The Tyranny of Dinner

In a week of atrocious sleeps, sick children, wild cold winter rain storms, and school stop work meetings, I'm finding the jump from one role to another almost impossible. The brain cells do not seem to absorb the language of the graduate school right now and none of my previous jobs seems to have gone elsewhere - see title.

I realise how much I've been wanting things to change as I stand in front of the fridge, with the need to produce dinner for the family, at about 5pm every evening. Wonder what would happen if I just did not do anything about it at that time of day? Sick of it being my responsibility every single day...

That said, the subjects I've got are THE reason for doing the Masters in the first place: Change Management, Leadership and Knowledge Management, all three of long-term interest, since Corporate Vision days. Maybe I'll get to use some of the old stuff; academic referencing could be a problem, with so much change since then!

This too will pass, this too will change, as I stop being around quite as much. Oh patience. Right now, maybe a good sleep would brace me better. It is Week One as a graduate student, part time mum again. Does 'mum' get to be a part time role I wonder?

So my besty phones this morning...

..and says, 'help' you speak German! " One of my paintings has been doing really well in Germany, as the cover of novels and now a magazine! What's it all about?" See for yourselves: Cicero the magazine . Her image is on the cover of the June issue, with a great rave about her.

How is this magazine viewed in Germany? I'd not heard of it. Berlin readers, pls comment - it's published there.

What it's about is: the globo-tribe, mobile, available to go anywhere, coming from anywhere, and my incredibly talented, hard-working, painter friend swimming easily in its currents. Oh and did I say she's gorgeous?

Define home

Among only 'bout 1000 jobs around the house, yes our own house, back in our own street, I miss this geographically-free space of the blogosphere. There's a liberation in this space. I feel very much at home out here, as I do in the galleries, museums, public gardens and bookshops of the globe.

That said, it has been rewarding to get in and DO here, and it is, slowly, feeling like home again. One day last week, turning over the sods to reinstate our vegetable patch, I dug up a silver earring hoop of my own. So that's what coming home means, you dig and turn up your own stuff - from 2 years ago. And the soil which turned up to fill the bed is curiously inert, lifeless by contrast, not a worm in there. Lucky for the racecourse nearby which has a great big painted sign on its corrugated iron fence: free manure. You shovel and haul it yourself. Six sacks done.

And in Cork, the families are getting ready to go back to school after the long summer holiday. On Monday, I will miss them again, as I so often have been.. I see some of them in the streets here sometimes, or think I do.

Our new school is great too, we are happy at the change, with the Bean settling well into his age cohort now. The furniture is assembled, boxes despatched, shelves restored, office set up, letters sent, start-up costs paid, uni courses enrolled in, tip run done, garden jobs done. What's left? Oh just the rest of our lives.

And on Monday, I resume my own postgrad studies. A door closes on a wonderful year of lightness, of returning to myself, of pursuing long-held dreams.

Asterix and Obelix take it to Bondi

My first ever City to Surf in Sydney with the Bean, yesterday, with 75,000 of my closest friends. Completed the course, enjoyed ourselves: not bad for a small one who's 8, and another who's not very race-fit. We had prepared well, with practice runs around Newcastle, discussions and costume preparations, and the other half of the family briefed on the meeting point for a picnic at the beach afterwards.

Well, we had an absolute blast! Running down into the red start group, as we made our way to our blue start group, we nearly got cleaned up by the FAST runners - and got a great rev from seeing them go. At the Kings Cross tunnel, I could see it dawning on him that this whole thing was going to be an 'event' all the way to the beach. We shouted ourselves hoarse at the footbridge, where the other half of the family was watching, heard the rustling of the drinks stations well ahead of seeing it at Rose Bay, ran up Heartbreak Hill at a steady pace, walked whenever he said walk, then he took off and ran again. I just stayed with him, and had plenty of energy left at the end - I am just that much fitter after the gym in Cork. (thanks Jamaican in Cork for the motivation!). We people-watched the whole way, had drinks, chatted, jogged, patched his heel close to Bondi and kept going the whole way! We were snapped at the finish line, didn't know this at the time, but V proud we were. A flood of tears, overwhelm, at the finish made me realise that I'd worried a lot about what I was putting on this small boy, but he's made of stern stuff.

Then in the bright winter sunshine at Bondi, with the sea brilliant green-blue and the skate-park in full flight, we picnicked among all the other smiling groups with red ribbons and medals around their necks. Me: elated, really enjoying this whole thing, and a definite starter for next year. Savouring what I'd looked forward to for 14 years - doing the C2S with my own child. Yes, a fine, long time coming - and we'll get under 100 minutes no bother.

That evening, back in Newcastle, a very tired, proud boy put his arms around my waist and said he'd like to do that with me another 24 times, then he'd get the cloth badge for 25 years' C2S completion too, just like the one we'd seen on a tattered old white shirt on the course today. Of all the things I thought of to say to that, I just squeezed him back, my eyes filled with tears - and said none. Treasure.

The hippos danced their rolling dance

On my birthday at the San Diego Zoo, the day was hot, like no day we'd had all year in Europe. A day to really warm the fibres.

A beautiful zoo, right from the flamingos at the front gate, to the last skyfari ride of the day, with my 3 men, large and small, singing me 'Happy Birthday' as we drifted and dangled over the top of the gorillas and spider monkeys in a slanting sun.

Sushi and lemon tart to finish the day, perfect in California - and for this mermaid-girl. What a year I've had, from the first day at Kinsale Harbour during the Kinsale Festival to the very last just now, at the San Diego Zoo. I'm not sure it summarises into a phrase, but it certainly feels wonderful to have so many experiences that I really WANTED to actually look back on now. Less yearning, longing for anywhere-but-here now.

Those hippos were dancing just for me.

Two more sleeps

Tomorrow is the day I have to say goodbye to my friends here, mothers through the school mostly.. And of course everyone is so matter-of-fact and upbeat on these occasions, when I want to cry at the finishing of a most precious year, just actually lament the passing for one day. What has been. What must become anecdote, memory, not remain the fibre of my life.

Fancy that - I've had: a year not working, a year with lots of trips to places I longed for for years!, a year rediscovering my own thoughts, a year of housework and excess childcare, a year of feeling part of this great thick blended throng of Europeans. A year on the up side.

The boys have grown a lot, physically and in their understanding of it all. LMM and I have had times to talk about the next 20, the next 5 years. And often not talk at all really, in the flurry of our separate logistic challenges - his the hospital, mine the boys and home.

Ireland has found its way under our skin, seeping in its green slow way as it does to buildings too. The kindness, the welcome, the accommodation to people's various needs. One of the Liberty-mamas, actually the first mama I met on the first day of school last year, said that when she moved to Cork, it wrapped its arms around her and she never wants to live anywhere else anymore. Now, at this point, a year in, I can understand and share the sentiment. It makes no sense at all that we should be leaving.

I love the range of people they are, the work they do in creative ways, the treasures of their children, their beautiful homes full of brilliant toys and games, their straight competence, their travels, their acceptance of a new one into their midst. Thank you all so much. And still, I leave.

All is Bared

What an awesome experience. I went to Blarney in the night, driving out the back way. Encountered not a soul on the road, not sure at all how many would be ahead in the Blarney Castle grounds. Pitch black, wondering about speed on a dark night, yellow street lights, even the hedges by the side of the road were still green tho.

Then, to the entrance. Suddenly it was like a world music festival, with people from ALL walks of life, warmly dressed, making their way in. People in pairs, in groups of friends - Cork, where nothing is a secret. All made our way down to a huge lit space, floodlit by sportsfield lights, sitting on our plastic bags, settling in for a long wait. And it was LONG.

What got to me was the cigarette smoke, my god they were all puffing away a lot. I had to go to the edge of the space we were all waiting in to clear the nausea. A group of women singing, a man stripping off to cheers WAY too early (just had to get his kit off), people with thermos flasks, ipods, warm beanies. I didn't speak much.

Some words from the crew, Spencer Tunick himself, then more waiting looking to the sky to lighten. It was only at about 5.30 that we all got our kit off. Which was easy, it was. Stuff everything into the bag, and walk out.

Walking out between the trees in a luminous crowd of white bodies was very moving: like the first humans walking out from the trees, primeval experience, even if totally removed from any historical accuracy ever!. Everyone still warm from clothes, shoulders sheltering bodies, curling over as they could. Eye contact.

Soon after, cold wet feet. Soon after, shouting and moving the mass, the putty we had become, into the right shape for the shoot, as determined from a crane high over our heads. Soon after, surreptitious glances at tattoos, shapes, colours of skin. We are all beautiful naked, even when cold in the grey light of dawn. Never more so.

More time passing and we are getting colder. During the lying-down shoot/red and white roses held aloft, I heard chattering teeth from a young guy near my head somewhere. The sun was nearly golden on the birch leaves nearby now, white light fading out the early grey.

It has seldom been harder to get my socks on, as at about 7am! The women only then made their way to a spot closer to the castle, for another stripping down. There was much hooting from both sides as the men watched from lower down the hill, like a scene from Braveheart now, cheering hooting, almost bawdy, but in such a fine humour in the early morning! Other folks are probably stirring and slurping their first cups of tea now, we're out here in full swing. Yep. As it were.

Dressed again, nothing but our big smiles to separate us from the rest of Cork anymore.

For me, an awesome, enormous feeling of wholeness in my body. Being one shape, inhabiting one vessel, not a collection of lumps too big and limbs too untoned.. Wonderful, a liberation.