Golden Moments

 

Run to the Sea

 

Ocean Joy

 

She runs with joy along the shore - completely within the moment. 

Five

 

My Dino baby is five - the last of my little ones. 

She's ready to explore the world and ready to be enthusiastic about all the curious things she comes across. 

She loves to wade in puddles, carefully tuck her dolls into bed, boss her uncle around and distribute cloud dough all through the house.

Her laugh is infectious, and she is well practiced at cute, and uses it to her advantage. 

It turns out little dinosaurs, just like little kids, grow up way too fast. 

Storm Girl

My youngest turns five soon, next year she starts school. This era of childhood, of my children at home is nearly over and my heart breaks a little bit. 

My little dinosaur with her wild imagination, her fierceness, her affection and wonder. 

It feels a little bit as if I'm about to unleash a storm. 

 

Last Light and Odd Awakenings

She is stalking - a t-rex approaching her prey. Constantly entertaining, she also bemuses me. 

I woke one morning this week to find her staring at me. "Mummy, when you die, I'm going to go and live with one of my aunties." 

"Um. Ok. It's good to have a backup. But truly, I'm not planning on dying any time soon." 

She cupped my face in her hands. "It's okay, mummy. Everyone dies."

"Ah. Yes. But truly, I'm hoping to be around for a long time yet." 

"Daddy will drive me there." 

I breathed in deeply. It was too early. My brain wasn't working, and I let it go and got up to start the day, but I do wonder what she's thinking about throughout the day. 

My demise, obviously, but what else?

 

lost & found

 

I managed to misplace these photos for four years - my littlest, my lasts' first weeks. Now I've retrieved them all the memories return. 

My baby years are over, and while the memories of those sleepless nights and nappies makes me eye twitch, they were so very very beautiful and precious. 

Childhood & Memory

 

The moments are slow but the years are fast, and our brains discard so many of the small moments that make life so beautiful.

The kids and I were talking in the car recently about how the brain decides what will be remembered and what will be forgotten. How we can't remember every moment, so our brain makes executive decisions about what will be important for us in the future. 

The kids were annoyed until I pointed out that we wouldn't want to remember every time we went to the loo or blew our nose or did the many boring things we do again and again. 

But we all agreed that we wished we had more say in what we remember and what we forget. 

The librarian in me wants to present a collection policy to my brain. This: we remember. This: we forget. 

I fear my brain has evolved to remember the things necessary for survival - the hard things, the dangerous things, the new and unusual things. I wish to remember the moments that make my heart sing. The sweet and the heart melting. The small things. 

My youngest child is leaving the 'little stage' and nostalgia fills me. (A familiar state to be honest - I first remember feeling nostalgic at about the same age my little Dinosaur is now). 

I want to remember each thing she says, each inflection of her voice, the way she curls to me in her sleep, the feel of her small hand in mine, but life is so busy, and so much is forgotten. 

I love this photo - her face is so serene, and yet her hair shows her inner wild!

These photos are from moments on a swing, on the first day my mum flew up from Victoria for a week. The first time we'd seen her in a year, apart from my grandmothers funeral. 

And my Little Dinosaurs' joy in having focused attention was so wonderful and so bittersweet. The Sickness has kept so many of us from our 'village', and within the house with all the busyness and stress I worry about the benign neglect of our youngest. 

She is never short of absent minded kisses, distracted hugs, someone to tell her they love her, siblings to squabble with, pets to over-love, but she misses out on the focused attention her older siblings got. I remember all the trips to museums, zoos, national park, the stretch of coast we took her older siblings to almost every weekend while their dad was studying for his med degree down in Victoria, the beaches we visited almost daily when we lived on the coast.

Our dinosaur gets walks - the same walk really, up past Owl Tree, down Wallaby Hill, down by Millipede Stream and past the cow paddocks and back - trips to the much depleted local dam (9.1% capacity at the moment) and many, many school runs. 

I content myself she doesn't seem unhappy. And when all the days are full of small things, hopefully more small things are remembered. 

 

Of elves and dragons

By chance my youngest happened upon a patch of swamp reed and decided to explore, by chance she had dressed herself in an old elf ballet costume of her oldest sister, so it was chance that had her looking like a small fae child. 

I was delighted. Recent research has led me to reading about the Scottish and Irish stories of the fae. They tended to wear green, to be wild and unearthly, and to appear at the liminal places on the boundaries of wild and tamed. 

My littlest is presently obsessed with dragons, dinosaurs and eggs, and decided that she is searching for dragons. She will tame one, and fly away.  

As she searches through the lush and shadowed green (and o, how beautiful and soothing is the green of the swamp reed) I hold my breath, entranced with the way the last light falls on, as she tells me stories of her adventure and her quest. She is intrepid, imaginative, engrossed in her make believe. 

She reaches the end of the swamp reeds, and finds some springy, low lying green stuff. She picks some, lies in it. Laughs as she and her sisters throw it up and see it fall. She is fierce and joyful, independent, intrepid and stubborn. She holds some of the deeply green leaves out to me, 'For you, mama.'