International Women's Day - Here's to the Women in my Life

It’s International Women’s Day, so what better time to pay tribute to the women in my life? J

My Wife

Chloe is a talented designer, creative by nature. She’s a loving Mother, a faithful, beautiful, passionate and honest wife and is, without doubt, my best friend. This woman makes all the days better.

My Daughter

The littlest and youngest lady in my life is my 6 month old daughter, who’s so pretty she takes my breath away just about every single time she flashes that cute little smile my way.

My Sister

Beautiful, intelligent, talented, sweet, loyal, caring, kind and a wonderful Mother too. She’s been there for me her entire life, in spite of the fact I haven’t always been the best brother. Her love is unwavering. She knows me inside out.

My Mother

No longer around, unfortunately, but the biggest female influence in my life. I take so much solace in knowing how much she would love my family, how much she’d spoil the kids, how much she’d love shopping with Chloe. I miss her so much I cannot breathe some days. A woman who lost her husband to a tragic accident, leaving her with 2 young children to bring up. She did so in the UK, despite Spanish being her first language and her English, at the time, not being so great. She worked as hard as she possibly could, some evenings coming home so exhausted from her manual job that all her bones and muscles ached. And then she made dinner, she cleaned up and she helped me and my sister with out homework. My Mother was the most amazing woman and I, the luckiest son.

My Son’s Biological Mother

Anje. How we miss her still. Despite the fact she and I were no longer together, she remained a close friend. Our disputes were never long lasting, always defeated by our shared love for our son. She was always honourable enough to admit her mistakes, put them right and make amends. A genuinely kind hearted soul taken far, far, far too young.

Some people are just always intended for worlds more beautiful than this one.

My Female Friends

I have some wonderful female friends both here in Manchester and overseas. I’m blessed to know wonderful Mothers, epic creative, inspiring writers and hardworking, determined women. You’re all a blessing to my life.

Transition

Transition – a period of change, a period of transformation from one state to another.

That’s where I was at for a number of years.

I made a few changes recently that signified the end, for me, of a state of transition.

I settled down!

Married with children and LOVING it. I made the decision that the time was right, that I was with the woman I definitely wanted to spend the rest of my life with and that I wanted her to be the Mother of my children. Fortunately she felt the same : )

This signified the end of my transition from jumped up little commitment phobe to the man my Mother always knew deep down I wanted to be.

Let An Old Blog Go

Recently, I let my former Second Life related blog go. Completely go. I loved it back in 2007, but it’s been largely dormant since 2009, still taking a few thousand visits a month but I felt almost guilty for the outdated content those visitors would be reading. Second Life just isn’t a significant enough part of my life anymore to justify maintaining a blog. That was the last connection between me and that period of my life in which I was spending some 30, 40 or even 50 hours a week in Second Life. I’m not saying everything about SL was bad and I would still love to pop back from time to time and catch up with a couple of old friends.

There were places, people and activities that made SL truly important to me. There were days I could be ‘in world’ for 16 hours and still at the end not feel as though I was ready to log out. I met some amazing people, experienced some wonderful things and learnt a lot about myself, others and the immersive online experience.

The place was virtual. The people were and are real and there are many I am still in touch with and whose happiness is the source of a smile for me.

It was time to let that blog go. It isn’t me anymore.

Cut my Working Hours

I have a business that offers me and my beautiful family a comfortable lifestyle. It was hard earned and lots of work. But it’s reached a point where I have people working with me who I trust completely. As such, I’ve cut my working hours down from the 50 or so I was spending in the office to 30. It might not be a drastic cut, but it means I can pick my little boy up from school some days and it means I have more time to spend with my family.

That is the real reward of this. It’s not about the materialisms. It’s about the luxury of being able to enjoy my family for even more hours of the week.

Transitioning Together

I often believe that people who are closely connected on some level do a lot of transitioning together. Their transitions are all often very different, but the experience of change is something they experience together in one way or another, whether in the same room or an ocean apart. I have many friends both near and far who have experienced an immense transition in recent years and who are now emerging stronger, happier and more fulfilled people. I love to see that.

Transition teaches painful lessons. But the rewards are priceless.

My Little Princess

My world...

My little girl is just over 6 months old now. She has been the most amazing addition to my life. Both my wife and our son were as excited as I was to have her in our lives. I fell in love with her the second she was placed in my arms. That feeling of protectiveness was overwhelming. There was this tiny little human being who depended on me for everything. She is so beautiful, she's got cute chubby cheeks and the sweetest little smile. Being woken up in the middle of the night is all worthwhile when I pick her up out of her cot and see that little smile beaming back at me, those beautiful dark eyes twinkling and feel those chubby little fingers grab onto my clothes. She grips me as though she will never let me go. And I hold her much the same way.

She's a Daddy's girl. The gurgles and giggles as we cuddle up on the sofa in the evenings. Chloe laughs  as she says,

"Ah yes, cry all day, my little darling but as soon as Daddy's home you're happy as can be!" 

She adores her big brother too. She smiles at him like he's the best thing on the planet. He loves it so much. He'll protect her as I do. I see that when I watch him holding her as though she's the most precious thing in the world to him.

"She's beautiful, Dad," he said to me last night as we put her down to sleep.

God help anyone who tries to mess with her when she's older...they'll have her big bro to deal with ;-)

Anyway, this was just a gushing post. I might just be the luckiest fella on the planet, you know.

Dwelling

It’s only at this time of night, as everybody sleeps and the house is silent, that I ever ‘dwell.’ There’s so much activity during the day, so much to listen to, to see… children to enjoy, activity, work, entertainment… so much going on that I don’t dwell anymore on things that are better not dwelled upon.

But tonight I’m dwelling. And it’s unusual for me these days. I don’t like it.

I’m dwelling on Chloe’s recent miscarriage. I’m letting my mind wander to the ‘if onlys’ of that situation. I’m praying to a God I’m still not completely sure I believe in that my baby boy or girl made it to Heaven and is with Gran and Grandad.

I’m dwelling on shitty things I’ve said to people, shitty things I’ve done to people. I’m dwelling on the way I hurt my family and friends pushing everyone away all those years ago. And I don’t know why… I don’t dwell anymore.

I’m a firm believer that sometimes you just have to move on from mistakes. Clear up the debris as best you possibly can, take the lessons you can learn and move on. Sometimes those affected by your mistakes won’t let you clear up the mess… sometimes with good reason. And it feels unfinished to walk away from those situations. Yes, you have your lessons. But leaving carnage feels awful. Fortunately, in most cases, I have been able to clear up after my mistakes. Most of them.

In the grand scheme of things, the mistakes I have made have been relatively minor. But we are all our own worst critics and with a more mature outlook on life, I now dwell on things I said that I should never have said… things I did I shouldn’t have done.

Dwelling. A painfully unfamiliar state of being for me lately.

So it’s time for bed. Time to sleep. Tomorrow, the wonderful chaos of my beautiful family will wake me in the early hours and this dwelling will all seem a distant memory.

Sleep well, folks.

Making the World a Better Place

Son,

You want to make the world a better place. That’s what you want to do when you grow up. You see injustices on the news and you immediately want to go out and personally fix them. You want to feed the starving, you want to personally disarm the armies of the countries at war and tell them all to stop – to be friends. You want to house the homeless, bring home all the stray, unwanted or cruelly treated dogs.

You want to make the world a better place.

What you don’t realise is that you already do. I tell you how wonderful you make my world and sometimes I think you just think I’m being an incredibly uncool Dad.

But you do. You make the world amazing. And not just my world… Every single time you pick up toys dropped from pushchairs in the street and chase the parents to return them to the babies, you make them smile. Every single time you hold doors in shops open for old people (or pretty girls) you make them smile. Every time you tell the pretty girls in the shops that you like the smell of their perfume or that you think their hair is pretty, you make them smile.

I have no doubt you will change the world when you’re older, one way or another. But just because you can’t go out disarming those at war and rehoming every single dog on the planet right now doesn’t mean that you don’t make the world better already. Sometimes making the world better is just a series of small contributions… if everybody on the planet made 5 other people a day smile, that would be a whole lot of happiness in distribution.

You make every single person you come into contact with smile, son.

The world is better because you’re in it. And my heart is fuller, my smile is wider, my life is a happier one because of you.

As I’ve said so many time before, you’re the greatest gift I’ve ever received.

I’ll always love you even more than humous.

Your incredibly uncool, occasionally soppy and eternally doting Dad xx

Explaining Love

You can’t draw a picture of love. You can draw things and people that you do love. You can draw moments of love. You can take photographs of people in love. But you can’t ever illustrate love. It’s too many small things to make one simple picture.

It’s the way she smiles at me first thing in the morning and the way she sends me messages when I’m at work just so I know she’s thinking of me. It’s the way she’ll make sure dinner’s ready when I get home from work no matter how tired she is… It’s the way she knows what I’m thinking before I’ve even finished thinking it, knows what I’m going to say before I’ve even said it and knows how I’m feeling without me having to put it into a series of meaningless adjectives. It’s the way she accepts me without a list of changes and compromises I have to make. It’s the way she kisses me, lays her head on my chest.

It’s the silent ecstasy that lingers in the air as we sit in the quiet just looking at one another. It’s the smiles that happen, without words or instigation, between us for seemingly no reason other than the world reminding us how lucky we are. It’s the way she tiptoes quietly around my mind during the day, no matter how busy I am or what I am doing. It’s the quiet nights in, it’s the books we read together and the poems we recite when the children are asleep.

It’s the way we work together as parents, the way we bounce off one another as friends and the way we’re there for our families – together. It’s the way she can make the worst day slightly better with a kiss or a passing comment.

It’s the way that she doesn’t expect perfection, nor do I. We simply expect honesty and one another. It’s the way she sees my imperfections not as flaws but as ‘character.’ It’s in the way she’ll write messages on napkins and leave them in my coat pocket or laptop bag. It’s in the way we function better together, in the way our imperfections complement one another just as well as our positive character traits do.

It’s in the way that we’re just better for one another. It’s in the way I want so badly to become a better husband every single day and better still again the next day just to even have a half chance at deserving her.

It’s in the way that everything is just better when we’re together.

You can’t draw that, take pictures of it or even fully explain it. It’s a bizarre thing, love… I'm not arrogant enough to think I’m the only person who’s ever experienced it. So, so many of us do experience it… yet it remains so difficult to explain.

So I won’t try anymore… I’ll simply enjoy it, embrace it and be grateful for it, for her… for my stunning wife, soul mate, best friend and the only person who’s ever really completely known me and loved me…

It Simply Wasn't Meant to Be...

Life sometimes delivers blows that you didn’t expect. And sometimes it they’re so painful that you wish you were made of steel, not of flesh and not of materials to susceptible to hurt.

Three days ago, Chloe and I lost our unborn child. A cruel twist of fate so soon after we’d had the pleasure of sharing our amazing news with everybody. It was a cruel, cruel, cruel blow.

She knew. She knew the moment she told me we needed to go to the hospital. And I knew. I could tell by the panic in her eyes.

I’ve learnt to accept life’s blows with a dignified acceptance. Yes, it hurts. Yes, my family aches for this loss. Yes, my wife is in pain. But I can only conclude there must have been a reason that this child, this tiny little baby, wasn’t meant for this world.

I take solace in the fact that he or she will be spared the incomprehensible cruelties of this world, of humanity… Perhaps he or she is with Grandma and Grandad somewhere much more beautiful than here, somewhere much purer. I hope…

I also take stock once again of what I do have (rather than focussing on what I don’t have).

My beautiful baby girl

My incredible son

My stunning wife

My inspirational sister

My cheeky little nephew

I am fortunate in so many ways.

To my tiny, precious unborn child… to the one never meant for this world. Mummy and Daddy love you. Eternally in our hearts and thoughts x