O lé lé

O lé lé! O lé lé!

Good evening (: At this moment I’m feeling a bit invaded. Contemplating an opening…my eyes were wandering around the room and to my right I saw two huge caterpillars crawling down a bunch of Mother’s Day flowers, which were not picked from the garden, but bought at a florist for Matt’s mum. Twenty minutes ago I found a slug slithering across the kitchen sink. In preparation for dinner tonight I took a bag of lettuce out of the fridge and found a tiny frog living in the middle. Yesterday I went to take a bite of salad and Jess said, “Mommy! Look!” and stopped me from biting into a tiny caterpillar. Yesterday Jess and I found a little mouse sitting in the corner of the laundry room, looking docile, fully alive, but as if it had eaten some rat poison. We brought the poor little thing (who had pooped all over Mary’s bed and eaten through my lavender grain pillow) outside and let him rest in a prettier place. For some reason slugs don’t evoke the same pity from me, they make me want to hurl so I chuck them out the door disgustedly. Jess’s pronunciation of this word is much cuter than the actual being: ssshlllug. Is this invasion of slimy, dirty creatures all that bad? No, it’s just winter I suppose, they’re looking for a home. The frog was quite cute, and a survivor! Two days in the fridge might kill me. I suppose they’re better than the hot sun, mosquitoes and flies of the summer.  

The season change is still affecting our health, but I think it’s finally coming to an end. After Jacinta’s cold from last week, she has had a middle of the night cough as its only remaining reminder that it is still there. Now with a vaporizer, chest rub, home-made cough syrup, lots of herbal tea, and echinacea she is sleeping through the night. I caught a nasty sore throat for 24 hours, ate nasturtium flowers, sucked down echinacea, licorice and sage tea, and slept a lot and it disappeared. Then Thursday night Jess caught a fever, spent Friday lying on me, sleeping, reading books, taking her temperature, drinking mint and licorice tea and soaking her feet in wet socks. Then we slept in today until 9am and the fever is gone. I’ve heard that fevers are sometimes a natural response that the body uses to burn off an infection, so I’m hoping her cough will have burned up in the fever. Matt’s pneumonia is gone, so we’re on our way!

As my sore throat was healing Sunday night, I said to myself, “Monday will be a lazy day, we’ll sit by the fire, knit, read books and do nothing but maybe some laundry.” I should know that you can never plan on laziness, you set yourself up for busyness. Matt went to take a shower before going off to work on Monday morning and came out dry reporting that there is no water. I went to start some laundry.  Matt then walked by and reminded me, “There is no water!” Keith popped back in from his first job and we began exploring the problem. We checked the circuit box, the plugs from the pump to the house, and a few other places. Matt had to run off to work so we kept looking. Keith got up on the tank to check and see if something was blocking the pipe to obstruct the flow. It was EMPTY! How does 4,000 gallons of water just disappear? They had just bought 2 loads of water and then it rained! We hadn’t done that much laundry or taken that many baths. After a while Keith found a tiny hole in the bottom of the tank, that’s how.

How do you repair a tiny hole at the base of a supposedly water-tight steel tank? Well, you don’t, the water repair man does it, but first you have to empty the last 500 gallons of water which lie beneath the level of the pipe. With a vacuum? No, you climb down a small hole barefoot (so you don’t damage the base of the tank or dirty the water) and bucket out the water, passing each bucket up the ladder to your friend. When there are only two of you, where does your toddler go? She sits on the top of the tank under close supervision for hours with toys and food, playing with the frogs that came out in the first bucket of water. What if your feet get cold? You take coffee breaks and switch places with your friend. I’ll admit, it was quite gratifying bucketing out those last few gallons and then wiping the floor clean. Jacinta eventually got to come down and play and see what we had been doing once the floor was clean. She was very helpful in dropping the empty buckets down the hole. We give her a lot of freedom in doing things that might seem dangerous to others, but she does exactly what we say to earn this freedom. She was told to sit on a towel and play, and later to lay on her belly on the towel passing the buckets down. This is exactly what she did. She loved it, and we got the job done. Eventually the repair man fixed the hole, Keith leveled the ground beneath the tank to prevent the same hole from reoccurring, and then the water man came and pumped 2,000 gallons of lovely water for a small price, $70. Keith missed two days of work and I didn’t get my lazy day, but I learned a lot and now we have water!

On the land this week, Michelle and I dug our fifth and final terrace into the potato patch. She had cleared the spot while I was away, but due to our constant need for more space to plant vegetables, we finished it off this week. Jess and Rory were happily playing in the shed so we rolled up our sleeves and worked. It felt so good to do some labor, but my muscles feel it now. My hands are getting tougher, splinters don’t hurt much anymore. I have a permanent dirt spot on my index fingers, no matter how much I scrub. I guess it’s the mark of a gardener, like chalk stained fingers on a teacher. Carrying the huge hardwood logs down the hill (that Keith had kindly cut for us) to hold up the terrace was the hardest bit. Throwing smelly chook poo on top was the smelliest bit. Planting root crops in it will be the best bit. Matt, after work each day, continued leveling the plot where we’ll build, hopefully next month. I also cleared out the house garden and loosened the soil. Keith and Jess cleaned out the chicken pen and drove two tractor loads of this great mulched up straw/manure to the house garden where I spread it over the soil. In a week it should be plantable.

Jacinta, Jacinta, what shall I say? She does so many funny things, when I come to you on Saturday nights I always kick myself for not writing them down as they happen. As we all know, children teach us. One morning I was in a hurry and spilled a whole bowl of rice pudding on the floor. As I was fretting and crazily trying to pick up each slimy grain with a spoon, Jacinta said, “Jedda do it?” The dog was sleeping, and we had to yank her out of her basket, but then she licked up the whole mess.  She sings now, it’s so sweet. Most often she sings la la la, but now an African song which starts with, “O lé lé! O lé lé!” Not only does she belt it out of nowhere, but if you try to sing anything else when it is on her mind she replies, “No….. O lé lé! O lé lé!” We had a lot of fun chanting this down in the water tank listening to the echo. Keith messes with her chanting back, “Hi Ho Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go,” and as if she’s in charge of all that is sung, she tries bringing back the “O lé lé! O lé lé!” Our friend Christine gave her a wooden train set last month and it has become her favorite toy, especially to play with daddy. She is also starting to request that “Daddy do it!” when I am cutting her food or putting on her pants. Although I’m often the only one she’ll let wipe her butt, Matt’s starting to get a little more of the credit he deserves.

Speaking of credit that Matt deserves…you are all instructed to go the blog and read Matt’s latest entry, regarding an Australian World Cup soccer player. If you are unaware, the World Cup Soccer Tournament begins in two weeks and Australia has made it in!!! (This is rare) Matt is very excited about this (in fact, I’ve never seen this part of him), and has found a link to the team (: So please go to www.paintedguitar.com/blog.html and have a laugh!  

Next Friday our little Jacinta will turn two, it’s hard to believe it has only been two years since she joined us. Her buddy in Ferndale, Otto, just turned two today. During the day we’ll probably open gifts sent over in my huge suitcases from America, try to get Jess to talk on the phone, think about and miss our wide circle of love and support back in the States, and cook up a Mexican feast and a birthday cake. In the evening we’ll have a little party with our friends Michelle and Rory and Pop and Grandma and sing Happy Birthday. Jacinta will probably stop us and say, “No… O lé lé! O lé lé!”  Perhaps if it’s her birthday she can be in charge and we’ll all have to sing with her (:

Goodnight everyone.

Your personal connection to the FIFA World Cup

So, in case you didn't have a reason to care about the FIFA World Cup beginning in a couple of weeks, here's a personal connection you can have, through me, arguably (see below) the best soccer player on the planet.

Here's the argument...

This is Ronaldinho, usually uncontested as the greatest player in the game today; he's from Brazil.

His team is the undebated frontrunner to win the cup.

So Australia (aka the Socceroos) gets to the World Cup Finals for the first time in 32 years, and in the first round, in our group of four, we find ourselves with Japan (ok), Croatia (whatever) and Brazil (oh crap).

Stick with me, here...

This is Lucas Neill. He's a Socceroo. It will be his job to mark Ronaldinho when we play Brazil - a game which we, ranked 44th in the world, will win simply because we are Australians and that is our national purpose - to win in unlikely situations.

I don't have a picture of me playing soccer, because my agents won't let me publish them freely (too valuable). Anyway, one of my first teams was the Wakehurst Public School Senior Soccer Team, in 1983 and 1984. I was in 5th and 6th grade.

In 1983 and 1984, Lucas Neill was in Kindy and 1st grade at... Wakehurst Public School. Obviously, as the budding young soccer player that he was, he looked for heroes. It goes without saying that he found me, and was inspired by my unquestioned brilliance, and decided to dedicate himself to training really hard.

Therefore, when Australia beats Brazil (bet your house and mother on it, it will happen), it will be becasue Lucas here, my protege, will have marked Ronaldinho out of the game, rendering him pitiable and facile in the face of Australian greatness. That certainly means that Lucas, at least temporarily, shall be regarded as the player who bettered the best, and I, the hero of he who betters the best shall be recognized for my footballing prowess, and at last acknowledged as the best proponent of the World Game.

It's a bit hard to swallow, I know, that you know someone of such athletic stature, but search your heart, you know it to be true.

And now you can enjoy Australia's impending surprise victory in the World Cup with a personal connection. Feel free to name-drop.

Footnotes:
There's a small possibility (very remote, however) that since I never knew Lucas Neill when I was at the same school as him, five grades ahead, that he may not have actually admired me in the way that I assume. But that's a stretch....

Passionfruit and Bandicoots

Would you believe Jacinta is saying these words, “passionfruit” and “bandicoot?”  I went away to choir one night and came home to hear her to say passionfruit, a three-syllable word that I didn’t bother with because it was “too hard.” It would be like Matt to have higher verbal expectations of our almost two-year old. Next question, do you really know what a passionfruit is? I must admit I thought it was a fruit juice company invention, but it really exists and is in season right now. Passionfruit grow on vines, they are not native to Australia, perhaps to South America. They are purple, round and about the size of an orange when they are on the vine. They are best eaten not when they are plump, but after they have sat around a while and shrivel up. You then cut them open and spoon out the thick yellow pulp and edible black seeds, eat it and drink the juice inside. It is sweet and sour, thus some people just like them spread over ice cream. Jess, the deprived child she is, doesn’t get ice cream but has come to love her passionfruit. It is one of those fruits that are normal to her and bizarre to me. She eats them rapidly enjoying every bit, while I wince and make sour faces yet savoring the newness of the fruit to my palette.

Bandicoot, this is another new word in my vocabulary and one that Jacinta finds in her everyday reality. We all smile at each other each time she says this, ever so carefully, paying attention to each syllable, “bandytoot.” A bandicoot is one of the many nocturnal Aussie animals that live in our backyard. Earlier this evening I was picking Keith’s brain to give me good description of this sweet little creature and all we could come up with is this: a hug rat-like creature, perhaps weighing 2-3 pounds. Comparing anything to a rat might ruin its reputation, so believe me, bandicoots are cuter and don’t come in your house. They eat seeds, fallen fruit, and dig up plants in search of yummy roots. Lately, Keith has been taking Jacinta out at night with the “torch” to watch Billy the bandicoot feast on seed. I suppose Izzy the water dragon has stopped visiting so Billy is her new evening entertainment. It gets dark around 5pm so we now have more waking hours to spend hearing and watching the nocturnal animals. Jacinta has become a little story teller, she’ll tell it in her few words over and over, “bandytoot……seed……yeah.”

On the land this week not much human work was done. Matt worked at the bank this week, but also got home in time to do some work on “the building site.” Mainly I think he’s digging up a few long tree roots, but I must admit I’m not much help yet. Although Jess and I did spend time out in the garden it was more in awe, sitting and marveling, lying in the hammock relaxing, or checking on plant and tree progress. Michelle and Rory spent a few days with us, familiarizing me with all of the planting she had done so I know what’s coming up. We picked two enormous beastly caterpillars off of the lemon tree. Have you ever seen a caterpillar with teeth hanging out of its mouth? With kids in tow, we walked these beasts straight up to the chickens (I dropped mine a few times en route in fear of those teeth) and even the chickens ran away! The only brave hen to eat these things was Old Mother, good Old Mother. She may not lay any eggs (nor do many of the chickens housed in our chicken retirement village), but she’ll eat garden pests. Jess and I cleaned up one dead-looking garden, near the house. I mulched and fertilized the kiwi vines, mulched some potatoes, and hmmm….perhaps that’s it. I watched the garlic, the peas and many new seedlings grow and just eased back into life. The trees all need a little help. That was a bit of procrastination eating at me all week, and now it has become a goal for next week.
It’s always good to get back to your own space, and for me, the kitchen. It is especially good when your garden has food ready and waiting to be consumed.
I made lots of salad this week, dug up purple carrots and chioggia beets to eat, and stir-fried some of the Chinese greens. After a summer of failed tomato plants, autumn somehow brought me two self-sowed tomato plants that are dripping with huge green tomatoes. Although the sun is not hot enough to ripen the tomatoes, off the vine they eventually turn red. Tomatoes, finally! Soon we’ll have broccoli and peas. I think so far I’ve learned that it’s fun to try strange varieties of vegetables, but it might be better to start with the normal ones. Of course I’d grow yellow, white, and purple carrots, but do they taste that good? Not really, that is, beyond the thrill of eating a carrot out of the garden.

Coming home after a month of busyness, Jess and I were lucky enough to stay home almost all week long. I took Jess back to playgroup to meet up with all of her favorite toys (hmmm….you’d think I’d say friends) on Thursday. We loved our visits from friends, and today went to the Murphy’s for a lovely day of lazing at their home. Matt drove out to Sydney to celebrate a friend’s wedding and then on to a football game with family, so he missed out on the fun, but had his own. Justin and Melina have been on their land for about 7 years and now have fruit to eat from their trees. We squeezed ourselves an orange juice, had white guava for morning tea, and Jess had a little banana as a snack, all from their trees! They didn’t have any lettuce in the garden so I brought some over, and in return got some of their handmade soap. They grow their own cows for meat, and use every bit of the body. The lard is used to make soap, I have yet to learn how exactly they do it, not that I’m about to start raising cattle.

Melina asked me what my family and friends thought of me, in choosing this way of life. I explained what I think some of you think of this, “Well, I know they trust that I’ll put my heart into it, do my best and that it will make me happy to try. I usually accomplish things I really want to do… so I guess they just wish me the best.” Perhaps you could think that this is a waste of a university education, but I don’t get that feeling from any of you. She said, “wow, my family just thinks we’re losers.” They grow their own vegetables, their own fruit, enough garlic to sell and pay for the things they can’t grow. They raise their own chickens and ducks for meat and eggs, sheep for meat, and cattle for meat and fertilizer. They slaughter their own meat and use every bit of the animal and either enrich the soil, their bodies or make other necessities.

I guess in this age where most city dwellers depend on others to do all of this and don’t know how to do any of this (myself included), I just look at them in awe. Perhaps it is our perception of farmers that needs to change. Should we not be in awe of the very people who provide us with nourishment? Perhaps it is the mechanization of farming that took a face off of those who nourish us and allowed us to look down upon that way of life. I am not a farmer, I do not provide food for anyone but myself. I still purchase most of my food from other farmers, but I can not see their faces and it does make it hard to thank them. I remember studying Thich Nat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and learning that one form of prayer is heightened consciousness and thankfulness for the sources of things. One suggested prayer was to sit down at breakfast and contemplate for example, your oatmeal. When I remember to do this, I first picture the face of the farmer who sowed the oats, the land in which it grew, the truck driver who took it from the farm to the packaging factory, the factory worker who packed the oats, the shop owner who sold me the oats, the farmer who grew the grapes, the sun that dried them into raisins, the cow who gave the milk for my oatmeal, the tree that grew the bark for my cinnamon, and on and on and on. For all of these people, the earth, the sun, the animals, I give thanks. I suppose the thought is that just giving thanks might change the way we treat them all.

It is getting late, perhaps I will go to bed and contemplate all the effort that went into creating my cozy bed, my warm blankets, and my pillows. Goodnight (:

Here and There

As I contemplate the past week’s events and try to regurgitate it into a few sensible paragraphs, I can not quite wrap my brain around the vast distance between writing a journal entry here in Macksville, New South Wales and writing last week at my dad’s in Mokena, Illinois. Yes, sitting on airplanes for almost 20 hours watching the mountains and rivers of the Western United States roll by, the waves in the Pacific Ocean, the clouds covering the waters and the full moon right outside my airplane window gave me a clue of the distance I was covering. But a real understanding of that distance I will never grasp until I take a boat across the Pacific Ocean, and it is probable that I will never embark on that journey.

One’s emotions get tied up in a season, no matter how little time one spends outdoors soaking up the season. Spring in the Midwest is wet, hopeful, smells fresh, and brings us outside to look at flowers and maybe prepare the soil for a garden. After a long cold winter with no green on most of our trees, little buds start to open on big massive dead looking branches. This pastel shade of green makes me feel light, as if I can start again, forgetting the cold loneliness of winter. Leaving the beginning of autumn behind in Australia, to arrive in this wet and hopeful blooming season in the US was quite strange. In autumn as I know it and am learning about how it happens here, typically we have had enough of the heat, we are ready to spend less time working outdoors, and come inside to cuddle by the fire. For some it is time to celebrate the end of the growing season, and enjoy the fruits of the harvest if you’re into eating local. For others it is time to prepare for the winter by killing a cow and stocking the freezer to nourish the family over the winter. For some it is dread of a cold, lonely sadness which may come with winter.  For some it is time to prepare for the holidays. I guess autumn to me is a season of endings, of less available produce, and of preparation for colder days, whereas spring is a season of beginnings, light and hope for abundance. I really think that being able to buy fresh lettuce and pineapple in the dead of the winter at the grocery store throws our bodies all out of whack with the emotions of the season. This is why we will eat nothing but pumpkins, carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach and bok choy for the next few weeks, just kidding!!! We might go crazy, but seriously, I am aiming to get us eating predominantly local food in the next few years.

Since I last wrote, I’ve had the chance to catch up with my dad and step-mom Barb and play in their beautiful garden. My dad figured out the key to Jacinta’s strong will and won her heart: do not ask her if she’d like to do something, tell her what you are doing and if it sounds appealing, she will ask to join in. With only 3 days to catch up with her Grandpa or any family member for that matter, I worried that there wouldn’t be enough time for Jacinta to warm up to the love that was being offered. So as she ran off into the garden with her Grandpa that day, and Grandma the next day my heart melted watching her explore the beautiful herbs and flowers, jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone with no thought of me (for a while at least.)

My last few days in the States were spent lazing at Lecia and Ben’s, watching Baby Kai grow and Jacinta fall in love with her “tiny cousin.” It was cold and rainy and excused us from any need to go outside. We listened to music, rocked the baby, guarded Kai’s life from his giant cousin accidentally “helping” him so much that she’d squash him, drank tea, ate, packed my three huge suitcases, played with toys, read books and changed Kai’s diapers almost hourly. Kai nursed, slept, cooed, “exercised” on his “baby gym,” pooped, peed, smiled and made us all smile too.
Jess and I had lots of echinacea, tea and fluids and tried to kick our cold in preparation for the long voyage ahead. I stocked up on herbal goods from the health food store to bring back to Australia with the knowledge that they may have been confiscated by the tough Aussie quarantine authority. Jess continually pursued Kai, from assisting at diaper changes, bath time, lying with him under his baby gym, pushing his electric swing for him to yelling, “awake!!!” if he opened his eyes the slightest bit after a nap.
Perhaps the prettiest memory of our time together was watching “the kids” share the big glider chair with Kai propped up on Jess, listening to lullabies from around the world, and reading them a story book while Jess fluffed the blanket over the two of them over and over. The tastiest memory I’ll take home from Milwaukee is my last dinner there with Lecia, Ben, Kai and Jess at a Mexican restaurant. Without too much detail, I’ll just say how much I miss the warm spicy Mexican food and culture which is present in so many pockets of the US, but not here in Australia.

Again, sparing you too much detail, my three flights to arrive back in Sydney were stressful in the airports trying to find seats on later flights due to weather delays, but relaxed and wonderful during the flights thanks to the extra seat granted to us out of sheer luck and kindness on all three planes. Although I did make it back on Mother’s Day, as planned, my luggage did not. With Jess in good spirits and the knowledge that “soooon” she’d see her daddy and be “home,” we patiently waited for our bags for over an hour. Through customs, off the plane, ready to declare all of my precarious herbal goods from the US, I was given a free ticket through the line that would have kept me an hour longer and the knowledge that someone would deliver my heavy bags to Macksville, with or without the goods in question. At first I was flustered, tired, snippy and annoyed, especially as I was digging for lost documents, trying to answer questions for a kind lady who would file my lost claim for me. My bags were strewn out on the floor while Jess continually galloped away to play on the luggage carousel, and a woman said, “Happy Mothers Day!” At that point, I was still pissed off. It was only after Jess cried her way through the line, grabbing some nice customs officer’s attention who then escorted us past 200 other annoyed passengers waiting to finally escape the airport that I realized how relieved I was that I got the short line versus the declaration line minus my baggage, happy for the airline’s mistake.

Jacinta and I rejoiced to see Matt and of course he was quite pleased himself. Both Matt and I doubted that we’d meet up after a 90 minute delay following landing, but not Jacinta, she knew she’d see her daddy and she did. The smile on both hers and Matt’s faces was just gorgeous, true joy, relief and wholeness. I must admit that Matt looked like he had shrunken. I asked him if he had or if it was just that missing him made him grow in size in my mind. He said he hadn’t shrunken, so I guess it was the latter explanation. Although she’d become quite a mommy’s girl over the past month with me as her only constant support, Jess rode in Matt’s arms all day long. We visited Matt’s sister for a few hours, then joined our adopted Sydney family for a Mother’s Day lunch. This wasn’t just lunch but we also met Matt’s best friend Jenny and her husband Ted’s new baby, Jonathan Donald who was four weeks old and sweet as could be. He was “tiny” just like Baby Kai and thus familiar to Jess. After some laughter and good food, lots of fun for Jess playing with Caitlin (2) and Zack (4 or 5?), we embarked on the last leg of our long journey. Matt drove the 5 hour trip all alone while Jess and I slept, stopping a few times for caffeine. At 8pm Sunday night we arrived here in Macksville and ahhhhhhh…is it nice to be home!

We were warmly welcomed by Keith and Mary who missed Jacinta like crazy. Although she arrived crying and tired, she eventually woke up for an hour to say hello and then sleep another 10 hours. Mary had made some lovely potato leek soup, as if somehow, telepathically she knew that I was in great NEED of a warm bowl of soup. We have been here for two days now. Jess smiles and says that she is “home,” and every few minutes she rediscovers something that she missed but didn’t know it. She tells “stories” about Kai, Grandma, Dja Dja, Lecia, Ben, Otto , Iris, Grandma and Grandpa, and many other loved ones we visited. Matt notes that she gives real hugs now and squeezes his neck when he picks her up. Although we’re back and she no longer has to miss her daddy, she still asks for a “daddy song,” as she is going to sleep. Everyone just marvels at the change in her vocabulary over the past month, it definitely exploded. Michelle and Rory came and cooked lunch with us yesterday and then the Murphy’s stopped by to welcome us home, it’s been a lovely homecoming.

Jess and I of course have played in the garden and discovered great changes in the land. Matt has done some hard work clearing the site upon which we will build the little addition that we will call our own, even moving a rock wall and working in the dark with a huge nightlight. Keith and Michelle added 2 terraces to the garden and soon after Michelle planted an amazing array of vegetables. The trees look the same, and there are greens, pumpkins and root crops to eat. Iris, the remaining chick, now runs and sleeps with the big chickens, finally! The local duck population coming for seed has doubled and the turkeys still chase each other around. The air is warm in the sunlight, but gets chilly at night. After 8 weeks of no rain, it rained yesterday and today! My luggage has arrived and nothing was confiscated.

My trip home to soak up love from our community in different pockets of the US was awesome, as these two days have also been lovely. Nomadic life has its bonuses, but I guess I’m not a nomad. Right now I guess I’m a “settler,” in that I want to settle down. I am truly grateful for my friends and family everywhere and also the opportunity to live a life where I can and have to go outside each day, rain or shine, to at least feed the chickens, dump the compost  and pick my lettuce.

Little pieces of me

Good evening y'all.
I come to you tired, happy, overwhelmed, and with a throbbing head and heart. All in one week I have become the godmother of my nephew in Wisconsin, soaked up some mommy love in my mom's house in Indiana, rejoiced with my community in Detroit, played in the Michigan Dunes with some of my best friends for a weekend, and this evening arrived at my dad's house in Illinois. It has been a whirlwind of three weeks here in my home country. I despise quick hellos and good byes, especially when they occur in the same 5 minutes. Come to think of it, who doesn't? Luckily I have had a few days with each of my immediate family members and it has been wonderful. I originally avoided a trip to Detroit because I knew I couldn't catch up with all of my loved ones in less than 48 hours. My original fear of coming so far, getting so close and not having time to see everyone came true and left me feeling heartless and saddened. But as this is the nature of leaving your loved ones and moving across the world, I'll have to get over the guilt. Although my heart aches and I am exhausted, I am ecstatic that I saw every beautiful face that I was able to see.
Jacinta has passed the nomadic lifestyle test with flying colors. Not only has she made it through long socially demanding days with no nap, she has stayed up past 10pm every night "seizing the moment" with her crazy chatty mum. From taking a trip via car or train every 2-3 days for at least 3 hours, staying up long past bed time to play with her best buddies Otto and Iris, sleeping at a new house every other night to dozing in my arms whilst I spoke of Australia to church friends one night and to school children the next, this girl was a trooper! She learned to bowl with Grandma and Dja Dja, climbed sand dunes, gardened at Grandma and Grandpa's house, took part in baby Kai's baptism, and finally saw the moon! She never tired of catching up with familiar faces, but did cry each time we had to say goodbye. As she does not understand geographical separation or the enormity of each goodbye, perhaps her tears fell because she just wanted to stay put and enjoy each situation a little longer, as did I.
At church she rejoiced in the lovely food set before us, moseyed around the room visiting and ran around in circles with the children.
At Carrie and Chay's she grazed with Otto and Iris and tried out every new toy she could grab. At Lauren and Dennis' she frolicked with Iris and had good girly fun in the warm spring air. At Jim and Suzanne's we had a nice breakfast and caught up on lost time. Jess played with toys from decades ago and was showered with her godparents' love. Jacinta heard the beautiful sounds of French once again while strolling in the woods with Estelle and I, soaking up the sounds of red winged black birds and the fresh muddy smell of spring in Michigan. At school she affectionately accepted the overwhelming love and kindness of my old French students, standing in the middle of crowds of small children conversing in whatever language she could come up with. She held their hands, led groups of young children across the playground like the Pied Piper, played in their little playhouse as if she was a big 4 th grader too, and played in the sandbox while we chanted old French songs. At Maureen's she learned to play "Ring around the Rosie," and continued singing "ashes, ashes" for days to follow. At Christine's she played in my old garden, roamed the house where she was born and tried out a new train set. At the Warren Dunes she romped in tents with Otto and Iris, met two new baby friends, warmed herself near the fire, cooked, roamed, picked flowers and soaked up the lovely vibes of three beautiful pregnant friends of mine.
So much has happened in this past week that I am unable to process what it all means to me. Summing up Jess' experience is perhaps all I can do. Mom and George spoiled us with all of the comforts of their home, a fire in the cheminea, good music including mom's dulcimer and piano playing. Friends took us out to my favorite café in Ferndale, to lunch at an awesome vegetarian restaurant, and even brought us Thai food from my favorite Thai restaurant. Church friends hosted a gathering with all of my favorite foods, they even sat and listened to me give a slideshow presentation! Ferndale friends gave us a place to stay and even had a get together one evening at 9pm because we couldn't get there any earlier. School friends worked me into the schedule to teach 3 classes so I'd have a chance to catch up with the children, and hosted a dinner gathering for teachers. Some other friends drove out to the Warren Dunes to camp with Jess and I for the whole weekend, and even drove us there. Mom and George spent time camping with us and then drove Jess and I to my dad's house.
Major sentiments right now are overwhelming gratitude for the generosity of my friends and family, sadness for the distance between us and my inability to catch up with everyone, fatigue from the busyness of the past week, and now sickness from over exertion.
I feel love pouring out of so many people into me and my sweet child, but this love is so spread out that it is painful. I have little pieces of my heart scattered all over America, in Senegal, in France, in Honduras, in Mexico, and in Australia. After about 10 years of travel all around the world, searching for new ways to live and embrace the world, I have come to a few conclusions. First off,
I have many choices on how to live my life, I have seen enough to make good choices. Second, I need to slow down and hold onto the friendships I have already made, love them, cultivate them and stop continually looking for more. Third, it hurts to have your heart scattered in so many places, it brings understanding and opens your mind, but loving so many people so deeply who live in so many different corners of the world is painful. I do not want to continue being a "leaver," I think I'd like to attempt staying somewhere.
It is late and I have no more insights, just love and fatigue. It has been lovely to see so many of you and sad to miss so many of you.
Goodnight y'all.

Sad news

The pictures will tell you all you need to know...