Room to create

Good evening y’all. Speaking of “y’all,” Jacinta has somehow picked up a southern American accent when she says certain words like “rice, ice, and smile.” It’s pretty funny, as if she doesn’t have enough influencing her tongue, I think she made these sounds up on her own. Sometimes she speaks a more relaxed Australian language learned from Keith. “I’m going to wash me hands.” She is showing an interest for what certain words are in French, but I haven’t done much with that thus far, besides lullabies and a few little poems.

Back to the big stuff, we are living in our new house now! How did it all happen so fast when it felt as if it could drag on for a few more weeks? Matt decided to give up the idea of finishing closets before moving in and found the renewed energy for the floor which was the last truly necessary task. Sunday and Monday I finished off a bit of puttying and Matt finished the remaining fiddly tasks and cleaned up. Monday night Matt and I stayed up late and washed the whole floor and then….he stained it with tung oil. Twelve hours later after another coat, we then had to leave the floor to cure for three days. No major work on the house for three days, how very strange, liberating and relaxing. We spent time packing up the old room and playing with toys that we discovered in hidden-away boxes. Jacinta was quite helpful crawling under couches, and dropping things in different boxes, but also at removing items which had already been packed. Matt and Keith moved the piano into its new home, no small task. Matt also started building his workshop down in the shed so that he could empty our new bathroom of all of his tools. The 4WD child’s wagon again came in handy toting heavy tools down the hill. Once the floor cured, we began moving in on Friday, what a joy! Jacinta helped Matt assemble her big girl bed and put our mattress in our room. The futon was moved into the small lounge room, the kitchen table assembled next to the huge kitchen window and the refrigerator moved to its new home. I left for an hour to visit the naturopath and came back to all of this newness and excitement. Friday night we ate our first dinner on our table and slept in a place we helped to create. Jacinta took part in so many steps along the way that she seems to feel no remorse in leaving the big family bedroom.

It will take us another day to completely remove ourselves from the old room, and then a while to build the means to organize our things and cook in this part of the house. One of these days we’ll get a composting toilet. Moving has been fun, I sort, carry small loads and waddle back and forth while Matt does all of the heavy work. Jacinta is spending a good deal of time just enjoying her space, her own room filled with only her things. At first when the room was empty she just danced and spun around happily while I swept up the last remnants of construction for over forty minutes, just feeling the space. We have been cramped for a while. Her toys are now spread around the perimeter of her room rather than hidden underneath couches and at the bottom of our bookshelf. Our hope is that she’ll learn to spend more time on her own given the space to do it. It seems to be happening already.

We were pretty focused on moving this week, but in our free time went to Nambucca (the nearest beach town) a few times: once to meet some friends with children Jacinta’s age and another time for our first ultrasound. We didn’t really want to bother with ultrasound but were told that some conditions can develop in a baby that hospitals out here can not deal with. So we took it in stride and made it a fun family event, Jacinta in Matt’s lap listening to him “ooh and ahh” and explain to her all the things we were seeing. The little child in my belly is healthy and developing just as beautifully as we expected. It was quite strange to look at moving pictures of this little being I had been feeling internally for so long. Following the appointment we went to relax at our favorite park to play in the sand and swim in the river. It was a lovely cloudy day, and although Jess had no interest in swimming, I enjoyed my leisurely float out in the river. Matt, exhausted from the race to finish the house, relished the peace there on the river bank, playing with Jacinta in the sand and reading the paper.

The garden grows on, slower now than before as the tomato and cucumber surge comes to an end. The dryness hasn’t helped much, nor have the chickens sneaking in to dig up garden beds. But the cows did not cause any trouble this week! Fearing that in a month or so we’d have nothing to eat in the garden, Jess and I planted some more corn, beans, carrots and spinach. It’s hard to keep the moisture in the ground though with the wind and the heat, so perhaps none of the seed will ever sprout. I shall be thankful for any results! This week we harvested our first eggplant, a whole bunch of strawberries, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, and a tiny cantaloupe. While Jess played with her plastic pigs in the water, I continued my meager weeding effort in the hopes of preventing the teepee garden from being swallowed up by a creepy crawly grass that is taking over. I need about twenty four hours of straight labor to get it done though. All I can do in this heat is about an hour. Oh well. Long live the weeds, powerful, vibrant weeds, we have a house now!

It has been a great week, a lovely way to begin 2007. I talked with a few loved ones from the Midwest and received a package full of pictures and summer maternity clothes from a dear friend. We’re free to create in our own space now. The breeze is awesome from this end of the house and the cicadas and frogs sing louder here as we are closer to the dam. The rooster’s early morning crows are also more prominent here, but you can’t have it all. It’s starting to rain! How lucky we are.

I’ll close on a story about our wedding ring. On one of Matt and Jacinta’s outings to the park, while playing on the swings Jess asked Matt about the six symbols on his ring. He first had her guess what she thought each one was, she saw bandicoots and kangaroos in addition to the heart and tree. The cross, the human, the music notes, and the pair of holding hands all had to be explained to her. These symbols are all very important to Matt and I so it was very special to let her in on them. Today as Matt was pulling down boxes which had stored things we didn’t need over the past year, he found a very special batik I had made in Senegal. It had five of our wedding ring symbols surrounding a big beautiful Baobab tree. It was a gift to both of us for our wedding and has hung everywhere we have lived over the past eight years. Today we found that the mice had destroyed it while it lay unused for the past year. It would be nice if I had really learned how to “batik” so that I could remake the cloth, but I was guided so heavily that I could never repeat this. So as we slowly move into this new life, I will slowly try to let go of this meaningful cloth and further practice the belief that material things are nothing. Most often they fall away from us or end up cluttering our lives so entirely that we have no room left to create. But as I tend to lose things...I’ll admit that I am elated to still have both of our rings, the mice can’t eat gold. (The original ring flew off of my finger in the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago, but we had another one made!)

Wishing you peace, joy and passion,

Shana