Jo Ind

I have had three personal trainers in the past five years – all young, all men and all so lean you would use a vat of olive oil should you ever need to fry them.

I’ve liked them all, and I’ve learnt different things from each.

But as I nurse a running injury I’m thinking about what I need in order to be able to run without doing as much harm as I do good.

That’s got me onto imagining what I really want my personal trainer to be.

My ideal personal trainer would be someone who:

• Speaks the language of sleep and rest as eloquently as he talks of exertion
• Understands that a woman’s strength waxes and wanes with the moon
• Is as skilled in the fine art of listening to the body as he is in pushing it
• Appreciates that a body in winter has different needs from a body in summer
• Grasps that time spent exercising is time that would otherwise be spent earning money or being with the family and so needs to be kept in balance
• Knows that nothing in nature goes on and on getting better and fitter and stronger…but goes in cycles with seasons of fattening and leaning, of working and resting, of hurting and healing.

Sometimes the best things are those that we stumble upon.

It was never part of my plan to play the organ for funerals, but it just so happened that I became a church organist because I could play the piano and there was a vacancy on the organ stool.

And so it was that playing for funerals became part of the rhythm and texture of my life and has been for the past 20 or so years.

Some funerals are huge standing-room-only affairs – 400 people squashed into the space with not enough orders-of-service to go round and with trouble being heard at the back.  Others are pitifully small and lonely.

Sometimes the person who died is someone who has approached death without fear and who leaves an inspiring legacy to her mourners.

Other times the coffin is shockingly small, carried by a mother and father in unbearably poignant steps.

Some families know exactly how they want the service to be conducted. They are well organised.  I have time to practice and my brief is clear.

Other times – and I enjoy these more, if I’m honest – I’m waiting for the hearses to arrive before I can find out what tune they want to what hymn and what I should do with this rock band that has turned up unannounced and set up in the corner.

But whatever kind of funeral it is – black or white, peaceful or tragic, smooth or veering on the chaotic – I always feel profoundly humbled to be taking part.

What can you say to people who are bereaved?  Not a lot.  Words lose their currency in the rawness of grief.

But music….quietly playing as families hold cold hands and kiss their beloved’s face before the coffin lid is  closed…offering suggestions of amazing grace, hints of heaven’s morning breaking….

I am so honoured. It is one of the best things that I do.

Image @szbrozek

There I was making all the preparations for Arch’s fifth birthday – cake (tick), presents (tick), balloons (tick), card (tick).

“Now darling,” I said.  ”There’s something you need to learn and it’s very important.

“When somebody gives you a present, you must say: ‘Thank you very much’ whatever you think of it.  Even if you don’t like it, even if you’ve already got it, remember the people who gave it to you have been thoughtful and kind – so thank them.”

I had no faith in Arch’s ability to learn this lesson so, at his party, I was in full-control mode whisking presents out of his hand to avert social calamities. “We’re having far too much fun to open them now, aren’t we?”

The crunch came a few days later when friends dropped by with a late present for Arch and we had no reason (pretend or otherwise) not to open it there and then in front of them.

Arch eagerly tore at the wrappings. It was Mr Men pants. I curled my toes – too young for him, not his thing, nothing he could play with…. What was Arch going to say?

“Thank you very much,” he said,  confidently looking my friends in the eye.

Afterwards I sat Arch on my knee and told him how proud I was of what he had done.

“Yes,” he said. “I thought I was going to like the present – but I didn’t. It was boring.”

“It was,” I said, “but you learnt something very important about not hurting people’s feelings.  I’m really proud of you darling. Well done.”

But as I said the words, I felt my heart contract.

If what Arch has learnt was so good and useful – why had it made me sad?

* Image @ uglyhero

For me, there have been few surprises about motherhood. There have been some, for sure, but in general Arch, who is now almost five, has brought me the awe, exhaustion, love, fun and general all-round blissedoutness I had always anticipated.

And I had done plenty of anticipating being a mum. I first started longing for a child when I was in my early 20s. The dream wasn’t fulfiled until I was in my early 40s, so there was plenty of time to yearn and imagine how it might be.

The biggest surprise for me has been the discovery that having a baby hasn’t completely dealt with that part of me that…wants a baby.  Five years on, I still want to be pregnant, to give birth and to breastfeed. That desire is more of a still small voice than the womb-wrenching scream that it was in my childless days, but it is there nonetheless.

“Have another one,” is my first response on observing this but  – even if I could – I’m not sure that’s the solution. I’m guessing that even if I had five or six, I’d still end up grey-haired, saggy-bellied and wanting a baby.

As I already have a child, I’m wondering if the desire that remains is best not taken literally. Perhaps I should welcome it as primal, as archetypal.   I wonder what would happen if, instead of feeling saddened that my baby-days are over, I embraced my desire as a metaphor to live by and found other ways of conceiving, bearing, giving birth.

This is a new thought. It’s very much in embryo but I shall wait as it implants and see what grows.

Last time I blogged, I was asking for help.

My pride at my four-year-old son, Arch, felt so overwhelming I felt it should not be seen in public. I wondered how other parents handled (or concealed) this obscenely primitive emotion.

As a result I have had three very helpful conversations, two on Facebook and one in the flesh, about the dilemma. (Is it a coincidence that the three people who helped me did not have children themselves?)

One discussion was about our ambivalence about pride of any kind. Is it good or is it bad?

We expect people to take a pride in their work, for example, but if they are too proud we wag our fingers at them: “Pride comes before a fall.”

I look in the dictionary and see it means both “excessive self-esteem” and “self-respect, personal dignity.”  Those are two very different things – opposites even – and yet the same word covers both. No wonder it’s confusing.

And then there’s that interesting point about whether we can be proud of something that has got nothing to do with us. I would not think so – and yet I am. (more…)

I’d love to take the credit for this poem but I can’t. My only credit is knowing the utterly brilliant Rosie Miles. Fans of Greenbelt, read and enjoy.

If heaven (2)

If heaven might happen

it would look like a racecourse

full of people not horses. (more…)

I wrote this poem one Mothers’ Day several years after my mum had died. Recently I lost Arch, aged three, in the supermarket for about five panic-striken minutes. That experience has brought me back to this poem, re-living it, this time as the mum.

The night after my  mother died
I lay in fear.
I am a child in a supermarket
Terrified
Searching for my mum
Between the aisles.

There she is.

In the sleepless dark
I toss between the faith
She would never abandon me
And her breathless body
Growing cold
In my hands.

May my work be the way

May it be my worship

May it be the growing of my heart and the connecting of my soul

May it be my reaching out and drawing in

May it lead me home
 

Written while on retreat at the ZeroCarbonHouse, Balsall Heath, Birmingham.