JOURNAL
documenting
&
discovering joyful things
After the party
These photographs are the calm after the storm has passed. The quiet after the chaos.
When your child has a birthday, you want to take a moment. To pause, to remember: "this time last year, this time three years ago, this time 18 years ago…" I don't think the power of that day goes away for a parent, ever. Does it?
Because in that minute, the minute you are remembering, the world gained this new person. If that minute (and all the hard, gruelling, labour-of-love minutes that preceded it) hadn't happened, the universe would now have a completely different personality.
It would have a hole in it that could never be filled, and a regret that nobody could ever understand, and a loss that nobody would ever know how to grieve. The paths of every single person your child has ever met and will ever meet would have been altered, some of them subtly and some of them in extraordinary and powerful ways, but altered nevertheless.
That's the power of a birthday, when you are a parent.
Scout turned three on Tuesday, and I have been waiting for my own moment of reflection. Searching for it, even, in the frenetic, time-spinning events that have made up our hours and days of late. This is the first chance I've had to stop and think and remember, and now I find my thoughts and memories overpowered by my feelings, and I am without words.
"I love you," I tell her every night when I kiss her and put her into bed (and many times throughout the day). "I love you a million, billion, trillion." And she whispers, "To the moon and back?" "Yes," I tell her. "To the moon and back, and then more."
Every day since she was born, every, single, day, I have told her this: "I love you forever." It is because I believe that my love for her will transcend everything. EVERYTHING. Even if I die, my love is and will be stronger than my body. It is my most profound wish that neither of my children will ever live a second without love.
And that's the best I can do about taking a moment. Happy third birthday Scout!
Monday morning pyjamas + links
Yesterday I didn’t get dressed and I didn’t leave the house. In fact I barely moved from room to room. Out of the four of us, Mr B was the only one to don “day clothes” as Scout calls them, or to walk out the front door (to get coffees in the morning and later, to get ingredients to cook dinner).
We are just back from a little mini-break in Warrnambool, where Mr B had a meeting on Friday, and Scout was so excited you’d swear we were going to Paris. The second she woke up on Thursday she demanded “Is this the day we go to Warrnambool?” from her cot, and practically vibrated through the rest of the day until it was time to leave.
We picked Mr B up from work and headed out into the night, Scout quivering and chattering and singing the ENTIRE TIME. I do not think she drew breath from Richmond until the moment we pulled up in front of the hotel overlooking the beach. And not even then. At one point she had me singing Christmas carols for her in the car, and then she treated us to a Christmas carol-esque rendition of Humpty Dumpty, as Ralph snored softly and Mr B peered over the steering wheel into driving rain in the dark, momentarily blinded every time a car came towards us.
We didn’t do all that much on our break, to be honest. It rained a lot of the time and, when it wasn’t raining, the sea wind was FIERCE. Ralph and I were both coming down with a bit of a cold, so we all took it easy and stayed as warm as we could, only venturing into the bracing air for short periods. But it was still lovely to get out of town, to explore (briefly) somewhere new, and to be together. The children were divine, beautifully behaved, and it must be wonderful to be of an age when calling room service and tasting Coco Pops for the first time can truly transport you.
On the down-side, I barely slept a wink while we were away, with all four of us crammed into a room, Ralph snoring through his cold, and moonbeams not-so-romantically piercing my eyelids from an un-dressed skylight. Then last night our neighbour hosted a party, and everyone is allowed to host parties and it was Saturday night and he’s a lovely, considerate neighbour, but last night when I so badly needed to sleep, I lay awake instead listening to a bizarre remix of Britney Spears singing “Oops I did it again” to a duf-duf beat pound from the courtyard just below our bedroom window, accompanied by the conversations and laughter and (as the night went on) singing of a big crowd of happy people.
By 1.30am when I hadn’t slept yet and was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired (and jealous of my neighbour and his guests and the carefree life I used to lead even though I wouldn’t change things - I really wouldn’t!), I came downstairs to the couch, further away from the party, to try once more for that elusive sleep. I found it at last, and grabbed about four hours before it was time to get up for the kids all over again.
Which is a long way to lead up to the not-particularly-interesting news that not surprisingly, I woke up this morning with my cold fully realised, feeling stuffy and crabby and woozy and lethargic. And now we finally get to the point, which is: I spent the entire day in my pyjamas. Blocked sinuses notwithstanding, it was actually a wonderful way to close out autumn, filled with nothing much except craft and cuddles and giggles and train sets and makeovers-by-toddlers and stories and love.
So here we are. Back to work today. I’ve been absent from this blog for a few weeks and I’ve been dying to tell you about all the creative projects on the go right now, but that will just have to wait until I have more energy to share. In the meantime, here are some cosy links to welcome Monday and winter.
The Passion Planner (and other stories)
Good morning! This is my new diary. It's called a "Passion Planner" which is a dubious name for a fabulous concept. It bills itself as "the one place for all your thoughts," and also "the life coach that fits in your back pack."
The diary is filled with prompts and questions and lists and mind-maps to help you define the life you want and then get there, step by step. The idea is that you can manage your work tasks, your personal tasks, your creative tasks, and all the rest, all in the one place.
This is perfect for me because I'm trying to juggle so many things at once. I write freelance for a number of clients, so I have to keep all their deadlines and meetings and briefings and interviews etc under control. Then there are all the children's appointments, from daycare and music lessons to doctors' visits and vaccinations and play dates and parties. Mr B's work calendar, when it impacts on me because of meetings and missed meals and travel. And of course our own (limited but still it does exist) social life, and some big parties we are planning this year. On top of that, I have this blog and my snail mail and the book I'm illustrating and the books and zines I'm writing and several more dreams in the wings, and I want to keep on top of all of them but also be a little more strategic AND inspired about them. None of those needs and schedules exists in a vacuum, they all impact on one another, so a planner that can hold them all together seems, to me, genius.
I ordered my Passion Planner from here, and got the undated version (because hello May already?), but you can also get proper yearly Passion Planners, and in bigger sizes too if you want to scribble more.
How was your weekend? I know many people think Mother's Day is a commercial construct, but BOY I really enjoyed my day yesterday. Yesterday was like the poster child for everyone who says the Simple Things are the Best Things. Kisses from babies (the big, open-mouthed ones). "Letters" from toddlers. Toasted bagels with cream-cheese for breakfast. Warm salad of pearl couscous, chorizo and roasted vegetables for lunch. Paper-thin crepes rolled up with lemon and sugar for afternoon tea. (Are you beginning to detect a theme here?) Drawing pictures while watching old westerns on TV. Two children racing up and down the hallway, each pushing toy prams, laughing and squealing and yelling "We are going to the Lost City!" And affirmation. So much loving affirmation, from my family.
(Also both children ate all their vegetables and at least some of their tuna for dinner that night, by which time I was pretty much feeling like Mother of the Year.)
We are funny about presents in our house on "days" like this, and on birthdays, and anniversaries. Sometimes we give big, extravagant presents, sometimes we give a card and a kiss, or a meal out. (Sometimes we forget altogether, we are scatty like that). But that's because the love and affirmative words are given freely throughout the year. The gifts are big and extravagant when budgets and time and inspiration allow. They are smaller when budgets or time or lack-of-inspiration dictate. So nobody gets unwanted, pointless presents, only presents that truly mean something, both to the recipient AND the giver. I like it that way.
This year, despite me saying "It's too much," my family bought me not only a voucher for a massage and facial (oh! bliss!) but also a personal lesson from an artist on letterpress type and and line-art plates. And it is too much, really it is, but I've got to be honest, I can't wait to do this class. Do you want some letterpress mail from me? The deal is that if I enjoy it as much as we all THINK I will enjoy it, we will put our money-box savings into buying an antique letterpress at the end of the year. Now that's a generous family, don't you think?
How was your weekend?
A face that only a mother could love
Lately I’ve been thinking about faces that only a mother could love. Or, more precisely, about the origins of that cruel and silly saying, and about how much YOUR mother most likely loves YOUR face*, no matter what your face happens to look like.
Your wrinkles? She is SO PROUD of the decades of life and love that you put in to creating those wrinkles. Pimples? Your mother thinks they are perfect. She can’t believe her little baby is so grown up! Oh, your snaggletooth, it just breaks her heart! It is JUST like the snaggletooth that used to peep out from below your grandfather’s wiry moustache, and it is a powerful reminder to her of family and blood and the inescapable links created by DNA.
I am incapable of seeing my children through a fashion editor’s eyes. Of imposing on them those bizarre, objective, unrealistic attributes that are supposed to combine to create “beautiful,” like long legs, wide eyes and full lips. I look at my baby's chubby little thighs and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything more delicious. Ralph wears a dopey, droopy-eyed expression when he’s tired that makes me want to envelop him in kisses. Scout has short little legs that will probably stop her from ever being long and lean, and I smile with pride every time I see them, because they are just like mine.
My legs, that I have hated for as long as I can remember being aware of legs.
I spent decades wishing my legs were longer and thinner and smoother and more tanned. Yet now I look at my daughter, who appears to have inherited EXACTLY my legs (DNA, baby!) and, on her, I think they are beautiful. Perfect.
This realisation is changing the way I look at everybody. First of all myself. How can I hate my legs, when I see them on my daughter? She certainly doesn’t hate her legs. (She doesn’t hate mine either!) As far as I can tell she doesn’t think about legs at all, in any capacity other than how good they are at running around, and twirling, and splashing in the bath. If someone was to offer to take Scout’s legs off her and replace them with a longer, leaner pair, I would want to scream at them, and thump them, and have them arrested. How could they infer that ANYTHING about her was less than exactly right, or dare to make her feel that way about herself? But if those legs are perfect on Scout, how can I hate them on myself? When Scout is my age, I will still think her legs are perfect, and want to tear apart anyone who would try to tell her she needed to change herself. Maybe, possibly, probably even, my mother feels the same way about MY legs, right now. Ain’t THAT something to think about!
It is also changing the way I think about other people. Not that I’ve ever been one to walk around judging people on their appearances. I have many faults but, thankfully, that isn’t one of them. But now, when I’m absently people-watching, I’ll play a game in my mind where I'll focus on a feature of someone, like their nose. And I'll imagine what that nose must mean to that person’s mother. How their mother must know that person's nose SO WELL in the interior of her mind, how deeply every contour of it is etched in her heart, and how she would change nothing about it. Not one cell.
And so nowadays I look at all the people around me in all their different shapes and sizes and colours and regular and irregular features and all the rest of them, and I think just how much their mothers must ADORE all of those faces and bodies. It’s actually a really fun and special thing to do. Instantly, the guy at the counter when you’re paying for petrol, the middle-aged woman crossing the road ahead of you, the bored-looking secretary at the doctor’s surgery… all of them, seen through the eyes of their mothers and now me, are perfect.
* I’m aware of course that not all families are the same and not all mothers and children have the same relationships that I enjoy with my own mother and with my own children. Not everyone has known the love of their mother and that is tragic and heartbreaking and, if that is you, I am so, so, sorry. Everyone deserves to be loved, unconditionally, from the very beginning. I hope you know deep love, now. Either way, I want you to know that if I ever look on your face, I will be looking at you and imagining mother-love and I will truly believe that you, too, are perfect.
Photo is by Milada Vigerova, licensed under Creative Commons
At table
Let's pretend we are all sitting around the table together, talking about our lives. Can you please pass the salt?
How was your weekend? Ours was absolutely lovely, filled with little moments that in the grand and global scheme of things probably hold no great significance but, in the tiny universe of our family, may become milestones to how we live and love.
I taught Ralph the word "grapes" and he pronounced it "gapeths" with gusto. So cute!
Scout helped me cook dinner last night, perched on a stool beside me with her apron on. Everything was a sensory learning experience. "Mummy can I touch this garlic?" she would ask, softly stroking the peeled clove. And, as I opened a jar of capers, "Can I just try one little one?" followed by frantic evacuation of said caper from her mouth, and the endearingly optimistic pronouncement, "I think it probably will be better when it's cooked."
Ralph, who still doesn't walk or even stand on his own, taught himself how to climb onto the bouncing zebra toy, ride it, then get off again. All by himself. He was immeasurably proud.
Scout spent a good hour yesterday being my mummy. As her baby I am required to spend a lot of time asleep, so it's actually quite a restful game. She tucks me in, and kisses me, finds me a toy to cuddle, then says "I love you a moolion boolion troolion my dahlink. To the moon!"
Another new word for Ralph this weekend was dance ("danth"). Ralph LOVES to dance, and once he learned how to say the word, he would yell it at the end of every song, before the next one came on. I also found it very sweet and telling that when I offered to play some music for him, he crawled as fast as he could not towards the Sonos speaker, but to the record player.
After Scout and I had cooked, we ate dinner together as a family last night. This is SO rare in our house, because the kids tend to eat and go to bed quite early, and Mr B doesn't get home from work until quite late. It was such a treat to sit down at the big table and share a meal, all of us, that we had cooked together.
Of these small things are memories woven and held.
Thank you to everyone who wished me well with our "VIP lunch" on Friday. It went really well and everyone had a great time, complete with an impromptu octogenarian and nonagenarian dance party to The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I've already posted all my thank-you notes to our guests. I'm trying to get better at sending thank-you notes.
I'm a celebrity! OK not quite, but the mail I sent to Pip Lincolne for her 52 Hellos project made it onto her blog yesterday. I was proud and a little bit embarrassed to be there. I think I knew but it didn't really sink IN that the letter I wrote her might be publicly displayed for people to read. Maybe that's how people on reality TV shows end up doing silly things on camera. They KNOW the cameras are there, but there's too much going on in their immediate world that they forget about the potential others who are witnesses to what they do and say. I don't mind, but maybe I would have tried to be a bit more clever or witty or write about something more momentous than being rejected in an umbrella incident if I'd thought of that. So maybe it's good that I didn't, because nobody enjoys reading self-conscious writing.
How about you? What will you share at the table today?
On being needed
Ralph has nightmares. He has since he was quite little. We often wondered what it was in his little life that could feed his nightmares. Not receiving milk in a timely fashion?
During the day, Ralph is the happiest baby you could ever meet. And that's not just his parents talking: friends, doctors, daycare teachers, everyone comments on how cheerful and loving and easygoing he is. Ralph's real name starts with H, and from Week 1 of his little life, his big sister was calling him Happy H. She still does.
But at night - not every night but most nights - Ralph cries out. It is a sudden, piercing wail that has me leaping from the dinner table or couch or bed at double-time, and racing up the stairs to his cot. More often than not, though, the crying stops before I make it to his door. I tip-toe into the unmatched peacefulness of a bedroom with a ticking clock and a sleeping baby, softly sucking his thumb. On the other side of the room, Scout sighs in dreams of her own.
Last night Ralph's nightmare must have caught me in the middle of a REM cycle. I was out of bed and into his room and reaching into his cot before my brain had even registered that the crying had stopped and he was peaceful once again. It was too late. I picked him up, and snuggled him to me, feeling tiny shudders as his sobs subsided. Ralph rested his head on my shoulder, snuggling just under my chin. One arm reached around mine and tiny, chubby fists opened and closed, opened and closed, on my arm, just the way he used to do when he was still nursing.
Before bed, I'd washed Ralph's hair. Scout had helped me. He smelled divine. So I just stood there in my babies' room, feeling Ralph squeeze and release, squeeze and release, on my arm, listening to Scout's regular and heavy breathing, and inhaling this tiny, close, intense world of early-motherhood that I'm in.
Sometimes, being the mother of tiny humans can feel claustrophobic. I'd read about this before but didn't really experience it the first time around with Scout. Partly, I think, because she would only sleep during the day if it was in the pram or the Ergo, so at least twice a day for several hours at a time, I could walk and walk and walk, with only my own thoughts for company, and that gave me the precious alone-time to think and imagine and process and renew.
But by the time Ralph was born Scout was walking, and soon after that talking, and there has been no rest since then. Not one day. Probably not an hour, or even a minute. They talk and cry and play and laugh and gurgle and eat and wail and crawl and grab and smear and break and yell and squeal and kiss and tumble through life from sunrise to sunset, and a good few hours either side of that. I'm not alone, I'm not exercising, I'm not renewing.
Even of an evening when they are in bed asleep and I pull out my computer to write this blog or pull out some pencils and paints to send some snail mail, half of me is still on mama-alert. I'm listening for the sounds of someone being sick, I'm checking the temperature in their room, I'm packing bags and preparing menus for the next day, I'm racing upstairs at the nightmare-call.
All of that can wear you down after a while, and leave you feeling closed in. Where am I, in all this?
And then I stand in the stillness of their bedroom with Scout shifting and now snoring softly, and Ralph's hand relaxed at last, limp over my arm. His jaw drops softly open and he is fully asleep. Gently, I place him back into his cot, tucking him in tightly the way he likes it. I listen to my own breathing, deep and slow now. I think about these exhausting and all-encompassing days and nights with my babies and I remind myself, "This too shall pass." But I don't want it to. Not yet.
Being needed can sometimes feel like a burden. But not being needed is heavier to bear.
Love
love has no gender
love has no race
love has no disability
love has no age
love has no religion
love has no labels
This video from Love Has No Labels has been doing the rounds of social media lately. Have you seen it? Just from watching, I feel so GOOD about the world. Like there is hope for us. Have a great weekend! Try to hug somebody.
(ps. If you can't see the video embedded below, watch it here)
Mean it
I want to share with you one of the best and most important lessons I've ever learned.
In my early 20s I used to babysit for a family who had four children under six. [Insert multiple exclamation points and utter parental exhaustion here. How did they survive!?!?]
The parents were (and are) dear friends of mine, and mentors. I’d known them since I was a rather lost and confused teenager, and our age-gap fell perfectly into that in-between state: they were not old enough to be my parents, but old enough to seem all-knowing while still fun and relevant.
As a teenager I looked up to them in every way and, in many respects, I still do.
One night, as they were preparing to go out and I was helping to tuck all the kids in and brush all the teeth and read all the bedtime stories, I witnessed their father breaking up some sort of disagreement between the children.
“I didn’t mean to do it!” cried one child, over some small crime I can’t remember.
“That's good,” their father said, “but you should mean not to do it.”
I don’t know about those children, but that was a lesson in intent that I have never forgotten.
It is one thing to be blameless on intention. To be going about your own life, and not deliberately causing harm. But to swap those two words around is a whole other level: to deliberately not cause harm is a conscious act in intentional kindness that is so much more powerful.
Last week, not far from my house, a young man was killed while cycling to work. And the person who caused his death did nothing more dastardly than open their parked-car door without looking. The cyclist was thrown into the path of an oncoming truck. Death was instant.
In my compassion for the family of that cyclist, I also feel devastated for the person in the parked car. That person is probably a good person. A kind person. Someone who loves their family, and hugs their Nanna, and sometimes buys lattes for their friends at work. All they wanted that morning was to get out of their car.
But they will carry the burden and consequences of the cyclist's death forever.
People all over the news this week are talking about penalties for opening car doors in cycling lanes. They want stronger legal consequences because otherwise how will the rest of us learn, and remember? I'm going to stop here because this is getting too heavy and too sad but the whole horrible incident reminded me of my friend's advice to his small children, all those years ago.
Dear friends, let's consciously do good. Every time.
Too often, we stop at intent. We like to say it's the thought that counts, but we let the lack of thought go without remark.
Mean to do it. Mean not to do it. But don't ignore it.
Folks, let's mean it!
Image credit: Joshua Earle Photography, licensed under Creative Commons
Fred & Lorraine
This love story made me cry a little bit. In a good way.
When 96-year-old Fred’s wife of 75 years, Lorraine, passed away, he sat in his front room and started to hum a tune, then he wrote down some words for her. “Oh Sweet Lorraine,” he called his song, and he said “it just fit her.”
He saw an ad for an online singer-songwriter contest and thought “why not, I’ll just send it in.” But Fred didn’t post his song online, he posted it old-school, in a manila envelope, to the studio. And he wrote a letter explaining the song, adding “I can’t sing. It would scare people HA HA.”
The studio was so touched by Fred’s story and his love for Lorraine, that they produced the song for him. Here's a little video about that process. And LOOK at Fred's face when the song starts!
(ps. There's something going on with the video I've embedded. If you can't see it just below this text, you can watch Fred's story here)
A Letter From Fred from Green Shoe Studio on Vimeo.
Thoughts about writing letters
Yesterday while I was walking home, a man came out of the post office just ahead of me and opened and started reading a letter as he walked. By the time I had caught up with him he had stopped dead in the path, oblivious to me or anyone else on the street, reading intently. I could see the letter was hand-written. As he devoured the words, a little smile played about the corners of his mouth. I walked on, smiling too.
Earlier this week I saw a segment on The Project on Channel 10. They were talking about Australia Post and the cost of sending mail. After showing the segment, Carrie Bickmore told the panel that she had recently read a letter that one of her grandmothers had written to the other, several decades ago. It was beautiful, Carrie said, and it highlighted why snail mail would still have a place in our lives today, and tomorrow. "Nobody is going to keep an email I send."
The STUNNING blue-and-gold letter in these pictures is from Maria, a truly generous and talented woman from Mexico. Maria is a writer, and a literature professor, and in her letter she told me about her cat, among other things. From her simple and heartfelt words I feel like Maria is already a kindred spirit. I can't wait to write back to her.
I posted a photograph of Maria's letter on Instagram yesterday, and a friend of mine in Sydney left a comment that her grandfather used to send them all mail-art. She's going to try and get hold of some envelopes that her mother has kept from the 70s and 80s to show me. Even 30, perhaps 40 years on, the love and care he put into decorating his letters to his children and grandchildren is still physically manifest, and able to be shared and loved with and by others.
I declare today the International Write A Letter To Someone You Love Day. Who's with me?