Monday, 1 June 2015

It's the 1st of June today and on this spring/summer day, you would expect the weather to be?

I wake to find wild, stormy weather more like in the month of November. Jeez a girl can only long for warmer climates and the feel of the sun on her face and hair. Look at the txt below on the definition of the month of June and why it was called June - for those even remotely interested read below the meaning and how June got it's name .... courtesy of  (http://blog.dictionary.com/june/)  for me the interesting part of the txt was the part about "dry and withered"

Here I am what I still consider a vibrant, dynamic woman - give or take a few things!

Okay so in my 50th year and repeatedly told that I look at least 10/15 years younger (honestly, without trying in any way shape or form to sound ego focused or vain or whatever, if I had a pound for every time I was told this, then hey, I would have secured my pension for a good old age - so I ask what exactly is their impression of a 50 year old today ?

Yesterday - I happened to take shelter in an interesting cafe, it was filled with life ie young life - I came upon it by accident, the weather outside was stormy as in the best highland tradition, those famous dark brooding skies and the waves on the beach high.

Sitting taking in my surroundings and the hippy/bohemia style of the place and some part of me let out a great sigh of peacefulness!

I felt the oldest there - the freshness and aliveness of them, making plans, optimistic and hopeful, dreaming and living for the days to come. If I was able to breathe in the atmosphere then I surely tried. People came and went, made their purchases and the music playing in the background, heightening my senses even more.

I looked out the window and remembered a young girl, many years ago full of life and dreaming, just as they were, listening to the soundtrack of my life and scheming about travelling and living, being in love for the first time and then being heartbroken, surviving and growing and then ultimately just surviving. Full Stop.

I watched them come and go and thought about how I had thought when young, my circumstances were difficult and when the opportunity to travel came calling, I couldn't embark on that journey. It would have meant leaving the woman, my grandmother who brought me up - alone and ill.

Four short years later - she was gone with cancer and I had embarked on another type of travelling as a young mum and wife. Then just a few short years later - a single parent.

I sat there in that cafe and thought of my two lovely girl's - strong, but very different young women each with their own wonderful, unique personalities and I feel for them. They go out in a world that seems so focused on instant gratification and sensation, communication in the hyperreality text ie facebook and the like lol

I sound like one of the old folks, but that's just the order of things I have come to realise in a harsh take off the specs sort of way! A passing of time and rite of passage with each of us, it happens to each and every one. No surprise there.

So getting back to this fascinating cafe and the brimming with life - there was a couple, just about 18 or so. Doe eyed and making out on the sofa. They were touching each other and cuddled together as only people do in the first flush of 'hotness' lol and love and passion and what is the word to describe? who cares!!! they were just being them, that moment, touching, being and not giving a feck for anyone else

In their world there was only them, the young guy cuddled her and held her close, she closed her eyes and looked as if the world was some blissful place she floated away on, then without censorship - my thought process took over .................... jeez! dry and withered - remember right at the beginning of this.

The cynical part of me - thought, you have so much to learn and you are about to get your heart broken, but she was so there in that moment and it was all there in her eyes and heart, no holding back, no what if's, no ??????????? just the feeling she felt and the moment being held safe and feeling loved. I wanted to protect her and say hold on, it ain't real and so on - then I suddenly realised how old I felt.

Then I softened and tried not to watch them - but was fascinated, their boldness, lack of concern how others around them felt and it took me back to a very long time ago - travelling on a bus with someone I was going out with, watching a young french couple make out exactly the same way and I knew that the young man I was with, was not the love of my life or even remotely my love!

I've remembered that young french couple all my life and seeing the young couple yesterday awakened that thought process again, I am sure there are many oldies out there my age and it will be called some kinda name - but as I looked away and out the window into the stormy weather, I felt something in the air - was it a kind of wonder? a kind of nostalgia? who knows - but it made me soften and what was dry and withered in me, remembered those first, wonderful feelings and the magic of falling in love, being smitten, just finding another person so unique that they were all you could think about. Wonderful moments in time and I wished with all my heart that beautiful young girl, would not get her heart broken.




For students and teachers alike, June is often their favorite month. School’s out and the days are long. But where did the first month of summer get its name? In Old English, this month was often referred to as simply “midsummer month.” It also may have been called “sere-month,” meaning “dry and withered,” though this term may have meant June, July or August.
In the seventeenth century, the Latin name for the sixth month crept into English, IĆ«nius, meaning “sacred to Juno,” the Roman goddess. At this point in history, the capital forms of J and I were not yet distinguished from one another.
Juno is the Roman counterpart to the Greek goddess Hera. In Roman myth, she is the patron goddess of Rome. She is shown alternately as a cruel goddess (in Virgil’s Aeneid) and the goddess of marriage and childbirth. In fact, summer weddings are still very popular, and they may have started because of the blessing that this goddess bestowed on those wed in her sacred month.