Library farts
Hello there It is that time of year, the Christmas “busyness” has come both on our sunny and your snowy landscapes. Of course the heat of summer changes the mood of Christmas here, but another difference is that Santa really is the major player here. I remember the reminder often as a child, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” I don’t think that’s much of a concern here. There are stuffed Santas all over, skinny fake Santas standing on corners advertising anything from carpets to car-washing, lit up Santas on light posts, and plywood cut outs of Santa and the reindeer on roofs. Jacinta points each and every one out to us, otherwise I might not notice the psycho Santa reverence. I’m sure it’s the same in America, but there’s usually a bit of competition with nativity scenes and menorahs.
Another lacking is Hannukah, we don’t live near a Jewish community so we miss out. Mom sent me a Hannukah cd filled with songs I happened to know. Listening to it here in this place devoid of Judaism, made me realize that although I grew up Christian, my music teachers and Jewish friends and neighbours formed in me a very special reverence and familiarity with Judaism. This will be our third Christmas here. The heat is becoming normal, but Christmas in a place anywhere outside of your childhood wonderland can never compete.
Jacinta and Genevieve’s embrace of the upcoming holiday will eventually overtake me and make me fall in love with Aussie Christmas. We have the trees decorated and now gifts have started to accumulate below thanks to Mom and George’s huge package, filled with lots of tiny wrapped packages for each of the girls. Jacinta is filled with excitement and curiosity, but not yet wily enough to try and guess what’s inside. Genevieve likes the sounds of paper and just wants to eat the wrapping; she couldn’t care less about what’s inside. In the past I have spent weeks hand making everyone’s gifts, preparing me mentally for the season and deeply feeling the giving ritual through knitting or making pasta. This year, I can’t imagine finding the time to do such a thing. Also, I am getting older and realizing that although I may love to make gifts, it’s more about the receiver than the giver. I have to laugh at myself and know my family would have had a good laugh opening my packages of handmade pasta, herbal tea and applesauce on Christmas Day. Live and learn, yes, slowly. Perhaps one good thing for all concerned is that now I wouldn’t get those things through customs if I tried.
Instead of making a lot of Christmas presents I got ready for our week away from home. I did heaps of laundry. Normally this doesn’t deserve a mention but this week it rained a little bit each day. Storms come across very quickly, so I had a few loads out on the clothesline in the rain for a few days. I took Jacinta to a swimming lesson and the girls to our last playgroup until the school year recommences in February. We did some last minute Christmas shopping and card-making. Jess and I recorded all of the French songs and poems we do in class as a gift to her friends. Matt edited it all and pumped out the cds for us, making the children all happy to have their own recording to sing with at home. I do pity their poor parents having to listen to my teacher voice explaining the meaning of each song. Oh well. Hopefully they’ll still respect me. Our last French class of the year was fun. I took requests from each child regarding their favourite game or song. Every one of them wanted to play Hide and Seek, no surprise, except for Josephine who requested a simple game I had made up on the spot months ago. I’m so happy my friends trust me enough to teach their children a foreign language that they’ll probably never find to be practical.
Gardening is a much more practical skill to have in this land so far from French culture, but I’d never teach that. I am the student and will always be. I have learned quit a bit though in the past few years. My friend Michelle who used to help me in the garden all the time came for a visit last week and was amazed at how much I’d actually absorbed given the lush state of my gardens. I think gardening is one of those things that constantly humbles you as you marvel at creation’s magnificence and the small things you can do to influence it. Thanks to Michelle taking care of Evie and Jess for an hour up at the house, I was able to compost, mulch and plant out a whole new garden bed in the tepee in the rain. It was such a lovely purifying hour, to spend in solitude in the rain, in daylight even! Solitude in daylight is quite a gift to a work-at-home parent. Besides this lovely memory, I did a bit of work with the girls, mostly harvesting and eating purple beans, strawberries, basil for pesto, zucchini and cucumbers. The cows broke into the orchard and knocked down the tepee so they left a bit of work to be done in order to give the beans back their poles to climb. We also weeded borage, fed the plants, and played store in the mud hut. It was also time for the potato harvest, Keith and I loosened the soil and left the potatoes on the edge of the bed for Jacinta to discover and throw into the bucket. Evie emptied out the storage bin in her search for the littlest bite-size potatoes to shove in her mouth and cause us fear of choking. She is a determined little girl.
Genevieve is the spitting image of Jacinta as a baby without the constant smile. She has more of a serious discerning face that has to be convinced to smile, not such a bad quality. She is an outdoor baby who whines at the screen and tries to get out of the house if she sees anyone else leave. Once this week in a pinch to satisfy her, I put her in her stroller sitting up out in the veranda so she could watch Matt work. She stopped crying and cheered up. Evie’s ready to walk and whines out of frustration as she stubbornly clings to our legs while we move around the house. She took a few steps this week, standing up from a squat, taking a step and squatting back down slowly. Previously I wanted her to slow down, but I suppose her frustration is winning me over. Now I’m cheering her on. It’s unfortunate that I have to think about the ramifications of her newfound ability to reach up one shelf higher in our kitchen, thereby reducing my excitement for her growth. She is pretty darn proud of herself though, baby pride is so awesome to witness.
Genevieve learned this weekend to clap her hands together and make noise after months of watching her hands miss each other. She also started making clicking sounds with her mouth. I wonder if this came from the South African click she hears us sing in choir or just from within her. No matter, she loves the sound and so do we. Jacinta told anyone who would listen today that “Genevieve learned to click and clap.” Our big sister may be jealous at times, but also proud. I tell anyone who’ll listen that Evie has learned to sleep! She sleeps through the night now with no milk until daybreak. Hallelujah! What a Christmas present! She also sleeps better in the day, thanks to our realization that being that attached to the breast was actually affecting her negatively. She still has breast milk, but only a few times a day now. It’s hard not to kick ourselves for not attempting this with Jacinta. Live and learn, yes.
Matt worked equally hard inside and out this week. Inside he kept busy contacting influential spiritual leaders in the Creation Spirituality community regarding the book he is organizing and editing. He had a few major successes in obtaining interviews and essay contributions with amazing people from various religious and cultural backgrounds. This is unpaid labor, yes, but each new contributor is a major boost both for my Matt Henry and Matthew Fox, the writer of Original Blessing. With each “yes” comes an understanding that these individuals have been inspired by Matthew Fox and would love to share how they are putting this inspiration into action. For my Matt, it is a “yes” saying, “What a great idea to celebrate this work of literature and move toward the future.” So although Matt would have liked to be occupied with income related work, this soul satisfying work has kept him quite busy.
Besides that, Matt finished off the veranda with baby safe wire around the edges and fixed up the entry way to the house. Now Evie can crawl around with a little supervision and Jacinta can ride her bike around. We have just begun tasting the fruits of Matt’s labor and oh, is it lovely. Now we have a place to let both girls play with water, in buckets with no risk of biting ants crawling up a leg. Jacinta brought out pillows to rest on the bench after lunch and watch Matt work out in the yard. We scrubbed potatoes out there, ripped off basil leaves for pesto, shaved off soap corners, snapped green beans whilst Evie tried to eat the dirty potatoes, eat the basil branches and knock over the bowl, eat the soap shavings and tip out the green beans. Matt finished work on the veranda on Wednesday, just before French class. The pride he must feel as he watches our friends relaxing on the bench he made and the children playing safely on a deck he built himself must be even better than what I feel watching friends enjoy a meal that I’ve made. We are spending more time outside now and will have even more of a reason to be out there after Christmas. This week Matt and Keith also worked on levelling out a spot for a swing set, moving tractor loads of dirt to do so. This will be a big surprise for the girls on Christmas morning, thanks to Keith and Mary. Jacinta, full of questions, believed Matt when he called this new flat spot a “dirt veranda.” She and Evie had a lovely time jumping in the soft new dirt with Daddy and Pop, having no idea why all the effort was going into this one spot. Their innocence is awesome.
Saturday morning we travelled five hours in the car to Sydney. We joined a bunch of our friends for the evening and had a potluck Christmas carol sing along Christmas party. You’ll be proud to know that I watched as Jacinta ate her first “lollies” (candy) that day. She had a candy cane in the car, and some gummy candy things at the party. I smiled, although I may have worried a little inside that she’d forget her excitement for fruit. She even ate a piece of sausage because all of the other children were, and later asked what kind of animal it was. I guess I’ll feel I have done well as long as she knows that she is eating animal. She will not be delusional in thinking that we don’t kill anything to survive and hopefully, she’ll learn that the Big Bad Wolf is really not so bad. He just needs to eat, like we do.
Sorry for that tangent, anyhow, we had a great time eating and singing. Matt with a mandolin, old friends who sing and a beer in hand is a joyous thing to watch. He forgets his anxieties about his voice and just has fun. Jacinta jumped on the trampoline, made music and tentatively eased her way into a group of little ones. Genevieve enjoyed watching all of the big kids, trying to taste their toys, playing the maracas, and getting passed around. This gathering always makes me smile because it is the only formal thing we do that puts some Christ in Christmas. There are no gifts: just food and song with friends Matt has had since his days in his old church youth group. I think I could perhaps survive on food and music, both which involve people you love.
Sunday we visited our friends Jenny, Ted and JD and drove down with Matt’s sister to Canberra in a tightly packed car. It was so full I broke the tambourine shutting the trunk, oops! The wonder of it all was that both girls slept the entire three-hour trip. This gave us a chance to get caught up on Allison’s life and politics, which usually I would only get to absorb bits and pieces. It was so nice to be able to listen with both ears and learn a little more about the excitement going on in Australia thanks to the new government.
I’m not sure how big of a headline it is in the US, but over here the conference on climate change in Bali was a big deal, thanks to the US delegate actually caving to international pressure to come to the table and compromise on reducing carbon emissions. It turns out that our new Prime Minister played a small part in this effort, thus Australia is feeling pretty awesome. To convince the USA of anything internationally is rough, but our newspapers said that many of the less powerful developing countries were speaking pretty harshly to the USA, which is abnormal. The rep from Papua New Guinea actually said something like, “if you (USA) are not going to lead the way, then get out of the way.” No real numbers were agreed upon, but it was agreed to draft a new protocol. Perhaps it was all talk, but we shall see.
So here we are in Canberra, the capital city of Australia, living in Allison’s flat with her. Imagine taking on a family of four, in your apartment, what a kind woman. Matt is working for his other sister Louise all week, and I am taking the girls around touristing. Today’s outing was to the National Art Gallery and to the National Library. We played out in the sculpture gardens and picnicked on the lake for a while, spending a few moments with a black swan family. When Evie grew tired we ventured inside to visit the gallery and found an amazing Contemporary Aboriginal Art Exhibition. Jacinta was well behaved, Evie slept and we truly enjoyed the art work. Of course, I’d have loved to read the explanations on some of the works, but that’s asking too much of a three year old. She did very well trying to control her hands and innate need to touch everything. The highlight for her was probably playing hide and seek in the bronze pears outside the gallery. The National Library was big, “so big a giant’s head wouldn’t even hit the ceiling,” said Jacinta. It had about forty children’s books, but all good ones. We did well to get through two books before Evie had had enough. What did Evie think of the fancy library? Well, “Mommy wouldn’t let me chew on the books or make noise, so I farted really loud so we’d have to leave.”
We’ll be back in Macksville by Christmas Eve, but for now picture me driving round and round the roundabouts wondering where the heck I’m going. Eventually I’ll arrive somewhere with my girls, and it doesn’t matter when because we have all day. Wherever we end up we’ll probably move slow, look for nice sticks, pretty birds, and play hide and seek when we find something interesting. I hope you have time to move slow too this week. Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah!
Peace,
Shana
Another lacking is Hannukah, we don’t live near a Jewish community so we miss out. Mom sent me a Hannukah cd filled with songs I happened to know. Listening to it here in this place devoid of Judaism, made me realize that although I grew up Christian, my music teachers and Jewish friends and neighbours formed in me a very special reverence and familiarity with Judaism. This will be our third Christmas here. The heat is becoming normal, but Christmas in a place anywhere outside of your childhood wonderland can never compete.
Jacinta and Genevieve’s embrace of the upcoming holiday will eventually overtake me and make me fall in love with Aussie Christmas. We have the trees decorated and now gifts have started to accumulate below thanks to Mom and George’s huge package, filled with lots of tiny wrapped packages for each of the girls. Jacinta is filled with excitement and curiosity, but not yet wily enough to try and guess what’s inside. Genevieve likes the sounds of paper and just wants to eat the wrapping; she couldn’t care less about what’s inside. In the past I have spent weeks hand making everyone’s gifts, preparing me mentally for the season and deeply feeling the giving ritual through knitting or making pasta. This year, I can’t imagine finding the time to do such a thing. Also, I am getting older and realizing that although I may love to make gifts, it’s more about the receiver than the giver. I have to laugh at myself and know my family would have had a good laugh opening my packages of handmade pasta, herbal tea and applesauce on Christmas Day. Live and learn, yes, slowly. Perhaps one good thing for all concerned is that now I wouldn’t get those things through customs if I tried.
Instead of making a lot of Christmas presents I got ready for our week away from home. I did heaps of laundry. Normally this doesn’t deserve a mention but this week it rained a little bit each day. Storms come across very quickly, so I had a few loads out on the clothesline in the rain for a few days. I took Jacinta to a swimming lesson and the girls to our last playgroup until the school year recommences in February. We did some last minute Christmas shopping and card-making. Jess and I recorded all of the French songs and poems we do in class as a gift to her friends. Matt edited it all and pumped out the cds for us, making the children all happy to have their own recording to sing with at home. I do pity their poor parents having to listen to my teacher voice explaining the meaning of each song. Oh well. Hopefully they’ll still respect me. Our last French class of the year was fun. I took requests from each child regarding their favourite game or song. Every one of them wanted to play Hide and Seek, no surprise, except for Josephine who requested a simple game I had made up on the spot months ago. I’m so happy my friends trust me enough to teach their children a foreign language that they’ll probably never find to be practical.
Gardening is a much more practical skill to have in this land so far from French culture, but I’d never teach that. I am the student and will always be. I have learned quit a bit though in the past few years. My friend Michelle who used to help me in the garden all the time came for a visit last week and was amazed at how much I’d actually absorbed given the lush state of my gardens. I think gardening is one of those things that constantly humbles you as you marvel at creation’s magnificence and the small things you can do to influence it. Thanks to Michelle taking care of Evie and Jess for an hour up at the house, I was able to compost, mulch and plant out a whole new garden bed in the tepee in the rain. It was such a lovely purifying hour, to spend in solitude in the rain, in daylight even! Solitude in daylight is quite a gift to a work-at-home parent. Besides this lovely memory, I did a bit of work with the girls, mostly harvesting and eating purple beans, strawberries, basil for pesto, zucchini and cucumbers. The cows broke into the orchard and knocked down the tepee so they left a bit of work to be done in order to give the beans back their poles to climb. We also weeded borage, fed the plants, and played store in the mud hut. It was also time for the potato harvest, Keith and I loosened the soil and left the potatoes on the edge of the bed for Jacinta to discover and throw into the bucket. Evie emptied out the storage bin in her search for the littlest bite-size potatoes to shove in her mouth and cause us fear of choking. She is a determined little girl.
Genevieve is the spitting image of Jacinta as a baby without the constant smile. She has more of a serious discerning face that has to be convinced to smile, not such a bad quality. She is an outdoor baby who whines at the screen and tries to get out of the house if she sees anyone else leave. Once this week in a pinch to satisfy her, I put her in her stroller sitting up out in the veranda so she could watch Matt work. She stopped crying and cheered up. Evie’s ready to walk and whines out of frustration as she stubbornly clings to our legs while we move around the house. She took a few steps this week, standing up from a squat, taking a step and squatting back down slowly. Previously I wanted her to slow down, but I suppose her frustration is winning me over. Now I’m cheering her on. It’s unfortunate that I have to think about the ramifications of her newfound ability to reach up one shelf higher in our kitchen, thereby reducing my excitement for her growth. She is pretty darn proud of herself though, baby pride is so awesome to witness.
Genevieve learned this weekend to clap her hands together and make noise after months of watching her hands miss each other. She also started making clicking sounds with her mouth. I wonder if this came from the South African click she hears us sing in choir or just from within her. No matter, she loves the sound and so do we. Jacinta told anyone who would listen today that “Genevieve learned to click and clap.” Our big sister may be jealous at times, but also proud. I tell anyone who’ll listen that Evie has learned to sleep! She sleeps through the night now with no milk until daybreak. Hallelujah! What a Christmas present! She also sleeps better in the day, thanks to our realization that being that attached to the breast was actually affecting her negatively. She still has breast milk, but only a few times a day now. It’s hard not to kick ourselves for not attempting this with Jacinta. Live and learn, yes.
Matt worked equally hard inside and out this week. Inside he kept busy contacting influential spiritual leaders in the Creation Spirituality community regarding the book he is organizing and editing. He had a few major successes in obtaining interviews and essay contributions with amazing people from various religious and cultural backgrounds. This is unpaid labor, yes, but each new contributor is a major boost both for my Matt Henry and Matthew Fox, the writer of Original Blessing. With each “yes” comes an understanding that these individuals have been inspired by Matthew Fox and would love to share how they are putting this inspiration into action. For my Matt, it is a “yes” saying, “What a great idea to celebrate this work of literature and move toward the future.” So although Matt would have liked to be occupied with income related work, this soul satisfying work has kept him quite busy.
Besides that, Matt finished off the veranda with baby safe wire around the edges and fixed up the entry way to the house. Now Evie can crawl around with a little supervision and Jacinta can ride her bike around. We have just begun tasting the fruits of Matt’s labor and oh, is it lovely. Now we have a place to let both girls play with water, in buckets with no risk of biting ants crawling up a leg. Jacinta brought out pillows to rest on the bench after lunch and watch Matt work out in the yard. We scrubbed potatoes out there, ripped off basil leaves for pesto, shaved off soap corners, snapped green beans whilst Evie tried to eat the dirty potatoes, eat the basil branches and knock over the bowl, eat the soap shavings and tip out the green beans. Matt finished work on the veranda on Wednesday, just before French class. The pride he must feel as he watches our friends relaxing on the bench he made and the children playing safely on a deck he built himself must be even better than what I feel watching friends enjoy a meal that I’ve made. We are spending more time outside now and will have even more of a reason to be out there after Christmas. This week Matt and Keith also worked on levelling out a spot for a swing set, moving tractor loads of dirt to do so. This will be a big surprise for the girls on Christmas morning, thanks to Keith and Mary. Jacinta, full of questions, believed Matt when he called this new flat spot a “dirt veranda.” She and Evie had a lovely time jumping in the soft new dirt with Daddy and Pop, having no idea why all the effort was going into this one spot. Their innocence is awesome.
Saturday morning we travelled five hours in the car to Sydney. We joined a bunch of our friends for the evening and had a potluck Christmas carol sing along Christmas party. You’ll be proud to know that I watched as Jacinta ate her first “lollies” (candy) that day. She had a candy cane in the car, and some gummy candy things at the party. I smiled, although I may have worried a little inside that she’d forget her excitement for fruit. She even ate a piece of sausage because all of the other children were, and later asked what kind of animal it was. I guess I’ll feel I have done well as long as she knows that she is eating animal. She will not be delusional in thinking that we don’t kill anything to survive and hopefully, she’ll learn that the Big Bad Wolf is really not so bad. He just needs to eat, like we do.
Sorry for that tangent, anyhow, we had a great time eating and singing. Matt with a mandolin, old friends who sing and a beer in hand is a joyous thing to watch. He forgets his anxieties about his voice and just has fun. Jacinta jumped on the trampoline, made music and tentatively eased her way into a group of little ones. Genevieve enjoyed watching all of the big kids, trying to taste their toys, playing the maracas, and getting passed around. This gathering always makes me smile because it is the only formal thing we do that puts some Christ in Christmas. There are no gifts: just food and song with friends Matt has had since his days in his old church youth group. I think I could perhaps survive on food and music, both which involve people you love.
Sunday we visited our friends Jenny, Ted and JD and drove down with Matt’s sister to Canberra in a tightly packed car. It was so full I broke the tambourine shutting the trunk, oops! The wonder of it all was that both girls slept the entire three-hour trip. This gave us a chance to get caught up on Allison’s life and politics, which usually I would only get to absorb bits and pieces. It was so nice to be able to listen with both ears and learn a little more about the excitement going on in Australia thanks to the new government.
I’m not sure how big of a headline it is in the US, but over here the conference on climate change in Bali was a big deal, thanks to the US delegate actually caving to international pressure to come to the table and compromise on reducing carbon emissions. It turns out that our new Prime Minister played a small part in this effort, thus Australia is feeling pretty awesome. To convince the USA of anything internationally is rough, but our newspapers said that many of the less powerful developing countries were speaking pretty harshly to the USA, which is abnormal. The rep from Papua New Guinea actually said something like, “if you (USA) are not going to lead the way, then get out of the way.” No real numbers were agreed upon, but it was agreed to draft a new protocol. Perhaps it was all talk, but we shall see.
So here we are in Canberra, the capital city of Australia, living in Allison’s flat with her. Imagine taking on a family of four, in your apartment, what a kind woman. Matt is working for his other sister Louise all week, and I am taking the girls around touristing. Today’s outing was to the National Art Gallery and to the National Library. We played out in the sculpture gardens and picnicked on the lake for a while, spending a few moments with a black swan family. When Evie grew tired we ventured inside to visit the gallery and found an amazing Contemporary Aboriginal Art Exhibition. Jacinta was well behaved, Evie slept and we truly enjoyed the art work. Of course, I’d have loved to read the explanations on some of the works, but that’s asking too much of a three year old. She did very well trying to control her hands and innate need to touch everything. The highlight for her was probably playing hide and seek in the bronze pears outside the gallery. The National Library was big, “so big a giant’s head wouldn’t even hit the ceiling,” said Jacinta. It had about forty children’s books, but all good ones. We did well to get through two books before Evie had had enough. What did Evie think of the fancy library? Well, “Mommy wouldn’t let me chew on the books or make noise, so I farted really loud so we’d have to leave.”
We’ll be back in Macksville by Christmas Eve, but for now picture me driving round and round the roundabouts wondering where the heck I’m going. Eventually I’ll arrive somewhere with my girls, and it doesn’t matter when because we have all day. Wherever we end up we’ll probably move slow, look for nice sticks, pretty birds, and play hide and seek when we find something interesting. I hope you have time to move slow too this week. Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah!
Peace,
Shana
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
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