Livin in the past.

There is an envelope i've carried with me, through the years and various moves to boxes and rooms in different homes...

In this envelope there are notes, many wonderful, small and generous letters.

They are the answer to the questions we were once asked - a long time ago when we were kids... and life was a simplicity we never appreciated.

Where is my treasure?

 They are wrapped. Embraced. Secured. In an envelope worn and torn by age and travel. But safe because they are so beloved.

They are the words that remind me of a person i sometimes have forgotten to be kind to... someone i have neglected and sometimes abandoned. Someone who lives in the handwriting of others. The well wishes, the kind words. Love and light and memories soundtracked by laughter.

Every so often in the messy days and exhausted nights- i come across a shimmer of these notes, these magical little moments suspended in time. And i am reminded of how lucky i have been, to have known what i know, to have seen what i have seen... and in it all to have shared this life, with so many amazing people.

I live in a past that i have loved... i live in the people that i have loved, and they in me.

Across a moment, and into infinity.

These are my treasures.

Whimsical Wellsford Diaries

You write what you know.

I guess that's why i stopped-
For a while KNOWING anything was a challenge.

I can't say i Know how i got here... but here i am.

I still lay in bed on random nights writing the beginnings of novels in my head. The difference now are the miniature hands and feet that begin and end my days and the reluctance to get up- switch on the light and indulge the little words floating around in the night.

The less you do it, the less willing they are to co-operate.

My mind is rusty- or not so much rusty as the cliche goes... but more mouldy- like in an old house with too much moisture and not enough light or air.

As i try to write, little hands reach up and claw at me - 'DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWW!' a little fair-haired boy with a question mark on his expression stares up at me, then trots away when i don't comply with his request. His footsteps, an uneven rhythm on the wooden floorboards merges with the crying of his brother and the voice of a three year old talking in the nonsense of a toddler and the tone of a teenager.

She's a head of beach textured waves and ringlets - a mouth full of newly learned phrases smeared with this mornings spaghetti and toast. Her eyes are like his. Big. Brown. Full of ways to make your heart bend and break and dance all in the space of a moment.

How she came from me i have no idea. I could swear she made herself, birthed herself in her own sweet time and grew herself. How such a small person knows her way around as if she's been here longer than any of us amuses me in the minutes that i have to watch her. Most days they are all i have now to watch.

 I always suspected growing up would require less thinking and more doing but how the days have flown past on the jet fueled propellants that are children- is confounding  and all you can do is allocate those 'fill-in-the-silence'- small talk voids with the odd 'Gosh they grow so fast.'

And so the years have bought us here - again i feel i should write but i've forgotten so many ways to put into sentences the things that melt and mash into chaotic hours. And in the quiet times, where angelically the dinosaurs sleep, my mind is blank with the promise of dishes, laundry and chores that won't do themselves. All the time we have is spent on a show or a screen to deflect our eyes from the exhaustion behind them.

So i  lost my words in the days that we somehow squander, hour by hour on the daily tasks involved in discovering the small and immense lives that we have made together.

She with her chocolate eyes and secret knowledge or whatever it is that gives her the unshakable confidence that she belongs here and that the world did not create her, but she is somehow needed here. Some purpose yet to be determined and one i hope she never forgets.

Then boy, with his porcelain skin and sometimes-hazel eyes- those lips and eyes that form question marks when new discoveries are met with disapproval. Why we can't eat textas or scribble on floors is a mystery i sometimes struggle to define myself let alone relay to a face so sweet and a mouth so susceptible to frowning...

meeeeeeeeemmmmmreeees

I’m not sure what I want or need – sometimes there are narrations in my head that want to be written and it feels silly that after all these years and lifetimes, I continue to wrestle with the inability to stop trying to express what I can never capture in these letters.


I was walking. Pushing an apple green pram- with a tiny face staring up at me beaming a smile brighter than any summer day I’ve known. The sky was a perfect blue swept by wisps of white- this country is amazing in its ability to be so at ease in the presence of all the beauty that surrounds it. The houses, the streets, the shops… and just beyond it the green of hills that hold every town in an warm fortress of peace and comfort.

I hate the way the words form sentences that are contrite and ineloquent. All the vocabulary I know never does reality any justice.

I feel a desperation looming- I do not want to leave here but at the same time I know there are also things I need that are far away from this life we have here. Mangawhai is beautiful. It is beautiful in the way a child is. Unaware and inexplicable. It catches me at moments and takes my thoughts away. It shows me like they have at one stage or another- that there are times in this confusion of existence- that do not need to be anything more than they are. Quietly miraculous.

I struggle daily with the must-do’s and to –do’s and the innate wanting to float away. I don’t know sometimes- which would be more beneficial to the little minds that watch me.

Before I forget the things I have loved here- Wellsford in all its warmth despite the wind and frost of winter. The librarians and library with all the love for stories echoing in every shelf along the walls.

Wellsford with the warm timber floors and the windows that looked for roses and beautiful things to enhance them.

Wellsford with its cold nights and rainy days and all we had to do to keep warm and sheltered and all the comforts that make those nights feel like memories made of sunlight.

Maungaturoto and the fields of green, the sunsets that never seemed quite real. With its timber walls that made animal shapes inspiring water-paintings and thoughts of the lives within the trees. The kids running up and down the hallway. A wedding that made ripples and no tidal wave. Gentle and natural.

The stars that looked like fireworks suspended in the sky. Discoveries of how hay is rolled and fields of dried grass harvested.

I miss old energies. But I love this place. I love the time I have been afforded here. I love that we have had this experience. And that life as we've known it has never been boring.