There’s a silver lining in every cloud, they say. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll question that concept…because some clouds are just plain dark and bilious and looming and scary.
The proverbial ‘cloud’ for me, as it happens, was all of January 2020, and I should also (for good measure) add in half of February if I’m going to be completely honest.
If you check the calendar, that would bring us to pretty much now.
Today.
Like 1:30pm, on a bog-standard, slightly overcast but a bit muggy afternoon, at the half messy, half cleared kitchen table, with a stack of stuff to be sorted up the other end that I will have to deal with another day. Because right now I think I have found my silver lining (or it has found me more to the point), and I have to tell you about it.
This.
The box of photos I hurriedly shoved in the boot when we evacuated for the first time, with the mother of all fires bearing down on our back door.
I absently open the lid in an effort to further avoid dealing with the clutter that I’m supposed to be sorting, and there it is.
My silver lining.
My dad was a photographer, and I think I can safely say one of the best. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time. (I much preferred to be behind the lens rather than the subject of attention). It means that we now have the most wonderfully documented lives as his children. What an amazing gift…and an absolute saviour right at this moment.
Instantly I’m overwhelmed with memories, thoughts, and the words which have until now thoroughly eluded me.
(You’ll notice the absence of a January blog).
There’s me, tomboyish and unkempt, hand-me-down jeans rolled up to the knee, standing on a craggy rock perilously close to the foamy crashing waves just ‘thinking’. Looking. Probably dreaming, if I know me. And these photos aren’t your standard little 6x4’s…they’re larger than life, poster size. Evocative and fluid, like I’m transported right back to that beach, that risky rock, and the complete oblivion of everything.
What’s that got to do with Minimuds? Absolutely nothing. Well not exactly ‘nothing’, I guess, because right there in that photo I was transported back to the essence of me as a simplicity-seeking child, and it hasn’t changed a bit in a good few decades.
It was the gentle prod from the universe that I desperately needed. A reminder that I can reign it all back in when I want to just stop the world and get off. And I suppose that’s where Minimuds comes in to it.
Nature, fresh air, and the odd serendipitous moment to take pause and dream.
Our kids need it as much as we do.