Hump Day Happiness

Dear Wednesday… where have you been? It feels like it should be Friday already. As the end of term three creeps closer, and the lurgies bite, as Winter seems like it may never end (although it almost has) the days begin to drag. But, the top of the hill is here, it’s a short ride to the bottom and the weekend… I can all but hear the collective sigh at that thought…

So, on we go then with this weeks hump day happiness… the  time of the week we reflect on what has made us happy the past seven days.

This week I only have one happy.  It’s a good one I promise. You see, I have been waiting for this day for just under nine months.  I knew it was coming… I have felt feet kicking through a tummy wall… I have kissed a blossoming belly… and I have laughed, and talked, and wished… but yesterday I got the good news… You see my darling friends welcomed a new member to their family. I have written of this family once before, and the loss of their precious Layla.  Their big boy has a baby brother… I am an auntie again, and the joy I feel can only be described as love for my friends and their sons.  So, that you see is more than enough for me this week.  Now, I’m off to sort out flights to wrap my arms around all four of them.

So, that’s all the happy I need this week.  Because right now, all is love at my house.

Now over to you… what has made you happy this week?

Happy Hump Day!  And welcome to the world little one, you are loved beyond words xxx

N xxx

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Tags: freindship, hump day, the family that was made, wrapped in love

The rattle of the empty nest

Earlier this week the Blue Eyed Boy went on school camp.  Hubby and the Green Eyed Girl were there to wave him off on the bus while I was at work.  I collected the Green Eyed Girl from school at the end of the day and home we went.

On returning home from school there is a flurry of activity, daily chores to be done, afternoon tea to be devoured, homework, screen time.  Apart from the natter of how was your day and newsletter reading, permission form filling in, and some homework checking, I have been made redundant in this. Over the past year there has been quite a shift in our home dynamic.  The kids have done a lot of growing up.  Suddenly the independence and autonomy I had been working towards and sometimes yearning for is here… and as much as I like it, with one child away there was a definite lack of clatter and chat.

The Green Eyed Girl was happily cocooned in head phones and email messaging to a school friend.  Tea was sorted. Hubby was working in the cupboard office.  As I walked through the kitchen, I had a sudden thought… which I could almost hear pinging off the walls in the oh so quiet house.  This is what it’s going to be like when the kids leave home… this rattle and quiet and jobs done…I stopped.  I shoved the thought back.  I wasn’t ready for it to be a real thought.

Oh, I have plenty of days when I mutter away about please for the love of Pete when will they leave home? But when given a taste (and I know it was a very tiny taste) I am just not sure I’ll be as pleased as I joke I will be.  For the first time in eleven years I am aware of a new stage in mothering.  The stage where mother bird doesn’t need to be there… the stage when the baby birds have left the nest.

I know this is the way it’s meant to be.  I have carefully lengthened and loosened the ties.  I know I want independent children who challenge and problem solve and make their own way, even if it is not my way. And I know for sure that the empty nest is still a long, long way off.  But this week I have had a glimmer of what that may be like.  Perhaps when the time comes I will be a little more prepared.

But I’ll tell you one thing… I sure was happy when the house was full again.

Tags: blue eyed boy, children, green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love

A moment in time.

As I stood on the escalator going down I looked at the girl in front of me. Tall, thin, confident.  She looked back and smiled, and I fell in love all over again.

How could this person I looked at be the babe I bore? How did she get to be this grown?

Stepping off the escalator we walked side by side towards our store of choice.

“Do you want to hold my hand?” I asked.

“Nope, I’m right,” came the reply, without a hint of regret.

I knew this was one of those moments in time that I needed to remember.  I wanted to freeze frame it as my heart clenched.  I rummaged through my bag to get my iPhone, thinking if I slowed my pace I could take a photo of her from the back… but she slowed to match my speed.  I knew that I couldn’t ask her to walk ahead, the self conscious would take over and the photo would be a lie.  So I put my phone away.

I know this is a fragment in time. I know that the path is not always like this.  I know there is door slamming, and I hate you! Clashing and  worry. Anger, hers and mine.

But this moment is none of that.  She may not want to hold my hand, but she still wants to walk beside me.  For now, that will do.

Tags: green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love

Ritual

I have read a few blogs on ritual and comfort this week, like Jane’s and Melissa’s and it got me thinking about my own.

Wellbeing has been playing on my mind lately, as can be seen in my ramblings on roller coasters and the small happy. For me, ritual means a number of things, comfort, familiarity, belonging… a sense that all is right with the world.  It can be hard to find that sense somedays.  Work, family, house hold tasks can all sometimes pile up, in the case of the washing that needs folding, quite literally.

This, then is a good reason to have a few rituals that help make the mundane less so… for me the washing folding takes place after the kids are home from school.  This started before either the Green Eyed Girl or the Blue Eyed Boy were even approaching school age.  When they were both down for an afternoon sleep, I would try to make sure I sat with a cup of tea, a book, a cooking magazine, the tv… just some time out for myself.  Upon their waking, as they shook the last remnants of sleep and began rummaging for food I’d begin to fold the washing. It stuck.  Now days though I am lucky enough to have two people old enough to help with the washing folding, so things go a lot faster.

I have other rituals too, and these are the ones I really want to talk about.  Not the ones that have to be done… but the ones I want to do.

Tea is one such ritual.  Most afternoons as I come in the door I like to dump my work basket and put the kettle on.  While I wait for it to boil I place an earl grey tea bag in my favourite cup, add a spoon of sugar and sit at the kitchen table.  Once the kettle has boiled I pour, stir and let it brew.   There is something almost meditative about  the way I do this.  Every part of the process the same, every day, done with a sense of easing calm.  Once the tea has brewed I add just a dash of milk and give it a final stir before sitting at the table again.  I might browse through a magazine, chat to the kids, read the school newsletter, even tweet on my phone, but it’s still time out, a chance to catch my breath after the day.

Something else I like to do when I’m pottering about the house is light incense.  It fills the house with a wonderfully sweet, earthy smell… one that makes me think of my sisters and my mum.  When we move to a new home, the first thing I do is light nag champa day and night until the home is ours.  I guess it’s my smudging ceremony.  On days that I am home, I light one after the other… and when I go into my sisters or my parents homes, they have that same scent welcoming me back.

Rituals like these are small, and although I said they don’t need to be done, I think perhaps they do.  It’s the little things like this that can make a day, give you a sense of comfort, of happiness, of lightness and wellbeing.  For me, that’s what the ritual is for… so I’m placing mine in the must do pile.

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Tags: house work, ritual, wellbeing, wrapped in love

Goodbyes, god and a place called home.

I prided myself on the fact that I was a cut the cord kind of girl. That I could move on, leave behind, not look back. Fool. More to the point, Liar. (Yes, I just called myself a liar.)

While I am able to move on, and while I have in the course of my life moved a lot, I have learnt that saying goodbye and cutting the cord entirely are very different things indeed.  I think I used to say I was a cut the cord kind of girl as a form of self defence. I had, after all, learnt that for some people out of sight is out of mind.

But goodbyes are more than just the thing we say when we leave a friend’s house. More than just a word we use when we shut the door on one house and look towards a new one. While some goodbyes are a see you soon, some are forever.

But are they?  Are they really forever? Just because we say goodbye and move forward, just because we may never see a certain place ever again, is it really gone? Do we really wipe it from our mind and memory forever? Do we… perhaps I should say, do I.
And, while I’m talking goodbyes, lets change place to person. What about when we see a person for the last time… what then? I know for a certainty that I do not want to be a cut the cord girl then. Not usually.

Years ago when I attended my paternal grandfather’s funeral, my maternal grandfather, Pa, took my hand as we walked back up the aisle, and said to me, ‘Love, we all go in the end. Don’t be sad, life’s been good to me.’ (or words to that effect).  He was my Pa, I unashamedly worshiped him… I was 14. Within a year Pa too was dead. I did not attend the funeral, but he had said goodbye to me already so that was enough.

So, what am I trying to get at here, what am I trying to say?  Well… I’m not all that sure I know myself.  Goodbyes can be hard, I know that. They can be devastating.  Lets face it.  Last goodbyes can be ladened with grief, sorrow, regrets, remorse.  But perhaps they don’t need to be.  Perhaps a last goodbye can be a beginning…

A beginning of memory in which love and comfort reign.  A beginning of keeping alive the spirit.  Perhaps, for me, this is where God is… a god of small things, a god of love, a god of keepsakes.  As for home, well, for all it’s cliché, it is, after all, where the heart is.  So perhaps home is in the beginnings that a goodbye brings.  Perhaps home is opening the door to the  god of memory and saying ‘come in, pull up a pew, I’ll put the kettle on…’

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Tags: cutting the cord, god of small things, goodbyes, wrapped in love

The family that was made.

I have been struggling a bit with writing lately.  The words are muffled in my head and not coming out right.  So I trawled through my drafts and found this… I had forgotten to publish it.  It’s from earlier this month when I was home In Tassie… It made me smile, it made me remember sometimes all you need is friends, family and time…  so here it is.

Yesterday was one of those days you just can not plan.  It was a cool, but sunny Tassie day and I headed with The Green Eyed Girl and The Blue Eyed Boy to BestPam’s home.

We decided to walk down to the beach for a bit of fresh air.  About three blissful hours later we walked home, with four soggy, sandy kids.  It was one of those days that just happen, no money was spent, no need to seek out some over priced, over hyped amusement, we had each other, the roar of the waves, and sunshine.

Sometimes I think we can forget about these simple pleasures as we chase the tarnished rainbow of adventure parks and new movies.  Sometimes I think we forget all we need is our family… and by family I mean this and  this and this.

Sometimes all we need is people who know us and love us, and a chance to chat, and laugh, and cry, and talk about what is really on our minds… or not. This particular week in July is one our family that was made all remember for a range of reasons.  Reasons involving joy, and love, and loss and grief.  It is a week filled with tears and laughter and remembering.  It is a week filled with love.  So, thank you my Family that was made.

Tags: Best Pam, freindship, wrapped in love

The unwritten post

Sometimes words don’t come. Sometimes I can spend a day with a million thoughts in my head but none come out as I want them. Sometimes the words are there, but just not ready to be written.  Sometimes the words are written, but I’m not ready to publish them.  This is true for a lot of the things I am writing at the moment.

So, instead of dwelling on that, and thinking what I can not write, or writing what I will not publish, I’ll borrow from my Dad.

Some people measure their wealth in monetary terms.  For them success is directly related to the dollar, the elegantly understated car, the house, the holidays.   Whether by luck or good fortune, my family didn’t have the option to measure wealth in this way.  But we are all rich none the less.

In just these past seven days the wealth of our family has been evident… it’s in the watching of a grandfather teaching a grandson how to cast perfectly with a fly rod… it’s in the loud arguing and laughter late into the night … it’s in standing on the edge of a frozen lagoon, dad, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, pointing out the nesting black swans and rolling stones across the frozen surface listening to the ping as the sound travels through the ice to the sluggish water below.

It’s in the knowing that we are loved as we are, unconditionally, and that sometimes, pictures speak more than words…

Ladies Walk, Penstock Lagoon, Tasmania.

Tags: wrapped in love

Five Birds

I have five birds tattooed on my right back shoulder.  They are small, and black.  I love them, they are my constant companions, and even when I can not see them, I know they are there.

Birds are a constant in my family’s life.  As are the nests they make and the feathers that clothe them.  There are a range of reasons for this, some easy to pin point, others less so.  In my house are feathers gathered along the way, on walks, in the garden, from holidays, day trips… Some I have even wrapped in bubble wrap and carefully packed in moving boxes. Some have been sent to me by friends with notes like, I saw this and thought of you…

I have nests too.  The Blue Eyed Boy made a nest from pine needles and brown fern fronds in Kinder.  Two years later The Green Eyed Girl made one from wire, collaged green leaves, and a black feather.  They both adorn the thin white mantle piece in the kitchen.  In a small, round pottery bowl I have a nest that had been left empty, and blown by the wind from a tall tree fern at our old home.  It is made from the tufts of soft brown downy fern that protect the newly forming fronds as they wait to unfurl, stray fluff from our old dog and a piece of pink insulation from renovating.

When we moved interstate, The Green Eyed Girl and The Blue Eyed Boy received parcels from my parents… two small white boxes with gold ribbon. Inside, two disused nests from their land… one made with sheep wool, fern and twig, one from horse hair and wool… we have them still. With the nests came a card for each child, talking about the nests and the birds, and how each year they make a new home, a home different than the last, but a home none the less.

There is a quote often bandied around when my family all get together at one of our homes, or the family shack… when the talk has been incessant, voices raised and full of laughter and wine and beer… a quote from a story that became a movie… and while the story itself is semi-autobiographical, parts of it could well have been my family.

In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing…  goes the line from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.  It goes on to say… our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies…

Apart from the fact that I have two sisters, not a brother… and that Dad was an Anglican Priest, pretty much the opening lines of the story belong to us.  My Dad is a fly fisherman who ties his own flies.  Much of our younger lives were lived between the church and the family station wagon that drove us all to rivers, lakes, holidays where Dad could fish and we could follow…  the soft lap, lap, lap, of water on the edge of a lake, coupled with the long flick of fishing line as it cuts through the still air, once, twice, three times, before it is released to gently, silently, fall across the water towards a rise spotted through polarised lens…a linear ripple breaking the surface tension…  then the almost undetectable slow pulling in of the line, as a fly, made of feather, or fur, and thread, mimics the nymph, or the may fly… or other insect that is on the waters surface at that particular time of day.

I can spot a trout rising to the surface of a lake or river. I know how to walk with quiet calm movements, almost silently so as to make no detectable sign on land that a trout may detect.   I can stick a tied fly on a hook in the end of my thumb to better admire it’s beauty.  As a child I loved to peek into my Dad’s blue metal compartment drawers, full of feather, fishing line, nail clippers, scissors, waxes, threads…  I wasn’t really meant to be looking in it.  Then there was the time I helped Dad untangle his fishing line.

Throughout my life, whether I be child, brooding teen, uni student, young wife, mother, part of our family is centred around the blue metal drawers and its contents.  Contents that have now grown to fill a whole bench in The Shack, feathers a big part of that bench.

Part of our family is also centred around our family home.  For us, this is not the place we were brought from the hospital to… nor the place we spent our childhood in… we have lived in a number of towns and houses over the years.  Some of them were homes, some were holding patterns.  But to us, home is where we all are.  It is where the blue tin compartment drawers and their contents are.  It is where the hooks and the feathers are.

Our family make new nests, we construct, build, preen… then sometimes with the wind, move on again and build a new nest.  On my back I carry part of that home as five birds in flight… home may be where the heart is, but for me, it’s where the battered blue compartment drawers and feathers are.

Tags: history, tattoo, wrapped in love

A glance…

This morning I tweeted this…

It is a moment I will always remember.

Today as I dropped the kids at school 11yo son glanced back at me & smiled a goodbye.  In that smile I caught a glimpse of the man he will be.  It stopped my heart, just for a moment.

Sometimes I wish I could bottle these moments…

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Tags: blue eyed boy, twitter, wrapped in love

Hump Day Happiness

Wednesday seemed like it would never get here this week… but here it is! Thank you for showing up this week Wednesday, much appreciated.

It has been a funny week. Starting woefully, but steadily getting better, and that’s how some weeks go isn’t it? This week I was reminded that it’s OK to have a crap day or two, and it’s OK to let it wash over you. I was also reminded that we need to be gentle to ourselves… thanks.

So, this week, it’s the things that I am thankful for as well as those that made me smile.

My Hubby, for treating me kindly, and with humour and patience.

My lovely friend who I shared an afternoon wine and chat with while our lovely children played around us.

My friends and family IRL on on line.  You made me smile again… thank you all.

So, what made you happy? What are you thankful for? I’d love to know… and for the lovely bloggers, I have a linky below, so you can share the Hump Day Happiness.

Have a great rest of the week everyone, be gentle to yourself and those around you  xxx

What made you happy this week?

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Tags: freindship, hump day, wrapped in love