A prod here; a poke there. Melbourne Writer's Festival. Growth of language & of arms & of sunlight & it's time for another edition. The sun is heading north again. Galileo would disagree and as a science teacher I shouldn't say it. But hey. Sunlight in the north windows here. The house on our northern boundary was demolished a month or two back. Winter sun fills our northern bedrooms now.
I'm sitting at the kitchen table and it's 9am. CJ at work. Steph sitting opposite me: “there are lots of these textas aren't there, Dad?” Kyla in the highchair: “texta! There-you-go! Ta-kew! Lid on!” Words. So many words. “Ta! Packet!”
What are you drawing there, Stephanie? “I'm drawing lots of pictures.”
Time marches on. Days are blurring together. It feels like we're treading water here. Nothing really happening. But then you look around and Steph is sitting on the potty. Or Kyla is sitting down thumbing through a stack of books.
Stephanie reading (memorising the words) to Meg & Mog; reading it to her little sister. Kyla memorising the sound effects throughout the story & chiming in at the appropriate page: “Whoo Whoo Whoo! Clip-clop clip-clop! Boom!”
The markers of time for me (aside from my work life, broken into 48 minute periods, week1 and week2 tiumetables, 10-week terms) is our girls. Kyla now with a sheet of paper on her head declaring “hat!” SJ laughing: “that's not a hat, Kyla.”
Yet I'm feeling stagnant. All my energy is gone. Family life leaves nothing for interests. No story-writing. No sport (even watching – what Olympics?). No tree-planting. No live music.
A late-night bike ride to catch Tim Rogers on a Saturday night rekindled thoughts of a life now passed. But a recognition that is won't always be thus.
Walking the Merri Creek. The creek has been up lately. Surging eddies and a drowned weir at the Northcote bridge. The CERES sandpit. Fleming Park. Cooking up Italian lamb casserole (again) on a weekend (again) to be thankfully plucked from the freezer on a Wednesday evening (again); Wednesdays being the one day when both CJ & I work, and amid the mad hour of screaming & tiredness the pre-cooked meal that everyone enjoys is worth its weight in prepared gold.
Cooking up lime butter fish in our kitchen in E Brunswick & feeling waves of Top End barramundi memories flood over me.
Flicking on some tunes after tea & the dancing of Stephanie & the copying of Kyla. Somehow, somtime, Jet's “Are you gonna be my girl?” became the default dance track here. Maybe it's the first track on the iPod. Whatever, when those first few bars of guitar ring out, girls run from anywhere into the dining dance floor & get down. It's great.
And I've taken a new job. Teaching is fun & rewarding & structured & family friendly & I think I'll teach again, but I've now taken an opportunity to reenter the water world. Three-days-a-week at the Bureau of Meteorology's new Water Division. A(nother) new challenge awaits.
Next? I'm aiming to experience a professional massage one day soon. Why not? I've heard good things. Also yoga. And to play more guitar.
Right now I feel a shepherd to these two girls before me as they make their way in this world. And that's taking about all I've got.
