This Is Water
4th August 2015
Comrades!
How are you?
It’s been so long since last we spoke. I am just back from a week-long visit to a health retreat. It was amazing. I’m still processing my thoughts on it, as I adjust to the somewhat brutal reality of being back in the thick of Mum life. My back really hurts tonight. Sadly, the Princess life is over.
Oh, the retreat…. a week of rest, exercise and laughter with my darling old friend Dim, and a detox from caffeine, sugar, gluten, salt, alcohol and the internets. What an interesting world it was - no driving, no housework…. amazing. More on this later.
I just wanted to pop in to say that in some sort of message from the universe, my laptop burped and died just before I left. The brilliant Dr Keith has just finished fixing it for me, and I’m back online, on-blog and off message.
It’s been a busy time. In the lead-up to my trip away, I was really feeling overwhelmed. Keith was overseas for a couple of weeks, then we rolled into school holidays, which ended with a road trip visiting relatives. Now, the term is in full swing, which means lots of car-pool texting, menu-planning and packing and re-packing bags.
The kids are fantastic. Loving their new (garage sale) trampoline, although their favourite games is pretending to be dead on it, which slightly defeats the energetic purpose of the thing. Eight year old Peanut remains my favourite comedian. T-Bone swings between his two energy settings: timid like mouse and wild like buffalo. But tonight, he set the dinner table without any prompting - napkins, candles and all. I was amazed. This boy normally needs me to walk him through every step of his process like a guide dog. Maybe he’s growing up?
George has taken to shouting ‘No way Jose!’ when she gets in trouble and ‘I’ll take that as a yes’ before I have time to answer any request. Also, she says she can speak donkey language.
How is you? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Just the perfect amount of whelmed?
I don’t know. Being back in the scrolling to-do list ticker of family life is something of a minor shock after a strange, suspended period away from all of this, where I felt like I was dropped back into my independent self, thinking about nothing but my next sleep or yoga class. It was so great, but I haven’t worked out yet how to take a little of that peace and apply it to the Mum zone.
I watched this moving David Foster Wallace speech while I was away. It describes, so beautifully, the frustrations and pleasures of adult life, and the power we have to choose to see how those frustrations connect us to each other. How there is beauty even in those frustrations.
More soon. Love to you guys.