Sprinklings...

He’s been stroppy all week. My sweet, funny, cuddly monkey has been belligerent and angry.  Complaining and grumbling. Crying at the drop of a hat. After three weeks off of school and a two week visit with some of his favorites in the world he had dropped the belligerence. Sleeping until late. Laughing. Snuggling. Playing gnomes and fairies. Noticing. He’s a noticer. But it had been a while. Even his older brothers have remarked lately that he’s just not himself. “He’s never away with the fairies any more, Mom. I think the fairies miss him. I miss him too, actually.” 

I ask myself so often if it’s the school. Is it just not the place for him? He told me last week as he sobbed and clung to me at drop off, “But mama you don’t understand. There’s just no magic in this place.” A couple of folks have suggested he’s “got my number.” Maybe so. But there’s truth in what he says. I don’t reckon it’s manipulation as much as true grief for a world that was.

I ask myself if it’s the environment? He swam in the sea when it was so cold even the oldie “polar bears” who love to swim in cold water thought he was crazy. I had to start carrying a towel even in the dead of winter. If we were at the sea—which was every single day—he was in it. In underwear. In the buff. In his clothes. Didn’t matter. He wanted in. I miss the ocean like I miss people. With a longing and a loneliness I can’t put words to. Even when I try. What must it be like for him? Well over half his life was spent at the sea. It must be torture to be in this dry, brown suburb. 

I do my best. We draw. We read and read. I talk to him about fairies. I try to let him take his time. Magic, after all, cannot be rushed. I take deep breaths and reach for the lessons I learned my last year with him in Oz. To slow down. To see “distraction” as beauty—whether it’s a tiny bug or a gorgeous flower or the world’s best stick. To release expectation. To stick to a solid rhythm, but to let things flow within that. Breathe out. Breathe in. Still…school starts at 9:01 here and there’s no changing that no matter how many great sticks are along the way.

After an uncharacteristically hateful remark about breakfast, “No! I DO want breakfast! I want a GOOD breakfast. One that I LIKE!” I suggested he head to his room and get dressed. That I’d leave the breakfast on the table and he could eat it or not. Up to him. Then requested that he perhaps not come out of his room until he was ready to talk with a little more kindness. So when he yelled at me from his room, “Mom!!! Come here!!!” I didn’t really want to come here. I wanted a second to breathe and rest and choose to talk to him with a little more kindness as well. “Hurry! Quick!” and there was something in his voice…something familiar, but forgotten. Was it wonder?

“Look! A robin!” It took me a few minutes to spot the robin through the blinds, but there he was. Then we spotted another. Still another bird. Hidden in shades of greys and browns, but with one little bright red patch below his beak. He named them all of course. Then named the tree outside his window the “gathering tree.” Then he got dressed. Ate his breakfast with no stropping. And though it took him ages to get his coat, and he did ask once more if he HAD to go to school we walked along in a state of magic. We noticed things. Even though we had to hurry a bit. He clung to me after the bell, but he didn’t cry. 

Sprinklings. Sprinklings of magic. That’s all I’m after. I figured they must be here somewhere. Today, they were.

Independance Day

The Facebook memory posts of this weekend in years past are rife with longing. Homesick references to hotdogs and fireworks. Wishing for Rockies games and American food. Truth is if I could have returned “home” yearly to the US for any holiday I would have chosen the 4th of July over Christmas every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

You know what I’m like. I always cry at parades. I ooh and aah over fireworks and have been known to clap my hands and squeal for particularly good displays. I’m a sucker for a good hotdog and would still choose an ice cold Dr Pepper over a delightfully cheeky rosé more often then my classy-side would like to admit. I know almost all the words to every patriotic country song they’ll play this weekend and have a small stash of stars and stripes decor that come out every year no matter what part of the world we inhabit.

Last year I threw a party. With hotdogs—or the closest estimation I could come up with in Oz—and watermelon (even though it was winter there I found one!), and cokes, and iconic American music. We played whiffle ball in the park across the street and I decorated the house with stars and stripes and red, white, and blue.

I’ll be there to watch at 9:30 sharp tomorrow as the firetruck leads the kiddos on their decorated bikes and scooters around the neighborhood loop. I can’t wait! I know the pool will be stinking fun with its baby games and splash contest and all day bbq. Our friends hooked us up with their yearly firework watching spot and I am looking forward to every sparkly moment. 

Still, as our first 4th of July weekend as US residents for almost 8 years unfolds I find myself filled with longing. Homesickness. The funny blessing and curse of an expat: my heart lives on several continents. I suppose no matter how American the holiday it still brings that point to bear. 

The pool was closed all day. Since I couldn’t wear a swimsuit I accidentally stayed in my jammies all day. Slept a bit. Cried a lot. The sky this evening is overcast and thundery. Even the cardinal rule of absolute family togetherness on holidays in a new country is being broken: Middlest is 600 miles away.

Listen, there’s so much to celebrate and much gratitude for the place we find ourselves in. This incredible neighborhood. This lovely state of Colorado. Old and new friends that surround us. In spite of all of that though the truth is I’m melancholy. Filled with memories and the truth of how far away everyone is. Filled with a bit of worry about the state of things in all 3 of the countries I’ve grown to call “home.” On Independence Day it’s my interconnectedness that brings this emotion. I love all the flags my family has unfurled under. All the combinations of red white and blue that have given me life. Brought my family together. Showed me more of who I am. Taught me in more ways than one about brotherhood from sea to shining sea. 

I’m going to get dressed now. We have a very important neighborhood gathering to attend. With streamers and ribbons and all the paraphernalia needed to make that parade really shine. Love you British friends and Aussie friends. I’ll be eating a hot dog and drinking a Dr Pepper for you tomorrow. I sure miss you all!

Magic

Sometimes the universe conspires. It communicates. Everything speaking in the same words and language. A book suggests the thing you’ve been missing. A movie’s central theme matches that of your longing. A friend speaks the themes your heart has been wrestling. Then as the day closes you read the word in memories from Facebook posts not once but twice and three years past. 

Magic. 

I often described experiences abroad as magical. England brought magical castles visited with sweet boys transformed into knights as they passed the turrets. Magical forests dripping with history and story were most certainly inhabited by the wood elves and spirits of my childhood’s favorite books. Mushroom rings and hollow trees we swore were signs of fairies. Around any corner in London might be a tiny little alleyway filled with culinary delights or hundreds of year old bookstores or tiny toy shops. Everything felt ancient and beautiful and deep. Winding roads. Storybook woods. Here was Pooh bridge where one could play Pooh Sticks. There was Portobello road where Paddington shopped and had his cocoa with Mr Gruber. Not to mention Arthur’s castle or the Pevensie’s train platform or even Bilbo’s shire. 

Magic. Everywhere I looked. Everywhere we went. Magic was the light in our eyes and the delight in our hearts. We found it everywhere. 

Magic.

Australia had magic of its own. It inhabited the sand that squeaked under our toes. The sea shell and sea glass and shark egg and coral treasures left to us by winter waves and collected on quiet mornings walking side by side. The whales brought it. Breaching and blowing and bringing their precious babies closer and more often than my local friends had ever seen them. The dolphins stirred it up around the surf boards of my sons. Or brought it laughing on my birthday morning. Or racing by on camping trips playing and dancing in the waves. They came so often. Saying hello then saying farewell. I looked for them. They nearly always were there to see. It was magical. 

Sometimes it was in the bush. Crazy flowers we’d never seen before. Beautiful gum trees releasing their smell into the briny air on wet mornings. Painting the air with their blue haze over the nearby mountains.  

Australian birds are full of magic. Ridiculous colors and color-combinations that make you grin and even giggle to think something real could be that fancy just by being born. Pink birds. White birds with yellow mohawks. Bright multi-colored birds so loud the three year old once asked if I could turn the volume down. No. There was no turning down the volume on all that magic. All around. Daily in my ears and in my nostrils and filling every sense with the NEW the beautiful the magical.

Even at school! Littlest’s sandpit included buried crystals from the “fairies” to help them learn their pincher grasp. The big boys classes included music and gardening and two languages and drawing every single day. Even school was a magical place.

Not a single week went by those three and half years in Australia without one of us remarking, “can you believe we get to live here?”

Magic.

Magic has filled my heart and my mind for much of the last 8 years. Adventures abroad. Shared with these wonderful men in my life. 

It was evidenced the other night. In three different Facebook posts. All posted on the same day, a few years apart. All referencing magic.

We’ve been “home” from our Grand Adventures for 3 months. Months of transition. Unpacking, repacking, unpacking. Jumping from place to place. Then Moving In. A huge task of epic practical, emotional, and spiritual proportions. Boxes of things were put away. Holes were made in walls. Boys registered and sent off to school and sports practices. Doctors appointments. Bedtimes. Packed lunches.

After the hustle and bustle of transitioning and traveling I was surprised that the fairly restful state of settling in and settling down was so unnerving. Sure there was grief at saying goodbye. To friends. To places. To a sense of home. To the adventure. 

Except this wasn’t quite that. This was a small feeling. A nagging, frustrating, off feeling. Little and persistent. Like when you’ve forgotten something and can’t figure out what it could possibly be. Like a niggling pain that never quite goes away.

On the same day that the “magic” posts appeared on Facebook the boys and I watched The Secret Garden. Reminiscing as we pushed play on the afternoons and evenings Middlest and I spent reading that book. Snuggled up in my same bed in a house thousands and thousands of miles away. I had forgotten that lovely story. The depth and beauty of it. It struck me then as it strikes me now. How Colin insists on inviting the magic. Insists they all do it together. That they all pledge steadfast commitment to the magic. So of course…the magic shows up. He walks! His father and he are reunited! It works!

The movie included a story I don’t remember from the book. Mary tells Colin a story her Aya told her in India. About a boy. When this boy opened his throat you could see the whole universe inside of him.

On the same day I saw the “magic posts” of my own on Facebook and watched the movie with the boys a friend wrote about looking for joy and often finding it in adventures and traveling and dancing and falling in love. “Then things got normal” she wrote. And I wept when I read those words. 

“Then things got normal.”

My friend went on to write that when things got normal she tried to find joy in ice cream or alcohol or shopping. Except joy wasn’t in those daily normal things. It was inside of her.

I can be fairly stubborn and thick headed. So it will come as no surprise to any of you that all of these things conspired with one other fact: for weeks I’ve been reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic. 

Magic.

The word in my posts. 

Magic.

The healing magic in the movie.

Magic.

The words of my friend, though she called it joy.

Magic. 

The book speaking about being part of it. Inviting it. Being a vessel for it.

Inside of me. A universe. Inside of me. Joy. 

Magic.

I looked for it in England. I found it in the woods and the castles and the nooks and crannies of London. I looked for it in Oz. I found it in the sea, in the skies, in the scents and sounds and tastes and feelings all around me. 

Then things got normal.

Except perhaps. Just maybe. The magic isn’t “out there.” 

Perhaps. Just maybe. The magic is “in here.” If I look? If I open my throat? I’ll find a universe of magic right here inside of me. 

The Antidote

Emails suggest I make sure the paint on the outside of the house is clean and every chip of paint on the inside—even the ones noted on the move-in condition report that were already here are repaired and the backyard porch is returned to its ‘pristine’ condition. What?!?! Houses don’t make it into pristine condition after they’ve been well loved for 2.5 years. Even if you take super good care of them! Movers and cleaners and walk throughs and plane tickets and travel arrangements are all in the mix now needing time on the calendar and energy to plan. Already. Even though I’d like to pretend our move is further than 6 and a bit weeks away. 

The calendar fills and fills with end of year BBQs and birthday parties and final concerts and performances and baseball and futsal and swimming and school fairs and holiday get togethers and all the this’s and that’s of end-of-school-year madness. 

As an aside: though it has been an interesting trial I vote ‘no’ on January to December school years. In the future, I’m looking forward to the last month of school insanity and the run up to the holidays being separate things. It seems futile to pretend that one can do every event and remain anywhere close to sane, but somehow the calendar on the wall just keeps filling and filling.

The boys are eager to spend as much time with friends as possible before we leave. Friends come out of the woodwork asking for one last visit and time before our looming exit from the country. 

Plus there are presents to buy for Christmas and turkeys to order for Thanksgiving and Bridger’s birthday to plan.

I know too that there a spiritual and emotional issues at play. We’re returning home to the US after essentially 7.5 years away. An end to a season of life we have loved. The realities of reverse-culture shock loom. Uncertainty and loneliness at leaving our friends here and moving to a season of making new friends in a once-familiar place. The reality of entering another season of unsettledness. Something we know from experience takes a minimum of 9 months to pass and actually in many ways lasts more like 18 months to 2 years. 

Don’t get me wrong. I see the bounty and beauty that all of this muchness represents. The big, amazing life that all the busyness belies. 

Except I find myself spending too much time on Facebook. Watching too many trailers on imdb. Old feelings I’d thought I’d finally vanquished creep in. A low-level anxiety. Uncertainty. Worry. A sort of frantic flitting around from thought to thought. The laundry backs up and meals are haphazard. I can’t quite get my bearings. I want to sleep. A lot. I gravitate towards something I chose in the deepest part of my being to reject—crisis mode. This is the chaos that sets in with a move, with the end of the year, with holidays, with busyness. 

No. I thought a few nights ago. No this doesn’t work for me. I reject crisis mode. I tried to remember what to do instead. 

So I sat on the floor with my 5 year old and played Go Fish. Which naturally turned into wrestling and laughing. That helped. Then afterwards I said yes to my 11 year old and sat in the Big Green Chair and read. Not Facebook or articles online. Books. Real, live books. Better. Much better. Dad was on a late-night work call with the Europe in the kitchen so the nearly 13 year old and I made quesadillas and sat on the floor in my room for a secret picnic and stayed up way past our bedtimes talking about friendship and moving and change. Yep. That’s the stuff.

Also ‘Spoto.’ It’s the Aussie version of slugbug and has transformed car rides into shrieking hilarity. What’s not to love about slugging each other and shouting every time we see a yellow car? We’ve been playing for about 2 weeks. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m winning. Middlest says it’s only because I sit at the front of the car. I tried to explain how much concentration driving takes, thank you very much. He doesn’t seem convinced. I don’t care. Spoto helps.

Today I felt myself drifting towards anxiety so I immediately bundled us off to Farmer’s Market. The happiest place on earth. As we left the bread stall where the man always remembers his name and gave him an extra muffin today, Littlest declared, “The world is FULL of kind people and THAT is one of them!” True, son. True. Then the cherry man gave him nearly an entire punnet of cherries. We were happy and full and we sat on the grass and ate purple carrots with the greens on but somehow he still started to look listless watching the jumping castle I’d said no to. I was considering picking up my phone. Instead we sat on the grass and played Row  Row Row Your Boat with our bare feet pressed together. We followed on to Stinky Feet and then headstands and laughing. 

Bex and Brad showed up and we talked and somehow I felt enough again. Present. With my bare feet in the grass and my bags of local grocery goodness. My happy child and my own unique Cori-ness to share with the world.

“No!” I say to the poison madness of busyness and chaos and anxiety and crisis mode. “Yes!” I say to  delightfully simple antidote of play and laughter and bare feet and connection. 

Phew. That feels so much better.

The Sea

We have learned the ocean is not just for summer days. We have learned to soak up its beauty without getting soaking wet. 

The tide was high this morning. Coming nearly to the steps. So it doesn’t squish, like usual, up between our toes.  It gives, but only a little. Walking along. Stopping periodically to empty the small piles of sand from our shearling-lined boots. We don’t spend so much time in the sand as on it. Traveling over the top. 

It’s quiet. Both of us busy. Never too far from one another. Winter at the sea is for collecting. 

Soaking in the sounds of the waves as they steadily, steadily, swoosh along the beach. Quieter today. Gentler than yesterday. They swoosh instead of crash. Nevertheless they are relentless. 

I am reminded yet again of the enduring metaphor of the sea.

The change—constant. Sometimes generous as we can attest today with our pockets full of smooth sea glass. Other times taking so much. Sometimes gentle. Sometimes fierce. But always, always there. 

And I think, as I often do these days of how I will live without this daily injection of metaphor. The tonic effect it often has on my heart. 

What will I do without the sand? Even when we aren’t at the sea itself it is constantly there. In bags and shoes and little piles in the corners and building up in my dryer vent. 

I will miss the sand. The everywhereness of it. The pervading annoyance and comfort of sand.

What will I do without the sea? The quick-rusting of any toy or tool with the merest hint of metal. The filthy grimy windows even after Caid’s just cleaned them. The salty smell on the breeze. The swooshing background wave song that has become a constant part of our Australian soundtrack. 

The constant thereness of the sea. 

In May I was laying on Mom’s bed in Colorado. Chatting about this and that the day before we were returning home to Australia. She asked me if I was a Mountain Girl or a Sea Girl. Told me about a sermon she’d heard about it once. 

There are mountains where I am going. We will get reacquainted. I know I’ll love them again. I used to long for them when we lived in England. 

I have learned the answer to Mom’s question though. One I hadn’t known until I lived here.  

Sacred Space

Irresistible. Irrepressible. He shouts his invitation and my list of ‘to dos’ is no match for it. I am beckoned in. I bring my broom. Preparing this sacred space for our sojourn here. Gum nuts and damp leaves are brushed aside. The broom is discarded. As the zip closes the rest of the world falls away. It’s just us here. Cocooned inside the mesh. 

The light softens—the sun shining its mottled leafy pattern through the wall of magnolias. The breeze whispers her sweet song, drying up the muddy dampness of the night’s thunderstorms. The crows call their bizarre half-human cries. The schoolyard across the way sounds like us playing hooky. Reminding us that for today, we don't have to be there. Reminding me that for a few short months it’s just me and him. 

We have our ball. Our games. Offering each other our shrieks of laughter as precious gifts in our tiny universe. No one can touch us here. No one can reach us. We bounce and jump and the scwerch scwerch-ing of the springs is a song that says to my heart “be here. Only here for now.” I obey. I've been obeying for about 3 weeks now. Still I marvel that there was this universe, this precious world just outside my front door. 

Funny, I had thought it nothing but a rusty old trampoline. 

A Bowl full of Sunshine

Rose posted a photo today and something inside me stirred. A gentle stirring. Like the butterfly tickly flutters of a new baby growing inside. Can you photograph sunshine? She did. A big bowl of sunshine. Yellow pear shaped. Perfect round and cherry red. A photo of sunshine in red and yellow packages. A bowl full of beautiful tomatoes from her Colorado garden. 

Maybe it’s some latent farmer love. A longing for dirty hands and a ripe harvest. Perhaps that bowl of tomatoes awakened something deep in my Northern Hemisphere genetic roots. Harvesting a yummy bowl of tomatoes in August just make sense to me. Back to school and the height of the harvest season = August. Back to school and ripe tomatoes = January? That hasn't quite stopped feeling weird. 

My vision swirled. As it will with me. There were raised-box gardens and greens and zucchini and tomatoes and Steve and I mulling over the best way to fertilize.  There were chickens and flowers and I had on gardening gloves. There were canning and fermenting and preserving jars all stacked up on shelves in basements. Kate and I cooking. Scotty and the boys eating corn on the cob on the back deck. Years seemed to spin and swirl around me and all of the visions they contained were in a backyard. In Colorado. And it didn't feel weird. 

A garden. One that grows in the ground. Instead of pots and boxes that can be easily moved. Tending plants I wasn't thinking would reach their full potential with my friends and neighbors, but with me. At my house. For a long time.  

It felt like something I could enjoy. Planting. Harvesting. Planting. Harvesting. These are things one does when one stays. When one isn't leaving soon. When one enjoys the movement of season into season into season into season. I could picture jars in the pantry and bags in the freezer. Things to enjoy throughout the year. These are the actions of a stay-er. Hmmmm…staying. I could try that for a while. Especially if it meant bowls of sunshine every August.