adding to the family

Did you think that was all I was going to write about the wedding? People, I've only just begun! I couldn't wait to introduce you to the new members of my family. Can you believe that in one day I've gained a new step-dad, two step-sisters and three step-brothers, two more brothers-in-law, two more sisters-in-law, plus another niece and four more nephews? Do you think I'm happy about that? I'm telling you, happy is an understatement.

Right at the front of the photo, sitting next to Isobella, are Jack and Nevaeh, and up behind them next to Greer and Joy's son Isaac are Dominic, Liam and James. These boys got up to the cutest shenanigans during the ceremony, stealing flower petals from the girls and throwing them at each other in a manner that was just quiet and cute enough to get away with. Liam is the most stoic gluten-free kid I've met. Nevaeh is a sweetheart who has impressed my girls no end because she could ride a two-wheeler when she was three! (The girls on the other side next to Bill are Joy's Anna and my Abigail.) These kids love each other. They've got on like a house on fire ever since they all met, even the out-of-towners we only just met at the wedding.

Behind the boys are Bill's son Des and his wife Emily, and up behind them are Tim and his wife Casey, and Bill's daughters Aimee and Cathy, and their husbands Oliver and Dan, respectively. Then right at the back next to Paddy is Bill's son Caleb. The loveliest seventeen year old I know. I've always wanted brothers. Now I've got three of them! And you can never have enough sisters, as far as I'm concerned. Now I've got five altogether!

The girls have been talking about their "new cousins" since well before Mum and Bill got engaged. But I haven't breathed the word "step-dad" or "step-sister" or "step-brother" to a soul. It seemed a bit too forward, and a little weird given that Mum and Bill had only actually been dating since Valentine's Day. But I was quietly very thrilled. Then on Sunday night wedding photos were flying around on facebook, and we all got busy friending each other. I saw a photo that Bill's daughter Cathy had put up of Joy and I walking Mum down the aisle which she'd entitled "my new stepsisters and stepmum." I was chuffed, and that's when it really hit home. My family has grown.

I happened to be talking to a friend this week about families. She relayed a conversation she had with her mother at a time when she was finding her mother-in-law frustrating. She had started to complain mildly about her mother-in-law, who she loves, and her mother cut her off instantly. "Don't ever speak ill of her" her mother said. "She loves you and she is your ally."  I thought that was priceless. And so true. Our family is, or should be, by and large, our safe place, filled with allies.

My team just got larger this weekend. I've got more allies. More people who, if push came to shove, would stick up for me, look out for me, and speak well of me.  And it goes both ways.

giving Mum away

I've never seen her so happy. She was giddy with joy. I've never seen her so beautiful. The most elegant bride, of any age, that I've witnessed. And Bill, well he looked like the cat that got the cream.

They stood at the front of the church surrounded by their gorgeous grandchilden. The kids fidgeted and  made faces at each other, but the Bride and Groom wouldn't have had it any other way. Then they danced out of the church to that old hit by The Crystals, I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still, da do ron-ron-ron, da do ron-ron, somebody told me that his name was Bill, da do ron-ron-ron, da do ron-ron. The children followed them like they were the pied-piper, and together, in a glorious bunch of kids and beauty they did two laps of the church aisles while the wedding guests clapped in time to the music. Da do ron-ron-ron, da do ron-ron. It was pure celebration.

Five years ago Mum walked out of a church following my darling Step-Dad Don's casket. How could she have possibly known that even as she mourned her beloved Don she was being prepared for Bill. In a way, if you think of time like water, like a deep river we swim through, she walked out of that funeral and straight into her own dream wedding.

You won't have noticed it but she was wearing the same outfit that she wore when she married Don twenty-three years ago. We updated it a little, but the skirt and top were the same. Mum knew almost as soon as she and Bill got engaged that she didn't want to wear anything else. Some how it just made sense.

I understood this after I had a dream in which Don met Bill. In the dream we were all standing in a hallway, Bill on one side, Don on the other, and Mum in the middle. I turned to Don and asked him, "what do you think?" Meaning, "What do you think about Mum and  Bill?" He shrugged and looked cagey at first, as he was known to do, and so I tickled him in the ribs. "Go on!" I said, teasing him. And then he broke out in the widest grin. He smiled from ear to ear.

My sister and I walked Mum down the aisle. She didn't need bridesmaids, she had her gorgeous grandaughters for that, but she needed someone to give her away. It was the highlight of the day for me, made all the more special by the fact that the three of us knew, deep down, that my sister and I were doing it on behalf of Don.

something like normal

We're in countdown to wedding day mode and this is how our place looked a few days ago. The wedding is a big event. There's an afternoon tea for just about everybody straight after the ceremony, followed by a sit-down dinner here for family and a few friends. It was decided that a fresh coat of paint was needed in preparation for decorating the dining room for the dinner.Our walls were a very tired and grubby green. Now they are clean, fresh and light.I can't believe what a difference it's made to this room. I wish we'd done it as soon as we moved in. But back then we didn't know whether we were coming or going. We were overwhelmed by all the work that needed doing and painting seemed frivolous. 

But this room, and the kitchen behind me, are my workspace. This is where I spend most of my time. The kids work, eat and play at our enormous dining table. I watch them from the kitchen through the servery you see above, and look out to the windows overlooking the bush and water. I've perfected the art of looking past the grubby walls to the view beyond. I'd become numb even, to the dissatisfaction I felt with that tired old green. And I'm not high maintenance. It doesn't take much for me to decide that there are bigger things going on in the world than the state of our walls.

I underestimated how good this fresh clean space would make me feel.

I'm going to make a jump here, so stay with me. Besides re-arranging furniture and hiring table linen for the wedding, I've been doing a lot of thinking. It all started when I moved the boxes still to be unpacked (nearly a year later) into a room that was originally a bedroom but was too full of that revolting asthma-inducing mould to be slept in. It has been a work in progress for months, a room without a name (we have to name our rooms around here or we don't know which one we're talking about!) and without any real purpose, as yet. The mouldy gib was pulled off ages ago, leaving a nice wee window at the end of the room where you can see through to the toilet next door, which the cat likes to sneak through when no one's looking.

But we did a bit more room shifting recently. What was the library is now an office fit with plywood tables made by Paddy, with space for two or three people to work at the same time, now that we have some part-time staff working with us on the business. My desk where I used to sit and write by the window needed to go somewhere, and I decided that the room with no name could become, albeit temporarily, my study. In went my desk, followed by all the boxes yet to be unpacked, all mine. The first box I unpacked contained my journals. Some of the thirty plus journals I've filled with words since I was a girl. 

I started reading and I couldn't stop. This room which gave me space to unpack boxes was also helping me unpack myself metaphorically. I realised things I've never realised before about myself, about our relationship, and about what I want for my future. There were moments when I was absolutely gobsmacked by what I read. First shocked at how insecure I was before I met Paddy, and then amazed at the insights I had for myself despite my insecurities. There were things I wrote that echoed, ironically and prophetically, the troubles that were to come. I wondered whether it would have made any difference If I'd re-read them later on, or remembered the weight of them.

And the more I un-packed, the more I thought, and suddenly I found myself deconstructing whole worlds of belief. The tired and grubby walls of ideas I had inherited by virtue of my family and church upbringing were dismantled at lightning speed.  I'd grown up with these tired ideas, as tired as the green walls of this room were. They were familiar. I'd never really questioned them, although I had, very occasionally, wondered if it would be possible for those walls to be a different colour. But my questioning never went anywhere, because I was convinced there were more important things to devote myself to. 

Then suddenly I found myself with newly painted walls. The tired old ideas were gone, and in their place was something new, fresh, and clean. And I couldn't believe how good it felt.

The real walls I'm looking at now have only been painted with undercoat. That's why it's amazing they look so good! It's a flat stark white, an on the way colour, and even still, it's wonderful. The colour we will paint over it once the renovations are done will probably be another version of white. Simple and fresh to frame the gorgeous green we see out these windows everyday.

And in the same way, the fresh new ideas that have changed everything inside my head are a work in progress too. They're an on the way colour. Which is why I've hardly breathed a word of them to anyone but Paddy, and why I'm not going to be writing about them here until I'm ready. But I couldn't not tell you something. It just feels too good to keep to myself. It doesn't feel scary, and it's not at all unsettling. It feels like we're on our way to something like our version of normal.

simple learning

I've discovered that homeschooling is not complicated. Its essential ingredients are simple. Time, healthy relationships, community, and wisely chosen freedoms. When we homeschooled previously these things were not so readily available to us. I was driven to follow a particular recipe, not able to improvise. I was too concerned with how our learning looked to others, with wanting my girls to measure up. Now I'm finding that the recipe for learning comes instinctively to me, and what works each day is different. We make it up as we go along.

Homeschooling is the trip to the art gallery we took the other week. It's learning the violin, and experimenting on the piano. It's the impromptu flax weaving session my Auntie Celia gave the girls and their cousins when she came to visit. It's the mess in Isobella's bedroom that always involves several books lying open, and whole worlds created on floor. It's the full set of 1980's children's encyclopedia I bought from an op shop the other year. It's the pictures we painted while we were reading "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton.

Homeschooling is the beautiful and user-friendly handwriting programme we use. It's us all doing the dishes together, when we can. It's riding bikes. It's the swimming lesson, the gymnastics class. It's the maths curriculum that works with Isobella's brain, not against it.

Homeschooling is the blog we started for Greer last week, and the blog that Isobella has been doing sporadically for over a year. It's the fun touch typing lessons on the BBC website. It's starfall for phonics. It's Paddy and I working from home as much as we can, and Isobella coming in to the office the other day and asking "when can I start working in the business, Dad?"

Homeschooling is me not having to rush around like a mad thing in the mornings trying to get us all out the door on time. It's the freedom I have to get on with my day, after the hour or so of focused table-work that is our morning rhythm. Then whatever the girls do in their natural self-directed manner, with me close by for support, whether it's playing or reading or researching or creating, is all good. It all counts.

Homeschooling is the freedom we have after trying school twice, that we know now home is where our learning happens best, and that we are in for the long haul. I have long range forecasts, rather than driven short or medium term goals. That's freedom. Homeschooling means more time for me to write in the mornings, if I've gotten up early, and it means more headspace for me to write at that desk in my mind as the day goes on, if I haven't. It means setting a pace for our days that suits us all. It means peace.

Homeschooling is the library. It's the beach. It's the zoo and the museum, when we get there. It's going all together to the preschool music and movement class I help run and watching the girls play with the babies. It's seeing Isobella smile, noticing how much more confident she is, how settled and happy in her own skin she is. That's homeschooling.

It never felt like this when we did it before. There were too many agendas. We never really got confident. It was like riding a bike with trainer wheels, too scared to take them off, but always a bit wobbly.

This time there is no agenda.