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.

I'm seven!

"The moment a child is born, a mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new." Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Seven years ago yesterday I was born. At the end of a long weekend of on-and-off labour my first daughter arrived by emergency caesarean at 8:30 in the morning on Sunday 28th March, 2004. In that moment she made a mother of me. Since then that date has been etched in my memory, at first representing the shock and disappointment I felt at the circumstances of her birth, and then as time and other birth-days healed that memory, as a wonderful, joyful day of celebration.

So yesterday was a good day. We had done all the big celebrating over the weekend (museum trip on Saturday minus the picnic, and a family dinner on Sunday night) and I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. Paddy took Isobella and Greer out to a climbing wall centre. I had a quiet morning cleaning up after the night before and we had our violin lesson in the afternoon. A lovely day, but still full enough that by the time I got to bed I hadn't had a moment to write. I lay down to sleep tired, but with my mind full of words. I told myself that I'd write in the morning, but I really wanted to write. I wanted to write while it was still the 28th of March.  I wanted to write that date at the top of the page of my journal. So I did. 

Seven years is not long. I'm a newbie, only just beginning my life as a mother, and yet I can hardly remember what my life was like previously. On the 28th of March 2004 I was changed forever.

Motherhood is both a gift and a burden. Preparing to give birth for the first time is like preparing for a journey to a country you've never been to before, without knowing the climate, customs, or language, and without a guidebook or even so much as a map. Oh you may think you have a guidebook. Good advice and a book or two can seem like adequate preparation, but when you finally land on foreign soil you realise that anyone who ever told you they had been there themselves was actually talking about a completely different country. Neighbouring perhaps, but different nonetheless. Seven years ago I stood alone on the tarmac of motherhood. Everything around me was strange and unfamiliar. In panic I tried to run back to the plane. Too late, it was gone.  

Mothering is a lonely, unknown journey. I spent the first weeks of Isobella's life wishing I could be pregnant again. My life as I had known it had disappeared before my eyes and I couldn't do anything to get it back. It didn't help that the depression which had been an unwelcome guest in the past was knocking at the door again, demanding to be let in. I was in that fragile post-surgery stage after my caesarean, and exhausted. I felt like a stranger in my own life.

But now I wouldn't have it any other way. I wouldn't exchange those anguished moments for anything. I watch that big girl of mine, all seven years of her, as she explores the world with bright eyes. She's never still, she never stops asking questions, her imagination is nothing short of bizarre, and she's caring, affectionate and thoughtful. I live each day hoping to God that I do her justice. I've learnt so much from her and from mothering her. It has been the same with all three of my girls. Those girls are one of the biggest reasons I'm who I am today. They've been the making of me.

I look at babies now in wonder. Right there, in that tiny squirming bundle, is a person. A whole life's worth of dreams and talents and personality. Mothering is such a privilege. We get to grow alongside these small people and watch them emerge.  Like a child longs to see that moment when the butterfly finally emerges from its chrysalis, we see it. Every day, moment by moment, mothers get to see the butterfly.

A good friend of mine is about to give birth to her first child. I'm excited for her. I can't wait to hear about this brand new life which is about to burst out. The baby is due any day now. She's in that limbo land mothers know all too well. She's a writer and this is her poem.

Waiting

Each night I go to sleep expecting you might wake me.

But last night it was rain,

torrential, sheeting past an open window.

Then the fan switching itself on and off,

tending an invisible guest.

Later, what sounded like a bird, but was probably

a moth, flew laps the length of our hall.

Nothing to do but lie in the dark, the two

of us on either side of the same door,

ears pricked, waiting for a knock.

Marita Hastings

wednesday things

1. We had sports with our home school group this afternoon. Instead of being inside the gym as it normally is, the girls got to play t-ball and run around outside in the park near the gym and swimming complex that we go to. As they were finishing up I noticed that the trees nearby were pear trees, and that the ground was littered with rotten fruit. We walked down through the pear trees looking for fruit that was decent enough to eat. The pile on top of the buggy quickly grew into a huge pile underneath the buggy. We came home with a huge bag full, maybe even 5 kilos worth! Free! I peeled and cooked them this afternoon. Now we are all looking forward to breakfast. Porridge and pears, I'm thinking.

2. Last night was such a bad night with Abigail that I can hardly bear thinking about it. She's been gradually showing signs of growing out of her daytime sleep. Even when she only sleeps for half an hour she's not ready for bed until at least 8:30pm. So we thought we'd try keeping her up all day. Hah, the fools we were. She fell asleep eating at the dinner table at 6pm, and I put her to bed. We were lulled into a false sense of security and celebrated the freedom. Then at 8:30pm she woke up and cried. We thought she'd go back to sleep, so we left her for a while, and then went in and checked on her a few times. A couple of hours later, she still hadn't gone to sleep. I got ready for bed and took her with me. She was so awake she just kept on sitting up and talking. I was so tired I was worried she'd roll of the bed. So I gave up and sent her out to Pat. Long story short, several hours later, after he'd tried everything from sitting in her room super-nanny style, to feeding her, and then rocking her, he brought her in to me again (I'd kept waking up hearing it all) and she finally conked out. He's got a video of her that he took on his phone, at midnight, sitting up at the table eating pears. Cute. Not.

3. Abigail did make up for the grief she caused us by producing her first poo in the potty this afternoon! I know, I know, you don't really want to hear about poo and potties, but I'm sure you'll understand that it was a very exciting moment around here. She's been talking about "ca ca" and "wee wee" for a while, and seems to be aware of what she's doing. She's been happy to sit on the potty for a while, but this is the first time there's been any result. I think she was pretty impressed.

4. Isobella lost a tooth tonight eating dinner, the second this week. The first was on Sunday. She announced that teeth were worth $2 on Sundays and promptly wrote a note to the tooth fairy to tell her so. Of course, the tooth fairy obliged. She's good like that.

5. Speaking of that big girl of mine, it's her birthday next Monday and I've only just organised her party. It's a picnic at the domain outside the museum, followed by a visit to the museum. Mum just informed me that it's supposed to rain all day Saturday. So much for the picnic. I suppose I'll have a brainwave about it at some time. Hopefully before Saturday!
                                                                               

broken city, broken people

I farewelled my sister back home to Christchurch this morning and my heart is still heavy. She heads home to a city that remains broken and to a house that is still recovering from chaos; a constant reminder of the earthquake.  She and her partner are lucky enough, their house was not seriously damaged and they both have jobs. But the earthquake has changed everything.  The way they drive to work, the atmosphere they work in, and what they do with their spare time. Their electricity is back on, but for essentials only. Through a miscommunication it turns out they didn't have contents insurance after all, so three or four hundred dollars' worth of food is lost, as well as some expensive tools. It's not money they can just pull out of thin air. She's been up here for a break, and was happy to be going back to her own bed, but she wasn't looking forward to returning to a disaster zone. Who would?

Christchurch has seen a range of responses to the earthquake. Many families have temporarily relocated to other parts of the country, plenty more have simply packed up and left. Some have gone to Wellington and Auckland, some even to Australia. Whole suburbs have been abandoned; empty houses stand beside roads covered in pot holes, silt and flooding. But community spirit still abounds. Churches all over Christchurch have stepped up to supply free meals, food banks and temporary accommodation. A memorial service was held in Hagley Park on Friday, attended by Prince William and thousands of Cantabrians. Mayor Bob Parker looked tired but resolute. Everyone promised that Christchurch will be rebuilt.

But buildings can be rebuilt. Given the necessary time, money and expertise, re-building will happen. Not so for people. Damaged emotions aren't so easily healed. Time helps, yes, but the other ingredients necessary for healing are not always clear. What will it take for my sister to feel at "home" in her own home? What will it take for those who have fled Christchurch to find home in the places they have fled to? What about those who struggle to sleep? Those for whom fear has manifested as anxiety and depression? And what about those who suffer most of all, those who grieve the loss of their dearest? How will their lives be rebuilt?

When the first earthquake hit last September it was easy to write about angels. We all said it was a miracle that nobody was lost. This time around we are hard pushed to find miracles. No survivors have been discovered since the day after the quake. But there are miracles. Every survivor will tell you there are. The beloved Christchurch Cathedral has been completely cleared with no bodies found, when we were expecting twenty. When rebuilt it will become a place of hope, without any shadow of death. Perhaps they're small miracles, but they're miracles nonetheless.

Still, some will refuse to see miracles at all. For many it is just too difficult to bring God into the equation. A talk back caller was asked how the earthquake had changed his life, and his answer was bitter. "I'm now convinced there is no God," he said. I expect that for him Japan's earthquake and tsunami have been the final nail. Who can believe in a God who allows such things to happen? Yet earthquakes and other natural disasters have occurred relentlessly over the ages, and there have always been believers.

For the first week after the earthquake I found prayer was as automatic as breathing. I couldn't not pray. But at the same time I was keeping my distance from God. Deep down I felt abandoned. I could see God in the earthquake of September 4th, but not on February 22nd. It was too awful. I found within me an endless, anguished "why?" I heard it repeated by others as the days went on. Even the Mayor voiced it, wondering if there was anyone he could ask why these things happen. Then he answered it himself. "I don't think so."

No one would begrudge that talk back callers' denial of God. On a rational and intellectual level it's completely understandable.  Why would we place our hope in a God who appears to have failed us? Historically we have been seen as a Christian nation.  Missionaries were some of our first European settlers. But who would question us now if we completely turned our backs on any faith at all?

I haven't heard an answer to my guttural "why?" and I can't see anything in what I know of the bible or the Christian faith that gives me a solid answer to that question. All I know is that my instinct tells me something which goes beyond any head knowledge. My instinct tells me that this world as it is, with its earthquakes, floods and famines, is not how it was meant to be.

 There's a mental and emotional leap required to keep faith in God. Those unable to make it often count those who can as lucky. They stand as if on one side of a divide watching the rest of us as we size up and then make the leap. They don't feel capable or even necessarily desirous of making the same jump, so they shrug their shoulders and get on with their lives. Often it's as if we humans live our lives separated by this divide, believers on one side, non-believers on the other. But in times of inexplicable tragedy such as this, the divide is erased. We all suffer the same grief, we all ask the same questions, and for believers and non-believers alike, the answers are few.

Yet there is a difference. Many of the groups serving the practical needs of the people of Christchurch right now are Christian. These are not believers who are providing food and shelter simply because it's what they "should" do. These are people who are moved by genuine compassion, people for whom their faith not only compels them to serve, it gives them the strength to do so.  The bible is not silent when it comes to grief and tragedy. Jesus himself is often described in the gospels as weeping. The words of the Psalms take us as frequently through suffering as they do rejoicing. Think of those words we all know, Psalm 23. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...

I haven't heard an answer to my "why", but that hasn't stopped me asking. My "why" makes my prayers feistier and my tears real. And I've added this "why" to all the "why's" from years gone by which somehow I know I will get to ask in person, one day, on the other side. My "why" finds me here, writing, and as I write I find the heaviness of my heart lifting.

Just as Christchurch is broken, so are we broken. We need hope, peace, and all of us need some measure of healing. We can turn our backs on God if that feels safer, but in doing so we may be rejecting the very thing we need most.

Japan and St Patrick's Day

I was going to write you a lovely post on St Patrick's Day. I was going to tell you about our impromptu St Paddy's dinner with mashed potatoes and just enough green in it to do St Patrick justice. Isobella picked some clover leaves from the garden and put them on a little plate, and then wrote a sign saying "Happy St Patrick's Day" for the table. This was all while I was quite pre-occupied getting dinner ready, and tired because we had just got back from the bach the day before. (We stayed longer because Abigail got chicken pox) Still she ignored my grumpiness and carried on with her sweet plan regardless, including getting her and Greer dressed in green! So we celebrated St Patrick's Day after all, thanks to my quarter-Irish girls.

Then I watched the news. Japan, Japan, a week later and we are still crying for you. I watched a news story about a husband looking for his wife. He looked through list after list, read hundreds and hundreds of names. She wasn't on the list of the dead, and she wasn't on the list of the living. He told the story of how she had driven away from the Tsunami towards her cousin's house with their two children, and jumped out of the car just in time to hand the children over before the wave swept her away. What a mother. Did she have time to feel even a moment of relief? She did what every mother hopes to God they would be able to do in such an awful moment.

So that St Patrick's Day post was overtaken with tears for a country who needs as many St Patricks as it can get. It's not very postmodern of me to say so, and I know most of you don't want me to get all fundamentalist on you, but I can't help it, it's my heart's cry. St Patrick for Japan.

St Patrick wrote a prayer that he apparently prayed every morning. I love this prayer. If I was only ever going to pray one prayer, this would be it.

The Lorica of St Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

This excerpt is from the Catholic website EWTN.

lent and peace

These are the gluten-free pancakes we had for dessert on Shrove Tuesday. As you can see, we are pretty happy about the pancakes. Actually, I'm pretty happy that it's Lent, although happy is not quite the right word for it. After all the sadness I've felt for Christchurch, when I realised that Lent was approaching I felt my heart lift. It seemed entirely appropriate and almost a relief to be entering a season of soberness and contrition, given the awful event two weeks ago. A little bit of sacrificial suffering on behalf of Christchurch would be the least I could do.

Lent is the season in the church calendar that leads up to Easter. It lasts forty days, mirroring Jesus' forty days in the wilderness. This is a time of sacrificial fasting and of acts of penance. Historically Christians would fast all rich foods, such as meat, eggs, sugar and dairy products. (Remember the movie chocolat?) Many Christians nowdays choose to fast by "giving up" something for lent, such as sweets, alcohol, or television.

We've got some big news. The week that the earthquake struck we had a conditional offer accepted on a property that we will be buying jointly with Mum and my sister and brother-in-law. It happened so quickly it's crazy, but it feels very good. It's a huge house with two self-contained flats. It's on five acres, mostly bush, and it's about 100 metres from the water! Last year we dreamed of owning a house in the bush in a different part of town. It didn't happen but it made us realise how much we'd love a bit of land and bush of our own. We never imagined that dream could be realised this quickly.

So we are putting our house on the market! The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of painting, cleaning, weeding, tidying, sorting, and shifting stuff out to the storage unit we are renting. Thankfully last year we got the floors polished and finished most of the painting, but even without those big jobs I never could have imagined how much work there was to do. It got to the point on Sunday where I was so tired I couldn't stop crying. So I've decided to go to bed early for Lent, among other things.  I often keep going when I'm tired because I think that I'm the only person to do things right, or because I simply think I'm the only person to do things at all. Well neither of those statements are true, and I've realised I need to let go of some self-sufficiency and pride. Going to bed early will be one small way I can do this.

The girls and I are about to leave to go to our family bach with Mum for the weekend while Paddy finishes a bit of painting round the house in time for our first open home next weekend. I am practising some letting go. (You have to believe me that I'd almost rather be here doing it myself!) I'm also going to get some precious peace and rest. Just what we need.

Grannie turns 99

Grannie is ninety-nine! She had a birthday afternoon tea yesterday in the lounge at her rest home. My Aunt organised a display of photographs, letters, old school books, special pieces of clothing and other mementos. It was lovely. Grannie is not always that with it, but she actually seemed to know exactly what was happening. At the end as she was wheeled off back to her room we joked about her next birthday, and what a party that would be. She chortled and said "oh yes!" with a smile. A year and a bit ago we didn't even know if she would make it to ninety-eight. And here she is, on her victory lap towards one hundred.

There are so many things now that she can't tell us. So many memories she can no longer access. So many thoughts and feelings that she hardly had words for before, let alone now. I watch her and I realise how complicated getting old can be. Our past doesn't disappear off into the distance as we age. Often it's the opposite of that. We carry our past with us like an old backpack. Each year it gains a bit more weight.  If we never inspect its contents, or take a stock-take every now and then to discard perished goods, then we end up bent under the weight of it. I don't want to get to ninety-nine and carry that weight. I can't guarantee I'll have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with it then.

Tomorrow at 12:51pm our nation is observing two minutes of silence. We don't need to remember the awful disaster that occurred a week ago, it has not left us for a moment. Our minds will go over the images of dust and rubble and broken bodies. We will think of those lost, those still missing, and those who have been shaken to the core in every sense of the word. We will weep.

In that moment, we would do well to save a few thoughts for ourselves. To be thankful for whatever mercies we have received, however great or small; and to consider how we will spend the rest of whatever life we have in front of us. This is not narcissism, or meaningless introspection. This is a sober, circumspect and entirely appropriate response.

It's the first day of autumn tomorrow. I've been shutting the windows at night as the air cools and thinking of the other side of the world. Spring is theirs. It seems like just the other day that we were complaining of the heat. Summer has gone too fast.

Christchurch tears

If words were tears these words would be as salty and as wet as the ocean. No survivors have been found since Wednesday. There are still about two hundred people missing. The death toll keeps rising.

The bodies that have been recovered, and those yet to be found, they were just like us; three days ago they ate breakfast and had plans for the weekend. They are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, uncles, friends, sons and daughters. Yesterday the coroner assured us that the bodies were being looked after. "I am a mum and a grandma" she said. "There is always someone with them." I've done a lot of crying but at that I sobbed. Those bodies belong with their loved ones. There are hundreds and hundreds of people desperate in their grief to see the ones they have lost. To touch a hand, to hold the corner of a shirt. Who can imagine the horror of the damage that they will see? I can't. Crushed limbs, faces unrecognisable. But something, hopefully something they can touch, talk to. This is what the mourners at Pike River were so cruelly deprived of.

And the rest of us, even those of us removed by distance and with our loved ones safe, even we need something to see, something real to help us comprehend the horror. I feel useless up here in Auckland. If I could jump on a plane and get down there I would. I would sweep up the broken glass in my sister's house. Slowly work with her to pick up and clean up the chaos. I'd put on an orange jacket and walk into the war zone that is Christchurch's CBD. I'd pick up bricks, I'd comb through rubble. I would work all night and through the day to find your mother, your baby. I would sit next to the body of your cousin, sing to her, touch her. These are all things that we ordinary people are not needed to do. Yet this is what deep down we long to do, all of us.

New Zealand is broken. We have lost the heart of one of our most beautiful cities. Per capita our loss of life is greater than the losses of 9/11.  We are all hurting.

Are prayers and best wishes futile? No. Distance is no hindrance to those. We can sing too. We can let a song rise in our hearts, a lament that is waiting to be sung. As we sing it together, it becomes our desperate prayer.

I've linked it before, but this version of our national anthem was made for now.

Christchurch

Please pray for Christchurch. There are about 200 people still trapped. Please pray that the rescue teams will be able to reach them. My family are safe, thankfully, but so many are not. Please pray for wisdom for all those involved in civil defence and in rescue efforts. Please pray for miracles of survival.
O God come to my aid. O Lord, make haste to help me.

flower girl

When I was twelve I read a book. It was Faces in the Water, by Janet Frame. They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide us with ointment and bandages for our wounds and remove the foreign ideas the glass beads of fantasy the bent hairpins of unreason embedded in our minds.

I read those words and I understood them. I didn’t know how or why I understood them. I just knew that they were beautiful, and suddenly I was writing. I didn’t know I could write, I didn’t know I wanted to write, but I was writing a story.

I wasn’t always a happy child, but that story I wrote made me happy. From then on words became my sanctuary. I decided I was going to be a writer.

I have my mother to thank for this. She was the reason Faces in the Water was on the bookshelf. She was studying and her neatly written notes and perfectly straight underlining gave those already beautiful words great importance. This was how I learnt to read as well as to write.

I’ve always said that I have no “golden era” of childhood, that for me, life has only gotten better, keeps on getting better. Yet when I think about reading Faces in the Water for the first time, and writing that story, I think I would be happy to re-live that moment. When I read those words They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide ointment and bandages for our wounds I get tingly inside. I remember how extraordinary they were to me as a twelve year old. How they presented me with a doorway into an entirely new, entirely fantastical world. How they were that world themselves. How I wanted to enter them. How if I could have slipped myself in between the pages, in the same way that I cut open a cavity in the middle of an old book to keep my secrets in, I would have. I would have curled into a ball and stayed there.

But I couldn’t. I had growing up to do. There was school, with subjects to love and subjects to fear. There were people, to love and to fear. There was my own reflection looking back at me in the mirror, to love, and equally to fear. Who was this woman-girl I was becoming? I was a troubled teenager, even more troubled than I had been as a child. I was sensitive, vulnerable, wanting, morose, self-absorbed, and trapped, as much by my family as by my own inability to interpret and engage with the world.

Oh I was normal enough. Maybe you knew me and you didn’t think I was so strange. Or maybe you knew someone like me. Or maybe you knew yourself. I worked hard at being normal enough. It was exhausting. But at least I could write. I could write.

Then suddenly I came out of those years as if I had been Alice falling down the rabbit hole all that time. Only for me it was the falling that was most confusing, and the landing that felt so good. I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror and realised that I liked what I saw. I looked around me and found that the world made sense. I got on with living.

In this business of living I found something else that felt almost as good as writing - making people happy. Making people happy was thrilling. I felt loved, accepted, understood, and most of all, important. All those things I’d felt the absence of so keenly in my tumble down the rabbit hole. I couldn’t believe I’d lived without them. They became my food, my gods, they were addictive. I served them with every last bit of me. From the outside it looked like my mantra was people, people, people. But I was in a whirlwind of need and I had cast words to the side. “Why would I ever want to sit alone in a room writing?” I clearly remember asking myself. I had abandoned my sanctuary.

You probably know how this is going to go. Making people happy was exhausting. It was just as exhausting as trying to be normal had been as a teenager. Actually, making people happy was just another rabbit hole. I thought I had landed and that finally I understood the world, but really I was still falling. I was a youth worker in my church, out every night and then more, driven by my insatiable need for approval. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own, yet it was unfortunate that the church, an institution that is called to walk people into freedom, so often allows its people to come under even more bondage, exchanging one burden for another.

The church I was in, to their credit, sent me to a psychologist. I was diagnosed with mild burn-out owing to a compliant personality. The day I stepped down from my role as a youth worker I inherited a computer. I was twenty-two and I realised, all over again, that I wanted to write.

I’ve spent the rest of my life since then trying to make up for the years I gave up on words. I’ve written it here, I’ve said it, I’ve cried it, I’ve yelled it and I’ve prayed it, but after loving my family, there is nothing else in the world I’d rather do than write. Yet it's been the thing I've found hardest to do.

At the beginning of the year I made some intentions. One of them was to spend one day a month alone. I didn't know if it would be possible, but I wanted it enough to try. Last Thursday I did it! Greer was at kindy, Mum took Isobella and Abigail, and I went to the Franciscan Friary in Hillsborough, a retreat centre. I drove up the driveway almost giddy, overwhelmed. It was my first day alone since Abigail was born.

The Friary is beautiful. It’s a simple two-storied brick building surrounded by gardens and tall, old trees. After finding my room I went for a walk. I walked slowly, taking everything in. I walked under the canopy of trees, felt shy in front of a shrine to the Virgin. I thought about how calm she looked, how peaceful and uncomplicated. I listened to the birds, the cicadas whirring, shouts of children in the school nearby. I thought about my husband and his sisters who went to that school, and my nephew who is there now. I thought about the land and the people who belonged to it, the people who had come together and built a community.

And then I saw a flower in the trees above me. It was a magnolia tree, and the flower was in full bloom, rich white and beautiful. I stared at it, trying to read its perfection. On tippy-toes I took a photograph. I took it for me as much as for you, I didn’t know this story was going to be written. I didn’t know what I know now. I couldn’t have foreseen the reunion that was about to occur.

You see I’d been to the Friary before. In that “other life” as a youth worker. I’d stayed there for a week, training to become a school chaplain. The me that was there all those years ago was the me at the height of my striving. Convinced I was capable of saving the world! So sure my life was with people and not with words. So I was thinking of all of that as I walked back up the stairs to my room. I walked in and stood in front of the window at the end of the room. I was on the second story. The window overlooked the path I'd just walked moments before, and the tree with that perfect flower.

That flower. A few days or weeks ago, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there a lifetime ago when I was another person. It was open, flowering, perfect, right at the time I walked underneath it.

I lay on the floor and thought about the girl I was, the girl who rejected words. That striving desperate girl, so lost. I thought about myself through those years, and for every moment of lostness I prayed. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Have mercy.

I slept for a second, and when I woke I got up and sat at the desk. As I wrote I realised I was lighter, freer. I realised I didn't have to denounce my past, or heap scorn on the young lost thing that I was. I realised I didn't have to disassociate myself with her any more.

Because she had many redemptions, that girl. She loved God. She loved people. She loved life. She wanted to do her best. But most of all she was easily found. It only took a moment, that dreadful empty moment when I realised I was living the wrong life. In that moment I remembered what I had wanted all along; words.

And so I celebrate her, that so lost, yet so found girl. For does it really matter how lost we are, if we are easily found? I could have been less lost, yet less-easily found. More the tragedy that would have been. And in the eye of eternity I was already found. I was in that beautiful, hopeful darkness that comes just before dawn. That moment teeming with possibility. I stood in the darkness and saw the very first shimmering glimmers of dawn.

And in celebrating that girl I was, I pick up a part of myself I didn't even know was missing. I am put back together, whole. Jesus, son of David, have mercy. I take that girl, in all her confusion and desperation, and I kiss her. Come back to me, I say, come home.

So I've brought her home with me. That girl in a red beret and blue nail polish who was going to save the world. I love that girl I was. She has many stories to tell me, and much grace to teach me. I have stories for her too. Stories for her broken heart, stories to untangle her confusion. And what better stories could I tell? When really she is all of us, in parts. We are all a little lost, all a little found. We are all dwellers of darkness, about to witness the first light of dawn. We are all that flower, perfect, whether seen or unseen, blooming or wanting or waiting to bloom.

And the woman-girl I am? Still in awe of words. Still wishing I could curl up inside them. Still longing, waiting, wanting to write the worlds of words I've seen inside me somewhere. When? Everyday, moment by moment, yesterday, today, tomorrow. Bit by bit, word by word, I'm writing. Whether you see me or not.

the treasure of home

Sunday was Waitangi Day and I stood at the window at the end of the day and watched the sun go down. It was fiery golden right up until the moment it dipped below the horizon. The girls were in bed and most of the cleaning up from the BBQ lunch we'd had was done. I stood looking out the window at the glowing horizon, the brick house over the road and the trees, green green all the way up to the top of the ridge. I thought about how good it was to belong to New Zealand.

I was born in Spain, but Mum was a kiwi, and Dad immigrated to New Zealand from England as a child. We lived together in Madrid for a few months and then headed to New Zealand via England. I arrived at customs, Auckland airport, still all new at only four months old. There is a photo of my parents walking through the arrivals gate pushing a trundler of suitcases with a woven bassinet perched on top. I was home.

I was home, yet I didn't fully realise it for another thirty-six years. Home is a funny thing. Some people are at home wherever they are. Others can spend years living somewhere and never feel at home. My Grandmother was like that. My Grandfather dragged her to New Zealand when she was thirty-seven, two children in tow. She's about to turn ninety-nine, and she still calls England home. I've never questioned the fact that I am a New Zealander. I have the citizenship papers to prove it. And yet I haven't always known what being "home" really meant. When I was younger I spent a lot of time either travelling or wishing I was travelling. I wanted to go everywhere. I still do.

Then soon after Isobella was born a story was conceived. I don't talk about this story much, but if I'm lucky, you'll get to read it one day. The story was breathed out of the very dust and soil of my mother's home town Raglan. It's an earthy story, with roots that go back farther than I can see. The story made me fall in love with Raglan. It opened my eyes to see that I actually belonged to this place. It was in me.

The Maori have a concept "Turangawaewae" that is sorely lacking in western culture. Turangawaewae means "standing place." Te Ara, New Zealand's online Encyclopedia describes Turangawaewae like this;

"Tūrangawaewae is one of the most well-known and powerful Māori concepts. Literally tūranga (standing place), waewae (feet), it is often translated as ‘a place to stand’. Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home... In the concept of tūrangawaewae, the external world is a reflection of an inner sense of security and foundation. The mountains, rivers and waterways to which one can claim a relationship also express this internal sense of foundation."

I wrote about this a year ago. We had spent a week on Great Barrier Island, and being there I felt the same feeling I'd felt falling in love with Raglan. That same incredible feeling of belonging. The group we were with had gathered to learn and talk about New Zealand History, The Treaty of Waitangi, and the role of the church in all of that. During the week we had a spontaneous powhiri - the welcoming ceremony used when visitors arrive on a marae. Those who were immigrants to New Zealand and those who had never felt like they truly belonged here were invited to be the "manuhiri" or visitors, and the rest of the group were the "tangata whenua" - the welcomers or literally, "people of the land" who would welcome them to New Zealand. I knew straight away I needed to be manuhiri. It wasn't that I was conscious of not belonging, it was that intellectually I have always known I was a visitor. Not just because I was a literal visitor at the age of four months, but because I was pakeha. Deep down I saw myself as an outsider.

The powhiri was the real deal. I joined the group of manuhiri and we stood shoulder to shoulder as the call came out.

"Haere Mai! Haere Mai! Haere Mai!
Haere Mai ra e te manuhiri tuarangi e
Haere Mai! Haere Mai! Haere Mai!"

We moved slowly towards the voice that was calling us and the people waiting for us on the other side of the room. As we walked, I suddenly found that tears were rolling down my face. I hadn't realised I needed to be welcomed. I could have easily chosen to stand with the tangata whenua. The decision to be manuhiri was purely intellectual. But my heart was telling me otherwise. My heart was telling me I needed to belong.

So this Waitangi Day was special. For the first time I actually felt like celebrating. We kiwis are funny about Waitangi Day. Historically it has been a focus for Maori protest. Most non-Maori New Zealanders see Waitangi Day as a holiday and not much else. We turn on the TV news at night expecting to see images of Maori waving placards. A red-necked minority resent Maori and their grievances. Some Maori resent pakeha, understandably. It's a complicated situation, with a history full of tragic injustices and misunderstandings. Not unlike the history of so many other colonised nations.

But there's a difference. We have a treaty. In 1840 Britain was being urged to do something about the growing number of English and other immigrants in New Zealand, and the ensuing lawlessness and land-grabbing. The urgency was being voiced by Christian men - the same group that with William Wilberforce saw slavery abolished. Britain was reluctant, not wanting to repeat the past.  However in the end there seemed to be no other path, and she agreed on the grounds that the transfer of power be just.

So the treaty was born. A well-meaning but hastily drawn-up and poorly translated document. We have a complicated relationship with this treaty of ours. We can go through years of treaty history in public schooling and still not understand either its vitality or its uniqueness.  Waitangi Days come and go, protesters come and go, and we remain ambivalent. Yet it is ours.

The Sunday Star editorial yesterday was entitled "Waitangi Day's evolution cause for cautious pride." The editor noted that treaty settlements are now "treated as normal events" and that they have "restored a small portion of lost taonga and considerable mana."  This is good, and the atmosphere of celebration that is slowly coming to Waitangi Day is entirely appropriate.  But it's hard to celebrate something that's not entirely yours. Belonging to New Zealand means sharing ownership with the others who belong here. Ownership comes with responsibility, but it also comes with the many benefits and priveleges of belonging.

The conversation about the treaty belongs to all of us here in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we leave it to those at either extreme of the political debate then the conversation is not complete. More than that, our absence in the conversation is a form of filial laziness. We are the absent adult children, out of reach just when the family needs us most.

Where are you at home? Whose table do you eat from? How often do you stop to appreciate the feast that is laid out for you? What contribution do you bring?

Dorothy says it, Dave Dobbyn sings about it, we all know it, but there's no place like home. To have a home, and to feel at home, is one of the greatest treasures any human can have.

We got a dog just after Christmas. Silas was a rescue puppy, straight from the pound. He's a sweet and easy-going five month old lab-cross and it hasn't taken long for him to settle in. Two months ago he was wandering the streets, abandoned, but now as I write he's sprawled across our doorway on his back, legs splayed. He's at home.

I've got three daughters and they're at home too. They love their country. They get excited about our beaches and bush and birds, and they sing the National Anthem like a prayer without anyone even suggesting to them that it is one. I've been here since I was four months old, but in a way I'm just as new as my girls or the dog. So I'm taking my cues from them and making myself at home. I'm stretching out and speaking up. I'm home.

Thanks to Cindy Ruakere and friends for making this incredible version of our National Anthem. I've been listening to it as I write, and I challenge you to listen and not feel your spine tingle.

second thoughts

It's windy again today. I love the rushing sound of the wind through the trees. Reflected in the screen of my laptop I can see a large bush on the neighbour's side behind me, shiny green leaves moving. Behind the layers of trees at the end of our garden, far off into the distance, a huge tree is swaying against the sky, its branches tossed and troubled.

I'm thinking about the last post I wrote, and how I assured you so confidently of my position on computers and children. I asserted without question that "computers... are not play" and that as far as encouraging children to develop their skills with new technologies goes, that I think they "don't need much help." Then the very night after I wrote that post I talked to a good friend who happened to tell me that her daughter is going into a new "mobile class" at school, where the children have been given laptops, have an intranet they can post updates and video blogs to, and will be taught how to use computer programmes such as PowerPoint and animation programmes so that they can use the computer in various ways to present their assignments to the class. Now there's some irony for you.

My friend's daughter is a treasure. She is a delight to converse with, has an incredible imagination, and is intensely creative. She once told me that she had a pencil in her head which was constantly writing songs. She thinks in animation. She's already video blogging and updating away on her laptop, and she's seven. Did I celebrate with my friend on hearing the news about the class she will be in this year? Oh yes! She'll thrive, there's no doubt. And who knows what she'll go on to create in the years to come because of it.

I got off the phone feeling a bit sheepish. I knew straight away I would have to tell you. And since then I've spent the week thinking about what I think about computers and kids, what I think about computers and learning, and what I think about what I think! It was a week of second thoughts.

If I could re-write that post again, it would be a lot less emphatic. I'd explore the opposite view with a bit more depth and respect. I'd talk about the reality that computers have become in our lives, how they open up the world to us, offer us new and multiple ways of expressing ourselves, and make much of the world's knowledge accessible to the world. I'd also tell you how the internet has opened my eyes to other ways of seeing, how I've learnt so much, and gained so much, from viewing the lives of "others" through the medium of blogging. I'd probably finish the post up by noting the irony that at the same time as I was expounding the value of discouraging my children from too much computer use, I myself was in the middle of a two-hour stint on the computer!

I value open-mindedness. I've spent enough of my life being dogmatic and self-righteous. I want my girls to grow up confident in their own beliefs and in who they are, but with an ability to see and appreciate other points of view. That's not to say I have no absolutes. There are truths that are as real and as dear to me as my own life. It's just that I've come to see truth like a diamond. Unchanging, solid, beautiful and multi-faceted. My faith and my ideas about the world come from this.

If you read that last post and disagreed with it, speak up. If you see computers as an important part of your children's lives, tell us how you make it work. It's an important conversation, and "just turn them off" is not necessarily helpful or realistic advice.

I still whole-heartedly believe in play, and you can see from the comments on that post that there are other mothers out there who feel the same way. It seems that "go and play or I'll give you something to clean" is an oldie but a goodie. But the world we parent in is more complex than the world our mothers parented us in. Our children are going to grow up faced with an increasing plethora of technologies, ideas, and options. Change will be as impossible to resist and as constant as the wind in the trees. We need to navigate this new world alongside them. Roots will be invaluable, flexibility imperative.

play

I'm sitting on my bed with my lap-top on my knees. The girls are playing in the lounge. It's "rest time."  I can't believe I've actually managed to pull this off, but since the beginning of the year I've been getting the girls to play quietly in the lounge or outside while Abigail sleeps. Almost every day since then I've been coming here to to my bed to write, pray and read. I almost can't believe it. I'm pinching myself! But I'm so glad that I did, as I've been sick since last Thursday.  Not really sick, but sick enough to need a lie-down to get through the day, and I'm only just getting over it now. I've really needed the rest.

Right now I can see clearly through the doorway of this bedroom into the lounge, where the girls are playing.  They've taken on multiple roles in some kind of family game. They are wearing the top half of the flannelette pyjamas we were just handed-down from our neighbour and are playing with a random assortment of toys they brought out of the bedroom before Abigail went to sleep. They've been playing for at least an hour. They've gotten so used to rest time now that they anticipate it, and slip into playing mode as soon as lunch is over. This is something I've dreamed about, and tried to instigate many times without any success. Somehow this time it has worked. To say I'm grateful is a huge understatement!

It's been interesting to watch how easily they've adapted to playing in a small space for a set time-period, with limited toys. (They share a room with Abigail and most of their toys are in there.) I've been thinking a lot about playing these last few weeks, especially since the Sunday Star Times ran an article from the Sunday Times last weekend about "mobile kids" - the first generation of children to grow up with iPads and iPhones. According to this article pre-schoolers all over the world are becoming adept at handling the kid-friendly technology, so much so that for some it is “the new dummy,” with one parent describing her five year old as “addicted.”

Amongst the experts, opinion is divided. Professor Rose Luckin, a cognitive scientist at the University of London’s Institute of Education argues that smart devices can provide "powerful multisensory interations in a family context, any time, any where” with the added advantage of being mobile, so “you can be integrated more easily.” However Dr Eric Sigman recently told childcare specialists that “computers should be banned from schools until kids reach the age of nine.” He says “We risk infantilising the child’s mind by spoon-feeding it with strong audiovisual sensations… and subverting the development of children’s cognitive skills.”

I couldn’t agree more. Although computers, iPads and iPhones do not create the passivity that television does, they are still, on the whole, easy brain fodder that makes no demands on the imagination. They are a solitary activity, with no social benefits, and, as Educational Psychologist Kairen Cullen notes, they “tend… to displace other, more labour intensive activities such as outdoor play.”

About ten minutes ago, while I was still writing this post, Isobella came in to see me from the lounge, desperate to have “her turn” on the Leap Frog writing pad we were given at the weekend. I hesitated, knowing that it would cause friction. But she was right, she was due a turn, and I knew it would be easier for her to play with it now while the baby was still asleep. (Addicted? You should see the baby with that thing!) Once Isobella had the Leap Frog pad Greer was distracted and jealous. The easiest thing to do was to give Greer my iPhone and let her play on it. For the last ten minutes they’ve both been playing on the bed beside me. Educational? Well, yes. Peaceful? For me, no. And a long way from the imaginative play they were absorbed in twenty minutes ago. I know which I’d rather they were doing.

None of this is new, but I think it’s important to keep in mind. It’s understandable that for many parents, bringing children up to be familiar with new technologies is an important goal. Personally, I don’t think most kids need much help in that department. They learn so quickly that when the need arises, they'll catch on. I’m happy for the girls to play on my iPhone occasionally, and use the computer for learning once or twice a week, but I don’t go out of my way to provide them with these opportunities, and actually, I’d much rather they were playing.

You see, the thing that struck me most of all about this article was one small throwaway line near the end of it. Educational Psychologist Kairen Cullen says “Parents need the confidence, and time, to push more traditional activities.” "Traditional activities?" How sad! Firstly, how sad that what was once called “play” has become “traditional activities” and, secondly, how sad that parents need “confidence” to push it. No educational expert will disagree with the fact that play is the bedrock of all learning. But computers, iPhones, and iPads are not play. Play is what every child does naturally given some space, some free time, and access to a few basic toys and safe household items. And from what I’ve seen with my girls at rest time, the less they have, the better the play. It seems that given a few restrictions, the imagination goes wild. Far wilder than when presented with an overwhelming array of every toy and technology under the sun.

I do think that playing takes practise, though. Those two girls of mine have gotten better and better at it since we've been doing rest time. If I decided that they could watch movies or play on the computer during rest time, I know those playing skills would get rusty. I want them to play well - for their own enjoyment, for the development of their imaginations, but also for my own sanity! I want to be able to say "go and play" and know that they can and will, happily. After all, who doesn't want children who are independent and able to entertain themselves? New technologies have the appearance of being an easy and educational way to keep our children amused, but they do so at a cost.  In the end, nothing beats ordinary, old-fashioned play.

What do you think? What play do your children do best? What  are the best memories you have of playing as a child?