Remembrance of Things Past

Saturday again. The weekend. Strangely, one of the things I miss about not being at work, is looking forward to the weekend. Since, every day, we can choose (llama-crises excepted) how to spend our time, the weekends are notable only by the reduction in the commuting traffic (three cars a day passing by, rather than twenty) and in the amount of agricultural work carried out around us.

Today is a lovely, quiet day. Not lovely in the English sense of perfect blue skies and uninterrupted sunshine (which, let's face it, can get boring after a while), but lovely because it is just the right sort of day for sitting and doing nothing at all, except watching the light shift and change as gentle showers pass over, followed by bright sunshine that steams the roof and intensifies the birdsong. Distant thunder rolls lazily over the hills. Not a breath of wind.

Sitting under the awning on the terrace, listening to the rain spattering on the canvas, evokes nostalgia for camping experiences of the past. Just as yesterday's balmy evening heat and cicadas in the pine trees brought back memories of long-ago south-of-France holidays. How is it possible to feel nostalgia for something one still has? Maybe it's simply that a true appreciation of the present comes hand in hand with an awareness of its transience.

I've done quite a lot of nothing since getting back here last Monday, after a busy few days in Derby, cramming six weeks worth of mothering into a five day visit to my children. Despite the fact that I was amply able to fill my time with household chores, clothes-washing and shopping, the return to find my children managing very-well-thankyou without the constant ministrations of their mother did a little to ease the guilt I feel at having deserted them for my new life in France, and gave rise to the realisation of my increasing superfluousness to their lives.

They are 'my children' no longer. They are young adults with lives of their own, making their own choices, forging their own destinies, and doing things 'their way'. They have survived without my constant reminders to 'not drink too much' when they go out, to take their phone/keys with them, to water the plants and to put the bin out on Wednesday morning. Whilst I'm sure the shopping and washing I did for them during my visit was greatly appreciated, it was none-the-less a treat, rather than essential to their well-being.

Perhaps it is the dawning of this realisation, and a sense of having to let go of the past, that has conjured up those recent experiences of nostalgia. The hardest thing about being a parent is learning how to not keep being one.

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself....You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday...." (Kahlil Gibran).

Maybe, all this time for doing nothing, is the time for going 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu'. Maybe, at last (llama-crises excepted) I have time in my life for Proust.