Celebrating Birth Days

Just after the Birth Day

 

Last Friday was my youngest daughter’s 5th Birthday, which was celebrated with all the excitement and enthusiasm of a newly turned 5 year old. There was a trail of shredded wrapping paper, Barbie shoes, Octonaut stuff and various other brightly coloured, small plastic things designed to be trodden on by unsuspecting parents.

I’ve always loved my my children’s birthdays; sharing in the anticipation and joy of the day, organising the parties – and I’ve done plenty of those.

My daughter’s 5th birthday represents the 51st birth day I have celebrated – the combined ages of my 3 daughters. Every birthday, I always think back to their original birth day. My labour and the first precious moments of my child’s life. And they remain incredibly vivid. I’m very lucky that each of my birthing experiences were straight forward, although as different and individual as my daughters. I acknowledge there was pain and discomfort, but mostly, I remember and celebrate three intensely powerful and joy-filled births.

I imagine there will always be a moment on my children’s birthdays when I reflect about their birth and their earlier years. Moments of pride at how I have, and am, guiding them through life. But also moments of regret as I consider what I could have done differently.

And as the birth days roll by, I realise how much of the early years of parenting are just preparation for when your children get older. Sure, the early years are physically demanding and pass by in a fog of sleep deprivation, endless preschool energy and infectious enthusiasm for quirky displays  such as ballet scootering, or playing out complicated  games  that are peppered with ‘Now just pretend…’. Not to mention the fussy food habits, tantrums, nappies etc, etc. But all this fades into a mist coloured a soft shade of rose as one looks at the grunting, surly teenager imprisoned by hormonal urges they can’t control, let alone begin to understand.

As the birth days shift into double figures, the emotional and psychological demands are far more taxing, far more exhausting than anything your little one could possibly hope to throw at you. You are no longer the love of their life, but the bitch who ruined their life. For Ever More. And don’t even attempt to wander through the school gate with them, or deliver them to the front doors of parties, which don’t have friendly afternoon starting and finishing times. These parties start when you’re about to sit down with a glass of wine and then you remember you to have leave your cosy couch at 1am to pick them up. Remind yourself, as I did, that you too were once a teenager and survived to become a relatively normal adult, so there’s every chance your teenager will too.

As they move into young adulthood, you’ll discover the paradox of parenting. That the children you coaxed from their birth day on to become independent and self sufficient individuals, become just that and are off living their own lives, away from the nest.

Birthdays are  happy and celebratory, and for parents they bring the extra perspective of reflecting on the life that began on a birth day.

To My Bright Star

The Write on Wednesday Spark: Dear…
This week’s writing exercise is to write a letter. Write an open letter or write to someone more specific. Write a letter between two fictional characters or write a letter into a fictional piece you are already working on. Think  about how differently you write depending upon who you are writing to. Your content in an open letter may differ to content in a private letter.

Wherever the prompt takes you. Keep your post on the short side: up to 500 words OR a 5 minute stream of consciousness exercise. Link your finished piece to the list and begin popping by the other links. Oh, and enjoy!

The linky will be open each week from Monday to Friday. If you are playing the game, try to visit the other linkers, at least three of four would be nice. Encourage, critique and support your fellow writers.

You can find the link at inkpaperpen

 

Abbie Cornish and Paul Schneider as Fanny & Keats in Bright Star

Tess,

My Bright Star, I wish I could write you a love letter like the poetry of Keats, but instead I’ll steal from Wordsworth – If I could fill this paper with the breathings of my heart, it would be infused with a love which has refused to dim. It would whisper of years lost because of my arrogance. It would be spotted with tears wept because I lacked your courage. It would be folded in an envelope of hope that you might yet give me another chance.

Really, all it needs to say is, I love you still and always.

Jake

 

Keats wrote the beautiful poem, Sonnet, to his lover, Fanny Brawne. It’s their relationship that is depicted in Jane Campion’s film Bright Star.

Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou -art

Not lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task,

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

Or gazing on the new sot-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors.

No- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair loves’s ripening breast,

To fell for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever -or else swoon to death.

 

The Wordsworth quote is ‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart’ and is on the wall above my desk to remind me why I write.

Taking the Risk for Creativity

Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon

 

‘follow passion, encourage talent, be creatively opportunistic’ – Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon

Over the last few months, I’ve been to a number of theatre productions. Stage, ballet, contemporary dance and music. Some have been extraordinary. The boundaries of creativity pushed, where  an engagement between the performer and audience beyond a passive show and tell experience, has been demanded. Others have pushed, taken risks, but not quite achieved that perfect intersection of ideas, performance, design and delivery.

One of the productions that didn’t quite work for me was Graeme Murphy’s production of Romeo and Juliet for The Australian Ballet. The set design, costuming, performance and much of the choreography were spectacular. But the central drama, the emotion of the narrative, was lost amongst the busy-ness. Murphy’s desire to convey the universality of the story and themes overshadowed the poignancy and tragedy of the ‘star-crossed lovers’.

Romeo and Juliet

And I say that as someone who has admired Graeme Murphy’s work for nearly 30 years (ooh – that hurts! But I was only 2 – okay 20, when I first fell in love with his Cupid skateboarding down a ramp in the Sydney Dance Co.’s ‘Daphnis and Chloé). Murphy’s reworking of Swan Lake is hauntingly, heartbreakingly beautiful and still moves me to tears when I watch the DVD.

Murphy is not only a sublime choreographer for ballet, musicals and film, his productions for Opera Australia are also fabulous, sumptuous and original. Going to a Murphy production will always be interesting, will always have moments of breathtaking genius and creativity. Even the productions that are not ‘successful’.

As a writer I am inspired by Graeme Murphy and his partner and creative associate, Janet Vernon. They are risk-takers, willing to explore and experiment, to gamble with the possibility of failure in a very public sphere. It takes courage, commitment and a belief in your ability and talent to allow yourself to be so publicly vulnerable. It is easy to be ‘safe’, to write without challenging yourself or your reader; to adopt an attitude of ‘settling for’ rather than pushing through.

And for me, much of my procrastination centres on the knowledge that ‘settling for’ will not satisfy me, and yet, pushing through, the risk-taking, can be a daunting prospect.

I’ve yet to bulldoze my way through the envelope, but I have stepped through and then retreated. Working on my 2nd draft, the editing and re-writing of my novel I realise that now is the time to bulldoze.

Wish me luck!

Watch the skateboarding Cupid, danced by a very young Paul Mercurio.

Possessing Beauty – The Collection

The Write on Wednesday Spark:  Possessing Beauty
Write about a collection. Write about something you or ,someone you know, collects. Think about the “why” behind the collection – why is it important to collect this particular thing? How does it make the person feel to add another piece to their collection? Is the group of objects there to be seen, to be studied or simply kept together? Write a real life story or a piece of fiction. Wherever the prompt takes you…Keep your post on the short side: up to 500 words OR a 5 minute stream of consciousness exercise. Link your finished piece to the list and begin popping by the other links. Oh, and enjoy!

The linky will be open each week from Monday to Friday. If you are playing the game, try to visit the other linkers, at least three of four would be nice. Encourage, critique and support your fellow writers.

Write on Wednesday is hosted by – inkpaperpen blogspot

 

My fingers run across the fabric, reading the texture as if it’s Braille. The delicate, fragile appearance hadn’t prepared me for the ridges of hand-cut lace and the stitched thread weaving its way across the plain linen. A cloth that has spread across tables of meals and conversations; protected, adorned and then forgotten. Folded away in a drawer or boxed in a cellar until finally released.

The cloth, with its secrets, its yellowing age spots, is piled with layers of other people’s lives, other families’ stories like the books on the table next to it. And why choose this one and not the one under it or the one that covered it. Often I don’t really know. Perhaps the design of the embroidery, or the texture of the fabric whispers to me in a way the others do not. Maybe it reminds me of a cloth that belonged to one of my grandmothers or my mother. But whatever the reason, this is the one that I need to take home. To carefully launder, clean of the fusty antique shop smell that clings to its fibres.

But it isn’t always old material that I take home to my bower. Fabric shops lure me in with the same siren call. I buy lengths of fabric for the beauty of the design and colour and then wonder what I might do with them.The irony for a lover of textiles, a hunter/gatherer of cloth, is that I’m not a great seamstress. Although I’m always optimistic that my basic ability will flourish into a yet to be revealed talent.

Some pieces I frame, so instead of decorating tables or worn as a scarf, they on my walls. A Japanese handkerchief, traditional Lao embroidered collars, a silk wrap from an Art Gallery. Fabrics too delicate to wear. Fabrics that I want to look at, dream and reminisce with.

I don’t know why I’m so drawn to textiles. Could it be that I hanker for a time of substance, when materials were kept and treasured, not made from disposable fabric with the intention of being used once only. Is it from peering into cupboards as a child and searching out my favourite doilies, tablecloths and linen hand towels to use at my grandmothers’? I don’t really know, other than it’s a way of bringing beauty, colour, and design into my life. Of mixing the old with the contemporary. An expression of my personality and the incredible satisfaction and happiness of finding an object beauty.

My Last First Day of School

 

Heading off on Her Own

As Sydney’s gloomy, damp January drew to a close, my youngest daughter’s first day at school approached. Her excitement had been building over the last few months, with endless questions about ‘big school’. But as the day loomed ever closer, her excitement morphed into nervousness.

She had eased in her ‘super fast trainers’ and her black Mary-Janes and proudly worn her uniform at every opportunity, including to my uncle’s 75th Birthday tea. Lunches had been packed into her lunchbox and declared even yummier for being eaten from the hot-pink, insulated lunch pack.

I watched my youngest child excitedly preparing for school with a mixture of pride and sadness. I was proud that she was embracing such a huge change with confidence and eager anticipation, but I couldn’t deny the sadness I felt. This would be my  last first day of school. An end of an era. And more than that, I knew that once she started school I would lose not just the time spent with her, but the innocence of a pre-schooler.

On her first morning she marched confidently through the school gates and rounded the corner into the playground and froze. The playground was buzzing with first day excitement and energy. Friends calling to each other after the long summer break, boys snaking between groups of adults and chattering girls as they chased runaway tennis balls from their handball games. Like a champagne bottle shaken before opening, it was an explosion of noise and energy spraying out in all directions. And dotted amongst this overflowing spray were little bubbles, like my daughter, suspended in overawed stillness.

It wasn’t just the cameras that gave away the kindergarten parents, they also shared the startled looks, the badly disguised anxiousness, the searching for a familiar face of the children. But unlike their children, they hadn’t participated in a school readiness programme at pre-school. On their first day, they haven’t yet realised just how profound the change is, the adjustments that they will have to make and the letting go they will have to do. Most still think they are able to protect their child from the rough and tumble of the outside world and don’t know that very soon they will no longer be the most important, all-knowing figure in their child’s life. That role will be assumed by their teacher and, as the years progress, their peers.

The transition into school life is tricky, rarely smooth and hassle-free.Friendships will form and fracture, schoolwork, homework and the balance of extra-curricular activities all have to be juggled. It is an important preparation for the years to come when as a parent, you will experience and need to negotiate periods of loss, change and the developing independence of your children.

The First Assembly

On my daughter’s first morning, the school bell quickly rang and the morning assembly was held in a playground shaded by gum trees and frangipani. Without any ceremony, our little ones were whisked away by their teacher. Little faces looking back over shoulders for the reassurance of their parents. And I headed home with a sense of emptiness, on my last first day.

Writer’s Back

 

Most people wouldn’t think of writing as a physical activity. It’s a solitary, sedentary activity accompanied by the tapping of keys or the scratch of pen across paper. A strenuous brain activity, a mental exertion. Although, those who don’t write assume that it’s not hard for those of us who do write, a natural talent that comes, well, naturally. If only that were true. And if only my back didn’t tell me that my bouts of writing are also a physical exertion that takes  it toll.

There are periods of time (sometimes as long as a month) when my back doesn’t bother me at all. Usually this is a good indicator of the amount of writing I’m doing – not much. And then there are times when my back and neck ache, tighten, send pins and needles down into my wrists and leave with me headaches which a dose of codeine and a sleeping tablet are the only cure.

I walk, stretch, use heat packs and have a close relationship with my osteopath. I do yoga and ballet all to help my back and neck from totally seizing up, but the best thing I could do to relieve the pressure and strain on my spine is to stop writing. But that just isn’t going to happen.

Last weekend I had a massage, something I’ve looked on as a bit of luxury, time-wise and budget-wise. Before I completely spaced out, as the hot stones were placed along my backbone and the aroma of goanna ointment filled my head, I realised two things. Firstly, the mental space, the dream-like world you enter in such a nurturing environment, frees your creative thoughts and it’s amazing how many tricky problems can be resolved in quite unexpected ways. Secondly, that having the tender, tight muscles along my back, across my shoulders and into my neck so soothed by the massage is so beneficial, it should be deemed an occupational workplace safety feature, like Blundstone boots on a film set.

So, just as I try to regularly nourish my creativity, I am now going to have regular massages for my writer’s back. I’m not going to consider it a luxury, but a necessity for the longevity of my writing career and the communal sanity of those near and dear to me. I have too much writing and rewriting to do to be blocked by my writer’s back.

 

Riding The Teahupoo

For a girl who has never set a sandy foot on a waxed surfboard, I have a strange compulsion for watching surf footage.I am utterly in awe of the power of the sea, the beauty of the curling wave before it forms a barrel and the swirl of white water engulfing itself. And as for the men and women who ride these big waves? I think they’re nuts, but I am also envious of their fearlessness and would love , for just a brief instant, to feel the rush of taking off down the face of such an enormous body of water.

Shot at Teahupoo (pronounced cho-po) in Tahiti, this is the world’s heaviest wave and if you want to know more, you can read about it here.

We’ve had some big swells this summer, but compared to this, they’re ripples in a duck pond..

Summertime and the living is Festive

Nielsen Park

After the coolest and wettest December in 51 years, summer has finally arrived in Sydney. Long,hot, still days that build to a hot blustery southerly buster. Days of lying on the beach, sticky peach juice running down a sweaty wrist, mingling with coconutty sunblock and the audio wallpaper of cicadas chirrupping and cricket commentators chatting over the 5 day long  test games.

It’s also the time of year when many families head off their annual holiday, taking the roads leading to the north and south of Sydney for quieter coastal retreats. But I love Sydney in the summer. Lounging on Nielsen Park, building sandcastles, floating in the safely shark-netted water and sipping a cappuccino. Watching the bats fly over the twilight sky over the moonlight cinema screen, catching ferries on the sparkling Sydney Harbour and just generally enjoying the laid back, relaxed summer ambience that infuses my city.

Me - entangled

And of course there is the Sydney Festival. The annual arts programme of theatre, performance, music and art. over the next three weeks, you can sample cabaret in the intimate and art nouveau styled Spiegeltent; symphony and opera in a large open air picnic  atmosphere (cost – free); take in the works of Picasso at the Art Gallery of NSW; listen to Holly Throsby children’s songs or maybe PJ Harvey is more your thing. If you can’t find something to enjoy at the Sydney Festival, you’re just not trying!

Interior of the Spiegeltent

Gubba - an Indigenous mythical bush creature

My festival kicked off on Saturday at the Festival First Night (in our case afternoon) at the free family day in the Sydney’s Hyde Park. We became entangled in a sculpture installation with Polyglot Children’s Theatre and listened to a band of gypsy musicians rehearsing at a bus stop and wandered around corner to just in time to watch a big band in rehearsal with a group of swing dancers. Our afternoon rounded off with stories from Indigenous folklore and lazing on a lawn to mellow music that perfectly captured the essence of a late summer afternoon.

Gypsy Music

More Gypsy music

Getting ready to Swing at the Trocadero

Over the next few weeks I will be refilling my depleted creative well by attending several performances. It’s an inspiring start to a new year. My days will be filled with sun, sand and sunblock and my evenings with dance, music and theatre. It doesn’t get much better.

Epiphany

 

The last thing I remember clearly was singing, ‘Clang, clang goes the clanger’. Loudly.The way you do in the car. I was uncomfortable, tired, yawning, shifting away from the glare. Or had I already put my sunglasses on and relaxed? My daughter, sitting in her car seat in the back, was annoyed that I’d stopped mid-way through our third rendition of the 12 days of Christmas to sing along with Judy Garland. But was it then? Or was it earlier?

And then saw my own face, an airbag exploding, a crunch, a violent shuddering. the instant realisation that I had crossed the median strip of a major arterial road into oncoming traffic.

Somehow I got my car back onto the right side of the road and stopped it. Or maybe it stopped itself. I sat slowly registering the smoke wisping in tendrils from under the bonnet, the acrid smell of burnt rubber, the car bonnet smashed and the airbag.I thought about the smoke. That’s not good. I should get out. I should get my daughter out. But I couldn’t move. I was trapped in a parallel universe of shock and trauma so profound that my fight or flight reflex couldn’t cut through the atmosphere.

I looked at my daughter, stunned, silenced but unharmed. Someone was sitting with her, checking her fingers. Someone was holding my hand through the window, the door jammed shut by the impact. She kept me asking me if I was okay, but I had no words.

A policeman appeared asking me if I was okay, could I get out of the car? Everyone in the other cars were unhurt, he reassured me. I stared at him blankly, wondering what he was talking about. I’d crashed. But had I gone into other cars? Well, obviously. The grasp on reality was painfully gradual. The guilt, the terror of what could have been, however, flooded my consciousness.

It was the 22nd December, 2011, 245pm, a busy time of day at a very busy time of year. Today is the 6th January, 2012, Epiphany. The day the Three Magi brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The day Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas. For me, Epiphany will always be the 22nd December, the day my daughter and I escaped death or serious injury by a matter of inches. Some fluke or random alignment of the stars. The safety belt and airbag, the quick reaction of another driver I never saw.

I have thought about my legacy. What would I have left behind if I had been killed? Too many projects not fully finished. I have realised the fragility of life, how easy it is to become a statistic in the holiday road toll. I understand that bad things happen, not just to other people, they can and do happen to me. It has left me spooked. Not yet ready to ‘seize the day’ and ‘live life to the fullest’. I have not made my normal hopeful list of New Year’s resolutions. I’m just very grateful to be alive. But when I say good-bye to family and friends now, there is a new intensity to the hugs I give. My youngest daughter, still sometimes anxious and clingy, is the recipient of cuddles that could crush.

The formalities are over. Dealt with a speed and expediency by the both the police and insurance company, which has been a relief-giving surprise. The car is a right off. Now my psyche needs to heal, not such a speedy process.

So, six days into this new leap year, I wish you all a year of love, fulfillment and good health. And some advice, if you are yawning when you are driving, pull over. Nothing is so important that you can’t be a few minutes late.

Happy Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve. The Turkey’s stuffed & cooked, the salads prepared, the ice cream made and the carols sung. So, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

My wish is that you all spend  Christmas with the people you love and cherish sharing such a happy family day.

Thank-you all for reading my posts over the last few months and for all your fantastic comments.

Jxx