my sewing machine that turned it all around. You know it was jammed right? Well I was in deep throes of agony over this for some reason - every little thing is a huge unbearable thing lately - and I couldn't make it better. Yesterday evening Neil said to show him what was wrong with the sewing machine, so I shoved a piece of fabric from my scrap box under the needle and sewed it, to show him how it would jam and chew and make horrible noises at me that make me want to cry and hit the stupid machine. It did jam and chew and make horrible noises, but then suddenly it made this big "pthchshaaaaaaachhh" noise (you know like when someone yoinks up a load of phlegm (I spelt it right) from the back of their throat and then "hochs" it out on the floor - aren't I pleasant?!). And then it sewed beautifully without a single chew or noise! Yay!

So I looked and Neil in great delight and said, "I want to sew!" and he left me to it till bedtime. I sewed a nappy. I had to stop when it got too late, but I finished it this morning and you can see it here if you're as thrilled as I am about cloth nappies. Anyway last night after I had been sewing for a while, I realised that a) I was singing and feeling happy, and b) I was hungry. So I went downstairs to talk to Neil about dinner, and he said he could tell I was happy again because my complexion was completely different. Isn't it weird how that was just down to sewing? I have been sort of craving sewing for the last couple of days. I have felt like I NEED to sew, like a comfort thing, something soothing and creative and practical and distracting. And it seems like it has worked too.

The other thing that I've done that has seemed to help a bit is housework. I have been planning what housework I'll do the next day as I lie in bed trying to sleep at night. Yesterday wasn't a good day till my sewing machine worked, and I didn't get dressed or anything. When it got dark I felt awful for not having done anything I'd planned or getting dressed or anything, so I threw some clothes on (over my pyjamas, tsk!) and went to the butcher's and the supermarket and got all the food we have been out of recently. So last night we had a roast dinner!! This is good because I really need to be eating more meat (sorry to vegetarian readers!). I always feel kind of pfththth and anaemic if I haven't eaten meat for a week or more. Chicken nuggets and fish fingers don't seem to count. My whole body feels super grateful towards me in the 24 hours after I eat proper meat. I am someone who neeeeds to eat meat. Plus I like it :) I hope I'm allowed to say that? ;)

Anyway when I got home from shopping I did the washing up and put the shopping away and cleaned the kitchen surfaces and the gas hob. So that was my housework for yesterday. All crammed into a short patch, but I still felt better for doing some. So today I changed and washed the bed sheets and did laundry ALL day long. I folded piles and piles of clean laundry and put it all away, which as usual meant completely reorganising Neil's drawers and wardrobe. He has great difficulty keeping the contents of drawers tidy, so that you can't stuff anything else in it because it's all scrumpled up and mixed and shoved into clumps from where he's been rummaging and searching for that T-shirt he simply MUST wear, etc!! So it all has to come out on the floor and get re-folded and then I can put the new stuff away. A couple of years ago this bugged me to distraction, and then my mum told me this is how men are, and it's just something you have to do. Since then I have been perfectly happy to organise Neil's drawers, and I don't mind how many times I have to keep doing it. I like that it's part of my old-fashioned housewife role, because that's what I want to be anyway.

So that took me a while! And I took a bath and got dressed today. The other thing I was meant to do was clean the bathroom but I never did in the end. It's my least favourite household job of all of them. Yuck, I hate cleaning the loo. Hate it. But on the other hand I LOVE being a housewife and doing all these jobs around the house and keeping it nice while my husband works and brings home the money. I would have fitted RIGHT in 50 years ago wouldn't I?! I love it.

I phoned my mum today and we spoke for 40 minutes like we always seem to. We talked about lots of stuff, and about how I'm doing about Cameron at the moment. Mummy understands me like I can't explain. I never even knew she understood me THIS well. Or maybe it's grief that she understands. Probably both. She is simply the most wonderful amazing mother I could ever have wished for. I find myself scared silly a lot of the time lately, worrying how bad it's going to be when I lose her, if things feel this awful losing Cameron. I don't want to ever ever EVER lose anyone again, because I feel like I can't possibly go through this again and survive. Even if I get better from how I feel about Cameron's death, I still couldn't bear to relive anything like it. And I know it can only be worse when Mummy dies. There's no-one I've ever been closer to. Not even Neil yet, although that is in a different way almost, and I know that closeness with a spouse increases and deepens over the years.

Anyway, I did not give Mummy enough credit for seeing my relationship with Cameron for what it really was. I never told her what Cameron meant to me, ever. I never expressed it in words to her once, over all these years, not even when I was with him so frequently, and when I brought him home with me those times when I had sole responsibility for him. But she must have seen it, not just in me, but in him as well. Today I told her how sometimes I stand at his grave and cry and can't believe it. And she said that I have always been "more than a mini-Mummy to Cameron". And I knew she understood - completely. I never told her that I saw him as my own child, but she saw it anyway and knew that was the bond I had with him. Then she said to me that it ran both ways, that Cameron had the same bond with me. I know he did, but I hadn't realised others had seen it in him too. Neil said this evening that he remembered how in the last couple of years, whenever I've been to see Cameron at his house, his mum has told me he waited at the window for ages before I got there. He did that the last day I saw him too, in July. His mum said, "He never gets up this early for school!" hehe. He would always be up early, all excited that I was coming, and the last time I went to see him, he waited at the window an hour before I was due. And he was eleven. So he must have really really loved me and wanted to see me. I must have meant a lot to him if he behaved like that. That made me remember what his parents said to me as I left on the day of the funeral. His dad said, "He thought the world of you." To which I replied, "I thought the world of him too." I felt sad saying it, because at the time it felt like it left an enormous chasm, like, bigger than the Grand Canyon, of how I REALLY felt about him. Just to say he meant the world to me was so puny compared with what he really DID mean to me. It seemed such a sad and empty sentence in comparison, and one that didn't show anybody the truth about how I loved him.

But now I am piecing it all together, and I see that others who know me well have always seen that Cam and I shared a parent-child bond - not just me with my besotted heart, but Cameron too. Before he died, Mummy always used to say to me that Cameron and I had a bond that could never be broken. I used to think she meant what we'd been through, with his health problems and me being there for him always, but now I see that she meant a bond like a parent has with their own child. Also I am beginning to see that Cameron really DID have that bond with me, from how he acted around me, and before I would arrive, and the fact that on a difficult day like his funeral, his parents would take the time to tell me how Cameron thought the world of me. Now they wouldn't have done that if it wasn't absolutely true. And I know other people at the funeral meant a lot to Cameron but nobody else seemed to receive such a beautiful compliment as I did on the day of his funeral. Did I really mean more to him than most? The very thought is shiveringly wonderful, it feels like the greatest treasure. I only knew how much HE meant to ME, and I often presumed he felt close to me because of how I was there a lot when he was little, but that's all. If he felt like I do.... what a wonderful wonderful realisation that would be. And HOW I wish I had nurtured that bond more, how DESPERATELY I wish it.

Anyway.

I can't remember where I was going with that (if anywhere) so hmmm. Oh yes, the phone call with Mummy. So it was really encouraging to know she understood. My brother has moved house, and in 10 days new people are moving into my childhood home for the first time since we moved in there in July 1981 (I was five). There are two things left for me to pick up. A framed painting that I did in nursery school and some curtains. The curtains are LONG awaited, for our lounge. And the painting is a family treasure! :) In April 1980 my grandparents were part-way through their year long house exchange with a family in California. We flew out to see them for a month, and while we were there, we visited Yosemite National Park. I SWEAR I have a memory of seeing a bear when I came out of a public toilet, but Granny was right behind me and she says there was no bear. Just like I SWEAR I have a memory of going out with the family for the day and when we got back to our log cabin, the whole place was trashed and there was food everywhere, and Granny held me close while the others looked around, and then Daddy said, "It must have been a bear." But again, this is apparantly a false memory. I think I had been told before we went there that there might be bears at Yosemite. I wasn't scared at all, in fact I was desperate to see a real live bear, even if it was dangerous! Four-year-olds aren't usually scared by such things.

Anyway, I was so sure I saw a bear. When we got home, the first thing I did back at nursery school was to paint the bear I saw. It's just a stick bear with two dots for eyes and a curved smiley mouth, and two sticky-outy arms with circles for hands (paws, I mean). It has ears and flat feet too. It's painted with grey paint, except one of it's arms is done with brown paint, and it's that thick kiddies' paint that runs with thick drips. But my parents loved it so much when I brought it home that they pinned it up. And after a while they bought a proper mahogany frame for it and hung it on the wall. It hung proudly in the hallway for almost 20 years!! And now it has no particular owner since we are all grown up and my parents would want to put it away carefully rather than hang in on their wall now, so I am reclaiming it! I love my painting of a bear. My brother loves it too, but it's mine :) So I need to hurry up and visit my brother and his lovely fiancee at their new home, and pick up the house keys and pay one last visit to my precious childhood home, and take my curtains and my bear painting and my childhood memories, and close the door on that whole part of my life. It's such a shame when things like that have to happen. I would love to have lived and died in that house. I can't imagine it not being part of our family anymore :(

What else? Tomorrow is a scary / exciting day! Judith and I are going to visit Emily!!! Emily who reads my diary!!! We are going to pray with her and chat and it's going to be great. I have been feeling so distant and flat with God lately, so I don't know how that side of things will go. But I usually find that as soon as I close my eyes and focus on God and genuinely long to serve him and bless the person I'm with, he is always so faithful and somehow always blesses me and speaks to me. Today I have watched my new Deliriou5 (doesn't that 5 just annoy you?! Okay I'm gonna write Delirious from now on, because it bugs me!) video, but I didn't know many of the songs from the year it was made, and I was all but ready to switch it off and carry on being all flat with God, and then they played "I'm not ashamed of the gospel" which is one I used to punch the air and sing till I was hoarse to with the best of them, and that reminded me of what it's all about - Jesus. "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, I'm not ashamed of the one I love!" I was like, "Ohhhh yeah!" Like I'd somehow totally forgotten for a while, that Jesus is "the one I love" - the ONE. Lately Cameron has been the "one" and the "only" as well. I know this is normal. But I need to remember my First Love, which will always be Jesus. It was good to be reminded, and to then sing with new feeling, "I'm not ashamed of the one I LOVE!" because it's true again. It was never untrue, but I forgot for a while that I love Jesus so much. Well no, I didn't forget that I love him as such, I just couldn't feel it, my heart was absolutely eclipsed by the pain I was feeling at losing Cameron, and how much I loved Cameron. I have done a lot of thinking and praying aloud, "Jesus, I NEED you", but forgetting to say, "Jesus, I love you" like I usually do. Maybe this is a seasonal thing in life. Sometimes I really do just NEED Jesus, but then I guess that shows how much I love him doesn't it.

Well I hope tomorrow goes well. And after Emily's, we have therapy, so I am picking Neil up from work for that. And ohhhh my goodness, I absolutely cannot believe it is 1.30am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can that be?!! I came online well before midnight. Aaaargh. Going to bed. Night night!

Recent entries.....

Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24
Update - 5th Anniversary and other stuff! - 2004-08-16
Church picnic and being happy and things :) - 2004-06-27
Barbeque at Cameron's house... - 2004-05-18
To Tara... - 2004-04-19