Library Stories - Palmerston North City Library

You might have noticed I gave you a wee hint in that post I wrote about coming home from holiday. I found a treasure when we were in Palmerston North, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to indulge in a little fantasy I've been nurturing.  I've had this idea that you might like to hear about random libraries.  An idea that whenever I travel, I can post a story or two about the libraries I find.  I know, libraries.  Mmmm... not everyone loves libraries the way I do.  But I figure, if you are reading this blog then you either love me enough to humour me, or you love words enough that you must appreciate a good library.  And anyway, it's got to have some novelty value, if nothing else. 

So on that note I have the pleasure of introducing to you my very first library story: Palmerston North City Library.  I couldn't have asked for the a better kick-off to this tradition.  See for yourself the wonder that is Palmy's City Library.

I happened to read last week that John Cleese once said about a visit to Palmerston North "If you ever do want to kill yourself, but lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick." !! Palmy does not have a reputation as a must-visit destination, and gets plenty of stick from New Zealanders for being a very ordinary, small and land-locked city. However, I've found a reason better than any to live in Palmerston North: the City Library.

We had a few hours left in Palmerston North before we drove to Napier, and my friend Mels who we were staying with happened to mention that the library was pretty special. So we went to see it - and I'm so glad. It was a revelation. As you can see, the library is big, open, light, and full of interesting and innovative architectural and functional details. Each area was spacious and well-laid out, with very clear and useful signage.  The kids section was tidy, the readers (something I always notice) were organised and stored in easy-to-access bins (rather than being in one messy pile, as they usually are.) There was a toddler's slide, and a playstation!  Now that's how you get the kids to go to the library!

Every where we went there was comfortable furniture to sit and read on.  There were rows of comfy arm chairs on every floor, set up by big windows that looked over the square, and beside them were listening posts for music, so you could read and listen to your choice of music.  One woman had made herself so comfortable that she had taken her shoes off.  If there was ever a good advertisement for a library, that's it!

I think that in another life, I would be quite happy to move to Palmerston North. I would be quite happy to make that library my second home, visit it every day, find myself a quiet corner and sit and write and research to my heart's content.    I can't agree with John Cleese about Palmerston North in the slightest. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in my version of heaven (the theology of which will not be discussed here) there is a library just like this one. Lucky Palmerston North.

holiday pics

home

We have just got back from holiday.  Not just any old holiday... a trip down to Wellington and back in a campervan!!   We started up in Mangawai a week and a half ago, and then made our way south stopping at Huntly, Ohakune, Wellington and then back up through Palmerston North and Napier.   It was a whistle-stop tour.  If we could do it all again we would definitely take more time, but in saying that by the last night we were ready to come home.  Travelling with kids is tiring, but then who would want to stay in one place all their lives?  Not me!

Some of the highlights were taking the kids to Te Papa, Wellington in general, and Napier.  I also made a gem of a discovery (thanks Mels) in Palmerston North.  Surprised? Well just wait till you read the special post I have in the works!

So I'm home.  Surrounded by things to be put away and washing to be folded.  In a house that is badly in need of a good clean. I'm torn between jumping right back into normal life again, and running back to that lovely wee campervan.  But of course I don't actually have a choice.  At least Paddy still has a week off work.  We can have one of those "staycations" or whatever they call them over in that crazy country.  Yes, one of those holidays where I finally get to weed the garden and clean the blinds... and maybe even start our tax return, if I'm lucky. Yipee!!

today

Everybody is sick, except me.  Since Greer's birthday everyone has succumbed to a wretched virus, one by one.  I'm the last woman standing, hoping like heck that God's birthday present to me tomorrow will be that I DON'T get sick.  So far, so good.  Just tired, exhausted, bored and slightly grumpy.  The first few days I did ok.  If I can say it humbly, I think I was doing a fairly reasonable impression of Florence Nightingale.  But I didn't realise, all those two days ago, that I actually had it easy.  Kids when they are really sick, like glazed-eye, refusing to eat sick, are actually quite easy to look after. They just lie around watching TV or listening to books or music and they don't do much else.   They also have the lovely effect of drumming up all available maternal affection.  Yes, I loved my kids on Tuesday.  I also loved them on Wednesday, and possibly Thursday too. 

But today?  Today Florence Nightengale was called off to another assignment and her ugly step-sister moved in.  I guess it was to be expected.  She couldn't stick around forever.  Anyway, the baby got the bug and refused to be put down.  And I challenge any saint to stay saintly when you've got a permanent appendage weighing 10kg on your hip.  Moreover, this permanent appendage prefered her carrying person to either be moving, or sitting in front of the television.   Force me to sit infront of the TV, when loud and boring kids shows are on?  I'm in prison!   This 10kg appendage was not interested in sitting in front of the computer, not at all.  Not a blog reader, my one year old. 

Then, just as Florence Nightengale was heading out the door, my poor husband gets sick.   Really sick.  Shame, he missed out on Florence completely.  He was lucky to get a cursory glance from the ugly sep-sister as she walked briskly down the ward.  At one point he was heard asking me, in a feeble voice; "How am I going to be able to get hold of you?" as if I was heading off on a weekend trip, not just deserting him for another room!

But what really sent Florence heading straight for the train station was that the kids started getting better.  Yes, they did.  The little blighters actually got well enough to have opinions, refuse requests, to annoy each other, and to generally to a great job of getting on my nerves.   They could have tried the patience of a saint, if she'd stuck around long enough.   Greer was using all the energy she'd saved up being meek on the couch by having one melt-down after another.  And Isobella made it her day's mission to cough incessantly without covering her mouth, and to leave half-used tissues strewn from here to Antarctica.  Truly. 

How did I survive?  I'll tell you.  I got a call from my Dad to wish me happy birthday for tomorrow.  And that made me smile.  I bought some clothes online with birthday money (thanks :-})  Then I lit a prayer candle, for myself. I put Abigail in the high chair (finally, detached!) and set her up where she could touch the buttons on the dishwasher without even trying.  I then ignored the other two and cooked dinner.  And I cooked it for myself.  Not caring who would eat it or refuse it.  I stood and looked out my favourite window, just above the kitchen bench, and realised it had been a really beautiful day. 

There are many, many things I could wish I had been doing today.  Like being outside, like being alone.  Like being efficient around the house and getting "stuff done".  I could get really imaginative and wish I had been at the library, or in here writing, or in bed reading...  And if I wanted to, I could now transpose all those wishes onto tomorrow, my birthday.  I could fill myself with countless "if only's" and think up the most perfect birthday.  But none of it would be possible.  Tomorrow I get the privilege of being nurse-mother-wife again, hopefully this time more Florence than ugly step-sister.  It will be another ordinary day.

While I was looking around blog-land tonight I found this quote.

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savour you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want, more than all the world, your return."  - Mary Jean Irion

It was a nice moment, reading that.  It reminded me of what I always know, but often forget.  It saved me from wasting my thoughts on tomorrow.  It sent me here, writing this post, rather than into the kitchen to do dishes. And writing this post has re-fuelled me and left me peaceful and content.  I'm grateful.

guess what this is!

So you knew the idea was still hanging around somewhere... I told you about that here.   You knew it was part of a dream I wasn't sure of the form of, or the taste of, but longed for anyway.  You knew I was confused about how and why we'd done it in the past, and didn't have any idea whether we'd ever do it again in the future. Remember?

Well. Since those formative wonderings, the idea of homeschooling has come back to life.  You could say the dream has gradually taken a form I can see and describe.   It all started with that post, and those tears of joy I told you about watching the girls sitting doing "school" work up at the table.   It was followed soon after by a week at home for Isobella where she was too sick to go to school, but not sick enough to be on the couch all day.   I told her if she stayed home she'd need to "do some school" so I found a maths website on the internet for her, and it all started there.  From the hours she spent loving that maths website, she went on, mostly self-directed, to writing stories and typing them out, to reading old readers, to pulling out her old maths text book and doing some of the pages, to more reading... and more writing... and more internet maths. This went on for four days, and every day she became more content, happier within herself, and more proud of her work.  It got to the point where I said to her "you know this is what homeschooling looks like," and she replied, in so many words, "let's do homeschooling again Mum."

You need to understand that the week wasn't perfect.  I spent the first morning she was at home wondering constantly what was happening at school and what she was missing out on.  I got over that.  The second morning I lay in bed and thought about the prospect of being at home all day with three kids, no kindy, no activities, and had a moment of panic.  Where had my peaceful house gone? I got over that one too.   Then there was Thursday, my "writing" day. My treasured day, the gift that school had given  me, the day to myself (shared with Abigail) that was going to enable me to write the book.   Well Thursday turned out to be lovely, and I still got a bit of writing done.  By Friday I was in heaven.  I couldn't take the smile off my face.   I felt incredibly, deeply peaceful.   It was a peace that came from being free from the tyranny of getting to school in the mornings and being tied to pick-up time in the afternoons, a peace that came from spending the week doing something I now realise I love, a peace that told me my dream of a different life for our family was alive and well, and it took the unexpected form of homeschooling.

So that envelope in the photo above is our application to homeschool Isobella.  It spells out, in tidy-looking tables and concise paragraphs, how and why we want to homeschool.  It will be in the post today!

Four

She's four and the world is her oyster.   Amazing things are almost within her grasp, like words, like numbers.   "What is one plus three?" is an incredible question.  Her eyes light up and her fingers start counting each other.   The smile of satisfaction says "I know things!" She was given two colouring in books by her cousin, one a girl's one, so "girlish" and one a boy's one, so "boylish." Ofcourse. She is figuring out about the world.  She has discovered that her sister is her friend, her ally, that things are better when they're done together.  (Like going to to the toilet!)  She says "I don't feel four, I feel three!" but everything about her says four.  Everything about the way she walks and talks says "watch this space."

The night before last I was up until 2am making soup and the birthday cake.   It was a ridiculous chain of events, a comedy of errors, one of those nights where you have to laugh or you'll cry.   Isobella was sick, and up six or seven times in the night, and I had a one year old friend for about two hours from 11pm while the soup was cooking and I hadn't even made the icing yet!  When Paddy came home from work he got Abigail to sleep, but no sooner had he done that than I woke her up turning the beater on to make butter icing!  But it had to be done, the cake must go on...

Her birthday was lovely.  No actual party, but lots of fun and family...  I asked her at the end of it what her favourite thing about the day was, and she replied "my cake!" without hesitation.  This is exactly the kind of thing a mother knows instinctively, even at 2am.  

Happy birthday Greer-bear.   We love being your family.

ps.  It really helps to have an auntie who can make balloon dogs!!
pps. It also really really helps to have a husband who can rescue the decoration of said cake when it's 2am and the eyes are blurring...  all props go to him :)

happening around here

random conversation at the breakfast table

Greer: "I'm a japanese girl"
Isobella:  "And I'm a rock star girl"
Greer:  "And you're a japanese mum!!" (laughing)
Isobella: "Yeah mum a japanese mum!" (more laughing)
Me: "Why aren't I a rockstar mum?"
Isobella:  "Because you're not wearing sunglasses!

Ofcourse... stupid question. ;)

Want to smile?

Follow this link here and play the youtube clip to see something very lovely.

The "Let's Colour" project is a worldwide initiative to transform grey spaces with colour.  I could be cynical about the marketing aspect but I don't want to spoil it for you. ;)

a day

Today was a good day.   It started with me leaving home with no kids in the car.  I went and saw my spiritual director (yes, flash I know) and we talked about one of my favourite topics of the moment, the feminine attributes of God.   What I like to think of as "the she-ness of God."  There's another whole post in that... Then from there I went to my favourite library, the Kinder Library at St John's Seminary. I am reading through the diaries of Eliza White, a missionary in the Hokianga in the 1830's.   Research for that book.   That dream.  I sat in silence, in a beautiful space, with views of green and trees ahead of me.  A perfect day.  A day lived mostly in my head.  Do you know how peaceful it is in here?

Ten years ago I couldn't have imagined this kind of day.  I never could have dreamed that it would be possible, or that it would make me so happy.  Fifteen years ago you could have told me about today and I would have scorned it and told you it belonged to somebody else.  But I'm finally beginning to understand myself.  It will be a life's work, as it is for all of us.  By the time I'm eighty I'll know a thing or two.  For now I'm nearly half-way there and I feel like the journey's only just begun.   I know enough to have wanted today, and to have made it happen, and that's a revelation.  Today I was myself.

and the baby ate cake!

I always knew this was going to happen.  I've been thinking it and we've been saying it ever since that incredible day a year ago yesterday.  We knew she was going to be one in a flash.  And she is.   And it has been in a flash.  Knowing that time is going to go quickly doesn't really help you savour it though. Time just keeps on going, whether we stop to notice it or not.  And so I have a one year old.

She had a great day.  Dancing and friends at Mainly Music, then lunch with Abuela and Auntie Esme and cousin Jacob, then afternoon tea with Grannie and Auntie Joy and Uncle Dan and cousins, followed by dinner with Gran and Poppa.  Whew!  That's what you call sharing the love!

How does it feel to be one?  I used to think I could remember.  There's a photo of me at my first birthday with a bowl of ice-cream in front of me, my tongue stuck out as far as it can go.  As a child I knew all about that photo.  I remembered being that one year old, sticking my tongue out because I'd never had ice-cream before and I didn't know what to do with it. Well that was my story, anyway.  This one year old here, this darling Abigail of mine, she'd never had a whole piece of cake stuck in front of her either, but she sure knew what to do with it! 

Re-modelling a dream

I’m sitting at the desk in our new study. This room was once the playroom and has just been completely re-arranged. When this room was in between stages, not a playroom any more and not yet a study, it felt so empty. It was a sad thing for me. Creating the playroom had been a big part of my homeschooling dream. I wanted a creative, natural playspace, where our homeschooling resources could be easily reached, a room full of possibilities.

The dream began way back when I first had the crazy idea of homeschooling nearly two years ago, and its seeds were in the blogs I read of families who had created for themselves a life of adventure and learning together. The dream they sparked in me was tantalizing. It was so different from anything I’d seen lived out around me, so rich in opportunities for good family relationships, so creative, beautiful and natural. I wanted a life like that. It was the hippy in me I guess, the one that has been with me ever since I was born to a pair of hippies in 1974.

Those blogs I read sparked many hours of dreaming of a different life for us, and wondering how I could take our very ordinary lives and weave something more out of them. I was longing for something I felt we didn’t have. I wanted to create something that was uniquely us. I wanted to do family our own way.

So when we decided to homeschool Isobella it was a decision that brought great joy – to all of us – but especially to me. I loved every moment I spent reading about homeschooling and thinking about how we would make it happen, and turning this room from a study to a playroom was a big part of that. Every moment of organizing and shifting and sorting and tidying made me so happy. I was making my dream happen.

And most of the time, the room worked. The girls loved playing in it and when friends were over they were usually in there. I loved standing in there after the kids were in bed and looking over from the family corner to the table and chairs to the bookcase with the kids’ books and homeschooling things on it. I would stand there smiling. My dream was happening. Last November when homeschooling  suddenly became going to “real” school  (you read about that here) the playroom got neglected. The homeschooling resources got messy and were largely ignored, and I didn’t go in there and stand smiling anymore. Actually, I would go in there and feel sad, because the room now reminded me of that dream. The one I was very confused about. The one that I felt I’d given up on, by making the decision for Isobella to start school.

And so the room stayed, half-loved and half-ignored. Starting school was a big upheaval and took a lot of our focus, then there was Christmas and summer, and then getting back into school again with the New Year. I quietly got on with getting myself into a writing routine. Then about a month ago I realized how much both Paddy and I needed a study. I had a fleeting escapade with the idea of moving house, and then one night when I couldn’t sleep I realised we could have everything we wanted in a house (other than more space) right where we are. The idea of a study had come back again. The playroom was dismantled. The girls went back to all sleeping in the same room. Their toys have been downsized and re-arranged, and, amazingly, it works. I am sitting at my old, favourite desk in front of a window with a lovely outlook, filled with trees and sky. It’s not too squashy, we even have a blank wall (the only one in the house!!) and it feels good. Paddy can get away to work, and I can get away to write.

But sitting in the corner to my right is that bookcase.  In the same place as it had been when this was the playroom, still cluttered with the remains of our homeschooling things waiting to be… sorted? Given away? Put in storage? I have been ignoring them, focusing on the rest of the room, putting off the inevitable. They are the remains of the playroom, and therefore, the remains of the dream.

I can’t tell you right now whether that dream was simply for a season of time, or whether it was about my misguided attempts to re-create my own childhood. I can’t tell you right now if we made a mistake in homeschooling, and will one day look back on it as a “blip” or whether we made a mistake in giving up homeschooling, and will one day regret sending Ella to school. I can’t tell you whether I let myself get caught up in envy as I read those homeschooling blogs, and tried to create a homeschooling life as a way of trying to create a “perfect” family.

But I can tell you that when I look at those homeschooling things on the shelf, I feel a pang of longing. And when I sat down with ella yesterday afternoon and got her to write a story with me, it felt so good. And I can tell you that when I stood in the kitchen and looked back at our dining table with Ella there writing a story and Greer next to her doing her own “work” that I suddenly cried, big, wet tears of joy.

Am I happy to be in this study writing while Isobella is at school and Greer at kindy? Yes. Am I happy for Isobella who loves school and is very excited about her cross-country race tomorrow? Yes. Will I keep a couple of shelves here and maybe even a box in the kitchen for homeschooling things? Definitely. Is the dream still alive? Absolutely. Do I know what it looks like? No! But I’m dreaming on…

Sometimes dreams are works in progress. Sometimes we know what they feel like but not what they look like. Sometimes we don’t even know that much, yet we sense the longing for them deep within us, and are compelled to grasp for them, blindly. Sometimes in our grasping we reach out and find nothing but air, but still we reach out again. I’m convinced it’s all part of living the dream. Every failed attempt, every disappointment or change in plan is all living the dream.  And every moment we put words to our longings, let them live and breath out of us even when it hurts, we are living the dream.

Greer Said

In the car on the way to Mainly Music this morning.

Greer: "Mum do you do have beetles on your tongue?"
Me:"What??!!"
Greer:  "Do you do have beetles, on your tongue!" (Smiling)
Me:  "What do you mean?"
Greer:  "Or do you have taste bugs?" (laughing)
Me:  "Oh you mean taste buds - you made a funny joke!!"  (laughing and laughing)

It was quite clever, I thought.   And now I know she has been hearing "taste bugs" all this time...  I guess it makes sense... in a three year old kind of way :)

I left my laptop cord in Raglan

It did what I wished I could do - stay longer.   It had a few peaceful days down in my favourite place with nothing much to do. 

I came back to a freshly painted house, bags that needed unpacking, and school and kindy routines to whip myself into.  Then after that there was the enourmous pile of summer clothes that needed sorting and putting away till next time (sigh) which was immediately replaced by an enourmous pile of winter clothes that needed sorting and putting away in drawers for wearing (sigh.)   Then life happened.  Which is code for I spent at least a week angsting (again) about how to get anywhere on time without yelling and swearing at the children, or leaving them behind.  (If it was up to me I'd take the second option any day.)   Then more life happened.  Which is code for I can't remember but I know it was a busy blur of cleaning and tidying and trying to keep on top of general household admin so that the phone didn't get completely lost under the pile of bills and letters and school notices and other extrememly important stuff sitting on the table.  And also so that the power didn't get cut off.  Oh and there was more trying to get places on time.   After that there was a short period I will call the "when I knew my laptop was going to crash and did nothing about it" period.  After which proceeded the period of time I am now in, which I call "my laptop has crashed."

So here I am sitting in what was the playroom and is now (for the second time) the study.  That is very exciting.   I'm tapping away on mum's old computer which we managed to acquire just at the end of the "when I knew my laptop was going to crash" period.   The aquisition of this computer came about in the same way as my laptop crashed, unplanned yet seemingly inevitable.  

So I have no photos for you.  No photos of Karioi Mountain presiding over the harbour where the kids ran across the bridge and jumped and splashed in the water.  No photos of the harbour entrance, that wide wild mouth of churning sea where the kite surfers trip and sing over the currents.   No photos of the girls playing at the park and the beach, so happy to be in Raglan, living in their "Raglan home" and visiting their "Raglan friends" and talking about their "Raglan cousins".   I have some photos, but right now they are on the computer in the lounge (yes, technology gets complicated doesn't it) and not right here.  Will I get back all of my lovely Raglan photos?  We'll have to see how clever our computer guy is.

But that's not all that has been going on.  There are so many things I can't write about.  Things that are too difficult to write neatly in this box here, or are simply just not mine to tell.   Even now, a second ago as I was writing this, the phone rang, with such sad news I don't know what to do with it.
And that's how a month goes by in a moment.

happening around here

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.