Turn and face the strange
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
I'm sat in my garden, it's early in the morning, the sun is struggling to break over the horizon to embark on its early trek across the sky. The world around me is changing as it does every year around this time. The light is different, warmer, less harsh compared to the intensity of the summer. The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn, the temperature in the mornings is a little more chilly; we are transitioning to autumn. All of this is punctuated by the children returning to school, some to new schools, some in their GCSE or A-level years. And as I sit here, thinking about this perennial transition, I can't help but ponder the impermanence of it all. Change is inevitable, inescapable. However much we would like to think things will stay the same, whether that's a long hot summer or getting older, nothing will ever remain entirely as it is.
At this point, it could get bleak. If everything is always shifting, what's the point in trying to hold on to anything? And this is where we hit a few paradoxes. While change or impermanence is a constant in our lives, it's not staying still that counters the bleakness of it all. Paradoxically, again, it's the holding on to the constants in our lives: the family, friends and places that matter to us. Which are, of course, also always changing. For me, right now, it's the yellow lean-to I'm sitting in, looking out over the garden, providing me with a safe, secure and familiar place to think. None of these are going to be the same forever, but they are a constant right now.
Children need a constant relationship and attachment to someone, but that relationship evolves as they grow. It's how they survive the impermanence. They don't need us to be the same throughout their lives, what they need is for us to change with them. What they needed from us when they were born is not the same as what they need in adolescence.
And it isn't only us. A child's constants are a wider group than we sometimes assume: a grandparent, a teacher who knows them, the friend they've had since reception and even their home or school. Some of these arrive as parents recede, some sit alongside us the whole way through. In adolescence the balance shifts markedly towards friends and the outside world, which can feel like a loss to a parent when it's actually the system working.
The lean-to won't be here forever either; we may tear it down next year and replace it with something else. Nor will this particular autumn last. But with these constants around me, what comes next will be survivable, and sitting here this morning is enough.
