I'm going to live underwater

Good evening (: Another peaceful week gone by, another week closer to the birth. I am so excited now. Somehow as I get bigger and less comfortable, I am happier and complaining less. Perhaps Matt may have a different take on this statement given my groaning and grunting as I try to get comfortable at night. Honestly, I feel calm, happy, healthy, at peace with my surroundings, and ready to embrace this little being with all of my being. It hasn’t been terribly hot and has rained quite a bit this week, which helps our state of mind. There are many possibilities to explain this late pregnancy comfort.

First of all, I LOVE our new house! As you can imagine, it is an amazing feeling to inhabit a space that you dreamt up and helped labor to create. Matt has a different take on it at the moment, more like, “oh, look at that mistake I made,” and “I can’t build a book shelf for Jess’s books until I finish the bathroom. Then I’ll do this, then that,” and on and on. Secondly, as has been the case for almost two years now, I have no job outside of the house, nowhere I have to go, no obligation to earn any money. Each day I have small goals to accomplish, like cleaning the stroller, washing jars to fill with grains, packing a bag for the hospital, weeding around the house to deter bull ants, making cards for Jacinta’s friends, cooking meals for anyone inclined to eat them, harvesting a few vegetables from the garden, or putting laundry out on the line. If I don’t set out to do too much, I can actually feel accomplished, even though it may look to someone else as if I’ve not done much of anything. Perhaps these tasks seem menial to some who have jobs and occupations out of the house, but I truly enjoy this slow life.

It’s so funny thinking back to my teenage years and learning that this kind of life was demeaning to women. If you demean the importance of childhood also, then sure, this life isn’t worth my education. Although I (the government, alumni and Hope College) spent a pretty penny on college, I love this life, and would not have learned the value in it without my $80,000 college experience. Well, perhaps traveling for four years would not have cost so much, perhaps a better investment, but I wouldn’t have met Matt. I suppose most sane people wouldn’t see the value in that investment, those that gave me scholarships nor the U.S. government. All I can do is say, “Thank you!” The Australian government actually gives parents a special bonus called “Parent Payment,” if there is one parent at home with the children. It’s not just a tax cut, it’s a bi-weekly check supporting those who make the sacrifice of one income for their children. It’s quite a shock coming from the U.S. where there are so many single parents working low paying jobs who must pay for and put their children in child care from dusk until dawn to scrape out enough to pay rent and eat. It’s hard to listen to some politicians rave on about “family values” given the current policies in America. But I suppose the vast size of the US in comparison to these smaller socialist countries is always an excuse, but then…what about the military budget?

Ho hum, how do you transition from the military budget to preparing for a sweet baby to come and bless us? I suppose it’s impossible so I’ll just jump. I saw my naturopath one last time this week and stocked up on all of the herbal and homeopathic concoctions she has prescribed to make me strong and this birth as calm and easy as possible. I saw my local doctor and heard the heartbeat, strong as it could be once again. The head is still down and all is well. I finished knitting the baby’s blanket at choir on Tuesday and sang some lovely melodies into its stitches. I love knitting things in places that I enjoy being surrounded by people I admire, knitting different energies into its fibers. The next day, Jess and I gave the blanket a bath and also washed the stroller Jess used as a baby. Matt and I both each started and finished a glass mural this week. Matt painted a Leunig poem called, “The Smile” and I painted a scene inspired by one of Jacinta’s books called The Day You Were Born. It is a picture of a woman holding a newborn baby in the middle of a circle of people dancing and animals watching in the middle of the globe. I drew a little Jacinta holding onto the baby, added a few kangaroos to make it more geographically appropriate, a few squirrels to recognize my roots, and drew plants I know and love as part of the earth. It was a fun project and will be the wall behind the toilet in our bathroom. Could you ask for a more sacred location?

The loveliest part of our baby preparation this week was what I described to Jacinta as a “girly party to welcome the baby,” officially called a Blessingway. It was more of a “spoil the mama” party which then opens the doors for the baby, given a happy and calm mother. Four of my most treasured friends here came and brought me food, love and comfort. Jess knows and loves all of them and food, so she played a major part in the celebration with her exuberance and curiosity. Trish and Sally arrived first with huge coolers in hand, big smiles, and a beautiful chain of white frangipani flowers for me to wear around my neck. We sat and drank tea while waiting for the others. The clouds swelled, the wind picked up and the rains came down hard, just in time for Michelle and Osha to arrive in the downpour. After tea and chatting, Jacinta was anxious to begin so she called us to the circle where I lit a candle in the middle of the newly knitted baby blanket. This was our little altar, which I will recreate in the hospital to make it more like home. Each of my friends brought something special to them in the hopes that it would give me strength and energy during the birth: poems, shells, stones, bracelets, special coins, seeds, a digging stick, and kind words. Jacinta excitedly passed each object around for all to see and persistently asked “What is this for? What kind of seed pod? What do you dig with this?” as each gift’s significance was explained. After the altar was covered and we chatted about children, birthing and then food, we all squeezed hands for strength and moved on to lunch. It was yet another awesome meal prepared by my friends who love food: seaweed salad, spiced rice, eggplant and tofu curry, hummus, pita, baby quiches, pesto and cucumbers, and a plum and honey pastry. Osha who makes and sells all natural herbal creams and beauty products then gave me a foot bath and massage to top it all off. Jess watched and helped for a while, then finally started playing in the water hiding things under the bubbles until we finished and I was almost blissfully asleep. It was a lovely day and truly strengthened me in preparation for the birth, feeling the affection of my friends in a new land. I also received blessings from treasured friends in the States via email which brought it all together.

It feels as if things are coming together all over for us: the house, support from friends and family, the rain’s delay until after the dam had been dug out, Matt finding connections to continue working with Creation Spirituality, and now, almost firming up employment in Michigan for us this summer. Nothing is certain other than our desire to come out to the US for a few months this summer. Possibilities include working at the summer camp where we met in Almont, Michigan, lots of visits to our beloved Ferndale, Matt going out West for a few conferences on Creation Spirituality Communities, my step-brother’s wedding in Indiana, and most importantly, sharing our new baby and soon to be three year old Jacinta with our family and friends. We hope to come out and stay for at least June and July. After we will have finished our lovely abode, we hope to leave it, missing the only winter we get living in this hot country! We shall see, fingers crossed!

Speaking of the house being finished, I’ll give you the update on what Matt has done this week. Water has been the theme, funny that it also happened to rain after such a long dry spell. He started setting up the rain gutters on our portion of the house so that we don’t lose all of this rain to the grass. With these gutters our extra roof space is finally increasing the flow to the water tank. Plumbing is something new for Matt, as is much of what he has done so far though you couldn’t guess it looking at what he creates. He spent hours digging with Keith through the mess of already existing pipes going from the rain tank to the house, some dormant, some working, but all similar in appearance. They managed to dig in and hook up new pipes to bring water to our kitchen and bathroom. It was a long haul though. Drains still need to be created so the water isn’t in service just yet. I still carry dishes back and forth to the other kitchen, it keeps me fit, hee hee. The bathroom doesn’t yet have a toilet, bath or sink, but the pipes are there now, even connecting us to the hot water heater, nice. Matt began building the base for the old cast iron sink. Although he is anxious to meet Baby Henry #2, he would prefer he or she wait to come until the plumbing is finished. We shall see.

On Monday morning Matt will travel to Sydney to celebrate the life of little Teresa, our good friends’ baby who was born and died within five hours. This week he wrote a beautiful song for Teresa, Anne Marie and Bernie which they will use at the service. He will mourn and celebrate Teresa’s short life with old friends and drive back Tuesday morning, hoping that I will not yet be in labor. Jacinta knows that “Daddy is going to Sydney to say goodbye to baby Teresa because she died.” I wonder if you can really understand what that means at her age, even though she lives on a farm and sees death more often than most Western children. She named a star on my mural for baby Teresa, then chose two larger stars to be Anne Marie and Bernie. She then asked me to draw one more baby star, “for their other baby,” a baby that perhaps they will have one day who will live long enough to walk, talk, skip and jump.

Again, another hard transition from saying goodbye to a little being who never had the chance to do the things Jacinta does to telling stories about the joys of our living little girl’s life. I suppose each of us has our own path. Jacinta’s path this week has been quite smooth. She has been a great playmate, cook’s helper, and co-creator. She loves to help anyone that can give her a fun job. She is learning to calm herself down in her bedroom. It’s quite humorous after sending her to her room while she tantrums about not getting her way. She comes out after a few minutes of forced crying and says, “I’m calm now,” and goes on to do exactly what she refused to do five minutes ago. Another addition to life since we moved is that Jess will sing to us at bedtime each evening. We sing one song and she sings one too, sometimes with Matt playing “pitar” (guitar) accompaniment. This weeks songs were, “1 2 3 4 jump,” and “Mama duck Baby duck.” The lyrics are exactly the same as the title, over and over, with a definite melody sung quietly and with great feeling. You can imagine our hearts melting with each and every note.

Watching her grow from a little puddle jumper to a little girl who wears big black boots to go exploring down in the new dam (with parents) has been amazing. Muckwalking is what we call it: wearing boots up to your knees and trudging through mud so deep you could mistake it for quicksand. We all love it and now that the dam is not so steep or deep at the moment, we decided to make it an evening activity last Thursday. Logs that had been submerged for years are now good balance beams, clay that was dug up unevenly has formed little mountains to climb, it is now quite a playground. There are tiny bits of green popping out of the dirt, and a few lily pads resurfacing after the demolition. It is surely not swimmable but we still have the spa and the river for swimming.

As I have found too many words to share with you all I will end this with a story about another evening beach outing. After our picnic on the riverside, Matt lied down after a hard day of plumbing to rest under the trees while Jess ran and I waddled into the river for a swim. Swimming around the fish, full of energy to dive under and paddle around, Jess was in her element. She was back and forth from the shallow to the deep, in and out of her ring, goggles on and off, going from riding on my back to pushing off of my legs to swim under water and come straight back to me. At one point she said, “I’m going to live under the water.” Later on, she looked out across the water and saw a man dressed in red and white off in the distance and asked, “Is that Santa Claw?” I laughed at her pronunciation and said probably not, but that the man was digging for something in the water. We then spent the next fifteen minutes watching the couple dig for “something” and talking about what they might be doing. On the way home while munching on her apple, after a few minutes of rare silence she asked, “Do you remember seeing Santa Claw?” I told her I did, “at the playgroup Christmas party?” and then she recounted the whole day: exactly who was there, what she ate, and that she had played at the beach. It’s so interesting what children can remember when their brains haven’t yet been overloaded by all of the things that we grownups have in our heads. I suppose Santa is here to stay, there is no turning back.

Have a great week. Thanks for all of the responses on thunder, I learned something myself! I hope you all see Santa in strange places as Jess does, it’s funny to think of him digging for shellfish in the river. We’ll keep you posted on baby’s arrival.

Peace,

Shana