Homeward Bound

Well, that changes everything. A week ago, we decided to fly home on our original plan a, ie the end of June, with 2 weeks USA fly-over. After paying for the tickets Friday, it then took the weekend to decide really - and shed the tears. Once I've cried, the decision is made. Really made. Sealed in water.

In a week, it's changed my view of Europe, my needs of the place while we're still here, and my connectedness to it. Immediately, I'm less connected, less immersed, because I know we're stepping out. We're separate again. I'm on the way to becoming that stranger again.

And I got the next in our seemingly endless line of colds, one of those ones with a throat so raw I could hardly speak. Or move off the couch in the evenings while LMM worked the night shift. More on that later.

What I observe is that the variety, availability of SO much here deeply appeals to me. The thought of the streets in Australia filled me with glumness - so few cars to choose from. I've come to accept, enjoy the BIG variety of everything here - jams, cars, newspapers, destinations for our week-out trips. And, after being frugal because we're living here (and because I'm that way inclined in day-to-day life), I feel a shift to just HAVE whatever we can get in the remaining 2 months.

And thoughts turn to packing, each item I hold in my hands becomes a question: am I taking you back, do I still need you now, or are you for the bin immediately? Last night, this set of thoughts filled a bin: the Shanghai fake Converse, some out of date cosmetics and lots of paper, process-drawing from the boys.

Stocktake complete

I almost don't want to write it, for fear of it being true, or not true after all: I believe that I've had the big rest, the time to do something different which I SO needed in this trip. I'm ready for a new step, more active again.

This trip began as a desperation to be in Europe, part of this big world up here, where I feel right-side up. To introduce my children to my grandmother, to re-bond with what is also me, to show my boys that the world is so much bigger, that there are sides to their mother which they could not begin to imagine, over there on sunny Bar Beach after school one day. To explore the big world again, to immerse myself in it. Not to work. Travel.

And it's become a stocktake, a reflection of The First Half, with some thoughts now able to start about what I might do with The Second Half. Much bigger than I even knew. Confirmation that I am not a great at-home mum, even though I love them to pieces. I need a way to contribute as an adult, independent of all.

It's also really not sounding like a third child is on our horizon. I have treasure, two lively treasures, who will need, and get, so much of my best, who challenge me, surprise me, enrich me every day. So there's still a bit of room for me just to be me, in a way not mother/wife/daughter. The weepy part of me wails, the awake part sees that it's a good thing we've got going. Why change the balance - when it will change naturally, as everyone gets a bit older, into new things? It's other people's turns to do the babytime, I had mine, I did.

Leathermanman has made his big decision - to leave Psychiatry, and go for General Practice. Months of talking at every point, emails to all, oh and another thought on the subject. It was final one evening in Turkey: he went to the email, from our huts among the orange groves in Olympos and emailed the news. I sat around the fire, watching flames crackle, and was STOPPED with the reality of this moment: it's done. He's decided. Consequences for me too, I can think of my own path, can shape a path in line with that too.

Thought all this as I did washing, unpacking, paper sifting, after 2 FANTASTIC weeks holiday in Turkey. Couldn't talk about it till a few days later.

Launching

So, after more than a year of saying 'I-wanna-be-a-blogger', two more years of reading, looking, cruising and reading this online explosion, and possibly 158 days of noticing or thinking something which I could launch out here, I'm up on my wobbly blogfeet.

Observations about relocating a family from Australia to Ireland, about rich travels on the mainland, about the oddness of life in contemporary Ireland (that's most days, sure), about life with a shiftworker, about the temporary transformation from modern working mother to modern traditional homemaker! And also, observations about the experience of returning to Europe, born in Germany, but lived oh-so-many years in Australia: an exploration of roots and how they twine through my life, and the lives I helped create.

Oh and there's some oddball blogging going to go on until I catch up the many posts I shoulda made online, but in fact they made it only to my journal. Realtime blogging to commence soon.

A record of this bigger-than-ever year, for friends, family: including my own two small treasures, for the time they might want to read about their big year too.

Blown Away in Amsterdam

Winter weekend, my ONLY weekend without children, away away. Very excited as I pack - a 40th birthday party, a weekend in Amsterdam, not much money to spend, but time, precious time alone! I intend to get to the birthday dinner, maybe spend a bit more time, but then take days for me, to wander and discover what it is I actually look at when I don't have the Bean and the Pumpkin at my every step.

Well. I got sick. The weekend became something quite different from those expectations. Got more than I bargained for. I guess.

Picked up at the airport by BigX, and there's another old friend, just in from Canada too!. Wow, I'm going to trip down Memory Lane this weekend! Whisked into town, past canals in whipping rain and wind, to my hotel: like the brochure, up incredibly! steep short steps to the rooftop room, it looks over the canals and those incredibly picturesque Amsterdam houses alongside. Those steps have to be walked to be believed. (I remember that the first time I was in Amsterdam, in '95, I thought I'd landed in a complete dive, on account of the steep steps. Not so.) Off to a GREAT Indonesian restaurant, of course!, and then BigX's wife also joined us, fresh off the road from a meeting in Germany. Oh this is Europe now. Wonderful. This is just how it is - you get excited about other stuff when this is the baseline of your experience.

Then, I got sick... Woke up at 3.30 in the morning, CONVINCED that it was 8am, got cranky when my breakfast didn't arrive, wrote in my journal mad night thoughts, then looked at the watch again: 4.30am! Howling wind outside, screaming around the edges of the roof and across the canals below. Couldn't sleep. Dreadful guts. Cloudhead.

So the weekend became instead about turning 40 - we're all about there now - and evaluating the First Half. Planning the Second Half. Others in the group had made some concrete actual changes for their Second Half - I admire that, need to apply that sort of time-horizon to my own life. Steps to take now to secure the Second Half? The First Half had so much experience and roaming and discovery in it. Wonderful trip down Memory Lane, and also very real now experience of a great city, wonderful place.

Everywhere there are people on bikes, the most incredible types of bike-contraptions. A Bucks-Fizz is a transporter, for children, even under plastic, or dogs or shopping. LMM would love this human-scale city, this physical vibrancy in the people on account of much cycling, the Nine Streets shops, Albert Cuyp market with tonnes of the food we want to eat, not just the Irish selection-by-distance..and multicultural, people from everywhere. Just, how do you get to work HERE, without any Dutch, without being married to one, or descended from one?

I DID NOT stride across the city in glorious solitude, speak to attractive strangers in bars, or shop for a precious, personal treasure for life. I DID reflect on this group of friends, fellow travellers, my cohort, and that we're all at a similar place - much perspective, much left to do. And that we are not alone: there are lots of people with mixed marriages (in the sense of coming from different countries) different roots. All of us travelling the globe, comfortable in lots of places, drawing rich lives by being slow-mo-mobile, adding languages and possessions to suit the country we're in. And good it is.

The View From My Window 2

Sitting at the computer, the desk is behind a wall of glass the length of the room. So it's a perfect light room for an Australian family, top floor - which is great for us. I'm sure our noise travels to the floor below...

I look out and see an ancient stone wall, with some of the window arches bricked back in, weeds growing in the cracks, old corrugated iron on the roof. The owner of this building tells us that they excavated lots of bodies when he built this building about 20 years ago, exhumed them and took them away. We're just outside the city wall, so there are many burial grounds nearby.

I see a courtyard of white houses with grey slate roofs, and into lots of windows - probably 8 different places over there that we can see. LMM points out how many bathrooms we can see into, I notice the women cooking at the other windows, at the same time each evening as I am. There are satellite dishes, pot plants, lampshades, clothes airers. Sometimes clothes on a line, wet for a week.

We're all in our own versions of Rear Window, a hidden courtyard life, separate from the much more cheerless streets around us. It's neighbourly, we're part of a place with other people's lives nearby. It's never isolated. But no-one waves or speaks across it - that would be intruding.

UPDATE: In early June, the entire wall is green and pink, in wonderful flower. The sky has often been blue.

Dirty Veg from Caroline

We're back from a big trip, so it's time to settle now into another kind of life here: school, making lunches, dropping and collecting both boys (I'm off the 24/7 shift, hooray, that WAS a hard 2 months), getting to a workout often if poss, and shopping local.

Caroline's pesticide-etc-free vegetable stand at the Coal Quay every Saturday is pure pleasure. A request for a handful of spinach gets me a boy's backpack FULL, and then throw in some carrots, beetroot, cucumbers, salad leaves: with the dirt still on. She is definitely the gardener, with the dirt deep in her hands: I admire them and her, it must be a hard life, growing here in Ireland with this weather that won't really play nicely.

So I get home, wash dirt off and plan what to make with all this indigenous stuff - soup's good, parsnip goes with most everything as it turns out. Multi-veg mash is another Magic food: boys eat parsnip, celeriac, zuchini, carrot and potato, and I'm happy. Magic. Not all at once, but they all go in. Under sausages, it makes a regular appearance as dinner. Spanakopita. I love it. They all taste so damn alive, different from one another, like a true vegetable should! Makes me think of my father standing in the garden in Canberra, dirt on his hands, colanders full of the latest abundance. He grew, and still grows, most everything.

A thread right through from my Saturday mornings here in Cork, to my father's sensational plots in Canberra, with echoes too, of all the grandfathers that had their gardens in Bohemia long ago.

Paris meets Paris

Years of lead-up, this! Paris the bear gets to Paris today.

Driving up from overnight in Orleans, droping off the car at Orly airport, then train and Metro to our hotel. Me now with my boys, in Paris again! Wow. Lunch for E10 at a corner bistrot, fab fab, we're here. This, I can do.

And hitting the high notes immediately, we set off for the Eiffel Tower. Long wait in the queue. This will be the one time we do this. I never did when I lived here at 16, or in later visits - always too touristy. But now. The boys are hopping, I'm getting cold, the queue is full of tourists on shorter holidays, we get to feel that we really do live in Europe now. What a stream of life we're in.

Up in the lift, to the very top. EArrgh. Vertigo. I'm almost sick with the height of it, the headtrip of it moving up here, the wind, oh I know it's a safe structure, and it's been here, but suddenly I've got all teh bad thoughts rushing in. The Bean beside himself with excitement, the Pumpkin falls asleep on Leathermanman's shoulder and misses a real lot of it all. We go to the top, gaze into the museum boxes, stare out over this amazing city, roar into the wind. I'm back, I'm back.

On the way down, the Bean and LMM run the stairs (like LMM did when he was a kid here), the Pumpkin and I catch the lift down. Incredible experience, a real highlight. And then we search for toilets, go to a playground. Of course.

And into the 6e, past my old school, photos there!, amazing to BE HERE, shop for postcards. A shred of home it is. Dinner near St Michel in a Greek restaurant, staring at a statue of a nude white bum, over the shoulders of my two boys. LONG walk home, all the way past Notre Dame, the Seine, Place de Vosges, rolling, savouring every step. Just got here, wish I could stay.

(Paris the Bear is Paris because Painterwoman bought the bear for the Bean on the day he was born. Then 2 weeks later, she flew to Paris, to paint. That bear has been wanting to get here for 7 years!)

Australia can wait. Germany now.

A day of packing, nerves and anxiety, followed by an almost sleepless night. Does every mother fret like this on the eve of a big trip with her children, without her husband? I know I do. An epic trip, the travel within the travel of this trip - my children meet my grandmother. A life- achievement by the end of the day.

Pre-dawn moulding of small boys limbs into their clothes (selected to match eachother and me, plus travel well), taxi to Cork airport, and away to London Stansted.

My first time in a cheap airport: how long will it take to get through one set of customs and on to the next plane? Will my odd paperwork be a problem, as I'm not registered in Ireland, and I should be, according to the police and Immigration there? What could go wrong? How can I keep myself and these two small boys moving through the day? Can I make the switch to German again, now with them holding me in English as well?

Then Munich. I get a strange feeling as if this is the real start of my trip - as on so many trips my whole life long, I've come into Munich. This is familiar, my family, my roots. And the immigration guy asks me at the end, all friendly - why are you travelling with these boys who do not have your name? Could he please see the authorisation that I may do so? Digging out my marriage certificate to prove they are my lawful children, this is just German properness...there are rules, you must know that we know them, and we must be seen to be doing it all the right way...Goddamm. I had packed all the papers, so I expected it really, didn't I?

And now it's all new, talking to my boys, listening to all the Germans on the S-Bahn - on the way back from summer holidays in Sweden, China, the world. I'm eyes and ears, and memory lane, can barely speak for the flashbacks of other times I've made this trip, other times I've stepped off at Gauting, other times my grandmother is standing there as if she did this every other week!

And it's summer at last - we wear t-shirts, without singlets under or jumpers over, the whole day long. Lovely family days, remembering things past, family traits. Also crafting new days - now that I'm moving about with children of my own. An age watching the Bean swing on the rings in my uncle's garden, fabulous, what muscles, what meaning in a simple sunny afternoon!

The Bean gets to spend E35 on Schleich toys, agonising, enjoying the selecting for an HOUR, yes!, in the toy shop on the Stachus. The Pumpkin invents an elaborate game with my aunt, involving pegging all the clothes pegs on one of her potplants - and then pegging Christmas decorations, leaves, Easter eggs to the tree!