The 31 Day Drawing Challenge.

You know how, at the beginning of something like summer holidays, time seems to stretch out before you, endless hours just waiting to be filled? And then a curious thing happens, doesn't it. Time becomes a slippery ghost that seems to melt away into the day, without you even realising it. And suddenly the weeks are slipping away and you cannot grasp them. 

One of the four seasons.

I do try to spend this time doing things that the normal car-bound, school days don't allow, things like seeing friends who are further afield, or catching up on my personal to-do list that always, inevitably, ends up at the bottom of the pile.

Book cover for a favourite book.

One such thing on my list was, by coincidence, nicely facilitated by something my brother Andrew posted about on Facebook: a 31 Day Drawing Challenge, for the month of July. A list of titles/topics, one for every day of the month. Regular readers here will have noticed that I have recently been drawing, something which I have not done in any serious way for years and years, other than with the children. The reason for my renewed interest in this is something for a whole other post, which will follow in a couple of weeks, but suffice to say, the opportunity to commit myself to doing a drawing a day was nicely timed! I was feeling very rusty! And thanks to Donal Fallon of  Galway Pub Scrawl, I am not only enjoying drawing again, but day by day my appreciation of what it means to draw and illustrate, is changing and growing. 

A favourite fairytale.

I joined quite late into the challenge, and I have not managed to do every day since then, but I am really quite pleased to have managed what I have so far. As you can see, some days I had more time than others!

Do click the link above to see the rest of the work by everyone who is taking part. The variety of styles alone is amazing.

Favourite mythical creature.

So, it's the weekend now, and myself and the children are off for a long weekend, heading south the the tip of this island of ours, south to the lighthouse, the wilder, warmer sea. I may be naive to think that I'll have lots of drawing time (Three or four mothers, and at least twelve children? Hmm) but that is what I am aiming for. Now that my imagined project suddenly seems so much more possible, I am excited to get started!

What I wanted to be when I grew up.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I hope this warm weather continues. I hope whatever you get up to, you too find the time to tick something off your personal to-do list. 

Let's just give that to ourselves this weekend!

The Leave-Taking.

There is a little house that sits on a spit of land between a marsh and a sea, a place with jackdaws in the chimney, where lizards hide in the grass with the tiny shrews, where swans glide overhead and murmurations of starlings loop through curlew cries, and at dusk the bats swoop in their beautiful dance as herons skim the tops of the reeds against the sunset. There are countless birds that throng the marsh here, among them terns and mistle thrush and finches, lapwings, even occasional owls, and in the evening pheasant wander in the garden, and sometimes, somewhere beyond the reeds, a peacock calls, his cry across the marsh sending a tingle down your spine.

I have written so many times about the weather here and how it changes the shape of this place, about the seasons and how each one blooms and swells, brings dustly moths on the walls, spiders along the windows, stormy seas, sea mists, dancing sunlit grasses, endless blue skies, and sunsets that take your breath away.

I did mention big changes around here, didn't I? Big changes that we have been studiously ignoring the possibility of for rather a long time, now.

You see, our golden age is over.

For the sixteen years we have been living here, I have been in a little bubble with my babies, cocooned in this most magical of places, like some little creatures from the Wind in the Willows, the seasons rolling around us as we burrowed in, and we grew into this land, the green and the salt seeping into our blood and bones, from the very formation of my babies. Our Eldest was barely four months old when we moved in, and the following three were born right here in the living room with windows to the sea, and windows to the green and the mountains, pulling all combinations of seasons and weather and time of day into their beginnings, all manner of the elements that make this place so miraculously special, into the weave that is our little family.

As the years have passed, they have grown, we too, myself and Jay, have grown, this place like a paintbrush against our skin, each night touching up where it did not find us in our day, a tender reassuring like a fine mist that layers, and over the years has become our skin, as though we are this place and this place is us. But now it is at an end. When the year turns, together we will pack the little pieces of us, the myriad of little things that have been put together to form our home, the collections of Us, and we will move. And though nowhere will ever match this place, with all our hearts we know it will be somewhere beautiful. I do need green outside my window.

We are on a rollercoaster of emotions about it all. Some are excited, some wholeheartedly against it, but it is out of our hands, regardless, and because of that I have decided to embrace this change, the timing of which I can't complain about. I no longer spend my days embraced in this magical cocoon with my babies and toddlers, now that our Smallest is in school, instead I am out in the world more, looking at what I want to do with this next phase of my life, and this makes it easier to accept.

So, this summer will be about making the most of this remarkable place, a summer of gatherings of friends and loved ones, of Celebrating, and later in the week I will share with you, one such gathering that we had this weekend.

Photo by Líosa.

And who knows what wonderfulness is just around the corner, for I know there is a place for us.

Where I Think You Are When You Are Not Here.

This last week, I spent mostly in my car, zooming around the greening land, like a busy spider weaving a web in haste and without time.
Jay has flown again, to the Land of the Rising Sun, and as I have never been there, I cannot image him anywhere solid, but instead he floats, Somewhere Out There, like a sleeping balloon man whose ribbon I hold in my hand without thinking. You know when you are holding something you never want to put down, but you carry on with your day, and forget it is there, except for a vague awareness of how hot and clammy your hand has become, or how awkward or difficult things are with only one hand.
And so above me he follows me, floats, sleeping, throughout my day, and Up There, where I cannot see, he drifts through beautiful moss gardens that drip with water, where the breeze rustles the leaves over his head, tickles his sleeping beard, and stirs the bamboo, making them clack together, through bright lights of city nights, between gleaming glass towers that shower him in little bokeh balls of sunlight.

Though I know in reality he is not at all sleeping and dreaming, that in fact he is actually more likely running, just running, flat out through the night, leaping over obstacles, throwing aside impediments, barely pausing to rest, running to get home to us. And I like to think he too holds my ribbon, and somewhere above him, I am streaming out behind him, floating in a sunlit garden where children play and laugh, and we bake cakes and read to one another, pausing to tickle the cats, lie in the grass and watch the clouds roll around the sky, and thinking about what to make for dinner.