Coming Home

There is always something so lovely about coming home. About rounding that last corner of road and seeing the sea.
As children we always competed to see who would be first to see it, now my own children have started looking out for that first glimpse.
Although we live on the far side of the state now, it's always this little corner of the world, and this little beach shack (actually larger than our house back in Gippsland, but still) that feels like home. This place is the one that holds all my childhood memories of winter swims and then boiling hot baths, mah-jong games and hours of shell-seeking, teen revels when I'd catch the train and then the bus down with friends, arriving in the twilight for weekends of long walks, night-swims and big open fires, the place of return through all my twenties travels. I lived here for a year after my return from eighteen months working in Tonga. When I was evacuated from the Solomon Islands during the riots, this is where I came to await news of when I could return. My Beloved and I lived here for a further nine months while I studied teaching. This is the place my Beloved proposed, the place we were married, the place I spent two happy months waiting the birth of my Sprocket while my Beloved worked overseas - although I listened to family pleas and returned to Melbourne for the last few weeks. (Which I sort of regret, but I get their point that a heavily pregnant woman in a house by herself at some distance from a hospital is not the best idea, but as it turned out, my Sprocket was very late, so when my Beloved returned for his birth we had weeks of waiting.) This is where both our children were Christened.
While all the other places are transient, this is the permanent and the home.
These stretches of sand and sea. These winding clay paths through twisting trees. These changing tide marks and wild stretches of surf, these protected bays and big pools of treasures.
The night we arrived the rain fell in flurries all through the dark hours, and thunder was frequent. With my little ones curled beside me I listened to the rain on the roof, their steady breathing. Felt the kicking of the baby within me, and was perfectly content. My Poppet's name means 'night rain' and listening to the rain on the roof, its lulls and periods of intensity, while she is curled sleeping in my arms, is a recipe for happiness.
We have a week of rain forecast, warm - but wet.
I look forward to rainbows.

Weekly Stills - Moments from our Week

- Baby Jesus, amidst pine needles pilfered on a country walk. We have a little pine tree in a pot for our Christmas trees this year, but it doesn't smell the same, so I've compromised by filling the mantlepiece with pine branches.
-Nineteen weeks pregnant. I've started to 'pop' and our baby is quickening. Touch wood the not-so-lovely-stuff is over and it's all fun stuff and little niggles from now. I so love lying in bed and feeling the little kicks and punches.
-A gathering of Christmas stories. Each night we have a new one and favourite old ones.
-The Myer Windows - nativity with reflections.
-My Sprocket - water play in the garden.
-Roses from my garden and fairy-lights. It really is Summer!
-What can I say. I'm a (very!) messy cook. Gluten free Christmas pudding for eating down at the beach with my Beloved's folk. We won't see them over Christmas, so this will be an early one. I think Christmas pudding must be one of my very, very favouritest things to cook. The lovely smell of the butter and fruits cooking, the great froth when you add the bicarb, the scents of the spices, the gloss before the flour goes in. I'm still feeling a bit guilty about licking the bowel - you know, the uncooked eggs and the brandy, but it was completely irresistible. And I checked with my almost-a-doctor husband first and then further decided the percentages were so small as to be negligible…
-Nasturtiums and orange zest. Out of focus, but I love the colours. The zest for the cake, the nasturtiums for a salad.
-My little drummer boy, with home made instrument in the back garden.

Joining with the wonderful Em of The Beetle Shack (and many others) for moments from our week. 

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My Sprocket  - making music on the trampoline with a fork and a tin rubbish bin lid. Summer is here!
My Poppet - do you have to take a photo, mama? Bribes had already been called into play, but she's still not a fan of the mama-rrazi.

Joining with the lovely Jodi of Che and Fidel for a photo of my kids most weeks in 2013.

After NaNoWriMo

So November and the National International Novel Writing Month is finished. My 50,000 words are sitting smugly on the computer and I'm in a writing lull, catching my breath and blinking alot. 

Christmas is here, the holidays are here, we're busy not-getting-done-the-long-to-do-list I write each year for my Beloved's university holidays and I'm staring around rather blankly wondering what next. Of course there's the to-do list, but my Beloved and I are rather at odds about the-to-do-list. And I can see his point. 

After the madness that was November we're both in collapse mode and only just rising from (figuratively speaking) shuddering heaps on the floor. 

Seriously, what was I thinking trying to do NaNo in the months of the major exams of my Beloved's med course, while we were both sick, with one car out of action, the garden looking like something from a horror movie with one shed roof and a few massive branches knocked out with the big winds recently, another shed roof collapsed after the Sprocket decided to dance upon it, and weeds taller than Poppet. And the house not much better. 

Hmm. Maybe that's what I was thinking with Nano. Not thinking about it. Instead trying for something achievable. With a tangible end. And time pretending to be on top of everything in civilised cafes. 

Amongst all the disasters it's comforting to know that the bones of a brand new novel are sitting waiting to be finished. Of course, the fifty-thousand completed words only turned out to be about fifteen chapters out of twenty-six. Despite three assassination attempts, actually, no, four,  a couple of life-changing revelations and a sea-journey into the past, I'm only beginning to get to the really fun bits. 

I'll hopefully get the last forty-thousand words written over the next few months, put the whole thing aside for six months, ruthlessly cut ten to twenty thousand words and then put the whole thing up on the online writers site, Scribophile for critiquing. Which will take maybe another two months to earn the karma and then make the suggested changes. 

Writing is a long, slow, process. 

By the time the first draft of the book I've just been working on - momentarily titled Green Dragon Waking -  is finished, I hope to have completed the first fifty thousand words of the next two novels in the series. (And yes, most of my giddy spine-tingles at the moment are reserved for those stories. The New, Improved, All Kinds of Wonderful.) 

But see- look - my certificate! (This years certificate was a bit disappointed, the seem to have decided upon an overly pixelated look I'm not a fan of, but hey, it's still a cute little piece of digital paper to say I did it!)  

Home Alone

(Roses my Poppet picked and carefully placed in holes she dug in the garden, before she left)

The kids, my Beloved and my father-in-law are on their way home now.
They've driven about half the distance down from Queensland and are stopped in Dubbo for the night, with a ten hour drive before them tomorrow.
They've been gone nearly a week. This will be the sixth night that they're away. My Sprocket tells me he's had 'the best holiday ever.'
I've been trying to remember the last time I was alone in a house for any length of time, without a baby or toddler or preschoolers with me. The last time I slept in a bed, just me (okay, and the dog) and I had to cast my mind back… more than five years to when my Sprocket was summersaulting inside me.
My Beloved had gone to work in Vanuatu and, being heavily pregnant, I hadn't been allowed to join him. I'd asked scores of doctors and travel agents and the nicer ones hadn't laughed as they'd explained  there was no way I'd get travel insurance in my advanced state, so my dreams of a lovely tropical baby moon, lounging poolside while my Beloved worked, were scuttled.
Instead I went down to the family beach house and waited for my Baby and for my Beloved to return for the birth. I remember long walks, long baths, candles, music, calm birth classes, visualisations and long one-sided conversations with my Sprocket, awe at the braxton hicks, and feeling very ponderous, heavy and happy. Life slowed to the sound of the sea and the movements of my baby within.
Now, I'm alone in a house again, with only the dog sleeping by me, and the much softer flutterings of my third, and last, baby within, but I'm out of practice of being alone.
The night-sky outside seems very large. I jump at noises. While the first night I luxuriated in all the space and the remarkable rested feeling when I woke without small arms flung over my throat, small knees pressed into my tummy, and yet… it just feels… odd. Skew-wiff.
Through open windows I can hear the birds scuttling in the garden. I light candles without fear of the kids setting their hair alight. Fill vases with flowers without fear of them being tipped.
I spend time talking to my littlest one within, singing to it, willing it to kick a little more.  I make the food my family won't eat - chunky lentil soups and stewed fruits, tuna pastas and rice puddings. I have plans for a long, luxurious bath involving a home made body scrub and rose petals. I stay up late - reading and writing past midnight and then sleeping in - no falling asleep with the kids at 7.30, half-way through a lullaby. It feels ridiculously decadent.
And yet… it feels so strange that not once during the day do I have small, warm hands in mine, piping voices telling me the precise way they want their toast, long involved stories poured out, centipedes thrust at me to admire.
On Skype and on the phone their voices sound so little. Their presence is so big, when they are here I suppose I've started thinking of them as big. But they sound so young.
It's been so lovely to stretch, unwind, sleep. There is no way I would have finished my fifty-thousand words in a month to complete NaNoWriMo if I hadn't had this time. Or managed to sneak away all the excess toys and broken oddments. I am excessively grateful to my Beloved for giving me this time. To dream. To think. To write. To begin to think about getting organised.
But I'm so glad my family will be home tomorrow!