home

It's two months yesterday since we moved, and it has taken nearly that long for me to call this place home. Even just a week or so ago I inadvertently referred to our old place as "home" and found myself choking back the tears. The context was a conversation about the horrific power bill we received for our first month here. Even when we divided up the bill between us and Mum, we were left with an amount that was almost twice what it would have been at our old place.

We knew our old place. It was dry and easy to heat. We had gas hot water and a shiny gas fireplace that we could turn on any time with no effort. We'd knocked down a wall, put in a new kitchen and bathroom, painted the walls and polished the floors. It wasn't perfect but it was lovely.

This place is the opposite of that one in every way. Where the old place was small, this place is gigantic. Where the old place was dry, this place has leaks and drainage problems. The old place was shiny and easy, and this place, well, it isn't shiny or easy.

But I wouldn't go back. When I wrote to you just before we moved I told you that this move was like "pushing open an enormous and heavy door with all of our weight, and then slamming it shut behind us."
And that is exactly how it has felt.

I visited our old place a few weeks ago. It's the same house, but it's not ours any more. It is lovely and shiny, but it's also very small, and there's no bush or beach. Just a street of ordinary houses in suburbia.

I was happy to live in suburbia, once. Suburbia has conveniences which should not be sniffed at. My sister and her family lived over the road, and we were friends with our neighbours. We had shops in both directions and several beaches and parks within a ten minute drive. Our backyard was tidy and fenced, and just big enough for the kids to play out there for hours.

But then in November last year we found a property for sale (not this one) on two acres of bush. You could stand on the deck and look out over a valley of green, and in the distance, when the wind was in the right direction, the low rumble of faraway surf rolled in. I felt like I was looking into my own heart.

We missed out on that house, and decided just to stay put and enjoy our finished renovations for a while. Then one day in February Mum and I drove past the For Sale sign for this place. I knew straight away we needed to see it. We rang the agent and made an appointment for that week, and we put in an offer the very night after we saw it. It wasn't a difficult decision.

This place is everything we were longing for. We can walk through our bush to get to the beach you see in those photos above. I can see the water from where I'm sitting at the dining table.The tide is in and the water is green. The bush above it on the other side of the estuary is glowing in the sun. Other than the birds, the hum of this laptop, and the occasional scratch from the dog lying at the front door, it is silent.

But it's not just this place that's so good, it's all the places we are close to. Last week I went for a drive with Abigail and found a deserted beach at the end of a gravel road. The water was high and clear, and I stood at the edge and looked out to the wide, wild harbour entrance. It was that same view, eight years ago, from a different spot, that had brought sudden tears to my eyes. It was before we owned houses or had children, and we were exploring, wondering where we might like to live one day. We happened to go out to Huia, a little settlement on a quiet bay near the mouth of the harbour. Standing on the deck of a house that was for sale I looked out at that harbour entrance and suddenly began crying. I think that was the first time I felt like I was looking into my own heart.

We live ten minutes down the road from Huia now. We drove out there with the dog on Sunday afternoon. It was wet and windy and we were wrapped up in jackets and hats. We drove to Huia and went to the sole store, which also does takeaways and coffees. We sat by the window beside an old tea trolley covered with magazines and picture books and ate hot chips. Afterwards we walked along the beach towards the playground and dusk fell. We were cold and very happy.

I never knew I needed to live so close to this harbour. I couldn't have imagined how much I was longing for wild places, to live in wild places. But now it seems obvious. And it feels like I can get on with my life.  If there are any words, any stories for me to write, they are here. All my dreams, every hopeful imagining. Here where wild tides meet and sea birds soar over wind currents. Where the eye can see for miles without obstruction, over oceans and back again.

Ma blew out the lamp

I finished reading Little House in the Big Woods to the girls on Friday night. We sat on the couch all three of us in our pyjamas and we read eagerly, because it was the final chapter. I never read this as a child, others in the series yes, but not the first. I've really enjoyed it, and the girls have too. I wondered what they'd make of it, with its stories of hunting and harvesting and snow, a world so foreign to them. But they've loved it as much as I have.

As we read the last scene I found tears rolling down my face! There was something so perfect and peaceful about it. Laura and Mary are tucked up in bed at the end of another busy day, with Ma and Pa sitting by the fire.


When Laura and Mary had said their prayers and were tucked snugly under the trundle bed's covers, Pa was sitting in the firelight with the fiddle. Ma had blown out the lamp because she did not need its light. On the other side of the hearth she was swaying gently in her rocking chair and her knitting needles flashed in and out above the sock she was knitting.

It was when I read that Ma blew out the lamp that I started crying. I looked up from the book at the fully-lit room around us, the computer screen on the TV glowing, the lights blazing in the dining room and kitchen. I couldn't imagine turning out the lights. There was too much work still to do. I kept on crying, because something in me was yearning for the simplicity of a life where the day's work is all but finished at sundown.

I constantly feel like I am surrounded by unfinished work. I've been going to bed so late because there is always something else to do. My life feels complicated. Until the girls started school last week I would often go for days feeling like I could hardly hear myself think.

Ma's days were busy. Her responsibilities were huge. She provided for her family without a fridge or freezer, without so much as a corner shop. Almost everything they used and ate was made, grown or caught by them. Life was hard. Yet after dinner, with a fire flickering, Ma rocked gently and knitted.

What did she have that I am missing?

My spiritual director went on Sabbatical a couple of years ago. I remember talking to her about it before she left. She talked about the plans she had for the three months she was going to be away and she was quietly thrilled. I shared the anticipation with her, and then, not able to avoid wishing I was going on a sabbatical of my own, I found myself crying. (Yes, more tears, I know.) Tears of jealousy? No, longing.

And she said to me, I'll never forget it, she said to me so kindly, "Oh Idoya, there's heaven you know." I knew exactly what she meant.

I know that for many of you heaven is the stuff of fairy tales, and I didn't actually plan on writing about it today. Yet I can't help believing that there is a longing for it in all of us. A longing for a life free of heavy responsibility and never-ending work, free of grief that would bury us, and regrets that haunt us. A simple, joyful and fulfilling life. Somewhere deep down I know I was made for it.

still re-modelling the dream

It's two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm sitting at the dining table eating lunch. Abigail is in bed and my two big girls are nearly at the end of their first day at school. I almost can't believe what I've just written. The decision to send them to school has happened so quickly, I'm still in shock.

Homeschooling was never something I planned on doing. As I've told you before, I once swore I would "never" homeschool.  Ha. Those words came back to haunt me when, as Isobella was about to turn five, the dream of a homeschooling life crept into my heart. At that stage Isobella had petit-mal epilepsy that was not yet controlled by medication, and it seemed cruel and counter-productive to send her to school.

I started reading and thinking about homeschooling. Through books such as Teach Your Own by John Holt, and through the internet and blogs I found along the way, a whole world opened up to me. Not a small, sheltered and narrow world, as I had assumed, but a wide and fascinating world, full of intelligent parents who were passionate about giving their children a holistic and broad education, while still giving them plenty of time and space to play. This blog, and this blog were the first blogs I ever read, and those families enchanted me with their other-worldy life of books and nature and freedom.

 Just before Isobella turned six, we had to decide whether we were going to continue homeschooling. To my surprise I found that school seemed like a good option, and Isobella agreed wholeheartedly. Isobella was happy at school, she made friends and had a great teacher, but she didn't thrive the way I'd expected her to. When people asked how school was going I'd say "school's fine." Then after six months I realised that it was okay for me to want more than just "fine" for my daughter.

So over a year ago now, we decided to go back homeschooling.  It was an answer to the cry of my heart. I realised that not only had school not been good for her, it hadn't been good for me either. I had turned myself inside out to find a morning routine that got us to school on time, and I found the after-school pick-up almost as stressful. The decision to go back to homeschooling felt like us deciding to be us. It felt like I was saying, to myself and to the world, we're a little different, and we need to do things a little differently.

I've loved teaching my girls. I found that I'd rather be teaching my own kids than anyone else's. And as I've written before, homeschooling "made me the mother I'd always wanted to be." It taught me to just be. It gave me permission to step out of the busy world of pre-school activities and be mostly at home. It taught me that there were no commitments in my life that were more important than my children, and it forced me regularly to be completely present with them.

Most importantly, homeschooling gave Isobella the space and freedom to be herself at a time when her self-concept as a learner was most vulnerable. She told me after we took her out of school that the boys had teased her for her "scribbly" writing and drawing.  She had often been on the list of kids who had to finish their stories at lunchtime. And sometimes she would bring readers home that completely bored her. It was so good for her to be able to do her own thing at home.

Then in May this year I took Greer out of kindy a term early and started homeschooling her as well, because I knew she was ready for it. I couldn't see it at the time, but actually, that changed nearly everything. Greer quickly flourished, and one day during her first week of "official" homeschooling, I looked at the two of them working up at the table and the thought came to me in a flash, those girls are going to love school when they get there.

One night a couple of months ago I had a dream. In the dream Isobella was at school, and she was happy. When I woke up the next morning the dream sat in my heart like a half-open door. I tried to pretend it didn't mean anything, but the dream wouldn't go away. It scared and thrilled me at the same time. And so we started thinking about school again.

I found myself admitting things I hadn't admitted to myself before. I did find it a challenge teaching both girls. Their needs were very different, and I often felt like I had to be constantly on point to keep Isobella on task and to keep up with Greer. And then there was Abigail, whose daily mission was to climb up onto the table as many times as possible! I realised that I had been unconsciously withdrawing from the girls at breakfast time, in preparation for a morning of school work, and then withdrawing from them again at lunch time because my brain had just had enough. Afternoons had to be outside play or rest time, because by then I had simply run out of words. I don't know how other introverts do homeschooling, but I think if we had carried on I would have got very worn out.

I've shed more than a few tears over this decision. I felt like sending the girls to school was giving up on the dream that was so precious to me. I wondered how Isobella would cope, and I feared the return to a family life lived according to an institutional timetable. But since we first started talking about it the girls have not changed their minds. To say they were keen to start school would be an understatement.

It's taken me three days to write this post and it's now Wednesday. The girls have settled into school easily. They are in love with the library, have both joined the group that helps with the worm farm, caught the school bus home yesterday, and will be catching it again in about half an hour. I'll put Abigail in the buggy soon after three, put the dog on his leash, and walk up the road in the sun to meet them.

But I don't think I'll ever be a typical school mum. I don't feel any different this week, with the girls in school, to last week, when they were at home. I don't see school as the perfect answer to their education, and we didn't stop homeschooling because it wasn't working. After three days at school Greer is already saying she is bored with maths. She wants to count to one hundred, not to ten.

And that's the thing, see. We can do that. We can count to one hundred all afternoon and all weekend if she wants. I won't completely pack up our homeschool things, and if Isobella still wants to write stories with me I'll be in heaven.

Reading over the other posts I've written about homeschooling has been hard. I've felt tears pricking as I read. And it's been surprising to see how similar each stage of the journey has been. None of the decisions along the way were easy. Each of them was accompanied by tears and deliberation. And each time I felt pulled, as I do now, in both directions. School, good. Home, good.

I'm seeing something now that I never saw before. We really don't fit neatly into either the school or the homeschool box. My girls crave the stimulation and company that school gives them, and yet, for various reasons, they don't naturally slip into their place in the system that is a public school. I know that school will not meet all of their needs. And yet I have a gut feeling that somehow, despite that, they will thrive.

And then there's me. It's not like I'll be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. There's no question that this house is a job in itself, and there is plenty of work to be done on our business projects. And what about all those words I haven't had the time or head space to write? We had a big chat about school with the girls one night before we shifted.  They were so keen on the idea that I was taken aback. "If you girls go to school, what will I do at home all day?" I asked, half teasing, half choking back the tears. "Write, Mama," Isobella piped up immediately. "Write!"

where I've been

I spent last week in Raglan, one of my two favourite places. It's the small seaside town my mother grew up in, where I went to for holidays and where I lived for a while as a child. It's where my mother's sister and brother still live, and it gave me the story I've been working on for a while. The one I'm ever hopeful might (magically?) turn into a book one day.

We looked after my Auntie's house while she was away. We ate fish and chips on the beach, we went for a drive with my Uncle, we walked everywhere. To the beach, to the shops, to the library, back home again.  We had friends come to visit, we drove out to the surf beach and the kids ran wild through the wind. 

I didn't really want to come home. I've been saying that by moving house it feels like we've moved into a job, and it's true. We really have moved into a job. One with incredible rewards, and one that brings us great joy, but a job nonetheless. So it was nice to run away for a bit, to have a few days where there wasn't much I had to do or worry about.

I know Raglan well. My girls know it too. I've been going down with them at least once a year since Isobella was born. They love it. They know the beach, the park, the string of shops, the library.

It's a gift, in this complicated and time-poor life we live, to know somewhere as well as we know Raglan. I sat in the little Union church my grandmother attended, and remembered all the times I'd sat in those pews as a child. Church has always been fairly quiet there, unlike the churches I grew up in, and it was quiet on Sunday morning. I felt peace well up within me, that feeling of being somewhere I belonged. The pastors' voice was gentle, the small congregation were silent, and every now and then I'd hear the sound of a car driving past on the main road behind me. The same sounds I'd sat listening to as a child. I remembered.

here's why I love the internet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

beautiful

The sky out this window is growing light now. A faint pink at the horizon fades up to blue.  We have come away for two nights to celebrate our tenth anniversary. We are giddy with freedom!

I look out at the early morning sky from the anonymity of this hotel room, and I could be anywhere. I love that feeling. As if I am disengaged from my life, floating above the world, watching. That’s where the stories are.

Yesterday was my birthday and I spent the first moments of it in the kitchen after midnight, cleaning up from the day before. I was thinking about it being my birthday, and suddenly my heart bubbled with joy and I found myself singing.

Something beautiful, something good,

all my confusion, he understood.

All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife,

but he made something, beautiful, out of my life.

As you know, I had a fairly complicated childhood, and I’ve spent a lot of my life so far trying to figure myself out. I haven’t always understood or even liked myself. But through it all I've had a sense of being made, of something being made out of the raw material of my life. The gratefulness for that was what welled up within me in the early hours of Sunday morning. That song came straight from my heart, and it stayed with me as I slept and then began the day again.

After the excitement and exertion of the girls' party, my birthday was an after thought. We didn’t really do anything special, (other than come away to celebrate our anniversary!) But before we shifted house I found a beautiful second-hand dresser online and we bought it as a birthday present for me. Paddy went and picked it up two weekends before moving day, and, with a lot of effort, transported it to our new house, where the previous owners let us store it in the garage. On the way to the new house the top of the dresser completely came away as Paddy went around a corner, and it shattered on the ground. I got a phone call with the bad news. It was just furniture, but it was beautiful, and it was my birthday present. I cried.

I couldn’t bear to look at it for the first few weeks in the new house. I would go down to the garage and turn away as I walked past it. It sat, neglected. At one point water was leaking onto it from the ceiling and there it continued to sit, getting wet, until someone moved it. I went down to the garage to see how wet it had got and it was then that I actually stood in front of the dresser and looked at it. Even broken it was still very beautiful.

And then I saw myself, in that furniture. That sweet Rimu dresser which unbeknownst to us was only held together by three screws. Three screws which, no matter how carefully the dresser had been tied down, could not hold through nearly an hour’s driving and plenty of corners. I looked at it and in a flash I knew I was looking at myself.  

I’ve always felt as though I had a few design faults. Whether they developed as a result of  a complicated childhood, or whether they were just the quirks of my personality, I can’t be sure. I’ve been haunted by a feeling of different–ness, of being separate to the rest of the world. As if everybody else except me lived easily, made and kept friends, felt beautiful.

 Janet Frame’s fictional persona in “Faces in the Water” describes this as “a great gap… in the ice floe between myself and the other people whom I watched…with their world, drifting away… I was alone on the ice… a prisoner.” I don’t think you need to be suffering from severe mental illness, as Janet Frame was, to feel this. Probably most of us feel this way at some point in our lives.

So when I sing something beautiful, something good... I really mean what I’m singing. I’m familiar with brokenness and confusion, and if I am beautiful, if there is anything beautiful to come out of my life, I owe it all to God.

I realise this might make you uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t be writing those words here if I didn’t mean them. My whole life has been lived against the backdrop of an unshakable conviction that I am created and that my creator is merciful and loving. My ideas about God have changed enormously over the years. But one thing has never changed, and that is the sense that somehow, something beautiful is being made out of my life. I’m broken but beautiful.

the party

floors and birthday cakes

It's one-thirty on Saturday morning. There's a pavlova in the oven, nearly ready to come out. One birthday cake is sitting in mum's oven to keep the ants off it, and another birthday cake is sitting beside our oven, waiting for the oven to cool before I tuck it a way for the night. The dishwasher is on, but the bench is covered with dirty dishes. The rest of the house is tidy but filthy. Tomorrow I'll do some cleaning, make another cake and some chocolate crackles, and we'll be almost done. I'm sure I'll be screaming like a banshee at the last minute, yelling orders at anyone within earshot and trying to blow up balloons and brush my teeth at the same time. But it will be worth it.

I could have just flagged the idea of any party at all, given the circumstances. Anyone else with half a brain would have. We've been in this place three weeks today, and since Monday we've spent every hour we can scraping a vile sticky lining off the floor with the help of a wallpaper steamer. It's been one of those jobs that seems like it will never end. Last night I was up until 1am steaming and scraping the last of the disgusting stuff off the floor of the room which will eventually be our bedroom.

I've spent moments all week suppressing the panic that threatened to rise whenever I thought about twenty kids and a party, here. Right here on these floors which are almost completely covered with dust and mud. Right here where we are in the middle of playing musical bedrooms to try and find the rooms that are the least asthma-inducing, and where we're currently sleeping in two out of seven bedrooms, with the kids' clothes, books and toys in one room, and their beds in another!

But I'm not one to pass up a good opportunity for a party, and I couldn't imagine Greer turning five without one. It seemed a sensible idea at the time to combine Abigail's second birthday party with Greer's fifth, although I probably could have just had a quiet family afternoon tea for Abigail, and let Greer have the party all to herself, saving myself from having to make and ice two birthday cakes at once. Why do I do these things?

It wasn't so bad though, doing two cakes at once. I think it might have even cured me of a little birthday cake perfectionism. Now when I say "birthday cake perfectionism" I know what you are thinking. Let me get one thing straight. I am not talking about perfect birthday cakes in the way you are thinking perfect birthday cakes. Oh no! My birthday cakes don't look like the kind of cakes a true "birthday cake perfectionist" makes. But I know my inner perfectionist. She doesn't turn up that often but one of the things she turns up for is birthday cakes. I know because I had a moment when I couldn't find the cake recipe I always use, and went madly looking through several boxes to no avail. I know, because I had to catch my breath and tell myself some home truths when I couldn't find my favourite butter icing recipe and had to use another one, and it just wasn't right. On another night, I might have chucked out a whole batch of icing and started again. But not tonight. Tonight was not the night to be a perfectionist about anything.

So I decided, as I was being ok with things not being completely ok, that when it comes to birthday cakes, I've got the impressionist style down pat. Take Abi's cake for example. Hers is a "2" with light green butter icing, with chocolate finger biscuits arranged around the edges as a fence, and her favourite animal figurines on top. It kind of gives you the idea of a farmyard scene. Abi's not going to notice that the chocolate fingers are all broken at slightly different lengths, or that the butter icing has plenty of brown cake crumbs poking through and is solid, rather than fluffy. And then there's Greer's cake, a kind of whimsical garden with cats wandering through it. Ah yes, of course, you say, that's exactly what I would have imagined on a five year old's birthday cake! It's got spearmint lollies on toothpicks for trees, japanese crackers for a path, and pumpkin seeds for grass. And the icing was a quite lovely egg shell kind of blue, but since I iced it a couple of hours ago it has turned a shade reminiscent of old playdough, as Paddy so kindly pointed out. But the cats look like they are having a great time.

My mum was never into themed and fancy birthday cakes. I don't know whether it was just that she was carefully avoiding the pressure, or because she preferred a cake that was simple and good to eat, or because she genuinely didn't feel confident with those kind of things. I remember seeing birthday cake cookbooks at other people's houses, and gazing longingly at swimming pools made of jelly, and trains with carriages overflowing with sweets and chocolate. Then mum found a recipe for a hedgehog cake with chocolate buttons as spines and we were all delighted. We had "Harriet the Hedgehog" birthday cakes for years in a row, and never suffered birthday cake envy again.

It's funny the things that make the difference in a childhood. The things that still warm us on the inside when we remember them. All I can hope for is that some where in the craziness that tomorrow's party will be, Greer makes herself one of those memories. I think there's a good chance she will. And I'm pretty sure it won't be anything to do with my butter icing.

it's real

Our internet connection is only hours old. It didn't take me long to get here. I've been thinking about words all week, wondering what story I would tell you when we finally got connected with the "real" world again. The first few days we were elated, whenever I looked out the window at that view I melted. The kids were dancing and running everywhere, riding their scooters up and down our mammoth hallway. We couldn't believe there was this much space in one house. As Isobella said, "we live in the biggest house in the world!"

As it happens, we also live in the wettest and most drainage-challenged house in the world. Which is not surprising when we live on the edge of a rain forest! The house also badly needs painting and generally fixing-up. We have our work cut out for us.

We knew that when we bought the house, more or less, but I had no idea what it would feel like to move into a job.  We'd just finished doing up our old house. But now we know that was nothing. This is the real deal, friends. We could be on one of those reality tv shows. One of those, we must save this house now before we all go mad kind of reality shows. Or I could just write about it.

Today was case in point. Outside our plumber friend was continuing his marathon attempt to dig up pretty much every bit of mud and soil on the property. Inside, another friend, an eccentric genius, was installing our desperately needed ventilation system. In the afternoon a drain layer came to have a go at unblocking a couple of drains. Then our internet guy turned up. Celebration! 

Meanwhile Paddy was doing an evening shift and had to leave at 5pm. I was rushing around trying to get some food cooked for him to take. He left while the drainlayer, the internet guy and our eccentric genius were still in action. I fed the kids and got them in the bath and just as the genius was finishing installing our ventilation system I blew the fuse to the wire it was attached to when I let the kids use the spa bath for the first time. At one point there were three men standing around our power board trying to figure out which fuse exactly was blown. In the end they found it completely fried and we'll have to get an electrician in tomorrow. So we have a fantastic ventilation system without any power to run it!  The internet guy finally finished up by about 8:30pm, and I got the kids in bed at about nine, after they'd had a second dinner of cereal at mums'. By which time the house was absolutely freezing because there had been no point in putting the heater on, with everyone coming and going. I hadn't sat down since the morning. And it's our anniversary.

So welcome to the real world of living in the bush. Who would want a boring life? Not me. And really, I can't think of any better way to celebrate ten years of marriage than by forging ahead, arriving in places unknown, and embarking on new adventures. We did all of the above when we picked ourselves up, us and the kids and however many million boxes, and landed here. This enormous, damp, cold, and utterly lovely place in the bush. Ours.

going

We've got twenty-four hours to go until moving day. Or one more sleep, as the girls would say. Yesterday we teetered on the edge of chaos. I had read Psalm 86 in the Liturgy of the Hours in the morning; "make my heart simple and guileless" and that was my mantra when the stress started to turn ugly. I think it worked, I hope it worked. It has been easy for me to forget how big this all is for the kids. Isobella is in turns wildly excited and desperately heart-broken. She is sad about leaving our neighbours, and was nearly hysterical when I packed up the last of their toys.

I'm glad I said my good-byes to this house a couple of months ago, because that house is gone. In its place is a shell filled with boxes. They are piled up in the hall and piled up in the lounge. They sit waiting to be shifted, with their exact destination scrawled across the top of them. Kitchen, under-sink cupboard; Kitchen, cupboard under far window; Kitchen, shelves below servery.

But every where I look I see corners still filled with us, piles of us, monuments to the family that once made home here. Today is the day I take them down. The calendar hanging above the bench.  The little "to be sorted" pile by the knife block. The stones we collected from Great Barrier Island on the kitchen window sill, beside my postcard of Rembrandt's "Prodigal Son" where I sometimes stand and pray. How do I pack those? And what label would go on the outside of the box?

This is my last post from comfortable suburbia. We are leaving the house we've been living in since Isobella was nine months old. We arrived here with a cat and a baby, and are leaving with two more children and a dog.  When I next write (and who knows when that will be, as we are moving beyond the reaches of broadband!) I won't look over the roofs of houses, or down onto little contained sections filled with other people's lives. My view will be trees and sky and water. What will I do in all of that space?

There is an inevitability about this move that takes my breath away. As if this moment was waiting for us, somewhere in our future. As if it was a point we could have come to from any angle, and on any time frame. You could say it's like turning a chapter in the book of our lives, but that, apart from being a cliche, feels too passive. It's not like that at all. This move feels like pushing open an enormous and heavy door with all of our weight, and then slamming it shut behind us. There's no going back.

birthdays and babies

She's two now, that baby of mine. She turned two on Thursday. She was pretty happy about it, she knew what was going on. We gave her some playdough tools and a puzzle. We'll do a joint party with Greer when we get to the new house.

It wasn't long ago that I was lamenting the fact that she was turning one. Well a year, that's not very long, at least it doesn't seem long any more. Back then I was joking about finding a recipe for a bonsai baby. And now she's two.

I didn't think I wanted a third baby. After Greer was born I spent months angst-ing over whether we were "done" or not. Oh I talked and wondered and talked and wondered and cried. It was such a difficult decision. Most people I knew seemed happy with two. Two was such a normal number. And as much as I loved my babies I hadn't overly enjoyed that immediate post-partum period. So, out of desperation to make up my mind, I decided I was done. We sold the cot. Then one day I was sitting behind a woman breastfeeding her newborn. I could hear the baby snuffling quietly as it fed, and suddenly it hit me. I wanted to hear that sound again. I wanted another baby!

I sat behind that woman with tears rolling down my face for an hour. All I could think about was her baby and the baby I had only just realised I wanted. I rang Paddy. "I want another baby" I told him, crying. He laughed and promised me we'd talk about it when I got home. It didn't take much to persuade him. And so we got our precious Abigail Hope.

We have enjoyed her so much I can't believe I ever thought we were done without her. She's such a treasure, and third time around everything was so much easier. She wasn't an easy baby, but I had the hindsight of knowing that the worst times with a baby never last forever.  And now that she's well past the baby stage, we still enjoy her. She makes us smile and laugh all the time. She's the most fascinating combination of sweet and feisty. And she makes me want another baby. She confirms to me, every day, that I am not done.

There is a slight technical issue though. You might remember I had my tubes tied at the same time as Abigail's c-section. Hers was my third caesarean, and I just presumed that was what was expected of me. As I told people who asked, "three is the magic number for caesareans." I hardly gave it any thought. It seemed the sensible, practical thing to do. And I was so blown away to be having a third baby at all, that three seemed like a huge family. I never imagined wanting more.

Then I met someone who had been told by her specialist she could have "as many c-sections as she wanted." Soon after that I found out that the writer of one of my favourite blogs had had three c-sections and was pregnant with her fourth child. I started feeling jealous. Then I read one bloggers' answer to "do you want more children?" and her post about the Catholic teaching on contraception, and I cried. I couldn't believe I had given up the ability to bear children so easily. I couldn't believe I'd done it with barely a thought.

Now I look at pregnant women wistfully and newborn babies longingly. Hardly a day has gone by in the last six months that I haven't wished I could get pregnant. I've had a tiny taste of the longing ache to have a child. And did you know there is such a thing as post-tubal ligation syndrome? I didn't, but it turns out I've got at least half of the symptoms. Sex hasn't been the same either. I've just felt, well, sterile. There's no other word for it.

Last week Paddy and I watched "The Blind Side," a movie based on a true story. If you haven't seen it it's the one with Sandra Bullock as the feisty Southern Mom who along with her family, takes in and eventually adopts "Big Mike." Michael is a boy they find wandering the streets and who ends up becoming a very successful football player. I started crying in the opening scenes, and kept crying, until it got to the point, about halfway through the movie, where I turned to Paddy and said, sobbing, "I can't watch this any more unless you say we can adopt!" He was teary-eyed himself, and he smiled and nodded. 

I don't know what this means for us exactly. All we know is that we are not done! Our hearts are open to the possibility of growing our family. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I don't know whether it means we will definitely adopt one day, or perhaps foster, or maybe even somehow, miraculously, get pregnant ourselves. All I know is I don't feel sterile any more, and that is a very good feeling.

coming up for air

This weekend we were able to start shifting some of our stuff into the garage at our new house. It is great that the owner has let us do this, and it will make moving weekend much more straightforward. We emptied the storage unit we hired when we got the house ready to put on the market, we got everything down from the attic, and we took all the banana boxes you saw empty in my last post, now filled. What is sitting in our new garage looks like a small house-lot. Of course, if you came to visit our house today you wouldn't even realise anything was missing.

We tromped up and down our front stairs carrying boxes and furniture all Saturday and Sunday afternoon. After doing this for the umpteenth time I realised I actually like moving house. When it was just me and my sister and Mum we shifted a lot, sometimes as often as every year. Packing the house up to move became a familiar routine, and looking at new flats was exciting. Even after Mum re-married and we settled down, we still ended up shifting house every few years. I remember one moving day when I was at University but still living at home, I had packed my entire bedroom (minus the bed) into my little banged-up car the night before moving day. I drove to the supermarket where I was working for the day, the car jam-packed with stuff, and then drove to our new house straight after work. I got there well before the moving truck and the rest of the family. I was that keen.

It's a funny process, shifting house. Everything we own will be rendered transportable. It will be wrapped and packed away tightly, or emptied and cleared. Little things will be packed next to other little things, breakables will be wrapped and tucked into other breakables. I can't tell you how many boxes of books I shifted this weekend. Everything in order, everything contained. When I decided that order would be my word for the year, I never imagined we'd be shifting house, and I never would have thought that moving had anything to do with order.

There is plenty of shifting happening in other ways as well. Ideas are being packed and unpacked, wild dreams are being made room for. Treasures are being sorted and classified, ready to be put away, their season of use ended. Change is everywhere.

So it's busy inside my brain. I am tired. More sleep would help. But this is the best rest I can give myself. Writing is how I tidy up on the inside.

movement and rest

Yesterday it was exactly a month until moving day. While the house was on the market we lived in an unnatural state of order. I had a genuine fear of "stuff" the whole time. Nothing came in, plenty went out. I didn't let the girls bring home so much as a piece of paper! Once the house was off the market, we more or less got back to living like we normally do, and now, with four weeks ahead of us, the house is already filled with boxes.

Moving house is one of the most stressful things we can do. There's a list that counsellors and psychologists use, that list of the ten or twenty most stressful things a human can go through. There's tragedy and disaster in there, and a bit of the ordinary too. New job, moving house, that sort of thing. Moving house.

What state will I be in, in a month's time? Will I be beside myself with exhaustion, mumbling and incoherent, about to curl up in a hermit's ball for a week?  Or will I be tired, relieved, but calm? This is where reality TV meets the voyeurism of blogging. As long as I stay sane enough to put a sentence together, you will watch the drama unfold. I could even add a little poll to my sidebar. You could click "yes" if you think I'll survive, or "no", if you think I'll be a blubbering mess at the end of it all. Let me just see about that....

I was going to write a post about rest a couple of months ago. You might remember I decided to go to bed early for Lent. This was a very genuine intention, and it counted for a lot, as far as I'm concerned, even if sometimes real life got in the way. What that intention did was change the way I considered bedtime. Before Lent, bedtime had just been the thing I got to eventually when everything else was done. During Lent it suddenly became the focus of my evening, the goal I elevated above every other, once the girls were in bed. For almost the first time in my life, bedtime was important.

There's a context here. I've got a history of overdoing things. I know the taste of burn out. I've spent most of my life so intent on making other people happy that I didn't know how to look after myself. "No" was a word I had to get married to learn to use. The day I decided to go to bed early for Lent was the Sunday before we put the house on the market; after three manic weeks of  painting, cleaning, tidying, sorting, and shifting whole rooms around. I was so tired I was shell-shocked and tearful.

That's what I don't want to be in a month's time.

But when it comes down to it, I'm not sure I know what to do to avoid it. I mean, we have a whole house to pack and move, as well other deadlines for some really exciting projects.  And then there are all the ordinary things which carry on regardless, like homeschooling, and the fact that there are five of us and we all like to eat, wear clean clothes, and see the floor we are walking on. These things alone take up most of my time.

One day at the beginning of Lent I read Psalm 127 in the afternoon prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours.

It is vain for you to rise before dawn,
and go late to your rest,
eating the bread of toil - 
to those he loves, the Lord gives sleep.


I imagine the bread of toil like a slice of stale bread that's been sitting on the bench all afternoon. It's dry, chewy, and curled at the edges. Some of us are better at eating the bread of toil than others. Some of us are probably just like our mothers, who ate the burnt chop and shouldered most of the work around the house simply because there was nobody else to do it. To us there is something safe and familiar about the bread of toil. We've spent so long eating it that the taste of anything else is foreign and extravagant. The bread of toil seems to take the moral high ground. Work is valued, and inactivity discouraged, right?

I've always struggled to see value in rest. For me, real rest is something I've come to as a last resort, and often with a sense of failure that I can't carry on. It's not something that I've been able to see as valuable in its own right. It's not because I think I'm invincible. I think it's just that activity has been such a big part of my identity. I achieve, therefore I am.

There's a tension here, of course. Necessary work is exactly that. It has to be done and there's no avoiding it. Work that is associated with fruitfulness is exciting and often a pleasure.  The work for a project that is finally getting off the ground after years of dreaming is a miracle in itself. And then there's the old proverb about work being its own reward. The feeling of a job finished and done well; there's nothing like it.

But if we just keep on going, we gradually become less efficient and less productive, and eventually come to a grinding halt. I like what Ovid wrote about rest:
Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. 
And then there's what Jesus said about rest:
Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

 I've read those words of Jesus countless times, I've meditated on them and I've tried to apply them. But I know now that I've never understood them. If I had, my life would have looked very different. Let's see how I go this time around.

unconditional

Yesterday afternoon I sat on the couch with all three phones beside me. Waiting for the final confirmation that this house is not ours, and another is.The other house, the big house in the bush, was until yesterday afternoon a dream I have hardly let myself dream. Now it is real.

Space, peace, bush, water. Those things I saw within myself for the first time last year, when that other house in the bush surprised us. I hadn’t realised the longing I had for those things until then. But that property wasn’t meant to be ours, it was simply a place holder. It marked a page we hoped we would turn back to. We couldn’t have imagined how quickly and how perfectly that page-turn would be executed.

Now the book lies open at it. And it is even better than those first longings. Five acres of bush, 100 metres from the water. Bedrooms and useable space galore, and room for Grannie too.  I couldn’t have dreamed it, I couldn’t have even asked for it, it is that good! Wow!!!

everyday resurrections

I took this photo yesterday, although I should probably say chance took it. We stopped at a park on the way home. The carpet of autumn leaves under the trees was calling us to run scrunching. I took some photos on my phone of the girls kicking the leaves around, and then I as I was putting it back into my pocket this happened. A photo-fluke.

This photo looks a bit like my life at the moment. Lots of things going on, balls in the air, my head spinning. Tomorrow our house sale will go unconditional, and our purchase of the big house in the bush will go unconditional as well. When that happens I will tell you all about it! So exciting!! But as you can imagine there has been a lot going on, and all at the eleventh hour.  Not just house stuff either. There have been so many words I've written to you in my head over the last month. So many things I've been thinking about that I just haven't had time to write. So my head feels a bit like that photo too.

Yesterday my Dad fell five metres from a tree he was trimming in my sister's back yard. It is a very large tree, and the huge branch he had just sawn off swung around instead of falling straight. It swung right round to the opposite side of the tree, round to the ladder Dad was standing on. It broke the ladder and sent him flying. How he ended up with nothing more than an enormous fright and plenty of bruising is a miracle.

Then last night I went to Taize Prayer at the Fransiscan Friary. It was a moment of clarity in the midst of all the spinning, like that spot at the top of the photo that's almost in focus. Suddenly everything was still. We met in the chapel, the chairs in a u-shape around a collection of candles and autumn leaves on the floor at the centre of the room. Incense hung in the air. I looked around at the random bunch of people gathered. Some older, some younger, but all at home, all happy to be there. I was a newbie but I didn't feel out of place. It was a sacred hour of sung chants, readings, and silence. It was like sitting down beside a cool mountain stream and taking a big drink.

The readings were for Easter, and the one prayer we all prayed together was this poem by Joy Cowley.

Easter Sunday

This is the day of festival
and we thank you, O God of celebration,
with hymns of praise rising like balloons
and banners of love waving from our hearts.
Today we dance with the angels
round all the empty tombs in our lives,
celebrating transformation,
from grief to laughter,
from darkness into light.
Today we glimpse the truth
of suffering and death
as we move with you in your Jesus song
of resurrections without end.

This Easter I thought of something I'd never thought before. What happened in that moment directly after Jesus' resurrection? When Jesus is standing on earth, breathing our air again. The ground has shaken, the stone has been rolled, the soldiers have fled, and there is no one in the garden except Jesus, all new. What was he thinking? How was he feeling? What did he do? Did he touch his body all over just to be sure? Did he sit and stare at his hands, remembering? Or did he walk through the garden, talking to God, taking a moment alone like all those other moments alone we know he took. How did their conversation go?

I like the line in Joy Cowley's poem about dancing around "all the empty tombs in our lives" and the idea of "resurrections without end." We celebrate the greatest resurrection at Easter, but what about all the other, everyday resurrections? When problems that seem to have no answer are suddenly resolved, when two friends get over a disagreement and embrace, when despair hanging over a heavy heart lifts, and when a man falls five metres and gets up without a broken bone, what do we do? Do we stop and witness these extraordinary moments? Do we stop to breathe again, to sit and stare at our own hands, to see how new we are?

Light and truth, life and laughter. They come to us in spite of our brokenness, in spite of our ignorance, and despite the darkness that threatens. Our own everyday resurrections.

our Little Prince gets married

I'm sitting here watching the royal wedding. There are plenty of other things I should be doing. The kitchen is in a state, and I'm surrounded by piles of the girls' summer clothes waiting to be put away. And we have an open home tomorrow! Still, there is probably nothing more important in the world right now than this wedding.

Thirty years ago on that other, more fateful wedding day, I was six and Mum had got me out of bed late in the evening to watch the live telecast. Tonight, when I saw footage of Diana and her little flower girls I felt a shiver run through me. I remember that night. How she looked more like a princess than I ever could have imagined. How much I wanted to touch her ruffles, that impossible expanse of silk. How I dreamed of being one of her flower girls. She was wonderful.

My girls are asleep right now, I didn't even think of getting them up. Technology has moved on, of course, and the images I'm watching will sit in that little black box by the TV for them to watch in the morning. I didn't tell them about the wedding. Someone else did. They've never heard me talk about the Royal Family.  I didn't know where to start. The story of this little Prince is sad.

 But once they heard about the wedding, they were keen fans. They found some old magazines from the time of Diana. They've seen her wedding dress, the flower girls, and photos of William when he was a baby on the front lawn of Government House. They've been carrying those magazines around nearly everywhere. They will wake up tomorrow morning early and excited.

On the screen in front of me the final hymn is being sung. The lucky couple are about to walk together out of the Abbey, happy. And they look happy. Unlike that ill-fated couple. I saw Diana and Prince Charles walk back down the aisle in footage replayed tonight. In the moment they turned towards the congregation their faces were drawn and tight. I listened to tonight's vows and thought of Prince Charles making the same vows to Diana. At the time we were happy for them. It was every body's fairytale wedding. Well, nearly every body's.

But this time we've got it right, surely. This one's the real fairy tale. Or maybe not. Maybe these young royals are too sensible and worldly for that. Kate studied PR, she's not naive. She doesn't dip her head shyly when the cameras are out. William and Kate have known each other long enough to know each other, weaknesses, quirks, and all. 

The carriage is making its way through the gates of Buckingham Palace. The pair will soon stand on that balcony and kiss while the world watches. Then we'll go back to our normal lives, dirty dishes and bits of food on the table. We will brush our teeth, turn out the lights, and sleep, completely anonymously. Their day has only just begun. They will wave, kiss, live and love while the world watches. Will we be kind to them this time?

Me and Gill Greer

We're still sick, but don't worry, that's not what I'm going to write about. Being sick has meant that there hasn't been much going on around here, except for a bit more time to read and think than normal. Plenty of time, actually, to get completely caught up in this post, the one that followed it, and the debate that ensued. When I say caught up, I don't mean I actually took part in the discussion, but I do mean I read avidly from the safety of my sick-bed on the other side of the world. It was one to watch, I tell you.

Abortion is something I never thought I'd be writing about here. I've been planning on writing about it, one day, when I'm grown up and all, but on a new blog I've had in the pipeline for a while, a blog that will explore some ideas around Christian feminism. So abortion, right, that was going to come up. Just not here.

But last week I read an article in The Listener about Gill Greer, the New Zealander who is Director General of International Planned Parenthood Federation. The article was part of a series which showcases kiwis overseas who are doing good things. Gill Greer was recently named among the "100 most inspiring people who have delivered for girls and women," and by the sounds of it, she's earnt it. She runs one of the world's largest organisations, and is an intelligent, compassionate and vocal advocate for women's health rights. And abortion, did I mention abortion?

Gillian Greer made an impression on me. She is a grandmother, was an English teacher, and seemed personable and interesting, someone I could easily have a coffee with.  So I was thinking of her when I read the arguments that went back and forth over in that corner of the internet. She put a face to the political dispute that's been broiling since the Republicans started pushing for the de-funding of Planned Parenthood in the United States.

Abortion has always been a complicated issue for me. My mother had an abortion, and I was conceived in the nine months succeeding. If she hadn't had that abortion, I wouldn't be here writing to you. To me, that's complicated. But it gets more complicated. When she realised she was pregnant with me, it was suggested that she have another abortion. Somehow she knew that this time she wanted the baby.

Someone else made an impression on me this week, the author of the post that started that enthralling pro-life/pro-choice debate. Calah writes about being a young Catholic mother. She's always honest, and often funny. But what she wrote in that post took my breath away. If there's anyone who is entitled to write about the decision to keep or abort a baby, she is.

"Amidst the debates swirling around about defunding Planned Parenthood, some oft-repeated catch phrases are being tossed around like word grenades. One of these are "women in crisis." I'm sick and tired of hearing about "women in crisis" and how they need access to emergency contraception and abortions. That is a huge, steaming pile of lies, propagated by people who like to murder babies. Women in crisis do not need access to abortions. What they need is love, support, a safe place to live, and people (even strangers!) who will tell them the truth: that they are more than capable of being a mother. That they can do this. That their crisis, no matter how terrible, will be healed in the long, sometimes painful, always joyful process of becoming a mother.
Think this makes me heartless, speaking from my comfortable suburban home, having never known trials in my cushy little life?
Think again.
When I got that positive pregnancy test, the one that changed my life, I was addicted to crystal meth."

While I've always been pro-life, I've never felt comfortable with the rhetoric and actions of most of that camp. Placards and feisty arguments don't seem to have won us any battles so far, and I can't see any evidence that they will in the future. Certainly, if all we do is alienate our opposition and make the women who choose to have abortions feel judged and condemned, then we are missing something, drastically.

Gill Greer is quoted in the Listener article as saying "I probably get less calm when people talk about themselves as pro-life. My response to that is - I'm pro-life, I just happen to be pro the woman's life, and I believe if she has the ability to make a safe legal choice as early as possible in her pregnancy, that's saving her life." If you read those words and all they do is make you angry, then read them again. This is a woman who genuinely cares about women and their families; she's just doing it in a way that I and many others don't agree with.

And yet. And this is where it gets even more complicated for me. I was brushing my teeth last night, thinking all of this over, when a realisation hit me with such force I just about choked on my toothbrush. I realised, for the first time in my life, that I'm grateful that my mother had access to a safe abortion.

Life is exquisite. No one can look at a newborn and deny it. For all of us, no matter what culture or place we live in, whether we are a man or a woman, child or adult, a new birth is a holy moment. It connects us with the wonder of this world we live in, it reminds us of the beauty and preciousness of each individual, and it reminds us, if we let it, that there is a bigger story to our lives, that we are part of something bigger than us.

But life is also very complicated. All of us have survived some measure of hurt and dysfunction in our upbringing, and all of us battle with the disappointment of being let down by others and by our own averageness. We've all made mistakes, and we all suffer the consequences. In the complexity that is my own life this is abundantly clear. And yet I look back and see cause for hope. I see a story being woven out of the random and sometimes ugly threads of my life that is ultimately good.

Abortion is damaging, not only literally for the life within but also for the mother. Gill Greer might not believe it but there are plenty of women who say they suffer from Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome.  We can't be silent about this. The stories of women who regret their abortions should be respected and listened to. But can we do this without completely alienating our opposition? Is there any way a respectful dialogue can happen between the pro-life and pro-choice camps?

I'd have a coffee with Gillian Greer. I'd listen to her stories and her heart-wrenching statistics. Then I'd talk to her about the stories I've heard, some very close to home. I'd ask her to make adoption an easier and more accessible option for women who come to Planned Parenting. I'd ask her to consider the reality that Post-Abortion Stress syndrome is for many women, and suggest that Planned Parenting be more open about the negative effects some women experience following an abortion. Am I nieve? Possibly. But I'm a dreamer, and where would we be without those?

thursday things

1. We are all suffering, to varying degrees, from our first bout of cold weather sickness. Greer has a horrible croupy cough which seems to have brought back the asthma we were hoping she had grown out of. Abigail has asthma too, and although not as bad as Greer did at that age there's been a fair bit of coughing over the last couple of nights. Greer is tired. She had a meltdown this morning because I asked her to brush her teeth so I put her in bed with a tray and some puzzles. It reminded me of how much I loved staying home sick as a child. This was not a privilege earned easily I should tell you. We had to either be throwing up or have a scientifically confirmed temperature to get a day off school. One day I remember I was feeling the need to prove my sickness so I could stay home. I was in bed with the thermometer, and Mum had kindly given me a cup of tea. I had a brainwave and immediately dunked the (mercury) thermometer into my cup of tea. Oh dear. The thermometer broke, of course. At a loss as to what to do, I lifted the cup to my lips and was about to sip. My sister, who though three years younger than me was always the more practical of the two of us, quickly piped up "stop!" and saved me from drinking mercury-laced tea!

2. Greer has her last day at kindy (pre-school) next week. She's not actually five until July, so she's finishing a term early. She's super keen to join Isobella and start homeschooling. She does enjoy kindy, and especially loves her teachers, but she also loves staying at home with her sisters. I'm looking forward to not having to go anywhere on two more mornings in the week. I've been thinking about our morning rhythms and how they still need a bit of tweaking. With kindy finished we'll have four mornings a week that we can just stay home.

3. Family rhythms are something I've been thinking about lately since I was recommended a new blog by a homeschooling friend. The Parenting Passageway is a lovely, thoughtful Waldorf homemaking and homeschooling blog. This was the first post I read - "An Ordered Outer World for a Peaceful Family." I found it very inspiring. Then after thinking about order and rhythms in the home for the last week or so, I only just remembered the other day that my word for this year is ORDER. I'd forgotten! And the funny thing is that the process of having the house on the  market, while being extremely consuming and exhausting, has resulted in a pared down, pleasantly ordered house. And I hadn't even thought of the word order once while we were doing it all. You don't need to know about the storage unit we've had to hire to shift half of our STUFF into to achieve this domestic nirvana though. Neither do our prospective buyers!

4. Speaking of the house, this Saturday is our auction. We have a hunch it won't sell at auction but we are expecting to have some negotiating going on next week. Once this house is sold we will let ourselves get very, very excited about the new one. I am so looking forward to having no more open homes. Two every weekend for the last month has been tiring.

5. And speaking of tired, I am. I'm really tired at the moment. Isn't it lucky I decided to go to bed early for Lent. Even though I haven't been perfect at it, I've been going to bed a lot earlier than I was. I hate to think how tired I would be now if it wasn't for Lent. As you know, I'm a novice when it comes to observing the church calendar. But it seems to be a natural and good thing to observe spiritual seasons as well as earthly ones. It makes sense to me to have a season where we consciously restrict activity. Restriction of activity does not have to be viewed negatively. If it's an unhealthy activity, such as a bad habit, then restriction of activity is going to actually bring freedom. If it's restriction of activity that makes room for rest, then ultimately it's life-giving. Looking at Lent in this way makes me think that observing a rest day or a sabbath in our week could be like having a mini-lent every week. Paddy has worked on Sunday nights for most of our married life, so Sunday as traditional rest day has never worked for us. But I've been longing to find our own rhythm for rest despite this. At the beginning of the year I decided to make Sundays a no-internet day for me. It's been amazing how this one small thing has really made Sundays feel different, and somehow restful. I look forward to it. The culture we live in would have us believe that restriction is bad and that more is always better. Most of us know too well how untrue this is.

early morning

It was daylight savings this weekend. I've been awake since before 5am, lying in bed with my head buzzing but not quite feeling like I'd had enough sleep to get up. The big girls woke up before six. I sent them back to their room and now they are lying in Isobella's bed together talking and telling stories.

This is so much easier than a few years ago. I remember a time when a week of 5:30am wake-ups was de rigour for daylight savings change-over. And you can't just send a toddler back to bed. I used to dread daylight savings.

But I actually love being awake at this time of the morning. It's my favourite time to write, and in the past I've managed periods of time where I went to bed early enough to get up at 5am and write. That's my dream. I can't tell you how many times that husband of mine has heard me say "if I can just start going to bed earlier I'll be able to get up early and write." He'll believe it when he sees it.

Then there's Lent, and that very appropriate intention to be in bed early. Nine-thirty in the evening actually. Which is a lot earlier than the eleven o'clock or later I had been going to bed ever since Abigail was born (and she's nearly two!) At first it was survival with a windy baby, and then it just became a habit I couldn't get out of.

Go on, ask me how I'm doing with that Lenten intention. The answer is, if you are judging purely on the actual time I've been getting to bed, I'm doing pretty averagely. But if you could some-how see into my heart or read my mind you'd realise there's been a change. Going to bed is a priority now, rather than just something that eventually happens after everything else at the end of the night. I start thinking about going to bed as soon as dinner is over. I sometimes leave dishes, washing, and blogging to the side in order to get to bed. The girls are often not in bed themselves until 8:30pm so that doesn't leave much time. And given that we have our house on the market and have two open homes every weekend, and had Isobella's birthday last weekend, there's been plenty of necessary work that has meant that a 9:30pm bedtime has sometimes been unrealistic.

Enter daylight savings. Last night the girls were in bed by 7pm. It was nearly dark and I found myself getting tired and thinking about bed at 8pm. It has been light until eight or nine in the evening since last September. Summer days are lovely and long but they give a false sense of endlessness. They call us outside with promises of hours and hours to play and work. They give us the thrill of possibility, they ignite our dreams, and they spur our industry on.

Now the slanting autumn light is a constant reminder that time is passing, slipping between my fingers. Yesterday went so quickly. Dusk settled as we ate dinner and then without us even noticing it shifted to dark. Cold weather is still months away, so cosy is not needed, and yet the darkness still comforts. It gently shrinks our world until the only thing that matters is the pile of dishes in the sink, the apple cooking on the stove. Anything else belongs to another day.