me, heels and the new year

So here we are looking at 2011, all shiny in its newness and barely unwrapped. How does it feel to you? In our corner of the world it is hot and dry and the sky is clear blue. Perfect for dreaming under. I’ve been thinking about the year, flicking ahead through the pages of days in my mind. Wondering what shape those days will take. Just like I did last year.

I’ve got a few ideas, as I always do. But this time they feel more concrete, more practical. I’ve got a word too, and again, it’s very practical. I didn’t have to go searching for this word. It was waiting for me. But before all that, a story.

I was a bridesmaid for my good friend Allie at the beginning of December. It was a wonderful wedding. Allie looked gorgeous, and she and Glen were completely chuffed with each other. Isobella and Greer were very lucky to be flower girls. They were the first of the bridal party, and they scattered rose petals on the ground in front of us. I was worried that Greer would freak out at the last minute. After all, she's only four. But I needn't have worried. Greer was fine. It was me I should have been worried about.

You see, I'm not a heels girl. When it comes to fashion, comfort is a high priority for me. I've long passed the stage where I would sacrifice comfort for fashion (and that stage never lasted long for me anyway!) I like my feet to feel good in the shoes I wear. They do an excellent job of carrying me around and I respect them for that. I've also got scoliosis, so my back is crooked enough without the rest of me being thrown forwards by the effect of high heels. When it came to choose the bridesmaid’s shoes I was hoping we’d find some nice flats, but in the end, heels were what we ended up with. The silver ones you see above, next to my obliging feet. Cute.

The wedding was outdoors, on a beautiful early summer’s day. As the bridal party we had to make our way from the function centre down across sloping grass to where the guests were seated, then down the aisle at the centre of the seats almost to the edge of the point, overlooking black sand and faraway surf. It was magical.

Back to the shoes. Cute? On someone else's feet they were. On my feet they were a recipe for disaster. Those shoes had to carry me, wobbling, all the way down the slope, on grass, with eighty pairs of eyes watching. This is where you sigh and say “come on, you were only a bridesmaid. Everyone was just waiting for the bride.” But you don’t understand. I cried during the wedding practice. I did! Hidden behind my sunglasses were tears of pure distress. Distress at the very real possibility that I could stumble on my way down, and distress at my inability to be the kind of girl who sashays around with ease on heels. That afternoon, the afternoon before the wedding, I had to decide whether I was going to crumble or fight back.

You know which it was. I’m a fighter, no question. I got Paddy to buy me some heel-grip inserts, got some tips from the girls, and told myself I could do it. And that was my mantra for the next twenty-four hours. It was my mantra as I practised alone during the morning as we were getting ready. It was my mantra as I stood waiting for the cue to begin my descent. It was my mantra as I walked the long walk down the slope to the front of the guests. And I did it. I didn’t enjoy it, but I did it.

I won’t be signing up for any more heel-wearing opportunities in the near future. I think I’ve done my dash with those for now. But if the necessity ever arises again, I know what I’ll do. I’ll grit my teeth and I’ll do it, because I know that I can.

And it’s with that same raw determination that I’m looking 2011 in the eye. I’m very aware of my short-comings. I can see exactly where 2010 did not measure up to the dreamy ideals I envisioned last January. 2010 definitely had its moments. I could put it simply by saying I’ve got plenty of growth potential! But I’m ok with growth. I’d rather suffer a bit of discomfort than let status quo reign.

What about you? When you face your equivalent of wearing heels in front of a crowd, what will you do? What will you tell yourself this year when things get difficult? Will you be satisfied with the status quo to save yourself a bit of pain, or will you grit your teeth and fight back?

Think about it. And then come back in a few days. I’ve got some questions for you. Questions I think you are going to like. Questions that you might just find you have answers to already, somewhere inside you. And there’s that word too...

the gift of a story

The year I turned eight was a complicated year. There were conflicts and ructions and strange goings-on in my family, and underneath the surface I wasn't a happy girl. There's a photo of me on my birthday, kneeling beside the coffee table laid out with my birthday presents. I was wearing one of them, a new flannelet nightie, but the best present of all was a small, burgundy book, a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

In a year of complications and unhappiness, that book was one of the best gifts I could have been given. I read those stories over and over. My favourite was "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and in reading that story I dreamt I was one of them. I dreamt of escaping to another world, a world where I was beautiful and free. I still love that story. It speaks to me of a world beyond what I know, of possibilities yet-to-be-imagined. It satisfies the longing still in me to be beautiful and free.

Stories have been doing that very thing since the beginning. Stories teach us, comfort us, prepare us for the future, explain the past, and hold the threads of family and society together. Stories leave a legacy long after government policy has been phased out and scientific research is disproved. Stories live lives of their own, far beyond the lives of the story-tellers. A good story can comfort grief, facilitate healing, and soften tragedy. Every culture and age has its own stories. Every family and community has them. We live off stories.

And yet when it comes to the Christmas Story, we say "oh it's just a story." Somehow the insistence from Christians that we read this story as gospel makes us recoil in distaste. We reject the facts, and in doing so, reject the story. I'm a Christian who reads this story as more truth than fable, yet I read it with an open mind. In my reading I'm aware that some of the details may have been lost or changed in its two thousand years of re-telling, but for me, this story is not in the details.

I hate the commercialism of Christmas. I tried really hard this month to keep the Christmas Story at the forefront of our minds. For us, celebrating Advent was the perfect way to take our focus off presents and shopping and stuff and keep our hearts turned towards the baby at the centre of it all. I've written a fair bit about Advent in the last few weeks, and if you didn't get it then, now you know why. Advent was our panacea for greed and consumption. It saved me from despairing over plastic and shopping malls.

Advent gave us our most special moment of all, on Christmas Eve, when Mary and Joseph finally reached the end of their long journey and arrived at the stable. Baby Jesus was brought out of his hiding place and the Holy Family was united. We lit five candles. We danced and sang to"O Come all ye Faithful". Our hearts were bursting. The Christmas Story was a gift to us this Christmas, far better than all the gifts, as lovely as they were, that came on Christmas Day.

You don't have to be a card-carrying Christian to enjoy the gift of the Christmas Story.  You might be uncomfortable with a literal reading but that doesn't mean you need to reject any reading at all. This is a story that has been celebrated, remembered, and re-told for two thousand years. It's a story that gives us hope, inspires us to give, and connects us with the divine. In this age where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is only widening, and when we face news of tragedy and disaster on a daily basis, we need all the hope we can get.

In light of this, Santa just doesn't cut it. I'm not anti-Santa, and Santa is not banished from our house, but if our narrative-diet at Christmas was Santa and only Santa, we would be desperately lacking. Santa is the sweets and chocolate of Christmas. Treats taste good and are lots of fun, and for children who are fortunate enough to receive them they are anticipated with excitement. But they don't last. The same goes for many of the presents unwrapped on Christmas Day.

I'm sitting here writing this on the day after Boxing Day and by now the excitement of Christmas and new things has waned. Adults everywhere are regretting their over-indulgences and avoiding their bank statements, and children are in that tired, irritable post-Christmas funk, disappointed with broken toys and whining for more chocolate. That one anticipated day went all too quickly.

But the story remains. The story doesn't get boring and it can't be broken. It doesn't plunder our bank accounts, require weeks of late-night shopping, or cause stress and traffic jams. It doesn't trigger family bickering, engender competition, or result in inevitable disappointment.

I had one other special moment this Christmas. It was last week as I was madly trying to get our Christmas shopping done. As a result of a seemingly random series of events I ended up in the middle of a busy mall, standing outside The Warehouse, face to face with a ChildFund table laid out with packs advertising children who needed sponsoring.

It was such a contrast to the crazy bustle of the store I'd come out of, and took me so completely by surprise, that I started crying! The girl managing the table was surprised and concerned. I tried to wipe back the tears, embarrassed, but really I just wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for all the people so busy in their Christmas shopping that they walked past this stand without even seeing it. I wanted to cry for all the children whose faces were in front of me, desperate to be noticed. I wanted to cry for myself, that I so often let overwhelming need paralyse me from doing anything.

Then my dear sister turned up unexpectedly beside me, again by a seemingly random series of events. I was so relieved to see her that I wrapped my arms around her.  I explained myself tearfully, and we laughed. Then between the two of us we sponsored three children. Three girls who live so far from the greed and excess I've witnessed in the last few weeks, and for whom life from now on will be just that little bit easier.

Santa has got nothing for those girls. Those girls and millions of other children like them are outsiders to the world of Santa. But the Christmas Story is different. The Christmas Story is about a baby who grew up to be a man who noticed the needy and made friends with outsiders. The Christmas Story, however you read it, inspires compassion and charity. It celebrates the wonder of life and the hope of redemption. This is what we need, more than new things and over-full stomachs. We need a gift that satisfies our inner longings, a gift that won't wear out or be easily forgotten. We need a story.

Butterflies and Caterpillars

We met some homeschooling friends at West Lynn Gardens this morning. This is a large and beautiful community Garden with a Butterfly House. Today the Butterfly house was full of Monarch Butterflies. They were feasting on the nectar in the flowers of the bush in the photos above. They swayed gently on their delicate legs as they drank. We haven't been to this garden since we had Isobella's fifth birthday there last year, so the girls were delighted to finally go again.  They got to watch one of the volunteers water the plants and talk about the butterflies, and they had a great time hunting chrysalises. It was lovely.

What those photos don't show you though is that the rest of the day went from bad to worse. By the time I finally got the girls into bed (at ten to ten this evening!) it had well and truly become "one of those days." It was hot and humid, which always makes me grumpy. The heat saps my energy and makes everything seem like hard work.  Paddy had to go to work tonight, and even though he did as much as he could to help me get dinner ready and clean up the kitchen before he left, I was not looking forward to feeding the kids and putting them to bed on my own. Sure, I do it often, but something about today made me feel a bit sorry for myself.

I tried really hard to start the evening off well. I lit the advent candles and put on our youtube Christmas playlist. We were all singing and the girls were dancing around the lounge to one of our new favourite carols; "In the Bleak Mid-Winter". (Thanks Melanie!) Greer especially loves it, and she was dancing with a blissful look on her face when she said to me "Oh I wish we could go to a church like this and then I could sing with a book like I was at a recital!" Priceless! (Follow the link and you'll see what I mean - the girls are fascinated with choir boys at the moment!)

Then I was outside bringing in the washing when Abigail flashed past me carrying something. I only registered enough to think "she's got something" and "I should know what that something is." But I had nearly finished bringing in the washing so I kept going. Next thing I heard a loud clatter and an almighty wail. I ran inside to find her standing in front of the open door of the freezer, a cereal bowl broken at her feet, and her big toe covered in blood. She was well and truly yelling.

Suffice to say that that was the point at which things seriously started to go down hill. And things proceeded to go down hill for the next two hours. The lowest point (or highest, depending on which way you look at it) was when Greer was in time out for the umpteenth time and yelling at the top of her voice "nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. That's it then. I'm moving out!"

By that time I'd got to the point where all I could do was laugh. Abigail, toe finally forgotten, was riding around on her trike, grinning and oblivious to the chaos, and Isobella, in true form, was taking half an hour to brush her hair. I had used that tone of voice which is the closest thing to yelling without actually yelling so many times that I was starting to get sick of the sound of it. And by then it was well after nine in the evening.

And then I remembered something the volunteer at the Butterfly House had said in passing this morning. "Big caterpillars make big and strong butterflies." I'd had that comment in the back of my mind all day. You see, I could say that today was about the heat, or about the busy-ness of Christmas, or about my general tiredness, but actually today was all about the season of life I am in. I could wish Paddy could move up to a shift where he didn't have to work strange hours, I could wish we had a flash new house with air-conditioning. I could wish my kids were older and put themselves to bed, or that Abigail wasn't at that age where I feel like my main role in life is to keep her alive. I could wish the house was tidier, that Greer was more compliant, or that the girls slept in separate bedrooms so that I could send them off for a quiet wind-down time alone in the evenings.

I could have spent all day and all evening wishing for a million things to be different, but that would have been wishing away the season of life I am in. Really, I'm just like one of those caterpillars at the Butterfly House. I'm itching to fly with every fibre of my being. I can't wait to start weaving that cocoon. I can hang upside down like I was born to do it... but I want to be a big strong butterfly, so I need to keep eating. We saw some fat caterpillars today. I mean, fat really is the word for it. They were gorgeous, and so enormous in comparison with the teeny tiny newly-hatched ones, that they looked completely different.

Today was average. I cried. I got fed-up. I was very ordinary. But I did a lot of eating. In fact, I'm sure I'm fatter now than I was when I woke up this morning. I'm becoming one fat caterpillar.

Fourth Sunday in Advent

The girls dressed up as angels this morning, getting ready for our church Christmas Service.

All of the children sang two Christmas songs as part of the service.

There was party food and fun for them afterwards!

Paddy's mum Mary gave up Mass to be with us - lovely.

I conquered one of my fears this afternoon and tried a recipe from one of those blogs that leaves me feeling wide-eyed and inadequate. This is Peppermint Bark, just before I cut it. I'd call mine the slightly deconstructed/lazy version ;)  It is very yummy, although as you might notice when I took the photo it was sweating already - today was so humid. I'm too scared to take this out of the fridge now, not sure how I'm going to get it to Paddy's sisters' place an hour away on Christmas Day! Mmm... maybe this is a better gift for a winter Christmas?!!

This is where the Christmas Tree would be if I could be bothered getting it down. So far, no one has complained about its absence. The girls have set up their own manger scene complete with attending animals and three presents labelled appropriately. We were given a paper tree which is on top of the fire and is getting decorated randomly. Our kids' bible is open at the Christmas Story on the music stand. This is all their own doing, and better than a tree, if you ask me. (Mostly because the tree is going to require a lot of baby-training to stop Abigail pulling it down on top of herself!!) 

The girls read Christmas stories listening to Melanie's favourite Christmas songs.

We lit candles and talked about the special day which is so near.

And now I'm going to do the dishes.

Remembering Don

Four years ago today my step-dad Don passed away. It's been a while since I thought of him with a stab of grief, but I've realised there is one thing I am really sad about. I'm sad that he never got to see this blog. I know he would have been chuffed about it, and very happy that I was writing. But more than that, I'm sad that I don't get to write about him here, in the present tense.

I would have loved writing about him here.

Don was not a stand-out character. He was the kind of person you could easily miss in a crowd of people. He was quiet and unassuming. He was happy to be in the background. He loved to help, he was a willing dishwasher and an able cook, and for most of his marriage to Mum he took his fair share of the house-cleaning load. In his last few months of life he lost much of his strength, but I remember going around to their place a week or so before he died, and he'd just cleaned the windows. He was tired from the effort, but it was important for him to do it, he wanted to help.

He was an auto-electrician by trade, so he was a tinkerer and a fixer. He always had some sort of workshop set up at home. He loved to read. He loved cats. When he and Mum got married he was fifty, and had lived with his mother for most of his life. He took a while to adjust to having a family, and I remember in those first couple of years he would often talk to the cat, even when he couldn't talk to any of us.

Don didn't find it easy to understand my sister and I, the selfish and at times surly teenagers that we were. But he slowly and steadily won our hearts. He was reliable, generous, kind, gentle and often thoughtful. And those were the qualities that remained as he grew older, despite the stroke he suffered in his late sixties. Those were the qualities that made him the loveliest Grandad, a role which brought him so much joy. He wasn't the kind of Grandad that could run around or play rough and tumble, but he was his happiest with a baby on his lap, and always ready to give a cuddle or read a story.

At seventy-four, he died young. It was clear, just before he died, that he would have given anything to live just that bit longer. He would have been thrilled to see his eldest granddaughter start school, and he would have been over the moon to be adding two new grandchildren to his brood. He was a devoted husband, right to the end. But his heart had been through a lot. Three heart attacks, two quadruple heart by-passes and a stroke. We used to joke about how much he got out of the public health system, but the fact was that he got a lot out of his life. He lived out every last ounce of life in him.

I'd give anything for him to walk in the door now, to sit down next to me on the couch and talk. I'd be so happy to hear about the latest book he was reading, what the cat had been up to, or the plans he had for the coming week. I know he'd ask me how I was, genuinely, and then listen. I'd give anything to hear him laugh.

You've probably got someone like Don in your life. He might be your own dad or step-dad, an old friend or neighbour. Don't miss the treasure that he is. Listen to him, take care of him, but more than anything, enjoy him.  Make sure he knows how precious he is to you. In fact, today, even if only to humour me, enjoy all the people you love. Make sure they know how much they mean to you. I'll be doing just that, because it seems to me to be the best way I know of remembering Don.

trees, advent, and rain

Seven in the morning and it's raining right now, for the first time in weeks. I just went out onto the deck in my dressing gown and moved the girls' bikes under the eaves. I'd be quite happy to be out walking in this rain. It has been so humid. The garden is very dry. Our friends who have a farm are worried about drought. I hope this rain stays with us for a while, and I hope it's raining other places too, not just here on this suburban street with the cars driving up and down the road on the way to work. I love watching the rain.

I especially love watching the rain coming down over all the green I see from here. I've been thinking about trees lately, because a week or so ago our neighbours had several trees majorly trimmed and a couple cut down. We were sad and happy at the same time. We lost a beautiful Pohutukawa that was just outside our kitchen window. We loved watching the birds come to suck the nectar out of the gorgeous red blooms, and we loved how it hid the neighbours' roof from view. Now we can see their roof clearly. We like our neighbours a lot, but a roof just a roof, if you know what I mean, it's certainly not a tree.

But the view from here at our dining table is so much better now. The trees on the boundary between them and us were pretty overgrown, and they blocked out a fair bit of our outlook. Now sitting here I can see all the way around. A wide view over our street and up to the houses and bush on the ridge above us. We have more view out the back too. Whereas before there was a thick flank of leaves blocking the sky, now there are open spaces, openness we can see through past the High School next door out to far off into the distance.

This is something I love. I love views from high places. I love seeing forever. I love looking out over layers, seeing past our neighbours to the houses and trees beyond. It does my soul good. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's something about perspective. And right now perspective is exactly what I need.  It's amazing what we humans can withstand if we have some perspective. It might be simply knowing that the season we are in has an end date, or it might be knowing that what we are doing is a job that will be finished... eventually. Or it might be knowing that there are other, more serious things going on beyond our own small world, and that we are not alone. Or it might be an other-worldly perspective we need, a somehow knowing that what we are going through will one day be a blink, not even a blink, when viewed from that unimaginable eternity. I don't know which of those perspectives I need most, but I'll take any of them. And right now, looking out at the grey rain drizzling down over green trees is good for my soul.

Actually, now I think about it, Advent is all about perspective. Advent is a reminder, if we let it be, that there is something, or someone, at the end of all our waiting. For all our longing for something better than we have, for that feeling we just can't shake that there must be more, for all our dissatisfactions and frustrations, all our cynicism and disbelief, Advent tells us there is something we are waiting for, something worth hoping for.

At church on Sunday I had the privelege of sharing some thoughts about Advent, and these were my words:

"Advent didn’t mean much to me until a year ago. And even then, my understanding was limited. This year somehow I’m starting to get it. Advent as the season, the five precious Sundays, the time of waiting expectantly, of preparing our homes and preparing our hearts. And Advent as a mirror into the future. Showing us that the waiting and preparing we do now, in this one tiny moment of now, is a reflection of the waiting and preparing we will do all our lives, in waiting for the greatest, most holy, most unimaginable Advent to come. The Advent we are all yearning for, groaning for even, as Romans 8 reminds us.

That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. (Romans 8:18-25 The Message)

And so the obvious question now is simple. What are we waiting for? Last week we were given an image, a glimpse of what we are waiting for in the sense of the great Advent to come. But we don’t always know what we are waiting for in the now either. Are waiting for the craziness to be over? Are we waiting to eat turkey and open presents? Are we waiting for our summer holiday? And yet we know that is not what Christmas means to us. We know that it’s Jesus we are waiting for. We are waiting to celebrate his arrival. God’s arrival. That mind-blowing moment when our very creator and sustainer bursts onto the stage of our world and into our homes and hearts, as a baby. We are waiting for a baby!

This is how Catholic author and blogger Amy Welborn describes it.

“How can you prepare for that?

...The only way we can - the way that we’ve been given, the way that we live in a finite world aching for the infinite.
…Prepare to hold a baby.
Not in a closed room but in one with the windows and doors flung wide open so the mystery of God and His rising collapsing binding loosening transformed and transforming creation courses through and becomes the place you live with the One who made it all and made you to live there.
…Prepare to hold a baby.”

Most of us know about preparing for a baby. If we haven’t done it ourselves we’ve seen others around us planning, purchasing, gathering together all the paraphanalia that seems to go with a newborn. And we’ve caught their expectation, we’ve witnessed their growing excitement. And when that baby is due, when it’s “any day now” we don’t need to hear words to know how that pregnant woman is feeling. We can see it in her tired eyes, and in the unbelieveable hugeness of her aching, stretched belly. We think, she can’t possibly get any bigger, that baby has to come!

And even if you haven’t held a newborn of your own in your arms, you’ve seen one, you’ve held one awkwardly not sure if you might break it, you’ve held it in wonder, looking down at the tiniest nose and darkest eyes and been amazed that there in this bundle of warm skin, is an entire person.

And so it was with Jesus. Mary held her baby. And in her baby, in that tiny, fragile bundle of skin, was God.

What are we waiting for?

We are waiting for a baby."

And today I remind myself that. I give myself that perspective. There is so much more to my life than what I can see with my own eyes. This one moment I am in will pass. There is something coming that is better, more perfect, more beautiful than anything I can imagine... something worth waiting for, worth hoping in. I watch the rain still persisting down, softening the hard and cracked ground, and I feel it raining inside me, softening my heart, turning all my dry despondency into hope.

advent update

Things are pretty busy around here. We had a wedding last weekend, the girls were flower girls and I was a bridesmaid, and it was wonderful (more about that to come.) This weekend we have friends coming over for a BBQ, and so in between the two events I'm trying to get the house in order, finish all the big jobs we started when we thought we might be putting the house on the market (like putting mulch on the garden and cleaning the windows!) and do a bit of Christmas shopping. I don't want the rest of this month too feel so busy, and yet it is all good and important.

And then, in the midst of all that, it's Advent, and we are trying not to lose sight of it. Our Advent calendar gets opened pretty much every other day, and the girls are loving that. We've got the nativity scene Paddy's mum gave us on the piano. Mary and Joseph are making their long journey up and down the piles of books on top of the piano towards the stable. The figures get moved around every now and then by little fingers, but we're trying to stick to a "only on Advent Sundays" rule for re-arranging the scene owing to their break-ability. It kind of works. The stable has already been decorated with pink ribbon, as you can see, which when you are a six-year old girl, is entirely appropriate. We have a stocking "for Jesus" which holds the notes of gratitude we are writing and which will be opened and read sometime on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. (I can't remember where I got that idea from.) We've got a small pile of Christmas story books in the lounge and we've been reading them at bedtime.

I'd thought we might light candles at dinner time. I read about a family who have a candle-lit dinner every evening during Advent, which I thought was a lovely idea, until I remembered that we are in day-light savings here, and it doesn't get dark until 9pm! So we've had candles at dinner times on Advent Sundays,  but that's all.  I really understand Christmas in winter now. It's nothing to do with snow! It's the fact that you can have candle-light dinners. Light means so much more when it is dark all around. I've been wondering why we love light. Candles, Christmas lights, Christmas light displays.... we love them. Is it because they sparkle and glitter? Or is it because there is something inherently satisfying about seeing light in the midst of darkness? I have to admit that for the first time I've been a bit jealous of those of you who get Christmas in winter. It's so easy to celebrate light when it's winter. Light in winter is warm, hopeful and a longed-for refuge from the cold darkness all around.

Then yesterday I was sitting on our bed working on some thoughts for the Advent talk at church on Sunday. I looked from our bed out over the deck and onto the garden. It was late afternoon and the deck was half in shade. The other half, the half the drying rack filled with washing was on, was in full sunlight. Out in the garden the trees were swishing and swaying in the wind, lit up, glowing in their new green. At the end of the garden, underneath the huge pine tree that hangs over our back fence, were the spidery lines and patches of shade and dappled light where the sunlight hit the trees and spread itself out. Everywhere I looked I saw a story of light and dark, of dark and light. And I realised that light in the midst of darkness isn't the only story to celebrate. Christmas in summer is another story completely, and just as special. We get the sun at its best. We get to see trees glowing green, and intense blue skies. This is the light we celebrate. Blinding, glorious. The light of the world.

to read with your cup of tea

Here are a few interesting tid-bits I've read and enjoyed over the last couple of weeks. I thought you might like something to read with your Saturday morning cup of tea!

"A Life Beyond Reason" is a very moving story of a father's experience caring for his highly disabled son August.

"Right Intention vs Simple Intention" is a simple but meaningful take on doing the "right thing."

This is Betty Duffy's beautifully written account of an interesting experience she witnessed during Eucharist - a story in its own right.

Here is Erica Jong's editorial "Mother Madness" and her daughter's response "Growing up with Ma Jong"  I know I've linked these already in those posts about mothering I wrote, but they are interesting.... so if you haven't read them already, go on.

Enjoy your day!

we went to the ballet

We went to the ballet and two girls came home dreaming of dancers and dresses. Just like I remember doing at their age.

The ballet was The Nutcracker. A wonderful first experience of the ballet for those two lucky girls. They sat enthralled through the entire performance, mostly still and mostly quiet, (which I thought was good enough!) They loved Clara, and loved to hate her naughty brother. They were captivated by seeing children their age dancing on stage. It's a beautiful ballet, perfect for children. And the cast from the Royal New Zealand Ballet did a very good job of entertaining the grown-ups too, oh yes. The three patients in dressing gowns and dancing on crutches were genuinely hilarious, and Sir Jon Trimmer stole the show as the hurrumphy large-bossomed Matron. I laughed and laughed!

It was also a lovely escape, a treat to be able to suspend our disbelief and enter a world where tiny snow flakes fall on ballerinas in perfect tutus, and hospital beds float suspended above swathes of blue. We need as much of this as we can get, us grown-ups. We don't dream as easily as our children, tied to our calendars and cell-phones and self-importance as we are. And we aren't so easily mistaken about what is real and what is not. Four-year-old Greer kept asking if the dancers were "real people," yet at the final curtain she was one of the first people to start clapping.  She knew, instinctively, that the story had come to an end.

So we bundled ourselves out into the city at night. Surrounded by people walking and talking and going places. I remember how this feels to a child. Like realising that another world exists, outside, after bedtime. This is the world where anything can happen. Where shop lights and street lights shine against the dark sky. Where cold water and cakes quench thirst and fill tired, hungry tummies. They are dreaming it all right now in their beds, in the heavy sleep of exhaustion. Living it all again, this time with themselves as protaganist and star - dancing, floating, applauded.

mothering by guilt?

The post I wrote a couple of weeks ago "mothering by ear" has struck a chord with many of you. I wrote it after reading Erica Jong’s piece "Mother Madness" in the Wall St Journal. Reading that piece got me thinking about my own parenting, and how I’ve ended up parenting more by instinct than by any one philosophy. As I read I found myself realising how easy it is for us to judge other mothers who are parenting differently from us. Yet the only true judges of our mothering, as I went on to write, are our children. I’m so glad you were encouraged by reading that post. Encouragement does a lot to allay the encroaching “mother guilt” we all feel from time to time. But it doesn’t answer the obvious question; why are we feeling guilty in the first place?

Guilt seems to come to mothers all too easily. A friend of mine who works with families tells me that most of the mothers she's worked with have identified themselves as feeling guilty about their parenting at least some of the time. Guilt was a clear theme running through the comments made on last week's post. One mum was told by a friend that when you become a mother "guilt becomes your best friend." Another mother wrote about the "periodic mother's guilt and doubt I feel on a daily basis."

In the past, mothers didn't have time to feel guilty. Monday was for washing, Tuesday for ironing, Wednesday sewing, Thursday was market day, Friday was cleaning day, Saturday baking, and Sunday for rest. When you've spent all day up to your elbows in scalding hot water, navel-gazing is a luxury. Mothers back then spent far more energy on preparing food for their large families than on self-doubt. They didn't need a role description or a how-to-guide. The voice of necessity rang loud and clear, and her demands were simple. Food on the table, clean clothes, clean house, and orderly children.

Today most modern mothers would go faint at the thought of washing an entire household's laundry by hand. We can't imagine life without a vacuum cleaner. Presented with the challenge of cooking a full meal without electricity, we'd probably all fail miserably. The thought of spending every waking moment engaged in the physical labour that keeping house back then entailed, fills most of us with dread. Yet for many of those mothers, life was physically exhausting but actually far simpler than it is for us in the modern, western world.

We have something in abundance that they had very little of, and that something is choice. Once upon a time, a woman's role was carved in stone. She was expected to marry, have children, and then provide for the needs of her family. If she didn't marry she would serve her elderly parents, perhaps find employment as a governess or as a servant, depending on her social status, or, less likely, join a religious order. There, summed up in a few sentences, are the choices available to women in times gone by. Look back even further into the past and the options were narrower still. Today? I couldn't come close to describing all the choices the modern western woman can make. Not in one post. A book might just do it, but a few paragraphs would barely scrape the surface. And then there's the myriad of choices specifically related to parenting. In short, so many options that the choice is overwhelming and can be doubt-inducing.

It's no wonder that some women have a hankering for the olden days. You don't have to look very far on the internet to find women who revel in bread making and consider homemaking an art. Many mothers are finding that going back to the simple old-fashioned ways of preparing food and keeping house meaningful and comforting. Taking this idea to an extreme are the religious groups such as the Quiverfull Movement who see women's roles exactly as and no more than what they were in the past.

Personally, I consider my choices to be a privilege, and I relish in them. To choose to be educated, to have had a teaching career, to be pursuing my dream to write, and also to be the main care-giver and educator of my children are all choices I have been privileged to make. These choices have formed me as a person and given me a huge amount of freedom. I watch other women around me taking advantage of the same and similar freedoms, and I celebrate with them.

Yet with all of these options it is easy to get lost. Many of us come to the decision regarding working or staying at home and don't have a clear sense of which we really want. We look one way and see a huge expectation on women to have a career and to keep our families living at a certain standard of material comfort. We look the other way and imagine crowds of stay at home mums, all blissfully happy, judging us as "bad mothers" if we work outside the home. It's the same with every other aspect of parenting. One week we might read an article advising us to parent one way, and the next week we can read one espousing exactly the opposite principles.

I read in the Sunday Star this weekend about a survey that revealed that mothers feel “pressure to compete with other mothers.” The survey asked 398 mothers of all ages if they had ever lied to “talk up how well their children were going.” Apparently, these mothers had done plenty of lying. They had lied about a whole range of topics, including whether their babies were sleeping through the night, how their children were doing at school, and their children’s behaviour. Clinical Psychologist Rebecca Daly-Peoples was quoted in the article as saying that mothers feel extreme pressure to live up to celebrities, their parents and their peers, and are also under a huge “information overload” from all the books available, many of which “completely oppose each other.”

But for all the pressure and expectations we are under, at some point we have to make the necessary decisions and get on with our lives. If you’ve decided to stay at home, result being that you can't afford to send your kids to swimming lessons, then why feel guilty about it? If you work because it's your sanity and you love it, yet have a nagging worry that you are failing your children, then take a good look at your children. Are they content and healthy? Then why feel guilty? If you are at home because you believe it's the right thing for you and your family, yet you struggle with boredom and isolation, then do something to make being at home work for you. It could be as simple as joining a playgroup, or as wild as working from home on that business idea you've had in the back of your mind and never done anything about. Why feel guilty because you’re not enjoying yourself?

Sometimes, though, underneath the clumsy and condemning roar of guilt lies the whisper of our conscience. If we stop long enough to listen, we may just hear it telling us that our children need more time with us, or that they need us to be more present in the time we are with them. We may hear our conscience telling us that we are listening too intently to the opinions of others, and not to the children who matter most. We may hear it telling us we need to do something to look after ourselves so that we can do more than just survive, and so that our children can benefit from a healthy and fulfilled mother. We may even hear our conscience telling us to question some of our assumptions, to reflect on the way we ourselves were parented, and find some new ideas about mothering. Sometimes we need a clean break from the past to do the present justice.

Mothering is so much about listening. Our children need us to listen to them. A child's need to be heard and understood is enormous, and nobody knows our kids like we do. We are their chief interpreters, their filter on the world. We protect them, speak up for them, explain to them, and support them in their growing independence.

This week we went on a bush walk with Isobella's Scouts group. The walk went up and down steep hills and stairways and I noticed one of the younger girls going slowly, her eyes wide. I held back and talked to her, and then I offered her my hand. She took it, and then after a while she let go. We re-grouped and stopped for instructions, and then walked on. Suddenly I felt a hand grab mine. She had searched me out in the group. It was a privilege to walk with her. I was a safe place for her in her vulnerability. All children need this, and most importantly they need it from us.

Mothering is a hard job. It requires long hours, sleepless nights, and years of self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is the bread and butter of mothering, and we do it, most of the time, without even thinking. But self-sacrifice isn’t everything. Our children need to be mothered by us, not a hollow, worn-out version of us. What is it that makes you feel like you are doing what you were born to do? When do you absolutely, unreservedly love being you? The person on those moments is you – and that’s who your children deserve to be mothered by.

I know that feeling on the good days at home. I feel it when I’m watching the girls play the violin, and I felt it the other day when Greer looked up at me with the sweetest smile and said, completely out of the blue, “I want to be a home mama like you one day!” But I’m also feeling it right now, in this empty, quiet house. I’m feeling it because I’m writing. If I subjugated every one of my personal needs for the endless needs of my children, what would I be teaching them about being a person? What would I be teaching them about how to know themselves, how to find their dreams, or how to discover what they love to do? I live my life in full view of them. I live it with them, and I live it for them. And in amongst the craziness it so often is, and despite the daily struggle to balance my needs with theirs, I’m fulfilled, and happier than I’ve ever been. Why would I feel guilty about that?

Advent 101

Before you read any further you need to understand two things. One is that I don't take myself too seriously, and the other is that I sometimes think I know what I'm talking about, sound like I know what I'm talking about, but actually have no clue!

That important point out of the way, let's talk about Advent. Last year for the first time I realised that I wanted to make Christmas a more meaningful season, rather than one special day preceded by a month of crazy busy-ness and stressful shopping experiences.  Advent wasn't part of our family Christmas tradition, other than the advent calendar we always had, and it wasn't really talked about in the church I grew up in. I remember loving our Advent calendars though, the thrill of opening each tiny door and the uncontainable excitement that grew and grew as we got closer to Christmas Day.  A couple of years ago I started reading quite a few lovely Catholic blogs (like this one, this one, and this one.) and found that for these families Advent was really important and very special. I liked what I was reading, and last year I decided to try and incorporate some of these ideas into our own celebration of the Christmas season. But I didn't know much about Advent really, and with the busy-ness of the lead-up to Christmas my good intentions faded almost to nothing.

This year, somehow, I feel like I know a bit more. I managed to realise ahead of time that there are four Sundays in Advent (that was a good start!), today being the first, and I've been thinking all week about Advent and how we could celebrate it. I've been looking on a church supplies website at Advent wreaths, and talking to Paddy (who grew up catholic) about Advent. I found a really nice, plain circular wreath online, and showed it to him. I liked that particular one because it had an inscription around the base about light. I love the Advent idea about Christ being the light, and anticipating the coming light. That really means a lot to me. We looked through the other wreaths together, there were more simple ones I liked, but they had "hope, peace, love and joy" as the inscription around the base. "That's just not very advent-y" I said.

Well, my husband looked at me and roared with laughter. "You have no idea about Advent!" he said laughing, and then he laughed some more. I tried not to look silly. "But I thought Advent was about the Christ being the light" I said in my defence. More laughter. And then he (who was once an altar boy) proceeded to educate me.

So that is why I need Advent 101. I have no clue. At least I've figured out what the each of the Sundays in Advent are about now (today is Hope, then Peace, Love and the last Sunday is Joy, funny that...) and I think we'll do something together as a family around dinner time on each of the four Sundays. What we'll actually do I'm not too sure, I've got a few ideas, but I'm kind of making it up as we go along. Here are a few links if you're interested:

First up is Karen Edmisten's No-Panic Advent series
This post has plenty of ideas about Advent Calendars and Wreaths
This is a really lovely piece about Welcoming Baby Jesus
there are some beautifully simple ideas here
and this link is to a selection of basic kids colour-in pages relating to Advent. I'm going to print some of them out and make them into Advent colouring in books for the girls.

I think it's fair to say that we'll definitely be doing a low-church version of Advent, and I think that's quite appropriate given my complete ignorance! But I'm really looking forward to celebrating Jesus now, not just on Christmas day. In fact, I can feel it in my stomach as I write, a happy butterfly expectation, a bubbling waiting to burst. You might have noticed I don't write about my faith all the time here, but in truth I am a religious nutter... in the best possible sense. You have been warned!

sadness

We have just found out that there is no longer any hope for the twenty-nine miners in the Pike River Coal Mine disaster. Their families, friends and loved ones were informed today that there has been another, larger, explosion. It would not have been survivable. We cry for the children who will not see their fathers, the wives who have lost their husbands, the fathers who will never again embrace their sons, siblings that have lost brothers, mates that have lost mates. There are no words for this, but to say nothing would be unthinkable. There are so many questions, and right now, few answers. I offer this passage for the comfort of those who grieve, and for myself. I do not offer it out of presumption,  or because there is any way to lighten their darkness, but in sincere faith. This is my unshakable belief.

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1 Corinthians 15:51-52

My thoughts and prayers are with all who are mourning.

mothering by ear

The girls and I had our violin lesson this afternoon. I realised sitting there watching them play that the lesson has become the highlight of my week. It's one of those treasured few moments when I feel unreservedly good about my girls and about being a mother. Greer is a reluctant player, her face screws up in disgust at the scratchy sounds she makes, yet in front of her teacher she comes alive, she makes a genuine effort. Isobella plays like the free spirit she is. She adds in her own flourishes and hates to stand still. But she starts at the beginning and she doesn't stop until the end. I sit there amazed, and I can't help smiling.

Earlier this week I read the editorial on mothering that Erica Jong wrote in the Wall St Journal. Her criticism of the attachment parenting philosophy seems to have got a few people talking. Here in New Zealand that term isn't common, but the principles of that philosophy are adhered to by many parents, particularly those who reject the "routine" type of baby care advice dished out by authority figures such as Plunket Nurses. Attachment parenting is a child-centred philosophy. Mothers who follow it usually sleep with their babies, breastfeed as long as possible, "wear" their babies in slings, and devote themselves to full-time child caring.

As I was driving home from the violin lesson I found myself thinking back over the article, and over my own parenting. When I was pregnant with our first daughter I was full of lofty ideals and strong opinions. I was going to have a natural childbirth and "breathe" the baby out, once she was born I would not force her into an artificial eating and sleeping pattern, I would breastfeed as long as she wanted, never leave her to cry herself to sleep, and had a sling ready to use so I could carry her close to me when we were out. I didn't know much about the term "attachment parenting" but if you'd described it to me, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. Then came the umpteen hours of labour, an emergency caesarean, and well, you can imagine, reality.

Reality was the body that was too sore to do much baby-in-sling wearing. Reality was walking around in shock for the first few weeks just wishing I could go back to being pregnant again. Reality was a baby (and subsequent babies) who were so noisy and active in their sleep that I could never get a good night's sleep in the same bed as them. Reality was breastfeeding that was difficult, and certainly not the easy take-anywhere business I'd expected it to be.

I read plenty of books over those first few months as a new mother. I could tell you about all sorts of parenting philosophies and why I agreed or disagreed with them. But in the end what gave me confidence and helped me find my way as a mother was not following a particular parenting philosophy, but rather listening to my own intuition, making it up as I went along. In other words, playing it by ear.

Erica Jong's editorial has sparked some pretty strong responses. Mothers have decried her rejection of what they see as the most nurturing and child-friendly way to parent. Some have been horrified at the lack of repentance for her absence as a working parent who "hired nannies, left my daughter at home, and felt guilty for my own imperfect attachment." Interestingly, Jong's daughter writes her own response to her mother's essay, where she describes her mother as "always working" and yet "as good a mother as she could possibly be."

Mothering is a complicated thing. We earnestly strive to do our best, and yet we can never quite shake off the knowledge that one day we will look back and regret something. Something we did or didn't do, said or didn't say. And so we carry on, stabbing in the dark, fingers crossed. If we find a book that promises perfect parenting, then it's not surprising we pay attention. If we watch other mothers, envious at their seeming confidence and ease, it's no wonder we try to emulate them. And when we find that to our immense relief what we are doing actually works, then of course we buy the t-shirt, get the season pass, join the club.

We need to stick up for each other, us mothers, because for all the washing machines and dishwashers, televisions and babysitters, mothering is not getting easier. Your club might work for you, and it might work so well you'd stake your life on it, but it isn't going to work for every mother. And that mother over the road, or standing next to you outside your child's classroom, or beside you at the supermarket checkout, deserves your support. Whatever she's doing, and in whatever style she is doing it, she is probably doing her best.

In the short time I've been a parent I've met and known and loved mothers who work, mothers who stay at home, and mothers who do both. I know mums who do cloth nappies and organic food, and mums whose sanity is a pantry full of pre-packaged snacks. I know mothers who are incredibly grateful for their televisions, and mothers who won't have one in the house. I know mothers for whom the exquisite joy of parenting was stolen from them by depression. I know mothers who were bored at home, who craved adult company, and found their best parent liberated when they returned to full-time work. I know homeschoolers and schoolers, child workers, teachers, lawyers and writers. I know mothers who swear by their routines, who have children that fall asleep and wake-up on schedule, and I know mothers who have slept with their children well into toddler hood. I've learnt so much from these women. They have helped me see different perspectives, given me fresh ideas, challenged my assumptions, and confirmed some of my privately held opinions. But that isn't even the point. The point is their kids. I like them all. They are interesting, full of life, and will grow up, I'm sure, to make a valuable and unique contribution to the world.

Mothering is personal. We are the mothers we are because of our personality, our family history, our current circumstances, our deepest beliefs, and the children we are raising. No other mother has the same set of factors as you or I do. Therefore no other mother will ever parent quite like you or I do, and there's no point expecting them to.

I am full of contradictions. I have three daughters, I home school, and I love nothing better than spending a day at home with them. But give me some time to myself, my laptop and a library and I'm in heaven. I know I'll look back on this period of life as one of my most fulfilling, yet I often find myself daydreaming about how life will look once my girls have all left home. I look forward to being old, to having a quiet house, and to being visited by family who go home afterwards. Am I doing a good job as a mother? There are only three women who are entitled to make this judgment. Right now they are asleep down the hall from where I sit, warm and safe. They'll let me know what they think.

hello from the madness

We are on the last leg of our mad dash to finally get our renovations finished. We had already booked in some time off for us to get started on the painting, but we were launched into action when we saw a property out west that we fell in love with. The possibility of putting this place on the market got us moving like I've never seen us move before! We painted, got the floors sanded and polished, had carpet laid in the bedrooms, and finally got the tiling finished in the kitchen. And, just as we were almost finished, we missed out on that house we loved.

It was a disappointment and a relief at the same time. If you'd seen this place yesterday (I tried to take a photo but I couldn't find my camera, ofcourse) you would agree with me that the vague plan we'd had of putting the house on the market yesterday, the same day the carpet was laid, was completely ridiculous. Which brings me to facebook and the myers-briggs personality profile application I signed up for. Every couple of weeks it sends me a pithy little tip based on my personality profile. This is what I found waiting for me yesterday:
"You may create overly optimistic plans without considering all the details. Realistically estimate how long a task will take."

I think my dad would have a good chuckle over that one. He single-handedly saved the day yesterday when he turned up at 7:15am to finish the job he was doing for us. He got Paddy out of bed (no mean feat) and then helped him move the last of the big pieces of furniture that needed shifting before the carpet layers turned up at 8am! And when I say the last of the big pieces of furniture, you should probably read all the big pieces of furniture.

I am very happy that we managed to get it all done. The house is looking lovely already, even with boxes and piles of stuff all over the place. We were crazy to attempt to do it in such a short space of time, and at such short notice, and we did need a lot of help to do it. The girls and I turned up at my mum's on Sunday night at 7pm because our place was too chaotic and dusty for the girls to stay there. My dad, as I've said, came up trumps. Other family members and friends helped out not only because they love us but also because our ridiculous plan left them with little choice! We were on a mission, and there was no stopping us.

Now that we're almost finished I'm so exhausted I can't believe I actually know what day it is! We've shifted almost the entire contents of our house at least once, if not twice, so it kind of feels like we've moved house, minus the truck drive. But I guess if we were hankering for something new we've certainly done it the easy way. Sure, our little back yard is nothing like the 2 acres of bush we were looking at in that property we missed out on, but we do like our little backyard, and our little house with it's shiny new floors and white tiles. After all, it's home.

happening around here

full circle

This photo won't look anything special to you. It could be any family, sitting down to any meal, any where. You've got photos like this. That's Greer eye-balling the camera, eating a sausage. Abigail's in the high chair, and the other two kids are the birthday boys. Paddy is sitting next to my dad, then there's my step-mum, with my brother-in-law next to her. Sounds pretty ordinary, yes. Then there are the people just outside the frame. My sister and my mum are in the kitchen, and there are more kids in the lounge behind me as I stand taking the photo.

I guess that kind of makes me right in the middle. Which is exactly how I've grown up feeling. I'm the only child of my parents, who split before I was two. My dad re-married soon after, and I have two half-sisters on his side. My mum had my sister when I was three (I've already told you a bit of this days of our lives saga here) and we grew up together, so although she was technically my half-sister, our half-ness was never really an issue.

How that played out for me, though, was that I lived my life in two worlds. One world, the safe, ordered, controlled and loving world of home with Mum, and the other the completely different but exciting, fun, and slightly wild world of my dad's place.

When I was sixteen I went on a school trip to a french film. It was "Romauld et Juliet," a modern revision of Romeo and Juliet. In the movie a high-powered executive falls in love with his office cleaner, and is so smitten that he leaves his wife for her. By the end the wife has found herself a new man, and the final scene is of a picnic in a rambling garden, where the entire family re-unites, along with the new partners on either side. It's a loving, warm and very happy scene. The executive is blissfully happy with his new love, his ex is happy with hers also, and their children play and laugh and eat happily between them. I'm not going to edit out all those "happy's"... because happy was exactly the word for it, and the thing I remember vividly, twenty years later. I knew right then that that was my dream of dreams. I dreamt that one day all the parts of my crazy family would come together, happily. I kept it to myself, but I never forgot.

Fast forward twenty years to this weekend, and that scene at the top of this post. We were at my sisters' house, celebrating the birthdays of her sons, with my mum, plenty of friends, as well as one of my half-sisters, my Dad and step-mum. At one point I was sitting at the table with Mum on one side, and Dad on the other. And we were all happy.

Could I, at sixteen, ever have imagined that scene exactly? No, I couldn't have imagined it at all. It was a wild dream, the stuff of movies and happy endings. But it happened. I got my happy ending.

I wasn't the most important person in that room, not by a long shot. I sat in the background for much of it, enjoying the good company. But it was a special day for me. I've spent most of my life living in two parts. One side the part of me that fits with my mother, and the other side the part of me that fits with my father. I haven't always seen it quite like this, but it's taken me a long time to figure myself out, and this is partly why. It's also the back story to that chaos I told you about when I last wrote. This chaos I've had to come to terms with has partly come from living as if I've still got two worlds inside of me.

A couple of days after I wrote that post I went to spiritual direction. Wouldn't you know it, but we got talking about my crazy life, housework, and chaos. We also got talking about what my parents' respective houses were like. To say they were different is an understatement. I realised then that I have never fully acknowledged that my values and opinions about life and keeping house come from two completely different sources. If I've ever felt confused and slightly split-personality about these things it's understandable. And the fact is, I'm not a chip off either block. I'm my own random version, as we all are in some way. But I really am my own version. And during spiritual direction I realised that I need to start living like it. I need to integrate my two inner-worlds into a new one, uniquely mine, and get on with my life.

Funnily enough, within two days of that realisation, that chaos I wrote about was all but gone. The vacuum cleaner got put away after three weeks of waiting. I found the camera charger! The corners of chaos in the study and master bedroom are dealt to. The house is mostly tidy, and mostly clean, which is pretty much how I like it. I know Mum will always see something that needs doing, and that Dad may sometimes turn up and find it too tidy for his liking, but I'm ok with that. It's my house.

And as far as special family gatherings go, I'm thinking I'll be getting plenty more of them. It might even get so that they don't feel so special any more. For our girls those gatherings are already normal. They think nothing of having three sets of grandparents, they don't think it's strange that I have a step-mother, or sisters that are not sisters to each other. They love and feel at home in every part of our extended family. In fact, they are richer for it. And so am I.

my chaos

I would have started this post with a photo. If the camera was charged up. The camera hasn't been charged for nearly a month. Finally today I thought, "that's it, I can't bear it any longer"and I went to find the charger. Problem is, I couldn't find it. I looked in several obvious places, but no joy. It does have a home. It usually lives there. But somehow, sometime since the camera was last charged, it has got seriously lost.

I don't like losing things. It makes me feel like my grip on reality is not as tight as I'd like it to be. It seems to be happening more and more often. I could blame it on my age (which most of you would scoff at) or I could blame it on chaos. To be honest with you, I think it's the chaos.

Chaos is entirely, exactly the right word for the state of mind and state of life I repeatedly find myself in. Chaos is the tiredness that threatens to overtake me at the moment, the result of two weeks of living in the land of sickness. Chaos is the washing piled up on the couch waiting to be folded. It's the baskets of folded washing in the hall, waiting to be put away. (First there was one basket, then there was two, "that's got to be a good thing, hasn't it?" I said to Paddy. "One basket of clean folded washing is a good thing, therefore two baskets of clean folded washing is even better?" He didn't laugh.)

I've just put Abigail up on the dining table bench that sits under the window. I knew she'd like to look out, and I thought it might buy me a few more minutes here. I pulled up the blinds for a better view and noticed that the window is covered with patches of that lovely combination of  dirt and mould that happens over winter. That's chaos. So is the filing waiting to be done in the study. Ditto the bills waiting to be paid. Our tax return, quite rightly, should come in about here, but it's not even on my radar. That's chaos.

Chaos was reigning this morning in the girls' bedroom while I was sitting on the couch reading because I was just too tired to do anything else. I could hear Abigail pulling down the boxes of toys off the shelf and tipping out their contents over the floor. A sickening sound of hundreds of blocks cascading like a waterfall onto the floor. Meanwhile, at the same time as Abigail was busy tipping, Isobella and Greer were busy playing with everything else in the bedroom not already tipped out by Abigail. By the time they ventured out (believe me, I was not going in there!) Abigail had been dressed in Isobella's skirt and t-shirt, and she looked just like a walking doll.

That was the moment you would have seen a photo of, if I hadn't lost the camera charger. You would have seen Abigail, all sixteen months of herself, toddling around in an over-sized t-shirt and skirt looking hilarious. I wouldn't have taken a picture of the floor of their bedroom, which was literally covered, because the floor was not the point. Yes, I did get a bit grumpy in the tidying up process, and yes it was a team effort, which I could have done without, but it got done eventually, and we were none the worse off for it. Well actually, to the contrary, we were better off because of it. That half hour of chaos in the bedroom gave me a blissful few moments alone, and the end product was a sixteen month old in six year old's clothing, which had us laughing all day.

You see, I've come to a few conclusions about this chaos of mine. One is that it is fairly inevitable. It seems to come in regular cycles, no matter how hard I try to stave it off. Maybe it's the stage of life I am in, or the kind of person I am. Whatever the reason, it comes, and I don't seem to be able to do anything about it. But more than that, I've realised that this chaos of mine is not all bad. Crazy, unexpected and wild things come out of chaos. Think of Genesis, our most important beginning story. Chaos was that formless yet pregnant state, just before the most incredible act of creation.

Right now the girls are playing with string behind me in the lounge. At first they had it tied up and were doing the limbo. Then they turned it into a washing line and got the pegs and dolls clothes and strung them up. So now the dolls' clothes (which we laboured over in the bedroom this morning,) are strewn across the lounge. There is string from one side of the room to the other, stretched over the two bar stools and held down with precarious-looking piles of books. But those two girls are happy, satisfied with their playing, and I'm happy too. I'm sitting writing.

The thing about chaos is that it is often made up of millions of "should do's." I should have clean windows. I should put the washing away. I should have done that filing by now. I should be doing the tax return. I should be able to keep the house cleaner. But "should do's" are the biggest time wasters. Not only do they rarely get done, but all the energy they take up in "not getting done" is energy robbed from the things that really matter.

So I'm doing my best to kick out the "should do's". I haven't got time for them anymore. I'm going to try and get on with my "want to's" and "can do's." Regardless of the chaos. Of course there will always be "must do's", but they seem to get done, eventually. No, it's the "want to's" and "can do's" I'm giving my heart to.

So I'm following my own advice. I'm sitting here writing at quarter to five, ignoring the mess and the dishes and barely sparing a thought for dinner. Those three girls are back in the bedroom, door shut, with a bowl of frozen peas. And I'm smiling, the happiest I've been all week. True story!

words and angels: thinking of christchurch

It's been a week since the earthquake. A week ago yesterday morning Paddy came home from work and woke me with the news. "Earthquake In Christchurch!" he said "Ring Your Sister!" So I did, and my Auntie too, to check on my cousin. Just as the rest of New Zealand was doing. Picking up the phone. The news brought relief - they were ok.

Now after a week of hearing and reading about little other than the earthquake, our world has returned to normal. For us, nothing has changed. But for Christchurch, everything has changed. Hundreds are living in shelters, many are injured, thousands have suffered damage to their homes, hundreds have seen their homes and businesses destroyed. I think of the supermarket owner I saw on the news this week who has lost everything. A building that was just in the process of being upgraded and a thriving business. All gone. I think of the people living in shelters. I think of the family who let the news cameras into their home on the day of the quake, their home in chaos. I think of the people who no longer have jobs to go to. People who are waiting to hear if their homes will be salvageable. Others returning to clean up the mess. People for whom what was once their refuge is now a place of fear.

Yet we are all so lucky. How we survived a 7.1 earthquake with no loss of life is a miracle. I don't know if you "do" angels, but last Saturday a picture came into my mind of thousands of angels in the sky above Christchurch moments before the earthquake, a horde of angels descending as the quake was about to hit. Was that just my imagination, or could it be true? Did Christchurch get a little bit of other-worldly help in that terrible moment? Maybe.

And then there's all the ordinary yet just as angelic help. The ambulance staff who went to work last Saturday even though their own homes had been severely damaged. The emergency services who worked non-stop. The businesses that donated food. The concerned Kiwis who have offered a free bed to those without homes or in need of a break. The experts that were flown in from other parts of the country. This is all as it should be. We wouldn't have it any other way. In times like this, we realise how much we need each other, how inter-connected we are.

An earthquake is one of our most violent reminders that there are forces at play in the world that are completely beyond our control. Our treasured poet Lauris Edmond wrote vividly about her childhood experience of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake.

 "The morning of the earthquake was hot, and muggy as well – strange, thundery weather. The sun didn’t shine but it was all the hotter for that. It was Lindsay’s first day at school; when the bell rang for playtime I waited at the door of her room and hand in hand we went outside to play. Within moments the world began to blow itself apart in the most extraordinary way – the roof of the school flew off in a cloud of red brick dust, the walls subsided and the roof landed again with a roar on the heap they made. The ground rolled and surged as though it had become water, waves passing over and through the asphalt playground as we sat, or rolled about, on the grass by the fence. We’d clambered through the wire and were gazing in astonishment at that red cloud. Once the school had vanished before our eyes, turning itself into a heap of red rubble and dust, it was hard to know what to do. " (Here is the complete piece:"The Day the Quake Came" )

Words are important now. Words take the frighteningly incomprehensible and put it into a form we can control, manipulate, digest. Words enable us to put boundaries onto our experiences. To give harrowing memories an outlet. To put our horrors, literally, "on the shelf." Everyone who was in Christchurch at 4:35 am last Saturday morning has a story to tell. Talking is good. Being heard is so important. And more than all of that, writing gives the psyche the permission to begin to forget, to let go. The written word is safe, almost permanent. We can let the written word be guardian over our memories, and we can rest.

And what then of the internal earthquakes we all suffer from time to time? The medical diagnoses that leave us reeling, the ruptures in relationships, the conflicts and misunderstandings that crush us, the best laid plans that fail miserably? Do we help each other through these unseen quakes, allow each other the space needed to process the inevitable anger and grief? Do angels attend these?

Christchurch has a lot to teach us. Important lessons abound, if we take notice. I know what I've learnt. Two things I wouldn't be without. Words and angels.