Wednesday, December 14, 2011

and we say 'I know'

The girls have finished school for the year, an amazing year and Freya's last in kindergarten. I still marvel at how far she has come in the past two years, and when I read words like these I am reminded and I am grateful:

The sun has climbed the hill, the day is on the downward slope.
Between the morning and the afternoon, stand I here with my soul, and lift it up.
My soul is heavy with sunshine, and steeped with strength.
The sunbeams have filled me like a honeycomb,
It is the moment of fulness,
And the top of the morning.

D.H. Lawrence
The Mid-Day Verse

And though we haven't seen much sun of late, this one reminds me of a certain almost-two-year-old:

Under the new-made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways.

Dylan Thomas
Fern Hill

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

i don't want this feeling to go away


So, there was a meeting on Monday morning that I was to attend. It was not a business meeting, nobody had an agenda and nobody was wearing shoulder pads (that I know of). Its label is mothers meeting but it's actually much, much more and in a funny way much less than that.
But anyway, I found out first thing Monday that the meeting was to be at Merewether Beach. The main points of the 15,000 points that flashed through my mind in the next 30 seconds were: Rosa will run amok; I won't be able to actually sit down and ''attend'' the meeting; I need this meeting; I am a bad mother for not taking my toddler to the beach; I need this meeting. The result was, after about 10 minutes of just letting my brain run with it, I went alone to the beach and Rosa stayed with her loving father, completely oblivious of my whereabouts and the fun she was missing out on.
As I turned the corner and saw the still blue ocean I think I actually said "Oh, my" out loud. When I got out of the car and felt the warm, warm air I just knew that everything was perfect. It was all I could do to take the steps one at a time down to the sand, and as I walked into the waves there were hundreds of big, smooth rocks and shells at the soles of my feet that took me back more than 30 years to another beach and another lifetime. I dived in and the cold, clear water took my breath and forced me to the surface, gasping and just so happy to be alive and in the sea. I let the waves roll under me, then wash over me, until my feet lost contact with the sand and an age-old panic at the power of the ocean started to creep in. I washed off the salt and walked to the meeting venue - a picnic bench in the pavilion - and sat down to enjoy the magnificent day, the incredible view and the completely fantastic feeling that comes from sometimes just taking a breath. And having your breath taken away. I wish I could start every day like this.

Monday, June 20, 2011

a moment with Van the man and Mr Heinz

Let me start by saying there are few ills in this world that cannot be soothed by a bowl of Big Red tomato soup. And so it came to pass, some days ago now, that after a week in which all five members of the family had been struck low (thankfully not at the same time) with a heinous gastro bug, I sat down to breathe a great sigh of relief and warm my cockles with a little Big Red. Sorely needed to say the least.

At the same time, my dear husband was browsing through YouTube looking for suitably ancient songs and videos to entertain and educate the two eldest of our children. He asked me what I felt like listening to, and since I was in a wound-licking, contemplative kind of mood I naturally answered “Into the Mystic”. Because it is one of my absolute favourite songs ever, and I marvel at how beautiful it is every time I hear it. This led to another question from my dear husband, namely to which Van Morrison song did we dance our first dance as husband and wife. And the answer: These Are The Days.

I’m not sure if I had heard the song in the ten years since our wedding day. It certainly didn’t feel like it, as I sat crying silently into my Big Red, overwhelmed by everything that had changed in our lives in the past ten years, and by the one extraordinary, unfaltering thing at the heart of it all that is still exactly the same.