Leg rainbows and tree meetings
We’re coming to the end of the second week in the children’s new school, which I can’t quite believe. In many ways it has all gone very quickly and in other ways it feels as though we have been driving these lanes and wearing these uniforms since the beginning. A good sign I suppose. Atlas had a trip to the coastguard, he got winched into the helicopter and wore the pilots helmet, memories, no doubt, he will hold with him when he ponders what career to take as a growing man. He is so incredibly compassionate but not at all good with blood and gets a tear in his eye if we find a dead butterfly, so perhaps not destined for the search and rescue team. Inca is a completely different child all together. She has truly found her people. When her new friends came to say goodbye to her after a jaunt at the park with a lolly, they cuddled her and she held them too. Something I have not seen her do before. She would normally stand pencil straight, looking at me longing the moment to pass. It has always made her feel uncomfortable to be cuddled by anyone other than close family. But this week she cuddled them back, she swung higher on the swings and she laughed with all her heart whilst attending the daily ‘tree meeting’ the girls host on the riverbank at the front of the school before the gates open each morning. We all feel so very lucky and relieved to have taken the uphill path and feel as though it was the right path to take. We keep saying it feels like the final piece in our puzzle of Cornish life.
The heat doesn’t need mentioning. It’s warm. Very warm. I happen to adore the heat, I like crinkly tight skin in the shower after a day loading up foil kit, gardening or writing in the sun. Do a day outside and you’ll know you’ve lived. In this glorious weather you get the visible rewards as well, kisses from the sun on forearms, browning toes and a tempting ‘white bits’ mark indicating the hours spent beneath the sun depending on its severity. But with the heat comes ‘shorts season’. I can’t wear shorts, I don’t have the legs for it, so I sneak them on once the electrician has left or I’m home alone and know we don’t have any customers coming by. Aside from the lumps and bumps I have lots of spider veins running from my knees to the tops of my thighs and all the way back down again. I’ve always hated them, but as I was getting out of the shower the other evening after a surf with the children, Atlas said ‘I like your leg rainbows Mummy’. What a wonderful way to describe something I have loathed forever and a day. Don’t children have the most admirable perspective on things. That one little statement, from the mouths of babes, had the ability to suggest I realign a mindset that has sat so stubbornly within me long before Atlas was two lines on a white stick.
We have sockets in the kitchen, I’m currently pricing up the floor and working out whether we can hit go and begin watching yet more YouTube videos on how to tile a floor. I have a market tomorrow and then we have a community night to host at the beach for our watersports business. Chris will take care of the children until the early afternoon, then he will pass them on to me as I pack up my stall and on we will go to the next job of the day. It’s a mad rush, all of the time at the moment. We sat and looked at the August diary this morning, and then the September diary and then the October Diary and, we are yet to work out quite how we’re going to manage it all. But we will, we always do. Greyer and more tired for it but what else are we to do.
It’s almost time to pick up the children, we surfed last night so we will go to the park this evening. Probably with a strawberry Cornetto in one hand and a dribble of each others ice lollies on our chins after ‘one lick’ each for good measure to make sure we’re satisfied with our choices. Luckily for them, a strawberry Cornetto makes my tummy turn but if they happen to choose a Calippo I’ll be taking a few licks, jut to make sure they’re not out of date of course.