Kelly Exeter always tells me amazing and useful things.

I say ‘me’ but she actually tells all of us, it’s just that the things she chooses to say seem to be all about me. She has a knack of doing that thing that Sylvia Plath once said about being “a voice speaking from my own soul”.

Yesterday she gave me some great things, all of which have been running around my head all night. I had a night of wakefulness and what seemed like non-stop dreaming, so I know there was a lot to process.

One of the things that stuck with me was the concept of space. Of how two things simply cannot occupy the same physical space at the same time. The blog link was about thoughts, and how we can’t have a positive and a negative thought at the same moment, so we need to prioritise just how much mind-space we want to use up with junk.

I’ve expanded the idea to consider our physical space, the toy cupboard in particular. Take this lego on my floor right now for example:

They say there is an average of 67 blocks of Lego per person on Earth. I think we have more than our share.

There are so many of those pointy little foot-stabbers in that bucket, that it is overflowing. The Evils get the bucket out most days, and most days I have to shove it all back in the cupboard and close the door quickly, lest it all come tumbling out.

Me: Liam, I think we have too many toys, and waaay too much Lego. We can’t possibly fit another toy into that cupboard and the Lego bucket itself is overflowing. You can’t possibly use it all, and in fact I think you only ever use the top layer. Perhaps we could give some to some kids who don’t have any? The way it is right now you can never get a new toy, because two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time. You need to clear out, in order to make room for new things to come into your life.

Liam: I like the old things. I don’t want any new things. Other than computer games, and I have heaps of space on my hard drive for those.

Me: But there might be new things, new opportunities and experiences you don’t even know about yet, and you’re limiting yourself because you don’t have space to fit them into your life.

Liam: Don’t worry, I can get a bigger box.

So there you have it, the wisdom of Liam. No need to clear out the clutter, just get bigger, improve, stretch, create new boundaries.

Someone once said, “The mind, once expanded by a new idea, can never regain its original dimensions.”

Expand.

Oh, and he also solved the problem of getting to the bottom layers.

And that’s not even all of it!

Do you have Lego that appears to be breeding?

Do you have space for new stuff?

…From The Ashers xx

Image courtesy of Grey’s Anatomy, 37th ed. I knew that bloody heft of a forest would come in handy one day…

Me: Hey mate, I hear you are growing a bit of a Mo, how’s it going?

Liam: Not bad, not bad at all.

(Strokes ‘moustache’ like his Pop used to do)

Liam: Yeah, its’ coming along, about on a par with my hairy legs, and a little in front of my chest wig.

(Lifts t-shirt to reveal Mr. Puniverse thorax, with a completely, absolutely and utterly, bald chest.)

Liam: It’s weird, I have this Mo, but no other public hair.

Me: Huh? Did you say public hair?

Liam: Yeah, you know, the public hair.

(Gestures to his nether regions. Thankfully he doesn’t feel the need to elaborate with a display at this time.)

Me: It’s called PUBIC hair, mate. As in, the hair that grows near the pubis, pubes, or pubic bone of your pelvis.

(Now I’m gesturing to my nether regions. Oh sweet life, WHAT is going ON here?)

Liam: Ohhhhh, I thought it was public hair, as in, it tells the public that you are ready to reproduce. And stuff.

Conversation Officially Terminated at 7.10am. Way too much information has been shared before my first coffee (or wine). I do not wish to know what “and stuff” is. Not at all.

So how are your pube-y talks coming along?

Have you been putting your pubes out in public? (For strictly reproductive reasons of course)

…From The Ashers xx

Liam has just turned ten. He is medium sized, blonde and a little on the skinny side. So not at all precociously developed. He wears size eight clothes.

He came to Nath yesterday rubbing his upper lip.

Liam: Dad, I think I’m about to hit puberty.

(He is desperate for puberty because he is hoping to get pimples. Yes, he is my son.)

Nathan: What makes you think that mate?

(As clearly it is not the presence of any primary sexual characteristics that has prompted this thought.)

Liam: It’s just that I seem to be developing quite quickly at the moment. Check out my moustache. It’s still blonde, but as you can see, it’s really coming along.

(There is no visible evidence of said moustache.)

Nathan: Hmmmm

(Not wanting to offend Liam’s impending Manhood.)

Liam: I know, it’s weird right? I mean, usually it’s usually the other way around, you get the pubic hair and all that, and then secondary sexual characteristics come, well, second. I’m doing it in reverse order. Weird.

(Nathan now has nothing. He isn’t even sure what is a primary or a secondary trait.)

Liam: I reckon I’ll have to shave by Christmas as this rate.

(Liam walks off, talking to himself about Pokemon, in a voice so high pitched canines were cowering in Cooory.)

Seems legit.

Behold the magnificence of the Mo

…From The Ashers xx

By the time you read this, it will be exactly one decade since we welcomed this dude into The Ashers.

10!

But of course we weren’t really The Ashers then, we were just Al and Nath. This little fella made us into something bigger than ourselves. He popped into my uterus as a bit of a surprise, what with all the androgyny of me (It’s okay to say it, I know I might not be the most voluptuous, oestrogenic looking chick on the planet) and the cancer of him and his boy bits. I think it’s safe to say I thought that we would be pretty safe from being Offspring Infected. I didn’t even have my fingers crossed in ‘Barleys’ like we used to at primary school. (Yes, I know, it was my legs that should have been crossed)

So he buried himself deep into the warm folds of my womb and stayed there until he was nice and ripe and he was fit to burst right out of my skin.

He birthed himself just like a text book, and followed our every plan to the letter. So many times we would look at each other and say, “Is this for real? Is this kid Baby of the Year or what?”

Because he was.

Still is.

He is funny, quirky, clever, challenging, straightforward, just, logical and about seven steps ahead of us most of the time. He has a blog over here  if you want to see how he rolls. He has a strong sense of self, and so far, I think that is what I am the most proud of (other than the fact that I pushed his 9lbs7oz out of my very own vagina).

This morning he said to me with a sigh, “Today is the last day of single digits, the last day of my first decade. It gets tough from here.”

I thought he was talking about footy, “What do you mean, the competition?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot, “No, life, it gets rough from here on.”

Now it was my turn to look at someone like they were dopey, “I’m forty-three mate, my life isn’t rough. It doesn’t have to be rough.”

He sighed again, speaking slowly, as if I was a little feeble minded, and counted on his fingers, “Your Dad died, you have to make the lunches every day and then there’s taxes.”

I laughed and told him he didn’t need to worry about those things for a long time.

He looked doubtful and said, “It’ll be here before you know it. And the lunches: every.single.day.”

I left the room, shaking my head at this little grandfather-child we were raising, a little sad that he knew all of those things so early: the repetitive nature of life, and of death, and of course taxes.  I worried that some of his attitude was from having a sister with a thing, from spending too many of his days in hospital waiting rooms, seeing things beyond his years.  Or perhaps it was from his precocious reading, devouring stories meant for more mature minds. Or maybe it was just that he had seen too much of death and The Cancer. I vowed to bring more frivolity to his next decade. To encourage silliness and nonsense and time-wasting. To create space for daydreaming and giggling.

And then I heard some stifled laughter coming from the wizened one’s room, so I popped my head around to see these two idiots:

Very mature

goggles on, and taking pot-shots at each other’s heads with Nerf guns.

My heart lifted a little.

Maybe there is hope after all. Maybe the next decade will be just fine.

Happy Birthday Liam. You rock. And not just on the drums or the guitar or on the…erm…clarinet

…From The Ashers xx

The blog today is one from the vault: A story about blood and transfusions and little enzymes.

Click here for Just a Little Thing.

And by the way, Coco isn’t getting her transfusion for a few more weeks, but given the critically low levels of blood stores this week, I thought it was worth remembering how a little thing like a giving blood can mean so much to a little person.  Coco might not like getting transfusions, but she definitely loves how she feels afterwards.

If you are able to donate, please consider doing so this week. 

…From The Ashers xx

Today we said goodbye to our little exchange student, and we are bereft.

Wrung out.

We miss his big smiling face.  His lively dance moves.  The way he said, “What? Huh?” In a high-pitched voice to everything he found surprising about Australia, and anything we said that he didn’t understand (which was virtually everything).  We miss the way he made us laugh and the way he helped us see our town as if for the first time.  To appreciate the natural beauty, the weather, the faint scent of sugarcane and salt, the heaving sound of the waves.

We miss his enthusiasm to try new things, to stretch himself in ways we couldn’t even know.  He was afraid of many things, here in this slightly crazy space of a country.  The startling insects, the furry animals, the earthiness, the brightness of the stars.  He was surprised by the casualness and the warmth of Aussies (Ozzees), but he allowed it all to infuse, and brew and become.  We called him Watters, and he sent his Mamasan an email saying, “I’m an Ozzee boy now.”

Our throats got lumps in them.

We knew we only had him for a short time, so we stacked the days with experiences and we held nothing back.  We told him what we thought of him, and we allowed him to bury deep into our hearts.  Kind of like the way you do when you know your Dad is dying of a cancer that grows by dissolving vital organs, one by one by one.

But with more laughs than cries.  Because nobody was actually dying.  Even if you might not ever see each other again.

And that’s the thing.  What I found today, is that grieving is not about the death, it is about the missing.  Coco was beside herself when we were saying our final goodbyes.   She is seven years old, so she didn’t want to do it, wanted to just leave without the sting of the final glimpse of her friend.  I suppose she thought she would avoid some of the pain if she avoided the situation.  Which is what we often do.  Liam was completely different, because he said he knows he will see Watters again.  A different protective mechanism perhaps.

And me?  Well, I drove those emotions down nice and deep, somewhere down near my big right toe, where they can stay a while.  I’ll take them out every now and then, have a little look, and slowly and slowly the feelings will become more bearable.  A sense of creeping acceptance will begin to take over, until I can look at the whole experience safely.

I know how this works, by now.

Eventually and eventually you can smile with your eyes again.

And remember the people who scored your heart with their enthusiasm, and the way they could always make you laugh.

Watters.

Thanks for coming Watters.  We’re gonna miss you and your crazy stunts.

…From The Ashers xx