Jo Haycock

It is hard to believe that an entire year has passed since this photograph was made

and when I came into your room that morning, it was the first clue that I had of you having an idea, of how huge this time would be in your life.

The massive changes in your transition from tween to teen were inevitable in normal times. Transitioning when you’re locked down in a pandemic, having limited physical miles to explore and run to, is immense. Yet you’ve done this throughout with gusto, grace and the right amount of smart-mouthed attitude.

In a year of missed school days, when your right of passage has been to learn from all but rebel from most. You’ve closed your bedroom door a little more tightly, with a passing comment of “I don’t need your help, I can do it.” I dreaded to think about what those days might look like before they arrived, but since they have, you’ve continued to make me proud, even through my most frustrated days.

Lately we’ve began having conversations that start with “when we’re allowed to…” which feels exciting. But all the way through this time, with tempers fraying in moments and doors slamming with defiant tears the other side, there’s those sweet, sweet moments that start with “I’m happy / sad / angry and I don’t know why, I just needed to tell you.“

There’s no rule book handed to mothers when they become mothers. There’s no rule book handed to teenagers when they become a teenager.

I could not be more proud of this force of nature, the one I call my greatest wonder, my greatest gift.

This is Artifact Motherhood; a collaboration of artists from around the world who have come together to share our stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Through our writings and visual records, we want to create memories that are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and for generations to come.

This entry is the third in a series called “Seasons of Motherhood” and is meant to be one picture and one caption that represents our current journey/season of motherhood.

Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Devin Pixton and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.

There’s a saying that goes like this…

‘Only a surfer knows the feeling’

I’ve got a trusty old surfboard, shaped by a New Zealand friend called Greg, who used to live in Cornwall. My first ‘made to measure’ possession, back in the day when our local Friday night pub was a three-hour drive deep into the wild southwest of Kernow. Just in time for last orders at the bar and in perfect time for a ‘dawnie surf session the next day.  Before family, before children and responsibilities and before pandemic restrictions. This beloved surfboard has seen some dings and bashes over the decades and even though it has unlikely been ridden at Olympian standards, it is mine and now shared with my daughter.

You see, she’s gone and got the surf bug.

Just a few years ago and between lockdowns last year, I’ve got to relive a part of those halcyon surfing days. As we checked the conditions and headed to our local break, to relive that catch-your-breath ocean scent as you paddled out over the waves and to the line-up. Inhaling sea spray and wave foam mixed with pure adrenaline. The only time I’ve ever really thought in the moment I’m in, respecting and surviving the power of the sea.  But now these days, wondering whether I’ll actually be able to get to my feet and feel that same exhilaration all over again.

Only I now get to look over and see this same younger-me expression on her face.

I also know that soon, we will go home after a surf day, telling tall ocean tales and fall asleep that night with aching arms, salty and happy.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.

ESTUARY (noun)  /  es.tʃu.ə.ri

The wide part of a river at the place where it joins the sea

Leaning over the railings of the Severn Bridge, just five miles from our house and looking longingly southwestwards, to where I know the ocean waits.

It’s been an emotionally strange and longer than usual month, with January 2021 teaching me to dig deeper than ever I’ve known. To find the ‘new’ in the well-trodden paths around where I live.

I won’t deny, I’ve planned all sorts of covert dawn-breaking ocean jaunts inside my head – it would take around 40 minutes to drive to the rolling waves I need to be with right now – but Covid-19 shows no humanity and has left us all feeling terrified and risk-assessing literally every move we make.

The rules are made and there are fines in place, hospital scenes are no longer behind-the-scenes. It’s everything and anything to stop this. So I’m digging deep, finding the patterns, the dancing light and new ways of seeing on my walks from our home.

The Severn Bridge is the furthest point, and if I walk along this stretch of the coastal path, across the mudflats and long grasses, following the estuary back home, I’m those few steps closer once more to the sea.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.

With the sun setting down on Southerndown

I am reminded that we are a family who have been lucky enough to rock up and wake up to many beaches in the world over the years. This year has been very different for an obvious reason, so waking up on my birthday with landlocked feelings, I knew we had to go.

We met my parents there, the first outing with them in nearly a year, and they themselves had not seen the sea since 2019. It never ceases to amaze me how we all gravitate to the shoreline when arriving there. It’s like an affirmation that your ‘lost at sea’ thoughts and ideas will become more of a reality the closer you get to that edge. Or is this an ocean’s metaphor… our thoughts are as unique and real as each of the waves that roll in? 

I’ve never been so drawn as I was this day, to the dynamics of people and their lifestyles across the generations, using and playing on this great expanse of space. I was particularly drawn to the wild swimmers. This tribe, so full of exhilaration, freezing limbs and wild-eyed as they came out of the water.

Then the irony of standing at the foot of glorious jurassic cliff faces that meet sandy beach, and experiencing nature’s own million+ year earth-ology joining up with modern-day smartphone technology, as we FaceTime the other set of grandparents and walk them down to the sea. The gasps of joy and wonder coming through a six-inch screen surely has to be the next best thing to being there for them.

Southerndown Beach in South Wales is a well-trodden sanctuary for us, from over the years and we’re lucky to live as equally close to here as we do the Brecon Beacons. But it was this trip that it opened my eyes further to the hold this coastline has, with its ever-changing energy, so many people. My birthday calling to the sea.

A flock of birds bursting out of the rock has come to symbolise just how much that trip to Cornwall now means to me. We nearly didn’t make it. The forecast that week was stormy, working commitments crazy and a decade-long house renovation was making this trip unimportant.

We were all feeling a bit disconnected in early February. The heart of winter didn’t feel like it was shifting, and a yearning for Cornwall, a place I’d spent so many years calling my second home, was calling. We checked in to a clifftop static caravan, which wasn’t so static in 70 mph high winds, rocking us off to sleep and swaying our morning cuppas. BUT, we did call this place home for just a few days, breathed in deep on those wild southwest walks and found some curiosities around every corner. A month later a global pandemic hit hard. I will always be grateful we made it back there, back then.

Artifact Motherhood is a collaboration of artists/mothers from around the world. Sharing stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Our hopes and dreams for our children. With little nuggets of wisdom here and there. These are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifact we are leaving behind for children and the generations to come.

Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented April Christopher  and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.