wild places

We're back. We started packing and cleaning last night, carried on packing and cleaning this morning, got in the car at about eleven, got home this afternoon, and then started unpacking and doing washing. I'm sitting here surrounded by drying racks covered in washing, with more waiting in the laundry to hang out tomorrow. Where does it all come from? How much energy is wasted over the globe with our modern (and privileged) obsession with clean clothing? With clothing, for that matter. But that's another story...

We had a great holiday. We had down time, family time, fun and adventure. It's not everywhere in the world that you can jump in your car and drive to see scenes like this.

The steaming ground in this geothermal area was punctuated with craters and blow holes. In a couple of places the craters were filled with mud that bubbled and blew steam out of large holes. The noise was amazing, it was like the ground was alive. I'd hardly given a thought to what was beneath me while we had been back in town, in our safe and tidy suburban house. And yet only a short drive away the ground was roaring, wild and inhospitable.

We saw water roaring, too. We visited a dam yesterday and watched the gates open. The water poured out in torrents and steadily filled the first pool immediately beneath the gates of the dam. Then all of a sudden it burst through the narrow rocky gap below, churning and bubbling.

This:

Became this:

The noise alone was breathtaking. It was the like the thunder of a hundred waterfalls. I thought about Psalm 42:7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and billows  have swept over me. 
This roar was man made, but we'd seen the same force of water rushing at Huka Falls the day before. There the water rushed through a narrow gap in the rocks and poured out in a torrent over the lip of the falls. It's waterfalls and boiling ground, earthquakes and hurricanes that remind us how fragile and momentary our lives are.

As we drove down the motorway into the city today I felt myself sigh, a kind of resigned sigh. The holiday was over too quickly. But as we got nearer to home and the roads wound down through the bush and out to the harbour, my spirits lifted. I can't tell you how surreal it was, to have been on holiday in suburbia, where trucks roared past on the main road behind us, and then to have come home to this quiet paradise.

Packing the kitchen

We are packing to go away again. This time to Taupo, where there is a chance of snow! We are going away with Paddy's family to celebrate his mother's seventieth birthday.

The kitchen bench is covered with food from the pantry, waiting to be packed into bags. I want to take as much food as possible, partly to save money, but mostly because we have some interesting dietary requirements in this family and it's easier to have the ingredients so we can still do all our normal cooking and baking at home. And we can't do baking without baking equipment! A sieve, the scales, a large round cake tin so we can make a birthday cake for Gran, the slice tin I use for the oaty slice I make all the time, and two muffin tins. (I'm so excited about this gluten-free whole grain muffin recipe.) When Paddy sees the enormous pile he's going to have a fit. It's not like we have a big car.

I'm not much of a chef, I'm useless at chopping, and I can never get the timing of things right, but I like cooking. I especially like cooking when I'm not rushed. Baking in particular can be calming and grounding. Collecting and then measuring ingredients, mixing and pouring. Even better if no one is talking to me while I do  it.

When I clicked over to Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef just now to find that muffin recipe, Shauna was writing about a fellow food writer who has just very sadly and unexpectedly lost her husband. This friend, who has been supported amazingly through this funny thing we call the internet, had to decide whether to keep the summer holiday plans that had been made before her husband passed away. A holiday to a cottage they go to, or had gone to, every year. She decided to go for the sake of her girls, and told Shauna that three whole bags out of their luggage were for the kitchen. The kitchen is a good place to do grieving.

I'm not grieving, but I can't imagine going on holiday and not cooking. If it means taking less clothes to make space, then so be it. Cooking brings people together, it makes us more mindful about what we eat, and it is one of the simple yet so meaningful ways we can love each other. A friend from church recently had a new baby and a few of us made some meals for the family. Now sitting in the bottom of the church freezer are a random collection of plastic containers, all labelled with the handwriting of the person who made the meal. A vegetable pasta bake, sultana cake, shepherd's pie. The scrawled writing on the top a clear reminder to my friend that someone was thinking of her when they were in the kitchen.

I watched this emotional short film this week. I found it, bumped into it, on Pentimiento. It may make you cry, but I promise you it is worth it.


This was grace - short film from Andrew Laparra on Vimeo.

This is the story of a family, of a mother and father who have a special needs child. One of the first scenes is of the mother feeding her son. It's a simple, probably exhausting task, that happens many times a day, day in and day out. Yet it connects her to him. By feeding him she is loving him, sustaining him, serving him.

The pre-dinner rush on a normal week is often one of the most stressful times of the day. I hope that while we are on holiday we get the chance to appreciate the wonderful thing that it is, to have each other and to feed each other.

home

It's two months yesterday since we moved, and it has taken nearly that long for me to call this place home. Even just a week or so ago I inadvertently referred to our old place as "home" and found myself choking back the tears. The context was a conversation about the horrific power bill we received for our first month here. Even when we divided up the bill between us and Mum, we were left with an amount that was almost twice what it would have been at our old place.

We knew our old place. It was dry and easy to heat. We had gas hot water and a shiny gas fireplace that we could turn on any time with no effort. We'd knocked down a wall, put in a new kitchen and bathroom, painted the walls and polished the floors. It wasn't perfect but it was lovely.

This place is the opposite of that one in every way. Where the old place was small, this place is gigantic. Where the old place was dry, this place has leaks and drainage problems. The old place was shiny and easy, and this place, well, it isn't shiny or easy.

But I wouldn't go back. When I wrote to you just before we moved I told you that this move was like "pushing open an enormous and heavy door with all of our weight, and then slamming it shut behind us."
And that is exactly how it has felt.

I visited our old place a few weeks ago. It's the same house, but it's not ours any more. It is lovely and shiny, but it's also very small, and there's no bush or beach. Just a street of ordinary houses in suburbia.

I was happy to live in suburbia, once. Suburbia has conveniences which should not be sniffed at. My sister and her family lived over the road, and we were friends with our neighbours. We had shops in both directions and several beaches and parks within a ten minute drive. Our backyard was tidy and fenced, and just big enough for the kids to play out there for hours.

But then in November last year we found a property for sale (not this one) on two acres of bush. You could stand on the deck and look out over a valley of green, and in the distance, when the wind was in the right direction, the low rumble of faraway surf rolled in. I felt like I was looking into my own heart.

We missed out on that house, and decided just to stay put and enjoy our finished renovations for a while. Then one day in February Mum and I drove past the For Sale sign for this place. I knew straight away we needed to see it. We rang the agent and made an appointment for that week, and we put in an offer the very night after we saw it. It wasn't a difficult decision.

This place is everything we were longing for. We can walk through our bush to get to the beach you see in those photos above. I can see the water from where I'm sitting at the dining table.The tide is in and the water is green. The bush above it on the other side of the estuary is glowing in the sun. Other than the birds, the hum of this laptop, and the occasional scratch from the dog lying at the front door, it is silent.

But it's not just this place that's so good, it's all the places we are close to. Last week I went for a drive with Abigail and found a deserted beach at the end of a gravel road. The water was high and clear, and I stood at the edge and looked out to the wide, wild harbour entrance. It was that same view, eight years ago, from a different spot, that had brought sudden tears to my eyes. It was before we owned houses or had children, and we were exploring, wondering where we might like to live one day. We happened to go out to Huia, a little settlement on a quiet bay near the mouth of the harbour. Standing on the deck of a house that was for sale I looked out at that harbour entrance and suddenly began crying. I think that was the first time I felt like I was looking into my own heart.

We live ten minutes down the road from Huia now. We drove out there with the dog on Sunday afternoon. It was wet and windy and we were wrapped up in jackets and hats. We drove to Huia and went to the sole store, which also does takeaways and coffees. We sat by the window beside an old tea trolley covered with magazines and picture books and ate hot chips. Afterwards we walked along the beach towards the playground and dusk fell. We were cold and very happy.

I never knew I needed to live so close to this harbour. I couldn't have imagined how much I was longing for wild places, to live in wild places. But now it seems obvious. And it feels like I can get on with my life.  If there are any words, any stories for me to write, they are here. All my dreams, every hopeful imagining. Here where wild tides meet and sea birds soar over wind currents. Where the eye can see for miles without obstruction, over oceans and back again.

Ma blew out the lamp

I finished reading Little House in the Big Woods to the girls on Friday night. We sat on the couch all three of us in our pyjamas and we read eagerly, because it was the final chapter. I never read this as a child, others in the series yes, but not the first. I've really enjoyed it, and the girls have too. I wondered what they'd make of it, with its stories of hunting and harvesting and snow, a world so foreign to them. But they've loved it as much as I have.

As we read the last scene I found tears rolling down my face! There was something so perfect and peaceful about it. Laura and Mary are tucked up in bed at the end of another busy day, with Ma and Pa sitting by the fire.


When Laura and Mary had said their prayers and were tucked snugly under the trundle bed's covers, Pa was sitting in the firelight with the fiddle. Ma had blown out the lamp because she did not need its light. On the other side of the hearth she was swaying gently in her rocking chair and her knitting needles flashed in and out above the sock she was knitting.

It was when I read that Ma blew out the lamp that I started crying. I looked up from the book at the fully-lit room around us, the computer screen on the TV glowing, the lights blazing in the dining room and kitchen. I couldn't imagine turning out the lights. There was too much work still to do. I kept on crying, because something in me was yearning for the simplicity of a life where the day's work is all but finished at sundown.

I constantly feel like I am surrounded by unfinished work. I've been going to bed so late because there is always something else to do. My life feels complicated. Until the girls started school last week I would often go for days feeling like I could hardly hear myself think.

Ma's days were busy. Her responsibilities were huge. She provided for her family without a fridge or freezer, without so much as a corner shop. Almost everything they used and ate was made, grown or caught by them. Life was hard. Yet after dinner, with a fire flickering, Ma rocked gently and knitted.

What did she have that I am missing?

My spiritual director went on Sabbatical a couple of years ago. I remember talking to her about it before she left. She talked about the plans she had for the three months she was going to be away and she was quietly thrilled. I shared the anticipation with her, and then, not able to avoid wishing I was going on a sabbatical of my own, I found myself crying. (Yes, more tears, I know.) Tears of jealousy? No, longing.

And she said to me, I'll never forget it, she said to me so kindly, "Oh Idoya, there's heaven you know." I knew exactly what she meant.

I know that for many of you heaven is the stuff of fairy tales, and I didn't actually plan on writing about it today. Yet I can't help believing that there is a longing for it in all of us. A longing for a life free of heavy responsibility and never-ending work, free of grief that would bury us, and regrets that haunt us. A simple, joyful and fulfilling life. Somewhere deep down I know I was made for it.

still re-modelling the dream

It's two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm sitting at the dining table eating lunch. Abigail is in bed and my two big girls are nearly at the end of their first day at school. I almost can't believe what I've just written. The decision to send them to school has happened so quickly, I'm still in shock.

Homeschooling was never something I planned on doing. As I've told you before, I once swore I would "never" homeschool.  Ha. Those words came back to haunt me when, as Isobella was about to turn five, the dream of a homeschooling life crept into my heart. At that stage Isobella had petit-mal epilepsy that was not yet controlled by medication, and it seemed cruel and counter-productive to send her to school.

I started reading and thinking about homeschooling. Through books such as Teach Your Own by John Holt, and through the internet and blogs I found along the way, a whole world opened up to me. Not a small, sheltered and narrow world, as I had assumed, but a wide and fascinating world, full of intelligent parents who were passionate about giving their children a holistic and broad education, while still giving them plenty of time and space to play. This blog, and this blog were the first blogs I ever read, and those families enchanted me with their other-worldy life of books and nature and freedom.

 Just before Isobella turned six, we had to decide whether we were going to continue homeschooling. To my surprise I found that school seemed like a good option, and Isobella agreed wholeheartedly. Isobella was happy at school, she made friends and had a great teacher, but she didn't thrive the way I'd expected her to. When people asked how school was going I'd say "school's fine." Then after six months I realised that it was okay for me to want more than just "fine" for my daughter.

So over a year ago now, we decided to go back homeschooling.  It was an answer to the cry of my heart. I realised that not only had school not been good for her, it hadn't been good for me either. I had turned myself inside out to find a morning routine that got us to school on time, and I found the after-school pick-up almost as stressful. The decision to go back to homeschooling felt like us deciding to be us. It felt like I was saying, to myself and to the world, we're a little different, and we need to do things a little differently.

I've loved teaching my girls. I found that I'd rather be teaching my own kids than anyone else's. And as I've written before, homeschooling "made me the mother I'd always wanted to be." It taught me to just be. It gave me permission to step out of the busy world of pre-school activities and be mostly at home. It taught me that there were no commitments in my life that were more important than my children, and it forced me regularly to be completely present with them.

Most importantly, homeschooling gave Isobella the space and freedom to be herself at a time when her self-concept as a learner was most vulnerable. She told me after we took her out of school that the boys had teased her for her "scribbly" writing and drawing.  She had often been on the list of kids who had to finish their stories at lunchtime. And sometimes she would bring readers home that completely bored her. It was so good for her to be able to do her own thing at home.

Then in May this year I took Greer out of kindy a term early and started homeschooling her as well, because I knew she was ready for it. I couldn't see it at the time, but actually, that changed nearly everything. Greer quickly flourished, and one day during her first week of "official" homeschooling, I looked at the two of them working up at the table and the thought came to me in a flash, those girls are going to love school when they get there.

One night a couple of months ago I had a dream. In the dream Isobella was at school, and she was happy. When I woke up the next morning the dream sat in my heart like a half-open door. I tried to pretend it didn't mean anything, but the dream wouldn't go away. It scared and thrilled me at the same time. And so we started thinking about school again.

I found myself admitting things I hadn't admitted to myself before. I did find it a challenge teaching both girls. Their needs were very different, and I often felt like I had to be constantly on point to keep Isobella on task and to keep up with Greer. And then there was Abigail, whose daily mission was to climb up onto the table as many times as possible! I realised that I had been unconsciously withdrawing from the girls at breakfast time, in preparation for a morning of school work, and then withdrawing from them again at lunch time because my brain had just had enough. Afternoons had to be outside play or rest time, because by then I had simply run out of words. I don't know how other introverts do homeschooling, but I think if we had carried on I would have got very worn out.

I've shed more than a few tears over this decision. I felt like sending the girls to school was giving up on the dream that was so precious to me. I wondered how Isobella would cope, and I feared the return to a family life lived according to an institutional timetable. But since we first started talking about it the girls have not changed their minds. To say they were keen to start school would be an understatement.

It's taken me three days to write this post and it's now Wednesday. The girls have settled into school easily. They are in love with the library, have both joined the group that helps with the worm farm, caught the school bus home yesterday, and will be catching it again in about half an hour. I'll put Abigail in the buggy soon after three, put the dog on his leash, and walk up the road in the sun to meet them.

But I don't think I'll ever be a typical school mum. I don't feel any different this week, with the girls in school, to last week, when they were at home. I don't see school as the perfect answer to their education, and we didn't stop homeschooling because it wasn't working. After three days at school Greer is already saying she is bored with maths. She wants to count to one hundred, not to ten.

And that's the thing, see. We can do that. We can count to one hundred all afternoon and all weekend if she wants. I won't completely pack up our homeschool things, and if Isobella still wants to write stories with me I'll be in heaven.

Reading over the other posts I've written about homeschooling has been hard. I've felt tears pricking as I read. And it's been surprising to see how similar each stage of the journey has been. None of the decisions along the way were easy. Each of them was accompanied by tears and deliberation. And each time I felt pulled, as I do now, in both directions. School, good. Home, good.

I'm seeing something now that I never saw before. We really don't fit neatly into either the school or the homeschool box. My girls crave the stimulation and company that school gives them, and yet, for various reasons, they don't naturally slip into their place in the system that is a public school. I know that school will not meet all of their needs. And yet I have a gut feeling that somehow, despite that, they will thrive.

And then there's me. It's not like I'll be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. There's no question that this house is a job in itself, and there is plenty of work to be done on our business projects. And what about all those words I haven't had the time or head space to write? We had a big chat about school with the girls one night before we shifted.  They were so keen on the idea that I was taken aback. "If you girls go to school, what will I do at home all day?" I asked, half teasing, half choking back the tears. "Write, Mama," Isobella piped up immediately. "Write!"