I watch young folk go by, caught up in their busy and demanding worlds. Time is a set of handcuffs on their flexible wrists. Every moment is not theirs, but a collective, the needs of children, bus times, school restrictions, business or work confines, needs of she or he, borders with walls and fences that limit and prevent, with teeth and claws. Young, for me, belong in the amidships, the ones beyond the original dream, and sunk (but always positive) in the porridge of get-on-with-it. Raising young is tough enough for Tits or Blackbirds who, by the way, fly off once their young has sort of got the out there thing, but for us, who have to trek the yet unsolved landscape of a completely new traverse, or not trek it at all and just let go, this parental ask is the biggest ever.

I wonder if the experience and it’s repercussions and guilt and fear and all the other wotwots solify us or wonder us into a long term confusion. Probably both. After all, not one single one of us had a clue about being mum or dad. Not one. Nor the pull apart, the sleepless endless, nor the arguments about how, who, what, and when, and for years. Confuselage. My word, I think. So I watch and wave to the few folk who live up beyond me, on Tapselteerie and who make it better, who develop what we never could, and who are going through just what we did waaaay back when. When freedom was a real word, when my feral children could invade the village at any age, from 6 years old and I knew they were safe. I thought that safety thinking had gone, but it hasn’t. The new kids on the block are safe too. They cycle down, walk, join friends. I meet them in the woods, these lovely young free things, gathering mushrooms, or just talking and laughing.

It happies me.