This week, I found light in an unexpected place.
On Sunday, just before the our church’s Darkness To Light service began, a dear friend handed me a surprise gift: the book An Extra Pair of Hands by UK author Kate Mosse.
I unwrapped it there and then, in the half-light of our pew.
She'd spied it in Waterstone’s and bought it for me on impulse, thinking it might resonate with me right now, being a memoir about “caring, ageing and everyday acts of love”.
In one passage, Kate writes:
I didn’t, then, realise how exceptional this quiet, ordered childhood was, how ordinary and precious. Knowing that I was loved …
And because of those very many years of being loved unconditionally, and supported unconditionally, that what was required some thirty-five years later would be both possible and a privilege.
—Kate Mosse, An extra pair of hands
Earlier this week, my father said something I can’t stop thinking about.
He was worried that I was doing too much for him and my mother, and ‘getting busy’, as he puts it. I told him that I loved them, and was doing exactly what he and my mother had done for me when I was a child. They would never have let me go without a meal, or miss a dose of medicine, I said.
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he insisted.
‘You don’t “bring up” adults.’
But here’s the thing, I think we do.
The timing of my friend’s gift, on the first Sunday of Advent, might have been coincidental, but it felt deeply significant. It was a light in the dark. A sign and a confirmation that, yes, sometimes, we get to bring each other up.
And it’s a privilege.
This essay is so beautiful, tender, and relatable. It had me in tears. Love you, friend ❤️
Oh Jenni what a wonderful and timely gift to you ❤️ And it is true I think like you - we do end up bringing each other up. Sending love 💕