I've just been reading my beautiful friends post over at www.zactom.blogspot.com
It got me thinking a lot about the subtle choices that curve our paths and shape our lives. And also about the bumps and dips that we don't see coming that can throw us into a tail spin or send us sky high. As Welshy likes to say "Life is not a straight line."
My mother in law was a card giver. A letter writer, the gifter of books and at every opportunity, the sender of a greeting card. I have kept most of the cards she gave me. Everything from "I won't say congratulations because L is the one who should be congratulated on being engaged to you, but I will say best wishes" to birthday cards written in her broad and curly writing-always in black, felt tip pen.
In February 2009, I went to Europe for a month. I needed a break between full time work and embarking on full time study. As per usual, I got a card in the mail a few days before I left. "Bon Voyage!" It declared in black felt tip. "All the best on your holiday and when you come home, you will start a brand new journey and you have my love and best wishes for that too." She was, of course, referring to me returning to study. I think.
So i went to Europe, traipsed about, had a fantastic time if truth be told. I got back to Melbourne and had 6 days of jet lag and classes. On Sunday night, the phone rang, my mother in law was dead. She'd suicided. And a new journey had indeed started. But a completely different one to the one i had envisioned.
Fast forward to my last class of that course. Having painted my way through grief and sketched a new life outside of my marriage, I was single, at the end of a journey And SO ready for a new adventure. I assumed that I'd get a fabulous job, save the world, bite off more than I could chew. The next day I put on a pretty dress and went to a friends party. I told everyone how i had finished school, how crazy the last two years had been. I shared a beer with my ex husband and danced to this stupid song that seems to follow me around like a puppy. And then I met this gorgeous Welsh guy with bad manners and unusual eyes. I gave him my phone number and woke up the following day wondering if my qualification would be recognised in the UK. 6 months later I sat in his parents farm house in the middle of rural Wales and ate cake. Pregnant with their grandchild. Talking about sheep.
Once again, the adventure I was gearing up to, morphed into a surprise, life changing, beautiful, scary journey of epic proportions.
We have this one tiny life. A limited amount of forks to confuse us. A line of a certain length to lead us through the thick and the thin of it. We might not be able to choose our own adventures, but I am so glad that mine chose me.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
zzzzzzzzzzz
So...I thought the not sleeping part came after the part we will not mention. (You know the one..."what's that puddle...give me drugs...this is barbaric.....wah, wah, wah...let's never do this again.")
But I am still 13 weeks from my due date and I am having such trouble sleeping. Welsh and I have been together less than a year. Is that too soon to sleep in separate beds? Before little mini me was in town, we could have slept in a single bed that Welsh picked up from the side of the road. In fact, we did sleep in a single bed that Welsh picked up from the side of the road. And it had a great big lump in the middle of it. Oh the joys of falling in love with a back packer.
We'd just cosy up and cuddle all night and wake up after a few hours sleep refreshed and ready for the day.
These days, the only way Welsh can spoon me is if he also spoons my human sized sausage pillow as well. And if i spoon him, he complains that my stomach is too hot. Then there is the getting up at least twice a night to visit the bathroom. Then being kicked constantly and gasping loud enough to stir Welsh who then strokes the pillow to calm it down. More than once I have given up and gotten up, only to return a few hours later to find Welsh cuddled up to the pillow with no knowledge that I have left the bed. Our legs always seem to get tangled, my hair gets in his mouth and when his alarm goes off I thank goodness that the night is over.
We plan on having the baby sleep in our bedroom for the first six months. I mean why not?
But I am still 13 weeks from my due date and I am having such trouble sleeping. Welsh and I have been together less than a year. Is that too soon to sleep in separate beds? Before little mini me was in town, we could have slept in a single bed that Welsh picked up from the side of the road. In fact, we did sleep in a single bed that Welsh picked up from the side of the road. And it had a great big lump in the middle of it. Oh the joys of falling in love with a back packer.
We'd just cosy up and cuddle all night and wake up after a few hours sleep refreshed and ready for the day.
These days, the only way Welsh can spoon me is if he also spoons my human sized sausage pillow as well. And if i spoon him, he complains that my stomach is too hot. Then there is the getting up at least twice a night to visit the bathroom. Then being kicked constantly and gasping loud enough to stir Welsh who then strokes the pillow to calm it down. More than once I have given up and gotten up, only to return a few hours later to find Welsh cuddled up to the pillow with no knowledge that I have left the bed. Our legs always seem to get tangled, my hair gets in his mouth and when his alarm goes off I thank goodness that the night is over.
We plan on having the baby sleep in our bedroom for the first six months. I mean why not?
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The idea of family.
Before i start this post, let me just put in a disclaimer that i am 6 months pregnant and for an already emotionally motivated woman, that equals close to cuckoo. These hormones have me screaming at the TV (footage abut the recent UK riots and the absolute lack of empathy shown by both the perpetrators and the public makes me want to hide in a cave) crying at the drop of the hat and lauging so much that my already stressed out stomach muscles threaten to pack it in. The other thing is that I feel love INTENSELY. C to the Rrazy.
Anyway.
Ohhh i feel like the energy it took to put together that first paragraph has worn me out. Do all pregnant people feel like this? How do people work? I struggle to finish a sentence most of the time. I really do. i sometimes have to tell Welshy to shut up so I can close my eyes and think of the word I am trying to find. Sometimes I just give up and say things like "What doing after?" so I don't have to put together "What are we doing tonight?"
Basically what i wanted to write in this post is that I really love and miss my family. And i wanted to say that i have another family now which is Welshys family and there are some moments that I have with his nieces that make me want to wrap them up and put them in my pocket. And the last thing I wanted to say was that there will be a new family soon with this little person on the way.
So that's the general vibe and i guess it would have sounded lots better if I had full use of my mind.
The end.
Anyway.
Ohhh i feel like the energy it took to put together that first paragraph has worn me out. Do all pregnant people feel like this? How do people work? I struggle to finish a sentence most of the time. I really do. i sometimes have to tell Welshy to shut up so I can close my eyes and think of the word I am trying to find. Sometimes I just give up and say things like "What doing after?" so I don't have to put together "What are we doing tonight?"
Basically what i wanted to write in this post is that I really love and miss my family. And i wanted to say that i have another family now which is Welshys family and there are some moments that I have with his nieces that make me want to wrap them up and put them in my pocket. And the last thing I wanted to say was that there will be a new family soon with this little person on the way.
So that's the general vibe and i guess it would have sounded lots better if I had full use of my mind.
The end.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Winding dowwwwnnnn.
Good morning blogland!
Well i finally feel, after two months of a strange square peg, round hole sensation, that i have settled in to my new abode. The surrounding hills seem familiar, I have worked out our hot water system, I can even tell you which village child belongs to which set of parents.....
I call them village children because for two months, I have seen them move about the village en masse. There are 24 of them in total. They all look vaguely similar to each other in an un-brushed-hair and sneaker wearing kind of a way and further more, they are always on their own, without a parent or guardian in sight.
When I've questioned Welsh about their origin, he usually gives me some convoluted answer such as "Well you know Emma Golly Gosh that is always in the pub? Well she was married to Gog for a spell and they had the blond one then he had an affair with Mr Marples daughter and they had the other blond one. Then She married Bill, the Scottish guy and had the twins. One of the twins has the same name as Mr Marples youngest too!" And who is Mr Marple? "You know, the guy that lives in The Old Smithy." Who or what is a Smithy one may ask.
It's a confusing place where sibling groups span two generations and everyone seems to have been married at least 13 times before they are 21. I heard a four year old explaining her family to my neighbour in the pub the other day. It is disturbing to hear such a small child say "they got divorced because it just didn't work out. But mummy met her new boyfriend at the karate club and he has muscles out to here!!" whilst she gestures 30cms from her spindly little forearms "I really like your dog" she continued on as she patted a humongous Afgan Hound, the wrong way up its back.
They travel in gangs on their bikes, usually with three or four dogs trailing them. They shout out "I heard you're having a girl! congratulations!" from across the street, even though at that time, we had told noone that information. They use words that should be beyond their vocabulary and state things with such authority, I think they must be true. They've shown me their secret club house beside the river and infiltrated my facebook page, despite my privacy settings being set to maximum. And when I told Welsh that one of the small boys looked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable, he glanced back to him, only to see him wink and give Welsh the thumbs up. (I'm actually a bit scared of that kid.)
These kids seem wild, yet have incredible manners. They seem to understand boundaries without having to be told. They stay awake until midnight and drink shandies like little old ladies. There is no such thing as school holiday program or nannys or even parental supervision really. Sometimes there will be 6 of them playing in my backyard for hours on end until Welsh gets home from work and shoos them on to the next house. Noone is allergic to anything, and if i give them all dinner, they eat everything on their plate then ask what i put in the cheese sauce. There's no room for tantrums in this village, no space for "but daddy, I want an Oompa Loopa NOW!" There is just jumping in the river and being home in time for tea and asking the alarmed look Australian women when her baby is due so they'll have a new friend.
There is something in this way of being bought up. I am not sure what it is yet, but there is something.
Well i finally feel, after two months of a strange square peg, round hole sensation, that i have settled in to my new abode. The surrounding hills seem familiar, I have worked out our hot water system, I can even tell you which village child belongs to which set of parents.....
I call them village children because for two months, I have seen them move about the village en masse. There are 24 of them in total. They all look vaguely similar to each other in an un-brushed-hair and sneaker wearing kind of a way and further more, they are always on their own, without a parent or guardian in sight.
When I've questioned Welsh about their origin, he usually gives me some convoluted answer such as "Well you know Emma Golly Gosh that is always in the pub? Well she was married to Gog for a spell and they had the blond one then he had an affair with Mr Marples daughter and they had the other blond one. Then She married Bill, the Scottish guy and had the twins. One of the twins has the same name as Mr Marples youngest too!" And who is Mr Marple? "You know, the guy that lives in The Old Smithy." Who or what is a Smithy one may ask.
It's a confusing place where sibling groups span two generations and everyone seems to have been married at least 13 times before they are 21. I heard a four year old explaining her family to my neighbour in the pub the other day. It is disturbing to hear such a small child say "they got divorced because it just didn't work out. But mummy met her new boyfriend at the karate club and he has muscles out to here!!" whilst she gestures 30cms from her spindly little forearms "I really like your dog" she continued on as she patted a humongous Afgan Hound, the wrong way up its back.
They travel in gangs on their bikes, usually with three or four dogs trailing them. They shout out "I heard you're having a girl! congratulations!" from across the street, even though at that time, we had told noone that information. They use words that should be beyond their vocabulary and state things with such authority, I think they must be true. They've shown me their secret club house beside the river and infiltrated my facebook page, despite my privacy settings being set to maximum. And when I told Welsh that one of the small boys looked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable, he glanced back to him, only to see him wink and give Welsh the thumbs up. (I'm actually a bit scared of that kid.)
These kids seem wild, yet have incredible manners. They seem to understand boundaries without having to be told. They stay awake until midnight and drink shandies like little old ladies. There is no such thing as school holiday program or nannys or even parental supervision really. Sometimes there will be 6 of them playing in my backyard for hours on end until Welsh gets home from work and shoos them on to the next house. Noone is allergic to anything, and if i give them all dinner, they eat everything on their plate then ask what i put in the cheese sauce. There's no room for tantrums in this village, no space for "but daddy, I want an Oompa Loopa NOW!" There is just jumping in the river and being home in time for tea and asking the alarmed look Australian women when her baby is due so they'll have a new friend.
There is something in this way of being bought up. I am not sure what it is yet, but there is something.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
I stopped watching TV and started writing again. I also got divorced once and for all on Sunday.
Letting you go began in that moment when i realised that you were not the lighthouse, you were the rocks I was about to wreck myself against.
I’d resisted walking away. Resisted even admitting to myself that it was a vague possibility. I sat in a bar with one of the strongest, smartest women I have known in my lifetime and shook my head though my tears when she suggested that I start looking after me.
Not only could I not fathom that I couldn’t drag you kicking and screaming through the rip tide of grief, I could not see that I was actually drowning myself in the process.
I guess that’s when I knew. I guess that’s when the stone of fear and regret and loss and panic, that had been sitting in my throat for a year, shaped itself into words and left my mouth, skimming truths, leaving ripples along my carefully constructed surface.
“But if I start moving in that direction, it will spell the end for our marriage.” Feelings are not facts but I was reading from a script that we had been writing since I signed our marriage certificate.
I knew I was about to leave you behind. I couldn’t stay though. Our love had evaporated and left a salty trail or everything that could have been, if things had been different. If you had been stronger, if we’d both been more patient, and the inescapable, insurmountable, excruciating reality, that if she had not had died that night, we would have been different people. In a perfect world, grief ends and people are made more resilient. In a perfect world it takes nothing more than love to make something work. In a perfect world we’d never have known the horrors of divorce.
Then once I started looking at me, I knew that I could survive this. I knew that I would come out the other end, mostly intact. I also knew that you would not. And I couldn’t stand it. Being pushed away. The silence. The averted eyes. Being held hostage by guilt, in our dark flat with a cat that would not sit on my lap and a husband who ignored me. How could I live like that? How could anyone? And for how long? A month? A year of sorrow? A lifetime of unhappiness?
I guess that’s when in started. In that bar, in the Summer time. And I have been walking away from you ever since. It’s Summer time again where I am and I am still leaving you.
I skim real stone these days, in the stream beside my house. The silence is often broken by the sounds of tractors or sheep or cows or my own voice, singing loud and clear across the field of my belly, finding her tiny ears, filling her tiny heart, a love song that could not exist without that conversation, in a bar, a thousand years ago, a million miles away. I stopped drowning that night and started swimming.
I built my own lighthouse.
I’d resisted walking away. Resisted even admitting to myself that it was a vague possibility. I sat in a bar with one of the strongest, smartest women I have known in my lifetime and shook my head though my tears when she suggested that I start looking after me.
Not only could I not fathom that I couldn’t drag you kicking and screaming through the rip tide of grief, I could not see that I was actually drowning myself in the process.
I guess that’s when I knew. I guess that’s when the stone of fear and regret and loss and panic, that had been sitting in my throat for a year, shaped itself into words and left my mouth, skimming truths, leaving ripples along my carefully constructed surface.
“But if I start moving in that direction, it will spell the end for our marriage.” Feelings are not facts but I was reading from a script that we had been writing since I signed our marriage certificate.
I knew I was about to leave you behind. I couldn’t stay though. Our love had evaporated and left a salty trail or everything that could have been, if things had been different. If you had been stronger, if we’d both been more patient, and the inescapable, insurmountable, excruciating reality, that if she had not had died that night, we would have been different people. In a perfect world, grief ends and people are made more resilient. In a perfect world it takes nothing more than love to make something work. In a perfect world we’d never have known the horrors of divorce.
Then once I started looking at me, I knew that I could survive this. I knew that I would come out the other end, mostly intact. I also knew that you would not. And I couldn’t stand it. Being pushed away. The silence. The averted eyes. Being held hostage by guilt, in our dark flat with a cat that would not sit on my lap and a husband who ignored me. How could I live like that? How could anyone? And for how long? A month? A year of sorrow? A lifetime of unhappiness?
I guess that’s when in started. In that bar, in the Summer time. And I have been walking away from you ever since. It’s Summer time again where I am and I am still leaving you.
I skim real stone these days, in the stream beside my house. The silence is often broken by the sounds of tractors or sheep or cows or my own voice, singing loud and clear across the field of my belly, finding her tiny ears, filling her tiny heart, a love song that could not exist without that conversation, in a bar, a thousand years ago, a million miles away. I stopped drowning that night and started swimming.
I built my own lighthouse.
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