I’ve been reading a lot about ‘callings’ lately. I’m at an age and stage of life where I think that I should have it all sorted out, and be living the dream.

Which I am.

But I’m not.

I’m living a lucky, beautiful life, in a place I adore and with people that I would do anything for. I can count my blessings like so many sheep and then never fall asleep. I have ticked all of the boxes that ever existed for me, and then ticked some more. Most mornings I lie in bed, in that delicious moment of waking, as the blur of my dreams fall out of my ear and onto the pillow to dissolve like sugar crystals, and I wonder if I am actually awake. Is this life real and true? Do I really get to have all of this? Am I worthy?

And then an annoying, corkscrew of a notion makes three clockwise turns into my right cerebellum and I’m almost dizzy at the knowledge that I’m not telling the whole truth. There is secret that I’m keeping from myself, and it takes everything I am to cover it up with tasks and thoughts and things that must be done RIGHT NOW. Until it collapses and suffocates under the weight of responsibility and action for another day.

It was a full moon this week, and in the fitful sleep of the liar, the rotation of the the corkscrew has been relentless and exhausting, trying with its twists and excruciating turns to force me to notice it. I’ve noticed. And I have resisted. Stress-resist-stress-resist in an endless dance of the shambling 3am drunk who cannot stop for fear that they don’t know where home is any more.

I have a calling.

And I’m ignoring it.

I think I’m afraid that if I bring it out into the light it might not be a shiny as it is in my mind. Or perhaps I won’t know what to do with it once it hits the air. Oxygen might destroy it, or give it wings that can’t be clipped, and I’ll be careening out of control and out of breath, trying desperately to keep up, yet falling behind, falling behind, crawling along with no skin on my knees and the sting of dust it in my eyes where I once held my precious thing.

It’s safer to bury things in the dense flesh of your liver. The darkness keeps it safe.

Doesn’t it?

Do you have a calling?

Are you hiding it too?

…From The Ashers 

Post Script: The top of my blog draft page has little tags. Something Anna put in when she designed this page. I think it’s called the Hello Dolly plugin or something. Maybe it’s the words to the song. Anyway, I’ve never taken much notice of it. I just looked at it now, and it said, “It’s so nice to have you back where you belong.” Interesting.

It’s the day for it, isn’t it? The day when all of your chosen media are full of everything you should-would-could do to make yourself more shiny from this moment forward. The implication being that somehow this whole last year was crappy, and were all personally in need of some kind of therapy. Depending on the algorithm and, what you have been looking at and liking of- it could be your body, your mind, your finances or just your shoes.

I don’t hold with that at all.

I think that almost everyone I know did the best they could in each of the moments. I know for me, some moments were better than others in the Champion Of All Things awards, but on balance, I did okay. And I bet you did too.

The end of the world year can take on portentous feelings if you buy into it all too much. The endless lists of how-to and what-to and who-to can become overwhelming if you let the whelm come anywhere near your neurones. And it will try to flow over you. That’s its nature.

This morning we chose to pop over to the beach for the last time this year, I thought I would take some really cool pics of the kids frolicking in the gentle waves, and Nath getting barrelled. I imagined the sun would be rising over the water, creating diamonds of significant rays all ready to be captured. In my mind’s eye I envisioned a significant moment. Perhaps we would hold hands in the water and send out a frangipani, singing Kumbaya and Auld Lang Syn (neither of which any of us know more than two lines of) and say fare you well 2016. Something to mark the passing of the year, and the passing of my Dad.

Shit. I wasn’t going to mention that, but I have and I have and I have, and of course I always do, for the end of the year now always brings more to it than just the end of the year. It is also the end of a life. Which is why I attach more significance to this day than just an arbitrary date. For if we are to be real and say the truth, there is no inherent meaning in the moments from 11.59.59 to 12.00.01, other than the meaning we chose to make.

Ever since my Dad passed away on the first day of the brand new year, I wake up on the 31st feeling scratchy. Sometimes half a day goes by before I acknowledge the reason why, but whether I chose to look at it or not, the irritation is there from the moment I open my eyes. Sometimes I think I’d like to hurt someone or have them hurt me back, just so I can let the constriction in my throat burst out, and the prickling behind my eyes slosh away.

So we went to the beach. Like any other day, but like a day that I would like to be different, significant, something.

The beach was a fairly windy, which is never a good omen for me because: FRIKKEN WIND, and the surf was little more than a blown-out shorey with a massive sweep. The sand was too hot for children who had chosen not to wear their thongs, against my best recommendations, so: all.of.the.whinging. And then on her first ride, Coco cracked it because the salt water was too rough and TOO SALTY. Liam tried to paddle out the back a few times, couldn’t, and came sloping over to me, shoulders hunched in the posture of defeat.

And that was about where I lost it. Not in a major way, and not out loud, but in enough of a way that everyone knew to ‘Stay away from Mummy right now’.

I went up the beach a ways by myself, and wrote ‘2016’ in the sand with my big toe, and the waves licked it up.

I noticed the toe-nail polish from my Christmas manicure glistening in the sunlight and I thought it looked pretty.

I felt the despicable, messy wind on my two-day-old sunburn and I liked the slight cooling feeling.

I looked out to the horizon and saw a white yacht bobbing over to the edge and smiled at the memory of all the drawings the kids and I have done together over the years.

I saw Nath standing with his back to the dunes, hand up shielding his eyes, watching the waves, watching the kids, watching out for us in the solid, stable and careworn way he does and I realised that even in the shittiest moments, in the seconds where I feel the most broken and fragmented, I have this wonder of a man in my life.

We didn’t sing Kumbaya or even One Love. There were no petals set free. The kids still carried on about things that kids do. My sunburn still stung and we still have ants in our bathroom. There is still paperwork to be done, and tomorrow I will probably have a slug-like hangover rather than fluttering into the new year on rejuvenated wings. And my Dad is still dead.

But there is coffee for tomorrow and champagne for tonight, and we all do the best we can with what we’ve got, and some of the moments will be mundane and muddy and magical. And so it goes. Come by here and Kumbaya.

Fare You Well 2016.

Fare You Well Peter.

Fare You Well, Regular Reader. Travel Well, Travel Light, Smile When You Can.

…From The Ashers

When you make the choice to fully immerse yourself in something, there is a shift within your cells that is terrifying and exciting in equal measure.

In the moment that you decide to go all in, to play full on, there is terror in the knowing that you will lose something of yourself in the process, and that you will gain something too. The fear is in the stepping off. In that free-falling moment when you don’t know quite where you will land, or even how. Will you spring as light as a gymnast on the lush grass, or will it be more like the first time you bring your Christmas-drone in for landing, shaky and off centre, with the no-rain-for three-weeks crispy weeds spraying out in all directions?

A fledgling project, an expensive purchase, a shiny new relationship. They all create the nervicitement of: new me/old me. And right there in the moment between the two, is where the juice is. And that juice is the sweetest and most luscious of all.

In a dusty box at the back of  my mind there is a creature called the Push Me Pull You. I think it could be from Sesame Street, or maybe it lives with Dr.Doolittle, but in my memory it has one body and two heads, facing in opposite directions. So if one head wants to move forward, the other must go backwards.

Jumping in feels a lot like what the poor Push Me Pull You must always have a sense of. In order to move at all, the backward facing head has to trust, and step into the vulnerability of not quite knowing where it’s going, or what the ground is like. It can only feel the irregularity once it carefully places its tiny cloven hoof on the uneven ground. And the forward head has to be sure to lead in the best direction, dealing with whatever comes up in each moment, and making decisions the backward head can’t help with.

Today I sat on the stairs and watched my little girl grow up before my eyes. She went into her bedroom in a flurry of iridescent flamingo pink, and emerged with only a blush of subtle rose on her shoes-a nod to the the days of childhood that she inhabited only moments before.

I sat on the stairs and watched her gather her bag, count her money and smooth her hair. I saw the confident step of the woman she will become, going out into the world without me by her side, her only compass the words we have shared over the years, and the direction she chooses to steer on her own.

I sat on the stairs leaning on my sandy summer-knees, pulled by the heaviness in my heart, as I thought of the way the world looks at her, both real and imagined, and the judgements she will face. I remembered all the times she has cried about how people stare at her, or ask her why she is yellow. And I guessed at all the times she didn’t cry, but pushed the dark feelings deep down into her gall bladder, and smiled the sunshine of defiance.

I sat on the stairs, and the stairs stretched out in front of me like a dark Dr.Suess movie, a conveyor belt of the endless nights and days where I will watch her take that ebullient step over the threshold, without looking back, out, out into her life.

As it should be.

I sat on the stairs and I knew in that moment that my little girl needs very little from me these days. She knows her own heart and her mind is stronger than a nine year old mind ever should be, and that is how this world turns. My little girl is no longer little.

I sat on the stairs and thought of a mother I know very little of, who made a choice this very day to jump off into the abyss of blissful anaesthesia. A mother who knew that no matter how long she sat on the stairs, her little girl was not coming back. I thought of Debbie and her broken heart and I had a tinkling of what that rancid loss might be like.

Can you die of a broken heart?

Can you choose when you step out of this world?

I think you can.

I hope for that mother, as she let the griefs lay all over her like a heavy and cool blanket, it was more exciting than terrifying. I hope she felt the relief.

I hope she got to taste the juice. And I hope it was sweet.

Vale Debbie. Vale Carrie. Travel well ladies.

Last month we talked a little about the science of persistence, what it takes to make your persistence, well, persist.

It turns out there is much research into what makes us persistent, to exhibit true grit, so we can use this knowledge to improve our likelihood of staying the course, even in the face of adversity.

In my quest to examine the nature of persistence in the gritty real world, I did what I always do: I turned to my zen master gurus kids.

If I am to be completely honest, my kids so far haven’t exhibited much in the way of sporting accomplishment (sorry kids, but you probably won’t be going to the Olympics any time soon, unless Minecrafting and making Glitzy Globes is admitted), but when they set their minds to it, they are able to surprise me.

This is the story of Coco and the Cartwheel… Getting gritty in the garden.

Coco had been going to gymnastics for a few months when seemingly, she woke up one day and decided she wanted to learn how to cartwheel. (In the interests of full disclosure I will admit that I have never performed what could be termed a successful cartwheel, so other than a knowledge of the basic biomechanics involved, I could be of no real assistance. That’s right: I have never done a cartwheel. I’ll not be mocked.)

“Mum how do you do a cartwheel?” she asked me seventy-three million times a day, “I really, really want to do a cartwheel. Do you think I’ll ever be able to do a cartwheel? I think I’m gonna do a cartwheel soon.”

With absolutely no desire to hurtle through the grass upside-down, I asked her why she was willing to risk breaking bones and vases for something, (let’s be honest here) is essentially useless.

“I love the idea of it. I love that I can’t do it yet, but I know that I will one day, and then all of us girls at school can cartwheel all around the oval,” she said, hopping from one foot to another, popping to get back to her training. Then she stopped, “I know Mum, why don’t you video me with that slo-mo thing on your phone, so I can see what I’m doing?” I smiled inwardly, knowing what I knew about the science of grit: interest, deliberate practice, purpose, hope and belonging. Or in in8 model terms: Why, What, How, Who with, and When? She had it all.

Over the next few weeks Coco practised, practised, practised. She fell onto her head and her bottom, she bruised her shins and dented my walls, and accidentally kicked the cat in the head, as she careened through the lounge room. Most days I was cajoled into ‘rating’ her efforts out of ten, and one lazy autumn afternoon, her Nan watched her do 57 attempts without stopping. Until finally, somehow (grit maybe?) it clicked. She went from doing dodgy, splay-legged, upside down cockroach flips, to properly executed, graceful cartwheels. She jumped for joy, as did the cat and the chippy husband (Think: plaster walls), and shouted, “You ripper, I can do them. I’ve mastered them…Yippee… Now I’m going to google ‘how to do a round-off’ and nail those too. I can’t wait!”

Oh my. Give me strength. Or grit*.

A sign of persistence

*If by grit you mean a glass of wine and a nice lie down.

That was then, this is now

When I was eight years old I got my first pair of roller-skates.

I woke up on Christmas morning with anticipation that shimmered in front of me like the gauzy curtain of a boudoir. I ripped it aside with nary a thought of how it may have been thoughtfully placed to create a mood, such was my desire and my need.

I ran to the box that was the size and the shape and the heft of the things I had been wishing for since at least November, which of course was the same as forty-seven years in my eight year old chronoestimation. I held the box in my hands and waited a century-second before hungrily tearing off the slippery-gaudy-cheap paper. Skates. At last. Skates.

The wrong skates.

My heart stopped beating for a moment-year, and I buried my face in the remnants of that gaudy paper, ashamedly scratching away the look of horror, before my parents could see what the face of an ungrateful child looked like.

The skates were white, yes. The wheels were red, yes. They were boots, yes. But they were Hang Ten. I wanted Redstones. More than wanted: I needed Redstones. In that moment of complete and total disappointment, I knew that there was nothing I could do, and that I would never have Redstone skates. The part of my forebrain that somehow knew things that adults knew, was aware that this was probably my one shot. My one chance at owning Redstone roller-skates. And now it was gone. So close / so far.

I forced a smile to my mouth and to my eyes, and carefully laced the hideous wrong-skates. My parents were overfrothing with the happy that comes from seeing their child truly love the carefully-chosen gift so much, that they can’t even speak. I couldn’t speak.

To keep my hands from shaking and my from eyes crying, I began the soothing task of lacing, and once done, I slowly made my way down the slick cement front steps. Each step was heavy with the despair of the wrong-skates. I took a deep breath, bent my knees slightly to get my centre of gravity just so, and pushed off down our driveway.

The skates rolled forward like nothing I’d ever felt before. They had a power of their own. I barely needed to push- I was gliding, gliding, flying, gliding.

“Am I flying? I think I’m flying!” I screamed so the people two streets over, behind the Henwood’s double storey house could hear. “These skates are AMAAAAZING.”

I skate-flew out onto the road, and lifted up to the touch the lowest lying clouds with the three lateral fingers of my left hand. From my place above the world I looked back to see my Mum and Dad below: she leaning into the space at the front of his chest where she fitted like a nesting cup, he with a grin that threatened to split his head open like the watermelon on that weird knife ad.

I think I heard him shout, “I know you wanted Redstones, but the Hang Tens have better bearings. They’ll roll better.”

I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but that day I knew without a doubt what considered, quiet, caring, love meant.

It meant Hang Ten skates.

The very best kind of love. Love that makes you fly.

…From The Ashers

*This was created from a prompt from Liz Gilbert’s creativity challenge: What did you most love to do when you were eight? It was supposed to take 20mins. I failed- this took me 37minutes. Oh well. Close, as they say, but no cigar.

What did YOU love to do when you were eight years old? Do you still do it?

Why not?

I mean that- why the hell not?

Sometimes the beauty is in the spaces, isn’t it?

The pause between when you tell him you love him for the very first time, and you wait, one beat, another, and there is that delicious-scary anticipation, before you hear what he will say back.

The gap between the notes in your favourite song. You know precisely how long to hold the silence. You take your breath, before the lyric unfurls the next layer of story.

The very first moment when you become aware of yourself in the morning, when for a second or two you are no-one and nowhere, your brain is furry and unfocussed, and there is no cancer or death or pain that cannot be taken away.

The beauty of the space.

This week two more of my people died.

I know this is inevitable. That with every moment that passes, every beautiful space that passes me by, I draw closer to another death. A bigger space. Another one that can never be filled.

Those deaths take my breath away, every single time.

This week two more of my people died, and there is a space in my heart that can’t be filled, and nor would I want it to be.

What do you say when someone dies? Do you say: passed away, passed over, left this earth, deceased? I don’t like any of those. I say they have left a space.

And so I mark it.

In my appointment book, which is the thing that runs my days, I write their name, where the time for their check up would normally be. My Dad comes in most Saturday afternoons. Hayley comes in every second Tuesday night. Geoff comes in once a month on a Saturday morning, and Bob has 9.15am on a Tuesday, every fourth week. Don’t worry about my tenuous grip on reality, I know they aren’t actually coming in, but I can’t bear to erase them, to take away the space they held in my life.

In the beginning, the space is almost unbearable. The allotted time stretches out from my toes to eternity, and I think I will never endure the tock-tock-tocking of the moments passing. After the passing of months, that if joined together would wrap around the equator eleventy-million times, the space takes on a new form. The time morphs and passes faster, or perhaps it just has less barbs to be ripped out of the gentle skin of my forearms. The space holds itself, it never de-ceases, but I find that I have a fortitude, a fort, that I never knew I’d built, and I can sit in the space, and put the jigsaw pieces of my heart back together.

Some of the pieces are missing.

There are spaces where there once was a picture.

But there is beauty in the parts that are now missing. They are the memories of my very own. Invisible to another, but clear to me.

And they are wondrous.

…From The Ashers