unexpected

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It’s a chilly June morning. The cold lights a red swollen fire in my throat and keeps it burning all season long. “I’ve got a virus at the moment,” my sister warns when I ask her if she’d like to join me on a walk. “Oh no, me too,” I reply. I mean, I have a glandular fever flare like last week and the week before, because it’s permanently active. When I expend extra energy, resources my body usually uses to control the virus, things become a fiery hell. A day in bed. It sounds fairly innocuous. But then again, all things seem innocuous in small doses, and I have a full time job now. We made a decision earlier in the year that we would either move to a warmer climate or buy a winter-long supply of the only thing that helps. The thing is not at all cheap, and not at all vegan, but it helps contain the flare radically. We ship it on bulk from the US. It is made from a calf’s thymus gland, a protein that my immune system needs more of to fight infection.

But I digress from the cold morning. I hustle to eat breakfast, tidy up the lounge, have a shower, because I have to lie down at 8.30 am with the poppet. Aurelia sleeps radically better next to a human, and we made a decision to stop the cot fights and fails, and co sleep for now. I only resent needing to nap with her when I compare to the women whose babies sleep alone, in cots. Comparison is especially the thief of joy in parenting. I know some mums get ten entire minutes to sip a hot drink all by themselves because they share it on social media. I fantasize about cleaning the bathroom without my often groaning spectator. On the weekend I was whittling through the flesh in my lobes, trying to re-pierce my neglected holes because my morning slot is a mad rush to get up and get back to bed.

Neither Aurelia nor I believe that we need to go to sleep at 8.30 am. We lie down thinking this is quite unnecessary, and that of course we can both stay up all day. But in a few minutes she surrenders, and as I surrender to mothering her in this manner, a sleepiness I could have sworn I would not feel, creeps into my eyelids. Maybe this isn’t such an encumbrance after all. Maybe this is actually the perfect thing.

The irony does not escape me. I feel a lot worse on days where I busy myself in these sleep slots. My baby, whose sensitivity and high demands require more hands on mothering than I’d expected, her needs also force me to lie down twice a day. An unwanted, frequently bemoaned, and yet vitally restorative practice. I do not believe in random events, and I thank my Creator for the silver lining.

I sense that silver linings are woven into the universe, and with time {sometimes many years}, and a softness of heart, we glimpse them. Closer to home even than rainbows and stars in the dark.

I grieve winter’s effect on me, but when spring arrives and we drive through the country and buy our first jonquils for the season, I swear I am happier than most. I get a relief+joy cocktail appropriate to the degree I have suffered.

Having a sensitive daughter is similar. She asks for physical contact all day and all night, and when I recoil from the intensity, I remind myself to lean in rather than pull away from her needs. People everywhere try to procure smiles from her, as she holds her face with porcelain solemnity. They would like to hold her but she dissents loudly and clams up, apart from with one person she knows well. Later in the warmth of our lounge we are privy to the hugest smiles, most adoring eyes, scrumptious cuddles and giggles. That leaning in to meet her needs for security? It is rewarded with the most exclusive view of her true person. The smile she gives me when she wakes from her nap to see me lying next to her? It’s like the golden sun coming out, not even behind a cloud.  

I’ve written about my closeness with Ben, and the chance I’ve had to learn to sew, the unexpected light in the pain and isolation. I love that I must always be fit and healthy because of my diet and exercise regime. The friends I’ve made through computer screens are intuitive, sensitive, compassionate and suffering women who I will love for all my days. Being awake while operated on has been my worst fear for a long time, but even that way of birthing came with a strange glow of empowerment after surviving the ordeal. I didn’t realise till Aurelia was born that having a tiny baby, while complicating things immensely prenatally, also meant that she would be my tiny baby for a lot longer than usual, and it delights me.

But there was one sizable cloud that didn’t appear to have a silver lining. I have long wondered what the point of my education in music and ballet was, once my body brought it to a close. The hours and years of dedication seemed to be a snapped branch. Did it have a place in my life beyond a wistful memory?

Only years later do I see that without the richness the arts bring me daily, I would be even more prone to despair. Sustaining my mind in a long illness; this is an immense value. I don’t want to end my life so much when I have danced around the lounge to Tchaicovsky to Aurelia’s delight, when I have listened to a composer’s representation of all the emotions on the human spectrum and felt understood, seen myself in the characters I read of, been transported in these books to harder eras, and breathed in perspective. If education’s purpose is to enable us to live a rich, abundant life, then that richness is beneficial all the more when we move into a barren place. That richness is sustaining life. Susan Shaeffer Macauley shared in her book this quote: “Education is a matter of the spirit.”

I know this now.

I want to get up even though I hurt, and smell the ocean again, and create a garment, and read another poem, and hug my scrumptious baby, and eat more cake. I think that there is an iridescent lining attached to each crushing cloud.

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

Henri Matisse

wonder

I was looking over some of my blogs from 2012, and one stood out to me.

pessimism & hope 

"I would love to begin a post one day by writing something like this:

Feeling well, and coping with life at the moment.

Apparently it is possible to feel that you are coping with life, I’ve heard of people who do, but I don’t think I’ve felt like that for a solid three years."

And because I would love to begin a post like and for it to be true, I will write it now.

Feeling well, and coping with life at the moment.

There, I said it. I meant it, I felt it.

If I couldn’t put into words how great the suffering of chronic illness feels, I can even less put into words the inexpressible amazement and joy of returning to health when you didn’t expect you would. There are simply not words in our vocabulary which do justice to these feelings. ‘Amazed’ has been so overused in such inappropriate circumstances that it falls far short.'Flabbergasted’ is getting closer but seems to imply an unsettled amazement – and quite frankly, I feel blissfully content. 

It is inarticulatable, and I suppose that is a beautiful thing. Perhaps only common things can be fully expressed in words. After all, there are so many things in life which can’t quite be captured or comprehended because of the huge complexity of our minds and bodies. When words fail, I think that images and music can often reach a little closer. 

Thomas Tallis lived a long time before us, in the 1500’s. His music is heart wrenchingly glorious and this piece seems to capture the unspeakable. This peice says ‘wonder’ to me. 

Spem in Alium

Wishing you a year filled with beautiful moments, smiles, increasing courage, comfort, relationships & well days.

Danielle x

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles - Charlie Chaplin

a creative mind

My first year of school consisted of daily sobbing episodes during maths, where my teacher would take me out to the toilets to calm me down. I seemed to live there with those toilet rolls and brick walls. Writing stories and imagining non-realities were the things that gave me joy. My astute parents asked me whether I’d rather take gymnastics classes or ballet lessons. Next thing I knew I was wearing little ballet slippers, a pink leotard, and learning to stand in first position with my tail tucked in. There commenced my passionate love affair with dancing. I didn’t just dance in the studio; I danced down the hall way, up the street, in front of my mirror, and all the way back to my next class.

At ballet, age 14

I was captivated by the magic of the stage, the expression, the poise, the other-worldliness of the art form. It made me feel ecstatic and free. The exquisite beauty of ballet minimised the pain – the grating of my raw toe on sandpaper Pointe shoe, the sting of mentholated spirits on a fresh wound and the exacting military regime of class. I felt alive when I was dreaming of being a ballerina, and working towards those fantasies.

I'm second from the left - a ballet concert

Contemporary

 And if I wasn’t commentating about my make-believe life at a full-time ballet school, I was spending time with my black horse. There aren’t photos of him because my parents couldn’t afford him, but he was beautiful. So were the fairies I cared for, I wish you could have known them.

My parents always said I lived from one excitement to another. It’s true. I was always looking forwards, hoping for something...I was never quite here in the mundane present. Practicalities bored me to tears. The sensible and functional were my ‘off switch’. But why is it important to peel potatoes faster? Why can’t I daydream? Why should I wear runners on this walk when they look so hideous? Aesthetics won every argument. I spiced up my real life with forays into different eras and lifestyles. I perpetually relived scenes of myself as a boarding school student in the early 1900s, or a princess, or an actress. I fantasised that a movie director would one day walk down the street and see in me the exact face he had pictured for his next film – and little me would launch my glamorous screen career, Audrey Hepburn the 2nd. Every book that I read, ballet that I watched, film that I saw was an invitation to venture into a new life or idea, and then imagine it while I played my flute or danced.

But I shouldn’t be writing in the past tense! I’m giving the illusion that I have grown out of these ‘childish’ dreams and moved onto maturity. The thing is, while Ben is away studying the physics of x-ray machines, I am at home hosting TV shows, coping with life as an Edwardian lady, and generally steering clear of concentrating on the dishes, or the vacuuming. Or else it’s writing a blog post in my head, planning my soap making or collage projects, wondering what it would be like to have a disabled child... Is it any wonder that I grate my knuckles, drop glasses, and spill nail polish, just as I did when I was young? “Concentrate on the task at hand,” was something my mum used to repeat to me day after day. If I concentrated really, really hard on the recipe I was making, it was sure to be a failure. And if I let myself day dream, it was sure to be a failure. So I decided it was best to go with the most enjoyable option, to pass the time and numb the boredom. I honestly thought I’d grow out of it because I hadn’t met an adult like me, but I become more doubtful by the day. I have these terrifying visions of my future daughter catching me in the kitchen saying,

“It was such a privilege to work with everyone on this film. Yes, it is hard juggling my acting career and family, but we make it work...blah, blah, blah.”

She might think I’m mad. Or maybe she’ll ask me what I’m imagining, and tell me that she is a poodle for the day?

My imagination was never looked down on at home, isn’t it considered healthy and essential for all children? Once when I was about 14 I told a young guy about some of the things that I think about. He was concerned, genuinely worried about my mental state. That day I learnt that it’s fine to make believe as a child, but do not admit to it when an adolescent (let alone an adult!) I should have reminded him that I was created by a creative and totally sane God. When does that beautiful and crucial part of a child become worryingly eccentric? I’ve never ever heard a ‘grown up’ friend talk about their creative thoughts. But I know, and am whole heartedly convinced that I am not the only one. If choreographer’s weren’t lost in the stories in their heads, they couldn’t write the ballets they do, nor could authors, or painters or musicians – they dream, they have to dream to create.

When I am inspired or passionate or fired up about something, it’s inextinguishable. It burns so intensely inside. I have to hop out of bed at midnight to write an idea down, I have to listen to a piece of music ten times over to relive the thrill of the emotion, I can’t help but jump up and down, and up and down with excitement. I don’t believe this is something to grow out of, to restrain and curb. I’m grateful that despite the strong pull of gravity and reality, so much stronger now that I have so little strength, I can still soar. And I’m grateful for all the writers, and ballerinas, and composers, and painters who’ve gone before, for their creativity and dreams. I hope the day comes where I can contribute to the arts in some small way, and keep the fire burning.

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” 

 

Bernard Shaw

dreaming

 “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

~ Albus Dumbledore

According to my baby book, I was five when I decided I wanted to be a ballerina or a flautist. Dreamer. If I’d wanted to be a school teacher, or a florist, there would have been a lot more chance of achieving it. I realised that I would have to pour every bit of me into pursing my dream– and as nothing else in the world seemed to make me feel so alive and joyful, there was no question about giving myself wholly to it. Below are my two favourite quotes from the past, which are scented all over with determination to make my dreams come true:

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll still be among the stars.”

Dwelling on dreams is wonderful, but I did forget to live...a lot of the time. It’s odd to think that I learnt more about living during a year lying on my couch, than nineteen running around. What good is it to be a person of great wealth, but unable to enjoy your heated pool and gigantic TV because you’re too busy working? Or to be in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, but too stressed and fatigued to take joy in your rewarding profession? That’s not life. I think living is a rich diversity of experiences; living is loving, and giving, and exploring, and learning, and resting, and enjoying, and laughing....and not being a sickly hermit crab from workaholism. (Note: a year of enforced rest is an excellent cure for the latter condition)

I hope to be a flautist if I can do so whilst retaining health in mind & body: my dream hasn’t changed. But I don’t want to let myself get lost in a life not lived, my dream isn’t worth that cost – I need time with my husband, my family, my Maker, and lots of moments to smell the jasmine (as I don’t have any roses, and jasmine smells divine).

p.s. if you haven’t been alive of late, I suggest taking a day off work/uni to re-establish full existence.