An introvert abroad - day 3

Day 3.

Yesterday I thought that I wouldn't write something every day. I thought I should wait until something spectacular happens (whatever that means).

Then I asked myself why I was sharing it here: why not just write for the sake of it, squirrel it away for later? I read a friend's Facebook post about social media being bananas for the monkey mind and thought: hmm, maybe I'm just banana-hunting. After finishing this paragraph I wanted to delete it.

Then today happened and I couldn't help noting down more moments, more thoughts. Too many to cram into one post here, although I have to tell you about Sheila.

On the intercity train I sat next to an elderly English woman. Her stories and commentary were so fascinating that introverted little me didn't mind that she filled the better part of 2 hours with her chatter.

She's been in New Zealand since 1964. Her husband died on holiday in Norfolk Island less than 10 years later. He had to be buried there, because she couldn't afford the then $28 000 to hire a plane to bring him home.

Sheila hates the way people say her name in Australia, and reminds them that hers has a capital S. Together we wondered why it became a colloquial term for a woman. Sheila thinks Australia is amazing but can't stand the heat and the deadly critters.

Sheila thought it was better that I'm single rather than settling for an unhappy marriage, like one of her granddaughters just had. She followed it up by telling me I still had time to find someone nice, in just the right grandmotherly-but-worldy-wise tone that didn't make me bristle.

Sheila owns a bach overlooking the beach where Captain Cook landed. And as we spoke, she was on her way to ticking off a few items on her bucket list.

Meeting Sheila led me to a wish that I had understood the significance of family histories before my grandmother died. I've catalogued the painful parts, the bruises passed down the generations. But what about the delights? What about the miracles that are threaded through into the life I call mine?

Like one story my mother tells occasionally: how my great grandmother survived a train bombing in the war because she went to check the post office for a much-awaited letter. There was no logic to it, as she'd already been earlier that day. If she hadn't though, I wouldn't exist.

I wonder if this is what people mean when they say they travel to find themselves. Everything here eventually leads me back to myself.

Loving yourself in pieces

Self-love is a tall order - a skyscraper to climb over, without ropes - when you're used to beating yourself up on behalf of other people. You know, to save yourself the effort of feeling the shock and bruise of it, the next time it starts. When a fight with yourself leaves you lying bloodied on the ground.

So the answer isn't a must, a giant should, an impossible goal. Start small. Start somewhere.  Start with the marvel of your hands gripping a door handle. With the way your lungs keep fluttering without your thought to guide them. Start with your strong legs that carry you everywhere, even when you're tired and angry and aching.

Start with the pieces of you that someone has loved before (but maybe you didn't really believe them). Look in a mirror and find one thing beautiful. What did they tell you about your eyes? Maybe the way your neck curves into your shoulder, the way your hair falls over your ears. Has someone loved the sound of your voice? The way you put words together carefully before they come out of your mouth? Start with what they told you your smile did to them.

Start with the things you think you're not supposed to love. Start with the way you insist on loving someone that you've been told you should give up on. With your resistance and stubbornness. Start with your obsessions. The way you have to straighten up the cutlery on a table, just so. And the way you keep your anger to yourself, because you don't want to burn anyone else with it. Start with your clumsiness, your sensitivity, your hurry, your yearning.

You are loved and lovable just as you are. You don't have to believe it. You don't even have to feel it, in your bones or your belly. But it's true, you are lovable. I promise.

Thoughts on charm and endearment

It's easy to rattle off a list of adjectives that describe what we like, and seek in other people. Particularly in dating. But in practice, "honesty", or "good manners" might mean something different to you than it does to me. And how they relate to each other, when one is more valued than another, can vary wildly from moment to moment and person to person.

Honesty for you might mean pointing out that the nail polish on my toes is flaking and really needs a touch up. Good manners for me might mean not mentioning it, so as not to make someone else feel self conscious. Good relationship is how we navigate the waters in between.

So when it comes to quantifying what I seek, and am drawn to in other people, I find myself looking for moments. Snippets of daily life that tell me something about another person, that give substance to the names we have for characteristics, behaviours and things we find charming.

So... in no particular order, a non-comprehensive list of things I find appealing, and endearing, in other people:

- umbrella awareness in crowds on the rainiest of days

- asking how people are with feeling, as if you really want to know

- licking the froth off the inside of your takeaway coffee cup lid

- melty, long, warm, wrapped-up hugs

- the ability to commit to small things, like when I will see you next

- chasing rubbish that the wind blows away from you

- asking quirky questions about how things work, such as "is there an equivalent of a car wash for aeroplanes?" and collecting the answers like little pebbles

- admitting that you wanted to lick the plate after a particularly delicious meal

- being prepared for the usual eventualities... always carrying a handkerchief, a spare umbrella in the car, snacks on a bush walk

- the ability to see how someone is in a given moment, and respond in kind, even if neither person has words for it

To be continued...

Letters to the future

When I was thirteen I started a ritual. I got the idea from a novel - the name of which has long fallen out of my memory.

Each birthday I sit down and write a letter to my future self. A real handwritten letter on paper and sealed in an envelope for a year. Then at 3pm each birthday (my birth time) or as close to it as I can manage, I open it, read it and write the next one.

I did it for ten years, then stopped for ten years, and started again last year. Ironically I think the years I wasn't writing it were probably some of the hardest years I've had: the ones where that annual reflection and reminder from my past self might have been more useful than usual.

I've only ever showed those letters to a few select people in my most inner circle, but maybe there's something in there for other people too. So here's a snippet from last year's letter:

"When you are lost, you only need to remember. Look at who you have been to remember who you are. Look to the dailiness of love that you have lived, even when the softness of it was not there. Trust your reserve and your patience and kindness. Follow your sensitivity."

For me those letters have become a touchstone for the person I am. A way to reconnect with who I have been all along, a reminder of my ambitions and daydreams and yearnings. Sometimes reading them makes me sad at the contrast between one year and the next; sometimes it leaves me with a wry smile at the surprising wisdom of my younger selves; and then sometimes it's incredibly grounding.

People write letters to their younger selves all the time, but that seems pretty useless to me. We can't go back in time. Our youth cannot be shaped by the adult we will become, but the reverse is usually true.

So, what do you want to say to your future self?

Highly sensitive happiness

Happiness is having the senses sated. That hunger that can only be filled by experiences of beauty. Exquisite tastes on your tongue. The incomparable sensation of the sun on your skin. Breezes untainted by the stink of the city. The sound of the ocean bringing you back to yourself. Music that rubs you the right way, wakes up your heart. Gentleness, delicate pleasures, comfort. It isn't that hard to find: I just forget sometimes.

There's no half-life on love

The rest of the story

Direct link to video

This.

Remembering all the other ways there are to tell the story of my life.  More than the stories I was born into, the words I have gathered about me like garments. Behind the grief and wanting to howl at the moon: the rest of the story lies waiting to be told. The strength of women, their straight backs.  The sheer joy of living, the pleasure of sating the senses.  All the fierce, deep love.  So much that it spills over sometimes, even if it comes out in the wrong language. 

A kind of relief blooming in my chest.  An unfurling, breathing easier.  Everything will be okay.  Happiness is not beyond me.

from the ashes

I am (unofficially) godmother to the two adorable little boys of my best friend.  I’ve known her since high school and somehow we have managed to remain friends even as our lives have taken completely different directions.  I’m the perpetually single, big-city career woman and she’s a sole parent with 2 boys, a beagle and a feral cat.


The boys I will call Baby (just turned 1) and Boy (who is 6).  Baby is (from my clucky, occasionally-visiting perspective) positively cherubic and finds me hilarious.  Boy is a rather intense and strong-willed but very loving little boy whose idea of family includes mum, brother, dad, dog, cat,grandma, grandma’s new partner and me (awww *melt*).


They now live in South Australia in a town that is ridiculously difficult to get to from Sydney (2 plane trips if I’m feeling cashed up, or a full day of cars, trains, planes and buses if I’m strapped for cash).  I would love to visit her more often than the once or twice a year I actually manage to make it down there, but it is what it is.    


I work for a service that provides parenting advice, and my job is to manage our website and find ways to do 'online development'.  Recently I started to blog about my experiences of parenting as a 'non-parent', but a last minute decision by my manager means my posts were pulled down and will not see the light of day in that place again.  


No matter.  My friend had already seen a few posts and loved them.  And I hope that my experiences as a well-informed but ultimately bumbling non-parent godmother might be illuminating for others, amusing at the least.  So, as part of my resolution to talk about everything I'm giving them a home here. 

Personality in pictures: the state of your butter tub

There are people who dig into their butter as if there's gold buried at the bottom of it, and the butter is just in the way: a culinary side effect of the mining process.  There are crumbs left in the butter as their toast is spread with equal abandon and enthusiasm.  Their toast has a little pool of melted butter in the centre and few streaks across the edges.

Then there are those who glide the knife across the surface, taking butter evenly from all sides; smoothing rather than gouging; revelling in the smear of buttery goodness across the entire surface of their toast.  Even the edges, because dry crusts are anathema to them.  They have a routine.  The toast has to be the perfect temperature before butter is applied, resulting in butter that is halfway between melted and firm.

Which are you?

Personality in pictures #1

I was baking apple crumble the other day, and realised that I always try to peel the apples in one piece. I cultivated the skill in childhood, and now it's something I do without even thinking. But for someone who doesn't know me, it might be considered a 'quirk'. So I'm starting a list, because I'm proud of who I am, quirks and all.

And I'm not alone. Minerva likes to peel oranges in one piece too.

between seasons

It's true.

Uncrowning

Last year I lost ten kilos, grew my hair and started dating. This year I've sworn off dating, gained ten kilos and cut my hair. Several times.

If hair is a woman's crowning glory, what does it mean when it's gone? Is she less a woman, not feminine, making a statement, seeking change? Is she suddenly edgier, more interesting, sexier, less soft?

Hair and grief have a long history together. I only have to look around to find it. This week I learned that my aunt's new partner shaved off his facial hair after 30 years... and a divorce. I have made an art of cutting mine off. If l look back at my many haircuts, I can find a heartbreak - small or large - to match most.

The body of a tree records everything that happens to it, lays down history in the rings of its trunk. Seasons of growth, debilitating droughts, lush summers. A wound in the trunk of a tree will leave evidence, even if it's only a ripple in one year's archive.

Our hair does the same, showing the history of our bodies, our health or unwellness. Wouldn't it include our emotions, our memories too? It might explain why so many turn to scissors after ending relationships, a death, giving up a way of life. Declaring ourselves fit for a fresh start and unburdened by the past. Revealing that we have a past worth cutting off.

Slow remembering

Remember how good it feels to just stop... look away from your destination from a moment and revel in where you are... to come home and slow down... to breathe and remember who you are without the rush.

all that sparkles

I have always thought it was possible to love your work. Maybe not all of your job, or every minute of it. But to be a person whose eyes light up when they talk about what they do.

I have been a person who becomes earnest and intense when they talk about what they do. I have even been passionate about it. I have talked at length about how important it is to get things right, railed against the things that rile me up and shared the ragged hope that has kept me going.

Feeling a pang when hearing about someone whose "eyes lit up" when talking about her work, the same work that I do, dealing with the inner stuff of people. I commented to my colleagues that I had never felt that way about doing what I do. They shrugged and said something like "you're just not that kind of person".

Knowing that I had to get out, that keeping going would eat me up, burn me out, kick the stuffing out of me and more. But what would I do instead?

I found the answer. It was pretty obvious, in hindsight. It's been dangling from my ears and twined around my fingers and trailed throughout my history. So I'm learning how to do what I love.

These are just the beginning. And now I sparkle too.

How to show someone who you are

Always start with a smile - beaming, grimaced, forced or fractured.... happy-to-see-you... afraid-of-what-you-might-see... I-can't-help-smiling-at-you... if-I-don't-I-might-cry. How to show someone who you are.

The way you laugh with different parts of you... the memory of the colour of your eyes when they're closed... the tilt of your throat when you listen... the scent of the inside of your wrist... the curve of your lip when you smile. How to show someone who you are.

The scars on your knees from before you grew up... the way you crinkle your nose before you sneeze... the creases in your upturned palm when you lie still... that sound you make when you start to cry... the look in your eyes when you hear something unexpected. How to show someone who you are.