Views from my tree

Autumn!

2011-03-25T21:18:00.004+11:00

Hello...long time, no see...it's been a wild, crazy year where my life has been whole-bodily squashed into a new and wonderful form. Everything is complicated and, as such, I have been given the moments one by one and challenged to do what I will with them. One...by one...by one...sweet, indignant moments that won't let me stop and gather them up...moments intricately laced with spidery web that I could almost get lost in...

...and my past has turned out to be not what I thought it was. It's become a clear, accurate rendition of what lay before it...and so I experience what is now with much more clarity and defiance...and with much less haste...

...and in the soft Autumn breezes I can plant my life and wait for the cold...

Ebb and flow

2010-04-10T14:40:00.004+10:00

Seems I have been ebbing recently. From blogging that is. But sitting here listening to Jeff Buckley singing 'Hallelujah', a quiet house and a stack of dirty dishes awaiting me, I find myself harkened back to the blogging bosom. I am not religious at all, well not in a religion way anyway, but the word 'hallelujah' is so beautiful. It's like liquid silver. So:

Hallelujah because my children awaken creativity in me.

Hallelujah because I can be inside me all the time.

Hallelujah because I am a narcissistic fool.

Hallelujah my garden survives!

The Monkey Man and Monsters...and Audio-Visual Media

2009-09-26T23:07:00.009+10:00

It all started with me. I introduced television to Bird Boy. Early. There was no getting out of it, really, Blondie used to watch it when Bird Boy was a baby, and Bird Boy just started watching. At first I would attempt to squirrel him away but then I hit a bad spot where it was easier just to let him watch. You know, the usual, Playschool, In the Night Garden, Bob the Builder, all that stuff on ABC.

Then we got rid of the TV. I had to for me as well as the children. I wanted to watch it all night and it wasn't good for me. Blondie wanted to watch it all day and I couldn't handle that. It wasn't about eradicating screen-time but about having more control over it.

The forward motion of the television is not conducive to turning off. With no more advertisements about exciting programmes coming up and no more non-stop programming it was easier to switch off. In our new audio-visual paradigm, the kids started watching more DVDs and using websites on the computer, they could choose what they wanted to watch, when they wanted to watch it, and when they turned it off.

Someone gave us Monsters Inc. It's not a bad movie. Blondie enjoyed it. But he was four and understood what was actually going on. It's a movie about Monsters who generate electricity in their city by collecting the screams of human children. In order to collect the screams they enter their bedrooms at night and scare them. The hero of the movie finds out that laughter actually generates more electricity and all is well in the end as they stop scaring children and start entertaining them. It's a feel good movie.

Bird Boy watched it. I shouldn't have let him. There are suspenseful scenes where monsters are in children's bedrooms and the children are frightened out of their wits. While the rest of us knew the monsters were actually good guys and very friendly and sometimes a bit silly, Bird Boy was internalising the dark, the shapes, the shadows, the suspenseful music, the scary-looking monsters, the quivering children and the screams. I know. I was silly.

He started being afraid of the bedroom when I turned the light off at night (even though we had a nightlight). He would cling to me and ask me if it was scary. I hugged him and breastfed him to sleep as usual and all was fine as he fell asleep, but I felt really bad for him being scared of the dark like that. My parenting him to sleep every night is partly to avoid that 'scared of the dark' thing that a lot of kids go through. But it seems we haven't avoided it.

The hallway suddenly became a no-go zone. If Bird Boy happened to walk up the hallway in the night by himself (even if the light was on) he would be breathless and crying by the end.

Then he watched Brum. In some episodes of Brum there are men dressed up as apes. We didn't know they frightened him until Sebastian was talking about someone he knew who everyone called the 'Monkey Man'. Suddenly Bird Boy clung onto me. 'Monkey Man?!?! Where's the Monkey Man?!?!' Now when we went to bed he would tell me there was a Monkey Man. I started to think he was really seeing him when he pointed at the doorway. I asked him what he looked like and he said, 'Angry.' In answer to me asking what he was wearing he would say, 'Red.' Every night he would mention the Monkey Man. Every day he would ask us about him. We would try to reassure him but it made no difference. The whole thing wasn't helped by my feeling that an old man haunts our hallway. I was getting scared too.

By this time we were already making sure all possible things on screens that would scare him were avoided. Monsters Inc. was put away and so was Brum. I screened all DVDs carefully and rejected them if I thought they were scary in the slightest. After a while the obsession with the Monkey Man calmed down quite significantly...although he does still mention him, but in a sort of joking way:

Bird Boy: Is there a Monkey Man, Mummy? (said with a smirk)
Me: No
Bird Boy: Where's the Monkey Man? (said with a smirk)
Me: Erm, he doesn't exist.
Bird Boy: I'm the Monkey Man! (much laughter)

I stopped being so vigilant with the censorship. I was sure Bird Boy had got over it and I trusted the common and popular children's shows to be appropriate for him. Bad decision. He watched an episode of Roary yesterday. It's a much-loved show of his and he doesn't get to see it often as we don't have a DVD of it and, of course, no television. So I put it on for him and let him be. Bad decision. I console myself with the fact that even if I had been watching it with him I wouldn't have been able to turn it off without him feeling like he missed out and it would have been a huge issue.

It turns out the show was about monsters. Roary and his friends Cici and Flat Bed go up a dark tunnel and get spooked by the Flash the rabbit who is pretending to be a monster. Looks harmless enough (it's very obvious that it is Flash being the monster) but it seems Bird Boy has now been reminded of creepy things in the dark again. Last night as soon as I turned the light off he clung to me for dear life, asked me breathlessly if there were monsters and fell asleep on my shoulder, forgetting even to breastfeed to sleep as he usually does.

I know I am responsible. I ruined it all for him by leaving him to watch Monsters Inc., a movie totally inappropriate for him. That's what started it off.

But what about the actual programmes? I've long had a feeling that children's programmes are often inappropriately trying to teach a lesson or moral. It's a normal thing to run with an overall theme and, of course, film and television makers should be free to express themselves, but it seems that every children's show I watch is trying to educate my child in a way I wouldn't try to educate him myself. I see in children's shows a penchant for telling children what to do, telling them what to think and telling them how to be. In allowing screen media into my house I let them do that. I escape to the land of non-responsibility and let shows entertain my children; keep them busy. It's convenient, I admit and accept that.

But why is it that all these show producers feel the need to morally educate my children? I feel like it is lazy storytelling, lazy entertainment and unoriginal. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen 'monsters/ogres/etc. etc. are scary but they don't exist' theme in children's programming. Also themes like 'don't tell lies' and 'share with your friends' are rampant. My children don't need to be told not to tell lies. It's normal for kids to be honest. Besides, they have parents who are connected with them and encourage honesty in all sorts of everyday life ways. Likewise with sharing. The concept of 'teaching' children to share is overrated. See this article on sharing from fellow blogger, Majikfaerie. I totally agree.

It seems like children's show writers have a list of themes to pick from and they simply run their finger down with their eyes closed and pick the one they indiscriminantly land on. How about some originality, programmers? How about some real storytelling? How about some subtlety? Children are people, too, they're not just receptacles for our moralistic hang-ups. They're not just containers for our preconceived judgements about what they think and how they feel. If you can't be original or non-moralistic, how about a heads-up on the DVD cover or TV programme about what themes you push in the episode or movie we are about to buy/see? That would help me a lot, thanks.

Granted, I do believe that Monsters Inc. is an original movie challenging the age-old 'scary monster in the bedroom' scenario. I also must admit that Brum is usually funny and original too, just unfortunately caught up in this whole 'Monkey Man' matter. It does have a little too much good guys versus bad guys for my liking, though. Okay. A lot. In any case, thank the Universe for Peep.

It is obvious to me that monsters and the like are an adult construct and that children would never be frightened of them (or even know about them) if not for children's television shows and movies (in our case), children's books (authors are often guilty of the same lazyness and unoriginality) and/or adults actions (like forcing children to sleep alone from a young age and refusing to parent them at night).

Hopefully Bird Boy will get through this latest monster problem, but I'm afraid it's already ingrained in him. I guess the only thing we can do is try to support him in dealing with it and think seriously about making children's television ourselves.

Safe or unsafe - that isn't the issue!

2009-07-24T22:10:00.017+10:00

By now most Australians would know a little about the current homebirth crisis in Australia. For those who don't know, the Government is trying to bring in legislation that effectively makes independent midwifery illegal. Independent midwives can't get indemnity insurance and aren't supported by the Government to do so and the new law states that health practitioners can't operate if they don't have it. If an independent midwife does attend a birth post July 2010, they and the person who put them up to it could both be up for a $30,000 fine.

The homebirthing community of Australia is shocked and dismayed that from July 2010 onwards they won't be able to birth at home supported by a known and trusted midwife, except if they live near one of very few homebirth programmes operating out of hospital and are deemed 'low-risk'. This means that even if you happen to live near a hospital-homebirth programme but have a breech position baby, twins, labour for too long, had a previous caesarean or two, too-high or too-low blood pressure and a myriad of other conditions, you'll be forced to birth in hospital too.

There has recently been a lot of talk about homebirth in the media, much of it negative. 'Oh, but it's unsafe!' they say. 'Women should birth in hospitals where if something goes wrong, the equipment is right there to help!'

It is really annoying me. We live in a society that is ALL WRONG. We have been brought up to put our full trust in the doctor and surgeon and to take no responsibility for our own health. Everywhere I hear women say, 'But they won't let me' or 'I couldn't because they said...' and 'they said this pain relief would help me rest' and let birth professionals get away with threats and ultimatums that are not at all evidence-based but mostly seeking to adhere to hospital policy and thus satisfy their insurers. I let them do it too. My first birth was a complete sham. I was threatened and goaded (in the most lovely way) and made to lie in a completely stupid position for what 'they' deemed a failure to progress birth. I can't believe some of the things I let them do to me. All in the name of a 'healthy' baby. Yes, my baby didn't die. I didn't die. But if I had given birth at home, without intervention, we both wouldn't have died either. In fact, I'm almost certain we would have both ended up a whole lot healthier.

Let's get back to the 'homebirth is not safe' comment I hear all the time. Time to get our facts straight. There was a major study done in the Netherlands (where 30% of births are at home) that ended with this conclusion: 'The outcome of planned home births is at least as good as that of planned hospital births in women at low risk receiving midwifery care in the Netherlands.' What was also said that for births of subsequent children the outcomes were better in homebirths compared to hospital births. Another study done in North America came to this conclusion: 'Planned home birth for low risk women in North America using certified professional midwives was associated with lower rates of medical intervention but similar intrapartum and neonatal mortality to that of low risk hospital births in the United States.' So, in other words, homebirth was found to be as safe as hospital birth but with lower rates of intervention. I'll take homebirth, thanks!

Now to blow the fallacy that hospital birth is safe out of the water. Yes, according to the studies, the mortality rates are the same as home birth. So why not birth in hospital? Well, it depends on your understanding of the word 'safe'. If you call slowed labour caused by transfer from home to hospital, induction for no reason other than post-dates, encouraged position to labour often the 'lie in hospital bed with upper body at 45°' position that is the very worst for birthing as the coccix obstructs the birth canal, offering of water as pain relief unusual, fetal monitoring which forces the woman to stay in bed, wholesale pushing of epidurals known to have a chance of maternal death and a number of other side-effects, pushing of pethidine (a synthetic version of opium) of which only one side-effect is that it interferes with the baby's sucking reflex if given at the wrong time of labour (which it often is), babies with bruises all over their heads from forceps and ventouses and/or holes in their heads from scalp monitors, caesareans done on a 'failure to progress' basis, caesareans given for breech and twin births or because of previous caesarean or for no 'good' reason at all, babies with syntocinon-induced jaundice, enforced vaginal examinations causing undue stress, episiotomies, perineal tears from pushing too hard due to coached pushing, PTSD and PND of mothers caused by negative birth experiences or birth rape (YES, birth rape is very real) and compromised breastfeeding and bonding relationships caused by negative birthing experiences or caesareans SAFE then go ahead, birth in hospital. (Excuse me while I take a breath.)

It's pretty clear that I'm all for homebirth. I wouldn't birth anywhere else. But, of course, hospitals are needed. I would definitely transfer to a hospital if there was a complication that couldn't be dealt with by my midwife. That goes without saying. That's what hospitals are for. Of course I would have a caesarean if it was needed. I would ask my midwife for her advice if it got to that. She's an expert on normal birth and thus knows when something isn't normal and needs extra assistance.

There are a few studies negating the current thought on 'high'-risk births. But regardless of the studies, what's 'high'-risk to some is 'low'-risk to midwives who are experienced in normal birth. Take for example breech birth. A midwife trained and experienced in breech birth knows how to manage it safely. If you were a midwife used to breech birth being taken to theatre then the idea of it would freak you out. Also take for example 'post-dates'. There are studies to say that the current thought on the normal gestation of a pregnancy is incorrect and other studies to show the dangers of induction. If I had a breech baby or was 'overdue' in the eyes of the hospital birth world, then I would make the decision myself whether to have the baby vaginally or by caesarean, or be induced. I would weigh up the risks in my situation and make the decision myself.

But HOLD ON. Can we please just reverse all the paragraphs I just wrote? We don't need all that information! This issue isn't about safety at all. If it was about safety, the Government would also be seeking to regulate out of existence elective caesareans, abortion, smoking, drinking alcohol, eating unhealthy food, people who don't exercise, people who swim in the ocean, rock-fishing, swimming pools, driving motorcars, walking across the street, bike-riding, abseiling, rock-climbing, sky-diving etc., etc., etc. Aren't those things proven to be unsafe, at least to some degree? So why wouldn't the Government regulate them so they would become illegal? Well, it's simple, really. We get to choose what we do. This is a free country. If a woman can choose to have her baby cut out of her why wouldn't I be able to choose a homebirth, even if it was unsafe? If a guy can drink himself to distraction every day of his life, ending up with liver disease then why wouldn't I be able to choose homebirth? If I'm allowed to cross the six lanes of a busy highway at peak hour then why the hell can't I choose homebirth?!

We get to choose whether it's safe or not. There are so many reasons why birth should be left in the hands of the experts - the birthing women. Not doctors. Not Government. Not even midwives, but me and you. We can be instrumental in keeping our own health. It's important because most careproviders, especially hospitals, are not looking out for you, they are looking out for themselves. Seek information, find evidence, listen to stories, read articles, inform yourself on all sides and then consult with your care provider armed with everything you have found. Try to avoid the media or at least consume it with a grain of salt. Don't let care providers put fear into you. If you suspect something they say is not evidence-based and tailored to your personal situation then go and get another opinion (and then another and then another). Make your own decision. We are lucky enough in our country to be able to make it!

This legislative push against homebirth is a violation of every Australian woman's human rights, no matter where they plan to birth. If they can come after my choice, you'd better watch it, they may come after your choice too!

A Winter Solstice story

2009-06-20T23:08:00.005+10:00

By me...for you and your children...

I hope you all have a snuggly day.

I hate cooking

2009-06-15T19:36:00.006+10:00

I hate cooking. Not with a vengeance — just a quiet, bored, annoying sort of hate that hangs around every time I cook. I even hate cutting up stuff, simple things to eat, normal things like apples and oranges. A carrot will send me into a sweat. Which is really not a good thing because now I have two children and a husband who works A LOT, I am the main cook in the house. So, basically, I am hating something I have to do all the time, every day, sometimes every hour or so. I must admit that sometimes I can make yummy meals but I still dislike cooking them. It's been a challenge all my adult life.

I was complaining about it yet again with Sebastian last night after dinner. This was the crux of my argument: 'I hate cooking. It takes, like, an hour to cook dinner and it's gone in ten minutes!'

Then something occurred to me. Something was askew in my logic. Everyone had enjoyed the dinner. I mean, REALLY enjoyed it. It was fried chicken fillets crumbed with ground cornflakes (Blondie has gone wheat-free so I couldn't use bread crumbs), steamed corn on the cob, carrot and broccoli, and steamed beetroot mixed with lemon juice and feta cheese. It was yummy, I must admit. Sebastian is still going on about it.

Anyhow...something occurred to me and it was this: while we ate the meal and talked with each other and delighted in the taste and texture of the food and felt our tummies getting more full, there was a sort of light in the air surrounding us, an energy that bounced around and reflected its light in each of our eyes. This energy, these kind of points of light that flew between us in the moments that made up the short ten minutes it took us to eat our meal, outshone every dull, achy thud that my thoughts had made as I cut and sliced and dipped and filled and fried in preparation for our dinner. The brightness of those ten minutes multiplied to fill the empty space left behind by my negativity in the hour before. It was like a payment — but not a hard, sweaty payment as I automatically think of when I think of the word payment, it was a sweet, joyful offering to the drudgery of my hard labour. And in the moment I realised that, there was no choice but to accept such a sweet payment...in full.

So...if ten minutes' joy between us can pay for my hour's painful monotony, what would it mean if that painful monotony was transformed into joy? Could it mean that the energy accumulated by the enjoyment of dinner would multiply tenfold as we actually eat the joy that I offer up as I prepare the dish?

These realisations don't take away my general dislike of all things in the kitchen. I still hate it. However, I would really like to start creating a new way to 'be' in the busiest part of my house. I spend so much time there, it's really a huge part of my life, so if I actively hate it while I'm doing it I'm hating a huge part of my life, right? I'm determined for it to change, one day at least. I can't go on hating my life like this. I have two boys who are bound to one day grow into teenagers and young men. They deserve a mother who fills their food with her love and who shows them they can love making food too.

My kitchen can become a place of bliss, I know it's possible!

Our Wall - day 6

2009-06-04T22:59:00.007+10:00

I've been meaning to update the wall saga for a while now. This video was taken a long time ago and the wall has since been completely finished and the area has since been sitting waiting for concrete and drainage. We're a slow bunch, us tree-dwellers, we'll get around to the concrete soon. I thought I'd better keep going with the videos for the sake of consistency and to show off Seb's passion and talent for video editing.

This video is a little different to the wall videos prior to it. It contains a little side story about a bird we rescued as it had a broken wing. It also includes shots of a wall inhabitant (and Sebastian talking in a funny David Attenborough voice). It's a bit more fun than the other videos and I'm in it too!

It's better in high quality so if you feel like it, click the vid to go to Youtube and select the HQ feature. In fact, it's much better seen at Youtube because it's widescreen and my template cuts off the right edge of all my pics/vids. Gotta sort that out!

It is, after all, just a moment.

2009-05-25T21:50:00.005+10:00

I caught myself in a moment of sheer panic this afternoon. Blondie was making one of his famous concoctions and spilt red food dye all over the kitchen cupboards and floor. In the same moment, I noticed Bird Boy drinking the water for dipping his paintbrush in. Embarrassingly, I freaked out and hollered at Bird Boy to stop drinking paint water while I swore about the red splatters all over my kitchen. In that moment I was lost.

Later on, when the boys were in the bath, I thought about a friend who said he had tried some sort of 'flying' in the bath when he was young and cracked his head open. I thought about his parents' reaction and realised that as I was in a 'moment' this afternoon, when my friend cracked his head open his parents also would have been in a 'moment'...except, of course, the circumstances were much more serious and that moment had passed more than 20 years ago. He's alive, seemingly well and unharmed.

In 20 years my children won't show any ill effects either. I'm sure Blondie won't have red hands and Bird Boy didn't die of paint poisoning (the paint was non-toxic). All is well. So why did I freak out so much? Why did I take a gorgeous, amazing, individual moment and pour my frustration and tension into it? Was it that it was just a good opportunity to dump my load? Or am I so used to the status quo that anything different rattles it?

When I compare the two scenarios, the head-splitting and the mess + paint-water, I see that every moment, whether viewed as 'good' or 'bad' in my well-worn psyche, is just that. A moment. And it will be followed by countless other moments with the potential of being seen as 'good' or 'bad'. And those moments themselves will be followed by others, ad infinitum. So, really, what does it matter? What is it in me that takes that moment so seriously, as if it means the end of the world for everyone because that moment existed? Why react so strongly when there is clearly no danger of death or serious injury? Isn't it better to preserve my relationship with my children and let the moment be as it is without reacting so negatively? Surely in that moment this afternoon, the only ill effects would have been due to me losing my temper!

Can I let it be and go with it rather than against it? How can I learn to let the moments flow into one another to become one whole existence, an existence where I actually experience the moments rather than judge them and react unconsciously to them?

I don't think those questions can be answered. I can only take each moment and do what I can for that infinitely small space in time. If I make mistakes, that is okay. The opportunity still exists in the next moment. Each moment is, after all, just a moment, and my life is full of them. It is amazing to think that I have infinite choice!

Reflections on my early parenting: Torture

2009-05-24T20:51:00.008+10:00

Blondie was never a child to follow the sleep patterns that babies were supposed to, according to books. He never had that sleepy first two or three weeks of life that I read many babies have, and tended to sleep in twenty minute shifts during the day. He woke every two hours at night for a short while and then settle into four or five hour shifts which sometimes extended to seven or eight as he grew a little older, around 8 weeks or so.

Although night sleeps at first were pretty by the book, day sleeps were always very short. I had read a lot of books before he was born and had on-hand many parenting books and they all said that babies should sleep two or three or four hours at a time, three times a day. Additionally, the midwife who ran our birth preparation classes said that very young babies only wake for an hour at a time and sleep the rest of the time. Well, he just never did that, and I automatically assumed it was because I was doing something wrong.

I remember when he was very young the visiting midwife from the hospital came to check on us and she attempted to show me the 'wrap and put down' method of baby sleep. She wrapped him very tightly in a cotton wrap and took him to his bed, where apparently he was going to grizzle a bit and then fall asleep naturally and peacefully. Well, of course, as soon as she put him down he started screaming and as she came out she looked at me as if to say, 'Okay, it hasn't worked, you'd better go and get him'. We had failed at sleep.

Although he slept quite well at night early on, at about four months of age he started waking every two hours again which sent me into acute meltdown (if I hadn't been there already from all the post-birth and new-parenting anxiety I was carrying). From this point he woke continually at night for at least 18 months, sometimes every hour, often 10 to 12 times a night. He fell asleep pretty quickly as long as a breast was available. I was a wreck.

People offered all sorts of advice. I don't blame them because I sought advice continually, hoping for the magic cure that would help my baby sleep in a continuous block again. Some people advised controlled crying (which, of course, was never on the list for me) and others tried to convince me it was normal for young babies to wake at night and what he was doing was completely natural (which, of course, is true, as I realised later). Others offered all sorts of dietary, sleep-training and behaviour-changing help, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list of advice was massive, which served to confuse me more.

I was really worried, especially about the day sleeps. I saw that during the day he needed more sleep as he would get overtired and beside himself all the time. I felt like there was something wrong in what I was doing and that I wasn't bringing what he needed to him. It was awful inside my brain at that time. Guilt was the main ingredient.

On top of all the sleep advice, people offered me little tidbits of reassurance that were meant to make me feel better about it all. One of the most common tidbits of this sort of advice, meant to be reassuring and helpful, was

They use sleep-deprivation for torture, you know!

Rather than making me feel better, it served to make me feel more guilty about my child not sleeping.

I couldn't work out what it meant. Were people commenting about my sleep-deprivation or my baby's sleep-deprivation? Were they empathising with my own sleep troubles or were they accusing me of torture? My mind at the time inclined towards the latter. Did they think I was torturing my child by not offering the correct amount of sleep to him? I already thought I was most neglectful for not arranging for the correct circumstances for my child to sleep more than 20 minutes during the day or two hours at night. Now it seemed as though people were agreeing with me.

What I know now is that it was actually meant in an empathetic way. It is the sort of 'saying' that people shell out to new mothers to try to make them feel better about feeling so crap. It's meant to mean, 'Hey, you must feel really bad, almost as bad as the prisoners they torture with sleep-deprivation.' Unfortunately, I took it to mean, 'You're making your child feel totally crap, as crap as those prisoners feel who are tortured with sleep-deprivation'.

It took me a long, long time to realise it was meant as an empathetic, you-must-feel-really-bad response. It wasn't until Bird Boy was born and I did all the same things and found he was a babe who slept a little longer than my first. And it was after I had discovered babywearing for daytime sleeps. It was also after I discovered my babes sleep better when their noses are free from snot.

And after all my experience with babies and sleep, all six years of it, I am much more gentler on myself. Of course I wasn't torturing my baby! If I was, then I certainly tortured Bird Boy much more by waking him intentionally all the time for the sake of getting places on time for Blondie. Even though I understand now how it was meant as a support for me rather than pointing out what a bad job I've done, I will never say it to other mothers. What if they're in the same place I was? I know about that mother-guilt, it's all-encompassing and is actually the only torturous bit in the whole equation.

In any case, that saying is wrong. Sleep deprivation is not torture. Sometimes it can be sensational fun!

Nurture my soul

2009-05-14T22:56:00.000+10:00

This morning I was sitting on the beanbag reading a book while Blondie decorated a hotrod he had asked me draw for him and Bird Boy watched an episode of Peep on the computer, and it occurred to me that I was giving my children what I had sorely missed when I was a child. It was about half past eight and in my childhood, since just before I was five years old, by eight-thirty I would have been bundled off to school, leaving behind the comforts of home and the things I wanted to do to be thrust into the classroom to do things other people wanted me to do in a cold, strictly scheduled environment.

But instead, in my children's lives, the morning was peaceful and they were both doing exactly what they wanted to do. The autumn light was warming the loungeroom-cum-playroom and in my heart I saw that this learning-at-home thing is right. I also saw that by giving my children what I always wanted when I was young, I am nurturing my own soul too.

In supporting our children as natural learners, we strive to let their natural love of learning guide their life and not undermine or damage it with arbitrary rules or requirements. It's amazing to watch our children pick up stuff all by themselves that many people believe children need to be taught.

My children:

live at a generally unhurried pace with lots of places to go and lots of things to do but no pressure to go to them or do them.
live in an environment that is their own and shows the fruits of their labours.
live with at least one parent who is available to them all the time and both parents who try hard not to be pre-occupied with silly things like extreme tidiness or manipulate them to behave in a certain way.
get to experience the world in their own individual way and in their own time and with a lot of control over what they do and when they do it.

I would have absolutely loved to have all these things in my life when I was a child. The reality was quite different. It feels so good to realise that when Sebastian and I offer these things to our children (which unfortunately isn't the automatic right of all children) each day we give a little of each of those things to ourselves. I'm watching my inner little girl be nurtured by stepping back and watching my children's undamaged love of learning guide them in their day-to-day life. Maybe this act of generosity to my children is turning and feeding me too. Maybe by doing this 'natural learning' thing, eventually the misgivings of my own childhood will cease to feel so misgiven.

Inspiration?

2009-05-06T20:40:00.006+10:00

From where does inspiration come? Does it always have to come in a flash or a moment? Can it be a long, slow growing, a tumbling, a softness that doesn't go away? Is inspiration of me or of something else, something higher that I can't control? Will it always just come upon me, or will there ever be a possibility that I might create it? Can I bring it on with patience and a lot of slow plodding?

It seems right now like there is a lot of jelly-like substance around me, like I am swimming through an opaque swirl. Inspiration seems to be passing by and landing on other people. Sebastian is madly working on his first cartoon (amidst working on the buses) and the two boys are eating and eating and eating and eating and eating. It seems like I am the prop for everybody. There's so much to do and so much to get done that when I am in it I am pre-occupied with thinking about what will come next and then when it finishes at the end of the day I look for entertainment and withdrawal. You wouldn't believe what I've been watching on Youtube; suffice to say I'm hearing a lot of American accents.

Does a load on practical tasks mean stuff that isn't really practically necessary falls by the wayside? Or is it just that I am not open to expression at the moment? (Right now, as I write, I am pulling a bandaid off my arm hair by hair.) Is it that I am focusing on the practical tasks as a way of avoiding being open to inspiration or expression? Or vice versa, am I feeling the lack of inspiration and turning to the practical to avoid the awful feeling of not being able to write? And this all rolls back to the first questions that ended up a bit like this: Is inspiration up to me, then?

I have an image of me rushing into the bedroom to find a big suitcase, to which I dive into and start throwing all the clothes this way and that, frantically trying to find inspiration. Makes me laugh. Somehow I don't think it's like that. More like a wander through the garden glancing this way or that, or maybe a staring sort of waiting sort of thing.

Maybe I just need more sleep.

Land of the Silver Birch

2009-04-06T21:45:00.005+10:00

We've been singing a song at our Montessori prep group lately, and I have become semi-obsessed with it. I love it. The tune is just so very sweet and the words celebrate nature. It's healing me.

I've never heard it before but after doing a little research I found that it's commonly regarded as Canada's unofficial anthem and is often sung by Scout and Guide groups and with children of all ages. We have been doing two of the verses with movements and they're cute too, but I can't find them anywhere on the Net to confirm they're correct.

I love this song so much I've done a Youtube video of me singing it with the movements. I also plan to do another one with all the verses accompanied by guitar so stay tuned if you like it.

Thank you, Land of the Silver Birch, you have brought me back to music.

Look away now

2009-03-19T01:29:00.004+11:00

I really don't want to blog this but I feel I have to. It is part of the whole story and if it was missed out, this blog wouldn't be a true record. I've got to forget about people reading it. I'm embarrassed because some who read this I know personally. While this post isn't particularly revealing, it is made directly from the void and while it is not a completely accurate record because I cannot get anywhere near close to describing it, it is still from the place and that is embarrassing. I don't know why. Maybe because I can make it all seem normal. I feel like I am hiding something from my friends when I don't talk about it with them but blog about it. If anyone has ever experienced depression you probably know how hard it is to talk about it in real life (and useless, too). So I make this post with a blast of blustery impulsiveness.

Whoa, this is really strange to be watching this from a different angle. It's not that it's any different or anything. It's not any different at all. I'm sitting up really late, blahing out with some sort of empty blockout hole in my brain. Like a lack of care about anything. I feel like I'm watching this emptiness with a hint of disgust and a whole lot of bemusement. I really want to sleep but I just don't care for it. I want to fill the empty space with something but I don't know what. Trying to find something to spark me up, something that ignites something but there is nothing there to ignite. I want that. I want that abandon. I've always wanted it. I wish for it. I want to run so very, very much. Not away, just around. Why can't I? Why am I bound to my emptiness?

This seeing is different. The bemusement wasn't there before.

Feeling...

2009-03-13T21:52:00.005+11:00

Feeling used
Feeling tired
Feeling heavy
Uninspired

Feeling broken
Feeling fixed
Feeling taken
Feeling nix

Feeling gone
Feeling sheer
Feeling little
Feeling near

Feeling prosaic
Feeling brown
Feeling flat
Feeling down

Feeling itchy
Feeling beat
Feeling earth
Beneath my feet

Day five

2009-03-10T23:06:00.001+11:00

It's getting tedious, now. But it's nearly finished!

Freebirth happens here!

2009-02-25T11:11:00.005+11:00

I'm not talking about me, though Bird Boy did come out in the bathroom before the midwife got there...no, I'm talking about our chickens! They are laying eggs!

I almost missed the first one. I was talking to a friend about them being just old enough to lay so we went down to have a squizz. I opened the back of the coop and she looked in the front. I completely missed it but she said casually, 'There it is. A little brown egg!' There it was!

The next day I saw one of the chickens in the hutch and wondered where the other one was—they've been pounced upon by cats before—and so Bird Boy and I looked in the back of the coop, where it's protected and dark. There she was: Birdie-num-num standing a little shakily next to her very first effort! The look in her eye was as if she was saying, 'Crikey! What just happened then?! Squawk!' She looked rather disturbed.

I didn't want to make it worse for her so I didn't take it while she was there. Instead, I closed the back on the coop and waited for the chickens to get back to pecking at the garden before I nabbed it. It was still warm. Bird Boy carried it around all day. Blondie drew a picture of it all.

I've developed a new-found respect for these lovely chickens. I've been thanking them profusely and stroking their soft, shiny feathers. How amazing it is to grow an egg in such a short amount of time and then birth it so gently and so normally and without any fuss! They are truly glorious birthing females and they deserve all our love and respect. Not only do they lay them, we get to eat them! I feel like the luckiest woman on Earth!

And they look after themselves, too. After we found the third egg today, Blondie had a chat to Birdie-num-num and affectionately grabbed her around the neck. She really didn't like that and pecked him on the face (which was the closest part of his body she could see). I've never seen her do that before. Blondie was alright, though became a little wary of her after that.

Then Bird Boy insisted on carrying the egg around and, soon after, dropped it on the back step. There was the most perfectly formed gorgeous little yolk, surrounded by the watery gel, sitting splat on the backstep as if in a frying pan. I had to wash it away in case the chickens ate it—I can't risk them getting a taste of their own egg.

Oh, and we made the first two into scrambled eggs last night (along with some other yummy home-laid eggs someone had given me). There wasn't enough, so true to mother form, and in appreciation of the beautiful bird that gave it to me, I let everyone else eat them. I had a taste and they were scrumptious. More for me later!

Our front yard, day four

2009-02-24T21:02:00.004+11:00

Seriously, this front yard thing is getting depressing. The last two weeks the guy didn't come due to rain the first Saturday and then he had to work for his employer last Saturday. I'm hoping he can make it this Saturday.

Luckily, though, I am only up to day four here, so still a couple more vids to go until we get to day six (the ever-escaping day). Soooo...here it is, day four. It's a long one at more than seven and a half minutes but I can guarantee lots of fun and interest: the truck delivering a second load of stone, the excavator sorting it, the guys starting the third course of the wall while Sebastian watches, Sebastian flying (yes, I said flying), a description of what we plan to do, meeting of Jack the dog, and Sebastian confusing the guys with talk of his flying.

I'm going to encourage Seb to take the asbestos fence down this weekend (I have to dig it out, though, because it's buried a foot and a half under the ground). Once that is done we'll feel like we're getting somewhere!

Death of a friendship

2009-02-21T23:22:00.005+11:00

I'm so sorry I said the wrong thing. I'm so sorry you reacted angrily towards me. I'm so sorry I reacted angrily back to you. I'm so sorry you misinterpreted what I said. I'm so sorry we did this all over email. I'm so sorry you felt unloved and unsupported by me. I'm so sorry I felt unloved and unsupported by you. I'm so sorry you lost your trust in me. I'm so sorry I lost my trust in you. I'm so sorry the trust was so easily lost. I'm so sorry things were irreversibly changed. I'm so sorry I wasn't more generous. I'm so sorry I feel like blaming you.

It doesn't matter how many times I say I am sorry because it can never be taken back. It stands and towers above us and will shine its dirty light on our souls forevermore, even after we've forgotten about it. It can't be fixed, it can't be solved, it can't be gotten over. Even if we happen upon each other again, which is highly unlikely, that chasm will still be there. It will never be sewn up because it can't be. A blight upon our lives. Mistakes we can never take back.

I am so sorry.

We have a two-year-old...

2009-02-18T22:04:00.003+11:00

He turned two about a month ago but OMG he has just entered TWO.

He has discovered he likes to chuck things, hit things, bang things together, jump on anything, climb on anything, grab and pull and rip and shout and run and squeal with delight when he sees he's making an impression.

I am exhausted.

Unimaginable, Inconceivable, Incomprehensible (Part 2)

2009-02-15T22:07:00.004+11:00

This is Part 2 of two parts. Part 1 is here.

I almost completely missed what was happening in Victoria as we got rid of our television about six months ago. Bushfires were burning across the state, homes were burning and people were dying. I only realised what was going on when I came across a thread on a forum of which I am a member. People were expressing their shock and sorrow and a couple of members were recounting terrifying stories about their escape. There was a general outpouring of emotion about what was going on. I read several pages of updates and discussion, but I couldn't connect. I didn't feel sorry, I didn't feel the weight of tragedy. It disturbed me. I didn't even feel anything when I read of an eight-months pregnant woman dying by herself on her property. I felt ultimately divorced from the horrific tragedy of it all. I didn't know the places, I didn't know the people. I just could not imagine it.

The day the fires hit towns in Victoria, an arsonist-lit bushfire burned in bushland about 30kms south of here. There was smoke in the air that day and I was mildly annoyed as I hate the smell of smoke and worry about my sons' lungs when there is smoke in the air. Bird Boy and I are asthmatics. I kept all the doors and windows closed in the house until Sebastian complained of stuffiness and threw them all open in a huff. As it turned out, that very day I was complaining about the yucky smell of smoke, people were dying in their cars and on their properties in Victoria. When I found that out I still didn't connect! Why wasn't I shocked or saddened? Did I need to experience the horror firsthand in order to feel it? Was it because it had since started raining here and we were in the midst of water and mud? How could I not empathise? Why didn't I feel the horror? Where was my concern for my fellow Australians? For my fellow human beings? Why didn't I feel it like everyone else?

So, that very day I was experiencing the inconvenient smell of smoke, people were dying. I went on a search to find images and stories to try to trip my empathy and came up with this image from this page:

People fleeing the fire crashed in the midst of thick smoke. 'Up to' six people died in the crash, seemingly either on impact or in the fire. Who knows...

There was a tiny sense of horror, but really more fascination with the fact that people trying to flee weren't only being hampered by the fire itself but by the lack of vision on the road. I've experienced lack of vision in fog on the freeway and it is partly helped by lights. But in this type of fog no light would have helped. I've looked at that image over and over and I still can't comprehend that those cars would have been filled with people.

I also found this page, a montage of images and stories from the aftermath of the fires. I also spoke to friends and family who had watched the coverage on television. I read lots of articles and stories on the Net. It wasn't getting me anywhere. I still couldn't feel anything.

After watching several ABC current affairs shows online, though, I think I am on the verge of a discovery. I have taken my heart out and examined it this week as I looked at images and stories about the fires. I noticed that they caused a level of shock but didn't really affect my level of empathy for those people. I did notice, however, that my heart skipped a jump as I watched people crying and upset on the ABC news online. I searched for more moving pictures and found myself tearing up a couple of times. Could I finally be developing empathy for the victims of the bushfires? But how? Is it real? Could my empathy be media-induced?

Moving-pictures media coverage was pioneered in the times of the Vietnam War when images and film of war were beamed into the loungerooms of millions of people for the first time. People suddenly saw the horror and destruction of war and rightly demanded their sons and husbands be kept or sent home. Since then we have been much more likely to see what is happening almost firsthand through moving pictures and sound on the spot of whatever disaster/war/happening is going on throughout the world. As the most prominent of examples, we saw film of the the September 11 attacks on New York City and of the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami that hit many parts of Asia and Africa. These are more recent examples, though. I have grown up seeing moving pictures of disasters on the news and current affairs television programs and it has become highly unusual for something major that is happening in the world not to be televised. I would hasten to say that a major happening might not make the news if there is no film of it.

As I start to feel something for those people in Victorian bushfires, I ask: Has my sense of empathy been changed forever by television? Can I not feel for someone without seeing firsthand what they are going through? Do I need to hear the cries of frightened people to feel it is real? Can I only be moved by moving images, my ability to empathise dulled by over-stimulation? To me, this is serious stuff. If what I am saying is true, it's like an organ has been stunted. And if it is stunted, how can I ever get that real sense of empathy back? Did it ever exist? Is it a faux emotion, only feeling like empathy, and not really supported by the significance of my whole being?

So that leads to a major question for me—is this 'empathy', so closely tied to moving images that I am so used to, natural? Maybe human beings aren't meant to know that much about each others' plight? Maybe we are meant to be protected from others' sorrow? Has the advent of television changed the human psyche forever? Well, I guess the answer to that is obvious in so many ways. But if our ability to feel empathy has been increased, is that a good thing? We can help each other if we feel for each other, but on the other hand, would our ability to help each other be hindered by our empathy being scattered over so many tragedies?

For me, all those questions relate to the well-known philosophical riddle that goes, 'If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?' I mean, to me, those bushfires don't exist on a real level. I don't know the areas, I don't know the people, I haven't smelt the smoke (it's about 1000km away from me) or seen the flames. Does me perceiving it suddenly make it real for me? And is that 'real' really 'real', I mean, does the fact that I have seen it on television and not in real life make it not real at all? And therefore, my empathy not real?

I want to laugh, because a part of me is saying, 'Does it matter? Who cares?' Well, I do. I notice these things, I can't ignore them. The fact that I did not start to feel empathy for the people affected by the bushfires until I saw them on moving image is disturbing to me. It matters to me whether stuff is real, because I know for a fact that so much stuff isn't real. I'm constantly trying to sort out real from not real. It's a major theme in my inner life and I feel, always will be.

I saw a collection bucket for the victims of the bushfires at the grocery store today. As soon as I realised what it was I felt tears start to burn at the back of my eyes. I felt so relieved...there was that well-worn empathy I know so well—I'm feeling it. Phew! I now know where to find it if I lose it again.

Unimaginable, Inconceivable, Incomprehensible (Part 1)

2009-02-15T02:42:00.010+11:00

As an Australian, I have grown up around the idea of bushfire. My childhood memories are dotted with knowledge about bushfires and fire safety, and of recollections of bushfires burning somewhere in my homeland. I don't remember a time where I didn't realise the potential for a bushfire, especially in the heat and dry of Summer.

On the Northern Beaches of Sydney, where I grew up, there were fire danger signs on the side of the roads in and out of the area. The needle was carefully placed by some invisible but dedicated hand, to show on any given day how dangerous the weather could potentially be. The options were low, moderate, high, very high and extreme, and I could never remember on which option you weren't allowed to light fires. I'm pretty sure the 'no fires without a permit' sign shown here was only put up in times of fire danger—when I was a child it was a normal thing for people to light fires in their backyards to burn off their garden rubbish and normal for people to light a fire while picnicking or camping, all without any permit whatsoever.

Nowadays the signs are still there but they're digital, probably operated remotely.

It wasn't until January 1994 that I knew of bushfire on a personal level. The Northern Beaches were ringed by fire in the north and west (the eastern side is ocean and the southern side is Sydney Harbour). Bushfire entered our suburbs, places everyone thought were protected from the scourge of heat, flame and smoke. Bushfire raged across our main roads and into houses on the edge of reserves. The freeway and roads north in and out of the city were closed due to fire crossing the road and burning the bush surrounds. There were also fires on the southern side of the city, closing southern roads in and out as well.

I lived in Avalon at the time, near the northern most tip of a peninsula, mostly protected from any bushfire from Ku-ring-gai National Park (the most likely culprit, in the West) by a body of water called Pittwater.

While the fires were burning, for some reason I can't remember I needed to drive home from the western side of Sydney. I drove east along Mona Vale Rd while the fires were raging in Ku-ring-gai to the north. There was a dark, ominous feeling of storm but without the blue-grey clouds and with no hope of rain. Just dusty, brown, still air, hanging with a horrible smell. At a certain lookout point near Terrey Hills, a few people had stopped their cars to watch. I stopped too, and I remember seeing smoke billowing out of the bush to the north but feeling quite safe from it as it was so far away. A few houses in Terrey Hills were lost that year but I had passed through the area by then and never really connected those smoke plumes with loss of property or wildlife.

Back in the relative safety of Palm Beach, near where I lived, I sat on the beach with my boyfriend at the time and looked across Pittwater at Ku-ring-gai burning. The national park bordered the suburbs across there and a few houses were lost in that area. Although I never would have known by looking at the smoke—I couldn't even see flames, just thick, grey smoke spiraling into the sky. It didn't look all that scary.

After the fires were over and the danger had passed, I remember driving along a road called Forest Way and seeing where the bushfire had crossed the median strip. It drove home to me how unprotected from fire greater Sydney really was. Here I was, driving along a main road leading from and to major centres and roads, and nature had intervened to make sure no-one took it for granted. I couldn't really comprehend it, though. Yes, it was obvious fire had passed through and into my city. It was also obvious along a lot of other roads I frequently travelled on. But the real danger of bushfires was still inconceivable to me. As far as I was concerned, bushfire caused destruction of the bush, burnt some houses and inconvenienced a lot of people. But my family and friends and I were safe. I delighted in the beauty of the burnt bush in the following months while it sprouted young leaves in all shades of green. It was magical to see a burnt tree sprouting with young shoots, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Fast forward to the massive fires near Canberra, Australia's capital city, in January 2003. I remember a series of news reports and images and being aware of some personal stories and issues surrounding bushfire management. There was a general feeling of mismanagement and anger at the lack of warning and a lot of people who lost their houses were upset at having been forced to evacuate, in the belief that their houses might have still been standing had they stayed. After those fires, I remember the general advice on whether to evacuate or not changed from 'evacuate early' to 'stay and fight for your home'. There was also a lot of talk of arson, which is usually the cause of urban bushfires and definitely was a factor in the fires near my home in 1994. Often bushfire arsonists are never found which is a terrible thing as there is no-one to blame and no answers as to why it started.

There have been many bushfires in Australia over the nearly 37 years of my life, at least one or two in my general area every season, but many of them don't cause property damage or loss of life. Many bushfires burn unattended in the middle of vast areas of bushland, burning out well before they have a chance to threaten human life or property. So while they are serious enough to watch carefully from afar, they barely rate a passing mention in the news. There aren't many bushfires in the northern part of Australia as it is in the tropics and so in the hottest part of the year it's very wet. In fact, while the current bushfire crisis in Victoria has been going on, parts of Queensland have been in flood and torrential rain. And do you know what? I don't even know which parts...

Which leads me to talk about the current situation. This will be continued in Part 2.

Our front yard, day three

2009-02-08T22:05:00.003+11:00

We've just had day five of our front yard landscaping bypass us and I realised that I haven't posted about day three yet! Here is Seb's video: it includes a burst of giggling from me, some serious panning and grooving from Seb, shots of the just-started wall (of course) and our bare-looking house, a car, a record of what's going behind the wall (which will be found when the wall finally collapses in 3547), some ceremonial smashing, and a fuzzy loudspeaker. Enjoy!

You and me

2009-02-02T21:46:00.007+11:00

Whenever I sneak away from you at night
Your full tummy lying sideways on the family bed
And a wet, milky patch spreading underneath your chubby cheek
I remember that it's one less time I get to breastfeed you
And one less time we have shared that closeness that is so subtle, I can't truly imagine it unless we are in the middle of it...

...and I imagine you growing into a three year old, and a four year old, and a five year old, and on and on until you are in your teens
And I'm watching you start to fly from the nest
And thinking back to this time
When you were so dependent on me
And I on you
And your small indicators of growing
Were so big
And how I could never have imagined you now
As that is in the hands of you and the Universe and my imagination doesn't stretch that far.

Now you have gone out alone many times full of confidence and without a need for me (but with a care for me stored away in your pocket)
And you are full of your own life and eager to move and learn and experience and be in the world...

...and WOW doesn't time fly, you were just this big back then
I can't imagine that anymore
But I do know that you were then what you are now and are now, what you were then
And you will be, on and on into the future
My dreams for you insignificant because you will go where you go
And I can't change that...

...I can only try to connect with you as two separate people stamping their ground upon the world
You, you and me, me
And everybody else the same
That closeness stored away somewhere in our hearts
So quickly fallen into the past but
Still treading ever so lightly on this moment.

Sunflowers and ancestors and humanity

2009-01-28T21:12:00.008+11:00

Our sunflowers are dying. Their short life is over. We planted the seeds, the seeds sprouted, the leaves grew huge, the stems grew as tall as me, then came flower buds out of the top crown of leaves. The flowers opened, turned east to west with the sun for a couple of weeks, and now the plants are folded over on the ground as if they are old and decrepit and ready to go. The other day I picked one up as I was going to pull it out and noticed seeds forming under the hundreds of miniature flowers that make up the centre of the flower. So I broke the flower in two and harvested the seeds while Blondie and Bird Boy watched.

As I was pushing the seeds out of the flower into a bag with the ball of my thumb, I was suddenly washed over with the miraculousness of this world. These seeds were the product of this sunflower in my hand, which had descended from another sunflower seed which was the product of another sunflower, which in turn was the product of another sunflower seed and so on and so on. So this sunflower in my hand was the direct descendant of a sunflower planted thousands of years ago! In that way my sunflowers are intimately and physically and energetically connected with sunflowers that grew so long ago. What was lying in my hand was ancient itself and I felt it!

I told Blondie about what I was feeling and he was amazed too. His face was lit up with wonder and I could see the mirror of his thinking shining in his eyes. He was experiencing the magnitude of the Universe as I was! And he was awfully excited about the 'fluffy stuff' we found under the flower when we ripped it off it's stem. 'Wow, maybe those seeds were made from that fluff, Mum!'

I realised that that link between descendants is tangible, not just some memory or history of them as I was taught in school. That link is there when I plant a seed, when I water the plant, when I watch the plant swing from side to side as the day progresses. That whole existence of thousands of years is encapsulated in my hand when I harvest the seeds. It is truly amazing and quite obvious now I see it!

So, if that's the case with sunflowers, so be it with humans? Of course! Within my ova and within Sebastian's sperm we carry the physicality, the energy, the evolution of millions and millions of people that went before us. We carry the results of every moment of their lives; and so the results of their thoughts, their feelings, their labour, everything they ever experienced. Born and raised, dead and buried, born and raised, dead and buried, like a neverending spiral of light that isn't going up or down, but only through. Joined together by the force of evolution. Minute particles of energy that are making up the story of my egg. They may not be measurable (yet) but they are there. It can't not be true. Everything that anyone before me ever learned is stored in my ova. Everything that they ever said is there too. Everything that they ever thought or felt. Everything that they ever experienced. As big as the universe is, as small the parts of my egg are. And the universe is infinite!

And as I am tangibly connected with my forebears, my descendants will be connected with me. They will carry my experience too, my own evolution. Now a completely new responsibility arises in me. Not a sort of heavy responsibility of darkened load, but a serious, bright, rich responsibility that if I live my life to the utmost of my potential, this potential will be passed through my sons to their children and their children after that. They will feed from my life as I have fed from other's lives before me. They will be born with a little bit of me in them, just as my sons carry a lot of me now. Everything I do, say, think, feel, will be passed on. So I take this knowledge with both hands and get excited about the fact that I am responsible in part for the future of the planet, for the future of humanity—just as those sunflowers move from east to west as the sun moves and create seeds that will live on into infinity.

Fear and breathing

2009-01-22T16:22:00.003+11:00

Three-quarters of the way through painting our largest bedroom, I caught myself holding my breath. You know the type of thing—a fully-loaded brush poised above the wood of the window frame, ready to make a permanent mark that quite possibly could go where I don't want it to go if I don't pay attention. You know the type of thing—hold breath, don't make a mistake.

So, there I was, all my breath on the inside, my body shaking with stationaryness. Then I pull the paintbrush down onto the wood and...make a mistake.

I have experienced rare and fleeting moments when I'm really paying attention, when I am really present to the moment, when I'm really attentive to what I'm doing. I know these moments include the relaxation of my body, a mind that is relaxed and free from negative emotion and chatter and, of course, a sweet and regular breath going in and out. Holding my breath is actually the antithesis of attention.

It brought me to wonder. I've noticed this penchant for holding my breath when I'm about to do something important many times. I know it's unconscious and I know it's unhealthy. Why does it happen? It doesn't take long to find out why when I think about it...it's pretty obvious.

Fear. Ingrown and practised fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of stuffing up. Fear of doing the wrong thing. Fear of getting to the end of a project and having to do it all again. Fear. Fear of feeling wrong, and of my reaction to myself if I find I am wrong. Fear of what others will think.

But why would I automatically hold my breath when I feel fear? And, further, why do I feel fear when I'm about to do something important? I can only guess at this stage. When did I first feel fear? In the spirit of finding out more about this phenomenon I look to my past to try to find what might have caused me to respond like this. If I try to see what it was that brought me to this response maybe I can understand myself better and start to allow myself the space to heal.

When did I first hold my breath as a response to fear?

Possibly at my very first intake of breath—fresh out of my mother's body, finding myself in a stranger's hands, fluorescent lights bursting in my face? Or was it the first time I lay in my cot crying for my mother...crying and crying and crying and getting no response and not being able to express my needs effectively? Or the first time my mother or father shouted at me, frustrated and angry about something that I could not understand? Or perhaps after the first 'good girl' I heard, fearful of not hearing it again? Maybe the first time I looked down from a very high slide in fear of falling off? Or maybe when the television showed something shocking to me, I drew in my breath and stared in horror at what was showing on the screen? Was it the first day of school, a whirlpool of anxiety in my stomach? Was it the first time I got something wrong and the teacher marked a big red cross on my page? Was it the first time I sat by the phone waiting for a boy to ring? The first time I went for a job interview?

Fear has been with me for longer than I can remember. Perhaps it even existed back into my last life, or many lives before. Maybe it is just part of the human condition. Perhaps I had already learned to hold my breath well before I was born into this life?

I feel that it is all of these experiences (and more) together that conspired to create this holding-breath response. In any case, it seems that pondering this question has opened up more questions rather than answers. I will never know when I first held my breath in response to fear. What I do know is that the fear response is ingrained in me and inextricably linked—if there wasn't fear in me, then there wouldn't be the holding of the breath.

It is definitely part of the human condition to respond and adapt to experience. It seems that all I can do is keep trying to see my responses and try to regularly practice the art of being relaxed and attentive. It's an art, I believe, because it is something so simple and always possible but is mostly unavailable in my day-to-day life. Maybe with years of practice behind me, I can start to approach fear from the inward side. Hold that thought, I'm off to meditate.

Our front yard, day two

2009-01-22T14:23:00.004+11:00

Here is Sebastian's second video showing the work on our front yard. There are a few embarrassing shots of me digging (yet again), pics of the trench we dug (we are very proud of our efforts because it was mostly clay soil and really hard going), preparation of the foundation, delivery of the stone and the start of the wall. About two-thirds of the way through there is a bit where Blondie had the camera and did his own talk-through of what was going on (he's learnt from his father LOL). What a cutie.

Our front yard

2009-01-19T20:27:00.006+11:00

We're three days into doing our front yard which feels like a lifetime because it's actually been three weeks. Sebastian's brother, who part-owns a landscaping company, has helped us out by setting us up with a couple of his employees who are working on Saturdays for us, and giving us free use of their big truck and earthmoving equipment. The two employees are really nice guys and working hard to make a new, inhabitable area for us to play in. We've helped by digging the trenches for the wall and supplying a beer at the end of each day. Sebastian will be the labourer once we don't need the truck or the bobcat to deliver stone or dig up the garden.

We bought the place in May last year and haven't ever really been able to use the front or side gardens properly because the front has a hefty slope down from the road and the side is fenced off and feels isolated. So we've gouged a great big semi-circle out of the land and we're going to build a dry-stone rip-rap wall to hold the hill back from collapsing on the flat area we will be playing on. We're also taking out the side fence and then fencing the whole front and side so at last the boys will be able to play out there without me! It's lovely in winter as it faces north and soaks up the sunshine. We are concreting the flat area so the boys can use their wheeled toys and also making a new garden in another area for them to enjoy.

It's so exciting I can hardly contain myself! We were very nervous just before we had the place dug up but now it's on its way we feel like it is the best thing we've ever done. The space looks and feels soooo good and there is so much more room on our tiny property (499sqm). When we finally get the yucky asbestos fence around the side garden down it will feel even bigger.

Here's a video Sebastian put together showing the work on day 1. You'll see how the front garden was beforehand, the bobcat scaring the breastmilk out of me as it comes too close for comfort to my boys, Sebastian being chased by the bobcat, me digging with a mattock (how embarrassing), the old asbestos fence which will soon be taken down and the space that we have created. It doesn't look like much at the moment but will soon (ish). I can't wait!

More videos to come of day 2 and day 3 (Sebastian is working on them—come on Seb!). The wall is coming together slooooooooowly...

Painting + Booba

2009-01-17T12:54:00.003+11:00

So many things to do, so little time...so many things to write but not enough headspace...so I want to keep up by posting this pic of my superb multitasking skills. Here I am painting the window frame while breastfeeding Bird Boy. I was using low toxicity paint and he was in there for about five minutes to stock up on mumma-love while I finished the painting. Yes, I could have stopped to have a breather with him on the lounge but it was about 38 degrees celsius and the paint was drying in about 2 minutes so I couldn't stop without my efforts going gluggy. Hence the booba painting...

We don't live in Paris, you know!

2009-01-09T16:05:00.005+11:00

We live on an S-bend on our road so our property is a bit like a corner block as it has two sides facing the road. This is good in one sense because it has a more open outlook and maximises our garden, especially as we are on a small block. But it also means it's subject to a well-known and awful law, and that law is this: Wherever a corner block falls, dogs may make their daily elimination wherever they smell fit, and owners may pretend it never happened.

Seriously. Have you ever noticed? If you're out walking in a suburban neighbourhood, check it out. On every corner there will be at least one dog poo, whether recent or ancient—watch out! I remember a particular corner in my childhood that used to be on my way to the shops—we even called it 'dog poo corner' in honour of its tendency to harbour at least three dog poos in various places. We used to make sure we walked on the concrete curb when we got to that corner.

It's like these corners are a magnet for poo—why? Is it because they are perfect places for owners and dogs to have a rest, thus elevating the possibility for a dog to have a crap? Is it because a corner is usually a meeting place for two streets, so if a dog poos there he or she is killing two birds with one stone by marking their territory in two streets at once?

I guess the 'why' doesn't matter, really. If your dog does a poo, the law states that you have to pick it up. Simple. But it seems that some people just don't care. I find dog poo on our lawn or on our verge all the time. Before we excavated (the garden is currently a moonscape so there is no lawn to poo on), I swear there was one particular dog who used to run down onto our front garden slope every day and drop its guts. It used to make me seethe. Not because of the dog, but because of the owner. Surely they knew the dog was pooing? It happened every day! For a start, why wasn't their dog on a leash (surely they wouldn't have come into our front garden with the dog and stood by while it pooed)? Secondly, if they noticed their dog had pooed (and this happened every day so surely they would have noticed it even once) why didn't they pop down with a plastic bag and scoop it up? That's what I would have done if it was my dog. Then I would have ensured it didn't happen again. Sure, poo on the verge (and pick it up), that's pretty usual, but poo in someone's garden where their children play and leave it there?!?!

As I said, since the front garden's been excavated I haven't noticed that particular daily poo. However, I was up on the front verge yesterday and spotted another, larger dog's poo! Yuck! I could smell it from a few metres away! It makes me think—perhaps I should put a sign out the front reminding people to take their poo with them. Here are a few potential signs I've been thinking about:

The esteemed title of this post: 'We don't live in Paris, you know!'

Or a more congenial, motivational sign: 'Get your plastic bag ready!'

Or maybe a song blasting out of a little speaker: 'Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, up, up!'

Or a threat, maybe that would be more effective: 'It's the law, you know. We have cameras!'

Or maybe an thoughtful but entertaining poem with a bit of a threat mixed in would get people in the mood:

'You own a pooch
We know it's you
You take it out to have a poo

You let it poo on someone's lawn
Then show the ultimate in scorn
You turn your back and then it's gone...

...from your world. Not ours.

You own a pooch
We know it's you
We also know you don't have a clue.'

Ha. Well. Not sure that one will get people on my side. Perhaps I'd get more poos with that one. Oh well. Must go and think of something more effective than these examples. Or perhaps I should just go with the flow, offer a bowl of water to the dogs, encouraging them to stop on my verge and do their job, and maybe play a game of match the poo with the dog. The kids would like that.

Digging, digging, digging...

2009-01-07T21:29:00.013+11:00

I've been digging trenches. We have excavated our front garden so there is now a flat area and a soon-to-be sandstone dry stone wall. We have to dig the trench for the footing because we don't want to pay someone to do it. The trench is 500mm across and 200mm down and is going to be about 18 metres long. It's mostly clay so pretty hard going.

I've done most of the digging because I complain less. That's no joke, Sebastian comes in from digging and goes on and on and on about how hard it is and how slow it's going and how we're not going to get it done in time (by Saturday). He doesn't like digging at all. But I actually enjoy it. I don't know why, probably because it's something different to what I usually do and while I'm doing it I don't have to deal with kids needing this or wanting that. It's just one job: Hold the mattock up high and let it fall, pull it towards me to dislodge a bit of clay, and lift the mattock up again to let it fall. Then shovel all the clay into a wheelbarrow and dump it in the pile. Then start again a little further along. It's therapeutic, really. Just the same thing, over and over. Meditative. Besides, I'm getting some much-needed exercise!

So, in the cool of the morning or evening, while Sebastian looks after the kids (which he usually misses out on because he works so much—he's on holidays at the moment), I dig the trench. My right elbow's a bit sore, I have several blisters on my hands which are fast turning into calluses and my body's a bit weary, but other than that I feel great.

My whole being is really enjoying it. I feel like I've joined an exclusive but wideranging and massive group of people—trenchdiggers the world over; people who for whatever reason needed to dig a trench. I feel like I'm a member of the club now.

While I was digging today I was thinking about all the millions of people who had dug a trench, but mostly about people who laboured in difficult conditions or had no choice but to dig. I was thinking of the Anzacs digging trenches to protect themselves from gunfire at Gallipoli in World War I; Jewish people being forced to dig their own graves in World War II; prisoners of war being forced to work on the 'railroad of death' in Burma; even Egyptian workers digging trenches for the building of the pyramids. So much has gone on in history that involves digging trenches, and under the most adverse conditions, and though it might sound a bit glib, it's not, it's real—I feel a certain kinship with those people, now that I know what trenchdigging is like. The movement of my body, the particular type of thinking as to where to bring the mattock down next, they must have been through that too.

My mind goes wandering and I wonder about the conditions of their work and I worry about them. I've been doing my digging in the middle of summer, happily in my own frontyard while listening to my children play inside or around me, shovelling their own dirt. What were the circumstances of those people forced to dig? What was the weather like? Was it raining or sunny, or perhaps it was snowing? What were they wearing? Did they ever get to bathe or change their clothes? I've been having two showers a day! Did they get regular drinks of water? Did they get to eat? What did they eat, anyway? Where did they sleep? Did they ever get to contact their loved ones? How was the soil? Did they use a mattock or a shovel, or maybe some other tool? What about the ones who died while they were digging? What happened...or do I really want to know? And did anyone ever get hit by a mattock? That's my worst fear when my children are playing around me—I am being very particular about how close they get to me and have one eye on them all the time when they are outside with me. What about how those trenchdiggers were treated? What were they feeling? Who did they miss? Who did they worry about? Were they resigned to the job or did they fight it every step of the way? Did they, in one way or another, enjoy it in some small way, even just the meditative aspect? If they found it meditative, did it help them process their situation? Did they ever sing while they were digging? What song? Where were their blisters, where did their bodies hurt?

There are so many questions, and no way of knowing the answers. I could research how it was for them in a general way, but what of the personal experiences? I will never know how it was in a more personal sense for all of them, but in the movement of my body when I bring the mattock down, I feel all of them. I honour all of them. I become all of them, and they become me. We dig together and we experience each other. The details become unimportant.

Where the wall's going to be.

Me using the shovel with the mattock resting behind.

Letter to an evicted tree fairy

2009-01-03T22:00:00.006+11:00

Dear Tree Fairy,

I was the person who ordered your home be demolished. I admit, I hated your tree. It stood in the front garden of our house, five metres tall, threatening to grow to 20 or 25 metres and completely overshadow it. Your tree's leaves were thin and spiky and fell on the ground year-round so my children avoided it and wouldn't go near it without shoes on. And it looked like a Christmas tree. I don't want a Christmas tree in my yard. It also blocked the sun in wintertime and our front garden is so lovely in wintertime...

So these are my reasons, and here now, knowing that you have no home, I see that you might think they are excuses. Especially as I am about to apologise.

Sebastian climbed up on his ladder and cut all your tree's branches off. They fell to the ground heavily. As soon as they were all off, the tree looked as if it had lost all its arms. It was a gruesome sight but I did not flinch. This was what I wanted, the demolishing of your tree.

Later, when the kids were otherwise occupied, I gathered my gloves and a hacksaw and started cutting the branches up—cutting your tree's fingers off. Piling them into neat, gatherable piles and tying them together with string. I was like a psychopathic killer, reveling in your tree's injury, enjoying cutting at its skin, your skin, testing what would happen if I ripped it, sometimes being lazy with my hacksaw while it scraped heavily over a large surface. I obsessed about how I should get rid of the body, counting my piles and matching the amount of string I cut, transporting them to the curb in wait of the truck.

Afterwards I surveyed the pile, wondering how so many branches could make such a small heap and congratulating myself on a job well done in minimal time. As I turned to the house to put my hacksaw away, I spotted your trunk. It still stood tall amidst the awful scene, as if a man standing tall against a field of dead soldiers. I moved closer in an attempt to appease you but then I saw it. You were crying. It was bleeding. Tears and blood welled at every cut. I had ordered a most horrific murder and not felt a thing. I saw you there, curled up within this long, skinny trunk, your arms folded up and in against you as if squashed. You were frightened, not only for you but for your tree. I walked inside my house.

This morning the machine came. It dug that trunk out, killing it with you inside it. I can only hope you escaped before the machine lifted it up and dumped it on the back of the truck. I can only hope you will stay around in temporary accommodation until we put another, more suitable tree in there. I promise you will like it. The leaves will be soft and fall to the ground in winter, giving you more sun on your skin just when you need it. It will be small at first but will grow with you.

Maybe you won't like how small it is. Maybe you will think it too soft, after your nest of spikes cradled you for so long. Maybe you will still be angry with me and upset. Maybe there will already be a fairy in the new tree. Maybe you will leave. Maybe that will be better. Yes, maybe it is better that you leave.

But where will you go? Surely there will be something around that is vacant. There are plenty of trees in the reserve...I'm sure I heard a kookaburra today calling out for new tenants. Go and have a look. It's lovely down there.

I wish you much love and peace and hope you find a new home. I'm sorry, to you and your dearly departed tree.

Currawong

Local 'Celebrate Your Body' Day

2008-12-31T22:14:00.007+11:00

I have dubbed today 'Celebrate Your Body' Day. It's just local (at my house and in my mind and body only hehe) and very simply involves me thinking about and loving my body and making a list of the beautiful features, wonders and individualities of it.

Here's why and how I love the gorgeous, comfy home I live within:

My hair is long and thick and curly and shines a reddy colour in certain light. It's great to play with and dreads really easily—hours of fun watching and feeling them form.
My eyebrows are expressive and I can raise one at a time.
My eyelashes are long and thick and bounced back after many years of being accidentally burnt with lighters.
My eyes are a steely blue, reflecting my inner strength...and they work really, really well.
I've got a nice smile which highlights the smile-wrinkles around my eyes and lets my self out most of the time.
My neck is the passage of all good food, wine and air and I am totally besotted by it.
My shoulders are slightly rounded which means I take after my grandmother.
My underarms are lucky that I love hair and don't feel any need to remove it.
My arms are long and really, really familiar. I don't know what I'd do without them.
My hands can do anything...except fix a leaking water pipe (but that's okay because I have a lovely friend who has hands that do that).
My fingers are long, can type really fast and play guitar well enough to enjoy it.
My back is shapely and responds really well to massage.
My boobs are round, pert and make nutritious, life-giving milk. They also respond well to massage.
I've got two great childbearing hips that any loved body can hold onto.
My belly is round and full even when without child and that means it is relaxed.
My uterus is an amazing baby-grower and birther and shines with the moon.
My clitoris sets me free.
My perineum has been ripped and sewn and still holds my insides in.
My buttocks are round and chunky and edible.
My thighs are also round and chunky...and edible.
My knees go up hills really easily but aren't all that fond of going downhill but that's alright because up is the way to go.
My lower legs are hairy and scary.
My feet are beautiful, just beautiful; rough and hard and so strong!
I love how my toenails go really evenly down in size from big toe to little toe, ending in the tiniest toenails ever.
Overall, my body loves balancing, dancing, breastfeeding, cuddling, loving, sitting, slothing, walking, swimming, floating, gardening, birthing, tending to children, lying in bed and eating, of course...oh, and breathing. It loves nothing like a good yawn, an orgasmic sneeze and a satisfying poo.

That's my list. Whoops, now I've made 'Celebrate Your Body' Day international and that may be embarrassing. That's okay, I'm just one in many trillion women who had or have gorgeous, loveable and love-able bodies. What do you love about yours?

This Evening

2008-12-23T20:42:00.005+11:00

Sun is setting
Boys are sleeping
Seb is working
Chooks are snuggling
Crickets are chirruping
Frogs are croaking
Parrots are talking
Heat is hanging
Legs are aching
Mess is sitting while
I am sitting
Computer is helping
Me relaxing
Thinking, imagining, creating, communicating
Breathing deep and stretching
Fingers typing
Keys are clicking
Somewhere dogs are barking
Through the trees some Christmas lights are shining
Yellow, pink, green...and flashing
Distant cars are travelling
Tummy rumbling
Must go eat.

My husband is a robot

2008-12-17T23:31:00.004+11:00

He cleans the kitchen but sometimes he gets stuck in go-slow mode and even goes in reverse sometimes. He also has a fault which causes him to redo some things over and over. I must get him fixed one day!

It's Christmas!

2008-12-10T22:02:00.004+11:00

We do celebrate Christmas in this house even though we don't necessarily identify as Christians. I guess the reasons are that my extended family does and both me and Sebastian love it (and, of course, the kids love it too). Soon I want to celebrate the equinoxes and solstices as well, as I have been meaning to forever—these festivals are, by their very nature, more meaningful to us in a practical sense. We also celebrate the festival of Sebastian's holidays, the next lot starting on 4 January next year. We're soooo excited!

But, for now...Christmas. We have what we call an Australian Christmas tree every year and we put it up last week. Decorating the tree is one of my fondest memories of Christmas when I was a child—my older sister and I getting out the sparkley, beautiful special decorations we hadn't seen all year and wrapping the tinsel around the branches...our Christmas tree was always plastic but special nonetheless. When I became an adult I never really decorated my home at Christmas but after Blondie was born I started wondering how I would celebrate Christmas with my children. I didn't want a plastic tree, I didn't want a cut-down tree, so something else had to be thought up. Sebastian has kept an old stump of a tree for a long time, not knowing what to do with it, so that is now our base. We collect fallen branches from nearby bushland, the idea being that we return the branches to the place we found them after Christmas, honouring the land in returning them.

This is the third year of our Australian Christmas tree and Blondie has already taken over decoration duties. He gets so excited and it's lovely to watch. Bird Boy loves it too but is less interested in placing decorations and more interested in touching the hanging ones and talking about them. He also really enjoyed jumping from the table into my arms. Here are some photos of us doing the tree.

Both boys also loooooooove Christmas lights. We went to see some this afternoon and Blondie exclaimed several times, 'Oh, I'm so excited I can't even think of what to say!' We've even been looking at Christmas lights on Youtube. Here's one where they set up the lights to flash in time with music. It's really entertaining.

We also sing carols. My all-time favourite is Away in a Manger and it turns out it's Blondie's too. I used to use it as a lullaby...

The video's crappy but if you close your eyes and listen it's beautiful. The tune is so gorgeous.

Ah, Christmas. I love it. I can't say anything more.

Motivation and strewing

2008-12-06T21:56:00.011+11:00

Lack of motivation is one of my biggest challenges—I find I am rarely naturally motivated to do anything and I sometimes float from computer to magazine to book in order to avoid doing anything. Motivation is an unnatural state for me. Or maybe it was parented and schooled out of me so long ago that it feels unnatural (more on that in another post!).

So when Blondie was born I was determined not to see him go down the same track. I wanted not to destroy his natural motivation and instead encourage him to be motivated and so I made a lot of parenting decisions that supported his sense of self...like not leaving him to cry, actively listening to his thoughts and feelings, keeping him close to me all the time, giving him breastmilk when he asked for it, using gentle 'discipline' and choosing natural learning for our sons' education. Unfortunately, all these parenting decisions go against what general society dictates and since I was a reader and a good girl who didn't have any of her instincts left intact, I found it hard to follow the decisions I'd made without questioning them incessantly. I mentioned to my counsellor the other day that I didn't feel I was a natural mother and he said that I probably felt like that because I wasn't filled up with all that I wanted to give my children when I was a child and it's hard to give something you don't have already. That makes complete sense to me.

Anyway, it turns out that Blondie tends to flit and dream just like I do. Whether it's something he was born with or something he was given by my mixed-up, first-time parenting, I don't know. Possibly a mixture of both. The difference between us two, though, is that he has a passion. He is very focused and besotted by cars. So in between flits here and there he plays with his matchbox cars, draws cars on the magnadoodle, takes his parents to 'car shops' (car display rooms) and watches Youtube videos about all to do with cars.

I often worry that he doesn't 'do' much. That he would rather sit on our big armchair and stare into space than draw or do craft or do a puzzle or play a game or go outside or any number of things I think he should be doing. If I bring anything directly to him he might be interested for a minute then say, quite adamantly, that he's not interested. He loves to go out and I often wonder if it's to avoid the feeling of having to motivate himself. I often wish my child was like those children often spoken about that go from one activity to the next in the home, amusing themselves for hours on end and bringing themselves to just the activities that we wish them to do. Ha, do they exist?

I found a way of alleviating my fears today. I strewed. I printed out a whole lot of car pictures for him to colour in. When he saw that one of them was from the motion picture, Cars, he immediately went to the computer, looking for better ones. I showed him the site I got it from and he spent a while printing out the pictures he liked. Then he brought them in to the kitchen bench (his other favourite spot to sit) and sat for another while colouring them in very, very precisely (so precisely he only got a fraction of two pictures coloured).

Then, after something to eat, I found him snipping the tops off some old teabags Bird Boy had been playing with, and pouring the contents into a cup of water along with ground ginger, dried herbs and all sorts of spices from the spice cupboard. It was his 'mixture'.

Then he checked on the ice tubs we made yesterday with plastic dinosaurs, cars and crystals embedded in them and spent about an hour excavating three large ice blocks. Bird Boy sat beside him for most of that time excavating his own block which was wonderful in its own right, and I actually got the washing up done. We talked about archeology.

Then Blondie played for a long time pretending he was driving a car, using an old car-driving game with a steering wheel that we've never put batteries in and a take-apart plastic engine for the car's engine. He stopped every so often to fix the engine, using a screwdriver to take certain screws out and then put them back in when he'd inspected what was underneath. He wore special driving goggles as apparently his windscreen had broken.

While I started dinner he went back to the tea bags and started pouring the contents of several bags into a little bowl, drawing pictures with his finger in the tea leaves. I suggested he get a plate in order to make a bigger canvas. He thought that was a good idea so he poured the contents of the bowl plus a few more tea bags onto a plate and started drawing. We went through several letters and numbers together which deeply satisfied my schooled soul. He enjoyed it too.

Here's a block letter 'S' he accidentally drew. Isn't it beautiful?

Then he started drawing cars in the tea leaves which must have inspired him to do a few drawings on his magnadoodle, because that's where he went next.

Then he sat up at the kitchen bench and had dinner, after which he said, 'Hey, we should all go out the back and let the chickens out!' So I took my dinner outside into the garden and ate while watching the boys spray each other and everything else with water spray bottles, the chickens narrowly avoiding a soaking. Blondie even sprayed the burgeoning seed trays.

We even discussed a little bit of Australian history because they were both stealing bites of my lebanese bread roll-up to which I teased them that if they had been in the UK in the 1700s they would have been transported to Australia as convicts for stealing food. Blondie thought that was rather amusing.

We came inside as the sun started to fade and Blondie started his car driving game again, this time crashing every time he took off. I had to be the ambulance (Bird Boy was my offsider) and turn up at the scene to check that he was alright (never a scratch!) and take him back to hospital for a check up...where I pretended to be the doctor who asked him to do several things to check that he was fit, including a couple of difficult, balancing yoga postures which he did beautifully.

Then it was obvious Bird Boy was fading like the sun so we all went to bed.

So...I see that I can indirectly encourage him to motivate himself. Like I can start the ball rolling by giving a tiny poke in the right direction and like a snowball, the energy in him accumulates and he takes off down the slope. I can also see that when I am motivated myself (I was today, mainly because I was worried about how little he does) that he feeds off that and learns to motivate himself. I can't guarantee that every day will be like today (in fact, I'm absolutely sure it won't) but now I have an extra tool in my belt. I can pull it out when I feel like it. I'm getting better at this natural learning gig every day!

One Small Postcard from Depression

2008-12-04T20:11:00.008+11:00

Depression. It's a funny word. It looks like so little but the actual state can encompass so much. It can be a tiny, tiny window through something that is bothering me, like a view through the eye of a needle; it can be a gradual downhill slide into Really-Really-Yucksville; or it can be a massive blow to the head, body and spirit that encircles me for days or weeks.

I hate the word, actually. It doesn't describe anything or even allude to anything, it's just a scrawny label that doctors use to sell drugs. But using it does help me to single out what is going on and not feel guilty about it (which, if I do, only serves to make everything worse). So, I'm depressed, I think. Ah. That makes sense. And then more is possible, and like the Maya Angelou poem says, I rise.

I start to think of things that I would like to change about my life, things that would make me feel better about myself. I would like to play more guitar, sing more, write more, meditate more, exercise more, see or speak with friends more, tidy the house more, do that activity with the kids I've been meaning to do for weeks and so on and so on. At that point in time, that moment when I have realised I am depressed, there is opportunity. Even more than when I am feeling 'even'. I can better myself. I am not that terrible person I thought I was. There is impetus. And it's a motivating force. It moves me. And for that reason at that moment, being 'depressed' is great!

Camera team for hire!

2008-12-01T21:47:00.008+11:00

Sebastian has found a new use for the snazzy camera we have had stored away for about a year and a half now. We bought it just before Bird Boy was born as we wanted to make a documentary about our homebirth journey. We did a lot of filming in the lead-up to his birth, but on the night that he came we didn't get any footage at all except for a grainy couple of minutes of me holding my newborn and beaming with birthy love. Bird Boy came like a flash of lightning—or rather I should say like a comet because he came on the day that Comet McNaught was brightest in our sky.

In between the about-seven massive contractions in the fifteen minutes I was in labour, Sebastian set up the camera in the loungeroom with the microphone in the hallway in order to at least get the sound. I was labouring in the bathroom which neither of us had ever considered happening and at the time we thought the camera wouldn't fit in the area just outside the bathroom. We felt like der-brains afterwards as it could have easily been set up to get at least our movements. Maybe you wouldn't have seen faces but you might have seen a birth! We didn't kick ourselves, though, as at the time our focus was wholly on birthing our babe and it was the most beautiful, incredible experience which I will always cherish.

So the homebirth film didn't get made. But we have this fantastic camera and all the software for editing and one day we will make some sort of film out of our previous filming—Sebastian has suggested a half-homebirth, half-home education film—sounds lovely, hey?

For now, Sebastian and Blondie have got right into stop animation and have been experimenting with the camera and the software we have languishing on our computer. Blondie loves doing it so maybe he will be the first to use our camera for something more serious! Or maybe we can hire ourselves out as a camera crew...except I assure you we wouldn't make your film this psychedelic! Have a look at this latest experiment. Look out for Blondie on a chair (that's the camera remote in his hand) and the seriously silly ending!

Red Ted the Daredevil

2008-11-28T21:05:00.005+11:00

It didn't take long to turn our beloved Red Ted into a daredevil. He was known as an unusually placid teddy who never questioned his lot in life (a permanent dark and dingy bed in the toybox), but when we wanted to test out a parachute in the loungeroom, he thrust his hand up. 'I'm sick of letting life just close its lid over me!' he exclaimed, punching his paw into the air. 'I want to take life in both hands, wring it out, and become the teddy I know I was meant to be!' So, using his new-found resolve, Red Ted let us attach a plastic-bag parachute to his back, hoist him up almost to the ceiling with our homemade pulley system, and release him into the ether using a simple but effective peg-release system.

He was clearly shaking when we started hoisting him up and steeling himself for the fall as he hung in wait for the parachute's release.

When he heard Blondie's 'One, two, three, go!' he emitted a strange squealy, growly sound from the back of his throat and plummeted to the floor, as brave as a teddy can be.

To our horror, he landed on the floor face first and looked like he had expired.

Imagine our relief when he sat up and growled a teddy 'Yahoooooo!' We knew then that he had achieved all he needed in life...but he asked for another go...and another...and another...

Now he's bragging to everybody that he's into extreme sports. I think it's all gone to his head.

P.S. We got the instructions from this site. After a few failed attempts at solo-operation of the peg release system we realised that it works much better when there's a person on either side. Now that's teamwork!

A question of censorship

2008-11-27T04:09:00.014+11:00

Sebastian took the kids to a large shopping centre the other day and Blondie came back beaming, holding a little JB Hi Fi bag with his latest purchase: ZZ Top's Eliminator album. Technically, Sebastian bought it as he had some vouchers from his birthday but he very generously let it become Blondie's first ever own CD. Blondie is a rock fan so it is a most appropriate album for him but he fell in love with it for one reason and for one reason only—a car. On the front cover there is a front-on image of a red hotrod with angel wings. Then the cardboard double album (including the original album and a DVD of videos and onstage stuff) opens up to reveal a double-page spread of the said red hotrod in all its shiny glory. Blondie was seriously excited. He rushed straight into the studio to put the DVD into the Mac because Sebastian had told him that the ZZ Top videos always included that lovely hotrod and Blondie is passionate about cars.

He sat back, deliriously happy, to watch the video of 'Gimme all your Lovin''. I remembered this video from the '80s but didn't remember any details except for the car. I was shocked as I watched it with Blondie. It starts quite innocently with the car broom-brooming towards a petrol station but quickly descends into a den of sexual innuendo with three sex-starved vixen women turning on a young, naive mechanic who, on receiving the very special set of ZZ Top keys from those cool rockers, drives off with the women in the hotrod towards his ultimate liberation...*wink, wink, nod, nod, if you know what I mean*...They drop him back exhausted but deliriously happy, only for him to wake up not long after, still under the car he was working on, to find out it was all a dream...but was it?...

I was half expecting the poor guy to stand up from his repair job under the car and find a big wet patch on his crotch!

Some people might think, well, that's all just a bit of fun. I agree. It's quite an entertaining video. The women are gorgeous and their clothing is colourful, albeit seriously skimpy. The car is ultra-shiny and purrs like a hungry tiger ripping apart a long-awaited meal. The ZZ Top guys are as cool as always. The mechanic is cute. I absolutely love the singer's voice. But I couldn't help wondering what message is this video delivering to my child? These women are portrayed as beautiful man-eaters, whose only value is as sexy things to lust after. Maybe even less valuable than the car. Yes, they are portrayed as strong, but strong in a sexual, dominatrix sort of way. Not strong as we know real strong women to be.

I was worried. Granted, Blondie was only interested in the car, and he replayed it over and over just to hear the car's engine at the start. But I am well aware of how impressions filter through to our subconscious and embed themselves...like tiny seeds implanting themselves in fertile soil, growing slowly but surely underground and above-ground to eventually become tall trees. Those seeds, the impressions, help form well-rooted ideas that we come to fully believe and don't question. Those ideas become simply how we see things and we often believe in them without even realising. I know this because I have managed to trace back certain ideas I have about myself and life in general to impressions that I received when I was a child.

So my quandary is this: That video is the opposite of the way I want my children to see women. It's not even a matter of the actual message of the video being remembered or even being
integrated—more that an idea or feeling of women is being imparted and affecting the developing image my kids have of what a woman is. BUT...Blondie loves it. He loves the music. He loves the car. He loves the guitars.

But, really, which mother would want their young, impressionable son to hear these lyrics from ZZ Top's 'Legs' (copied courtesy of this website). Get ready to vomit:

She's got legs, she knows how to use them.
She never begs, she knows how to choose them.
She's holdin' legs wonderin' how to feel them.
Would you get behind them if you could only find them?
She's my baby, she's my baby,
yeah, it's alright.

She's got hair down to her fanny.
She's kinda jet set, try undo her panties.
Everytime she's dancin' she knows what to do.
Everybody wants to see, to see if she can use it.
She's so fine, she's all mine,
girl, you got it right.

She's got legs, she knows how to use them.
She never begs, she knows how to choose them.
She's got a dime all of the time,
stays out at night movin' through time.
Oh, I want her, sure, I got to have her,
the girl is alright, she's alright.

I hear you. You're saying, well, why did you buy him the CD? That is a very hard question to answer. Yes, if Sebastian had had his thinking cap on, he may not have presented the cover to Blondie...he may have presented something more age appropriate. But now it's been done. Do I keep allowing Blondie to listen to the songs and watch the videos now that I see how sexist and misogynistic they are?

So the easy answer to this situation is not to buy the CD and DVD in the first place, but what about other situations that we don't have that much control over? Like children's television programming, for example. Great for children, eh? Well some of it is, and some of it is entirely questionable. What about Fifi and the Flowertots? There are seriously questionable values in that show—girls whose only aim in life is to dress beautifully and the only male characters are the naughty wasp and stupid slug. Blergh! There are so many other images, songs, television shows and advertisements we are faced with every day that could be seen as misogynistic—and that's just from the image of gender perspective, not including violence and consumerism and all that other stuff parents are faced with making judgment calls on. We don't even have a television and we still have to deal with a whole lot of this muck!

I'm leaving the question open. I don't know the answer. I don't want to hold my kids back by denying them the things they love, but I also don't want to hold them back by letting those sorts of influences guide the way they see and think and believe about certain things.

In this case, I didn't say anything and Blondie has calmed down on the ZZ Top album now. It's been four days and he doesn't even look for it anymore. I think maybe he heard 'Sharp Dressed Man' one too many times and got sick of it. I'm glad I didn't try to take it from him because he would have remembered it as a slight against him and it may have elevated the album in his consciousness. Who knows...it's an overgrown path for every parent and never, ever one that is clearly defined. I'm willing to fly by my pants on this issue...my sensible, stylish, linen culottes, that is.

And, besides, something good came out of it: have a look at this stop animation made by Blondie and Sebastian, with music, of course, by ZZ Top.

Sometimes I drive like I'm the passenger...on a Ferris Wheel!

2008-11-23T20:41:00.017+11:00

Yesterday we went to an indoor play centre with a lovely friend and her gorgeous son. We spent two hours there and the kids had a great time climbing and jumping and sliding and throwing and rolling in great pools of coloured, plastic balls. My friend and I sat and ate bacon and egg rolls and drank coffee in between mothering and trying to hear each other over the screams and cries of a thousand children.

As we left, Bird Boy spotted a hotrod in a glass cabinet and it wasn't until we were out at the car that I realised he was sobbing 'hot rod!' in between great cries and head bangs and body rolls on the asphalt.

I was weighed down with a bit of stuff so I popped the boys' shoes on the roof of the car and my bag on my seat and went back inside with Blondie and Bird Boy to check out the hotrods. We were in there about ten minutes and then back into the car, ready for the long drive home. I strapped the boys in and hopped into my seat quickly to get the air con going before they melted in their seats. But I forgot something. I left the shoes on the roof of the car!

We took off slowly and wound our way through a couple of roundabouts, turning left onto the single-laned main road up through a national park. Bird Boy was very sleepy but grumbly so I sang a few verses of 'Take you riding in my hotrod' as a lullaby. As the 70km an hour zone widened to two lanes and a 90km an hour speed limit, Bird Boy fell into hotrod dreams. I knew exactly when he fell asleep because I had my rear vision mirror trained on him—hey, come on, who wants to sing more verses of 'Take you riding in my hotrod' than is absolutely needed?! After about ten minutes we stopped at a set of lights and I zoned out to my thoughts as I tend to do on a long drive home.

When the light turned green and we started up again, I heard someone shouting and assumed they were having a bad day or maybe road raging. I ignored it and took off pretty fast so I was in front of the pack. About half a kilometre down the road there was a guy selling mangoes on the side of the road so I thought I'd pull over and get a cheap tray. When I pulled in off the road I felt a presence behind me and when I looked in my mirror there were two cars pulled in closely behind. My first thought was, 'Ooh, I hope they aren't the road ragers!', and the second was, 'Gee, everyone wants mangoes, I've set a trend!'

Suddenly there was a knock on the window and there was a boy of about 16 standing there. I immediately assumed he was about to sell me mangoes. I wound down the window with a big, salivery smile. But he wasn't the mango man—he was there to tell me he had been in the car behind me watching my sons' shoes fly off into other cars and onto the bush median strip. I was totally oblivious. I had been driving along consumed in my own thoughts and enjoying the scenery while the shoes and socks, according to the boy and his mother, became rocket grenades, hitting another car and almost causing a major accident. I was so shocked my hand flew to cover my mouth as my jaw dropped in horror.

I got out and went to the car his mother was driving. She said the incident had happened about 200 metres beforehand and they were all over the road and median strip. She said it wasn't worth going back because it was a dangerous road and there was no way I would find them in the bush. She also said she thought the socks were very pretty. Well, that made me feel better!

It was only afterwards that I realised that the car that had pulled in behind the boy and his mother had been sitting coldly silent, perhaps waiting for me to approach them and offer an apology. Maybe they were the car involved in the shoe bombing. At the time I still assumed they wanted mangoes. Ah, nothing like mangoes to keep you innocent!

Getting back into the car with my $15 tray, I found Blondie devastated. I had no choice but to go back for the shoes. We had spent weeks finding the right shoes for him and he had only just got used to wearing them and now they were gone, possibly forever. They were black Dunlop Volleys and one was painted by Blondie to look like a hotrod. Bird Boy's shoes were hand-me-downs, and although very nice, he had a few more at home. Blondie had none. He usually hates shoes and these were his only pair.

So we chucked a U-ey and went back about a kilometre, determined to find something. We drove slowly in the curbside-lane trying to spot anything that looked remotely shoe-ey or sock-ey. It took us a few minutes before a dark shape revealed itself on the road ahead—one of Blondie's black Volleys, the hot rod one, no less! It was sitting forlornly on the lane marker line, narrowly avoiding being run over by cars whizzing alongside at 90km an hour. What a terrible shoe-death that would have been...

After I pulled over and picked it up we drove on a bit more and suddenly there was the other one, lying on its side on the shoulder, obviously feeling a little pooped for the adventure.

So now I had both of Blondie's shoes. But you know the funny thing? There was no sign at all of those pretty socks and Bird Boy's shoes. The only items we found were Blondie's shoes. Perhaps my rendition of 'Take you riding in my hotrod' had calmed the hotrod gods and they arranged for the safe return of Blondie's shoes. I guess we'll never know...

Here is a photo of the Volleys, home at last and surrounded by family. They are being comforted by new socks and telling (exaggerated) stories about their amazing adventure.

Random Intimate Momentary Connections

2008-11-22T21:07:00.008+11:00

It's a bit of a mouthful, I know. But it is the only way, I feel, to describe this interaction:

My sons attend a facilitated playgroup once a week, headed by a male teacher we all love. He has a really respectful way with the children and always shakes hands with everybody as people arrive.

The other day he went to shake hands with Bird Boy, who was in my arms, his hand buried in my hair as it often is. As the teacher stuck his hand out and said hello, Bird Boy pulled his hand out of my hair and shook hands. All very normal, until I noticed something altogether unusual had happened. As their hands moved away from one another, I spotted, hanging from the teacher's hand, a single strand of my curly, foot-long hair, entangled in his fingers, obviously picked up from Bird Boy's hand as he shook it.

My first reaction was to be embarrassed. There was a piece of me hanging from his hand. That hair was an intimate part of me, it had been privy to everything in my life for a very long time. It had witnessed love and sex, birth and breastfeeding, insomnia and sleep, even death of a loved one, and given comfort to my sons and comfort to me in awful sorrows. It was not only a physical part of me, but a symbol of me, a part of the image of myself as most people's hair is. But I managed to cover my embarrassment, reaching to extract the hair from his hand, mumbling something lightly like, 'Oh, you have one of my hairs on your hand.' So followed another moment where I took the hair off his hand, feeling like I was tending to him; feeling a bit like I was putting sunscreen on his back or picking bugs out of his fur like chimpanzees do. From the outside it may have seemed like an unremarkable moment, and we all carried on as normal as soon as it was over.

Afterwards, though, I couldn't get it out of my head. That incident points to a subject that is fascinating to me—the knowledge that there are billions of people in the world, all living their life and totally involved in it and that I have absolutely no knowledge or experience of it. I walk along the street and get freaked out that a person I pass is living a life that is so similar to mine but at the same time so separate to mine. That I have absolutely no window into their lives, no way of seeing what is going on in their brain (though it is right there in front of me), no way of seeing what is happening in their life, no way of feeling their emotions. And they have no way of seeing or feeling mine. I find it really disturbing that this person and I are so intimately connected (through our humanity and connection with this Earth) with no way of expressing that connection unless we go outside of societal boundaries. Even friends and family, though closer in connection, are still a vast distance away (compare it to the distance from a stranger and it is sort of like the difference in distance between the Earth and the Sun and the Earth and another star).

All of me was stored in that one hair, and my sons' teacher held it in his hand! He had a window into my life, there in his hand (and he most likely hadn't even noticed)!. Boof! A realisation hit me. This was a chance intimate connection with someone I barely knew! I've called it a Random Intimate Momentary Connection, because that's just what it was.

So, I've decided to celebrate and relish future Random Intimate Momentary Connections. I will see them as windows connecting my life with others' lives, something I yearn for so much. I will be looking out for them in the future. Next time I open my wallet I might make sure the person next to me gets a glance at a photo of my chickens (not so random though); I will take the opportunity to have a secret look over a train traveller's shoulder to get a glimpse of what they are reading; I won't move my foot when a person accidentally kicks it under the table; I will try to stay present to the uncomfortable moment when an intake of air catches in my throat as I speak, accidentally conveying a carefully concealed nervousness or embarrassment; and smile inwardly in the moment when I realise I have been unknowingly carrying on with my solitary business under the casual gaze of another. There are millions of other possible connections, most of which I could not even conceive.

I just want to recognise these moments really, and celebrate them in myself. I wouldn't have changed my reaction in the hair moment. I am just happy that I recognised it. That is enough.

We've been here for six months

2008-11-20T20:44:00.018+11:00

We've been here for six months now. It seems so long. It's the difference between coming into winter season and coming into summer season and the whole place is accordingly opposite. When we moved in, the south-facing backyard was in perpetual shadow but now it is bright and sunny with a shady backstep to hide out of the way of the beaming sunbeams.

I'm considering hanging a hammock in between the fig tree (which was bare when we arrived and now seems fluffy with new light-green growth) and the bottlebrush (which is now looking alive rather than dead as it was). The area near those trees has turned out to be a little fairy haven and they're calling to me to lie down with them.

The vege garden isn't overgrown like it was and we have some things in and more to come.

The front garden is hot, hot, hot, so isn't a fantastic place to go in the middle of the day. But it was such a warm, snuggly place in the middle of the winter days, and still good in late afternoon at this time of year.

In the mornings, the sun shines in the east-facing dining room window now, prompting me to keep the blinds drawn most of the morning. It's a long way from when we used to defrost on the loungeroom floor in the northern sun on cold, frosty winter mornings.

And today, I saw my first storm light. You know, that spectacular light in the afternoon when the blue clouds of a storm cover most of the sky but the sun is still shining in the west...where the white light from the sun meets the moisture in the air and seems to hang there in front of your eyes...where the air takes on a sort of blue-grey colour which makes all other colours around intense...It is surely my favourite colour of all! I took some pictures of it. It's really hard to show the colour as it actually is, though. Not with an amateur camera, anyway.

The view of the storm moving north from our front porch.

A rock orchard in our front garden.

The reserve out the window behind our computer. The closest Eucalyptus tree has some sort of a weeping wound halfway up the trunk. I think this is common for Eucalypts...I've seen galahs checking it out for a home but it's not quite right yet. Maybe in a few more years they will come to live and we can watch as they raise babies.

So...we've been here for six months. The time difference between a foetus and a newborn, and the difference between that newborn and an almost crawling, grabbing, chortling, babbling baby. A lifetime. The time difference between our belief that we would rent forever and our excited offer to buy this house. And it's the difference between our relatively relaxed life and almost too much responsibility to handle. But more on that later...

Meet the family

2008-11-19T13:24:00.016+11:00

Here I am, Currawong, starting off a journal for everyone to see. Who would have thought? It's great, though, I'm looking forward to writing regularly and not giving a damn about what people think of me. And writing about things that are on my mind and regular daily stuff that I do with my kids and husband.

We are two adults and two children, four of the trillions of paths drawn through humanity throughout the history of this ball of ash. We are a homeschooling family (reasons why I will cover in another post) and live somewhere near the coast in Eastern Australia. I hope to bring lots about our environment and what we are doing day to day.

One thing that sets me apart from some people and brings me closer to others is that sometimes I suffer from depression. I hope to post a bit about the feelings and experiences of being depressed as I find it very healing to talk about it and I'm sick of pretending it doesn't exist.

Here's a pic of me and our chickens when they were very young.

One is called Birdie Num Num and the other is Little, both named by our son, Blondie, who is in the next pic communing most probably with Birdie Num Num because she is his favourite.

The birds are much loved by us all - they are our first pets since before Blondie was born, as we were always renting and never felt good bringing a pet into our house when we wouldn't know whether we were moving the next month or not. Now we have bought a house and we can finally settle in so the chicks have settled in too! My husband, Sebastian, aka The Balloon Man, loves them more than I expected him to.

Sebastian regularly changes his look via facial hair and different haircuts and headwear so expect to see some wild pics of him.

Then there's Bird Boy, thus named not because of his ability with birds, but his ability to tweet, tweet, tweet.

So...that's us. I hope you join us for the ride.