curlicue by sea (variations on a theme)

 

Recently, my Beloved and I were given twenty-four precious hours to recharge, child-free, and we fled to the sea. 

We have missed it so much. 

The sound of the surf and the scent of the brine, after so many long months in exile, was indescribable. 

At dusk we made our way to the shore, and sat at the high tide and listened, and smelt and felt. 

There was a random rootlet or twiglit, by my feet and I picked it up and began taking photos of it in the fading light. The camera found it hard to focus, as it was too close, the light fleeing, but I enjoyed the different way different parts were sharpened and softened. I loved it's lack of straight lines or symmetries. 

The way it looked to be in motion, when not. The way it almost looked like something other - a sea dragon, the prow of a viking ship, but didn't. 

In which you can just see the root/branch in the corner of the photo before I pick it up. And in which you see sand, pumice and impractical, child-free type shoes.

The sky and sea beyond, with one lone fishing light, of which my Beloved was very jealous. 

Autumnal

The light is golden, the temperature mellow - the kids climb the trees and balance as they walk along the wall and over the cavernous rock. Beloved has a holiday and we're enjoying time outside.

Being outside - without sweat - all together, is a kind of magic. There's no sign of leaves changing colour - foliage is strictly green - but the change of light and temperature is it's own kind of blessed and long awaited autumnal.

(Let's tenderly feed Doll-Doll to the giant croc) 

 Later, in the pre-dusk, the melt-downs will start, but in the early part of the day the kids run and climb and, with an extra set of hands around, I can pick up my hefty camera and enjoy playing with light and capturing moments in time.

It's not until the camera is in my hands that I realise how much I've missed it. I'm not as fast as I was, I can't get all the shots  I want  - with the baby in her carrier, I'm so much more lumbersome and my wild ones are hard to keep up with, but I love just making the attempt.

By the shore (Firsts)

Words are escaping me at the moment (and let's not talk about numbers - two and two equals five and three quarters, maybe?) so I'm just posting these - my little one's first trip to the shore. It was a very impromptu trip when I needed to drop something at the kids' school and thought while I was there we could go for a walk on the beach nearby. I loaded my mama and papa and the toddler and the baby and the oversized Wolf-en-Pup (who had to sit on my papa's knee as our car is small) into the car and we headed off.

And it was so lovely to walk barefoot on sand, to take deep breaths just because, and not to deal with pain, to smell the sea. The Wolf-en-Pup bounded, Giggle-Bear said 'wow!' a lot and built sandcastles with my mama and my baby slept pretty much the entire walk, with a few times she blinked her eyes open and looked around in awe - as if to say 'this is the world?'

While she was deeply asleep I decided to use the scarf I'd swiped up as a sunshade as I headed out the door as a photo prop and took some photos in the shade of a lean-to made of driftwood. The breeze swept through and the ripples hushed and my baby smiled.

Tiny sandy feet = heart-melt.

River Mouth - Maloolaba (Characters & Children...)

Looking at these photos from my birthday trip on the Maloolaba River, it struck me that my Poppet has started looking like one of my characters.

This wouldn't be so odd, if it weren't that I wrote the character ten years before my Poppet was born, in a fantasy book called The Language of Birds.*

Character wise, they could not be more different.

Jenny is reserved, almost shy, reflective, otherworldly and deeply nature oriented. My Poppet is outgoing, highly social, chatty and very of-this-world and, although she'll happily pick up a skink or pet a parrot, immersed in consumerism rather than nature.

Now I think of it, my Poppet's exuberance and friendliness is a lot more like Jenny's friend, Jack, although it's possibly a trifle immodest of me to compare my kidlet to a young godling. (Although she is fairly amazing. In my completely unbiased opinion.)

However, in these photos, my Poppet has a bit of Jenny to her, brought out by the nautical setting, as I do always see Jenny by the sea, and especially on boats. Jenny first appears in my story on a yacht on the edge of the world, at the very limit of the outermost outer hebrides of Scotland, the scene of her parents' murder.

Obviously, nothing like that has, or, God willing, ever will, happen to my Poppet.

But these photos of Poppet bring to mind the girl-of-my-fiction. The girl who is happiest walking the seashore alone, the girl who runs barefoot through the machair and knows the names and ways of all the seabirds.

The girl who finds the magical chalice that gifts her with the language of birds…

Child of my flesh and child of my imagination reflecting back at each other and both children of my heart. It is a strangely unsettling feeling…


(And yes. The white dress did get covered in tomato sauce. Of course.)

*Presently residing in a manuscript in a remote folder on my desktop while I mull upon it. I believe it probably needs another few years of rumination and three or four - or a heap more - drafts… Sigh. But it's no hardship spending more time with my characters.)