Wyn - Blue sky july: a mothers story of hope and healing

Blue sky july: a mothers story of hope and healing — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Blue sky july: a mothers story of hope and healing" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...26

Table of Contents

DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL,
England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd);
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of
Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel
Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,
24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Previously published in 2007 by Seren, an imprint of Poetry Wales Press Ltd.
Published in the United States by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First printing, August 2008

Copyright 2007 by Nia Wyn

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Wyn, Nia.
Blue sky july / by Nia Wyn.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-4406-3018-7

1. Wyn, Nia. 2. Parents of children with disabilitiesEnglandBiography. I. Title.
HQ759.913.W96 2006
306.874dc22
[B]
2008007686

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Joeski, with love

Acknowledgments

With thanks to my family, friends and everyone who has helped me on this journey. I am also grateful to Seren, for believing in this book; to Brian Tart for helping me share my story; and to Penguin for publishing it around the world.

Preface

Its hard to imagine some journeys.
The kind that happen rarely,
to someone else,
and the kind the heart doesnt want to.

People often tell me that they cant imagine how it is for me.
Mothers especially.
They say they cant begin to understand the things I think and
feel and do; and that they dont know what, if anything,
would pull them through.
Perhaps its impossible to imagine, unless it happens to you.

Because life can be changed in the split of a second, and everything
you think and feel and do changed with it,
changed completely,
changed within,
beyond all imagining.

This journey has a scale of its own,
a space between the lost and found,
that ends where it beginsinside me.

Its almost seven years ago now, the summer of 98.
And still, at times, its like yesterday....

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNET 116

YEAR ONE

(Summer 98)

WERE HAVING a baby, Alex and I. At the end of the summer. The doctor says that all is well, and my mother says life, as we know it, will never be the same again.

Time is in limbo in Market Road,
hanging around,
waiting.

When I left work and walked home through the city, I came in, put on the kettle and felt like Id left my world behind. I sat for a while at the kitchen table; thoughts of the city, the paper and all its stories, dropping like litter about me.

Alex says Ill be back within the year, that newsprints in my blood, but today, in my stripy top and dungarees, the whirl of headlines has unspun itself, leaving the simple equation of boy or girl, shining in its place.

The city collapses inward,
and is stilled by a tiny heartbeat.

I am between worlds now, I guess.

On the window seat in the front bedroom, I look out on the stained glass arches of an old Welsh chapel, and up to a small patch of sky. I come here a lot now to talk to my big round belly, and to watch the mothers pass by.

When the sun raids the chapel in the late afternoon, its like sitting in a rainbow.

Alex says its exactly a year since we moved into this Victorian red-brick house in Market Road and next month, when the babys born, the rose vine that clings around this window will be full to bursting in a hundred nameless shades of white.

Were growing together, the rose vine and me.
Almost ready, almost in bloom.

I think of Alex often when Im here. At the picture desk in the Western Mail, shirtsleeves rolled up, black hair flopping in his eyes; at the coffee machine, perhaps, making cheerful small talk with the typists; in the darkroom, watching light emerging out of shadow.

He calls from there, to say he misses seeing me across the newsroom. He says it suddenly feels real, having a baby, now were apart.

In his lunch break today, Alex went to the Morgan Arcade and bought a smiling man in circus clothes who swings in a basket under a striped balloon.

The weathers humid, close, like a calm before a storm. When Im buying the paper and an orange ice pop, Sam in the corner shop says: Its gonna break. Its gonna rain, any day now!

Ive not been feeling well of late, just tired and thirsty, which the doctor calls quite normal, and Alex puts down to the heat wave. Were in most evenings, him and I, pottering around half-naked together, playing U2 and watching the telly. Sometimes I sit at the piano and he plays guitar and we make up songs that make us laugh.

We often talk about this child-to-be, imagining some blue-eyed boy with rosy cheeks and golden hair, or some brown-eyed girl with jet-black curls in the tatty, patchwork dresses Ive seen in the shops.

We imagine it will be just like the babies in the catalogs and the adverts on TV.

We can dream our lives away these evenings. The twilight hangs about for hours and the windows are awash with pinks and blues.

Last night Alex rigged up his old Decca player and we danced to the single he bought when he was eight: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Lynn Anderson. He told me he bought it with his three bob allowance money at Woolworths in Reading after football practice one Saturday morning, and when he got home, his brothers called it poncy and said he should have bought Ziggy Stardust instead.

Next page

1234567...26

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Blue sky july: a mothers story of hope and healing»

Look at similar books to Blue sky july: a mothers story of hope and healing. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

John W. Quinn

Someone Like Me: An Unlikely Story of Challenge and Triumph Over Cerebral Palsy

Cheryl Koenig

Paper Cranes: A Mothers Story of Hope, Courage and Determination

Abbey Curran

The Courage to Compete: Living with Cerebral Palsy and Following My Dreams

Carmen Westberg

Dear Jeff: A Mothers Reflections and Responses Throughout a Family Tragedy

Johnny Agar

The Impossible Mile: The Power in Living Life One Step at a Time

Karen Pape

The Boy Who Could Run But Not Walk: Real Hope for Children with Early Brain Damage

Lisa Sexton

No Such Thing as Cant: A Triumphant Story of Faith and Perseverance

Sue Matthews

Paint Your Hair Blue: A Celebration of Life with Hope for Tomorrow in the Face of Pediatric Cancer

Katherine Elizabeth Clark

Where I End: A Story of Tragedy, Truth, and Rebellious Hope

Diana Webster

So Many Everests: From Cerebral Palsy to Casualty Consultant

Bonner Paddock

One More Step: My Story of Living with Cerebral Palsy, Climbing Kilimanjaro, and Surviving the Hardest Race on Earth

Nia Wyn

Blue Sky July

Discussion, reviews of the book Blue sky july: a mothers story of hope and healing and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.