I think I’m a bit of an ‘in the moment’ kinda gal. I love to dream, and in fact I set aside weekly daydreaming time in my diary to make sure I get my fill of fluffy future times, or as Joe Dispenza would say, “Creating a memory of the future” but outside of that, my family life and my work compels me to be all Fat Boy Slim. I simply can’t allow the past to determine my future, nor can I think too much about what may be. In the moment all the way, baby.

Which means once something is done, it’s done. I think about it a little, make some meaning from it, and then move along folks, nothing to see here.

So the idea of people having a heavenly birthday, although quite lovely in its intent, isn’t my jam. The age that someone “would’ve been” means very little to me. I’m a bit black and white. They aren’t here. So that’s that.

Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday.

And it kind of snuck up on me. I was busy trying to think of other things, and yet it came and went anyway. He’s been gone a good number of years now. More than a decade, less than a score. Long enough that I have been able to grow around the space he left in my heart, but not long enough that I’ve forgotten the way he cleared his throat before he spoke, the way he rested his hand on my mum’s shoulder when she needed his support, the way his eyes twinkled intelligently when he was patiently and carefully considering a new idea.

So many years, so many moments. And then time compresses down and it was yesterday that he was pushing our kids on the swing (way too high by the way) and saying, “Zoom zoom” whilst they squealed with pure terri-joy.

So what do you get a man who has everything is no longer here?

You get him a red wine emoji in the family chat and think of all the peppery-chocolate scented Henschke he tipped down the sink because it “tasted funny” when he was wracked with cancer cells. You get him some space in your thoughts as you sit on he couch and stare at his-now-your records, and think of how he taught you to slide them out of their crinkly sleeves and reverently place them on the turntable, closing your eyes as you wait through the first crackles to where the songs burst through. You give him your hairbrush so that he can gently brush the knots from your wet hair as you thaw out by the fire-at least it feels like you can do that, even though you can’t.  You give him immortality, by yet again mentioning his name.

Again and again.

Even on the days when it’s not his birthday and even when the people around you have grown tired of hearing about him.

Especially then.

Happy heavenly birthday Peter.

Happy Birthday Peter

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

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?

Lately I’ve been a bit of a seminar junkie.

See how I managed to make that sound like a good and bad thing all rolled into one? That’s because it kind of is. If you go to too many seminars you can start to think that real actual life is like a seminar, and you can do / be / have anything that you want in this world.

Which is true. You can.

But it comes at a cost.

And that tricky, sticky second part is the bit that sometimes makes it a lie. Where the person you are lying to is your very own self.

What happens to me when I go to seminars, is that I get all crazy-excited about the possibilities that exist in the world, all of the things that I am going to get done the minute I walk in the door, all of the lives that I am going to change with my MASSIVE VISION of working with every chiropractor I know, (and some that I don’t…yet), to ensure that every Woman, Man and Child on this PLANET is able to have lifetime chiropractic care.

Yessiree Bob, that is what I am going to do. And I shall be doing it Right Now. I’ve waited long enough. In fact, far too long.

On the long, dark drive home I trace the white lines and make voice memos about all of the ways I will expand the coaching business I am part of to get more chiros doing their thing efficiently and effectively. I make plans of working with the other coaching businesses so they will do the same. I plan to extend my own practice working hours, so I can see all of the people I turn away every week. I make plans to extend my own workspace so that it can also house some young chiros who want to enrol in my big vision. It might sound tiring, but I get so completely buzzed on the very idea of it all that I don’t give a shit about tired. “Sleep when you’re dead,” I say to my self out loud. “Sleep is for losers,” I whisper into my brain, just in case it is thinking of betraying the fire in my heart.

My headlights reflect on the white of our garage, and for a moment I sit in the quiet and the still. I roll the last moments of clear thoughts around in my mouth and brain, before my Mumbrain takes over, where everything is filtered through the veil of Everyone Else.

And then I open the front door.

I’m greeted by the sounds and smells of our home. Kids giggling over some silly little trifle that has taken their fancy. The comforting scent of garlic, tomato and herbs from the Spag Bol that Nath has cooked up for our dinner. Perhaps even a chocolatey whiff of a nice bottle of red he has breathing on the bench. The grumble of the waves carried to our balcony with the onshore wind that grabs the door from my hand, slamming it open, and announcing my arrival to my people. Silence for a single beat, and then I’m engulfed with cries of “Mummy” as hot little bodies press against me, furry paws trample on my feet and threaten to knock me off my teetering seminar-heels, a rough scratch on my cheek and a trace of manly aroma, heralds that I am home.

And I am truly home. This is the place where I belong, and am loved and supported for my quirks and my squarks.

And yet a tiny part of my heart stays in my seminar world.

And just like the drug to the junkie who devotes his life to getting his next fix, it is a desire that scratches and worries around the edges of my brain, trying to make purchase and get some serious traction. No matter where am I or what I am doing, it’s there. Teasing and cajoling and trying to have it’s greed met.

To satisfy it, I put inspirational signs up around the house, placating it momentarily, even as I feel it building in intensity, whispering: “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I scream back at the inside of my head, the words bouncing from cerebellum to frontal lobe and back again, over and over like a superball. “Leave me alone. I need time, time and well, time.”

But I don’t need time, not really. I just need to say what I really, really actually want. And figure out what I am willing to do to make it happen.

As we all do.

What do you really want?

And what are you willing to sacrifice to have it?

…From The Ashers

Hot Damn

I bit into the hot jam donut and thirty-four years dissolved off my skin.

The first bite was just right, a slight crunch of the fried outer and then teeth hit the fluffy of inside. A fine dusting covered my lips and I tried and tried not to lick the tiny crystals, tried and failed like every other time.  I stepped forward in the line, one step closer to that sugary smell.  I read the sign one more time: 20cents each, or 6 for $1.  So two dollars meant twelve donuts.  I pretended to decide if I would have six or twelve, teasing myself with the idea of being able to resist, and saving a dollar for later.  A later that added up to; one packet of Cheese Things, one White Knight, five Redskins, one pack of Fags and about six Cobbers or Freckles or Milk Bottles.  But I already knew I’d choose the donuts, which I may or may not later vomit up on the Spew Ball.  I stepped forward again and held and held and held my breath until I got to the window on tippytoes, so that my first gasp was of pure happysweet.

I got ready for the next bite, prepared, for you never know just when that scalding glob of fluoro pink will fly out of the donut and onto your delicate tongue, searing it for three days.  The process is: bite, pant with mouth open, and swallow, allowing the deliciousness slide down, forging a molten path along your oesophagus.  I handed over my two dollars, clutching the straining paper bag to my royal blue parka.  It was already becoming translucent with grease, and I had to be careful not to shake it too much- I could hear the waterfall of sugar falling from the donuts with each step.  I found a spot on the cold ground away from the annoying seagulls that were my brothers, and inhaled, like a sommelier.  The first bite was always the best and the trickiest.  Too big, and the scorching jam would shoot out and burn my fingers: IwontdropitIwontdropit, too small, and all I’d get was the dough.

Bravely, I popped the rest of the donut into my mouth and savoured the burning sensation, the touch-memory warming up old synapses that recalled the frigid wind coming off Albert Park Lake, making the metal rungs and handles of the play equipment so cold they burnt my fingers like the hot jam.  We called it Special Park for it was magical… Towering, curling slides, strange swings with almost evil leering kite-faces that went ‘swing-swong’ as well as ’round and ’round, orange and green balls that spun around and around whilst we chanted “FasterFaster” to our Dad on the outside, whose big arms never seems to stop or tire, ’til we came tumbling out, drunk on donuts and the spinning and the taste of hot, almost-vomit in the back of our throats.  Parents sitting in the idling warm of the car, listening to Fleetwood Mac or maybe Bob Marley, and imagining stealing a moment for themselves away from wide and innocent eyes, whilst outside we ran and ran from fort, to swing to see-saw and back, beanies pulled down tight but ears still numbing to deafness as we ran, almost weeing our pants with joy and daring when they honked the horn to go home and we scattered like Autumn leaves over the park so they couldn’t drag us home.

Special Park.  Special Days.

Did you ever go to Special Park?  It’s gone now of course, there’s a race-track and restaurants and the gentry enjoy the space that children once ruled.  The dirty-white of the donut van, ne’er to be seen.

Did your family have their own Special Park?

…From The Ashers (And the McShane-Rolfes) xx

Coco was still home from school today, her eardrum is still perforated,  the iPad is still lost, or found, and now living in it’s new home,  (I hope the new owners are having fun playing in all the Minecraft worlds that Coco and Liam have lovingly created over the last few months.) and my frown lines are still as deep as ever.  Yet somehow, today was a little better.

Today, the sun had to work a little harder to warm up the Sunshine Coast.  But it was worth it once it did.

Today I overcooked the eggs a little, so they weren’t quite as runny as I’d like.  But they were bright yellow, and yolky thick and tasty all the same.

Today I had to do four loads of washing to freshen everything up after all the musty sickness of the last week.  But the wind blew and blew and everything smelt fresh and sweet once I got it off the line.

Today Coco painted her own fingernails whilst I was in the shower, and smeared colours all over the white leather chair and the tiles.  But it sort of came off, and she was so proud of how she looked, that it mostly outweighed the vague pinkish blur that remains.

Today Liam taught me how to play chess, and it looked like he was going to win.  But I lured him into check with my rook, so I STILL RULE.

Tonight I wasn’t concentrating, and burnt yet another pot to a smoky cinder.  But when we had to evacuate to the balcony for some air, my neighbour threw me over a home grown lemon, then we spent time looking at that fecund moon.  Liam swore it was green.

So even though my day today hasn’t been perfect, it’s been a little better.

How has your day been?

Have you looked at the moon?