Seasons - five things I know

1.  Isobella turned six on Sunday - who once was my baby, completely dependent on me, now fully fledged autonomous human. And beautiful! She had a party, there was party food and a cake, of course.  And plenty of dancing!

2.  Back in February I applied for an artist-in-residence (as a writer) and it was quite a big deal for me.  I had to produce a CV of myself as a writer, and write a proposal of what I would be working on if I received it.  On Tuesday I found out I was unsucessful.  I was disappointed, a wee bit sad, but mostly I felt vulnerable. I nearly cried.

3. Last week while I was breastfeeding Abigail she bit me big time!  (She has teeth top and bottom!) I yelled and put her down, and after that she refused to feed.  Since then I have tried and tried to woo her back but she is steadfast.  She does not do breastfeeding any more.   "Mum, it's just so last week", she says.  "Don't take it personally".  But I do, and I cry.

4.  Tomorrow is Good Friday.  For me, as a believer, this is more than just a public holiday, or chance to go away for the long weekend, or even a good excuse to go to church...  it is a day that connects with something very deep inside of me.  The place that knows there is more to life than what I can see, hear or touch, and that is so aware of my humanity and my desperate need for redemption.   And the place inside me that somehow (and I know this is not true for everybody) finds it very easy to love and worship an ominpotent and omnipresent God.  That makes tomorrow a serious day for me.  A somber day, a chance to feel the weight of what I believe happened on that day, and to meditate on who Jesus is to me.

5.  The woman I wrote about last week, who was on a hunger strike, has passed away.

This week I will have lived it all.  Celebration, mourning, loss and hope. In my lifetime I will live it all. What I have now, I will not have forever.  What I do not have now, I may have one day in abundance.   But someone has already written this.  I can't do any better...

Ecclesiastes 3

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
A time to break down,
And a time to build up;
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn,
And a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,
And a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace,
And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain,
And a time to lose;
A time to keep,
and a time to throw away;
A time to tear,
and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence,
And a time to speak;
A time to love,
And a time to hate;
A time of war,
And a time of peace.

What do you think?

Twenty Years

This morning.  How can I get up at 6:30am and not have enough time to do everything that getting ready for school and kindy entails?  I only have to get myself showered and dressed, feed four mouths, pack two lunches, oversee personal grooming, the packing of bags, morning chores, and get up to the walking bus by 8:25.  It's not like I'm running a marathon or anything.   But could I do it?  No.  We finally got in the car at 8:28 (I thought it was five minutes earlier than that) and raced up to the walking bus, yanked the buggy out of the car, popped the baby and Greer in the seats and dashed across the road to lead the waiting group down the hill to school.  We were embarrassingly late.

The problem is that we are often late by at least a moment.  Mornings are a mission. I've tried tick charts, motivational sticker charts, showering in the evening, changing the order by which I do things... and some of those things help some of the time, but I've found no magic formula.  Every morning is just so different.

I saw Isobella off to her classroom and walked back up the hill with a heavy heart.  I was wracking my brains, trying to lay the blame somewhere.  Was it just my slackness?  Was lateness somehow tied up with one of the seven deadly sins and should I be going to confession?   Should I abandon the walking school bus, even though it allows me just to drop Isobella off most mornings, and usually only walk it once.  Or should we just pack up and sell our house and move nearer the school, right next door preferably, ideally on the side her classroom is on so I can just hoist her over the fence in the mornings....

On the drive back home I got thinking about a news item I saw last night.   A woman who has been partially disabled for twenty years following a brain haemorrhage and appears to be confined flat in her bed, has been refusing to eat for eleven days.  Her estranged husband was shown tearfully expressing his grief that the rest home she is in seems to be supporting her death wish.  As I was driving it suddenly dawned on me that this woman, who was once an attractive woman, full of life (we saw a photo of her in her thirties, perhaps), has for the last twenty years been lying in a bed barely even able to communicate.  For her, every day of the last twenty years has been identical. 

In the last twenty years I have finished secondary school, completed two lots of tertiary education, travelled overseas several times, worked in three completely different jobs, got married, had three children, bought two houses and sold one, been a landlord, started writing a novel, dreamed, longed for, wished, and made many things happen, and mostly, grown up.  From sixteen to thirty-six.  While this woman has done not much more than exist.

I am so grateful for this life.  This life with its crazy unpredictable-ness and with all its responsibilities and the rewards that follow.   How lucky I am to have things to be late for...  to have a (mostly!) sound mind and a very able body that can coral children and buggies at high speeds, that can walk down steep hills breathing in crisp nearly autumn air and then bend to kiss my daughter as she enters her classroom.  Not one day of the last twenty years has been the same.   Every day a new day, each one full of possibilities and challenges.   But who has faced the greater challenge, in those twenty years?  Me, with my jobs to do, deadlines to meet, events to arrive on time to, relationships to negotiate and children to care for, or that woman, lying in her bed, living in that strange, unknown space between this world and the next, not fully in this one, and yet not released to enter the next?  She is the hero.

52 Poems

Cutting the Cake of Life

I'm not quite sure where this story starts. Maybe it starts on June 30th, 2001, at our wedding. Maybe it starts in January on Great Barrier Island, when Paddy and I found ourselves waist-deep in the cool clear water of Karaka Bay, fully-clothed, and the words "will you marry me?" came out of my mouth. Or maybe it starts on a grey, tumultuous day some time last year,  one of many when we faced each other with angry words, full of misunderstandings.  Or maybe it starts even earlier than all of that.  In the moments when our younger selves began to imagine what our older selves would look like.  When we started forming our expectations, our hopes, and our dreams.

But beginnings are never quite as important as endings, and never as long and as challenging as middles.  Paddy and I started our lives together with all the best intentions, and with all the hopeful dreamy longings of two young people in love.  But we were two very opposite people and as time went on we became very good at being average.  It was unnoticeable to many, but it gradually became blindingly obvious to us.  There was an increasing sense of disatisfaction felt by us both, and an unanswered question hung around us in the air; "Was this how it was supposed to be?"

When you are faced with a situation that you are unhappy with, you really only have two options.  One is to change the situation and the other is to get out of the situation.  To sit with the status quo is not a real option, it's stagnation.   It becomes a gradual rotting away of all that was good, of what life there was.  We didn't like the second option, and I was rejecting stagnation, kicking and screaming all the way. So we had no choice but to change. And so, by God's grace, we did.   Are we still changing?  Of course.   Will there still be grey days and angry words?  Of course.  But we have reached a place of understanding and mutual good-will, and you can go along way on that. 

On Saturday we had a Naming Ceremony and Dedication for Abigail.  Our sweet, sweet girl.  We invited our immediate family and a couple of friends.  And we decided, the Monday beforehand, to surprise everyone by renewing our vows.  We had talked about it on and off since that unexpected moment on the Barrier in January.   And so we did it.   We ordered a cake, I went clothes shopping and got my hair cut, we bought flowers and prepared the house.  Nobody knew what we were going to do until the moment when our friend officiating said "and now Pat and doya are going to renew their vows."   Wow.   It was a dream come true, the fulfillment of Hope.

The cake was for all of us.   We put Abigail's name at the top to make up for the fact that we had stolen her thunder a little.  We cut together, one of us holding the baby, the girls holding onto our hands.  It was one of the best moments of my life.   And the cake was chocolate, rich, and very good.  It got eaten quickly!

But we might never have tasted it.  If we'd chosen to remove ourselves from the situation our marriage had become that cake would never have been bought, never eaten.  If we had given up and let status quo reign, there never would have been any change to celebrate, and no cake to celebrate with.  It's also possible that we could have planned the change and the celebration, but never followed through, and that cake could have sat there, metaphorically speaking, untasted, uneaten.

What cake is sitting in front of you in this season of your life?  Have you noticed how it's decorated, or appreciated its flavour?  Have you actually got out a knife and cut into it, taken a huge, greedy bite?  Or is it behind you on the table, ignored.  Maybe it's not the flavour you were expecting.  

But it's cake.  Come on.  It's got to be good.   Turn around and eye-ball it.  Take the knife and cut into it.   It won't be the only cake you eat in your life time.  There will be others, don't lose hope of that.  But taste that one in front of you now.  Relish it.

Avatar: Home Truths?

We must have been the last New Zealanders to see Avatar. One afternoon last week we dropped the kids off to Grannie, drove over the bridge, parked outside a non-descript movie theatre and went inside. We walked into the dark theatre and settled in.

Avatar is set on the moon Pandora, home of the Na’vi. These people inhabit a wild, lush and verdant habitat filled with all manner of strange and beautiful creatures. Pandora is a rich source of unobtainium, a super-conductor of energy which humans are mining to save the earth. Platoons of humans have arrived en masse to pillage Pandora of its unobtainium stores, even if it means destroying what is most valuable to the Na’vi.

I loved it. There aren’t many movies I’d watch twice and this is one of them. A fantastical adventure in a world more enchanting than I could dream. Action, adventure, suspense, love…we get it all. It’s an easy escape. No brain strain here, there’s nothing to decipher or deconstruct. Simply beautiful.

The movie finished and we walked out. We picked up the kids, came home. An afternoon’s light entertainment had been consumed. Great movie, we could have said, and then got on with our lives. Then as the days went by the memory of it would have faded. We might have remembered the ending, or the scary bits, or the M&M’s, or the grubby cinema seat viewed in half-light as we sat down. But would we really remember the movie?

It all depends on what we think we saw. Did we see a blockbuster, a crowd-pleasing blend of technical wizardy and old-fashioned story-telling? Or did we see something as close as we get to a morality tale? Something like sitting around a campfire and listening to ancient stories. You scoff, ofcourse. But the story is ancient. Indigenous peoples as guardians of the land’s sacred treasures. Outsiders who come only to take and to destroy. Two world views clash, each with completely opposing understandings of what is truly valuable. One man experiences a life-transforming paradigm shift and a hero is re-born.


How many times have we heard this story? How many times have we witnessed it from the safety of our couches? How many movies, books, newspaper articles and news clips have we seen that tell us this very same thing: we are in danger of losing what is most valuable to us. And yet we walk out of the movie theatre, go home, clean up the day’s mess, and sleep. Another day gone and nothing changed.

But couldn’t we change?

Couldn’t we watch a movie like this and let it alter us, somehow? Couldn't we take the story and make it our own? Couldn't we re-tell it to our families and our friends, write it onto our hearts and let it filter through to our thoughts, our intentions and our actions?

Or do we just want to be entertained?

happening around here

Eight Months Old

Abigail turned 8 months old yesterday.

Somehow, this is the age I really can’t believe we’ve got too. Partly because I think I had lost a month somewhere, and a week ago I was thinking she was turning 7 months! But also simply because 8 months just is so old. I mean, that’s a really old baby. It honestly feels like it was just yesterday that she turned 5 months. And 5 months is really very baby baby. But she is 8 months. And she is crawling, sitting herself up, pulling herself up to her knees and even once to standing, she is making good sense with her “da da da da“ noises, and she is mine. My sweetest most precious Abigail.

Yesterday we gave her a piece of celery to chew on while we were eating dinner. And for the first time she “shared” it. She pointed it towards paddy so he could nibble it, and then to the rest of us as well. I remember the other two doing it at exactly the same age… funny that. Such a sweet moment. Every day is full of them, if only I had a film camera rolling in my mind. That nothing would be forgotten. But we remember the things that matter most, don’t we?

I don't really know what I want to say here

but I need to say something.  Things have been going on and I just haven't known where to start to get it all out into a post.  It began with a phone call last Thursday.  My Grannie (nearly 98 years old) was in hospital after a fall which resulted in a brain bleed, and she wasn't expected to last long.  So I went to the hospital straight away and sat with her, with my mum and my aunt, and later my dad.   She was looking pretty vegetable-like.  I was so glad that the last time I had seen her I'd said a proper good-bye.  

Last week I also found out that my friend's Auntie had had a stroke.  By chance this Auntie was also on the same floor as Grannie.  I sat with her that Thursday night as well.   Auntie Coll had been in and out of consciousness, and when she was conscious was showing signs of improvement, so her family were hopeful.   I visited them both the next day.   Grannie had improved, and Auntie Coll was more alert than the day before.   She was so interested in Abigail, and kept reaching out to touch her.  

Then Grannie stabilised and was shipped out to a rest home hospital.   Where she now lies resplendent in her best nightie sipping tea out of a straw, asking me whether I came in "the back door or the front door."   Next to a woman who has her own bedroom furniture, covered with old photographs.  I could hear from adjoining rooms both lucid, animated conversation, and strange groans and babbling noises.

Then Auntie Coll deteriorated.  She had another stroke, and slipped back into a coma.   The woman who looked so well and full of life (71 is young when you know a 71 year old) and was obviously trying so hard to come back to her loved ones, was gone again.  Then on Thursday afternoon, after the most impressive thunderstorm, she passed away.

So what could I have written here?  That I have been thinking all week about death?   That everyday my thoughts have been with two women living on the edge of existence?  Who wants to read posts like that, really, when the sun is shining and the cicadas are out.... 

But one day it will be me, and if I'm lucky I'll be 71... or maybe even 98.  I'll probably be the one making strange babbling noises down the hall.  You'll come visit, won't you? ;)

A photo

Me and the girls were just looking at my twitter page... and they asked me about the photo I have as my avatar.  (See it here.) 
Isobella:  "Is that you at Grannie's bach with Abigail?"
Me:  "No, that's you when you were a baby."
Greer:  "Where was I?"
Me:  "You weren't even in my tummy, you weren't born yet."
Isobella:  "God was making you."
Me:  "Good answer."

PS.  If you follow me on twitter I will be tweeting when I put a new post up... if you are that way inclined.  www.twitter.com/MsMunnn

PPS.  I'm still taking calendar pictures, remember? I have a couple, (literally) and as soon as I get one or two more I'll share...  Go on, take a picture while it's still January and send it to me at idoyamunn@yahoo.com.

My Favourite Place

We spent the first week of the year at my favourite place - Great Barrier Island.  A group of us went to Orama Christian Community in Karaka Bay, near Port Fitzroy.  Orama is used like a camp, in conjunction with OPC (Outdoor Pursuits Centre), but once it was a fully-fledged community with over a hundred people living there.  I've been there once before, two years ago.  Paddy had to work, so I went with Ella and Greer.  It was a mission, but so worth it.  I found a haven - an incredibly beautiful, wild, remote place, full of history, a place on the edge, a "thin place" in the celtic vernacular.  I fell in love with it, so to go there again all of us together was amazing.

The group we were with was there partly for a holiday and partly to learn.  We were a mixed group of ages and backgrounds, brought together by an interest in the story of New Zealand, using the Huia as a metaphor for our journey of discovery. (More about that to come.) We were there to share perspectives and ideas, and maybe even collectively hear what God might have to say about our country.  (Yeah, I know, Christians are weird like that!!)  We heard from Keith Newman, author of Ratana: The Prophet, Alastair Reese, who holds postgraduate degrees in History, Maori Culture, and Theology, and who has written this dissertation on the alienation of Maori land, Cindy Ruakere, and Brad Haami, author of True Red.

The book I'm working on is partly historical, so it was just the inspiration I needed.

The girls had such a good time.   There was plenty for them to do, and lots of kids around to play with.   At dusk and when it was quiet wild rabbits came out from the bushes by our rooms and they loved watching them.  (Good entertainment for the kids but not so good for the vegetation...) The building we stayed in was at the back of Orama, looking up to the bush and hills behind, and right beside a creek.  We slept listening to the trickling of water.  It was perfectly peaceful.

It is a wonderful thing to have found a place that connects with somewhere deep inside of me.  A place where I feel completely at rest, completely at home, and at the same time completely alive and envigorated.   Where I feel so grounded, so connected to the land and to the past, and yet as if I am standing on the threshold of my future.  Words don't do it justice.

I do have one other place that feels almost as good as that - Raglan.  My mum's family is from there, and it's the setting of my book.  So maybe I should be honest and say I have two favourite places.  I like the maori idea of having a turangawaewae, a standing place.  The best explanation I could find of it was here.  "Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home."  Maybe my turangawaewae, in a physical land sense, can be two places, maybe I have one foot on Great Barrier, at Orama, and the other on the shore of Raglan Harbour.

Do you have a favourite place?  Where is your turangawaewae?  Tell me...

Today

Today I sort-of cleaned the house

I sort-of tidied it too

the kids were sort-of happy

baby slept, sort of

we ate a sort-of lunch

the shopping got done

minus onions

so it was a sort-of dinner

I sort-of watered the garden

and sort-of folded the washing

and then I sat down and wrote this sort-of poem

happening around here - Christmas

     

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the New Year

I've just put up our 2010 Calendar.  This is the first year I've bought a calendar before January 1st.  It's a nice calendar.  Very white.  No dog-eared corners.  And blank.  Full of possibility.  It makes me very happy to see it up there on the wall.  Happy partly I guess because happy is how I feel about 2009.  I've said good-bye to a very good year.  The hardest, yes, in some ways, but also the best.  I had a word for 2009 (cheesy I know but I got the idea here.)  My word for 2009 was hope.  It was the perfect word, and it served me very well.  So when I said good-bye to 2009 last night I did it gratefully.

Then my thoughts went straight to 2010.   What do I want for this year?  What is it that I want more than anything else?   The answer is easy.   To explain it I need to take you back to 2009... and hope.   You see in all the things I had hope for the thing I hoped for most was a book.  The one I am trying to write.  You've probably heard me mention it every now and then, over the last few years.  It hasn't got very far, but it hasn't gone away.  And the harder it has been to find time to write the more I have wanted to do it.   To the point now where I want it terribly.  I want to write a real book.  One that sits on the shelf in libraries, is bought in bookshops, is read.  I'm putting myself out there telling you.  I won't be getting much more heart-on-my-sleeve than this.  But I am quietly, shyly, confident.

Enter 2010.  A year that looks surprisingly different now that we are not homeschooling.  I have time.   One whole day a week - Thursdays - when Greer is at kindy, Ella's at school and it's just me and Abigail at home.  No prizes for guessing what I'll be doing on Thursdays!  The thought of a whole day to write is intoxicating. 

As far as a word for 2010 goes, I've got a few ideas going around.  I'm looking for something like hope-becoming-real, or hope with legs on! :-)  Something that reflects the hopeful determination I feel for this year, to just get on and do what I've been longing to do for so long.  

And you, my dear family and friends, if you had a word for 2010 what would it be?  Go on, think about it... humour me!

A Christmas Wish for You

Kissing the Face of God

by Morgan Weistling

I've been thinking a bit about Advent as this month has sped by.  I've been reading about how other families manage to make Christmas a meaningful season, not just one intense day.  I've been thinking about seasons and how we have lost our connection with them in many ways.  I wanted to somehow bring together these thoughts and start making Christmas more reflective, more evenly paced, and less shopping mall-fueled.  Well, I guess good ideas have to start somewhere, small.  We've had a few lovely moments with the girls, started a couple of new traditions in a very haphazard way... but my hope that this Christmas would be different has been largely overtaken by the realities of tiredness, busy-ness and the ordinary stuff of life.  Right now I'm very tired after staying up too late wrapping presents and being woken up too early by small people.   My focus for today and tomorrow is on lists. 

But at the same time there is part of me that is still hopeful for next Christmas, (at least we get opportunities for improvement!) and is relishing the chance right now to reflect on all of this. And I realise as I write that in this one moment, in a small way, I am doing what I wanted to do all along.  

So my wish for you is that you get a moment like this for yourself.  A moment when you realise you are doing what you most wanted to do this Christmas.   When that moment comes, savour it.   Remember it.  And take it with you into the New Year.  Take it with you through into 2010 and let it make its mark on your plans, your dreams, your lists.  That way Christmas isn't just one day.... 

Take care and enjoy Christmas.  Thanks for your friendship and support... and thanks for reading!

happening around here

Remembering Don

Three years ago today my step-dad Don passed away. It seems such a long time ago, yet it feels as if it happened yesterday. Greer was a baby when he died, and now there are two more grandchildren he hasn't met. So much has happened, and so much has changed, yet I can imagine him walking in here now and I know exactly how he would look, what he would be wearing, and how he would be carrying himself, as if I'd only just seen him last week. I wanted to write this post about him, to honour him and remember him. But I can't do any better than what I wrote two days after he died, and read at his funeral, so these are my words.

December 19 2006:
About two years ago I had a dream. I saw Don running, wearing a singlet and a number on his chest, and I saw him run through the finish line, with his arms raised high and the biggest smile on his face. And I woke up crying, I cried and cried. I woke up pat and told him, crying. “Ring him” he said, so I did. “Don I just want you to know I love you” I said, crying. The poor man he would have wondered what on earth I was going on about. “Yes dear, I know dear” he said, and I could hear him smiling.

That dream never left me and the next day I was thinking about it and I suddenly thought, Don has finished his race! He’s done it! And I thought, maybe his race was to see me and Joy grow up, to be the man in our lives that would help us get ready for our lovely men to come. What if that was his race – to be our first man, and mum’s darling husband! He put up with our teenage selfishness and moodiness, and he made friends with us. Bought us KFC and doughnuts and got out videos for us to watch, he delighted in buying us new clothes and anything else we needed. He shared his music to us. I”ll never forget the time we were driving down to Tauranga, listening to music, taking turns to choose what tape we played, all singing along to a combination of the carpenters, petula clark and rick astley! There were so many things about Don that were strange and unfamiliar to us, but it was amazing how quickly he became so dear to us. By the time he had his second heart attack three years after we got married, I realised just how much I loved him. He was in my heart.

Then the next day after the dream I was talking to pat about it. “You know what I think?” he said “Maybe that means right now Don’s on his victory lap!” And I thought, maybe he is. And now that he’s gone, I really do. I think the last few years for Don were one wonderful victory lap.

And our precious kids, his most treasured grandchildren, they made it a victory lap. Right from the moment they were born he loved and adored them. They lit up his face. Joy and Dan lived with mum and Don for a year, and Anna got to have so many wonderful outings and adventures with Grandad. Anna and Isaac, Ella and Greer, Grandad loved you so so much. He is “Gandad” to Anna, and “Gwandwad” to ella. And they loved him, will always love him.

Don, if you could hear me, I would tell you how grateful I am for your love. Your faithful, constant, dependable love has made me who I am in so many ways. You opened your heart to me at the most difficult stage of my life, you never pushed me away, you never got angry with me, you always made it clear when I had annoyed or frustrated you, but you never held a grudge against me. You always gave me a second chance, you always thought the best of me. I know you were proud of me. And the funny thing is, that in letting you be a dad to me, I have learnt how to have a dad, and how to be a daughter, not just to you, but to my Rog, and for that I can never thank you enough. I may not have said these things before, but I never saw them as clearly as I do now. Watching you go early on Sunday morning, as the sun had just started to rise, has changed me. I see things I could never see before. We watched you take your last breath, and then in the moment you went, we looked out the window to your tenth floor view and saw the lights of the city, shining pin pricks in the darkness, and Lake Pupuke a glinting blue-gold mirror in the sun’s very first ray. It was like I was seeing a new city, in a completely different land. It was beautiful beyond words.

And this is what I think you saw. At 5:25, according to your watch, I think a man with a vaguely familiar face came into hospital room and tapped you on the shoulder. “Would you like to come for a walk with me?” I think he said. You thought about it for a second, and then you said “yeah ok, yep, that’d be lovely.” And together you walked, you so tall and strong and well, striding down the stairs and out towards the lake, away from sickness, and sadness, traffic and deadlines, lawns to mow and windows that need washing, into the glinting blue-gold of a new day.

And the empty space you have left in our hearts is enormous. We haven’t even begun to measure it, to chart its depths and its lows. But would we ever have chosen not to have you, to save us the pain of this loss? No. Not ever. Because even in going you have given us something. Your love lives on in us, and we will spend the rest of our lives so thankful, so grateful to have had you and loved you. You were one in a million.

Allie's Dream

Today I saw a dream come true. Eight years ago my dear friend Allie left a comfortable administration job to re-train as a dance teacher. It wasn't the easiest or most obvious thing to do, but she did it. A dream had captured her heart; to open up the world of dance to young people with special needs. Kids who wouldn't normally get to dance. And that's what she set out to do.

She now teaches dance in special schools and runs after-school dance classes for special needs kids. Today was her first ever end-of-year performance. A real show, in a theatre, on a stage, with lighting, sound, and costumes. A two hour show involving 30 students of various abilities. I wish I'd had my camera, but I didn't, so I'll tell you what I saw.

A little girl who inched her way to the front of the stage and couldn't stop smiling and waving to her family everytime she was on... and it was no ordinary smile... her whole face smiled.

A young man who captured the audience whenever he was on stage, who danced like he was born to dance, as if there was nothing else he'd rather be doing in the world, and who made us forget that every move was done with a huge amount of concentration and effort.

A girl who danced like a firecracker, who fizzed and sparkled and glowed. And never stopped smiling, an infectious smile full of the joy of being her.

Kids who may not have been able to run or climb easily, but who could move instinctively to the music, who could understand the story in the words, and who loved showing us that story with their arms, their hands, their fingers.

But more than anything, kids who in dancing found themselves, who were happy to be themselves, who in that moment were so happy to be in their own skin.

And I saw a friend in her element, living out what was in her heart. A friend whose dream had come true. Who in that moment was so happy to be in her own skin.

I want that moment for myself. I want to live out what's in my heart, I want to see my dreams come true. I want to be completely happy to be in my own skin. Don't you?

The Balloon

Greer loves balloons. She got given a beautiful blue one at the beginning of the week. On Monday she took it onto the deck. "Don't bring your balloon outside Greer, or it will blow away," we said. "Ok" said Greer, and she turned to walk back inside. Then suddenly she lifted up her arms and tossed it into the air. And then it was done. The balloon was gone. Tears and sobs.

So we told stories. Your balloon has gone on an adventure Greer. It has floated way up high into the clouds and now it's flying. That balloon is saying hello the birds. It might even be going to places you've never seen. Like other cities, other contries even. Suddenly we were all caught up in the wonder of this adventuring balloon. Oh the limitless possibilites! Except for Greer. Greer was simply distraught. So we changed the story. Your balloon might come back to see you Greer. It might come back at the end of it's journey to tell you everything it saw and did. Well.... it was a nice idea.

Then came Tuesday. Me and Greer were taking out the recycling. Which turned into a little bit of weeding. Which turned into a bit more weeding. Then suddenly I spied something blue in the corner of the garden! The balloon!!!!!!! What rejoicing there was. And ofcourse, we took a photo.

I was smiling inside for a long time after that. I could hardly believe it myself. Did our story come true? Did that balloon go travelling and then come home? Our prodigal balloon? Probably not. But it was a lovely thought.

I kept thinking about balloons. How magical they are, really. We can project onto them all our wanderlust and hankerings for other worlds. Our deepest longings for flight, and escape even. And it makes me very happy to think that in this age of technology, a three-year old still loves balloons.

Rain comes, two weeks later

I think I should tell you that finally two weeks after I asked myself the question here, I found the answer. I was thirsty, tired, and inside there was a tiny place inside of me that was struggling to live. Until I picked up my journal and a pen and started writing. And then it poured. How is it that we forget the things most important to us so easily?

Overheard after breakfast

Greer: "Ella do you remember when God came over?"
Ella: "What?"
Greer: "Last night. God came over. He was playing with us."
Ella: "That's no real. It must have been a dream."
Greer: "Yes."
Me: "What did you play?"
Greer: "Hidey-go-seek. I was hiding and then he found me. And then he found Abigail. And then he found you Ella."
(Said with the sweetest smile on her face.)
Then Greer bends over and looks at something behind the kitchen island.
Ella: "Greer are you looking for God?"
Greer: "No, Jesus."

!!!!!