Writing about nothing

I can't think about anything to write, not having had any long contemplative walks for a week now (it's reading week at the moment). I remember I was writing about something last time but I stopped because I couldn't get down exactly what I was thinking, exactly what I was feeling in my walk.

I love the walk back from uni. The walk to uni never has the same effect. I'm always rushing to my classes or lectures. The dreaded feeling of being late for something. I'm very rarely late though. My punctuality tends to frustrate me when I'm the first one there. What was the point of rushing, breaking out in sweat and getting out of breath when the other party hasn't bothered to do the same?

The walks home are the best. I get to dawdle, stare up at the sky, kick up the leaves and, best of all, reflect. My best ideas, my most thoughtful decisions are made on that 25-30 minute walk. Maybe that's why I'm going a little stir crazy at the minute. No walking this week really. I've become a fatty no-brains. Haha...

I'm reading a book at the moment. It's called The Memory Keeper's Daughter. It's about a couple who have twins and one has Downs Syndrome. To spare the wife the distress of having a daughter who could potentially die young after years of hardship and worry, the doctor-husband asks his nurse to take the daughter to an institution. Instead the nurse takes the daughter and raises her as her own. The book follows the lives of the separated twins and how the secrets the characters all hold shape and unshape them.
At the same time, I've recently started volunteering at Midland Mencap Saturday playscheme. The children there all have varying degrees of learning difficulties which means each child has to be treated differently. These two instances seem to coincide on purpose. Whilst I know I can never begin to properly understand what the parents feel like, this book is teaching me some of the difficult decisions that someone in their position has to make. I guess I'm starting to appreciate how hard it is to be a parent fullstop, and, on top of all that, to have to make such heartbreaking decisions that could change your life forever.

The book is so dense with secrets that I feel like a naughty eavesdropper. I can feel how they want to tell the world, just so they don't have to hide the terrible truths any longer. But to reveal the secrets could destroy everything. It makes life seem to fragile. It's balanced on the tip of a tiny pinprick, and if you take one step to the side, you could plunge into the darkness. When you are a child, you can take leaps and bounds to the side - and forward and backwards for that matter - as long as you come back to the centre at the end. As you get older, the locus, the area for error, gets smaller and smaller until it becomes that pinprick. The thought of being on that pinprick scares me. Its scares me now more than on page one of the book. I guess that's why I am enjoying reading this book. It has taken me forward in time to the pinprick years, but at the same time, I can still step back and enjoy the size of my locus for the time being.

There, I told you this would be a blog of nothing. I need my walks home again!!