The dark side of the earth

At the moment my adoptive country belongs to the dark side of the earth. Even if I live on the south, several hundred kilometres from the Arctic Circle ( where the sun never rise above the horizon in this half of the year and never sets in the next half ), the differences light-wise between summer and winter are truly dramatic. If during the summer months we enjoy countless hours of direct sunlight and we never experience the night ( the only down side : no stars ) in this period at 16:00 is already pitch dark and in the morning before 9:00 the light is so dim. The official sunrise is at 8:47 and the sunset is at 15:27, giving us 6 hours and 40 minutes of daylight ( and it's going to get shorter until the solstice ). So in this period light, or the lack of it, it's something really important to everybody living at these latitudes. Houses and towns start glowing of many white lights, most of them on the windowsill or hanging over the windows or on the front porch. Candles are lit in many gardens and on the tables and sunny days and snow (which brings a great deal of light ) are celebrates with cheers and smiles and gratefulness. This makes me think that today for my American friends is Thanksgiving, the '' giving thanks'' day. What a beautiful tradition my friends. Let me borrow this celebration for a moment . I'm so very grateful for the four seasons we enjoy every year, because each of them makes us appreciate different aspects of the glorious creation we live in. And at the moment I'm especially thankful for the gift of light in all its magical, poetical and joyous aspects.

A sunny snowy day is worth a celebration in this season.

 

My neighbour's garden. Magical.

 

A few of the lights on our windows

Be-Longing

One of my sons love old movies. You know those classic italian movies, those that made the history of italian movie making itself. I've never been a great fan of these kind of things, but now we spend a lot of our evenings just watching one of these black and white productions ( btw many thanks to my brother in law, who sent us few more movies to add to our collection ). Being in a rather emotional mood lately, these movies trigger always all kind of feelings. The word that crosses my mind more often in my thoughts is belonging. Yep. I realized that I long to belong. For many different reasons, for my past experiences, for the path I have followed in my life, I've very often felt the sting of loneliness. And the feeling of being 'scattered'. I try to stretch in every possible direction, doing everything doable in order to find my right cozy spot in this universe and life. And I just came to realize that I have become a real control freak lately. I can forgive others 'mistakes' but I can't forgive mine, because each of them makes me feel like it's just because of it that my longing to belong can't be fullfilled. Anyway, those old movies make me long and cry for those time in which life was simpler. Simpler, not easier, I'm not that naive. Simpler, made of few smaller things but real life interactions. Evening spent with family and friends laughing and talking. Visiting for no reason, without the need of calling in advance or texting. Children and grown ups from different generations sharing life together and creating everlasting bonds. Oh my oh my too much thinking and controlling and longing and ... just need to relax and give up and let be and let flow ...a few pics from this morning frost ...

The life you don't chose

 '' I never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't chose.

We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours.

It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us.

There's nothing to do but salute from the shore. '' 

Cheryl Strayed

 

I've been away for so long from this little spot of mine here on the wide web. I missed it and at the same time I dreaded the idea to log and write what has been crossing my mind lately. Every given year, after the summer, when a new long year in Finland is in front of me I, more or less, fall in pieces and it takes a while to pick them up and glue them in a human-like shape and face again head up everyday's life. And it's not easy when you don't have family or friends nearby and it's not easy when you homeschool five children and you have a large family of seven people to care for, and you'd just love to have someone caring for you for once. It feels so terribly hard the idea of facing new long months of lonliness, just living a life I never really choosed. Five years ago when we sold everything we had in order to pursue a new way of life I was so full of dreams, so filled with hope, so sure that I was about to give my children the great chance to savour something totally different and incredibly beautiful. Then a sudden U-turn to which I didn't rebelled took me here, in a place where I don't belong, leading a life I feel as worthless and aimless and pointless and i simply can't forgive myself for being so feeble and I can't forget that U-turn. How is it possible to make peace with myself and let that ghost ship go ? Or better, would it be possible to dive into the sea and start swimming full force following the ghost ship hoping that someone might notice me and help me on board ? And how can you swim full force if you have 6 more people to bring with you, five of them which rely on you completely ( and already blame you so much because you let that U-turn happen without rebelling) ? But as every year I will manage to bury all those thoughts deep deep down in that dark place of the soul and I will focus on 'here and now' and on my many blessings and I will try so hard to forget my sister life for a while, pretending I'm living my dream and not someone else's. Please dear reader forgive my ramblings. I tried so hard to find something light to write about but it simply didn't feel honest. This post needed to be written to turn the page of my silence and open a window on the world and look outside for beautiful things to go through the arctic night and long and lonely winter. See you soon sweet souls for something more joyous. Have the nicest week possible dear ones !

p.s. I am and always will be grateful and humbled by the presence of these five wonderful human beings in my life.

Not only a word

I've been silent for a few days, but for a very good reason : for the first time in almost four years we had guests from Italy. Truth to be told my mother usually comes once a year, but beside her we never had the pleasure to have relatives here. So when one of my brothers in law told us that him and his wife were coming here to visit us, well excitement and joy grew and grew until last friday when they arrived. It has been a short but joyful and emotional time together (they left yesterday's very early morning ). Something very new for all of us and especially important for my children, our rather lonely situation here put a very heavy toll on them and feeling loved and cherished from someone else other than me was very needed indeed. I come from a very small family, only child of a single mother. I know loneliness very well, I know the feeling of craving for attentions very well, and knowing that my children experience the same feeling is rather heartbreaking. I know, they're five and we try to be very close to each other, but as they say 'you need a village to grow a child' and we always missed our tribe. The few days spent together gave us a glimpse of what it looks like not being alone, and it is beautiful. All of us feared the farewell, but incredibly we don't feel really sad, the love and joy we shared filled us and knowing that FAMILY it's not only a word gave us strenght.

 

 Dear friends, now please, go and hug your spouse, your children or grab the phone and give your old folks a call.

 Family it's not just a word.

Precious and fragile

This morning we decided to go all together at the local thrift store, a place we really like to visit. The store is right in front of a supermarket. As we got out from the car we saw there was a small crowd on the sidewalk just out of the supermarket with someone lying on the concrete, blood pooling around the head. Few seconds before our arrival this older man fell from the steps at the entrance of the market and violently bumped his head. He was there. Still. His legs still on the steps. Not moving or talking. Just bleeding. Several cell phones started calling the emergency number for an ambulance. But everybody else was silent, hands on mouths in disbelief. After few minutes the man on the ground slowly moved a hand. At that point people gathered closer, still very careful not moving his head or neck or spine but softly patting his back, telling him everything was going to be fine. Finally the ambulance arrived. We entered the store quite shaken.
It's night now but I can't get the image of the man out of my mind. It seemed all so unfair. But yet I know that it's not me to decide what it is right or wrong on earth. My thought flying to my far away relatives, how worried i am everyday and yet knowing that here or there, whatever will be, will be. And again my memory goes few days back, a friend with the sad habit of abusing alcohol and other things, how this is destroying his otherwise good life, and I can't help to compare him with the poor man whose life has been at risk ( or taken ? Hopefully not ) because his feet slip on the concrete. But then, who am I to judge ? Who am I to say who is righteous and who's not ? How strange this life can be. And how precious and fragile. And our only hope, and our only way is to live it in love, and for each other and with compassion for our fellow human beings. All so precious and fragile. All made of darkness and light. May our life be filled with love and lived in love. Blessed be and blessed do. God, the greater good, might keep us all in His almighty arms.

Feelings and flowers ...

It's a strange and weird period for me. I have so many mixed feelings everyday and sometime it's quite hard to cope with them. So many horrible things are happening in this world. Anger and violence and carelessness. My growing children ( how long will i dare to call them still children ? ) noticing and asking why and pondering and becoming the grown ups of tomorrow and i'm so afraid for the terrible example we are giving them. I try to pass them a message of peace, of love, of faith and joy, but it gets harder and harder and i feel so lonley in the task. I feel like everywhere anger has become the 'new joy'. Like everybody is looking for the right reason to let it all out ... but where 'all' comes from ? Are my own children growing such a 'all' themselves and one day they will let it out ? And in the middle of these thoughts my own lonliness stabs me with its sharp pain. It has been almost four year since we moved here and I don't have not even a friend. Nobody to talk with. No number in my phone ( beside close family ) to call. I keep telling me that if we've been lead here there must be a reason, but .... if there was a reason not to move here and we simply weren't listening ? What a hard moment. Yesterday as every sunday evening I was listening to my doughter radio program and when it finished my husband started playing italian music. I started to sing along and all of a sudden I remembered of so many nights spent chatting and laughing and singing old songs with friends... and the pain was back ... where is my village ? Where is my tribe ? .... Ah sorry for this rant, but it has been sitting heavily on my heart for a long time now ... but still I try to focus on good, and do good and be good and set a good example for my younger loved ones ... so here I am facing the sun and smiling at it and snapping few shots in the garden, finally showing us that spring is coming. Hopefully spring will come in my heart too...

Alive

I really need to write it down, to share it, because it feels so incredibly good that I need to let it out and to give a readable shape to these feelings to remind them in the dark moments that will sure come again ( as it happens to everybody from time to time ). For the first time in many many years I feel alive. Not exactly alive, because it might seem that until now I was numb and depressed all the time, and it not true. I feel like if I found my true self again. Like meeting an old dear beloved friend that you lost any kind of contact with and all of a sudden you meet her again. She aged, she's greying, she's heavier, but it's her, and you're so happy about meeting her that all the changes are not important at all. I'm not really sure how it happened. I started meditating daily and praying daily and most of the time I'm doing both at the same time, Christian meditation that's it. And I tried to just soak in beauty, and to practice mindfulness and to be fully in the moment, whatever moment it might be. And I found myself sitting on the thick carpet of my living room, with a box full of fabric scraps, colorful wooden beads, tiny silver bells and my little one freely ravaging through it all giving me all the freedom to let my mind and soul go and I found myself sewing and arranging and playing and having plain old fun with it all and when i felt it was finished I felt like waking up from a very vivid dream, still a bit dizzy, with a beautiful piece of ... art ... do i dare to call it art ? ... Yes, I can only call it a small, lovely piece of my very own art. My. OWN. art ... So liberating. So invigorating. I read lately, that if God gives you a gift, He will give you the chance to live by that gift.... Maybe ... This is what I'm talking about. Welcome back Flavia, here you are, in your beautiful uniqueness. In your imperfect uniqueness. In your perfect God-made uniqueness. This has been a real Easter for me. I feel I'm born again to a new fullest life.

Just today.

Every day is somehow a special day. Special doesn't mean always happy of course. Sometime a day it's just plain hard, like it was today for me. But being hard doesn't make it less special anyways. When the night falls, and the little one is peacefully asleep beside me and the chit-chatting of the older children quiet down, I take the luxury to come here in this little spot of mine and maybe check at the pictures in my camera and find the beauty that lies in an ordinary day.

 'How much does it weight ? '

Far from understanding how a scale works or being able to use it properly, James for sure already grabbed the concept of weight and the use of the scale. It seems that his light was weighting '10'.

Ten what it's not for us to know :)

 This little booklet it's something I'm very proud of. James was sad about something so to calm him and comfort him I made a drawing of Jimmy-Santa Claus (Babbo natale in italian ) since he has been declaring since Christmas that he is Santa Claus and keeps wearing the same Santa Claus outfit day in and day out ( we have to wash it in the evening and put it back in the morning, or on harder night we have to dry it with a hair drier or in front of the woodstove). He was so pleased at it that I decided to make a small booklet for him with him as protagonist. The drawing has been kept ver simple purposely, his imagination can fill the details and I wanted to make it in few minutes so that the magic of the moment wouldn't fade. After drawing and writing I hand sewed the pages together. It's really nice and James loved it '' You did it for me mom !''

 Gaia has been studying the human cell for science, here she is painting a model of a cell made out of FIMO modeling clay

 Of course James was at her side painting his own project ...

 And Milla, after working a bit with her loom-band decided to model something out of FIMO as well.

 Here Seba, the big tease! was working with regular rubber bands in a big sized circular loom. He always has the craziest ideas !

And while we were all working on our projects ... it started snowing !

Oh we do love snow ... but not now ! Not in march when we were ready to enjoy spring ! Not this year, with the very mild winter we had ! Hopefully this has only been a tail of  winter ...

So this was just today.

Pretty amazing isn't it.

Try and look at one of your days. 

Just pick one.

Not a special one.

Not your birthday.

Not a holiday.

Just an ordinary day.

Even a bit sad.

And look at it before falling asleep.

Wonders will disclose before your eyes.

Not such a thing as an ordinary day exist.

As all of our life is just extraordinary.

Blessed be and blessed do my dear.