Oh Baby! :)

Lola May, 8lbs 5 ounces, Born May 19th, 2008.

My best friend's daughter has given birth to a brand new human being called Lola May. She is gorgeous ( the baby)... and also I mean, it should be said, that she comes from a long line of gorgeous so she comes by it honestly. Paternally, her father is a sweet, gorgeous, sincere and loving young man, and that's all I know about that side of her heritage, but her mother is gorgeous, and her Grandmama is absolutely gorgeous. Also, it should be said that her Great-Grandmama has been famous all along for being a great beauty, as was her mother before her, and they are all, all of them, more and MOST importantly very beautiful inside and out. Which is really what makes them utterly gorgeous. (Okay, I may be biased. But I'm still right.) I'm blown away to think that I have known them all...... From great-great grandmama on down.

SO I'm a proud great Goddess mother. And I'll say it out loud:

THIS IS THE MOST LOVELY AND BONNY BABY THAT EVER WAS BORN!

You should know that my best friend is really my sister, although we share no genetic connection except thorough mutual Teutonic ancestry. But she's been the only sister I've known (and best sister I could have hoped for) since age 5 . That's 38 years and going strong, and she is the sister of my heart and soul. She is my place of safety and of comfort. I dont know what I'd do without her. She's been there with me virtually all of my life. She is the one who knows me like no one else. She and I share a connection that is deeper than either of us can put into words and stronger than any relationship I have ever known. We have fought, and kissed and made up like all siblings. We are excellent at debate, loose patience with one another, make huge room for each other to be 'Us' warts and all, and are sometimes controlling with one another whilst simultaneously making loving, supportive space for each other to be real and honest in the moment, and beyond. We 'see' one another's process whilst we cant see our own even when that process is in parallel, which is usually. We KNOW one another like we know the backs of our own hands. And that is rare and special. I would lay my life down for her. Or for Emma. And now also for Lola May.

Andreya's mother is my other mother and I address her as Mama as often as I address her by name. These days we are not always in touch but when we are we pick up with an 'as I was saying' kind of thing which only happens with very old and real friends. She raised me as much, and sometimes, it must be said, better and with more kindness, appropriate discipline, attention to sharing knowledge, genuine respect and wisdom than my own mother did. She knew me better than my own mother did. That was always true.....She always loved me as one of her own Babies and I always felt that. (What a gift!) I knew that deeply and without censure and she, my other mama, as a result of the nature of her real loving of me, is one of the pillars I stand on, and is therefore, hugely responsible (for all of the good bits) for the woman I am today.

They are family. They are more family to me than the cousins and aunts I have by genetic connection and who I know hardly and care even less about. They, my circle, this collection of female energies and loving women, are closer to me sometimes than my own brother who shared the same womb with me (not at the same time), and whom I also love very very dearly, but who is still more of a stranger to me than this heritage and lineage of women I am blessed to be connected to.

Sometimes one's family, sometimes, and in fact more often than not, one's real family are not related to us through blood. But through the heart. Through the experience of life and through the heart. We learn to love and discover, much more importantly, that we can BE loved by people unlooked-for, who simply show up out of the blue and just love us... because. They see something in us no one else does. They 'see' us. Really 'see' us. They fall in love with us. Even though we've sometimes been taught by our own family dynamics that we are not lovable as we are, not lovable unless we conform to the conditions and requirements they set on us. Unconditional family love is such a crock, isn't it?

These people we are guided to, or they to us, and who through serendipity, mystery and so-called 'coincidence' (which I dont believe in for one nano-second, and never have) or other means, come into our lives, and they teach us that we ARE in fact lovable, believe it or not, which is sometimes if not always an astonishing realization. We are lovable. We are LOVABLE!!! Often and even usually, it takes others outside our blood-family to allow us to learn that. To remind us of that. To give us that gift. But this experience of discovering that we can be loved, teaches us like no other experience, that we CAN LOVE in return. That we have the capacity to love more than we ever knew...... We can love ourselves and others. And that's the point, I think.

We stumble upon friendships which allow us to unfold and become the person we always wanted to be but which our blood-families never allowed us to grow into, because of their own historical/cultural and personal paths and constraints. We are given love and helpers along the way. LIFE gives us these gifts because it knows we need to grow into love in a way that the lessons of our families are lessons that we need deal with and then GROW OUT OF. And then move beyond. And so we are blessed to find kindness unlooked-for and understanding and wisdom in friendships that come into our lives at the exact moment, in the exact way we need them. A Blessing. Some are temporary. Sparking and acting as a catalyst. Some are around for a time and they serve their purpose, as one does likewise for them in mutual growth. Others, the most special ones, we are gifted to have for a lifetime.....This is a great treasure and a gift. These are companions through life, along the path of the 'big picture' and they become those who 'knew us when', and can give and receive more than any one else. I have a few old friends. From grade school. Real friends. I'm lucky to have people who 'knew me when' who let me be who I am now, and they've loved me through that process of becoming. I have one bestest friend who knew me when, and knows me now better than any. I am very lucky that my heart-family is quite big. I am really very very blessed. Andreya is the first and last among them.

There is a term of endearment I learned from a great series of books, and that term is this: Annama Charra. A Gaelic term which describes a friendship of the heart which comes along once in a lifetime. And so I am blessed to know and live what that means in reality.

But I digress....

When we were still children, Andy and her family moved back and forth from England to Canada several times and though both our families were relatively poor, our mutual parents kept our friendship alive, supported and encouraged by love, and by finding the means, somehow, though scrimping and saving (and in the 70's airfare was a very, very big deal, and so was a wee tiny mite traveling across the universe on her own!) to make sure we saw one another and spent time together every year or so. They knew we needed one another and they supported us. I will always honour and be eternally grateful to them for that. I went to England, she, my Andy came to Canada. And then they moved, finally and for good, to England when we were both 16. Neither one of us has ever really fully recovered from that ultimate separation.

We've gone on, had lives (big full and busy) but being apart has always gutted us. And yet, in our amazing relationship, we've kept up an extraordinary and very unique correspondence and connection. In cyberspace now we meet every few days. Before that, we spent a few weeks or a month filling up a school-book of lined paper with daily journals which we sent to one another. For years! We have literally thought of each other almost every single day of our lives since we've known one another. She's my sister. What else can I say?

I visited my 'sister' Andy, in England, when I was 7 - thanks to both our parent's scrimping and saving as aforementioned..... sent to spend a glorious few summer weeks with my friend who had moved back to the UK. And I still remember walking the sea wall with her grandparents. I still remember that house in Colchester, remember playing in the fields and the smell of burnt hay as the fields were turned over, burned and prepared for the next season's crop. A smell which evokes those summer days and probably will for the rest of my life....( Kate Bush sings evocatively of this fragrance and feeling in one of her songs.... "The smell of burning fields, will now mean you and here"....) I remember the both of us tramping through the long dry grasses, taking our tops off and laying bare (and very flat) chested on top of the gargantuan hay bales, soaking up the sun, to suddenly notice some boys coming our way and we scrambled to find our shirts which we lost in the hay. We found them JUST in time! I remember choking with laughter and spewing muesli all over the table out of my full mouth, triggered by something silly and probably unremarkable to an adult, as the three of us, me, Andy and her little brother dissolved in fits of giggles over nothing as only little children can do; we scrambled to clean up the mess before A's parents came in from the garden and managed to do it just in time but erupted in hysterical gales of laughter anyway when they came back into the house. "What's going on here?" The smiling inquiry was met with the typical "Oh nothing" reply which only made us laugh the more (try not-laughing when you've just spewed muesli all over the dining room table and you dont want the adults to know). It all underscores the fact that children have their own world and will always know when an an adult cant possibly understand. We took riding lessons and my love of horses was confirmed. Little Mikey impressed me by holding bumble bees in his bare hands, gentle things, and I still remember seeing my first Ghost in that house too... but that's another story for another blog.

So....back and forth we went and finally at 16 she moves to England, I get on with my own horrible and lamentable adolescence ( they are all horrible arent they? Its a rotten time of life. Adolescence and adolescents, just nasty, all of it.) Meanwhile....Years go by. She got married and had a beautiful baby girl named Emma, got divorced (no fault of hers), and I went through a few relationships, a couple of miscarriages, a marriage -which much later failed- and finally, finally, we met again when Emma was about to have a milestone moment... ten years later.....I made another big leap across the pond to England.


The transition from baby to 'little girl' at the age of 'about-to-turn-three' is very special and hugely important. I hadnt seen Andreya in 10 years. I brought a quilt with me that I had designed and made for her daughter. It was quite stunning .... and I worked on it for many months with so much love and care. It had the phases of the moon appliqueèd (wrong accent but I cant figure out the right one) in a circle around the centre. Then in the next layer outwards, it had horses and flowers appliqeèd too. And stars quilted all over. Lots of pink! Once I get a handle on how to work my scanner I'll post a picture of it. It was all hand stitched. All of it. And it is still, apparently, to this day, very beautiful and in good condition. Almost 17 years later. I made it for my little Em who was so, so very wee at the time. Three years old. Now she's a new mama.....

So for her 3rd birthday, we, Andreya and I, made Em a Lion cake (she, Miss wee Emma, being a fairly large Leo for such a small person, and she still is). We put lots of Smarties on it and I, wanting to get her some pink flowers to wake up to and to decorate her birthday table (Em was then and still is mad about pink!) went for a short walk to look for some. Shops were flowerless . On my way back, leaned over a small wall and grabbed a few pink fleurs from a nearby scraggly yard when no one was looking... (Very bad behaviour, just plain very very bad.) But I thought, 'Just one or two blossoms that no one will miss'......As it happened, they ALL came up with the roots and to my horror, as I looked about to see if anyone had seen my theft, I realized that I had taken them from the local church yard! So Em had stolen pink church flowers, many presents wrapped in pink, and her Lion cake too. Yegads.


Andy and I were both raised Catholic, but with a twist (or an open mind) and neither one of us took to the religion fully. Our parents were products of the 60's. Mine were health yoga freaks, steeped in the nouveau-psychotherapy of the times and natural medicine. Hers were more traditional yet open minded and both of our parents raised us to be likewise.

We are both Pagans at heart and heathens, and witches, in our own way. I wasnt there for Emmy's Christening, so Andy and I contracted together and agreed to a pact. A commitment of the heart. I was to be Emma's 'Goddess Mother' and although there is nothing on paper, that agreement is carved into my Soul as no other. Stronger than any commitment I've ever made. Or will ever make. Stronger than a Marriage vow. I've watched her go from stroppy child to precocious preteen, to monster teen in no time flat. To fully-fledged blossoming wise-woman and now a brand new mother, with, suddenly, all her ducks in a row and a mind which manifests organization and getting things done that leave me and her mother in open-mouthed awe. So much happens in nearly two decades its hard to fathom it all. Who is that poised, compassionate, considerate, creative, confident, intelligent and compelling woman and what has she done with the adolescent brat?!

Lola May is here and she's utterly beautiful.

I feel very very humble. I am leaving the maiden, mother phase and entering the crone era of my life.

I am a great Goddess-mother.

I'm so grateful for the health of my girls, and for the brave birthing journey they have traveled with such strength and Grace. And for the support they have received from everyone. Em's partner did her proud. He's a good young man and he did beautifully, did everything right. And their love is a shining, glorious thing, a beautiful and real gem. Andreya was with them and helped Lola be born. She tells me that Emma didnt cry, she didnt scream. Not once over 30 some hours. She was focused and present and POWERFUL in her birthing process and I am so very very bloody proud of her!

Huh. My Bella, my bestest friend is a granny! Wow.

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Thank you Goddess/ God/ Great Creator for all the gifts we have and for this new Soul who is so very much loved!