My favourite weekend morning ritual

Wake up slow (but early)

Slide open bedroom door – wide open – welcome in the bird song and watch the kittens play

Get nice drink form kitchen

Get back to bed

Open laptop

Write . . . . ahhhh – bliz . . .

. . . from my bed I look at a huge stack of books that I’ve written and tell myself it’s time to read them again.

Many years ago, when I was a student in Stavanger, I remember reading my journals and crying my eyes out through the night – I was at it for a whole weekend.

I spent quit a few weekends on my own in Stavanger, I like my own company – as well as that of others of course 🙂

Thinking about how I reviewed my life up to that point (I would have been 23 maybe?), how upset it made me to read all the journals I’d written by then, is putting a serious spanner in the works in getting myself to start reading them again now.

But it’s a task I can’t avoid because I’ve decided to write this book about how my childhood impacted me through my life and how I deal with it all now, as a grownup.   

It takes a whole load of sole searching and though conversations to write such a memoir – It sure is scary stuff! – Makes my tummy turn just thinking about it. Still, I’ve said I’m doing it – so here I go, – straight into fear and uncharted territory.

Also from my bed I can see the little kittens. I can’t believe I’m growing kittens in my back garden 😊   It used to be a load of flowers and plants, now – it’s kittens. They are so cute 💖   She has 2 left and it looks like these two will make it. It’s annoying that I can’t clean the back there, I like hosing it down and then take a few moment to sit and enjoy the cool tropical rainforesty feel of the wet tiles and greenery. It makes the hot dry and dusty space below ground feel like an Oasis 💖  

When the kittens play together, mummy cat sits – intently listening to the birds chirping in the trees – the air-con fans going, a plane overhead, the ‘e-Ekya -e-Ekya’ call from the guy on his tricycle collecting useful rubbish. Household goods etc. All day and every day it seems these guys cycle up and down the streets, calling ‘e-Ekya -e-Ekya’ in a way that I hear it a good few minutes before he cycle past our building. I wonder what kind of stuff they collect? – Everything is recycled by hand over here. – I Love that. 

One of the faults in my inner voice is how I still let my mother’s voice talk me down from taking action; like publishing my work – that voice send in the fear bear.

It is part of my value structure to believe I shouldn’t get to big for my boots – not to stick my neck out – or my ‘head above the rest.’ To follow the ‘norm’ is always the safe way – do that – follow the norm and be safe darling . . .

She did it with her best intention – she had the same fear I do – for Ruby – she needed to know I would be safe.

I can let go of this belief and when I do – I can step out of my comfort zone and let my own voice be heard. – This is scary new stuff to me!

I had a long conversation with my mum last night. I shared that I’ve got stuck with the book because I don’t know exactly what happened. I asked her to share with me how it was – what I was like – what her life was like – how my fathers alcoholism went on for years and years. How she hungered to leave but reasoned for staying till we had ‘flown the nest.’ The fear of the economic uncertainty – the housing situation it would have put us in, and the hours of work she would be away from us – she would have needed 2 jobs just to pay the bills.

When it came to school, I fell through, – big time! I was barely catching up with one year when it was the end of the next. . . I studied so hard in the subjects I really liked but I was well into Undgoms Skolen (middle school) before I could read at a speed where I could cover more than a few pages before my mind melted down.

Thankfully I inherited my mum’s love for books and when I could finally read I devoured all her old Nancy Drew’s and other scary crime books.

I remember one book she shared with me, about a woman with some serious menstrual and PMT problems, I can’t for the life of me remember title nor author (shame really for I should want to read it again). I wrote a school book review on it and the teacher was surprised that mum would let me read such a book. I think mum actually felt proud I did  😉 

Dyslexia seriously slowed me down. I still feel sad for myself when I look back at how I struggled and how unnecessary that struggle was, – if only my teachers knew what teachers know today – especially at CAC – about how to teach to kids who learn differently than the standard (draconian) school system.

I know this system so well from Ruby’s years in Castleconnell School. – But how else do you teach to a room full of 31 ten year olds? Most of the teacher’s time is probably taken up with keeping the class quiet long enough to teach anything at all. This is a big discussion and maybe it’s important to engage in it if we want a better future for the generation growing up today? 

I love how quiet it is on a Friday mornings. The Egyptians don’t seem to be up and about early – this is their day of prayers – the shops are mostly closed till midday and then some will close again for Friday prayers around 12 or 1.

The most annoying thing about the call to pray is that you can’t set your watch by it. It starts at different time every day. I think they based it on an intricate system of measuring the sun and the moon and some (showing my ignorance here – I could look this up) religious measurement. It’s the same with Eid. We never know when it will start – we just have to wait till the Imam tells us,  Really tricky when it comes to booking holidays 😊  

Religion is such a strange system to me. I’ve never really been in or part of religion. In Norway I was baptised, confirmed and sang in the church choir with 80 other kids – we had so much fun we even got together and did a reunion concert a few years ago.  – Oh how I belted out the high notes 😊  

I went to the Salvation Army Sunday school with our neighbours and enjoyed the art and crafts and the gold and silver little fish stickers we got in our attendance booklet every week ⭐️  The church was protestant, very relaxed and welcoming, often used for concerts. The priest, marred with kids, was just a regular family man, we called him by his first name.  

We only went to mass at Christmas, when I would usually sing in the choir – it was a beautiful mass with the huge church packed to the rafters and all the children welcomed to sit on the floor or yodel around up at the front. 

I never really new anything else about religion than there was only one God and he was a good God, nothing was really sinful other than stealing and murder. God was just a nice old man in the sky who looked after us. – So back then, I though everyone else in the world had the same relaxed relationship to God and Jesus as we did. – Living in Ireland, Thailand and now Egypt have truly opened my eyes to how diverse and full of mines religion truly is. It has also thought me to respect people who are in a religion. We all believe what we grew up to believe, – until we choose to change it.

In my teens I would have brushed off God with a huff and claimed myself an atheist. That was the in thing to do at the time, but now . . . Now I know there is something larger – expansive – and I’m starting to learn how to tap into it. I think I’ll call it Universe and Energy because that, to me, is large enough to hold it all. And that I like 😊

On that note, I think it’s time to get out of bed and start my day. Do you have a morning ritual?

Much Love & Light

Vig x