And the child that is born on the Sabbath day…
March 2024
Is, according to the rhyme the title of this newsletter comes from, bonny and blithe and good and gay:
I was born on a Sunday, Easter Sunday in fact1, and right now the only things I can say I am with any confidence is tired, about to eat some chocolate, and hella gay. So I guess one out of four is better than nothing.
Joking aside2, as a child I never quite understood what the rhyme was supposed to achieve, other than making most children feel bad about who they are, and I haven’t changed my opinion much as an adult. What your face looks like isn’t something you can control and the rest of the predictions aren’t exactly helpful either:
Like Once in Royal David’s City3 this feels like something adults created in order to force conformity and “correct” behaviour from the children around them via the effective application of religion based guilt.
Am I over thinking a children’s rhyme? Absolutely, I don’t deny it. But when you grew up with a significant number of the adults in your world4 quoting your line of the rhyme at you at you and saying things about the significance of being born on Easter Sunday like “God has marked you as his own, and will be keeping a special eye on you, so make sure you’re worthy of such a blessing” it tends make an impression.
Not a good one either.
I worried about not being bonny enough, not being good enough, not being happy enough. And then, once Gran had explained blithe mean carefree, I worried that by worrying I wasn’t being blithe enough either.
And those awful “elf on a shelf” things that prepare children for the big brother state we’re all now living in had nothing on the God those adults created in my mind; a God who had singled me out for some purpose I didn’t understand and, as well as watching me constantly to see if I was living up to those unknown requirements, also knew every thought I had.
Why yes, I was a solemn, anxious child who took things too literally, however did you guess?
These days I’m not remotely bothered about living up to a line in a rhyme and I’ve finally stopped trying to become who other people think I should be as well. Instead I’m doing my best to be authentically myself, doing the work and making the changes that need to be made in order to be comfortable in my own skin and in my own life.
As such I’m more interested in living up to the values that matter to me. Which, in no particular order, are: kindness, compassion, honesty, doing the job that is in front of me, offering grace to others and to myself, keeping my heart and mind open, never treating people as things, never assuming that I know all that I need to know, believing people when they show me who they are, and standing against injustice.
All of which boils down to do no harm, take no shit, and leave things better than I found them.
It’s also a work in progress because:
a) you can’t just snap your fingers and fix the habits of decades, and
b) I’ve come to believe that understanding who you truly are is an ongoing project that lasts your whole life.
What I mean by that is, even as you push to change yourself and the world you live in, the world pushes back with changes of its own. Every new situation, every unexpected change in your world, teaches you something new about who you currently are vs who you want to be, and thus the learning and the growth never stops.
For someone who used the illusion of control as the ultimate coping mechanism - if I planned everything and practiced conversations and what to do in any possible emergency in my head until I knew what I’d do in every conceivable situation then I could mitigate the worst happening - embracing that scale of change as a vital part of life is not comfortable or easy but it is necessary.
And I’m working on being okay with finding it hard, too.
Adventures in Word Herding and Yarn Wrangling:
I’m grouping these together this month because one of the blog posts I did both write and share is the quarterly update of my yarn creations:
And, again, I haven’t yet missed sharing a microflash on twitter each Monday so there are four more to read over here, should you fancy having a look.
Next month I’m going to try and find the time to join in with Jeannine Ouellette’s latest writing course - Visceral Self: Writing Through the Body - which starts over on her Writing in the Dark substack this Wednesday 3rd April.
I also have thoughts about what tales the Wildwood might tell next, which I’m hoping to turn from a jumble of notes into a blog post to get some input from those of you who enjoy what I share of that particular world.
Living Life:
The light at the end of the tunnel of house clearance is growing a tiny bit brighter every single day.
I can - kind of, in a hazy, maybe I’m imagining it sort of a way - see what might be out there waiting for me on the other side. We’re not at the “dressing the rooms for viewings” stage (as you can tell from that photo of yet another cupboard I’m clearing) but the list of what needs doing before we get to that point is now having things crossed off daily. It’s a good feeling, so long may it last!
Filling the Well:
As well as reading Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Cacophony of Bone month by month, matching the pace of my reading to the framework of the book, I’ve also been reading a poem a day from Brian Bilston’s brilliant “Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems”. I’d intended to choose one of the poems in here to learn in December, once I was at the end of the book, but this little poem planted itself squarely in my head on the spring equinox and has refused to leave:
My sketching has taken an interesting turn in that I have found myself drawing things in books. Or book, if we’re being precise; specifically Maggie Smith’s memoir “You Could Make This Place Beautiful”.
I suspect it’s mostly down to the layout of the book, with so much white space around the words, coupled with the fact that it’s making me feel far too many things all at once, that has taken me from underlining and writing notes to trying to capture my feelings in pictures. It’s one of my “slow reads” that I am sipping at, rather than gulping, and allowing myself to sink into the poetic beauty of her prose and really pull apart everything I can find and feel in each paragraph/sentence/word.
The One Card Tarot Draw:
What would the universe like us to keep in mind as we move into April, month of showers and shifting seasons?
When the winds of change start to whirl around you it’s tempting to throw up the defences and hide away. And though that might make you feel as if you’re safe, it isn’t really going to help you deal with the situations you find yourself in. Plus they may also cut you off from the good things that those same winds will catch up and deposit in front of you.
Take off the blindfold of fear and allow yourself to do what is needful to deal with what is actually happening, rather than lashing out wildly at a perceived threat that in reality may be opposite of a problem.
So, until next month, my lovely readers, may the road rise up to meet you and the wind be ever at your back xxx
Today, however, is not my birthday. It’s been quite a few* years since Easter aligned itself with my “hurrah, you’ve completed another orbit of the sun, have some cake” day and whilst I have been known to claim that Easter is my official birthday^ so I should get two days of dedicated celebrations I’ve neither the time nor the energy to do that this year. It’s bad enough we lost an hour switching over to British Summer Time today without adding an attempt to party into the mix.
*The same number of years I’ve been alive, actually, and having checked the future dates of Easter it seems like I’m going to be waiting quite a while for it to happen again.
^If having two birthdays is good enough for the King then it’s good enough for me.
I do, of course, know that in 1838, when the rhyme was first recorded in print, gay meant cheerful/happy rather than anything to do with sexuality. It’s just that it’s too good a pun to pass up.
Go and read the lyrics and marvel at how bloody awful the Victorians were; mild and obedient my arse.
Apart from my parents and Gran, thank goodness. If they had acted like there was something true in those lines of doggerel or that being born on Easter Sunday had any special meaning other than a “funny” birth story* I think I’d have been scarred for life.
*I turned up almost seven weeks early, at lunch time. The Doctor was more interested in getting the Sister to order his Easter Sunday lunch - Lamb, lots of potatoes, no carrots - than he was in sewing Mum up properly and actively complained that I had no sense of timing. Neither Mum, Dad or Gran were impressed by him.
As someone who was born on a Wednesday, I can definitely say the rhyme does not apply!
Also, I'm afraid your card will be late again... So happy birthday in the meantime!