Free Spirits

'Who invented God? I mean, what's the point of Christmas - is it just ... Santa and presents?' the six year old piped up from the back seat as we drove to school on the last day of term. For the first time this year Christian theology seems to have really made an impression - we have had tealights for Diwali, she has sung songs starting 'Shalom ...' at the dinner table, but this is the first year there has happily been a Nativity at school and it's made an impression.

So where do you go with this? (Insert your answer here - this blog's inclusive - I know where I am. All other religions, faiths, disbeliefs welcome). To my (studied philosophy at uni, theology for kicks answer) she retaliated: 'Well if God invented me, and he's so good, why am I naughty sometimes ..?' Temporarily floored - concentrating on not hitting tractor up ahead/ running over kamikaze pheasant in the lane I answered 'Free will, darling, free will.' The pilot's away again - I was out of screenwash (he normally takes care of these things), it was a close run thing for the pheasant but we survived. Free will - there's a discussion for your Christmas lunch if things fall quiet over the sprouts this year.

We've talked before about whether it's possible to be a writer/artist AND be a perfect mother/parent. Not, I think was the global concensus - but we persevere in trying to get the balance right. I rather feel I'm doing a rubbish job on all counts at the moment. I am wife/mother/businesswoman/writer/housekeeper etc and it's not adding up. Artists are (supposedly) entirely self obsessed. Children are - by their sheer nature - entirely selfish at the outset. It takes years to discover you are not the centre of the universe. You can see how there are problems reconciling the two. Adults struggling to retain a part of themselves, children learning that other people matter too.

Do you ever feel guilty for being a working parent/writer? I do. We turned up just before the end of term - I'd been researching a piece for the Times all day, but remembered on the drive in we were supposed to bring cakes for their party the next day (and that I was out of screenwash/ice spray - sometimes it's like a little version of the pilot pops into my mind when he's away rather like Don Capello's angel/devil. 'Buy Screenwash!' he said). Swung by the supermarket. As we were waiting at the school gates - me clutching my boxes of prepacked crispy cakes (congratulating self for having remembered), a lovely mother (the kind of woman I would like to be when I grow up), arrived with a beautiful platter of hand iced fairy cakes. Earth's crust cracks open - descend to purgatory, do not pass go, baleful looks from the six year old. Could I ever be that perfect? Perhaps you also end up feeling inadequate on all counts. Is that a mother's lot?

Talking of photography in the last post set me thinking about one of my favourite photographers - Lee Miller. To define her as 'photographer' diminishes her. She is a heroic figure. Model, journalist, war photographer, muse ... she's pretty much the template for every female protagonist I write. She took the photograph at the head of this post (a print hangs on my wall where I write). Man Ray - the Surrealist photographer who taught her everything he knew before she broke his heart looks into space, amused - or is it bemused, next to his new hot girlfriend. Her new partner/husband Penrose looks into the air in a very British 'o Lord what are we up to now?' way, while the Eluards embrace opposite. The dynamics - the tension in this photograph ... you could write a book. That it was taken by a woman, unlike so many 'fetes champetres' or loaded images like Manet's 'Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe' adds something. It raises questions.

Anyway - if you love photography, do a search, check Lee out. Her life is fascinating. The footnote is interesting: it was only after she died that the family discovered Lee's great cache of photographs in the attic of their farmhouse. Not only was she a surrealist muse, a Vogue model, she had worked on the front line and photographed terrible things during the war for Vogue, survived great hardship and unimaginable horror. None of them realised. In later years she wrote - wait for it, cookbooks, and sadly succumbed to alcoholism. Only now, ten years after I wrote my thesis on photography, is she getting the recognition she deserves with shows at the V&A etc. She had lived, and loved, one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century, and yet it had become hidden by her role as wife, mother, foil to her husband. In this obsessive tribute to her beauty, Man Ray pasted a photo of her eye to a metronome in front of his portrait:
and here she was photographed (if I remember correctly by her then lover), in Hitler's bath tub:

Perhaps this is something every soldier faces - or every person who goes beyond the lives they were born into. How do you come home? Who are you now?

TODAY'S PROMPT: Christmas. Families returning 'home'. Free spirits - or is it reach for the spirits time? Does anyone else drink sherry in the morning except your 90 year old grandmother and get away with it? Do you still find yourself treated as a child even if you are nearing retirement age? Are you still called by family names (I am - 'Katie' drives me nuts, but what can you do? And don't start me on Katharine). Do you think being taken for granted on a daily basis (which - let's face it - is what happens to mothers in particular) kills your artistic spirit? What are your feelings about free will and fate? Why not take a few minutes today and brainstorm your thoughts about family, free will and fate.