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Small stones: Toddler in the wash basket
I pull my toddler in his wash basket boat with a dressing gown belt as a rope. Up the hallway, around the living room, I follow his command. We collect things on the way, teddy bears to ride along and cars and dinosaurs. He is my youngest child and still fits in a wash basket,…
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Honey
Pure honey on my breakfast table, the honeycomb still visible, the dark triumphant golden of the hexagonal walls, the structure that seems to breathe, to concertina, something that you could walk through. But I don’t walk through, I take the castle on my spoon it passes across my lips and tongue, down my throat, coating…
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Small stones: The moment not
I feel this moment a lot, this moment not, this time with no outline, no handholds. This falling like terraces, down, a small plateau, and down again, the expectation that is stretched beyond it’s elasticity and becomes limp. The unanswered word, message, gesture, look, or the time of not knowing when.
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Small stone: The tipping point of raindrops
On the window they hang, these globules of water, those transparent ovals, their own surface tension holding them together. As I child I use to trace them with my finger, a kind of pluvial join the dots. But the fascination both then and now is with the tipping point of a raindrop, the moment it…
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The press of remembrance
I feel memories like an indentation, a pressing into or inside the flesh, a coagulation of associations, the smell of a strawberry candle, the sound of pigeon’s cooing, the journey into brown eyes, and always waves, or water of some kind, the splash of it, the smell of old upholstery in a recreation hall, the…
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Small stones: Smattering of snow
Out of the window, the sun just up over the hill now golden brown like the song, a smattering of snow has settled on the garden arch, the rose stems, on the top of the wall. It resembles Icelandic ash and laughingly triggers memories of the recent unprecedented snow that locked us inside otherworldly snow…
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The sense of warming up
Dragon breath, an aura of chill, the cold nose of a dog, toes the endeavouring forward stepping fellows braving the Arctic extremities, the ice in the lungs, the cold plate of the moon against the tablecloth of sky, the remembrance of snow in all its guises, like sand, like polystyrene balls, like candyfloss, like the…
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Small stones: Where my children came from
On a part of my skin on my lower abdomen there is no feeling anymore, it is numb. Because of emergencies and policies it was from there, a horizontal cut across the bikini line, that all my four children emerged. Before I knew better I felt as if I had never actually given birth to…
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Smacky mouthed kisses
I meant to write an Ode to Two Year Olds but he passed by that landmark delicious age but there is still so much to delight in. I hold his chubby hands, almost wrist-less, short arms that he puts around my neck and then he comes at me with one of those open mouth fishy…
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All stones are precious
I picked a worry stone from the beach, it is smooth and glassy to the touch, the inside unimaginably red, the outside mustard yellow. My children hunt for ‘gem’ stones, those pure white, red and yellow pebbles found by the shore and smoothed by the water’s motion. ‘What are the names of these gems?’ they…
Welcome to my Head above Water blog! I’m Alison, writer, mother and public librarian with a background in Communication Studies and Psychology. I have a particular interest in creative resilience, motivation and how nature and wonder can restore us. In my day job I run book clubs and creative events for children and adults.
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