Bigger than I could blog

Hi.  How are you?  Isn’t it amazing?  It’s 2011.  And I meant to write this post yesterday to mark the New Year but as is the fashion in my current life as never before: here I am , late again.

So what happened here?

Last year became enormous as did I.  As my pregnancy progressed, I got slower and tried frantically to fit in more and more before the baby arrived.  It was a time for doing, not time for reportage.

And now Matt and I have a son, Arthur who is nearly 8 months old.   He was mostly born at home, in our kitchen with a quick dash to hospital in the last 40 minutes where a careless (lady) obstetrician pfaffed about too much and too roughly with a ventouse and in the end my midwife says I pretty much pushed him out myself at 20 minutes past 12 on the morning of May 8.  He is a tiny Taurus Bull, born in the year of the Tiger who we refer to as the King of the Bears.  Grrr.  Snort.

Parenting is every joyous cliche I have ever heard and more and Arthur is a funny, exquisite, calm, stoic and generally delightful little boy who likes books, drumming, dancing and rabbits.  I think I speak easily for both Matt and I when I say our lives are far greater with him in it.  It has been so enjoyable I simply haven’t wanted to tear myself away in order to put into words something that might simply be indescribable.

I have decided not to return to work and instead, stay Mama-at-home/Artist-at-home and am slowly starting to make that combo work.  It means financially life is rather slim but I have been here before when I first found I needed to retreat from the cycle and I find I need and am happier with less and less as time progresses.   The investment in spending my time growing vegetables, ideas, images and a person is proving infinitely more gratifying.

Around me in 2010 people were born and people died.   I welcome all you fascinating creatures who have arrived with open arms and to those who left, I just dearly wish I had the opportunity to say goodbye or to ask you to reconsider your journey before you set off.  Everyone leaves a ragged, raw hole when they go.  Everyone.

Despite these sadnesses I thank you 2010 for witnessing me turning 40 , for the 10 year marker for my marriage but most overwhelmingly for Arthur.

Soon I will post some brief catchups on what DID happen after I stopped recording but looking ahead, placing one foot in front of the other, and despite my tendency not to, this year some resolutions became clear as I showered away the last dust of 2010: to remember fun and how to have it; and to put an end to waste – wasted resources, money, emotion and time.  I can and will cut back on all of them.

I wish you all the best for this year, whoever you are.  Be as happy as you can and remember that aching void that would exist if you did not.

Happy New Year.

x

My three favourite guys

Happy World Animal Day everybody!

two of one and one of the other

This last month has seen three new sprog in our vastly extended family.
First v. old mates Sean and Ange produced a little girl named Neika (haven’t clapped eyes on her yet). Then, as mentioned a little earlier, my beautiful neice Pip and her partner Kev gave birth to Alexander (left baby) and dear friends Susie and Dale rounded off November with the presentation (all vaginal delivery – no epidural- Susie is a freaking awesome machine of phenomenal uterine strength and fortitude – Maas, I salute you!) of the very marsupial, Charlotte (right baby).

Good work guys I am tres impressed but could you all have any future babies in colder places and seasons so I can knit things for them?

That goes for the lot of you…

Ivy Enid Rees

At the beginning of November my Grandmother (my fathers mother and my last remaining grandparent) passed away at the age of 98. It was not unexpected and in many ways had been willed onwards by the family general – she had been in an unhappy and uncomfortable state in a nursing home for some years now and that state had gradually become a state of almost total absence. I have had difficulty pinning down my feelings since her death but it feels wrong not to talk about it at all. My brother Chris already eulogised her beautifully on his blog HERE.

This morning I’m just making the space to write about it a little with a plan to blog whatever ensues so here goes…

We always knew her as Ibey – a mutation of her name that came about with my older sisters early attempts at speech. Her husband, Elliot Elwood Rees, known to the family as Dids (I have no idea how that name came about – must ask – in fact as I type I realise I don’t even know how to spell it. I’ve only heard it spoken.), died before I was born, although he knew Mum was pregnant with me. She lived in the one house that Dids built for her all the time I knew her until her health demanded round-the-clock nursing home care and she was moved into Aldersgate Nursing Home, in 2004 I think. I took a series of photos in the almost empty house with a borrowed camera in a super hurry (Mum and Dad were trying to clean it and get it on the market in order to be able to pay for her care). I love the series but the images are very small because I rushed and made an error with the unfamiliar gear. The house (this is me in the front yard HERE) is on top of a steep street called Belle Vue Avenue in Launceston. Until the age of about 94 she walked up and down that steep hill most days. Her sharpness of mind and spryness of limb were a source of great family pride and as we kids got older we would agree that our genetic inheritance was something to be proud of.

Ibey was as sharp as a tack for a good 92 of her 98 years at least and did not suffer fools gladly. Her sense of humour was dry, dry, dusty dry and positively wicked at times. She loved the cricket, an occasional glass of stout and a good poke around in the garden and never slept much. Getting up in the middle of the night you would see her light emitting from her open doorway and spy her still reading large print books late into the morning. She was not a cuddly grandma, she was often kind of spiky and I was sometimes scared of her as a child. In later life (Maybe always? Not sure…) she distrusted strangers and as a result, as her existing network of friends and neighbours (not similarly blessed with her awesome longevity) passed away, she became very lonely I think. A drunken, bumbling attempt at a burglary where her front door (next to the bedroom where she lay probably reading – not sleeping) was smashed in, scared her and sent her further irretrievably inwards even though she bravely scared the intruder away. I recognise her discomfort with and inability to trust strangers in myself.

I went through quite a few years of feeling firmly disapproved of – my weight, my hair and my manner of dress were never NOT commented upon and compared unfavourably to those of my siblings and cousins – and I now feel like I wasted quite a few good years of knowing this very interesting woman who held the keys to so many aspects of my heritage, by simply being reluctant to spend time with her.

Gladly, I reached a point where I grew up and was able to see the superficiality of these remarks and recognise that she was actually quite fond of me. I threw my wobbly self-confidence in a corner and right up to the last times I saw her we got on really well and laughed a lot. She thought Matt was terrific (I DID get full marks from her for boyfriend/husband choice) and she proudly clipped him out from newspaper when he won his Samstag scholarship.

The photo above is from her 80th birthday party where she’s flanked by Dad and her daughter (my Aunt), Wendy. We all had a great time out for dinner at Woofies in Launceston that night.

Mum is certain Ibey regained some awareness and recognised Dad on their last visit to her. She adored Dad and we have always been aware of it. She became a Great Great Grandmother a couple of days before she died when my niece, Pip gave birth to her son, Alexander although she didn’t know this.

At the funeral there were only the four of us, Dad, Mum, Chris and Me in a tiny crematorium chapel in a little bit of pretty, rural nowheresville outside of Launceston. It felt like a scene from a film. I know my sister Jacki was probably devastated she couldn’t be there – the family pride in Ibey runs even deeper in Jack than the rest of us I think – but she lives in NSW now.

I will ALWAYS associate her with berries and my warmest, fuzziest memories are of her wiping my fingers free of juice after letting me raid the patches of raspberry blackberry and boysenberry and giving me tea in the tiniest, most delicate cup and saucer with a little blue flower for a handle. If she was afraid I’d break it she never let it show.

She was tiny and positively formidable.

Bunny Update

The rabbits haven’t been news and that’s because everything is just fine. But they deserve some attention, so here goes.

Gino (or Bubba as he gets called most of the time, now) seems to have stopped growing and we are wondering if he is now going to stay a tiny wee thing forever, his heritage being a bit of an unknown factor. There is so much hairdo action between cuts and combs that we often think of him as a very short Jon Bon Jovi. A cross between him and a tiny suffolk sheep.

He has eaten the front out of my grooming apron and I now have to stuff a newspaper down the front for him to shred while I do the comb-out. He only chomps on while having his hair done and whenever else I pick him up he licks my face like a puppy and snuggles into my neck. He’s a pretty affectionate little guy and we have become very fond.

Noodle is now more used to him and happily curls up with him through the day but sometimes loses patience with his hyper-drive madness (have I ever mentioned how he moves like he is in fast forward ALL the time?)and gives him a nip. She also feels the need to impress her superiority around food and I often find a little chomp mark on his back while I’m grooming him. Naughty Noo-Noo. We have taken to bribing her with sultanas whenever we see her treating him real nice which seems to be working but she is already a little fat…

Roll on, nice weather because with it comes backyard Rabbit Jogging.

RABBIT ALBUM.

Beautiful Noodle

Earsqueaker

Michael also has a new trick. Listen closely now…

more about "Ear Squeaker", posted with vodpod

Roman Mysteries

I spent some family time on Sunday at my brother, Chris’s new super-sunny house catching up with him, his wife Elf, two of my nephews, Marcus (5) and Michael (3) and my Mum and Dad who were on a quick blow-in visit.

Dad looks great and is about 10 days away from his next operation. Mum always looks great.

Marcus spent most of the time I was there drawing quietly. He has a new calmness at the moment which is maybe just a new maturity.

Michael is crazy about letters and typography. He put this together himself, building the missing letters out of Lego. Apparantly it’s the name of a TV show so he has seen it written which is how he kinda knows what to do but I think it must be the sound of the words that grabs him… what other reason does a 3 year old have to write Roman Mysteries?

Captain Beefheart

This is my Dad. He has a very deep voice, a stubborn attitude, ridiculously curly eyebrows (that have been genetically passed on to me) and a furiously wicked sense of humour.

He scared the bejeezus out of us all a week ago by announcing (after heading off to Melbourne for some fairly routine tests)that he would immediately be undergoing six hours of surgery for a double bypass and to have a heart valve replaced at the same time. My mum stayed alone in a cheap hostel not knowing a soul in town while all this was carried out and recovery set in. People were very kind to her all over the place and she now LOVES Melbourne, which as she pointed out, is fairly suprising for a Sydney gal like her.

I flew over to keep Mum company for a couple of days and to visit him earlier this week. The greyish, bedridden chap I was expecting to see 3 days past the surgery was instead a frisky fella sneaking out of his physio and doing a little pixie dance up behind me. I was so relieved to see him looking good. He was released on Thusrday (a week on) and he and Mum flew back here, spent a night and then drove back to Turners Beach at the other end of the state yesterday. He is still tired and his torso is still very bruised and muscle-sore. There are large wounds (obviously) too but it’s all healing well.

The resilience of a man in his early 70′s is really heartening. His recovery is visibly marked in his comfort levels and demeanour day-by-day.

He will return for another arterial bypass (abdomen to leg) in about 6 weeks but things are looking good and of course that will be not quite as serious a venture.

His new heart valve came from a cow. I now want to burn him a copy of Trout Mask Replica but Dad is a jazz guy and I think Beefy’s gravelly rumblings will just give him the shits.

Shame.

fluff chaser