ENTRY TWO – INDIAN SUMMER

Just over a month ago I gave birth to Felix Jagger Neville-Kowalewski. Today as he sleeps peacefully in his little basket I can hardly imagine life without him. For this is what parenthood is like; before they come you can't imagine life with a baby, once they arrive it is impossible to conceive of life without. A child is a marker in time, like a stick thrown in the stream it shows the ebb and flow of the current.

Yesterday as we walked in the glorious October sunshine I came to a realization; I am in the late summer of my life. Spring was my infant and early childhood. Summer was my teenage years and twenties. Now I am entering the third season, yet I still bask in the golden glow of summer. My days are still long and often warm. My colours are still bright and late flowers still bloom, but I have produced fruit. A rose hip to my rose. I am no longer a single entity, selfish and wrapped up in my own desires and needs because I have a precious tiny fruit into which I pour my energy and adoration. Who basks in the warmth of my love and who is utterly, terrifyingly dependant on me for every need. A being I am still learning to understand, who with each passing day steals a little more of my heart.

As the seasons continue their gradual metamorphosis and the time arrives to set store for the coming cold months, I sit and nurture my little acorn in my loving arms, hoping that he will grow into a proud bright sapling and on into a good and noble man with arms as strong and wide as branches, a heart as true as oak and a spirit deeply rooted in the goodness of the earth. It is for this that I gladly make the sacrifices of motherhood, in the hope that all these and many other dreams will be fulfilled.

So I welcome my September and will not mourn the passing of summer as I stand poised to enter a more reflective, knowing season, a season of mellowness and of harvest. As the beech trees glow golden in the autumnal sunshine I look down upon my baby son and see in his face all the freshness of springtime and all the sweet promise of April. This is what parenthood gives you; a true sense of the continuity of life. A sense of connection to your own childhood and also to your own mortality, and as a woman a new reverence for your body, the vessel that miraculously produced this tiny perfect person. This sweet fruit. My lovely little rose hip, how I love you so.