Author Archives: Alice

A love letter to the father of my children on his birthday.

Posted in Heart, Letters by

One of my most vivid memories of you was when I told you I was pregnant with our son.
‘So, you wanna have a baby with me?’ ‘…When?’ ‘Oh, about 9 months?’
We were laying in bed, some otherwise toneless morning, in a tumbledown dive on the right side of town. We were so young. We’d yet to meet one another’s families. We weren’t sure where we were heading in our lives, but we sure hoped it was together.

A year to the day we met, Theo was born. And 15 months later, came Mabel.
We lived together and got a puppy. You went back to school. I stayed home with the baby. You began your career. I stayed home with the babies.
We mended what fell apart, as best we could. As best we knew how to. Though it proved not enough to keep things together.
We were 23 when I first saw you across a crowded room.
And you are 29 now, as I write this from a room crowded with life of a different kind.

Our children are outside right now. You wouldn’t believe it, but they’re talking about Bob Dylan. ‘Do you like Bob Dylan?’ ‘Yeah! Do you like Bob Dylan?’ ‘Yeah!’. We made some beautiful music together, you and I. It’s dancing all over us. It’s holding the tune while we find a new rhythm. And we are. We will.

Happy birthday. May the radio play all your songs.

There’s always a space on my dance card for you.

With love,
Alice.

October

Posted in Parenting by

Dear Babies,

It’s been a busy month. Mae’s birthday. My birthday. I’m 29 now. I’d had you both by 25.

I never thought of my self as a particularly young mother. You just came when it was your time to. I had always been the first of my friends to do things; go overseas; have a 9-5; buy a home; start a family. So even though, looking around me, there was no one I knew doing what I was doing, I was used to that. You find your own way. The only thing you are obligated to do, is to find something beautiful in living. To take the chances to find out who you really are. Just do things how they feel best to you. Your Aunty once told me, ‘just find what you can do, and do it how it needs to be done’.  I think that’s good advice.

Your journey is not comparative to anyone else’s, though we all begin and end in the same place. Remember, they say comparison is the thief of joy, because it’s true – nothing will ever feel as good as when you think you’re doing a good job; heading in the right direction; being your best. You have such a talent for happiness. Keep it with you. When you feel sad, which you will, hopefully from time to time and not all the time, though that can happen too, happiness can feel like it takes so much energy. But I have seen you, watched you everyday since you first arrived here, and I can assure you, happiness comes naturally to you.

You’re so good at happiness, I was initially just happy simply by association with you. And though there’s been such cause for sadness, your faces, our time together, your loveliness, your liveliness, has been the light that I have set sail for until I reached the shore. You have made me sure of so much; my self, my decisions, my ability to sustain my own contentment. You personified my happiness, gave it a face and a name and brought it to me everyday. You remind me what happiness is. Now I’d recognise it anywhere.

This month:

You woke me up before dawn:-
Mabel: ‘Happy New Year! You are a dog! Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome a brand new Otto! This is great! You are so much fun, Mama!’
&
Theo: ‘Mama, why can’t cows walk down stairs?’

I discovered you, both in the butter at the bench; Theo wiping it off Mae’s shirt with a cloth, and Mae thanking him.

I found you arguing; M: You can’t share my birthday, Theo! It’s my choice!

You yelled at me:-
Theo: ‘Did you say QUIET?’
&
Mabel: ‘YOU’RE MY HAPPY PLACE!’

You broke my heart:-
Mabel: ‘I’m sad because I’m not somebody. I’m just me.’

You made me laugh:-
Mabel: ‘My dreams are so much fun! My hot dog is so much fun! I’m so much fun!’

You asked:-
Theo: ‘Is this a home sweet home?’
Theo: ‘Who is Bonnie Prince Billy and did he die?’

You advised me:-
Theo: ‘Just breathe, Mama!’

You made my heart swell:-
Mabel: ‘I look beautiful in the mirror’.
Theo: ‘Mama! I couldn’t wait to tell you! I had a crazy dream about noodles!

Aside from everything you utter, one of my favourite passages came to me, tucked up in bed, always reading. It’s from Camus.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Remember your invincible summer.
Remember you’re my invincible summer.

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele,
Mama xx

January / February / March / April / May / June / July / August / September

A Love Letter to My Daughter on Her 3rd Birthday.

Posted in Letters, Parenting by

Happy Birthday Darling.

You are a constant reminder of how good things can be. You’re a shining example of happiness.
mbel2

I gave birth to you at the foot of my bed. Kneeling on the floor with your Grandmother in a headlock. At both of your births, the strength of her presence has been what assured me I could do it. She cut your cord and your Aunty came in. ‘Look! I did it!’ I told her, a sister I chose some 7 years earlier, when she hung over the fence separating our houses and tapped a bottle of Tequila on my window, at 8am, while I was eating my breakfast. This time we celebrated with a cup of tea.

Everyone went out soon after, I remember. The midwife packed and left. Your brother bundled off with your daddy, sent in search of pastries. Your Aunty doing the washing. Your Grandmother hurried home to tell your Pappous, in Greece, that you were finally here. I sat with you on the couch, in the sun, and remember feeling as if the house had never been so full. The room was you. It always is.

mbel1

You told me recently, as we were sitting on the same couch in the same sun, that I was your best hero ever. That I was like something off the television. And it was about the best compliment of my life. But then, that’s how I feel about you. That you are my daughter is one of the best things about me. And I don’t know exactly how these things work; if you chose me or I chose you, or if it’s all simply chance, but I do know, whatever it was, it got things exactly right with you and me.

I don’t know if I could ever tell you completely, how sweet you are. How you arrived in my life and completed something in me. Some search I had been on, without map or compass. You arrived and, set in my arms, came stillness. And from that stillness a quiet strength has at last had chance to make a home in me, to take a hold in me.

And I don’t know exactly if that strength that we find, comes from other people; a love that they show us, or that someone like them could believe in someone like you. Or if it just comes at certain times in your life, when you find the right light, and everything is revealed to you as simply greater than it was before. I just know that it happens.

It’s how I came to know, what people mean when they say, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.

You’re my best hero ever.

Love,
Mama x

September.

Posted in Heart, Parenting by

Dear Babies,

You’re not really babies anymore, you know. And you do know. You tell me often. “I’m big!” you say. Though sometimes you’ll concede “I’m little”. I kiss you to sleep, as I always have done. And you wake me by making a racket, as you have always done. Though times they are a changin’. Though the song remains the same.

Right now I am sitting on our blue couch. There’s an orange cat pressing his tickle whiskers to my arm, making it hard to type. I’m listening to all the different versions of ‘Dream a Little Dream’ I can find. Everyone that hears me type says I hit my keys too hard. I’m really writing this, you know? I am really here, in this little wooden house as you sleep across the hall in your little bunked beds. There are flowers on your sheets and there are cars on your sheets and there’s Dora on your pyjamas and there’s Thomas on yours. And in the morning it will be Mabel’s birthday. There’s a grey cat on the coffee table, and she has little silver feet. There are cherry blossoms on the mantelpiece.

My love for flowers is something you know about me. You tell other people ‘Mama loves flowers! And dancing! And her favourite colour is yellow’, all of which are true. You’re my biographers. You are telling my story to me and my fingers are flying trying to take it all down. Bang on the space bar. Smashing the full stop. There are notes of our lives over everything. On calendars. Throughout my phone. On receipts in my purse. Marked on my body. Scrawled on walls in crayon I can’t bring myself to wash off, because it’s you telling your story. So there’s nail polish on the doors and paint on the floor and pen on the paint work. Because, even now, I can’t believe you’re here. That you’re mine. And this is the place we do our living. You’re telling your own stories here, too.

I walked an enormous coffee table, another roadside find, several blocks home today. It’s the perfect height and the perfect length and it has tiny carved flowers on the legs. And I want to love it. Really. I’ve spent all evening looking at it, thinking how I will make it work. The possibilities. The purpose. Because it seems like it should fit right in. I can see you drawing on it and building on it and it being strewn with cake plates and tea cups and climbed all over. But I’m not feeling it. Because a lesson I have learnt in learning the lessons I’ve learnt to learn is, less really is more. I used to feel like, the more I had, the more real I was, somehow. As if owning things connected me in some way. Identified me as a person. With things. And, sure it is easy to say, over here or out there or after, that what I was trying to do was to fill some void; to find what was missing. When really, nothing was.

And that’ll bowl you over sometimes, that nothing is missing. That you have everything you need. And you do. Right now. Even though you mightn’t believe it, or though you might be working so hard to convince yourself otherwise. Because just you is enough.

Just you is enough.

Theo: you lost your smile for a little while there. Somewhere along the line that 4 has walked us. Things got hard again, as they do in times of change. And you don’t want to say ‘oh, that’s just 4!’ because, how reductive. And I’ve been 4 and 10 and 13 and 18 and in the last weeks of 28, and you could say ‘oh, that’s just!” to any of those and be right and wrong. But it’s back now, your smile. And it’s not an ear to ear. No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s a chin to eyebrow. Your face lights up.
You talk with your hands and when you’re asking me a question, in conversation, you extend your right hand. And it’s as if I can see the words walk off your palm and out into the world. Your questioning strengthens you, darling. Don’t stop asking. You are so brave. I hope I’m half as brave as you, when I grow up.

Mabel: you sing to everything. Songs you make up. The ones you hear. From Bonnie Prince Billie to theme songs on the movies we watch and watch. You walked into the lounge the last week, ‘right’ you said, clapping your hands, as I always begin, ‘you’re gonna play the drums and you’re gonna play the pianey and I’m gonna do this!’ this, of course, being your beloved harmonica. It’s only vexation being that you can’t sing and play it at the same time. We had friends over the week before, and as they left, you came slowly inside after waving them off. ‘What’s wrong, little love?’ I asked your small down turned face. ‘Alex and Hazel have gone home.’ You sighed. ‘And we were making a band!’. You stroke my cheek when I tuck you in at night ‘sing the songs when I was a little baby’ you ask me, and I do. The same as my mother sung me. As her father sung her. When I sing ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ you yell ‘I’m not going!’. When I sing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ you sing ‘I’m gonna let it shine!’. And you mean it. And you do.

Let it shine, baby loves.

And make sure you really love the coffee table, before you walk it all the way home.

I love you. I love you. I love you.
Mama xx

January / February / March / April / May / June / July / August

Three Hundred & Sixty-Five – Days at Home: Week 38

Posted in 365 by

Sweet faced daffodils and perfect pink tulips from the garden / Brown rice + soy milk + a sprinkling of yum for breakfast. And a cup of tea. / Every day dance parties / Carrot cake on pretty plates + newspaper wrapping and handmade cards. Because it’s the thought that counts. Because what’s important is showing someone you love them, as best you can. / Almonds + seeds + cranberries. In cakes. For snacks by the handful. On brown rice for breakfast. / More of my Mothers casual wisdom, handwritten by me 1 + 2 / This little love will be 3 so soon. Time’s flown.

Three Hundred & Sixty Five – Days at Home: Week 37

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Running away from home to stroll streets in Dunedin for a weekend / Little helper hands mixing carrot cake / Theo at the kitchen window / Stealing 5 minutes peace in the afternoon sun. Can we all just agree to add an extra day to the week dedicated solely to reading? / Tulips blooming in the garden / Cardigan dying 1 + 2 – cross your fingers for me / Lavender for borders and bees / And wonderful news! Dear friends are engaged. So begins a series of parties to celebrate, each more elaborate than the last.

A letter to my 2 year old daughter, after we fought over a sandwich.

Posted in Heart, Letters, Parenting by

Dear Mae,

You wanted to make a sandwich, like your brother now can.

It might seem odd, to row about a sandwich. But anyone who has ever cohabited with anyone will be sure and tell you, when pressed, or barely pressed at all, of the suffering they endured at the hand of a person they shared their house with.

You got the bread out of the bag and selected your slices. You would only be contented with tomato sauce as sandwich filling, which I am sure I should feel more shame than I do about telling the internet. I, personally, am not one to judge a person on their sandwich preferences. That’s very personal. But, you know how people can be. It was on white bread too. Which we only ever have in emergencies. Like, when I simply cannot face the supermarket and we have run out and I have to buy a loaf from the dairy. So, a lot.

We have this kind of high-powered tomato sauce, you know? One of the ones with the lid at the bottom? And it’s fairly full. So you’re standing there, using a dining chair for your table, bread laid out just squeezing the ever-loving crap out of this bottle of tomato sauce, which is, in turn, shooting over, not only the bread, but the chair and the wall, because this is real life, and that’s what happens. And I am trying to let you do your thing; it’s only mess, there’s worse things already dried on that wall, I’m sure. Saying supportive things like, ‘That’s wonderful, darling! You’re doing such a good job of getting the sauce out of that bottle! Do you know who Jackson Pollock is?’ When you begin to weep.

I ask you what’s wrong, only as taken aback by this sudden turn of emotional events as anybody who has spent time with a toddler would be, as these big, perfect Man Ray tears are rolling on down your little apple cheeks.

‘IT DOSEN’T LOOK LIKE MY NAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMEEEEEE!’, you tell me. In between sobs.

And I remember all to well, that feeling.

The abrupt realisation that things were not turning out as you imagined.

I help as best I can. Offer solutions, many and varied, all of which you reject. Because sometimes there is no helping things. Some times all you will want is for your tomato sauce sandwich to read your name, though you can’t spell it, and that’s just how things are. There’s nothing else for it. And I get that, darling. I hear how frustrating things can be. How trying. But feeling those feelings is part of this whole thing we’re doing. Connecting and growing.

Because, one day, you’ll sign your name to all sorts of things. Things you’ll make. Futures you’ll envision. And some of them might be challenging. And some of them might yield more happiness than you could have ever imagined they would, when you dared to dream of them. You have to begin somewhere.

 

This isn’t what the row was about, obviously. The row was when I went to put the top on your sandwich, and you lost your tiny mind, yelling at me that I had done it wrong.

‘THAT’S NOT THE LID, MAMA!’

It’s not?

‘THAT IS THE PLATE I MADE FOR MY BREAD! I MADE IT FROM MORE BREAD!’

Which? Totally genius. And so you.

Though you ended up covered in sauce and asked that I kiss your cheeks to clean them.

Which? Totally adorable. And so you.

And then your brother poured you both a glass of milk and asked you if we were having a celebration. And you told him you had some paperwork to do.

And I stood there a moment, in this green kitchen we spend so much time in, and I thought about writing this down for you. Because one day, maybe, you’ll be here, or there, and this kitchen will no longer be the centre of our universe, and you’ll be having bigger and better arguments over the same feelings. So here is some relativism for you.

It so often starts with a sandwich.

I love you,
Mama x