Shall we talk about something nice now?

The reason I blew the dust off the pages of this blog and decided to put fingers to keyboard again was because I felt like I wanted to add some value to the world. I have a busy bee of a brain, and I can move through a myriad of thoughts and feelings within a day, and I thought some of them could be of interest or use to you too. Lovely friends read my musings and tell me to write a book. Something longer and well constructed and more impactful, but I think we have to be honest here: I’m essentially a light-weight. Just as I love to talk a good talk about loving Veuve; two glasses and I’m pretty well gone. Samesies for personal development: I read all the books and do all the things, and then it comes to pass that all I really want to do is be like Cyndi says. Plus imagine an edit? No thanks. I’m too fragile to be told that I have to change something.

Funny, because just as I wrote that par above, a friend messaged me that I should take a look at Substack. Some kind of writing forum I guess. Mayhap I will. Or maybe I’ll just plod along doing what I do here with no real plan or goal other than looking after my mentals, amusing me, and possibly you.

So something nice:

I said I wouldn’t do any more grief posting, but I do have one more thing to add. I won’t tell you the whole story today- but suffice it to say, last year I won at a silent auction at a fundraiser in support of someone who’s life is entwined with mine. My bid won, which meant that we got to go to The Long Apron up in the hinterland for an amazing five course degustation and wine pairing. I’m not a winey, so I love it when someone does all the work and chooses the perfect blend. It’s always amazing to me at how certain flavours go together and can in fact change the entire dish. People are so clever.

But back to the Hinterland. As you can tell, I have some griefs going on: my kid has moved out, my cat got munched, and it’s winter, which is always a time for me to go internal and reflect. So being able to take some time out to go and stay up in the hills was an amazing privilege. Do you find that? Getting out of your own home can have huge benefits. It helps you to see things a little differently, and to come back home with new eyes. Added to that, the Sunshine Coast Hinterland is gorgeous. We have these little towns nestled into the cliff side, so there are views right back to the coast, and yet you are in another world. The shops are different, the restaurants are different, and the weather is different. On Sunday we drove home through actual fog, something I haven’t seen in about twenty five years.

I guess the point of today’s post is not to make you feel a certain kind of way, but to perhaps remind you to think a certain kind of way. To remember that your brain loves novelty almost as much as it loves familiar routine, and that by expanding that part of your mind; the curious, light-hearted, fun seeking part, you will allow yourself to step back into the routine with renewed energy, hope and gratitude.

It’s worth a try.

Views to the coast from Montville

PS Pop over to my insta if you want to see pics of the food, and a wine glass bigger than my pin-head.

It was Easter Monday, and we had been away in Brisbane for the long weekend, spending time with Mum and our manchild who has moved out (so he’s probably just “man” now).

When we have small stays away we have an amazing young girl- Little A- come and mind our cat. She comes and stays for hours, forcing pats on Woofa The Shitcat, and just hanging with her. Sometimes in life you meet people who are true animal whisperers, and cats know them, and know them well. You see, this little sunshine came to live next door to us when Woofa was spending one of her 482748972957892759 lives. In those weeks I was feeding her Ziwi pellets like they were tablets and giving her water in a syringe. Little A was right there with me much of the time. Cheering Woofa on, and sending her the good juju.

Once Woofa recovered (no one fully knows how) Little A was there to give her ear rubs and toe tickles. Woofa was a cat who loved very few, and Little A was one of them, and for that I am grateful. For the next part of this story is not so nice.

Warning: Not nice stuff to follow. 

When we got home from our trip, Woofa did what she always did- as we bought in the cases, she shot out like a bullet to make her ablutions. She would abide the shitty-litter when needed, but she always preferred a fresh air toilette. Before too long she was back inside to spread her fur over as many of our black clothes as she could- marking our legs with her scent and making us angora-like. I used to find that annoying, or at least the depilation that was always required after a Woofa encounter. I would take that annoyingness now.

As I was starting on the washing, Woofa decided she needed another run outside. It was nearing dark, and I usually wouldn’t have let her out, but she had been inside all weekend, and I thought, “Why not?” Why not indeed. Sometimes in life you have to be cruel to be kind, and other times you think you are being kind when unbeknownst to yourself you are actually being cruel. This is my guilty cruel.

I let my cat out for some freedom and to let her breathe the cool night air, and within minutes the massive cat-killing-listed-dangerous-dog next door; the one who is not allowed to be unmuzzled or in fact off its lead, EVER, had my little mate in his mouth, crushing that night breath right out of her.

Crushing her little lungs until they couldn’t draw in one more ounce of air.

Crushing her and crushing us at the very same time.

Flashback:

We got Woofa at a time when life was tricky. My Dad had died earlier that year, and I had a gaping maw in my insides that didn’t feel like a hole at all, but a lump of bluestone; just as heavy, just as cold, just as grey. I didn’t know quite how to grow around grief back then (oh what a thing to know: joy not joy) so when I looked into the blue eyes of that tiny kitten and I felt a little chip of bluestone fall away, I had to have her. Don’t get me wrong: I pretended that she was for the children (MOTY, me) but I think we all knew she was for me.

And so she was.

She was the one who sat with me through the long nights of worry about Coco. I would sit on the couch in Coco’s room, watching the rise and fall of her chest in the eon-nights before the horror-relief of transfusion day, trying to decide if she was doing the “puffy breathing” that constituted an emergency (what the hell is puffy breathing anyway?) and Woofa would purr a rhythm of a normal life. Some nights I could even believe her song.

She was the one who sat on my feet and kept me warm all the nights when Hayls was crook and I didn’t have the words to cheer her on in a way that she would feel buoyed. And then after. She was there with that same warmth in the after, when she cajoled me to believe that one day I would feel warmth in my blood again. And she was right, that cat of mine.

Or perhaps I was hers.

I guess that’s more true. I was hers. She owned a piece of real estate in my cells in exchange for all of the things she gave me.

By and by and through the years my life got easier and less grief filled. Less death, less fear, more life, more fun. Things got easier and harder and easier again, and all the while, any time I had sleepless hormonal nights, or early morning wakings, she was there and there and there with me. I’d open my lids and there she’d be, right up close and staring at me with those blue eyes saying, “It’s okay. You’ve got this. You’ve always got this. Now get me some food. And by the way, I don’t really give a shit about what ails your mind, give me the food. Now would be good.” I would raise myself from the bed and the so-familiar-it’s-almost-unnoticed ba-dumph of her hitting the floor would follow me to the kitchen.

Flashforward: 

There’s now been a little time since the Cujo next door killed my mate. Enough that you’d think I’d be used to going to the pantry without being accosted for “meo-ore food, meo-ore food”. But I still reach for the bag.

Enough that you’d think I would have stopped dream-thinking there is a little warm comfort weight on my feet at night. But I still feel the heft of her.

Enough that you’d think that I would have stopped half waiting for the ba-dumph. But I hear it in my mind.

Death is a strange and cruel thing. It allows your brain to leave you with things added: guilt that you let your cat outside to be picked up by a monster, fear that you might lose it like George at the murderer’s owner if she dares come near, anger that some deaths can be so so simply avoided, and yet they are not.

But the reaper? He leaves you not with things added, but with things taken away:

your comfort,

your solace,

your little friend,

and perhaps most of all the ba-dumph as she follows you, to salve your heart.

RIP Woofa Shitcat Butterball Popsicle Asher. You were a Goodcat after all.

I’m sorry.

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

Last week was a week of recognition of a life well lived. The life of a quiet gentleman. My Uncle Robin. Rockin’ Robin. Dizzy. (And no, I don’t know why he was called Dizzy. The Uncle Robin I knew was the opposite of Dizzy. Maybe it was one of those weird Aussie nicknames- like when you call the guy with the red hair Bluey.)

We took some time out of our usual life to be elsewhere- in minds and in bodies and in emotions. We took a break in normal programming to simply be with each other, Mum and I, and all of those who loved him best.

It was a guiltysad funeral.

Guilty that you are, for a brief moment, glad that it’s all over for him, and for those closest those who were witness to the slow ebbing away of the things that made him unique. For as the body slowly dissolves with cancer, you see a dissolution of essence. The skin loses it’s luminescence and a greying pallor replaces the vibrancy of healthy skin cells. Eyes that once sparkled with mischief and wit cloud over a little. And the affairs of the living- the minutiae of life along with the wonder of broad vistas- are no longer of interest to them. The healthy and hale share those many moments with those we love, trying trying to use our Siren Song to lure them back to life with us, even as we watch our words wash over them. They are here with us in flesh for fleeting moments. Their being tells us they are mostly moving on to whatever is next. And yet we try to hold fast to them as they continue to float away from us. The only solace for us is the serene way in which they drift.

Being at a funeral is always surreal. Torn between not wanting to be there at all, not wanting to feel the constriction in your throat that is keeping the grief from surfacing, and not ever wanting to leave, as once you exit you know that a chapter has closed. That your person will no longer be spoken about as much as they are, this day. I once heard a quote by Ernest Hemingway:

“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.”

And so we mention and we mention and we mention their name. We share the moments we had with them. We tell and re-tell those stories until they are as careworn as their now-still faces.

The celebrant at my uncle’s funeral reminded us of the importance of this moments. That is what we truly remember: moments and interactions, feelings and the ways they touched our own hearts. Moments are recalled more than whole days or even weeks. This celebrant said that if each of us wrote down one moment they had with my uncle, then we would have a book. And he was right. We would have the book of his life. The real book. The book that told of his intellect, and wicked sense of humour. The book that told not only of what he did, but the way in which he did. The meticulous care he took with detail and organisation. The unhurried way he looked into your eyes when you shared a story. The dedication to a routine and a rhythm of life that was composed of precisely everything he loved, culled of things he did not. A life of design where nothing was wasted, and nothing was frivolous.

There’s lots to love in a life like that. A life where you know exactly who you are, and the people you surround yourself with. Where you do precisely what you love, no matter what it looks like to others. Where you are safe, secure and loved enough to be able to offer that very same thing to those around you.

A life where others know if they are included in your circle, then they are valued.

I think it is the kind of life I want to live.

Vale Uncle Robin.

You are one of life’s true gentlemen.

Getting egged on to take a big sip, by a professional.

I have been thinking a bit about people that I used to know this week.  People who have died.  I always do, I suppose I’m  a bit of a dweller, but perhaps a bit more lately as I’ve been writing some stuff about cancer.  All my dead people except one had the big C.  So that’s a fair bit of C.  A fair bit of watching people you love being eaten from the inside out, until everything collapses in on itself.

I watched a movie in the late 80s called Less Than Zero, and the chick in it said she had a creepy feeling that her dead loved one (Possibly her Grandfather? My memory is a bit sketchy, it was the 80s after all) were watching her doing stuff.  She was a bit weirded out by it, mainly because she was having lots of sex.

I too think of the people I know who have died, and I imagine that they too are sometimes watching me, but I have made some rules up of what they do and what they don’t see.  Even dead dudes need boundaries.

They don’t watch me in intimate moments, like, going to the toilet or yelling at my kids.  They give my some privacy.

They don’t follow me around when I’m doing boring stuff like waiting for the car to get serviced, or doing the food shopping, although, apparently they do hover when I’m clothes shopping.  Particularly when I NEED those jeans on sale in a size 8.  (They find them and then pour me into them.)

They do sit nearby when I’m upset about them dying, especially when I’m in a secure little place like the car or the shower and think I might have a little cry.  I feel their warm breath in my ear telling me it’s okay to miss them, but that it’s okay to be happy if I want.

The hang out with me when I play the music they like, and I think I can hear them singing along, faintly, just faintly, at the blurry edges of my hearing.

They come and visit when I need a hand with something, especially if it’s a protection-type thing, or something that mortals can’t really help with.  They have superpowers to bend things a little if required.

I have given them some other powers too: they can read minds, so I don’t have to seem like a nutter, having my conversations out loud.  They can also organise things for me if I ask, like shuffle my appointment book around, or to help with the kids.  They can get my kid good blood on transfusion day, as well as a competent doctor who will hit the vein up first go. They keep an eye on my kids when they are out in the world, and help them to be safe.

They help me with; the plot twists of life, being graceful in defeat and they give me a nudge when I need some help to step onto a stage and be unafraid to share my heart. They help me to keep on going when I want to stop, to remember to dream, to let the sun shine on my face before rushing off to the next thing, and to take the time to simply be present for a moment. Most of all, they remind me that no matter what happens, life is a gift and the present is something that must be held gently and sweetly as it’s the only thing I truly have.

Noosa River- My thinking place

A little Of Course

Lately I’ve been making the time (no, not finding the time- when I try to find it, it is endlessly elusive, I have to MAKE it) to do some simple things. Breathing (don’t laugh, I’m doing breathwork- it’s a thing), coaxing and stretching out my wound-up muscles, taking fifteen minutes to sit quietly in the sun, designing my day so that I can have twinkling candles lit and dinner on the way in time for sunset, so that I can sneak away for a moment and drink in the last moments of the day.

To my Nan and the generations before I suppose this sounds like nonsense. Of course we would do these things. Of course you need to breathe with your whole lungs to keep the recesses fresh and clean. Of course your body works better if it actually works a little. Of course sunshine helps you to grow in more ways than just making your legs tanned. Of course the best time of day is when the light is low, delicious food smells engulf you and your nest is full of people you love most. Of course.

Yet somehow, some days, in the bustle of the hustle it’s easy to forget and forgo these little of courses, in search of a new course. Perhaps it might be something as fabulous as a new book, a new bar, a new job, or a new restaurant. Or it could be something more benign- just the rushing about in the minutiae of life- taking kids hither and popping to the supermarket thither, grabbing this or that or the other in order to tick all the boxes and have all the things.

Don’t get me wrong- these comings and goings are what makes up a life. They are the things that give meaning to our years, so long as we actually take the time to make the meaning and the memory by accepting the present of the present. With our presence. So many opportunities to receive. It’s often said that our true power lies in our ability to receive, and so that is the lesson of the simple of courses that I’ve been indulging in.

They feel so deliciously indulgent, which tells me they are something that my mind and body craves- so much so that I wonder how I ever let them slide. Yesterday I went down the slide- we have one in our own backyard, so I can’t tell you one reasonable reason for NOT sliding more often. As I slid, my scalp remembered pigtails flying behind me as I hurtled down a slide as a four year old. My skin remembered the sweet burn, as bare legs touched hot metal of slides that had baked in the sun all day. My eyes remembered looking to the sweet line of the horizon as I flew high in the air at the end, and wondered if I would ever touch the ground again. But most of all, my heart remembered the thrill of all of the slides: fast ones, slow ones, twisty ones. Ones where I crashed into some kid who had stopped at the bottom, or fell off the end, tumbling on grass or sand. Ones where I hurt myself a little, and then ran back to the ladder for another turn anyway. And best of all, it remembered the ones with the heavy-vulnerable weight of my own children in my lap. Feeling them press their backs against my chest, feeling for my safe heartbeat as they learnt to love exhilaration.

Those slides were the best ones of all.

Of course.

…From The Ashers