Beautiful Muddy Waters
Good evening (: Health is restored here as well as our busyness. I hope this letter finds you all in good health also. My stepfather had another surgery to unblock his arteries and restore circulation in his legs. It went well and he is on the mend, so we are all relieved and thankful. When I look back at the week, I can’t seem to process all that has passed through my hands, heart and mind. I also can’t see how I am still awake, but I am. In addition to really needing a couple of hours devoted to processing the week, Matt just brought me a cup of coffee and three little squares of chocolate.
Matt looks forward to his weekend chocolate, but not as much as a break from work. He still spends a lot of time on the road and in the company of unwell people. He has learned a lot more than I’ll ever know about the end of life and about disease. His shoulder has been causing him pain, but last night it eased up. He says it might have been my comfrey ointment, which of course makes me happy. But it also could have been chance. He and Keith spent some time this past week recycling timber from our neighbor’s house which is being reconstructed, lugging loads with the tractor to our massive timber pile. They are both feeling pretty lucky to have scored such good timber and plan to use it on numerous projects. Matt will soon dive into major changes in our house, the girls’ bedroom, sizing down our bathroom, and enlarging our lounge room. He only has one week of work left before his little vacation, just before we leave for the US. He wants to get in some extra time with us before we leave him to update the house.
While Matt played with the girls inside our cozy house, I started out the week with a few hours to myself in the garden, in the pouring rain. Typically I like gardening in the rain, but I was still not feeling 100% so I stayed in the shed, the messy garden shed, surrounded by mess that could have been sorted months ago. The garlic had to be harvested this week to save it from rotting in the ground from all the moisture. To store garlic you need to hang it in an airy place, free from sun and moisture, hence, the shed. Thus the impetus to clean up the piles of cardboard boxes, cracked hoses, rolls of weed cloth, dirty jars, messy tools, piles of fruit fly bags, newspaper rolls of old seeds, cracked pots and stacks of good pots. I find it hard to summon the energy to do something as cleansing as getting rid of junk when I see hundreds of other little tasks out in the dirt that might grow into food. Now I look at my clean shed which has room for people and garlic and am grateful for the rain which made me clean it and harvest the garlic early.
Harvesting root crops is definitely my favorite garden job, as it is all hidden until the moment you dig it up. You can not put it back in the ground if you don’t like what you see, what you see is what you get. I planted eighty garlic cloves about five months ago and did relatively little for them. Tuesday, Genevieve and I dressed up in our raincoats and took our tools down to the terrace garden. She played with the garlic plants after I dug them up and threw them in a pile. She picked off all of the garlic babies (tiny garlic cloves stuck on the bottom of each head of garlic) and sorted them. We left a lot of them in the garden bed, which is nice because in two years, magically, each little baby will grow a full head of garlic without any help from me. As the rain dripped down our foreheads, I celebrated the massive heads of garlic, a years worth of garlic. Genevieve tried to dig too and sang the few rain songs she knew, “raining pouring old man snoring,” and a little French rain song about a frog.
Later that day I picked Jacinta and Lily up from preschool. They had been inside all day and were really happy to come down and help me clean, braid and hang the garlic in the newly cleaned shed. I think the gathering instinct comes naturally to many of us because they entertained themselves for over an hour collecting garlic babies, hoarding them, counting them, and always searching for more. The big girls were delighted to take part in the harvest and process of such a good crop and to have a role to play in the process. They also enjoyed being outside, so close to the rain, yet warm and dry under shelter. We had such a lovely time that I lost my mind, high on the rare occurrence that the three girls play peacefully together. So we invited Lily to sleep over and keep the party going. All in all, it was fine, Lily was lovely but Jacinta was too tired for change so she had a long tantrum about which pajamas to wear. After this, the girls had fun together. I didn’t get much sleep, but this was actually quite humorous. I was woken only by the girls kicking each other in their sleep, (the response being separation) and by their shouts wanting to know where the other had gone. Genevieve woke with all the commotion. Matt and I both lost sleep but for me, it was pretty funny because I could laugh at my own insanity. Matt didn’t find it all so humorous, but dealt with my silly spontaneity. It is my nature to make quick decisions and believe that all will go well, without a worry in the world that something could go wrong. I haven’t had any real problems yet, and haven’t suffered a life of anxiety or fear. I am grateful, but also know that good energy plus a little bit of common sense usually generate a good outcome. A first sleepover isn’t too big of a risk though.
The rains left us alone by Wednesday with a sticky heat that just made you want to live in water. We had swimming lessons that day, but this was inside in an overheated pool with chlorine and white walls. Jacinta is learning how to do the crawl and can do a few strokes on her own now. Genevieve, on the other hand, cries for me or Matt the whole time, which isn’t working out. No big deal. Thursday afternoon, we needed to swim so I convinced Jacinta that we should try out swimming in the dam, since the water has started looking clear. She and Evie wore their life jackets and clung on to me at first, grossed out by the mud below but in awe of the tiny fish surrounding us. After a while, Jacinta was in heaven, swimming off on her own, liberated by this wet paradise that is our backyard. We all swam out to the middle, chasing a seed pod on the surface of the water, but couldn’t make it as far as the lily pads. Today Matt came down with us and crossed the dam with her so she could smell the purple water lily while I stayed with Genevieve. By the end we were sitting in the mud, throwing mud balls out in the water, jumping in the mud like frogs. We floated on our backs and watched the clouds. Jacinta made up a shadow chasing game. We swam across the dam a few times practicing Jacinta’s new skills until our fingers and toes turned into prunes. This was beautiful for me, as I find pond swimming one of the most liberating places to be. Swimming in a small confined body of water, I hover above the unknown brown bottom, with nothing to gaze upon but the surface of the water, trees, plants, birds, and sky. Jacinta was liberated by the mud. She has learned to enjoy the muck, the beauty of a swimming hole in your back yard and has a new motivation to learn to swim.
Matt paddled the girls and I all the way to town this morning. It was our longest trip as a family, perhaps 45 minutes long, yet the most serene. It was early and the tide was high, the water was very still. We saw a few pelicans and a few boats. Going under the two bridges was pretty exciting for the girls, Genevieve requesting, “again??” after we had rowed under the last bridge. We made it to town without the usual whining and had coffee, tea, croissants and bananas on the riverbank. The girls played on the inundated dock, as it was high tide. Kind Mary and Keith brought us the car, so I could take the girls to dance and Matt could row back solo. It’s a hard life (:
Speaking of a hard life, a true hard life, we visited our Togolese refugee friends this week. The mother was glued to her cell phone all day long, trying in vain to reach her mother back in Togo who had left her a message that morning. This image is stuck in my head: her inexperience with technology, her ability to stare at the phone in silence for so long, hoping somehow she would get through, her sadness, her fear, her anxiety, her ignorance of why her mother would call this day after 7 months had gone by since she left Africa. Given the state of the mother, the girls and I played with the boys, who seemed to be used to her preoccupation. The three year old was in his own world, jumping off every bit of furniture he could find (even the shelves and the keyboard) imitating different animals. This was a good ice breaker for my girls. Jacinta observed and giggled. Genevieve eventually joined in and chased the monkey. We brought a truck to share and as Jacinta got it out of the bag, she said, “We should give this to you, you like it so much.” We played the organ together (another kind donation in this house full of strange items), then read some books in English. I kept turning off the television so they would stop zoning out. After a while, they decided that we were more entertaining anyway, luckily because they cold easily climb the shelves and turn it back on. Jacinta read one of the simple books for us all, humbled by the chance to help teach. At one point she was shocked because the older boy said something in English. It turns out they know quite a bit, they were just holding back because they didn’t know us. After the books, the boys took us to their sunny backyard to place the potted vegetables we had brought for them. They proudly showed us the one tomato plant they had. Jacinta asked the oldest boy for a shovel. He nodded knowingly and brought us a scrubbing brush. We giggled and asked again. This time he came back with laundry soap, then a bucket of water. Finally we went with him to find a crayon. Jacinta drew him a shovel. He nodded, went and asked his mother and returned with a “No.” So we left the plants in pots, as planned and went to the beach.
Imagine arriving at the ocean for the first time, never having seen waves before. You are in a new land with a bunch of strangers, with a lot of strange rules. This white woman puts on cream and asks you to hold her hand and walk towards this vast body of water. I suppose it would depend on your age, but these little boys were curious, excited and completely trusting of the strength of my hands. They each had one. We didn’t go deeper than an inch or two, but the waves came up to about 8 inches a few times. They held on for dear life, exhilarated, but trying to figure out how to get a good hold when Genevieve and the two boys each needed a hand. Jacinta was in her own world in the sand making prints, playing with rocks, jumping in the water. For once, she was the most confident little person in the water. By the end, she silently showed them how to sit in the water and let the little waves roll them over.
Next we went to the jetty for fish and chips. As the food arrived, Genevieve fell asleep. The children were all very hungry. Jacinta didn’t like her fish, as usual. While he continually stockpiled his plate, the older boy quickly offered to take everything she didn’t want. Jacinta happily stacked his plate every time I handed her a new piece of fish to try. There was a small voice inside my head saying, “He shouldn’t take all that, he hasn’t even finished what is on his plate.” But Jacinta’s inside voice of inspired generosity won. Their mom bought all of the children icy poles (popsicles) while Evie was sleeping. Jacinta and the two boys sat on the rocks with no space between them, savoring the sweet ice while Genevieve slowly woke and ate her fish. Evie finished her meal just as the older children were finishing their dessert. Jacinta offered her little sister the rest of her icy pole. Then the five year old followed suit. Then the three year old followed suit. This was normal for the boys, sharing. But for Jacinta, this was big. Usually it’s like pulling teeth to get her to do this. But this time, her initial voluntary giving started a chain reaction of giving. Genevieve sat down with the three older children and allowed the youngest boy to put his arm around her while she savored her lemony ice and they watched the boats. It feels so good to share, everyone knows that. In our culture, this seems to be a lesson that takes years to learn.
Even if this generosity only comes out once in a while in my girls, I’ll take it, smile deeply each time and just hope for more.
I suppose their generosity will come out more and more as I give them more freedom. We went to a birthday party this week. Knowing there would be piles of sweets, I told Jacinta that she could make her own food choices given that she knows which things make her body healthy and which things don’t really make her feel well, but are just for fun. She slowly tasted each thing, resisting the urge to ask permission each time. She shined. When the piñata was smashed she grabbed one little bag of gummy candy and ran away to show me what she had gotten. She didn’t stay and pick up the piles of other things she could have grabbed, but relished her prize. A few minutes later she proudly told me that she had given Genevieve a red one (she loves red).
Jacinta is learning generosity as am I. I am also unlearning dogma. Candy is full of crap, yes, but I must let her live in this world, and live joyfully. So to celebrate her new food freedom, we created a gingerbread house on Friday night. We all worked together after Matt came home from work, gluing the walls together with sugary frosting and covering the house in lollies. It was very exciting seeing it all come together, and of course, tasting as we worked. Today our friends Rory and Michelle came over to do some recording (Rory is 5 and loves to sing and play guitar) and helped us demolish the house. It feels funny baking a gingerbread house in this heat, but pretty tasty and great fun for the family.
“A bush tucker walk” is also good fun for the family, if you know what you are doing and I do not. I have always figured that most of the weeds I pull are useful, but needed a good guide. The girls and I visited a school this week and went on one of these walks, led by a humble expert. He showed us all the weeds in our garden which we can put in a salad, which wild seeds to grind up and make bread, which wild berries are edible, which wild roots can be used in stew, which leaves can heal stubborn wounds. We ate kangaroo stew, warrigal greens quiche, a weedy salad, and damper (a thick flatbread cooked on the fire) for lunch. It was awesome for me, but my girls are pretty picky. They enjoyed the lead up to the meal though, especially picking berries and watching children at “big school.”
So with all that, what shall I take from this week? My friend from Togo is a tiny fish in a big scary sea. The mountains she has to climb are beyond my control and imagination, but I can bring them potted plants, popcorn and distract them from their pain. I can eat weed salad, sacrifice some control in exchange for more genuine generosity, swim in a muddy dam and feel beauty, goodness and freedom.
With that, I bid you goodnight.
Peace,
Shana
Also…some of your emails have been blocking my address as spam. I don’t know what to do about it, but would love suggestions. The best bet is that I stop sending these via email just in case there is something bad attached and leave it for you to look on the internet, www.paintedguitar.com. Look on the Blog.
Matt looks forward to his weekend chocolate, but not as much as a break from work. He still spends a lot of time on the road and in the company of unwell people. He has learned a lot more than I’ll ever know about the end of life and about disease. His shoulder has been causing him pain, but last night it eased up. He says it might have been my comfrey ointment, which of course makes me happy. But it also could have been chance. He and Keith spent some time this past week recycling timber from our neighbor’s house which is being reconstructed, lugging loads with the tractor to our massive timber pile. They are both feeling pretty lucky to have scored such good timber and plan to use it on numerous projects. Matt will soon dive into major changes in our house, the girls’ bedroom, sizing down our bathroom, and enlarging our lounge room. He only has one week of work left before his little vacation, just before we leave for the US. He wants to get in some extra time with us before we leave him to update the house.
While Matt played with the girls inside our cozy house, I started out the week with a few hours to myself in the garden, in the pouring rain. Typically I like gardening in the rain, but I was still not feeling 100% so I stayed in the shed, the messy garden shed, surrounded by mess that could have been sorted months ago. The garlic had to be harvested this week to save it from rotting in the ground from all the moisture. To store garlic you need to hang it in an airy place, free from sun and moisture, hence, the shed. Thus the impetus to clean up the piles of cardboard boxes, cracked hoses, rolls of weed cloth, dirty jars, messy tools, piles of fruit fly bags, newspaper rolls of old seeds, cracked pots and stacks of good pots. I find it hard to summon the energy to do something as cleansing as getting rid of junk when I see hundreds of other little tasks out in the dirt that might grow into food. Now I look at my clean shed which has room for people and garlic and am grateful for the rain which made me clean it and harvest the garlic early.
Harvesting root crops is definitely my favorite garden job, as it is all hidden until the moment you dig it up. You can not put it back in the ground if you don’t like what you see, what you see is what you get. I planted eighty garlic cloves about five months ago and did relatively little for them. Tuesday, Genevieve and I dressed up in our raincoats and took our tools down to the terrace garden. She played with the garlic plants after I dug them up and threw them in a pile. She picked off all of the garlic babies (tiny garlic cloves stuck on the bottom of each head of garlic) and sorted them. We left a lot of them in the garden bed, which is nice because in two years, magically, each little baby will grow a full head of garlic without any help from me. As the rain dripped down our foreheads, I celebrated the massive heads of garlic, a years worth of garlic. Genevieve tried to dig too and sang the few rain songs she knew, “raining pouring old man snoring,” and a little French rain song about a frog.
Later that day I picked Jacinta and Lily up from preschool. They had been inside all day and were really happy to come down and help me clean, braid and hang the garlic in the newly cleaned shed. I think the gathering instinct comes naturally to many of us because they entertained themselves for over an hour collecting garlic babies, hoarding them, counting them, and always searching for more. The big girls were delighted to take part in the harvest and process of such a good crop and to have a role to play in the process. They also enjoyed being outside, so close to the rain, yet warm and dry under shelter. We had such a lovely time that I lost my mind, high on the rare occurrence that the three girls play peacefully together. So we invited Lily to sleep over and keep the party going. All in all, it was fine, Lily was lovely but Jacinta was too tired for change so she had a long tantrum about which pajamas to wear. After this, the girls had fun together. I didn’t get much sleep, but this was actually quite humorous. I was woken only by the girls kicking each other in their sleep, (the response being separation) and by their shouts wanting to know where the other had gone. Genevieve woke with all the commotion. Matt and I both lost sleep but for me, it was pretty funny because I could laugh at my own insanity. Matt didn’t find it all so humorous, but dealt with my silly spontaneity. It is my nature to make quick decisions and believe that all will go well, without a worry in the world that something could go wrong. I haven’t had any real problems yet, and haven’t suffered a life of anxiety or fear. I am grateful, but also know that good energy plus a little bit of common sense usually generate a good outcome. A first sleepover isn’t too big of a risk though.
The rains left us alone by Wednesday with a sticky heat that just made you want to live in water. We had swimming lessons that day, but this was inside in an overheated pool with chlorine and white walls. Jacinta is learning how to do the crawl and can do a few strokes on her own now. Genevieve, on the other hand, cries for me or Matt the whole time, which isn’t working out. No big deal. Thursday afternoon, we needed to swim so I convinced Jacinta that we should try out swimming in the dam, since the water has started looking clear. She and Evie wore their life jackets and clung on to me at first, grossed out by the mud below but in awe of the tiny fish surrounding us. After a while, Jacinta was in heaven, swimming off on her own, liberated by this wet paradise that is our backyard. We all swam out to the middle, chasing a seed pod on the surface of the water, but couldn’t make it as far as the lily pads. Today Matt came down with us and crossed the dam with her so she could smell the purple water lily while I stayed with Genevieve. By the end we were sitting in the mud, throwing mud balls out in the water, jumping in the mud like frogs. We floated on our backs and watched the clouds. Jacinta made up a shadow chasing game. We swam across the dam a few times practicing Jacinta’s new skills until our fingers and toes turned into prunes. This was beautiful for me, as I find pond swimming one of the most liberating places to be. Swimming in a small confined body of water, I hover above the unknown brown bottom, with nothing to gaze upon but the surface of the water, trees, plants, birds, and sky. Jacinta was liberated by the mud. She has learned to enjoy the muck, the beauty of a swimming hole in your back yard and has a new motivation to learn to swim.
Matt paddled the girls and I all the way to town this morning. It was our longest trip as a family, perhaps 45 minutes long, yet the most serene. It was early and the tide was high, the water was very still. We saw a few pelicans and a few boats. Going under the two bridges was pretty exciting for the girls, Genevieve requesting, “again??” after we had rowed under the last bridge. We made it to town without the usual whining and had coffee, tea, croissants and bananas on the riverbank. The girls played on the inundated dock, as it was high tide. Kind Mary and Keith brought us the car, so I could take the girls to dance and Matt could row back solo. It’s a hard life (:
Speaking of a hard life, a true hard life, we visited our Togolese refugee friends this week. The mother was glued to her cell phone all day long, trying in vain to reach her mother back in Togo who had left her a message that morning. This image is stuck in my head: her inexperience with technology, her ability to stare at the phone in silence for so long, hoping somehow she would get through, her sadness, her fear, her anxiety, her ignorance of why her mother would call this day after 7 months had gone by since she left Africa. Given the state of the mother, the girls and I played with the boys, who seemed to be used to her preoccupation. The three year old was in his own world, jumping off every bit of furniture he could find (even the shelves and the keyboard) imitating different animals. This was a good ice breaker for my girls. Jacinta observed and giggled. Genevieve eventually joined in and chased the monkey. We brought a truck to share and as Jacinta got it out of the bag, she said, “We should give this to you, you like it so much.” We played the organ together (another kind donation in this house full of strange items), then read some books in English. I kept turning off the television so they would stop zoning out. After a while, they decided that we were more entertaining anyway, luckily because they cold easily climb the shelves and turn it back on. Jacinta read one of the simple books for us all, humbled by the chance to help teach. At one point she was shocked because the older boy said something in English. It turns out they know quite a bit, they were just holding back because they didn’t know us. After the books, the boys took us to their sunny backyard to place the potted vegetables we had brought for them. They proudly showed us the one tomato plant they had. Jacinta asked the oldest boy for a shovel. He nodded knowingly and brought us a scrubbing brush. We giggled and asked again. This time he came back with laundry soap, then a bucket of water. Finally we went with him to find a crayon. Jacinta drew him a shovel. He nodded, went and asked his mother and returned with a “No.” So we left the plants in pots, as planned and went to the beach.
Imagine arriving at the ocean for the first time, never having seen waves before. You are in a new land with a bunch of strangers, with a lot of strange rules. This white woman puts on cream and asks you to hold her hand and walk towards this vast body of water. I suppose it would depend on your age, but these little boys were curious, excited and completely trusting of the strength of my hands. They each had one. We didn’t go deeper than an inch or two, but the waves came up to about 8 inches a few times. They held on for dear life, exhilarated, but trying to figure out how to get a good hold when Genevieve and the two boys each needed a hand. Jacinta was in her own world in the sand making prints, playing with rocks, jumping in the water. For once, she was the most confident little person in the water. By the end, she silently showed them how to sit in the water and let the little waves roll them over.
Next we went to the jetty for fish and chips. As the food arrived, Genevieve fell asleep. The children were all very hungry. Jacinta didn’t like her fish, as usual. While he continually stockpiled his plate, the older boy quickly offered to take everything she didn’t want. Jacinta happily stacked his plate every time I handed her a new piece of fish to try. There was a small voice inside my head saying, “He shouldn’t take all that, he hasn’t even finished what is on his plate.” But Jacinta’s inside voice of inspired generosity won. Their mom bought all of the children icy poles (popsicles) while Evie was sleeping. Jacinta and the two boys sat on the rocks with no space between them, savoring the sweet ice while Genevieve slowly woke and ate her fish. Evie finished her meal just as the older children were finishing their dessert. Jacinta offered her little sister the rest of her icy pole. Then the five year old followed suit. Then the three year old followed suit. This was normal for the boys, sharing. But for Jacinta, this was big. Usually it’s like pulling teeth to get her to do this. But this time, her initial voluntary giving started a chain reaction of giving. Genevieve sat down with the three older children and allowed the youngest boy to put his arm around her while she savored her lemony ice and they watched the boats. It feels so good to share, everyone knows that. In our culture, this seems to be a lesson that takes years to learn.
Even if this generosity only comes out once in a while in my girls, I’ll take it, smile deeply each time and just hope for more.
I suppose their generosity will come out more and more as I give them more freedom. We went to a birthday party this week. Knowing there would be piles of sweets, I told Jacinta that she could make her own food choices given that she knows which things make her body healthy and which things don’t really make her feel well, but are just for fun. She slowly tasted each thing, resisting the urge to ask permission each time. She shined. When the piñata was smashed she grabbed one little bag of gummy candy and ran away to show me what she had gotten. She didn’t stay and pick up the piles of other things she could have grabbed, but relished her prize. A few minutes later she proudly told me that she had given Genevieve a red one (she loves red).
Jacinta is learning generosity as am I. I am also unlearning dogma. Candy is full of crap, yes, but I must let her live in this world, and live joyfully. So to celebrate her new food freedom, we created a gingerbread house on Friday night. We all worked together after Matt came home from work, gluing the walls together with sugary frosting and covering the house in lollies. It was very exciting seeing it all come together, and of course, tasting as we worked. Today our friends Rory and Michelle came over to do some recording (Rory is 5 and loves to sing and play guitar) and helped us demolish the house. It feels funny baking a gingerbread house in this heat, but pretty tasty and great fun for the family.
“A bush tucker walk” is also good fun for the family, if you know what you are doing and I do not. I have always figured that most of the weeds I pull are useful, but needed a good guide. The girls and I visited a school this week and went on one of these walks, led by a humble expert. He showed us all the weeds in our garden which we can put in a salad, which wild seeds to grind up and make bread, which wild berries are edible, which wild roots can be used in stew, which leaves can heal stubborn wounds. We ate kangaroo stew, warrigal greens quiche, a weedy salad, and damper (a thick flatbread cooked on the fire) for lunch. It was awesome for me, but my girls are pretty picky. They enjoyed the lead up to the meal though, especially picking berries and watching children at “big school.”
So with all that, what shall I take from this week? My friend from Togo is a tiny fish in a big scary sea. The mountains she has to climb are beyond my control and imagination, but I can bring them potted plants, popcorn and distract them from their pain. I can eat weed salad, sacrifice some control in exchange for more genuine generosity, swim in a muddy dam and feel beauty, goodness and freedom.
With that, I bid you goodnight.
Peace,
Shana
Also…some of your emails have been blocking my address as spam. I don’t know what to do about it, but would love suggestions. The best bet is that I stop sending these via email just in case there is something bad attached and leave it for you to look on the internet, www.paintedguitar.com. Look on the Blog.
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
10:07 PM
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