In the still of the night

Colette said that insomnia in the early stages is like an oasis. I agree with her - it's certainly good thinking time when everyone else is asleep, but I hope this isn't going to become a habit. The pilot's flying nights so the daily tea/bath/book/bed wind-down routine for the children normally sets me up for a few hours writing and then sleep, but lately it just hasn't been working. This summer has been 'fat with time' as Laurie Lee put it - strangely shapeless, linked to the house and children's holiday routine with the pilot away so much. I think a lot of you in the US are back to school this week? Hope you all get off to a great start - we still have a couple of weeks to go before everything gets back to normal here, the daily two hour drive to and from school. I read once that Stephen Spielberg keeps a dictaphone in the car, and this is the only way I remember anything because you get a lot of ideas when you are on the road for two hours each day. I think this sleeplessness is just a symptom of an overactive mind - (or too much coffee) - can't wait to start writing the next book, can't wait to get moving with the first two ... I don't know about you but I like this time of the year - new pencil cases and a sense of the next chapter beginning.

Yesterday's post about love attracted some really interesting comments. Natasha mentioned Atonement - that was a great adaptation, and the film really conveyed the sense of thwarted love and loss. Translating much loved books into films can be tricky. I watched 'The Sheltering Sky' again last night - normally love John Malkovich, but the film just didn't match up to the beauty of the book for me. Bertolucci had Paul Bowles narrating his own story, and at the end there is a wonderful quote straight from the text: “... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

This is what I was thinking about at four o'clock this morning - our responsibility in shaping our children's forever memories. I so want them to be good ones. The six year old has been asking some difficult questions lately - how do you explain certain choices made when you don't know the answers yourself? At the moment it feels like there is so much in the balance. There is a lot of 'when we get our own house, I shall paint murals on your walls, and we will build a treehouse.' 'When Mummy sells her book ...' (fill in the blank space with assorted answers to 'I want') I feel this huge responsibility for deciding to give writing a real shot - sometimes it feels like it would be a whole lot easier and more responsible to go back to the day job. Friends have stopped asking whether there is any news on the book. It's not just my future - it's ours. Which afternoons from their childhoods will the children look back on again and again? I just hope they're not the ones where there is a tired and cranky mother 'typing' in the corner of the room (ie, trying to snatch a few moments writing before the ideas fly away again). I hope their memories of this summer are the ones swimming in the stream with the hound, or running on the beach, or curled up with popcorn and a favourite film on a rainy afternoon.

TODAY'S PROMPT: Which afternoons do you hope your children will remember? What are the treasured memories from your own childhood? Why not take ten minutes and dust off your favourites: begin with 'I remember ...' and run with it. If you run out of steam, begin again and again 'I remember ...' If something fun pops up (knickerbocker glories, daisy chains, freewheeling ...) why not make it a new memory and share it with your own children.