Canvas

by Ruby

by Grace

by Nina

by Lily

Over the Easter break Kim got the girls to do a painting on canvas.  Thank god for Kim.  Once I was that mother who got the paints out more or less daily, made playdough weekly, did endless craft projects with the kids, sat them on my knee letting them guide the fabric through the sewing machine, displayed their work in an endless rotation on walls and on this blog.  And I didn't do it out of matyrdom or because I thought I should. I really liked that stuff.  I loved nothing more than hauling all the craft stuff onto the kitchen table and getting all the kids involved in some messy project.  It was my number one way to pass an afternoon.  When other kids came for plays it wasn't unheard of to sew bags or make potato prints, or stick bits of pasta onto cardboard and paint them.

Now it seems all my kid-crafting mojo has left me.  After more than a decade of parenting I just cant be bothered.  Painting seems like a lot of mess and hassle, and then what do we do with the finished products?  The art work on the walls has remained unchanged all year.  The idea of sorting through it fills me with ennui.

Maybe that is just the way it is - we are moving onto a new stage and lingering in the last one isn't so interesting (for me).  Unfair on Lil, who is forced to listen to chapter books when I'm sure the others still got picture books every night at her age, and who doesn't even get to watch half the favourite movies of the others because they've all grown out of them.  Movie nights on the whole are more difficult now - the tastes of a 12 year old and a 5 year old rarely intersect.  Do we just abandon the idea of a family movie and run it over two nights instead - little kids and big kids? I dunno.

I think I peaked too early, went too hard, too fast and left nothing in reserve.  

I always do lots of things at Christmas, or at least in the month leading up to Christmas. We always have a gingerbread party and I usually make lots of shortbread and often we make some decorations (this year painted gumnuts). We always make Christmas crackers, with fortune cookies and one dollar scratchies.  The kids still make all their presents for each other and their friends, which is pretty time consuming, and I usually make the kids something each, most often a dress. Cherries are always the sign that Christmas is near and this year I splurged on a whole box, which I've never done before. It was so luxurious for everyone to have as many cherries as they felt like and still have some the next day.

So even though Christmas is always busy and I always do lots of things, there has been a different edge this year. One of my sisters is very unwell and so all the activity has an air of keeping oneself busy and distracted, as well as a particular poignance to it. She came to our gingerbread party and we talked whilst keeping up brave faces for the kids - hers and mine - and I expect this is the reason that the door of the gingerbread house is wonky and the whole thing has a rather rushed look to it. We won't find out for a few more weeks exactly how bad things are, and of course we are hoping that the news is better than we fear. It seems a bit farcical to write about the little things I've been doing and making, whilst in the background this massive, life changing event is unfolding, and yet it also seems wrong not to record our Christmas season. And however powerfully something like this puts all our other petty concerns into perspective, still those petty concerns remain and have to be dealt with. This blog is, after all, about small matters, not large matters!

I appear to have misplaced the letters to Santa Claus which were rather delightful. Ruby began hers by hoping that Santa had been a good boss, as the elves need someone responsible - so proud that she's already identified the potential for exploitation in the relationship between capital and labour. Grace is hoping for a parasol and a beret (she really was born in the wrong era), and Nina asked for a briefcase (!). Lily is beguiled by almost anything she sees in a toy shop - a Jemima doll, a Strawberry Shortcake, a real live Minion please! And Ruby just desperately wants an ipod and swears she is about the only (nearly) 12 year old in the whole world not to have one.  I struggle with the whole technology thing. It does seem that most kids her age have something - a pod or pad or phone - that enables them to link in to social media and communicate with each other and by comparison we seem the most ludditish parents on the face of the earth. Lots of schools require an ipad but ours doesn't and so far she has only been able to really engage by using my phone, which obviously I control. I've held the line because I fear that once she has a device of whatever kind, she will disappear into a world of constant texting and surfing.  I don't think she's particularly interested in games, it's Instagram and social connections that fascinate her.  I know that rules around usage can be established, but I suspect that those rules rapidly become a battleground where parents are thrust unwillingly into the role of enforcer. And I'm not even sure what rules are appropriate - how much time is too much? how much privacy is reasonable? where can she take or use the device?

Once she has a device, and I know that it is inevitable eventually, I fear that she will never  again scoot round and round on the deck for hours, making up plays and stories. I worry that she won't write or draw as much - or at all.  I wonder if she'll still play with her sisters (admittedly this only tends to happen now when she is bored, but with a device, perhaps she'll never be bored?). And I am not sure that she will continue to read as much - or at all.  I also wonder whether I am totally overreacting and whether I'll look back on this dilemma in the same way that I look back on worrying about kindergarten and think how ridiculous I was.

The year, to all intents and purposes, is over. Craig and I have finished work, the kids have finished school, the concerts have been performed, the presents bought and wrapped and tomorrow the business of preparing the house and food for Christmas begins. I'm half thinking that if I am super efficient with all of that, I might just have time to quickly rustle up a couple of Christmas dresses afterall.....

Recently

Every year our jacaranda gets off to a slower start that the other trees in the neighbourhood and I think to myself 'oh, it's not so spectacular this year'.

And then a few weeks later its blooms intensify and I remember that it just takes a bit longer. Why do I struggle to trust in the reliability of the beauty of this tree?

My mum's Alzheimers is progressing, inevitably, and Lil has been dragged to various appointments and assessments with me, largely against her will. Mum's pug collection was a rare moment of delight and connection between Mum and Lily as they played with them, lined them up, and 'taught' them on Mum's bed.

We dragged the kids to the Emily Floyd exhibition at Fed Square with the promise of the Noodle Nightmarket at Birrarung Marr afterwards. But they loved the exhibition and we didn't have long enough there for them. Lots of hands on stuff for kids to do and lots to absorb as well. We are a bit crap at getting around to all the many great things on. A resolution for the new year, perhaps, to see more of my own city. I've been hopeless at that this year.

We revamped our dining/sewing room. It's quite a spectacular room, with this wild crazy wallpaper, but it had horrible curtains I'd never liked, a ceiling painted in multi-coloured pastels that I'd loathed (the ceiling is gorgeous pressed metal but I'm not a fan of that style of painting even though I understand it's true to the period). This amazing nouveau box window badly needed repainting and so we did it in glossy black to match the doors and skirting boards, did the ceiling white, took down the curtains and got a new table that actually seats our family plus guests.   When I say 'we' I mean we got proper painters to do it.  I was so impressed by them I started to fantastise about chucking in my job and becoming a painter.  It seems to me that it would be a hugely satisfying profession.  Each day you'd see a measurable change  -'I painted that much, it looks much better'.  We've got a new sideboard that accomodates nearly all my fabric and notions and will get a window box built in for my machines. I think this might mean that I can actually keep things a bit tidier and we can use the room for, you know, actual dining without the drama of having to move all my sewing stuff out.

It's a lovely place to sew.

There have been occasional ice-creams, amongst other treats. Tooth flossing has entered our daily routine.

We had a slightly disasterous night away where we had no water, except the nearly continuous rain that fell outside. Grace and Lily picked wildflowers and saw kangeroos, but it wasn't the relaxing mini-break I had been hoping for amid the busy-ness of the end of year.

Ruby and Nina continue to confound me, alternating as they do between thickest of thieves and cruelest of siblings. I'm trying to learn how to stand back more, to be supportive without intervening too much. These are hard lessons and I feel I'm a slow learner.

Meanwhile Grace and Lily make shops and schools, potions, medicine, restaurants, gardens, pick bouquets, bicker, cry, laugh, cuddle, set up massage tables and dog training schools and make Pokemon islands, raise babies, read stories and walk imaginary dogs.

I can't help reflecting on the year and the contrast to last year when at this time we were in New York, or about to go.  After our three months away I vowed to make several changes, including seeing more of my friends, stressing about work less, and making more time for various things I had decided were important, like seeing movies, reading books, taking a class or two.  In all truth I have not managed to implement any of these changes and if anything have seen less of friends, been more stressed about work and done less of the many things I like doing!  On the upside, my resolutions are ready-made for 2015.

The Looooooong Weekend

I don't work Fridays and I took Monday as an annual leave day, so combined with Cup Day I had a 5 day holiday.  Hooray.

We didn't go away. Instead we had Halloween and lunch with my oldest friend and her family.  Bruce came by for some help making kitchen curtains for his new house.  We went out for dumplings and took the kids to 'Kiki's Delivery Service' at the Astor.  I don't suppose there was a share house in Melbourne without the Astor program poster on the back of the toilet door in the 90's.  Nothing like knowing something is closing to make you rush out to go again, filled with waves of nostalgia.  I try not to succumb to 'how great things were back when....' thinking, but I do feel a bit sad about all those old cinemas that were so formative and no longer exist - the Genferrie Hoyts on the corner of Dandenong and Glenferrie Road, with foot warmers in front of the seats, where I saw 'Blade Runner' and 'The Muppet Movie' and 'The Elephant Man'.  The Carlton Moviehouse in Faraday Street, where I saw 'Betty Blue', the Metro where we didn't see 'Storm Boy' because it was sold out and had to go to something else instead - can't remember what.  At the Astor I saw 'Agnes of God' with my Mum one afternoon, and 'Casablanca' and a million other films.  Some are still left - the Rivoli, where I saw 'Children of a Lesser God', the Classic, where I saw the first 'Superman' with Christopher Reeves and the Valhalla - now rebadged the Westgarth and thriving, where I saw 'The God's Must be Crazy' and walked to Camberwell with my oldest friend with whom I had lunch last Saturday.

I got Lily some Hansel pants (I guess they are really some form of imitation lederhosen, but in our house they are Hansel pants) at the fete but the straps were a little short and gave her a wedgie, so I lengthened them with ribbon. 

Our pathetic gardening efforts over the winter were rewarded with one small and very sorry cauliflower.  Look how bug eaten those leaves are! I hope to do better (what I mean by that is that I hope Craig does better) with the tomatoes and basil for summer.

I took the three younger girls to the gallery to see the Romance was Born show - fun for the under 8's - and to ride on the golden carousel in the foyer.  We had afternoon tea in the gardens across the road.  I forget, sometimes, how wonderful Melbourne's public gardens are and how much fun kids can have with a police memorial, a fountain, some assorted fallen seeds from nearby trees and a bit of sunshine.  I dosed off in the sun while the kids pretended to join a circus and ride ponies in the ring.

Cup day I forgot to even watch the race.  Some years I get quite into it and enter the sweep and have  a flutter and a BBQ and give a damn and other years I don't.  This was one of the don't years.  I dragged out all the drunkard's path quilt patches I had made way back here and tried to decide what sort of strapping I should use to join them - dark, patterned, bright, neutral.  Sewing has been in a bit of a hiatus, partly because of the fete, partly because we are revamping our dining room/my sewing room (we've actually got a table that can seat not just our family but some friends now too!) and partly because of Breaking Bad which I am very late to get to but which I find quite riveting.  I need to have some handsewing but I'm nursing a minor crafty injury  - overuse of my left thumb, which interferes with hand work.  

Cup night we went to half moon bay for a swim and fish and chips on the beach.  We never go bayside and, if I didn't have family south of the Yarra I'd probably rarely get there which is just ridiculous. The kids were very impressed that this little picturesque place was just a short drive from home. Must explore Melbourne a bit more and stray from the well beaten paths we tread.

And now Lily's fifth birthday is upon us and we are careening toward the end of the year.  I can't believe it's more than 12 months since we departed for America.  A whole year gone and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Little things of no great importance.

Every day a hundred words, a thousand thoughts, a million moments forgotten.  Did the invention of the camera aid or inhibit the process of memory.  Do I remember my newborn's face, or do I just recall the photograph?  

Captured forever: the muddy feet; a completed sunflower stitching; singing in the rain; the end of autumn; taking a bow; preparing for lunch with friends.

I'll look back on these in a year or more and perhaps remember the lunch - we had tuscan bean soup and salad and bread; how kinder was unexpectedly closed so Lily came to work with me; how much Grace and Lily loved making a muddy mess of the newly-dug-up veggie patch; walking to tap class through the autumn leaves, Lily and Grace playing clapping games along the way.

I remember Ruby teaching Nina those clapping games.  I remember Pauline Mak teaching me 'My Name is Aitch Eye Aitch Eye Chicken Boy Chicken Boy Uni Uni Eye Eye Eye' in grade 2.  Back and back it goes.

And a few more years will pass and perhaps I'll forget the lunch and remember only the bowl and the tablecloth. I won't remember who did the stitching but might remember sitting with my girls, helping them pull yarn through hessian.  I won't remember why Grace and Lily are bowing, but will remember that house with the high picket fence and the forget-me-nots that poked through it in the summer, Saturday mornings at tap, watching the Fred Astaires and Suzy Q's be absorbed into little feet and minds.

I wonder how our memories are distorted by photographs.  How the act of capturing that image gives it a disproportionate importance and corrupts the truth. 

Stormy Seas

Nina brought home these two paintings from school this week. That very contained little boat, neat as a pin, under those rather menacing clouds and that tempestuous sea could be emblematic, I suppose, of her somewhat opaque personality. She's so often such a together little girl, always busy, often on her own, deeply immersed in creating something and sailing contentedly along. And yet the storm clouds and the rough seas are never far away. Like all parents, I wonder in which particular ways I will fail each of my children, and with Nina I suspect it will be my failure to comprehend what causes the electrical build up that releases the lightning, and my vain attempts to calm those waters when they need to rage.

Disoriented

It's been slightly disorienting leaving behind the ritual of putting on thermals, donning gloves and scarves and hats, throwing in extra mittens for Lil, making soup, drinking hot chocolate (bemoaning the lack of loose leaf tea), to now find myself waking at 4am to the smell of smoke in the air from distant bushfires. All day today Melbourne was in that strange haze the presages bad news on the radio of houses burned and lives threatened. I turned 12 on Ash Wednesday in 1983 when the smoke and dust turned the sky dark in the middle of the day. 

We went to friends for dinner last Saturday. It was still 39 at 6.30 as we walked down Hoddle Street to their house.  I took whipped cream and fruit in a cold bag for the pav I'd made so it didn't melt off on the way.  We sat outside in the airless evening sweating and intermittently spraying each other with the mist pump.  Our own mist pump smells vaguely of garlic from a long ago anti-cabbage moth concoction we'd used on the broccoli, when we still tried to grow broccoli.  By the time we left the girls were fractious with exhaustion but the hot night didn't abate and sleep was elusive. 

The girls have slipped back into their roles as gatherers of 'fairies', makers of tea parties, mixers of potions and wreakers of havoc.  I've been trying to get the house in order, or, more accurately, establish a new order for the house. Sorting out cupboards, filing art work and putting a decade or more of photographs (old fashioned photos printed from film!) into albums. It's been rather lovely revisiting those years, seeing myself pregnant (again and again and again), holding newborns who somehow look exactly like the people they have become, falling in love with these adorable, chubby cheeked, cheeky eyed, worried browed, newly toothed then newly toothless, growing girls of mine.

Last week I ventured back to work.  I'm trying to maintain a professional distance, trying to keep work as just one of the many things in my life. It's easy at the moment but I know this will be a challenge. A colleague wisely said to me today to make all my life changing decisions now, before the perspective granted by my long holiday vanishes. Quickly, he urged, it'll be gone next week.      It's something I've always prided myself on, my ability to switch off, establish boundaries, stay detached, but this past year really tested me. I have to remind myself sometimes that, even in the concrete jungle, the sky is still blue when you look up. 

Tiny Mice

I walked home yesterday in the gloom. It wasn't late but it gets dark so early. The streets were empty, the snow mostly gone but for a few dirty piles.  I could smell smoke from a wood fire, a smell that reminds me of chilly childhood winter afternoons at my grandparents place, wet shoes, walks in Sherbrooke Forest.  For some reason, wet days and wood smoke make me feel lonely, or perhaps not lonely so much as yearning for a warm house full of people and food to share. It's a funny feeling because of course I was returning to exactly that.

It's been a lazy week for us here in Boston.  After all the excitement of Nana and Pa arriving, Manhattan and Christmas I think we all felt like doing nothing much for a few days. The past week we've visited the Arnold Arboretum (a sort of Botanic Gardens run by Harvard University on a thousand year lease) for a lovely winter walk through their woods, gone ice skating, seen 'Frozen' on a particularly wet and miserable day and had dumplings at our favourite place for xiao long bao.  After a few days I was feeling a bit strange, melancholy nearly, and realised that I hadn't done anything with my hands for some weeks. 

The next day the girls and I made these little felt mice, inspired by a few I saw on Pinterest and in particular one that I can't find anymore so can't include the link. I felt a bit better but am now missing my sewing machine. I'm filling the void by purchasing fabric online...

Up till now we had largely planned our time, but from here till the end of January, we've nothing organised, which is quite exciting as there are so many possibilities.  The weather means a few things are off the table - a ten hour tour of Gettysburg in sub-zero temperatures won't be welcomed by the girls for example- but also puts a few things on the table, like a ski trip to one or more of the many small ski fields New England offers.  Tomorrow is New Years Eve and we will be going along to some of the First Night activities.  I suppose the end of a year always calls for some reflection but I am not yet sure what to make of this year of 2013. Certainly the end has been a highlight, but the rest of it is a bit of a blur. I have much thinking to do about it all before I can adequately summarise it.  For those of you for whom the end of 2013 has already arrived, Happy New Year. Here's to 2014.

Scenes from the Weekend.

My oldest girl is big enough to read the newspaper,

My youngest is still little enough to show you her belly button.

Ruby made bickies (and pom poms);

Grace made something out of blu tac and a button (and pom poms);

And Nina made pom poms and spent most of the weekend in a world of her own which required ballet clothes.

Our local council refuses to provide 'green bins' for garden waste and instead requires us to cut everything up into box size pieces for collection. It's a bit annoying. The scorched earth of our front garden will soon be planted out. It only took a year longer than planned.

We finally put in a lemon tree. I can't believe I've lived more than 15 years without one. One day I'll be able to stop swiping lemons from Sheryl and Bruce next door.

Craig trimmed the jacaranda, though we won't be around to see it flower this year.

The playroom fluctuated from messy to messier.

And the weather was kind enough to dry the woollen blanket I scored for $9 at the op shop. My kids are always asking for an extra blanket on their beds.

It was a very quiet weekend. I started and finished a book I had been eagarly awaiting. I was almost reluctant to start, knowing that I'd be unable to stop and swept up into its world. I'm a bit of a sucker for a well-done dystopia.

I did a lot of reflecting on big and little things and reached some conclusions that helped to settle my mind. It is difficult, sometimes, to keep perspective and I think I wrangled a few things back into their proper place. Mostly it is a case of recognising that what seems overwhelming rarely is, and that there are very few things that are actually important.