the gift of a story - for you

I'm re-posting this from last year because this is still exactly how I feel, and I couldn't say it any better. Hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

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.

who needs you?

This afternoon there was a 5.8 magnitude aftershock in Christchurch, followed later by a 6.0 quake, and further smaller ones as well. Dust rose into the sky from the already severely damaged Cathedral. Luckily there was no major damage in the city, but there was plenty of damage all the same. I watched footage filmed in a supermarket. The shelves shaking, the signage swinging, sirens going off, and people screaming. I cried - I couldn't help it. It was too much. Humans can't suffer that level of panic and stress for as long as the people of Christchurch have without it becoming debilitating. The Mayor, who is cutting short a holiday to return to the city, described people sitting on the ground and crying.

Cantabrians have left the city in droves. They've left temporarily and they've left permanently. More would leave, I'm sure, if they weren't stuck with a house that's impossible to sell, or weren't in the middle of negotiations and arrangements regarding insurance and re-building. The aftermath, which must seem now like it will be unending, is complicated and heartbreaking.

There are people who are choosing to go to Christchurch. There are builders and plumbers and engineers who are filling the gaps in the pivotal building industry. The re-build is far from smooth, it's not even a work in progress in many places. And then there are the people, like a friend of mine, who feel that this needy city is exactly where they need to be. I take my hat off to them.

But leaving is one of the sanest options available to Cantabrians right now. It goes against all instinct for survival to stay. We should be doing whatever we can to make it possible for those who need to leave to leave as quickly as possible. Could landlords in other cities offer a month's free rent to those re-locating? Could people offer their homes and holiday homes to those in need of a holiday somewhere where the ground is firm, as happened so generously after the February quake? Could employers make an effort to interview prospective employees from Christchurch? Could the government create a short term transitional unemployment benefit specifically for people wanting to move out of Christchurch to other parts of the country? Could the government set up a task force that would go about the business of re-building people's lives, not just their houses? Why not?

I read "The Little Engine that Could" to Abigail tonight at bedtime. It's an old Golden Book that was on the bookshelf at home when I was a child. The story was too long for her to keep up with, so I was skipping bits, but it brought back so many memories. The little engine with it's carriages filled with treasures is stuck. It can't go any further. A shiny, haughty engine drives past and refuses to help; a big, self-important engine refuses to help. An old tired and rusty engine is sure he can't help. Eventually the Little Blue Engine, who thinks so little of himself, saves the day. He chugs to himself  "I think I can I think I can I think I can" and makes it over the hill.


It occurred to me for the first time that this is a re-telling of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story, a man has been robbed and beaten and lies dying on the side of the road. Several people see him but walk to the other side of the road to avoid him. We all understand this. Sometimes it's just easier not to get involved. Finally a Samaritan, an outcast, takes the man to an inn and pays for his full recovery. The story comes from a question asked of Jesus by a lawyer, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus answers the lawyer's question straight from the Torah, the Jewish book of Law. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And your neighbour as yourself." Which means, in a nutshell, love and look after others in the same way as you love and look after yourself. But the lawyer, obviously on the look-out for a loophole, asks "Who is my neighbour?" And so the story of the Good Samaritan is born. Jesus' message is clear; your neighbour is the one who needs you.

There was another desperately sad story in the news today. A five year old girl was viciously attacked in a camping ground near Taupo on Wednesday night. The Mayor of the Taupo District has reacted strongly, demanding to know why "our forbears got rid of the death penalty."  He clearly thinks the offender is scum and doesn't deserve to live. That precious five-year old whose life has been changed forever is my neighbour, no question. But the offender? Who is his neighbour?

We don't want to think we are like the shiny self-important engine, too important and shiny to help, but sometimes we are. It's easy to be like the big busy engine, with other, better things to do. And we let ourselves off the hook too easily when we think like the tired engine,  I really can't.  But we can all be the little blue engine. If we think we can.


My closest neighbour tonight is Abigail. She came out in chicken pox yesterday, two days before Christmas. She is covered in spots and pretty miserable, and she's sitting on the table next to me right now scratching her head and looking at photos on my phone. I'll take her to bed with me soon and we'll try to sleep. I don't really have any other option, I'm her mother. But the thing is that we usually meet the needs that are closest to us. It's the needs that aren't so close that we often ignore.

If there was one thing that Jesus understood, and he wasn't the only great teacher to get this, it is that we are all connected. When you hurt, I hurt, somewhere along the way. We think we can live our own separate lives, keeping those close who we choose to keep close, and excluding those we choose to exclude, but it's simply not true. We will sit at our tables on Christmas day and we will all eat well and starve, in the same breath.

how it is in december

It rained nearly all of last week. We started wondering whether summer was really coming. But it did. It's been mostly sunny and warm since Monday. The rain hasn't really bothered us that much, but it was funny having to hang out washing inside the week before Christmas. 

We had our Christmas service at church and the kids all got up and did a kiwi rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was pretty cute and they had a lot of fun. Back at home we finally got our Christmas tree up. And then came the lights. According to my husband, you can't get lights that don't flash anymore. The Christmas tree flashes red and green, and the lights around the french doors do a rolling medley of flashing so fast it should have a health warning for epileptics. It's lucky we found our old fairy lights which are strung up around some of the windows. They are small and still, just how I like them. I actually got a bit grumpy about all the flashing lights, as my family will tell you readily. It wasn't just that they were flashing, it was that they outshone my advent candles. I got beeswax tea light candles especially, but next time I'll find the biggest candles I can. Christmas is not the season for subtlety, obviously. 

It's not just the lights I've been grumpy about either. During the last week of school the girls couldn't stop talking about Santa. We've never been anti-Santa, but neither of us has ever had the energy or enthusiasm to support the fantasy either. So the girls figured things out pretty quickly, and up until this year have never shown much interest in Santa at all. This year was different. Greer's been singing Christmas songs about Santa at the top of her voice, and under the christmas tree is a creation made of blocks and wooden trees which is apparently "Santa's Grotto." Sure, whatever. But the last straw was when I heard Isobella tell Greer she wasn't going to make her a Christmas present because she "hadn't been nice." Just in the same way we hear everywhere that Santa only brings presents to children who have been good. At that point I told the girls that I was grumpy with Santa and that I didn't want to hear any more about him! For a few days afterwards they'd ask me every so often if I'd "stopped being grumpy with Santa." Eventually they stopped asking!

I know I probably sound like the Grinch. If you know me, you'll know I really am not like the Grinch at all. But I hate the "you'll get presents if you're good" thing.  It's manipulative, untrue, and quite frankly a bit low. I love my kids, we all do, and that's why we give them gifts. Our love is not conditional, so why would our gift giving be? And Santa? Does he actually love anyone?

Anyway, I am actually really happy about Christmas. I love looking at my diary for this week. Every day is covered with lists and scribbles, except for Sunday. Sunday is completely blank. Sunday will be lovely. Mum will probably take the kids to church while I stay home and cook the turkey. Then we'll sit at our enormous table, us, Mum, and my sister and her family, and we'll eat and talk and enjoy each other's company. Later my Dad and step-mum and sister will probably come around, and we'll eat and talk some more. We're pretty traditional around here, as far as Christmas goes, so it won't matter if it rains. We've never had any urges to go to the beach or have a BBQ; turkey and pavlova make us all very happy.

about today

This is today. Paddy got home this morning from his last ever overnight shift. I woke up just before he finished and turned all the Christmas lights back on in the lounge and wrote him a sign that read "welcome to your future." Because that's exactly how it felt. 

He's been working overnights for five years. That's five years of living as if he was flying across to the other side of the world every week. Five years of being tired, five years of rejecting his natural body rhythms, five years of living against the grain.

For me it's been five years of only ever getting a sleep in when we're on holiday, five years of being sole charge at night several times a week, five years of being awake when my husband is asleep, alert when he's tired, tired when he's alert. Five years of going to bed at different times, every night. 

Now I'm not saying five years is a long time, but I am saying that any amount of time living like that is long enough. 

Do you remember what the last day of school felt like on your last day of school ever? I do. I remember walking up Howe St to K'Rd with my friend Jenny. The sun was shining, and we talked like we were heading off on the adventure of our lives, life. Like we could go anywhere and do anything, as if anything was possible. That's exactly how a girl should feel at seventeen. But at thirty-seven? Today I felt as close to seventeen as I have since I was seventeen. Today was life beginning all over again.

Except this time I don't need anything to be possible. I just want my life. Our life. The one inside me, the one that's been patiently waiting for me all this time. It never rested on anyone else, but somehow, with life opening up for Paddy like a wide gate to the world, I feel like life is opening up for me too.

Today five years ago my step-dad passed away. I wrote about him last year and those words are still truer than true. He'd be so happy for us today. He'd think it was wonderful. He'd want to hear all about our plans, the businesses we are working on, and the contract in the pipeline that could make next year a lot easier if it happens. He'd be so proud.

St Nicholas and everything else

  

We started a new tradition this week. I invited my friend Liz and her kids around after school on Tuesday and we celebrated St Nicholas Day. We made this cake, I printed out some colour-in pages from here, and I got a picture book from the library called "Saint Nicholas: The story of the real Santa Claus" by Mary Joslin and read it to the kids. We even tucked a small present into their shoes when they weren't looking. "Saint Nicholas has come! Saint Nicholas has come!" they yelled at the top of their voices when they found the gifts.

I didn't know very much about Saint Nicholas myself until this week. I didn't know the story about the gold coins being thrown down the chimney to the family in need, and the coins landing in the shoes and stockings that were drying by the fire. I didn't know that in Holland, where the children all put their shoes out ready for a present to be delivered by St Nick on the night of the fifth, the Dutch word for Saint Nicholas is "Sinter Klaas." It's not that I didn't know all of this... in a vague sort of way... but I'd never actually put it all together.

So it made me very happy to have another story to layer over the Santa story and the piped christmas music. Especially this week, when Greer had a lovely carol singing morning at school, accompanied by flashing lights, reindeer, a gingerbread house, no sign of a manger anywhere, and no "real" christmas carols.  And especially when this is the time I start to get a bit grumpy and overwhelmed by all the money and activity that the Christmas season seems to require.

But I'm not here to complain. The fact of the matter is that this week was actually very complicated, for all sorts of reasons. As I wrote to you last time, I am trying to achieve a kind of "zen" purposefulness about our Christmas preparations. But I keep being thwarted. I keep crying for children without families, and getting emails from World Vision in my inbox warning me in no uncertain terms that a "hunger crisis is looming" in West Africa.

And so what do I do? I buy more Christmas decorations.

celebrating Advent as myself

Today is Annunciation Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent. Yesterday the girls and their cousins went treasure-hunting for leaves and flowers to use as the backdrop for our nativity scene. I found the closest thing I could to a purple or blue piece of fabric, laid it over the top of the writing desk that sits in our dining room, and then created a backdrop for the figures that will be added as the weeks go by. It's looking lovely and simple now, but it won't stay that way for ever. By the time Christmas comes it will most likely have plenty more greenery, plus a full menagerie of animals and figures from our nativity set. This will all lead up to the arrival of baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, who will be very comfy and warm on that manger Isobella created over a cut stone.

Today at church our Pastor spoke about the Annunciation. The moment right at the beginning of the Christmas Story where the angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells her she is going to give birth to Jesus. This story has always been meaningful to me. I am in awe of Mary's willingness. Her initial incredulity at the angel's words melts into obedience. Be it unto me according to your word, she says. There is no passivity here, her vow must have come from a steely resolve she somehow found within her. I want that. A selection of paintings of the Annunciation were shown, and some of them were beautiful. But none of them moved me like this one I found tonight in this post about preparing for Advent.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1859-1937

Here there is no hiding from the reality; Mary was so young and vulnerable. There she is, having been woken from sleep, disheveled, unsure, amazed. It's easy to read the story without really considering what this moment must have been like for her. Was she afraid? At first, yes. In shock? Probably. Completely taken by surprise? Absolutely. And yet something within her must have understood. Something within her must have been ready to be willing. Just a girl. Yet so ready.

Last year I bumbled my way through Advent, thrilled to have found an antidote to the commercialism of Christmas, but a complete novice. This year I'm still making it up as I go along, but I feel like I'm being re-united with an old friend, one who I liked the instant we met, and who I'm chuffed to be seeing again. I'm having fun discovering and creating traditions that are uniquely "us." The girls are so excited about Advent. We lit our first candle tonight, read the story of the Annunciation from Luke, and wrote some prayers together. It took us to way past a reasonable bedtime, which meant that it was growing dark. I walked into the dining room after tucking the girls in and the glow of one small candle changed everything.

But I've found myself not just thinking of our family traditions, but myself, and what I want to get out of this season. Karen Edmisten, in the post I linked to above, writes, As Advent unfolds, you're savouring the liturgical season, you're teaching your children about watching, waiting, and preparing for the Lord. But what are you doing for yourself? Her words challenged me to ask myself the same question. What do I want to ponder on as I wait? How will I contemplate what is to come? What will my priorities be in this potentially crazy season?

I don't think this kind of reflection is only for the religiously-minded. Anyone that wants to avoid a Christmas that's filled with stress and exhaustion would do well to pause and consider what lies ahead. Or else, as my pastor said today, you end up with another "Groundhog Christmas." I've had enough of those.

I've been writing nearly every morning since I told you I was doing NaNoWriMo and trying to write 50,000 words. I've been getting up at 5am, or as close to that as I can manage, and I've never been more content. I feel like I'm finally doing what I was made to do. I've been working on the novel that's been hanging around for almost forever, and I'm making writing a feature of my day. I feel like I've found the life I searched for desperately, knowing it was out there, but never quite found. I won't get to 50,000 words by Tuesday, but I've written 9,000. That's 9,000 more than zero.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel like myself. I'm living my life, not a version of it. Writing, in the active sense, influences my decisions, my priorities, and how I spend my time. It's the thing that makes me me. This all causes me wonder what shape Advent and Christmas will take now that I'm writing. I have a feeling that if I can keep this living-as-myself thing up, everything else will fall into place.

New Zealand: what future?

Yesterday I went to a special assembly at the girls' school. There was a powhiri (welcome ceremony) for all new students and their families. We who were the manuhiri (visitors) met in a classroom to practise a waiata and to have the protocol explained to us, and then we walked around to the school hall and gathered at the door. Inside the entire school was lined up facing us, with the Kapa Haka group in full costume at the front. One of the eldest girls called us, "karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai" and then the whole school welcomed us in with a haka.

Isobella has been in the Kapa Haka group since the first week she started at this school. I went along as parent help last week when the group performed at a multi-cultural concert in West Auckland. The kids were beside themselves with excitement. We negotiated crowds, ate lunch, got ready and had a quick practice, and in the end we were left with only a few minutes to get all thirty-something of the kids down through the hall and onto the stage. They did really well, considering there was no adult in the background to coach them. It's a pretty white group, and they didn't have the same volume or feistiness as some of the other groups, but they did their very best, and you could tell they loved every minute of it.

One of the other schools performing that day was one of the local schools in our old neighbourhood. This was a small school, one of those schools that some how along the way becomes the second-choice school for families who have the resources to choose something other than their local school. The roll at this school is tiny compared to the school up the road with the "excellent reputation", and has a high percentage of Maori and Pasifika kids. Is this the cause or the effect of the "white flight" that has gone on around it, who can say, but the result is undeniable. Still, it's a big-hearted school doing its best with limited resources and support. And the school's presence at the festival was hard to miss. They had just about the whole school involved, the kids were brimming with pride, and very happy.

We were able to watch this school performing on stage just before we went off to get our kids ready. It was their Kapa Haka group, a big group of kids in full costume, with piupiu skirts and the girls with moko face- painted on. They looked fantastic, they were loud and proficient. Then just behind me a man who seemed to be one of the dads of the group stood up and started a haka of his own from the audience. He was loud and passionate too. By standing and doing this he was offering the highest honour he could give the kids in that moment, and giving them his sincere and tangible support. I looked at the man, a wild looking Maori guy with a woolly grey beard and tats down his arms, and I could see that he was bursting with pride for those kids up on stage. In a moment I realised how incredible it was for him to see his child up on stage, belonging and succeeding at school by celebrating being Maori. I cried. I couldn't stop the tears rolling down.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Maori kids got the strap for speaking Maori in class. Not so long ago, Maori children were likely to grow up ashamed of their Maoriness.  Whole generations have passed without having seen their culture and traditions valued. Who is crying for that now?

I was down at mum's last week when she was watching a TV programme that follows families with missing members and helps them find them. An elderly Maori had discovered he had fathered a son without his knowledge, and that son had been adopted. The programme tracked the son down in Australia and I watched the father and son's emotional reunion. It was a grey day, and the family had set up a welcome party underneath the carport at the end of the driveway. I watched as the family welcomed the son, assembled together just as the girls' school had been at our assembly yesterday. The wife of his father, his soon to be step-mother, led the call. "Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai" she called, tears rolling down her face. The son walked towards them, his tears welling up too. The father met him, they shared a hongi, and then held each other in the tightest embrace, sobbing. The father whispered in Maori in his son's ear, over and over. I couldn't understand the words, and neither could the son, but they were like a soft song that washed over him. In that moment, no other language would do.

It's election day next Saturday. Politics was kept back stage while the Rugby World Cup was on, so it's felt like a very short lead-up. I've been more unsure about who I'll vote for than I have been for any election previously. I'm a left-leaning kind of girl, but I wouldn't call myself "left". I have some very "right" tendencies, but I'm definitely not "right", and even "centrist" doesn't describe me either. If I could dial up my ideal government it would be like an icecream cone with several scoops, each made of different flavours. I'd choose a policy from here, a policy from there, an ideology from one end, and another from the other end. Meanwhile, in the real world, a bleak financial outlook combined with some very desparate needs mean that I'm basically stumped. I can't see any one party that has the big picture covered.

I've been reading some sobering facts about our nation. The UN recently released a paper on child welfare entitled "Doing better for Children" and New Zealand doesn't fare too well. We have some of the worst statistics for children's health and well being in the OECD. Overall, our child mortality is higher than the OECD average. Twenty percent of our children are living in poverty. Maori children under 15 are six times as likely to be living in an overcrowded household, and Pasifika children are twelve times more likely. This has led directly to high rates of diseases that have completely disappeared from most developed countries. Margo White in the Listener notes that rheumatic fever is taking its toll amongst some of our children. This disease, which shouldn't exist, can leave children needing immediate heart-valve replacement surgery, and then monthly penicillin injections. Dr Norman Sharpe, the medical director of the NZ Heart Foundation, says that there are a thousand children on the Auckland register having monthly penicillin injections to prevent rheumatic fever re-occurring. Lance O'Sullivan, a Northland-based GP, regularly sees children who are "walking around with the heart of an eighty year old." His stark indictment;  "this is a disease of poverty, and brown kids... this is a race-based problem."

There's been plenty of political rhetoric thrown around recently about race-based policy. There are a few politicians who use it to fear-monger and to get attention. They want us to believe that race-based policy is morally repugnant, that it's a form of racism itself, and that it benefits some, only to leave the rest out in the cold. It's an easy position to hold when your culture is in the majority wherever you look, and when you live in a warm, dry, and comfortable house, and don't need to know where your nearest food bank is. But to believe it you have to be in some measure of denial about the reality of life for those on the other side.

At the end of the welcoming ceremony at the girls' assembly, the group of us who were being welcomed filed across the hall and greeted the front row of adults and children on the other side. Some of us shook hands, but most of us shared a hongi. That beautiful pressing of noses symbolises the oneness of shared breath. For a moment, the visitor and the host are one. Once the greeting was over, we the visitors were given new seats, right next to our hosts. I looked back over to the other side of the hall where the visitors began the ceremony, and the seats were empty. The meaning was clear. There were no more visitors, everyone now belongs.

That oneness is exactly what we need. We could all do with more opportunities to walk in each other's shoes. It's too easy see people as either "them" or "us." But what sort of future is that?

how it is in November

 

We've been here nearly five months. Looking back now I think we were in shock for the first two or three of them. It rained endlessly, and it was cold. It took about four months for us to finish playing musical bedrooms.  The transition from homeschool to school was a big one, and we still haven't quite got our routines sorted yet. But the sun is out. I took that photo this morning when I suddenly realised I could see something new; bright light.

If you look closely you can see a peak of blue between the deck railings. The tide is in and the water is glistening. That's new too. Having spent so much of my childhood by the sea in Raglan, the sparkle of sunlight on water always stirs my heart.  The way the drops of light flicker and dance is magical, and it brings all the hope and emotions associated with summer flooding back. I'm ready for this.

That doesn't mean it's suddenly easy though. Greer's asthma has got so bad that she's been sleeping in Mum's spare room for nearly two weeks. She's allergic to mould, and I'm pretty sure that the bits of mould in places on the ceilings and walls are the culprit. The other two girls are now showing signs of mild asthma too, and that makes me grumpy. We have plenty of work to do.

But I'm happy. My early mornings have become so normal I can't imagine life without them. I'm adjusting to life with only one child in the house, and she's adjusting to being on her own. Right now I'm writing on my laptop which is up on the kitchen servery, and Abigail is behind me feeding playdough to her doll. Just before we came in here we hung a load of washing out on the line, in full sun, and Abi played with the pegs and walked around my feet singing.

spring

I think it's finally spring. These flowers were the sight that greeted me during the weeks when we were all sick. A friend of Mum's had given them to her, and she shared them with me. They gave me hope and something beautiful to look at when the house was in disarray. They made me happy.

Something else is making me happy at the moment, and it's very good news. But there's a story to tell first, of course. Last Friday after I wrote the previous post Paddy and I went to see our therapist/counsellor who we'd managed to get an appointment with at short notice. I went out in a short-sleeved t-shirt for the first time, and the sun on my arms was warm. We've been seeing this woman on and off for about five years, and she's extremely smart. She works us out (or even better, gets us to work ourselves out) in an hour, every time. That's good value!

I told her a version of what I told you last week, how I'd realised that I'd had this sub-conscious victim thing going on, and that I could see now where my communication had been laced with resentment. The words I was using in our communication that week may have been innocent, but the tone was not. I apologised to Paddy, I told him I would have got on my knees if I needed to, I was that sorry. There's something safe about feeling sorry, when I'm really sorry I know I've got to the end of myself, I've uncovered everything that can be uncovered, gone where I need to go. Something is finished.

Our counselor then pulled out a set of cards with words on them, representing a range of human needs. She gave us a pile each, and asked us to choose three. "What were your needs at that time?" she asked us. "At the time of the conflict, what did you really need?" We each went through our set of cards and pulled out the words that resonated. There were plenty of words and phrases I liked, but only a handful that I knew were right for that moment.
Authenticity, consideration, mutuality.
Paddy chose his three easily, and I understood them straight away.
Respect, appreciation, acknowledgement. 
It's not rocket science really, is it?

We got to buy a set of cards and bring them home, and this is where the story gets good. I had a great time the next morning writing in my journal and reading through the cards. I laid the cards out around my laptop, up at our big dining table where I'm sitting now. They were breathtaking in their sheer number, and in the kaleidoscope they represented. I was looking at words that stood for almost every possible need an adult could have. I found myself asking some really good questions, and answering them with the cards.

The first question I asked myself was this. "What needs am I meeting when I write?" This is what I came up with;
meaning and purpose, clarity, creativity, time alone. 
Then I asked myself the opposite question. "What needs am I meeting when I choose to do other things, rather than write?" (By other things I mean the things I would normally choose to do in the evenings rather than write, like clean up the kitchen, tidy and clean the house, or do washing.) And I came up with;
order, beauty and aesthetics, efficiency, time alone. 


In effect, the needs I meet by writing are very similar to the needs I meet when choose not to write. If that sounds Irish, bear with me. I'm talking about the time I have most control over, which is the evenings, after the girls are in bed. That's the time I'm most likely to write. But usually once the kids are in bed you'll find me pottering around, re-ordering after the day's activity. I'll be tired, but usually happy enough, and certainly satisfied once I'm finished. I will have met some of the same needs that I could have met by writing. Time alone, order, beauty and aesthetics, creativity. And usually if I've been pottering around in my own space I will have been thinking away and created some sort of clarity in my head as well. Unfortunately though, I'll usually still want to write, here or in my journal, or at least do emails and read a few blogs. Which is how I end up going to bed way too late, and getting way too tired.

But isn't it a funny thought. Who would have thought I could meet some of my deepest needs by folding washing?!

Now here's the good news. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as Nanowrimo. It's never really grabbed me before, but somehow, mysteriously, this time I just wanted to do it. My friend Marita is doing it too, so we are keeping each other honest. I've written 3053 words since Tuesday. I'm way behind on the Nanowrimo target of 50,000 words by the end of November, but I'm way ahead of any hopes I ever had of actually writing this thing before the kids leave home. Let me put it this way, this idea, which I've mentioned a few times here, has been on the back burner for seven years. As of the 1st of November, it is officially on the front burner! That, my friends, doesn't just make my day, or my week, or my month, it basically makes my whole life! This is an astounding, near-miraculous thing! Worthy of many exclamation marks!!!

So this is what I asked myself last weekend as I sat right here with that pile of cards. I asked myself "what are my needs for this month, being the month I will be attempting to write 50,000 words?" And this is what I came up with.
 - time alone
 - order
 - efficiency
 - power in my world.

Is that surprising? It was to me. I would have thought I'd come up with some of the other words from the pack, like creativity, peace, and beauty. But no. To give myself a good shot at writing 50,000 words this month I need power, order, and efficiency. Who would have guessed.

Here is the really good news of it all. I've been setting my alarm and getting up at 5:30am every morning to write. To do this I've set my alarm (on my phone) to go to bed by 9:30pm every night. I've had to leave the dishes in the sink, ignore baskets full of washing and toys strewn across the floor. I have to walk past the TV, past emails and the internet, past long chats late at night. It's made me grab efficiency by the scruff of the neck and make it mine so that I can get the bare minimum done. It's made me leave jobs for Paddy to do the next day (when he's working  nights) even though I'd rather do it then, and do it my way. The result has been a messier house, three thousand words, and a happy me. There are some details I'll still have to thrash out. I do still want to spend time with that husband of mine, that goes without saying. And I know that when there's sickness in the family there will be days when I have to give up on the early mornings. But I think I've more or less found the way I want to spend the rest of my life.

If you've read this far, thank-you. That tells me that you are interested, and that you might even care. You might be my sister, or a treasured friend, or an old friend, or a new friend, or someone I haven't met yet, but if you read this far  then you've put yourself on my team. If I ever complain about tiredness or busyness or feeling lost in life, please remind me of the words I've written today. You are my witness!

sixes and sevens

I'm all at sixes and sevens this week. Still tired, although not as people-weary as I was. This week everything felt difficult. I lost energy rather than gained it, and the house descended into more and more chaos as the days went on. Everything I did was undone as soon as I did it. The smell in the kids' toilet wouldn't go away, even after I cleaned it. Yesterday the kitchen floor was covered in crumbs five minutes after I'd swept it. There was no point.

It didn't help that Paddy and I had slipped back into our old pattern of confrontation, our bugbear. I sat on the toilet crying and realised, for the first time, that I don't have to wear it any longer. That I can fight this thing that brings out the worst in both of us. That I can say "no" with as much freedom as I say "yes."And at the same time, in such a funny contradictory way, I realised that I can wear it, I can take it, that I would lay myself down again and again for this marriage and this family of mine.

This morning I read a quote from Richard Rohr at Heather King's Shirt of Flame and cried.

Christians indeed have a strange image of God: a naked, bleeding man, dying on a cross. It's not what you would think the image of God could be or should be. Is God eccentric here, or is it we who have not diagnosed the human situation correctly?
Jesus receives our hatred and does not return it. He suffers and does not make the other suffer. He does not first look at changing others, but pays the price of change within himself. He absorbs the mystery of human sin rather than passing it on. He does not use his suffering and death as power over others to punish them, but as power for others to transform them.

I read Luke 6 while I was crying on the toilet this week. You know, turn the other cheek, give your coat to the one who steals your shirt. This is how Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The Message:

To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously. Here is a simple rule of thumb for behaviour: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them!

This is possibly the hardest, most misunderstood thing that Jesus ever taught. If we think it's describing a passive, gutless life, then we should think again. Jesus was not a victim. He could have walked away from the cross. Instead he was steadfast and unflinching, and what he accomplished was possible because he took his fate willingly. Giving is always a choice.


Luke 6 in The Message goes on like this;

Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticise their faults - unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don't condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you'll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you'll find life given back, but not merely given back - given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.


I realise now, right now, that there are things in our marriage and in the daily grind of motherhood that I have subconsciously felt victim to, that I have felt I had no choice but to accept. That invisible victim-hood was a quiet, small fire that fueled on-going resentment. Resentment doesn't stay hidden, and it brings along its sister bitterness with it. Those two are a no-fail recipe for a hard heart.

I washed Abigail's feet this morning in the bathroom basin. She had run around in bare feet all day yesterday and I had forgotten to do it before I tucked her in last night. I was about to put socks on her this morning when I saw how filthy they were. I couldn't bring myself to put clean socks on all that dirt. She was happy as I gently rubbed her feet in the warm water. Even happier when I let her put some soap on her own hands and join in. Then I sat on the toilet with her on my knee and dried those two small feet. And I realised that service is the embodiment of my love for her, and the best way (along with physical affection) that I can assure her of that love.

I could walk away from it all. I could walk away from the battles, the impossible effort it seems to truly know and understand another person. I could walk away from the smelly toilet, the crumbs on the floor, and the weariness that chases me whichever way I turn. I could say no to all of it. But I won't.

tired

I know I've written this before, but I'm very tired. We are at the end of two weeks' school holidays, and it has been lovely having the girls at home, but a bit too busy for my liking. Somehow the days turned into a blur of social visits and errands. And added to that, I've developed a bad habit of staying up too late. It's not a winning combination!

Tomorrow we are heading off to our church camp for the long weekend. The girls are beside themselves with excitement, and we'll have a great time. But I have to say that the thought of spending all weekend with large numbers of people just makes me feel even more tired.

It's taken me nearly all of my life to admit that I really am an introvert. I used to think I was an extrovert. I'm pretty outgoing and I love people. I remember at one point a long time ago thinking "why would I ever want to sit in a room by myself and write?" Now I'm in no doubt at all. All I want to do is sit in a room by myself and write!

I read this post at Conversion Diary about being overwhelmed and it made me think back to the days when I couldn't even recognise let alone understand my emotional state. I've experienced exhaustion and burnout more than once. For me, they have always triggered depression. But even though I had helpful counselling each time, I never recognised that part of my exhaustion was related to my introverted-ness. I was an introvert living like an extrovert and it was almost killing me.

Now I get it. I'm tired right now, not just because I've been staying up too late, but because I just haven't had much time to myself over the last two weeks. In the past this feeling would have had me worried that I was doing too much, and the feeling of wanting everyone else to go away and stop talking to me would have made me think I was on the road towards burnout again. But now I understand, that feeling is simple. It just means I need everyone else to go away and stop talking to me!

In her post about being overwhelmed, Jenn at Conversion Diary describes the emergency "burnout gas mask" steps she takes as soon as she starts feeling overwhelmed. I like the idea of having steps that I have already thought through and default to automatically as soon as I start to feel really tired or overwhelmed. These would be mine. As in, I should be following them right now.

1. Quiet.

2. Sleep.

3. Write.

4. Time alone.

Unfortunately not all of these things are completely within my control. I'll have to ask for help. But I know that if I don't, I'll only feel worse. It's a no-brainer really.

meet my enemy

Meet our stove. It looks pretty innocuous, right, a very ordinary stove. But don't be deceived. This stove is a menace. I've been cooking on this stove for nearly four months now, since we moved here in June, and I can tell you, this stove is nasty!

Let me tell you why. Only one element can actually be turned down. The other three just burn and burn. The largest one in particular gets so hot that I'm scared I'll hurt myself. And it's only got one setting. Burning hot. It turns off, but it will not turn down. 

In the first weeks after we moved here I swore a lot in the kitchen. I even cried a couple of times. Every pot we own now has black on the bottom. I've burnt everything from rice to potatoes, eggs and even the onion and carrot I was trying to sweat to make soup. Tell me how am I supposed to cook something on a low heat when none of the elements produce a low heat? 

I can tell you I've tried everything. I've had two elements on at the same time, one being small and therefore slightly (slightly!) cooler than the other, and I've moved the pot from one to the other. I've tried every element and every setting on every element, going through all the options in case I'd missed the magic combination. I've even resorted to standing in front of the stove and lifting the pan about fifteen centimetres off the element and cooking that way. (It still cooks!) Everything boils over at some point, so the trays under the element are covered in black and often with a little pool of old cooking water that burns up the next time I use that element and stinks the house out.

So after the first two months we realised the stove had to go, and we started making plans to buy a new one. Now, sitting in the kitchen next to the said stove, is a second hand but shiny and beautiful stove. It's gas top and electric oven, it's big, and it's getting installed today. We won't know ourselves! 

When I finally got to show mum how bad our stove was she couldn't believe we'd put up with it so long. I told another friend about it and her reaction was the same. "It must drive you mad!" was her reaction, or something along those lines. 

The funny thing is that after I admitted how bad that stove was, and once we'd decided to eventually get a new one, the stove stopped making me mad. I even stopped swearing about it (mostly!) The food was still burning, and the pots were still turning black, but it didn't get to me anymore. I just expected it.

I was thinking about this one day this week, on a day when Abigail was being particularly trying. It was one of those days where she was climbing on the tables, opening the fridge and helping herself to a glass of milk, getting the bread out and trying to make her own lunch, and throwing the girls' best coloured pencils all over the floor. It was the kind of day that when Paddy wakes up from his day's sleeping and comes out to see us the first thing he hears from my mouth is "that baby is driving me nuts!"

But somehow, in the midst of cleaning the honey off the floor, and picking up the coloured pencils for the umpteenth time, my frazzled brain managed to make the connection between my frustration with Abigail and my frustration with the stove. And I realised I'd started to feel like Abigail, that sweet two year old of mine, was my enemy.

Now I was smart enough to know, once I'd figured that much out, that there was no point in going down that track. If I continued to see that two year old as the source of all my problems and frustration I would only end up more frustrated, and she would probably end up on the unfortunate end of a fair bit of venting. And that wouldn't be fair on her. 

So I'm adjusting my expectations. I'm no longer surprised when she chucks the girls' pencils all over the floor. I hardly blink when she grabs a glass and helps herself to water out of the water dispenser. I merely make a murmur of disapproval when she helps herself to the milk and pours it, half into the cup and half on the floor. And I now know that she's capable of getting herself a slice of bread from the fridge and helping herself to the pourable honey from the pantry. These things no longer take me by surprise. And I'm reminding myself that she won't be two forever.

Frustration can be blinding. We rarely think straight when we are frustrated. And frustration leads to resentment and resentment becomes a weight that's very hard to shift. It makes us desperate for a scape goat, desperate to lay the blame somewhere, because if we are going to feel this bad we might as well have a good reason for it. 

That stove wasn't my enemy, it was just a malfunctioning stove, and Abigail's not my enemy either, of course. She's just a very determined two year old, who will only be two for eight more months. Right now I should be giving her breakfast, but she wouldn't let me put her in the high chair. She wanted to join in the with the big girls' game of school. So she sat down on a little chair in front of them and turned the pages of an old biology text book, and talked to herself about "buzzy bees." Then while I was writing this she came over to the servery behind me, reached up and grabbed Isobella's bowl of half-eaten cereal, and pulled up a chair. She's sitting next to me eating it now with an adult size spoon, and the milk is going all the way down her front and onto the chair. At least I'm not surprised!

Poetry Friday : Instructions for how to get ahead of yourself while the light still shines

If you have a bike, get on it at night
and go to the top of the Brooklyn Hill.

When you reach the top
start smiling - this is Happy Valley Road.

Pedal at first, then let the road take you down
into the dark as black as underground
broken by circles of yellow lowered by the street lights.

As you come to each light
you will notice a figure
racing up behind.
Don't be scared
this is you creeping up on yourself.
As you pass under the light
you will sail past yourself into the night.

Jenny Borhholdt, Miss New Zealand: selected poems
(Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1997)

Because this poem has always made me smile!

More Poetry Friday once it's Friday at Great Kid Books.

hard week, happy ending

This shows you how happy a girl can be on the day of the performance of her school show. Don't you remember? Eating dinner early, jumping in the car in the new evening light of spring, being hustled into a room full of other children just as excited as you are. The air so thick with expectation you could stick your tongue out and taste it. Just look at her.

The funny thing is that I'm here at home writing this, while she is right now on stage in her moment of glory. Up until this morning I was the one going, and Paddy staying, because all week he has been the sickest of all of us, but today we were neck and neck, he slightly better, me worse. Isobella fervently prayed last night that Dad would be well enough to go to the show, and this afternoon when I told her he was, she was over the moon. Wasn't bothered much when I told her that that meant I was too sick to go. I love how she loves her Dad.

Anyway, he is there sitting in the school hall now, Greer beside him, video camera in hand, capturing the moment. But I'm capturing the moment too.

I'm weary and sick of being sick.  I don't need to say how exhausting it is when everyone gets sick at the same time, because you know. We've had a week of it. I didn't even know the date until yesterday.

I'm getting picture updates from the show on my phone, and it's wrapping up now with a haka, the whole crew. I can see in the mass of faces up on stage that they are overjoyed. Rugby makes these kids happy, especially at the moment. They love their haka, and they love their country.

I can't think of a better image that expresses the heart of a kiwi than a bunch of kids up on stage doing a haka as their grand finale, and reveling in it.

going bush

I took the dog for a walk yesterday. Once I'd finally finished vacuuming, made lunch, and sat Abigail on the couch to watch Curious George, I grabbed the lead and my trusty dog whistle, and called out to Paddy, "I'm just taking Silas for a quick walk." I walked across our wet lawn, through the gate behind the trampoline, and up the bank to the stand of Macrocarpas that tower over the back of our section.

We walked together up through the trees and then came out at the top of the reserve that borders our property. We sloshed down the muddy slope and around to the edge of the bush, and took the path that travels through the bush between the beach and the bottom of our section.

We walked along the track, through muddy patches, over the stream, gradually going higher. I looked through the trees towards the harbour and I could see the water in distance, now quite a way below us. Suddenly I realised we had gone further than I'd ever gone before. To the right of the path was a fence that was falling towards the ground and covered with gorse bushes and dead leaves.

I knew Mum had managed to walk from the house through the bush to the track one day, and that she had tied strips of fabric to the trees as she walked. I thought the fence must be the edge of our property, and wondered if I could make my way through the bush back to the house, hopefully finding her path.

At the same time as I was pondering the wisdom of this action, a girl came walking up the path behind me with her dog, a fat pit bull terrier. It looked like an over-sized stuffed toy, only menacing. I looked at the girl and then the dog, and in an instant found myself walking off the path and straight into the bush.

In that moment I knew I had no idea whether I was going to regret my decision. I knew I didn't know exactly where I was, and I knew I had no idea if I was going to be able to get back home safetly. I also knew I had left my phone at home. I was wearing gumboots, I had the dog, his lead, and the dog whistle.

I have a default position when it comes to challenge and adventure. Something like an unwritten rule that I don't ever turn back. It's related to tenacity, which is good, but it's also a kind of stubborn refusal to turn around even if that would be the sensible thing to do. On a superficial level it's simply that I don't like being bored, that I hate going back the same way as I've come. I thrive on the new.

When my sister and I were teenagers we went on a family holiday up north. We took my step-dad's little dinghy with us, and one day we putted out to a small island just out from the beach. We built a fire and cooked damper, played around by the shore. Then my sister and I got bored and wanted to go exploring. I took the lead. "Don't do anything silly" Mum warned me as we left.

The island was pretty small. It probably only took us about 15 minutes to get to the farthest point. We had been clambering along big boulders and along rocky slopes and it was easy, but this was the obvious place to turn around and go back. My sister Joy, who was probably only eleven or twelve, wasn't so enthralled with the adventure, and would have been quite happy to do that. But going back was the boring option. I persuaded her to keep going. We ventured around the tip of the island, to the opposite side that we had started from. The boulders gradually turned into rocky cliffs that jutted out with just enough of a ledge that we could clamber along. It was thrilling, but Joy was starting to struggle, and Mum's parting words were ringing loudly. At one point we were three or four metres up from the beach, creeping along a thin mossy ledge. Joy slipped and only just stopped herself from falling all the way down. I can still remember it vividly, more than twenty years later.

We got back eventually, and said nothing of what had happened. It was a secret I held to tightly, a sobering reminder of the trouble I was capable of getting myself into.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I'm forging my way through thick bush, my gumboots slipping in the wet mud. I'm holding tightly to the dog's lead like my life depends on it. I can't see more than a few metres ahead, and I really can't tell which direction I should be going in. I see another fence in the distance and I'm relieved. I try to head up the slope alongside it but the gorse and bushes right beside the fence are too thick for me to walk through, so I head in the same direction as the fence, hoping I don't lose it.

The dog's struggling too. The lead keeps getting caught up, and we are trampling over dead branches and gorse. At least I've got gumboots. We get to the top of one ridge and I'm hopeful I'll be able to see where  I'm going, but I can't see anything other than what I've been seeing for the last fifteen minutes. Nikau Palms with their fronds like dancer's arms reaching upwards, the skinny charcoal branches of Ti trees filling in the gaps. And the muddy ground littered with dead palm leaves and branches. I was clambering, nearly on my hands and knees in places. I slipped twice, landing squarely in the mud.

I was starting to have visions of me breaking an ankle and landing incapacitated in the mud with nothing but a dog whistle. I knew the dog would eventually find his way home, but it would take Paddy hours to find me. I didn't even know where I was. If there had been a point where I should have turned back I had completely missed it.

By the time I finally got to the top of the highest ridge and could see clear sky ahead, I had completely overshot our property and had come out on the top side of the neighbours directly above us. I was covered in mud, leaves and gorse prickles, and had been gone more than an hour. I was exhausted and slightly shaken, but enthralled. "Have I got a story for you!" I said to Paddy and the girls when got in.

I made a mistake in going out without my phone, I know that. But I've thought about it a lot and I don't think there was a point where I should have turned back. If I had turned back any time after the first five minutes or so I would have got even more lost. I think back to that moment when I decided to leave the path, and I now see it as almost inevitable. I love a good adventure.

I did something else rash this week. I started a new blog. I wasn't going to tell you about it. I was going to keep it almost-secret until I had figured out where I was going with it. I went to a lot of trouble yesterday to email and message a few people privately. I wasn't going to tell everybody, because I know not everybody is going to be interested.

But then I went and got lost in the bush, and that got me thinking about me and adventure and how sometimes it's the right thing to forge on anyway, even when the going is tough. I know this new thing I've started could get me in a bit of trouble occasionally. I'm pretty sure I'll end up with mud on my backside. And I know that I've really got no idea where I'm headed. But is that really so scary?

how it is

This is how it is. I am very, very tired. The girls have all had colds made worse by asthma, in varying degrees. On Tuesday night Greer was awake coughing for literally two hours. It's a hacking, gasping cough that I hate. Last night I sat praying beside her on the bed as she was going to sleep. What else could I do? I sat there thinking of the verse from Psalm 127 which comes up in the afternoon prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours; to those he loves, the Lord gives sleep. I took it as a promise for her, and I reminded God of it desperately. I sat there until the coughing seemed to slow down, and she went to sleep. She did cough later on in the night, but nothing like the night before, and she managed to sleep through it. I'm so grateful.

I went to the supermarket today and did nearly a whole month's worth of shopping. I ended up with two overloaded trolleys and a fed-up two year old who just couldn't see why she should stay sitting down. I was weary and slightly overwhelmed by the amount of food I was about to purchase. The checkout lady smiled as I shifted Abigail into the trolley our groceries were going into and finally strapped her in successfully. "I think you are very patient" she said out of nowhere. I smiled and chucked inwardly. Too tired to be anything else, I thought. "Do you think so?" I laughed, "that's very nice of you to say." And we had a great conversation about meditation and being kind to your soul, about how stressed people can be when they come to the supermarket, and mothers who have nine children and how sometimes more is actually easier. It was a conversation that made us both happy. And then I went to the chemist, popped into Isobella's class to drop something off for their show next week, and once we got home, finally, I'd been out all day.

It's Friday tomorrow, and there's the week gone. With sick children and broken nights and grocery shopping. One of those weeks where I take the treasures where ever I can find them.

Tonight as I was tucking her in Greer told me she thinks God is going to help her get all the way along the monkey bars at school. I smiled and felt compelled to add a note of caution, even just going one more bar than yesterday Greer, even that is good. Trying not to envision a trip to the emergency clinic. Then her face lit up and she said "imagine if there was a monkey bar that went all the way around the world. Imagine that you could go all the way round the world!" And then I got it. Going all the way to the other end of the monkey bars is like travelling to the other side of the world, it's that far, and that amazing. And what a thought, what a dream, to swing across the bars and land somewhere completely else.

And then suddenly the moment comes where my mind soars, because I can do that. Right here on this page, and in my head, that almost boundless place, I can swing over to anywhere. Sickness, tiredness, supermarket shopping, I swing right on over you.

father's day

I’m not confident when it comes to celebrating Father’s Day. I didn’t live with my Dad much past two, and even when I saw him regularly from the age of eight onwards, I don’t remember spending a Father’s Day with him, or ever making him a card. As an adult that’s changed, but my dad’s an old hippy at heart and the commercialism of Father’s Day doesn’t interest him, so I usually just go and visit him to say hi and give him a hug.

I love my dad. He might not have really parented me, but I feel like I intuitively understand him, and there are some uncanny similarities between us. We share the same dry, slightly ironic sense of humour. We love reading, we’re both short sighted, and there’s definitely a family resemblance between us.

During the week I rang him and invited him over for a cup of tea on Sunday afternoon. “It’s Father’s Day” I said, in case he hadn’t realised. He thought that was a lovely idea, and we agreed that he (and my step-mum) would come over some time after two.

We went to church in the morning and when we arrived home the girls got busy finishing off their gifts for Paddy, and I started tidying up and getting some food ready. I hadn’t made elaborate plans. I knew Dad would be happy with a cup of tea and a bite of pretty much anything. But the girls were excited and Isobella said “I’m going to make a Father’s Day party!!”

Her enthusiasm was hard to ignore. I got down a few party things from up in the pantry. We blew up some balloons and set the table with party plates and napkins, blowers and chocolates. Isobella made a card for my dad, and picked a flower from the garden for him. We attached balloons to two chairs at one end of the table, and made two special settings, one for Paddy, and one for my dad. I made pikelets and put out a bowl of chips. It wasn’t a huge effort, but it was special, and the girls were really excited.

Three o’clock came and went, as did four o’clock. My dad and step-mum are usually pretty relaxed about time, so I didn’t worry. I swept the floor, unloaded the dishwasher. At five o’clock I texted Dad. “How far away are you?” I asked him. The pikelets were getting cold, and afternoon tea time was about to morph into dinner time. He texted back “30 minutes” and I realised that they hadn’t even left yet. The disappointment bit hard.

But it was too late. I rang and told him. He would have jumped in the car and come out straight away, but we don’t live ten minutes down the road from them anymore, and by the time they got here the moment would have been gone. They’d had friends pop in and I hadn’t been exact enough when I arranged the time with him.

We have a good friend and her twin boys living downstairs from us. I walked down to find her, blinking away the tears, and invited them up for a party. The boys' eyes lit up when I said the word "party!" and the fact that they were there made up for the girls’ disappointment that my dad wasn’t.

We’d set all the places at our big table, and it seemed ridiculous now that they weren’t coming . But once we were all sitting down there was only one place that was missing a person. Suddenly I realised who that place was for. I got a candle and took my postcard of Rembrandt’s Prodigal son down from the kitchen window sill.  I placed the card and the candle in front of the empty table setting, lit the candle, and had my own quiet moment remembering my perfect, heavenly parent.

If this seems all a bit too raw and personal, then think about it this way. This story isn’t just my story. It’s the story of every person who has ever lost or been let down by a parent, which is pretty much all of humanity.

You were four, and your father left on plane and you haven’t seen him since. You were eight and your father died, and then when you were a teenager, your mother died. You were three or four and you were asked to help at your older sister’s birthday party. You tried, and failed, and the disproval you were shown in that moment has reverberated for nearly sixty years. You weren’t good enough.

I like to think that I’ve figured a few things out about myself, but Sunday reminded me that not very far below the surface I’m just a little girl who wanted her daddy. In that one ordinary moment, a simple lack of communication, the past came flooding back. And I realised that my relationship with my dad is not as straight forward I thought it was.

But nothing’s ever as straight forward as we’d like it to be, and I can live with that. I’m lucky to have a relationship with him at all, and it means the world to me that he loves my girls. When it comes to being a Grandpa, he’s a natural.

And pain is not all bad. I’d rather be someone who feels pain than someone who ignores it. If we let it, pain will teach us empathy and make us soft-hearted.  As much as we try to hide our tears and pretend that everything is fine, pain never really goes away. It has a sneaky way of manifesting itself in surprising ways, and if left completely unacknowledged, can return later in life and suddenly derail us.

This might be raw but it's important. The story of me and my crazy family is a good one. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it. And the pain that has accompanied it at different times has forced me down a path that has led me, ultimately, to knowing and understanding myself far better than I would otherwise.

And we can all do with more of that.