good-bye for now

There are parts of Phnom Penh that remind me of Buenos Aires. The wrought iron gates with their ornamental details, the iron lattice bars over the windows, the tree-lined streets. There is enough of the air of L'Indochine left in the best parts of town to make me feel like I was sitting down to tea with a grand old dame. Well past her prime, but still with good taste, and fairly good manners for her age. That the city has any beauty at all is incredible, givZen that it was completely cleared out when it fell. Apparently, before the troubles, the city was one of the most beautiful in Indo-China. 

We went to Siem Reap this week and on the way up I saw houses on stilts, cows on the road. It was subsistence living in full colour. Siem Reap, however, has become a tourist mecca. The kids weren't begging (much) but they were peddling their wares with the same desperation. The prostitutes have gone underground in most places, but the girls who were offering massages and beauty therapy, a career that's used to get them out of the sex trade, looked tired and blank.

We went out to the Killing Fields by tuk-tuk this afternoon and life was hard where ever I looked. Don't ask me about the Killing Fields. There are plenty of complicated places around the world but this has to be up there near the top of the list. I can't explain how life here has evolved since the Khmer Rouge destroyed the very fabric of the Cambodian culture. Evolved probably isn't even the word. If Cambodia was a patient, a victim of some horrific act, they would be barely recovered, hardly even standing on their feet. Beneath the bustling streets and the commerce springing up around the tourist dollar and the floods of ex-pats in Phnom Penh, there is a vulnerability that is chilling. 

I'm getting my head around going home tomorrow. I'm more than ready for the ordinariness of family life, and I've got some things I just need to get on with. Like write that book. Mels has been my tour guide, co-adventurer, and confidante. She has put up with my absent-mindedness and my naive dreaming. I couldn't have done this, wouldn't have done this, if it wasn't for her. She has made a home for herself in the craziest of places, and she lives this complicated life day in and day out. We'll say good-bye to each other at the airport in the morning and she'll jump on a moto and drive back into the thick of it, while I fly right on out.

counting

So my baby is three today. Three years ago today they whisked her out of me, and ended my baby making days in one foul swoop. I now have mixed feelings about Abigail's birth day. I look at the video of her caesarean and see the smile on my face as clear and bright as a blue sky, and yet I know that in the very instant I am smiling they are doing the tubal ligation I requested, and taking away every other baby I would ever long for.

And she wants a baby too, that three year old of mine. She says “my need a brother and a sister.”  She is right. She would run the show if we let her, and a younger sibling (or two, or more) is just what she needs to help her remember that there are other people in the world beside herself.

Isn’t that one of the most important things we can teach our children, after all? Far better for them to learn it now than suffer the heartache and  loneliness that can only come from a life lived in expectation that everybody else should be about the business of making them happy.

We are away for the weekend, and I can see the ocean from out of this wide window. The white breakers are crashing on a faraway shore, and scrubby green hills rise up above the seaside-town-turned-suburbia.

With all this space I can finally hear myself think, and I am weighing up my life. Measuring expenditure versus income, checking the balance to see that it does, in fact, break even. I’ve never been able to do this before. I’ve never, not in my whole life, known where I start and where I finish. I’ve lived at the whim of everybody else’s feelings and expectations. If you were happy, I was happy. But it never really worked for me, it only made me tired and anxious and depressed. I don’t need to live like that any longer, and I am thrilled.

The three girls have been playing and playing today. They took armfuls of toys up to the rooftop deck, ran around, and then dragged them all back down again. This is nice, this having a three year old. The older two have spent so long having to put up with her interrupting their games, or messing up their creations. There have been things they wanted to do that they couldn’t, because a toddler had to be included, or kept safe. Now comes our reward for  that. Three girls who play together, who genuinely enjoy each other’s company. We can all relax a little.

I’m going to Cambodia for a week this month. I’ve been so busy with the wedding I’ve hardly had the chance to think about it. But the tickets are sitting in an envelope on my desk, and my renewed passport should be arriving any day now. I’m going to visit my dear friend Mels who has been teaching in Phnom Penh since January. We were talking on the phone a couple of months ago and she told me about the holidays she had coming up. “I should just come over and visit you!” I said, half-joking. I got off the phone and told Paddy what I’d said, and he agreed. “Go!” he said, in so many words.

I’ve been a traveller for as long as I can remember. I made my first solo overseas trip when I was eighteen, the summer after I finished school. I went to South America, mostly Chile, and I came back convinced that the only thing that I wanted in life was plane tickets. Since Paddy and I got married twelve years ago I haven’t left the country. We’ve dreamt of travelling, but it all changes once there are two of you, plus children.

This trip is my reward, in a way. I’ve put family needs and responsibilities ahead of my own ambitions again and again. Women do this without even thinking. It’s in our DNA. But eventually the time comes, or should come given the right circumstances, when we can reap a little freedom from the hard work we’ve put in.

I’m turning thirty-eight next month. I’m thinking of the next two years as preparation for my fifth decade, rather than the tail end of my fourth. And my preparation will be doing more of all the things that are important to me. More writing, more reading, more travelling, more walking, more babies and more abandoned enjoyment of that family of mine. I owe it to all of us.

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.

where I've been

This is where I went on Friday in the late afternoon, after I'd folded the washing and swept the kitchen floor. I said good bye to the girls and got in the car and drove the hour and a half trip here alone. I walked in the door with only my own bags. As soon as I got here I set my laptop up on that table you see and started writing. It was my first twenty-four hours completely alone for at least eight years.

It was a vague idea we've had for a while, that I could come out here to Mum's bach alone and work on the novel. It was one of those ideas that could have taken forever to make happen, or possibly never have happened at all. I booked the bach for all of us at first, I couldn't quite believe that I was going to get to come on my own. Now that I've done it once I'll do it again. And again.

I only wrote a thousand and something words but I finished the re-structuring I started a month ago and got my head around the part of this thing that I've been most scared of; the historical part. I'm not a natural academic. This is a big admission for me, and something I've literally only just come to terms with. It's to do with dyspraxia and the fact that my eldest daughter is not the only one in this family whose brain doesn't run in straight lines. I faced the fear that I wasn't capable of writing history. I'd had it in my head that I had to have all the facts straight before I could write, that I had to have an arsenal of verifiable and referenced details before I could do anything. But I'm  not writing a paper, I'm writing fiction. I can write whatever I like.

I drove back home with this deep sense of peace. I had spent a day and a night devoted to the the thing I want to do almost more than anything. I felt like a writer.

slowing to notice

This is what I've seen lately, on the days I've slowed down enough to notice. I posted an article on facebook a friend had shared a couple of weeks ago called  "Slow Down to Save Time" , mostly because I liked the title. Slow down to save time. It resonated with me. Some how, intuitively, I knew it was true.

There's not much logic to this habit I've developed of washing the dishes by hand. It definitely takes more time than loading up the dishwasher and only hand washing what won't go in.  It's been nearly a month now, and the repercussions are obvious. The house is messier. Paddy doesn't get it. He uses the dishwasher at the weekends when I try to bow out of the kitchen. He thinks I should give up so I can get on with everything else, and he'd like me to hang out with him. I'd like him to hang out with me, in the kitchen. I like a man with a tea towel. It's not that he won't help when I need it, it's just that he can't see the benefits.

The girls are really getting the hang of washing and drying the dishes. They do it most days, at least once or twice. It's a fantastic way to get us hanging out altogether in the kitchen, and it's a nice uncomplicated job for them to do, in chunks if necessary. Sometimes they just need a bit of focus, they just need to be reminded that we are all in this together, and the dishes do that perfectly. We have fun in the kitchen. When they are in there with me doing the dishes they often get to help me cooking or baking as well. We talk. I'm not saying it's all Little House on the Prairie and there's never any complaining, not at all. But once they get over themselves and get on with the job we enjoy being together, and I really appreciate them.

But I'm actually doing the dishes by hand for myself. I find this space when I'm washing the dishes that I don't find any other way. My hands get on with the cleaning, and my mind is free. I think, I pray, I sing, I write... all in my head. I process the events of the day, or go over what's ahead of us. I can't rush, there's no point, I'd only break something. I get into a slow rhythm. I notice things.

In the evenings when I'm tired I find washing the dishes by hand easier than loading up the dishwasher. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it's something to do with that dyspraxia story that's brewing. Washing a bowl in one sink, and then slipping it into the rinsing water in the other requires hardly any conscious thought. I find myself at peace. My breath slows. I enjoy it. And when the job  is finished (even if sometimes it's not finished till the next day) I'm satisfied. The dishes are often cleaner than they were out of the dishwasher, and sitting on the dish rack over night they are drier. And a bench of dishes is easier to put away than a whole load in the dishwasher. I used to get the girls to unload the dishwasher in the mornings but that was a big task, and I had to keep them focused the whole time. Now I do a bit, and they do a bit, and before we know it it's done.

The fact that the house is messier hasn't bothered me, and that's a surprise. I've realised how many hours, literally, I would spend tidying up each week. Perhaps I've dropped my standards, but I think actually it's more that I've found a truer, more genuine standard, one that reflects what's important to me. And it's been very clear to me that I was obviously doing too much of this tidying up business on my own. It was time for a bit more labour division.

I had a talk to the girls last week about the bomb site their rooms had become. I got a big storage container and "paid" them in stamps on their stamp charts to put as many of the messy, clutter-creating toys in it. I encouraged them to put in the plastic ones especially. We filled an 80 litre box easily. I told them we'd get it out at the end of Lent and then decide what we'll keep and what we'll give away. At that point it will be high stakes. I will present them with a bowl of gold coins and pay them for each toy that stays in there.

I've cleared out their rooms before, but I've never done it this thoroughly. Isobella especially seems to produce "stuff" on a daily basis. Notes and letters and plans and creations and random treasures from all over the place. They gather on her desk, in her drawers, on the shelves in her cupboard, they spread everywhere. And once they are there, she doesn't know what to do with  them. She can't order or classify them, and asking her to decide what she wants to keep and what she wants to throw out pushes her over the edge. That's another story too, about the hidden dyslexia that we've discovered she battles with.  I've taken out the shelves from her cupboard, and removed a whole piece of furniture from her room. And there's been a fair bit of rubbish smuggling going on, I can tell you that. But the girls are happy with the result. Their rooms are so much easier to tidy. And they are more peaceful, easier to play in.

I don't know if I'll keep up washing dishes by hand after Lent. I hope so, because it feels good to me. But it does mean it's harder for me to get to bed, and if I don't get to bed early, I can't get up early and write. I really want to get the first draft of that novel finished this year. I have to write.

But I'm wondering whether, as time goes by, I'll be able to find a rhythm for myself that will include washing the dishes. There's something that makes sense about what I've been doing, as crazy as it sounds. My world has shrunk, in many ways. It has shrunk to this big old camp kitchen of mine. I cook, I bake bread, I feed the girls, I wash the dishes, all in this one big space with windows overlooking the garden, and an opening into the dining room where I can look out to the bush and the water. Time slows when I'm in the kitchen. Whole mornings go by when I haven't ventured any further than this one space. There's something very good and simple about that. And when I slow and time slows, my mind expands. Stories brew, sit bubbling away on the stove in my mind. Their ingredients laid out on the bench, being gathered and prepared, bit by bit.

a for app, b for book

I went book shopping last weekend. It's funny how that doesn't have a ring to it in the way that clothes shopping does. Book shopping. But that's what we did. I got a few Whitcoulls book vouchers for Christmas, one from my little sister Esme, and the others from the girls. I didn't want to go to just any branch, partly because I wanted to have a good selection, and partly because I spent three years working at the big store in Queen St what seems like a lifetime ago, back when I wondered what on earth I was going to do with my life.

So into town we went. It rained all weekend, it was raining when we left. The drive right into town takes about forty minutes, and we drove in with the tires hissing on wet road all the way. I was really looking forward to having a nice time browsing and then coming out with a handful of treasures. I have good memories of working there all those years ago, and I remember clearly the layout of the fiction section where I spent most of the three years I worked there. It had a wall of fantasy and sci-fi, half a wall of classics, three stands of what we called "contemporary fiction" and a long wall filled with bestselling, money-making paperbacks. I spent my days dusting and tidying shelves, bringing armfuls of books down from upstairs and re-stocking, helping customers find or choose books, and serving at the counter when it was busy. The fiction section was tucked in behind at the back of the store, and it was a quiet oasis.

But I knew something was up as soon as we walked into the store. I could see cards where there used to be books, and cook books where there should have been NZ fiction. I walked around to where the fiction section should have been and my heart sank. It was a funny mix of business, craft and reference which melded around the corner into fiction. The entire fiction section fitted into the same floor space that the greeting cards used to take up. I found a few books I was happy with, but I didn't want to browse. It just felt wrong. We went upstairs and my unease grew. Stationery was spread out unevenly over the top floor, and sidled up to it were rows and rows of a complete mix-up of books, all with coloured stickers, most of them blue-stickered, meaning 75% off. I felt like I was at the bedside of a terminally sick relative.

Then we went up to Borders (now owned by the same company as Whitcoulls.) It was the last day of their closing down sale. If being in Whitcoulls had been like being in a hospice, then being in Borders was like standing in the desert and watching vultures consume the remains of a carcass. The once grand three level store had been reduced to one small level, and what books there were scattered on tables and stands there were random and dog-eared. I found a few things, but everyone was hungry and Abigail was starting to lose it, so we left.

I remember being horrified when I first heard about e-readers and the prediction that one day real books would be a thing of the past. I couldn't think of anything worse than no real books. How could you be truly reading without holding a book in your hands and feeling the weight of it? What was a book without pages, spine, cover?

Just before Christmas I read this post at Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. It's about a recipe and the gorgeous Holiday Food app that the recipe came from. And it's about iPads and the creative potential that exists with apps. I was completely taken. I've got an iphone but I never used a reader on it, and I've never been interested in having an e-reader. But something in my brain came alive when I read that post. I spent the day with this bubbling going on inside, this incredible sudden alive-ness in my brain. I couldn't stop dreaming about apps.

So when Paddy came home with a surprise Christmas present for the both of us, I was petrified and desperately hopeful that he'd gone out and bought an iPad. And when my hopeful fears were fulfilled, there was no way I could tell him off for spending so much money because I was too happy. We bought the Holiday food app that introduced me to iPads, and it was even better than I imagined. It is luscious. Beautifully designed, easy to use, and full of recipes and how-to's. It has crisp, vivid photographs, and video too. I would never have thought that anything could be more beautiful than a beautiful book. But this app is even more beautiful than a book.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

At the end of our book shopping expedition I didn't feel sad any more. By the time I'd made my way round two stores, one trying to re-make itself to survive, the other already dead, I'd worked through my grief. E-books are here to stay. Within twenty years I expect that most of us will read more books in electronic form than we'll read printed on paper. But that doesn't mean it's the end of books, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the end of writers. Digital publishing means that more books will get to more people more easily. And writers will still get paid. But I don't have the same confidence for the publishing industry as we know it. Publishing survives on paper and ink and mass production and will have to re-invent itself several times over to avoid becoming a relic.

I'll tell you what I do have confidence for, and that is for small publishing houses who specialise in very special books, treasures that will be works of art in themselves, and the small but clever book stores who will sell them. I don't believe we will see the demise of all booksellers, but I do think the bell has tolled for supermarket-style booksellers, the ones who think they can sell lots of everything without really knowing the books they sell or the customers who come to buy them. The kind of stores who have no idea about range other than to make sure that they have a good stack of bestsellers and a handful of whatever has been recently published.

I hope I get more book vouchers next Christmas, but this time I'll ask for vouchers for Time Out or The Women's Bookshop, both veritable institutions who have weathered the rise and demise of the supermarket bookstore. They both have a loyal following of customers, and both have a genuine online presence. In the future stores like these will become treasuries and precious links to the past. Books will be collectors items, and families will pass them down like heirlooms. And writers? We'll keep on writing.

black sand dreaming

We came out here for a picnic tea twice this week. This is Whatipu, the beach right at the entrance of the harbour. It's not that far from our place, but most of the way there the road is narrow and windy and unsealed, so it takes a while. The road leaves Little Huia, a handful of houses at the edge of the water, and winds up the hills through thick bush. Occasionally you can see through the bush to the mouth of the harbour below. The sun was setting on the cliffs on the other side of the harbour each time we came, and they towered bright white above the blue sea. I've written to you before about wild places, but this is as wild as it gets.  This is why we live where we do.

It's the kind of place that makes me feel like anything is possible. As if every idea is waiting for me there hidden in the black sand, or carried by the sea gulls as they glide above us from the huge sand dunes to the enormous rock that sits on the edge of the water, guarding the entrance to the harbour. I was lying on the sand listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves on the beach and watching Paddy and the girls splashing in the shallows, when a novel idea came to me. That is, an idea for a novel. Which really only means one thing. That I have to hurry up and finish the one I started, so I can get on to the next one.

I was standing in the laundry at the beginning of this week putting a load of washing on. The Laundry is tacked on to the back of the house, with a separate entrance, and it's where we dump our dirty shoes and gumboots, rubbish bags waiting to go out, recycling, and anything else we need to keep out of the house. It's filthy. The corners of the windows are filled with spider webs and the window sills are littered with dead insects. I was looking down at the dried mud on the floor as I loaded in the clothes, and wondering when I was ever going to find the time to get in there and clean, when suddenly, completely out of nowhere, came a word, and I knew as soon as I thought it that it was my word for this year. Industry.

You see the other thing I've been doing this week, besides walking on wild beaches, is planning. Somehow I've got this year by the scruff of the neck, like a small dog with a large bone, and I'm not letting go. This year will conform to our requirements, we will wring it out like a wet towel, trample on it like a load of grapes in a barrel, eek out of it every bit of fruitfulness and success we possibly can. I'm going to take a day a week to sit in the office and make sure we do. I will be the managing juggler, doing my best to keep all our balls in the air.

So how will I write that novel in a year which will be as busy as a city? I'll tell you how. I will start every morning in the country. I will start every day at this desk, in the dark silence of dawn. How exactly I will manage this I'm not sure. Over Christmas it was impossible to get to bed as early as I wanted to. But I kept trying. Every day I've said to myself, I will go to bed early. And on the mornings where I haven't gone to bed early enough to get up and write, I've taken the dog and walked down to the beach while the sun is new and cool, and discovered that walking is almost as good as writing. But even when I haven't written or walked I've gone often to the little desk in the corner of my mind, the one where the words pile up like snowdrifts, where they come in without any one to stop them or any guard to keep them out, where they congregate in clumps and huddles, where they feel already written, even before they are.

celebrating Advent as myself

Today is Annunciation Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent. Yesterday the girls and their cousins went treasure-hunting for leaves and flowers to use as the backdrop for our nativity scene. I found the closest thing I could to a purple or blue piece of fabric, laid it over the top of the writing desk that sits in our dining room, and then created a backdrop for the figures that will be added as the weeks go by. It's looking lovely and simple now, but it won't stay that way for ever. By the time Christmas comes it will most likely have plenty more greenery, plus a full menagerie of animals and figures from our nativity set. This will all lead up to the arrival of baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, who will be very comfy and warm on that manger Isobella created over a cut stone.

Today at church our Pastor spoke about the Annunciation. The moment right at the beginning of the Christmas Story where the angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells her she is going to give birth to Jesus. This story has always been meaningful to me. I am in awe of Mary's willingness. Her initial incredulity at the angel's words melts into obedience. Be it unto me according to your word, she says. There is no passivity here, her vow must have come from a steely resolve she somehow found within her. I want that. A selection of paintings of the Annunciation were shown, and some of them were beautiful. But none of them moved me like this one I found tonight in this post about preparing for Advent.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1859-1937

Here there is no hiding from the reality; Mary was so young and vulnerable. There she is, having been woken from sleep, disheveled, unsure, amazed. It's easy to read the story without really considering what this moment must have been like for her. Was she afraid? At first, yes. In shock? Probably. Completely taken by surprise? Absolutely. And yet something within her must have understood. Something within her must have been ready to be willing. Just a girl. Yet so ready.

Last year I bumbled my way through Advent, thrilled to have found an antidote to the commercialism of Christmas, but a complete novice. This year I'm still making it up as I go along, but I feel like I'm being re-united with an old friend, one who I liked the instant we met, and who I'm chuffed to be seeing again. I'm having fun discovering and creating traditions that are uniquely "us." The girls are so excited about Advent. We lit our first candle tonight, read the story of the Annunciation from Luke, and wrote some prayers together. It took us to way past a reasonable bedtime, which meant that it was growing dark. I walked into the dining room after tucking the girls in and the glow of one small candle changed everything.

But I've found myself not just thinking of our family traditions, but myself, and what I want to get out of this season. Karen Edmisten, in the post I linked to above, writes, As Advent unfolds, you're savouring the liturgical season, you're teaching your children about watching, waiting, and preparing for the Lord. But what are you doing for yourself? Her words challenged me to ask myself the same question. What do I want to ponder on as I wait? How will I contemplate what is to come? What will my priorities be in this potentially crazy season?

I don't think this kind of reflection is only for the religiously-minded. Anyone that wants to avoid a Christmas that's filled with stress and exhaustion would do well to pause and consider what lies ahead. Or else, as my pastor said today, you end up with another "Groundhog Christmas." I've had enough of those.

I've been writing nearly every morning since I told you I was doing NaNoWriMo and trying to write 50,000 words. I've been getting up at 5am, or as close to that as I can manage, and I've never been more content. I feel like I'm finally doing what I was made to do. I've been working on the novel that's been hanging around for almost forever, and I'm making writing a feature of my day. I feel like I've found the life I searched for desperately, knowing it was out there, but never quite found. I won't get to 50,000 words by Tuesday, but I've written 9,000. That's 9,000 more than zero.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel like myself. I'm living my life, not a version of it. Writing, in the active sense, influences my decisions, my priorities, and how I spend my time. It's the thing that makes me me. This all causes me wonder what shape Advent and Christmas will take now that I'm writing. I have a feeling that if I can keep this living-as-myself thing up, everything else will fall into place.

spring

I think it's finally spring. These flowers were the sight that greeted me during the weeks when we were all sick. A friend of Mum's had given them to her, and she shared them with me. They gave me hope and something beautiful to look at when the house was in disarray. They made me happy.

Something else is making me happy at the moment, and it's very good news. But there's a story to tell first, of course. Last Friday after I wrote the previous post Paddy and I went to see our therapist/counsellor who we'd managed to get an appointment with at short notice. I went out in a short-sleeved t-shirt for the first time, and the sun on my arms was warm. We've been seeing this woman on and off for about five years, and she's extremely smart. She works us out (or even better, gets us to work ourselves out) in an hour, every time. That's good value!

I told her a version of what I told you last week, how I'd realised that I'd had this sub-conscious victim thing going on, and that I could see now where my communication had been laced with resentment. The words I was using in our communication that week may have been innocent, but the tone was not. I apologised to Paddy, I told him I would have got on my knees if I needed to, I was that sorry. There's something safe about feeling sorry, when I'm really sorry I know I've got to the end of myself, I've uncovered everything that can be uncovered, gone where I need to go. Something is finished.

Our counselor then pulled out a set of cards with words on them, representing a range of human needs. She gave us a pile each, and asked us to choose three. "What were your needs at that time?" she asked us. "At the time of the conflict, what did you really need?" We each went through our set of cards and pulled out the words that resonated. There were plenty of words and phrases I liked, but only a handful that I knew were right for that moment.
Authenticity, consideration, mutuality.
Paddy chose his three easily, and I understood them straight away.
Respect, appreciation, acknowledgement. 
It's not rocket science really, is it?

We got to buy a set of cards and bring them home, and this is where the story gets good. I had a great time the next morning writing in my journal and reading through the cards. I laid the cards out around my laptop, up at our big dining table where I'm sitting now. They were breathtaking in their sheer number, and in the kaleidoscope they represented. I was looking at words that stood for almost every possible need an adult could have. I found myself asking some really good questions, and answering them with the cards.

The first question I asked myself was this. "What needs am I meeting when I write?" This is what I came up with;
meaning and purpose, clarity, creativity, time alone. 
Then I asked myself the opposite question. "What needs am I meeting when I choose to do other things, rather than write?" (By other things I mean the things I would normally choose to do in the evenings rather than write, like clean up the kitchen, tidy and clean the house, or do washing.) And I came up with;
order, beauty and aesthetics, efficiency, time alone. 


In effect, the needs I meet by writing are very similar to the needs I meet when choose not to write. If that sounds Irish, bear with me. I'm talking about the time I have most control over, which is the evenings, after the girls are in bed. That's the time I'm most likely to write. But usually once the kids are in bed you'll find me pottering around, re-ordering after the day's activity. I'll be tired, but usually happy enough, and certainly satisfied once I'm finished. I will have met some of the same needs that I could have met by writing. Time alone, order, beauty and aesthetics, creativity. And usually if I've been pottering around in my own space I will have been thinking away and created some sort of clarity in my head as well. Unfortunately though, I'll usually still want to write, here or in my journal, or at least do emails and read a few blogs. Which is how I end up going to bed way too late, and getting way too tired.

But isn't it a funny thought. Who would have thought I could meet some of my deepest needs by folding washing?!

Now here's the good news. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as Nanowrimo. It's never really grabbed me before, but somehow, mysteriously, this time I just wanted to do it. My friend Marita is doing it too, so we are keeping each other honest. I've written 3053 words since Tuesday. I'm way behind on the Nanowrimo target of 50,000 words by the end of November, but I'm way ahead of any hopes I ever had of actually writing this thing before the kids leave home. Let me put it this way, this idea, which I've mentioned a few times here, has been on the back burner for seven years. As of the 1st of November, it is officially on the front burner! That, my friends, doesn't just make my day, or my week, or my month, it basically makes my whole life! This is an astounding, near-miraculous thing! Worthy of many exclamation marks!!!

So this is what I asked myself last weekend as I sat right here with that pile of cards. I asked myself "what are my needs for this month, being the month I will be attempting to write 50,000 words?" And this is what I came up with.
 - time alone
 - order
 - efficiency
 - power in my world.

Is that surprising? It was to me. I would have thought I'd come up with some of the other words from the pack, like creativity, peace, and beauty. But no. To give myself a good shot at writing 50,000 words this month I need power, order, and efficiency. Who would have guessed.

Here is the really good news of it all. I've been setting my alarm and getting up at 5:30am every morning to write. To do this I've set my alarm (on my phone) to go to bed by 9:30pm every night. I've had to leave the dishes in the sink, ignore baskets full of washing and toys strewn across the floor. I have to walk past the TV, past emails and the internet, past long chats late at night. It's made me grab efficiency by the scruff of the neck and make it mine so that I can get the bare minimum done. It's made me leave jobs for Paddy to do the next day (when he's working  nights) even though I'd rather do it then, and do it my way. The result has been a messier house, three thousand words, and a happy me. There are some details I'll still have to thrash out. I do still want to spend time with that husband of mine, that goes without saying. And I know that when there's sickness in the family there will be days when I have to give up on the early mornings. But I think I've more or less found the way I want to spend the rest of my life.

If you've read this far, thank-you. That tells me that you are interested, and that you might even care. You might be my sister, or a treasured friend, or an old friend, or a new friend, or someone I haven't met yet, but if you read this far  then you've put yourself on my team. If I ever complain about tiredness or busyness or feeling lost in life, please remind me of the words I've written today. You are my witness!