Reflections

Taking stock, as you do from time to time, I find myself reflecting on just how out of step I feel with the world at times.

I look around me and see all kinds of people, all manner of ways of being, people I genuinely love at a deep level, and yet, I am tribeless in so many ways. I don't fit in. I've never fit in. And even if I did I probably didn't feel it.



Striving, as we do, to live an ethical life, we can get pulled in so many well-meaning ways. There are plenty of well-meaning, kind, nice, ethical people out there. And yet, as Muslims we have to be it in a different kind of way.



There are the obvious things like, not attending places that serve alcohol. As a result that puts us completely out of the social sphere of most non-Muslim people I would rather like to hang out with. We don't do the pork thing, which seems to perplex some (really, it smells like burnt tyres... go without it for a month and see). We don't freely mingle with people of the opposite sex - I know, I know, how do we survive at all (families do mingle, just not singletons) and then there's music. Yes, we don't really go for music either, although some Muslims are OK with it, it certainly isn't the centre of our lives to which we all dance gaily around.



See? Mixing can be problematic, and I suppose no matter how hard we try it always will be.

Most of the time I am OK with this. I am OK with being me and walking the path I see as right whether or not everyone else is walking somewhere else. And I have my babes, and resident squatter who calls me 'wife' - I have my tribe.

I just wish sometimes it was a little larger...

It was Eid

I don't think you can 'spoil' people with kindness; I don't subscribe to the belief that children can be spoiled by being loved beyond endurance.

Raising children requires constant attention, just like a garden really - if you take your eye off the ball for too long you look back and find a vine winding its way up your sweet peas and smothering the life out of it. Snip! You cut the bad away to let the flower bloom and bear fruit.

With children it's constantly correcting bad habits, wrong assumptions, pruning back. If they're acquiring a bad trait you are the one who helps them to balance it.

I'm also a firm believer in rewarding right attitude and effort rather than outcomes.

This Ramadan my children have tried so very hard to fast in the afternoons, and cultivated a love of going without. It is true that they've had one eye on Eid since LAST Eid and Ramadan for them was a countdown to this glorious day. But at the same time, they deserved a day of ease and happiness and giving, after a whole month of stopping, waiting, with-holding. "For every hardship there is relief" as the Qur'an promises. And they do so love Eid these boys of mine.

Children deserve to be happy. It is their absolute right to be so. Their future is an unknown quantity, but for sure it will be filled with their share of sadness and loss, pain and fear, growing and letting go. And it will find them whether they like it or not. But this, the years they are sheltered from that harshness should be one of utter contentment; when they look back they should remember their childhood as a glistening jewel of reprieve in a hard world, and perhaps shower their own children with the same.

I remember one line from a Dr. Who programme which sums it up nicely for me, "Why should you let them be happy today when they are going to be sad tomorrow? The answer is - because they are going to be sad tomorrow."

Unfortunately I saw the diametric opposite of this in other people this Eid. I have seen into the pit of festering human ugliness and the poison they pour onto their children. I have seen children cower in fear at the sound of a voice - a voice that should be one that offers protection and one that the children should have sighed in relief at hearing. There were two Eids in my house this past week - a Tale of Two Cities, as it were, juxtaposing to offer a panoramic snapshot of the two sides to humanity. My children saw it too; and I think they understood that what they take as normal, as their right, is actually a blessing too.

Give your children a childhood and do not withhold, for tomorrow tears will fall.

Family

I see some people who have family in the same city and I wonder how different our life would be if my own family weren't so scattered and fragmented up and down the country. Would we live in each others' pockets? Never bother to pop round?

It would be nice to be nearer, to have that connection. I do feel like the lone wolf in many aspects of my life; I sometimes even forget that it is possible to do things with other people - that burdens and joys were meant to be shared. I've done so much for so long on so little that it never occurs to me that anything is missing.

But this weekend I remembered that there is.

And here I am, back in the sphincter of modern Britain, walking back up the endless hill pushing that bloody boulder. Alone.

I need to get out more.

Here and Now

We're into the last ten days of Ramadan now. It's a special time, almost like the previous twenty days have been working up to this. Some people are now going into a retreat, with no contact with anyone or anything, just extra worship for these last days. We're getting sucked into the boys' Eid countdown excitement instead. And they are very excited for they do so love a good Eid these boys of mine masha'allah.

In the meantime we concentrate on the here and now. Work still needs doing. The house needs cleaning, the chores need finishing and this, some pattern writing, going on when time allows.

Each day is made up of steps taken in the here and now.

A Matter of Perspective

Three shots. Same thing. Different view.

Sometimes changing your perspective and viewpoint is easier to affect a change than trying to rearrange the world.

Work with what you've got. Try hard. Try harder. Make it beautiful.

Be content with that and forgive everything else.

All Too Soon They Stretch Their Wings and Leave

Each morning, before their own breakfast, they would rush to check on their charges. All accounted for. Present and correct, and look how they've grown!

Pen and pencils would come out directly after breakfast to chart the meteoric growth of a creature no bigger than an eyelash to finger thick monsters.

Soon the monsters are hanging from a chrysalis and the excitement mounts. Morning checks turn into twenty four hour peeks. Just in case.

The morning the first butterfly emerges there is a chorus of shouts and tally hoes! from the boys. We all troop in to marvel at her transformation. But wait, there - peeking from the bottom of another cocoon - a butterfly emerges before us. It catches us all by surprise and there is much cooing. One by one the cocoons give up their secrets and we are rewarded with five butterflies waiting patiently for their moment to shine. We watch how they eat, we study their enormous eyes, we comment at how her drinking straw reminds us of liquorice and gently sit and watch as one day rolls into two. Then three.

But then there comes the day the little one hadn't really bargained for - the day he must let them go.

This a hard lesson for him. He loves them and wants to keep them forever. I remind him that they need to find a place to start their own families now. And that such beautiful wings were meant to be stretched. And how that if you love a thing you must put their needs before your own. And that to hold on too tight to a handful of water will mean it squeezes out through your fingers ever more quickly; that all we can do with the beautiful and joyful things that life gives us is to hold them gently and drink them quickly before they fall to the earth.

And then I realise I am actually talking to myself.

I hug my children in one of those tight mama-bear hugs they don't really understand the meaning of and prepare myself for the day that my beautiful butterflies will fly too. The best thing we can give our children is roots and wings.

We all walk into the garden. The boys gently lift our guests from their cage one by one and watch as they realise how big the world is, and how they must now make their way into it, bravely, trusting those wings that took so long to grow.

The little one is sad. I ask him if he'll come and visit me when he's a big man with his own family. He rolls his eyes and says 'no'. Then grins, grabs my leg and says, 'YES' and asks if he can play outside the gate.

These days may be long, but these years? They are so very short.

These Days of Summer

We don't stray far from the doors these days. We can't. But that's not to say we don't enjoy these days of summer when we can.

Sometimes life is easy and sometimes there are tests. But life, as the saying goes, is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. We've learned to find the joy wherever it is, grab hold and suck its marrow out, regardless of circumstance. You get knocked down, you get up again and you hold on tighter than before. And the next time you're knocked you take longer to fall. And you still get up, because that's all we have. And you look for a reason to be happy, you find something to be grateful for, and sometimes regardless of the situation, it can something as simple as a cold drink in a pretty cup feeling a wisp of cool air kiss your cheek before the onslaught begins again.

And you take it. Because that's all we have. And it's more than enough.