Happy New Year! This is a resolution-free safe space but that doesn’t mean we can't start as we mean to go on. Right now the picture feels big and my desires feel far beyond me: invest in childcare, invest in maternity care, invest in the services that protect vulnerable women and children; invest in the single mother who has no shelter for her and her two-year-old tonight; and, of course, #ceasefirenow #ceasefirenow #ceasefirenow. (How long will we keep saying that? How long before there’s no children left to kill?)
This year 50% of the world’s population will be asked to take part in an election. Isn’t that something? A 15-minute drive from my home is Eagle House, a residence that radical suffragettes would visit after stints in prison on hunger strikes to recuperate. It is easy to forget that voting is a privilege, but it’s getting harder to ignore what’s at stake. The news has been consistently remarkable for at least a few years now. Let’s hope we can stave off the numbness.
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HAVE you ever stood in a playgroup at a church on a Thursday morning, making small talk as toddlers crawl and run around your feet, colouring in the January gloom, and felt yourself disintegrate, a hologram vanishing from the world?
Have you ever wondered, as you stood nursing a tepid tea, watching all that light pour down from the tall turquoise stained glass window, flooding the balcony and the pews, where has the world gone?
Have you noticed, as you’ve stood in the large, airy Methodist church, that among the squeals and yells, the clatter of plastic on wood floor, the sudden sob of a 3-year-old, that you can’t hear the street or the weather or how the earth is turning on its axis or what is happening in the places where things are happening?
Have you wondered why time lulls by like a lazy stream on a stiflingly hot day when you are with a baby? The type of day where you can’t seem to find any air.
And this place you’re in, that you’re always in, is drifting, floating, nowhere to land, and as you peer out the window, all you see is the velvet black universe occasionally punctuated with blindingly bright stars, and you keep wondering but where is the world.
Have you ever walked into a room of women, at the age of 38, and felt like a teenager? Have you offered smiles and tried to strike up a conversation? Have you steadied yourself against the exhaustion of it all, trying to convince yourself of who it is you’re introducing? Have you ever worn your favourite earrings in the hope of sending a secret signal to someone - someone who wants to talk about the news and books and how they wish they had more time to read/write/paint/run/sing/dance, and would you fancy that exhibition/did you listen to that podcast/watch that film/have all those other thoughts that have nothing to do with our beautiful children?
Have you yet realised that even though you normally rant about the impossible riddle of British childcare and feel overwhelmed by the misogyny served so piping hot with motherhood, this is all packed neatly away with the nappies and wipes as you smile and agree you can’t believe how quickly they grow? And maybe, even though you feel like you can no longer trace your outline, and at this moment you have no sense of time or urgency or excitement or anticipation or action or rage, just this quiet morning in a quiet space, have you also figured out that it’s okay to feel this way? At least for now. Because soon you will walk back into the daylight and hear the sound of the traffic and feel the air and see the movement of clouds and soon you won’t be missing from the world forever, but now you know exactly what you are missing the world for. Have you ever started to realise the centre of the universe is somewhere other than what you thought it was for the longest time?
And when he stumbles up to you as you stand there awkwardly, trying to lap up the light before it washes you away, his eyes shining in delight at the small car gripped tight in his hand, his eyes shining in delight at you, have you wondered if once again he will save you?
Have you started to think that maybe the destruction, the displacement, the isolation he has caused isn’t damage and rubble after all? But maybe in this quiet, inside these solid walls, you start to understand that it’s an excavation, a restoration, a renovation. And like any grand design, it takes time. So much time. And time is one thing you have this slow Thursday morning, knowing the world only from this distant orbit.
Some great things
Lana Del Ray’s version of Take Me Home, Country Roads? Yes, please. This song will be forever lodged in my hippocampus, securely wrapped in layer after layer of the sweetest memories. This Soul Music episode on in it is quite wonderful, too.
Julia is back! The second series of the drama about Julia Child is on Now TV. It is about Child’s wild success and her wonderful marriage. But it’s also about the arrival of the 1960s and women and empowerment and ambition - all in a changing world. (Super relevant to my interests). It has the same slick stylised historical aesthetic and warm poignancy as my other fave, Mrs Maisel
Sometimes men are allowed in WAW. I discovered photographer Garry Winogrand thanks to this in the Guardian. Utterly mesmerizing.
Another man: I am obsessed with the Blue Zones with Dan Buettner series on Netflix. Blue Zones are the name given to the few select areas of the world that have the highest number of inhabitants aged 100 or over. Forget all the self-help books and Instagram accounts. This drills down to the absolute essentials of not just what keeps people alive, but keeps them happy. Fascinating, inspiring and moving. Plus, all that beautiful scenery is a real balm on cold January nights.
Thanks for reading
Marisa x
This piece resonated with me so much. There is so much there that it felt like you were speaking words I wished I had said. My kids are now 12 and 8 and I agree, you demolish and rebuild, but better. Thank you Marisa, if I had read that piece ten years ago, I would have felt so much less alone.
Beautiful. ❤️ Captures so much of how I feel every Thursday morning. How I wish we could talk about something other than the children or how people would
Ask me how I am not the kids and yes it feels like we have disappeared although temporarily. I hope. ❤️