"Out of difficulties grow miracles." Jean de la Bruyere
It may, or may not have gone unnoticed that I haven’t written for a while. There are many reasons and no good excuses for this. Writer’s block, lack of focus, being incredibly busy, the unwelcome re and re and reappearance of covid, I could go on but why would I do that? The road to hell is paved not only with good intention but interminable excuses.
I have wished and intended to write so many times about so many matters occurring around me in this glorious place: how we live by the seasons in Cumbria, you can tell the month of the year by the creatures in the fields, how we have become accustomed to unloading the children from the passenger seat en-route to the shops so they can rebuild a dry stone wall that has come down in a high wind, or lift a wayward lamb out of our path. A traffic jam is more than one tractor coming towards you on a country lane no wider than your car with no passing places, and “up yonder” is something people actually say in every-day conversation. I have wanted to write about sunrises and sunsets the likes of which I have only seen in documentaries and oil paintings, and how you know when a tourist is just passing through because they knock on your door and ask “excuse me, did you know there’s a hen in the lane!?
We have been in Cumbria now for almost a year, in our house for eight months. We have made friends, established ourselves as part of the village, Scout group and school. I have planted our formal garden and we have cultivated the paddock, previously inaccessible. I have nurtured a vegetable garden from seed and we have harvested its first fruits, welcomed a kingfisher to the beck which runs through our garden and more birds than I have been able to identify, even armed with my fully illustrated book of ornithology. (Husband and I have a plethora of nicknames for one another now ranging from Bill of Bill Oddy, Alan of Alan Titchmarsh, Barb of Barbara from The Good Life and so it goes on). At the end of this summer, we will have officially lived all four seasons here; the incomparably beautiful Lake District, where on a good day there is nowhere on earth I would rather be. And therein lies the rub, we have all nailed life on a good day, have we not?
When we first arrived in Cumbria, we were so immersed in the process and procedure of “moving” there was not a moment to think. Reflectively, critically, nostalgically or any other type of thinking. We were just doing. I would get up before both the sun and my family every morning to unpack more boxes and try to make the house feel like “home” as quickly as possible. With every item I unwrapped and re-discovered from our previous beloved home, I put a stamp of familiarity on the new place and welcomed a piece of Suffolk into this unfamiliar landscape. Then we were in the honeymoon phase where it felt like waking up every morning on holiday. The Lake District for us has always inhabited a distinct magical, ethereal quality that we now lived amongst. How many people ever get to do that? I actively encouraged myself to remember how it felt to bundle our babies into blankets at 3am when they were little, tucking them into the back of the car before setting off on our 7 hour drive for a summer holiday in the Lakes. Remember the feeling and wake up to it every morning, because now it’s yours…I implored myself not to lose the physical sensation.
But it doesn’t matter how poetic or philosophical or mindful or grateful you are, when the alarm goes off at 5:30 am every day and you live in the coldest, wettest part of the country and you still have to go to work and chase the school bus, the cost of living crisis looms, and it hasn’t stopped raining for 2 weeks and you’ve forgotten what the sun looks like… one has to dig very, very deep to find the emotional strength not to get in the car, drive back South to live in a Vango by the Orwell Bridge, blasting local boy Ed Sheeran’s Castle on The Hill, shouting to every passing vehicle “I’m bloody back!” texting every one of your friends “drink???” Genuinely, very hard.
Every day I am amazed by and grateful for the opportunities presented to us as a family, living in the vast and rugged Cumbrian landscape, largely untouched by urbanisation and I endlessly seek new ways to capitalise on the place and time I find myself in, but there have been times when completely overwhelmed by blind emotion, I have simply cried for “home.” I admit it.
I have been so homesick. I have been grappling for my very sense of identity which at times, I have put down to being peri-menopausal. I have felt incredibly lonely, isolated, longing for the familiarity of home and the infinite comforts that entails. More than anything, it is a feeling without singular focus, the feeling of our old house that I so loved, surrounded by neighbours we were lucky enough to call good friends, close to my Mum. I loathe the long periods of grey, sunless weather and find it an impossible discipline not to compare the long weeks of sunshine in the South-East to our seemingly endless downpours and temperatures limping along in the low teens as friends and family post pictures on social media of their bikini clad beach days and implore the heat to “give them a break.”
But I have said before however and I stand by it, being comfortable is not a reason not to embrace or even seek out change, I am a fervent believer in stepping way outside of the comfort zone and taking a chance; investing in the possibility of adventure and opportunity. That does not mean it isn’t hard because it is, painfully so some days. There have been times when I question why we had to spoil our holiday destination by making it home. It’s like that final glass of wine, you were having such a great time until you had that one extra glass. You used to really enjoy a drop of the red stuff and now, you went and ruined it…
But then something quite remarkable happens. You throw off the hangover, you feel better. You forget what it felt like, time passes and you have a another glass and thoroughly enjoy your evening. You remember what it feels like to have just the right amount, cork the bottle and go to bed. The company is divine, your favourite music is playing (and it’s not Castle on the Hill) and everything feels…good. You have peace of mind, and you feel content. Fulfilled, focused and at ease. With your environment, and with the wine.
We have been so welcomed in our new community and extraordinary things have happened since our arrival which, quite simply, would not have happened if we had stayed in Suffolk. Daughter is thriving in her new school which she describes as the “school of her dreams.” Son, having been to (and left) three schools and failed to thrive due to additional needs, has been embraced within the Scouts and is gaining qualifications in climbing, sailing and caving. He is taking his GCSE’s three years early at a special college established by teachers who identified a need for young people with specific needs not being met in mainstream school, and he has a girlfriend. When he was “assessed” by confounded and perplexed teachers in school who resorted to shutting him alone in a corridor and refusing him play time, we were told he was lazy and un-motivated; a “super-car in idle.” We were advised by one doctor to put him in a “special school” with an education plan. I’m not sure that the specialist in question meant a college for children undertaking physics, computing, maths and English GCSE’s three years early, but that is what our “lazy, un-motivated and idle” son is now doing, aged 13, with no education plan. He holds a professional climbing qualification and is working towards his Gold Chief Scout Award. If that is what Cumbria has gifted him alone, it will have been worth it. Every last drop of rain, every snow fall, every cloud, flood and tear shed… to say nothing of what it has gifted the rest of us. We are surrounded by people who have embraced and accepted us, adopted us and welcomed us.
What I have learned is that it’s ok to miss people; what a privilege it is to be able to pick up the phone, call a dear friend and have them comfort you whilst you sob at them. They may not, of course, describe this as a privilege, but they haven’t blocked my number and ignorance is often an advantage. I have been very supported, and to those of you who have received such phonecalls and texts, thank you friends. You have kept me sane.
I cannot promise there will not be more: more phonecalls, more bad days, more dark days, more rain… but on the days when we spontaneously go sailing on Windermere or for a stroll with the dogs through the Lake District National Park, or indeed just look out of any window in our house and see nothing but mountains and farmland… on those days and in those moments, I have to check in with myself and remember that I am in the middle of one of the biggest adventures of my life. It is absolutely permissible and entirely ok to feel sad sometimes, to reflect on the last chapter and to cry. But in re-reading the previous chapter, I must not ever be so mindless as to miss the fine detail of this one. I do not want to look back at this time and realise that I didn’t live every single moment to its fullest.
Be in the sadness. Be in the tears. But don’t ever turn your adventure story into a tragedy.
Derwentwater on a fabulously sunny day. It does happen!
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