existing's tricky:but to live's a gift
Hi. Just over a year since I last posted on this blog. When I log into my dashboard I see the many half written drafts waiting. The new series I had started. The coming-soon teasers. Plans for this website to grow. When I hit publish on my last post, I didn’t know it would be…
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It’s been a pretty busy past month or so, and writing has been more of a challenge for me. We are currently on a visit back to the UK, so very much out of our regular routines, and of course the babba is a month older, and now very much constantly on the move (crawling and furniture walking), so I can no longer really write in moments of playtime. Nothing unanticipated there.
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A sunny morning walk along the canal, out toward Port Meadow, my baby nestled against me. Dappled waters. Cow parsley, horse chestnut and hedgerows dripping with may. Could not have dreamed of a more perfect welcome home.
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The carpark was so full when we arrived in the Hunua Ranges this Easter weekend that we had to backtrack and park on the road. Unsurprising, given the strong sunshine and crisp autumn air, but off-putting. We decided to walk the Cossey-Massey loop, hoping that the majority of people would be taking the much shorter Hunua Falls track, and fortunately we were correct.
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My baby lies asleep on my lap. He is ill for the first time, a tummy bug. Cradling his little exhausted body in my arms and stroking his head I just want to kiss him over and again, I love him so intensely. Soon I will be struck down too, although when I started writing this I was hopeful I might have escaped. I am not prepared for how violently it hits me, I feel I have been wrung out and bruised from the inside, and I am filled with amazement at how bravely my little one weathered it. Fortunately it passes through us both in 24h, and we are now recovered.
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From my Easter Sunday run with O.
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We agree on a time to meet, and I start planning the night before. Countless tiny tabs on my phone in the dim light of the lamp while O sleeps. Routes plotted in the Maps app. Mental calculations: if we reach here by 10.30, will we manage to get there by 3? In the end: we leave later than we’d hoped. Of course. It wouldn’t be a family roadtrip if we left on time. But it’s not disastrous. We’re off, the Toyota Blade close behind, rainclouds battling it out with the sun for possession of the sky.
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At the end of December, when my baby was just three months and I was still spending more of the night awake than asleep, I made a list of three personal and professional things that I wanted to accomplish this year. One of them, as I mentioned in a recent post, was to develop a writing practice.
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My family left yesterday evening. We hung around in the airport while they queued to drop off their bags, I sat on the floor to feed O, then walked him around the departure terminal while we waited. As I type, they are still in the air, wrenched away from me back home across the globe. They arrived in Auckland towards the end of February, stayed almost a month. Now they’re heading back into a northern hemisphere Spring, while we move into Autumn.
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This is such a great practice for anyone nursing or spending a lot of time with a babe in their arms. As much as I try to sit up straight and be mindful of my posture throughout the day, I still find myself with an achey back, tired arms and legs, and tight shoulders all the time. I would recommend this for anyone feeling tense, sore or stiff – it somehow manages to target all of problem areas in one go: the neck and shoulders, spine and ribcage, hips and hamstrings. The entire practice is low to the ground as well, which I find really soothing when I’m low on energy.
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It was a sticky hot December morning when we set out on this walk, brightly sunny at first, giving way to heavy grey clouds that chased us back to the car. The path starts at the bottom of a new housing estate, crosses over a mangrove bay, then twists in between the estuary and back…
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It’s Sunday morning and everything is strangely calm. The light is grey through the window, a grey we’ve accepted as the norm this summer. When I opened the curtains a few hours ago the garden was deadly still, a soft rain barely perceptible falling. The trees are stirring now, a gentle musical movement, and a fat speckled-bellied thrush is perched on our fence, lost in thought. Occasionally a rough gust shakes everything up, leaving leaves rustling and dancing in its wake.
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We’ve been having a very wet and humid summer this year. It’s February now and Auckland is still green, long after you would have expected her to have turned gold. To be honest, it isn’t very pleasant walking weather
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You might have noticed that I’m trying to write weekly again, at least for a while. I like taking a moment to look back upon things at the close of the year, a moment to pause and ask myself what I want going forward. I embrace the symbolism of January, two-faced Janus, gazing both into the future and the past. It allows me to pivot, redirect my attention, review my priorities…
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This is one of those deceptively slow and simple practices that somehow goes way deeper than you realise at the time. I would recommend it for anyone with a sore back, chest, neck and shoulders, for anyone tired or low on energy (hello sleep regression!), or for anyone anxious who carries tension in the upper body and/or struggles with shallow breathing when feeling stressed.
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“Where is the place your body is anchored? Which body of water is yours? Is it that I’ve anchored myself in too many places at once, or nowhere at all?”
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It was a moody afternoon in early December when O and I ventured out to East Auckland to explore the Bucklands Beach pathway. Heavy storm-clouds threatened,
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I started writing this post towards the end of October, as I began to stir and emerge from the blur of the first few weeks. I remember turning the page of my calendar and realising with a physical shock that the month was almost over. I’d barely noticed it had begun.
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It’s September 1st 2022, just after 6pm. I’m writing in the grey of the gloaming. Outdoors a dogged barking, the tu-tu-tu twitter of the birds, the occasional rush of a car. The trees are still, the sky bruised.
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I didn’t know, not then, when I threw my bag into the boot, when I entered your address into my phone, turned the key in the ignition, felt my tiny Micra shudder and shiver,
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Mad to Live 