Change For The Better

It has been a long ten days here at Chez Blueday. Paul has been in hospital, he's had surgery, he's not dead. In fact, he's back at home bouncing around, recovering splendidly and rebuilding his home-made fridge. As you do. Me, on the other hand, since Paul made it out of hospital, well, I have been as limp as a wrung-out dish rag. For a week I couldn't sleep, couldn't function, and could hardly string two sentences together. It's all slowly getting better. I have been pottering in the garden for hours. I read some nice books. I have some lovely friends and Paul's family have been extra kind. My friend Shirley always gives excellent hugs. She says ten seconds is the minimum amount of hugging time to register with your nervous system and elicit comforting hormones (clearly she has done her research). When she saw me on Tuesday she decided I needed at least a double dose, and gave me a long, comforting hug which was very therapeutic. Sometimes it is the smallest things that make a difference.

I realised this week that I have a deep-seated belief that I am responsible for the safety, health and happiness of everyone I love. Also friends and often also random strangers. I remember sitting on the beach once, counting and re-counting the bobbing heads of the surfers out in the waves. This belief is not based on any observable evidence at all. There is not a thing I can do to guarantee anyone's safety, health or happiness. The reverse of this belief, of course, is that when the people I love are not safe or healthy or happy, I am to blame. There is no basis in reality for this belief either, and it is very debilitating, because blaming yourself for things that are not in your power to change is a terrible waste of energy.

Since I have realised what my sneaky brain has been up to I have felt much better. I am not responsible for Paul's health, I tell myself, and when I say it out loud, of course it makes sense. I can't make the children happy, I can't keep random surfers safe. Such a very small circle of things are within my control, maybe only the things that go on in my mind. I can make sure I wear a seat belt, but that doesn't guarantee my safety, it only increases the chances. I can't guarantee my health, or even my own happiness. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Keeping that thought at the front of my mind has helped me to create some calm this last couple of days. Any sense of control we think we have is largely illusory. That is a Stoic philosophy I knew in an intellectual sense but am just beginning to experience it as something I now know.

These last twelve months have been a very inward-looking time for me. There are a lot of mind-habits forged over a lifetime which probably seemed like a good idea at the time but aren't serving me well. I have been slowly letting go of the more problematic ones. Starting to let them go, in any case. They keep popping back of course, which gives me the opportunity to say, "Well, hello, old friend, it's you again. Let's have a chat then move right along.."

Today has been a warm autumn rain day. Red and I walked to the doctor's and back in the drizzly rain. I have started to clear some of the perennial garden I planted a few years ago. It is beautiful, but time consuming. In a couple of years my plan is to move up the mountain with Paul, and rent my house out, so I would like to streamline the garden, and make it more maintenance-lite. I am going to plan a dry garden of mostly native plants, and most of them the kind that grow naturally into lovely rounded mounds. My plan is that it will have the effect of a lot of green and grey pillows, with flowers for the bees and birds. So far, I have achieved this effect only in one small corner of the front garden, so there is plenty of scope for further experimentation.

Today I pulled out a dying rose bush which looked by its trunk to be decades old, which did go on the compost heap, and some perennials that I grew from seeds and cuttings. I'm giving away the plants I remove, so they will have another life in the gardens of family and friends. I love that gardens go round and come round. Here are some tubs of columbine and lamb's ears for my mum and a friend.

On the weekend I dug up a dozen bearded irises and took them out for afternoon tea. No, they are not edible, and we didn't eat them.. it was a gift strictly for gardening purposes..

Here is the top terrace, all flowers, some fruit, and then the top vegie garden, which is too shady and full of tree roots to be a really good place for vegies. Both these spaces will turn into a floaty Tasmanian native garden and I will be a calm and Zen gardener. Maybe. This is the future according to me.

So last year, inward change. This year, change in the garden, and who knows? Maybe out in the world as well. But mostly just very pleased that Paul is still here and we can continue on with our life together.