I would have started this post with a photo. If the camera was charged up. The camera hasn't been charged for nearly a month. Finally today I thought, "that's it, I can't bear it any longer"and I went to find the charger. Problem is, I couldn't find it. I looked in several obvious places, but no joy. It does have a home. It usually lives there. But somehow, sometime since the camera was last charged, it has got seriously lost.
I don't like losing things. It makes me feel like my grip on reality is not as tight as I'd like it to be. It seems to be happening more and more often. I could blame it on my age (which most of you would scoff at) or I could blame it on chaos. To be honest with you, I think it's the chaos.
Chaos is entirely, exactly the right word for the state of mind and state of life I repeatedly find myself in. Chaos is the tiredness that threatens to overtake me at the moment, the result of two weeks of living in the land of sickness. Chaos is the washing piled up on the couch waiting to be folded. It's the baskets of folded washing in the hall, waiting to be put away. (First there was one basket, then there was two, "that's got to be a good thing, hasn't it?" I said to Paddy. "One basket of clean folded washing is a good thing, therefore two baskets of clean folded washing is even better?" He didn't laugh.)
I've just put Abigail up on the dining table bench that sits under the window. I knew she'd like to look out, and I thought it might buy me a few more minutes here. I pulled up the blinds for a better view and noticed that the window is covered with patches of that lovely combination of dirt and mould that happens over winter. That's chaos. So is the filing waiting to be done in the study. Ditto the bills waiting to be paid. Our tax return, quite rightly, should come in about here, but it's not even on my radar. That's chaos.
Chaos was reigning this morning in the girls' bedroom while I was sitting on the couch reading because I was just too tired to do anything else. I could hear Abigail pulling down the boxes of toys off the shelf and tipping out their contents over the floor. A sickening sound of hundreds of blocks cascading like a waterfall onto the floor. Meanwhile, at the same time as Abigail was busy tipping, Isobella and Greer were busy playing with everything else in the bedroom not already tipped out by Abigail. By the time they ventured out (believe me, I was not going in there!) Abigail had been dressed in Isobella's skirt and t-shirt, and she looked just like a walking doll.
That was the moment you would have seen a photo of, if I hadn't lost the camera charger. You would have seen Abigail, all sixteen months of herself, toddling around in an over-sized t-shirt and skirt looking hilarious. I wouldn't have taken a picture of the floor of their bedroom, which was literally covered, because the floor was not the point. Yes, I did get a bit grumpy in the tidying up process, and yes it was a team effort, which I could have done without, but it got done eventually, and we were none the worse off for it. Well actually, to the contrary, we were better off because of it. That half hour of chaos in the bedroom gave me a blissful few moments alone, and the end product was a sixteen month old in six year old's clothing, which had us laughing all day.
You see, I've come to a few conclusions about this chaos of mine. One is that it is fairly inevitable. It seems to come in regular cycles, no matter how hard I try to stave it off. Maybe it's the stage of life I am in, or the kind of person I am. Whatever the reason, it comes, and I don't seem to be able to do anything about it. But more than that, I've realised that this chaos of mine is not all bad. Crazy, unexpected and wild things come out of chaos. Think of Genesis, our most important beginning story. Chaos was that formless yet pregnant state, just before the most incredible act of creation.
Right now the girls are playing with string behind me in the lounge. At first they had it tied up and were doing the limbo. Then they turned it into a washing line and got the pegs and dolls clothes and strung them up. So now the dolls' clothes (which we laboured over in the bedroom this morning,) are strewn across the lounge. There is string from one side of the room to the other, stretched over the two bar stools and held down with precarious-looking piles of books. But those two girls are happy, satisfied with their playing, and I'm happy too. I'm sitting writing.
The thing about chaos is that it is often made up of millions of "should do's." I should have clean windows. I should put the washing away. I should have done that filing by now. I should be doing the tax return. I should be able to keep the house cleaner. But "should do's" are the biggest time wasters. Not only do they rarely get done, but all the energy they take up in "not getting done" is energy robbed from the things that really matter.
So I'm doing my best to kick out the "should do's". I haven't got time for them anymore. I'm going to try and get on with my "want to's" and "can do's." Regardless of the chaos. Of course there will always be "must do's", but they seem to get done, eventually. No, it's the "want to's" and "can do's" I'm giving my heart to.
So I'm following my own advice. I'm sitting here writing at quarter to five, ignoring the mess and the dishes and barely sparing a thought for dinner. Those three girls are back in the bedroom, door shut, with a bowl of frozen peas. And I'm smiling, the happiest I've been all week. True story!
Friday, September 24, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
words and angels: thinking of christchurch
It's been a week since the earthquake. A week ago yesterday morning Paddy came home from work and woke me with the news. "Earthquake In Christchurch!" he said "Ring Your Sister!" So I did, and my Auntie too, to check on my cousin. Just as the rest of New Zealand was doing. Picking up the phone. The news brought relief - they were ok.
Now after a week of hearing and reading about little other than the earthquake, our world has returned to normal. For us, nothing has changed. But for Christchurch, everything has changed. Hundreds are living in shelters, many are injured, thousands have suffered damage to their homes, hundreds have seen their homes and businesses destroyed. I think of the supermarket owner I saw on the news this week who has lost everything. A building that was just in the process of being upgraded and a thriving business. All gone. I think of the people living in shelters. I think of the family who let the news cameras into their home on the day of the quake, their home in chaos. I think of the people who no longer have jobs to go to. People who are waiting to hear if their homes will be salvageable. Others returning to clean up the mess. People for whom what was once their refuge is now a place of fear.
Yet we are all so lucky. How we survived a 7.1 earthquake with no loss of life is a miracle. I don't know if you "do" angels, but last Saturday a picture came into my mind of thousands of angels in the sky above Christchurch moments before the earthquake, a horde of angels descending as the quake was about to hit. Was that just my imagination, or could it be true? Did Christchurch get a little bit of other-worldly help in that terrible moment? Maybe.
And then there's all the ordinary yet just as angelic help. The ambulance staff who went to work last Saturday even though their own homes had been severely damaged. The emergency services who worked non-stop. The businesses that donated food. The concerned Kiwis who have offered a free bed to those without homes or in need of a break. The experts that were flown in from other parts of the country. This is all as it should be. We wouldn't have it any other way. In times like this, we realise how much we need each other, how inter-connected we are.
An earthquake is one of our most violent reminders that there are forces at play in the world that are completely beyond our control. Our treasured poet Lauris Edmond wrote vividly about her childhood experience of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake.
"The morning of the earthquake was hot, and muggy as well – strange, thundery weather. The sun didn’t shine but it was all the hotter for that. It was Lindsay’s first day at school; when the bell rang for playtime I waited at the door of her room and hand in hand we went outside to play. Within moments the world began to blow itself apart in the most extraordinary way – the roof of the school flew off in a cloud of red brick dust, the walls subsided and the roof landed again with a roar on the heap they made. The ground rolled and surged as though it had become water, waves passing over and through the asphalt playground as we sat, or rolled about, on the grass by the fence. We’d clambered through the wire and were gazing in astonishment at that red cloud. Once the school had vanished before our eyes, turning itself into a heap of red rubble and dust, it was hard to know what to do. " (Here is the complete piece:"The Day the Quake Came" )
Words are important now. Words take the frighteningly incomprehensible and put it into a form we can control, manipulate, digest. Words enable us to put boundaries onto our experiences. To give harrowing memories an outlet. To put our horrors, literally, "on the shelf." Everyone who was in Christchurch at 4:35 am last Saturday morning has a story to tell. Talking is good. Being heard is so important. And more than all of that, writing gives the psyche the permission to begin to forget, to let go. The written word is safe, almost permanent. We can let the written word be guardian over our memories, and we can rest.
And what then of the internal earthquakes we all suffer from time to time? The medical diagnoses that leave us reeling, the ruptures in relationships, the conflicts and misunderstandings that crush us, the best laid plans that fail miserably? Do we help each other through these unseen quakes, allow each other the space needed to process the inevitable anger and grief? Do angels attend these?
Christchurch has a lot to teach us. Important lessons abound, if we take notice. I know what I've learnt. Two things I wouldn't be without. Words and angels.
Now after a week of hearing and reading about little other than the earthquake, our world has returned to normal. For us, nothing has changed. But for Christchurch, everything has changed. Hundreds are living in shelters, many are injured, thousands have suffered damage to their homes, hundreds have seen their homes and businesses destroyed. I think of the supermarket owner I saw on the news this week who has lost everything. A building that was just in the process of being upgraded and a thriving business. All gone. I think of the people living in shelters. I think of the family who let the news cameras into their home on the day of the quake, their home in chaos. I think of the people who no longer have jobs to go to. People who are waiting to hear if their homes will be salvageable. Others returning to clean up the mess. People for whom what was once their refuge is now a place of fear.
Yet we are all so lucky. How we survived a 7.1 earthquake with no loss of life is a miracle. I don't know if you "do" angels, but last Saturday a picture came into my mind of thousands of angels in the sky above Christchurch moments before the earthquake, a horde of angels descending as the quake was about to hit. Was that just my imagination, or could it be true? Did Christchurch get a little bit of other-worldly help in that terrible moment? Maybe.
And then there's all the ordinary yet just as angelic help. The ambulance staff who went to work last Saturday even though their own homes had been severely damaged. The emergency services who worked non-stop. The businesses that donated food. The concerned Kiwis who have offered a free bed to those without homes or in need of a break. The experts that were flown in from other parts of the country. This is all as it should be. We wouldn't have it any other way. In times like this, we realise how much we need each other, how inter-connected we are.
An earthquake is one of our most violent reminders that there are forces at play in the world that are completely beyond our control. Our treasured poet Lauris Edmond wrote vividly about her childhood experience of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake.
"The morning of the earthquake was hot, and muggy as well – strange, thundery weather. The sun didn’t shine but it was all the hotter for that. It was Lindsay’s first day at school; when the bell rang for playtime I waited at the door of her room and hand in hand we went outside to play. Within moments the world began to blow itself apart in the most extraordinary way – the roof of the school flew off in a cloud of red brick dust, the walls subsided and the roof landed again with a roar on the heap they made. The ground rolled and surged as though it had become water, waves passing over and through the asphalt playground as we sat, or rolled about, on the grass by the fence. We’d clambered through the wire and were gazing in astonishment at that red cloud. Once the school had vanished before our eyes, turning itself into a heap of red rubble and dust, it was hard to know what to do. " (Here is the complete piece:"The Day the Quake Came" )
Words are important now. Words take the frighteningly incomprehensible and put it into a form we can control, manipulate, digest. Words enable us to put boundaries onto our experiences. To give harrowing memories an outlet. To put our horrors, literally, "on the shelf." Everyone who was in Christchurch at 4:35 am last Saturday morning has a story to tell. Talking is good. Being heard is so important. And more than all of that, writing gives the psyche the permission to begin to forget, to let go. The written word is safe, almost permanent. We can let the written word be guardian over our memories, and we can rest.
And what then of the internal earthquakes we all suffer from time to time? The medical diagnoses that leave us reeling, the ruptures in relationships, the conflicts and misunderstandings that crush us, the best laid plans that fail miserably? Do we help each other through these unseen quakes, allow each other the space needed to process the inevitable anger and grief? Do angels attend these?
Christchurch has a lot to teach us. Important lessons abound, if we take notice. I know what I've learnt. Two things I wouldn't be without. Words and angels.
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