life at home

I've been writing to you in my head for a week now, ever since I got off that plane last Sunday and spent the day relishing the family and feeling miserably cold. I was going to tell you about how we live under a flight path, and that when I left Auckland I saw our beach from the plane as it banked at the edge of the harbour and then took off. I wanted to tell you how I wasn't in a window seat but I managed to look out just at the right time and there below me I saw the estuary and the row of houses at its edge, the bush with our house somewhere in it, and the beach, our beach. A second later I saw the rolling surf of Whatipu beach at the mouth of the harbour,  that wild place that makes me dream novels. I carried those images tucked inside me as the plane sped upwards. I don't know how I could have left without them.

I was going to write to you about the flights, there and back. Listening to Josh Garrels and sensing a new story being uncovered. Watching the other passengers, the couples leaning in to each other, the children itchy for freedom. I wanted to tell you about the roar of the engines and the way my stomach flipped as we left Bangkok, next stop Phnom Penh. I would have written to you about the lights on the tarmac at dusk on the return trip and listening to Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto as we flew above Australia at night and the tiny outposts of light I saw as we crossed the outback. And the knowing that was becoming so clear, about myself, about my life and the journey my life has taken.

But then I came home to my people. They'd been more than fine without me, but still it took a week to get clean sheets on all the beds and clean towels on the towel rails. There were benches and corners to clear, and washing to fold. I walked through the flotsam and jetsam of a week that had happened without me. I was living my life again.

And then my dear friend's father passed away suddenly, unexpectedly, and threw us completely. Her heart is now an aching wound, and her mother's life has been ripped in half. How does that wife fill the space that was so warm with his presence? How can she even count the millions of ways he filled her days and made sense of them? He was sixty-two and healthy, so treasured by his family and friends. How do they go on now? They go on limping, looking upwards. There's nothing else.

I know about this. I know about grief that acid ache.I stood at the washing machine five years ago, on the morning after my Step-Dad Don died. We washed his clothes for the last time and I cried at the smell of him on his blue vest. My chest was tight and hollow, my stomach sour. It was the worst day I'd known, and there hasn't been one like it since. Losing someone is being handed a loaf of stale mouldy bread and being told to eat the whole thing, one dry scratching bite at a time. We have no appetite for grief. And yet it is work that must be done, a job that cannot be left unfinished, or else it will take our lives too.

My friend Marita rang from Sydney last night with news that a mutual friend of ours had died. My friend Corin, who got back in touch with me through this blog, was a writer I've known since I was at school. He died a long way from home, somewhere in the States where he'd made a new life with a wife who sang in a choir. We had a brief email conversation a few months ago. It was a tiny, momentary glimpse, like seeing him out of the window of a plane as I sped past. I hold that image close now. He was wild and beautiful and found.

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.

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.

here's why I love the internet

A few months ago I was looking around here and there and I found this blog.

Now before you start thinking I'm flash and click away I'm not. I have no idea how to make that image into a link. If you do, please tell me. Until someone does, you're going to have to keep reading until you get to the actual link. It's coming.

This blog is pure genius. An agnostic and an atheist are spending 2011 going to church every Sunday. And they really are. They are going to church on Sundays and blogging about it.

The reviews of the churches they've been visiting make good reading. They're occasionally cutting, often irreverent, but always genuine. The pair have even found a church called The Bridge they actually like and want to go back to. Amanda, in particular, is witty and insightful. I like her honest and intelligent perspective. Her stories of visiting everything from The Bridge, a rough bunch of people who meet in a warehouse, to a rainbow church on Gay pride day, are fascinating and sometimes even inspiring.

Take this post, for example. Amanda writes about how on basically the crappiest day of her life, she got a message from Donna, one of the pastors at The Bridge, inviting her out for drinks. The message left her complaining that Donna was "making it really hard for me not to believe in God anymore." She goes on to write "because no matter how ugly it gets... I haven't lost the ability to see beauty everywhere... In the church pews, in my children's faces...in amazing conversations..." She even says "because of the heathenous things we write on this blog, Joel and I are probably the two most prayed-for souls in all of Portland, Oregon, but this was the first time I ever really FELT those prayers, welcomed them even."

Amanda promises us she's not on the road to "accepting Jesus Christ as my personal saviour" but she has decided to start reading the bible, along with The Bridges' booze and bible study group "Red Letter Pub". She's been won over by that Pastor Donna, and says " I don’t have to believe in Jesus to want to surround myself with people doing their damnedest to live like him"

And there you have, in one sentence, why I love the internet. Out of the mouth of a self-confessed "heathen", on one of the most random blogs I've found, were words that impacted me more than any song, book or sermon.  "People doing their damnedst to live like Jesus" is the best description of a Christian I've found. It cuts me to the core.

But before you think I"m going to get all serious on you, here's the other reason why I love the internet.

Yeah I know, this guy has been around for years, but last week he made my day. It's been pretty crazy here, finishing off the mammoth drainage operation we have undertaken, and rushing to get the downstairs flat habitable before our tenant moves in next weekend. We've reached that uncomfortable stage of starting to run out of both money and time... So there's plenty of potential for stress. But this guy was just what we needed.

Now as you probably know, this is Gary. He's become rather famous since he posted himself on you tube lip-synching to this song by the band O-Zone. (I think those Bros boys must have some secret Romanian love children!) The band themselves never made it even half as big as Gary did, as he's the second most watched video on the internet, and I think I know why. Gary knows how to have a good time without even trying. His unabashed silliness reminds us all how much fun we can have when we give up worrying about what other people think.

Thanks to Gary we've all been dancing and singing to our heart's content, and laughing like we haven't laughed since the night a couple of weeks ago we all got high on carpet glue! Even the baby sings it. "Maia - hii, Maia haa, Maia hoo, Maia ha ha!!!" 

And me, well, the truth is I've been singing it the most. So much so that even the kids have started getting sick of it! But I'm not ashamed. Because when I sing it my heart lifts and I remember that there is more to life than drains and mud and walls that need painting. In fact, strange as it is, that song makes me think of heaven.  About that unimaginable after where everything will make sense. It might be a tacky love song made famous by a random guy sitting in front of his computer, but it reminds me that one day the complicated and heavy weight that this life often is will one day be lifted.