So That Was 2010

(Our personal 2010, I mean. You all know already what happened in the wider world.)

It was a mixed bag.

Wonderful to get our Housing Dept home after the 13-year wait, back in a town we’ve always loved, just as we needed to be closer to shops and services. It's also closer to many old friends, and we have been making new ones too since our return a year ago. We continue to love our peaceful street, with nice neighbours and mountain views.

The Beloved Spouse’s first wife died in February after an illness. This was of course an emotional time for him and his children. He couldn't attend the funeral (in Melbourne) but contributed his reminiscences to the eulogy.

Good news is that Spouse’s heart specialist told him at his annual check-up in Feb. that his heart is in excellent shape.

The old car became scary to drive with the automatic transmission slipping, but we were lucky to find an affordable replacement.

I retired from the Sunday markets soon after moving. Adored the work and the atmosphere for many years, but realised I didn't want to keep getting up so early and lugging the stall around. Occasionally people track me down and come to the house for Reiki treatments or psychic readings.

We both developed eye problems. Spouse needed expensive laser work. Thanks to his youngest, my Second Stepson, for a generous and well-timed gift which made that possible! (Yes, there are Medicare refunds but you still have to pay upfront.) As for me, I have a film over my left retina, a thing which apparently can happen with age. They monitor it frequently and I do a little eye test every day. If the film stays tightly attached, no problem; if it gets loose and wrinkly, I'll need surgery. This is unpredictable, but so far so good.

June - July were our worst months. My favourite Aunty over in Perth, my 'second Mum', died. Sad, but not unexpected. Then Spouse got an infected toe and went to hospital, we thought for a day or two. He deteriorated rapidly, was transferred from the local hospital to a bigger one forty-five minutes away, and all in all was in for three weeks. It wasn't the toe, which cleared up. Apparently he got a strain of flu they couldn't identify. He nearly died, and it was all very scary for both of us. He finally turned the corner when I called in all the Reiki help I could get, but remained frail some time after coming home.

I bought him a wheely walker, which he still needs from time to time due to arthritis. In fact we now have one for the house and one for the car to save me lugging it up and down steps. I'm not supposed to do heavy lifting because of my own arthritis, and have also stopped my Tai Chi classes because I can no longer stand on my right leg. But we are taking supplements and have found our way back to our good chiropractor in the coastal village where we used to live, who is helping. You walk out of his clinic with your body feeling noticeably different!

I still travel to said village often as facilitator of the WordsFlow writers' group (which has been going four years now) and as Secretary of the Management Committee for the Neighbourhood Centre. They won't let me go! Which is fine, as I enjoy both roles and it's only a half hour drive through pretty country. If I still lived in Melbourne, a half hour drive would seem like nothing.

During an exciting visit in May from Thom the World Poet (based in Austin, Texas) and his mate Bob Mud, muso/poet./artist from Brisbane, with a workshop for WordsFlow and a performance in the Castle on the Hill at nearby Uki, Spouse became so enthused that he joined WordsFlow and has been getting stuck into his autobiography and his children's stories.

We had a visit from Spouse's eldest, my First Stepson and the three little grand-daughters, soon after moving here. They filled the house with laughter and colour, and it suddenly seemed very quiet and spacious after they left.

Later in the year the beautiful Stepdaughter had a quick trip to the Gold Coast with her boyfriend, and drove down here to take us to lunch and see the new home.

(Her son, 18 now, is shaping up as a talented writer, which is exciting for his grandparents here!) And Second Stepson is arriving tomorrow for a week's visit over xmas.

My Firstborn injured an Achilles tendon some months ago, and is still recovering after surgery and having to wear a special boot for a while. No more swing dancing for him just yet, which was one of his greatest pleasures — but he has taken up DJ-ing and is enjoying it.

There have been some deaths of old friends, not all of them elderly.

I am still estranged from my Youngest, by my own choice.

I have acquired several new Reiki students who want to go as far as I can take them with their training, and who are already potential Masters, exciting to teach. One of them has created a herb garden for us in our little courtyard out the back.

We have a wonderful handyman who is an old Reiki student of mine. Housing Dept maintenance is quick to fix the essential and/or emergency stuff; he does the rest very well at a most reasonable rate. The guy who used to mow our lawns for free became a family man and isn't so available any more — but with our Housing Dept rent we have a little more money to spare, and our neighbour's friend, who does her lawn for $20 a fortnight, asked if we'd like him to do ours too. Yes! And I finally succumbed and got household help from Home Care for a very low fee. They don't do everything, but they do the stuff I can't manage, and are nice women to boot. (Stop it with those mental images! That’s not what I meant.)

Spouse had another trip to hospital in September, following a fall. He complained of headache and blacked out a minute, which was enough for me to call the ambulance. However he was fine and they allowed him home in a few days. Whew!

We are adjusting to being older and less mobile, e.g.for the most part seeing movies on DVD rather than climb stairs at the cinema. (With our wide-screen digital telly which we were able to get at sale price just after moving here, that's no hardship!) I'm enjoying doing more of the driving now and feeling more confident/competent as a result. Life goes on merrily enough. Writing is our major focus, as indeed it always has been.

As for my great weight loss program, it got thoroughly abandoned. This was not planned, but a lapse that lasted and lasted.  Too much going on, higher priorities.... Now I am a large lady again — damn! Never mind, after Christmas I’ll start over and stick to it. This is not a New Year resolution (made to be broken) but an intention for taking good care of myself. Others who did stick to it are looking wonderful now!

And so, dear people Bright Blessings to you all!

Home

We are having a second day of taking it easy, flopping around in our nightwear with warm woollies on top. Yesterday we spent most of the day in bed. Our bedroom in this new home has become a sanctuary — even though it’s never completely uncluttered, because we avid readers and compulsive writers keep piling up books and notebooks on the bedside tables. It’s a small enough room to be cosy and big enough not to feel cramped. We look out through one wall of glass on to our private, enclosed little courtyard garden. Though it has been low priority so far and the weeds flourish, the potted geraniums are bursting out of their pots and blooming in bright pink, the big plant in the corner —whose name I’ve never learned in years of caring for it — has glossy new leaves, and the vines are thickening on the fence.

Today we have finally got out of bed, late morning, and sit at our respective computers in our respective offices. This whole house is our sanctuary. Like the bedroom, it is both spacious enough and compact enough, and the offices are not so far apart that we feel disconnected from each other. We get up and wander about between typing, get a cuppa, fetch a book, talk to each other in passing. The cats come and find comfortable spots near us. Usually Levi keeps Andrew company and Freya clings to me, but this varies. Sometimes they wander off to the places they like best of all: Freya on the bed, Levi beside the heater.

We’ve had heavy colds for days. I’m paranoid now about the slightest infection, after Andrew nearly dying of influenza a few weeks ago — but we’ve now had the flu injections for the first time ever, and we’re taking echinacea and zinc. The doctor couldn’t suggest anything else helpful. Giving in to it seems to be working. We try to remember to drink lots of water, we flake out and snooze as inclination takes us — we get tired often — and we avoid anything too energetic. Bare minimum housework, and nothing but pleasurable tasks on computer. The huge, loud, repeated sneezes that shook our whole bodies have pretty much stopped. The aches and pains are less acute.

I realise my body is trying to process and clear some stuff. ‘What are you two unpacking from other homes?’ asks a Reiki Master friend, and mentions a couple of places with unhappy memories for us. She’s right on the button as usual. I have indeed been doing the last of the unpacking and thoughts of those other homes have been arising, and even earlier homes in my earlier lives (as child, as young mother ...). As for Andrew, he has been sorting out his files and boxes of papers at last, and looking through photos; and I realise he has been mentioning his own past homes too. It is as if, now we’re settled in a place that we love and know is permanent, we can allow ourselves to relax enough to release old angst.

I think back on the homes we’ve shared, particularly the ones that weren’t so great. I see how brave and optimistic we were, knowing the drawbacks but — having to be there for a time — actively seeking and even creating positive aspects. We explored our neighbourhoods, found places to go for walks, set up our books and ornaments and our writing spaces ... and sadly, at the worst places, had to leave a lot of stuff in storage. That wasn’t what made them so bad, but it became part of the general dissatisfaction. Without going into ancient recriminations, I could sum it up as difficulties with places that were unsuitable in themselves but all we could find at the time, exacerbated by further difficulties in sharing those spaces with other people — a residential landlady in one instance, fellow tenants in another. As most of our homes have been delightful, we haven’t dwelt on the few bad memories; it seems it’s time to deal with them now.

I seldom remember my dreams these days, but the last couple of nights I’ve had dreams around the theme of home. I remember little of the first, but in last night’s dream I was returning to a large hostel where I have lived in recurring dreams. (In this dream, I didn’t live there all the time; it was a place where I rented a permanent room for times when I might want to stay overnight in town.) It was a while since I’d been there, and there had been extensive remodelling in my absence. I walked along what at first seemed the familiar corridor to my room, looking for the number — but a laundry had been installed halfway along, and girls in undies and hair curlers were dashing in and out to wash and iron their clothes, laughing and chatting to each other on the way. I became confused, and when I got to where I thought my room should be, there was a wrong number on the door.

I decided to leave, and went downstairs to the foyer and then outside. The hostel was on top of a cliff. There was a steep, sandy path leading down to a street below. I stood at the top of it, about to go down, when something made me turn my head to the left to look out over the sea. I gasped at the beauty of the view: hills, ocean, islands, horizon, sky; at once sunny and slightly misty. Some other women came up behind me to go down the path. I stood aside to let one go ahead of me. Two others waited politely for me, but I told them to go on because I wanted to look at the view. They turned to look too. ‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ one said, before they went on. ‘Isn’t it ever!’ I replied. 

I don’t remember walking over to the edge of the cliff top, but next thing I was falling. I was falling very slowly, upright, and although it was a deep drop and I was probably about to die or be seriously injured, I was quite calm. I had some notion of making the most of what might be my last minutes. I kept moving my legs back and forth, with the idea that I might be able to catch the side of the cliff with my heels and find a footing. Another fast forward and I had come to rest at the bottom, sitting in a sandy hollow in the cliff wall, with my feet on one of those tubes that people put under their backs when exercising.

I looked again and realised it was actually a tube-shaped bag with a zip. I opened it and saw jumpers belonging to my [former] husband Bill and our schoolboy sons. [One of the jumpers does exist in real life, but Andrew and I got it in Peru long after Bill was dead and the boys grown up.] I saw that this bag was one of a number of items stowed under a low hedge at my feet. The beach disappeared and I was at home in the back yard. In the dream I knew it as the first home Bill and I and the kids had; now I realise it was actually much more like the home I lived in when I myself was a child.

How should I interpret this? There are suggestions there of several real-life homes besides the ones I mention, but no exact matches. It’s interesting, though, to recollect that I have a sort of parallel life, or more than one, in various series of recurring dreams. I become aware of this whenever I have another of those dreams; it always evokes the recall of others in the sequence. Then I forget again until next time. This time it aroused the waking memory of another series too, where I visit a particular shopping area tucked away behind main streets in a Melbourne suburb. I have a notion it‘s Prahran, but it might be Cheltenham. These dreams also contain a huge, sweeping, curving road I must drive on between this little shopping area and home, and there’s a fork that I have to be careful of because it’s confusing and a bad choice could take me miles in the wrong direction. I’m not altogether sure this is a dream, but it can’t logically be an accurate memory either; there were no such roads approaching Prahran or Cheltenham when I used to drive to either place. It’s more like one of the roads I could take home from Melbourne when I lived at Three Bridges in the Upper Yarra Valley. Maybe it’s a combination of two different recollections, or a dream series that has mixed them up.

[As an aside — I look back in wonder at all the driving I’ve done over the years, in what a variety of places and conditions. It’s amazing because I’ve been so shit-scared of driving most of my life, yet I did so much of it so successfully. Even today I don’t exactly take it for granted, but now that I’m the main driver in the family, I’ve become much more at ease with it. I see (again) that my past self was brave; also that my present self is competent.]

This home we love so much won’t quite accommodate all our remaining possessions; that’s becoming obvious. We’re having to make hard decisions now about things to discard or give away. Perhaps that’s what has led to this mental stocktaking of places I’ve lived, and griefs and trials associated with them, as well as fonder memories and things I find myself proud of. Or perhaps it is the knowledge that we won’t have to move again, and the very pleasure we take in this place, which occasion the looking back and putting into perspective all the ups and downs of the journey that brought us here.

Since I began writing this, our handyman mate Phil has come and put up a blind over the little bedroom window that looks out onto the street. The street is at the bottom of the sloping lawn, beyond our big back gate; even so we felt a bit exposed, and now we’re secure. He hung some canvas panels in the garage, which is taking shape as library / consulting room / temple: paintings of Indonesian dancers, which Bill and I picked up in Bali 47 years ago. I found them rolled up in a plastic bag the other day, in the course of unpacking the last boxes. It’s been years since I had a place to hang them and I’m glad to be able to look at them again.

They and other artefacts from Bali are mementoes not only of travels shared with Bill and our boys, but also of the house we lived in longest, where we first displayed them; the house where the kids grew from kindergarteners to university students.

‘You’ll have to get rid of that,’ said someone decades ago, of my precious coffee table. (I was moving house then, too.) I don’t know why she thought so, and I have it still. It’s big. It has a timber frame with no metal nails, just wooden bolts, and the top is ceramic tiles in burnt orange and darkest brown. (‘Of course she picks the most expensive one in the shop,’ said Bill when we bought it in 1972. And it was, but that wasn’t why I picked it; I just took one look and fell in love.)

The aforementioned residential landlady piled a heap of stored furniture on top of it in her shed when we lived with her — chairs and other tables, boxes full of crockery — even though she knew it was one of my treasures. ‘I thought it was solid,’ she said. It survived, but has been a bit wonky ever since. I don’t let anyone sit on it any more, though it invites sitting. Years before that, my very large dog took a chunk out of the corner one night when he was looking for something to chomp on. I was upset at the time, but it’s hard to notice the missing bit now, and when I do, I smile and think of my beautiful dog. That table has been with me in ten previous homes, and here it still is.

One of the first things we did here was put up pictures. Both our fathers were artists. My favourite painting by my Dad is above my desk. It is of Mt Roland in Tasmania, his and my favourite mountain while I was growing up, and for many years thereafter. (Mt Warning, near my present home, is my favourite now.) Andrew has his father’s etchings in his office and a photo of his father, himself and his brother sitting astride a cannon in a local park where he grew up. He’s at the front, being the littlest. He’s six, and he’s laughing with joy.

When we sit in our armchairs and watch TV in our well-heated house on these cold nights, I think back to evenings by the radio in Launceston when I was a girl, the whole family gathered around the fire. This is safe and warm like that.

Yes, we’ve arrived home: a home that partakes of all the homes before.

Photos of the new home

Now that we've been here four months, have NEARLY finished unpacking and getting books on shelves, and have already rearranged the furniture somewhat ...

We took some photos. They are stored on Photobucket. Go and have a look! (To be truthful, they were taken a few weeks ago and show our old white car. I must put up some photos of the new red one!)

IRONY … AND DILEMMA

We received a letter from the Housing Department. We have been on a waiting list for low-cost housing for years. Last we heard, we still had a ten-year wait ahead of us. But now that Andrew has turned 80, we are given priority. They can’t say exactly when an offer will happen. The man I spoke to last night said, ‘We don’t know if we’ll get a vacancy in the next three months.’ The woman I spoke to today said cautiously that we’re well ahead in the running and will probably get an offer within 12 months.

This would be wonderful news if we hadn’t just moved house. I don’t know if I could cope with another move very soon. Even with help from friends and family, it was a costly and physically exhausting exercise. And now that we’re here, we love the place. On the other hand, the reduced rent would be such a huge saving for us that it would radically improve our lifestyle and remove a lot of stress – and they tell us we’ll probably get a 10-year lease.

We only get two offers. If we reject both without good reason, we’re taken off the list. If we reapply after that, the waiting time will start from the date of the new application. Oh how I wish we had accepted the six-month lease we were first offered here! But we said, ‘No thanks, we want more security of tenure than that’ and went looking elsewhere. The landlord came back to us with the offer of a 12-month lease because we were just the sort of tenants he was looking for, and so we grabbed it.

I looked up stuff about breaking a lease and found dire warnings that it can be very costly – although not necessarily. One legitimate reason for doing so, which might mean not owing the landlord compensation, is if we’d suffer significant hardship by staying here. That could certainly be argued, but in this case it’s not a matter for which the landlord is in any way responsible.

The lady I spoke with said she could suspend the priority until after our lease finished and then restore it without disadvantaging us, but Andrew was horrified at that idea, so we have left it as it is. And I dare say when the time comes we could always ask to terminate the lease early, and/or find someone to take it over.

We’re listed as wanting Murwillumbah, the town around which we’ve lived in various locations for the last 15 years. This is the furthest out from it we’ve been, here on the coast – and now we think we might prefer to be here after all. (Though we remain fond of dear old Mur’bah and have many friends there.) If we want to change our preference to Pottsville, we have to write a letter pretty swiftly. We won’t necessarily get the exact place we specify anyway; we might, but we’ll be offered whatever comes up in the general area.

I’ve hurt my back, Andrew’s had a crook leg and hasn’t been able to help much with anything, and in the last week or two I’ve been inexplicably weepy at the drop of a hat. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to depression in my life; just not a thing I normally suffer from. ‘You’re exhausted!’ says one of my closest friends. ‘Next time you move,’ says our massage therapist, ‘I’ll come and help. It’s too much for you!’ I tell her we had help, and she says, ‘I know, but I’ll come and help too.’ I do mental calculations and think, ‘Well, we’ll get our bond back, and that’ll mean we can pay the removalist to do the packing for us next time….’

Much as I dread another move, much as we love being here, it would be wonderful not to be always budgeting so tightly. So I think I’ll take Andrew’s advice and leave it up to the Universe, trusting that we’ll be looked after, as we always are. Meanwhile I’m going to get those books on the shelves and make the most of this place while we’re in it!

Hi honey, I'm home! Didja miss me?

What a saga! Six weeks offline took me through fury, despair, insanity, and finally into deep resignation. At that point the problem was suddenly fixed, and now I am jubilant, ecstatic, excited, whole.

The first month was down to our server, Gotalk (yes I will name names!). We called in the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the Gotalk Resolutions Team, our local member ... all to no avail. I'll spare you all the boring details of their dereliction of duty. They finally connected us on Feb 20th but didn't bother to tell us until we phoned yet again on 23rd. Then no-one could figure out why things weren't working our end. Finally a technician called in person to check things here - which had by then been checked many times by every other means - and, finding nothing wrong, went to the local exchange. As he thought, they had not yet got around to wiring us up, so he did that. In the process of which he found they had been going to connect us to a faulty wire – whenever they finally would have done it. So he changed that, and suddenly at 11.39 yesterday morning we were up and running. I told my writers' group in the afternoon that it was a measure of my great dedication to them that I actually showed up there instead of staying home to play on the net! As it was, Andrew and I were up till all hours catching up with voluminous correspondence. (Yes I have been able to use Neighbourhood Centre computers, but they are old and slow and much in demand, so it was very limited access.)

Whew! What a relief! Apart from feeling emotionally bereft without my online pals, it has been costing us a heap to use our landline instead of email, engin and Skype - not to mention the hours waiting in queues during the many calls to our server. Our bill jumped from an average of $80 per month to over $300 - and that's without downloads. Yes, we will be disputing it!

Well, there was one bonus from not being online. I'm now Secretary of the Neighbourhood Association, which involves sending files by email, amongst other things. When the Coordinator of the Neighbourhood Centre realised I didn't even have a flash drive (memory stick, for the uninitiated - of which I was one until recently) she arranged to get me one. 'There aren't many perks of your position,' she said, 'But this is one. We need our Secretary to have this piece of equipment.' And she got me one in a luvverly shade of magenta which of course matches everything I wear. It even has an attachment to clip onto my keyring. I feel flash all right!

Any'ow, apart from that we successfully moved, with much physical and financial help from loving friends and family. The new place is lovely! AND is lower rent. It has the same number of rooms but they are all smaller, so we have been doing a lot of what one pal calls de-materialising. The Op Shop has become used to us popping in every few days with yet another load of contributions. Nearly all the teddy bears have gone to bring joy to others, after all. The one I acquired first, which I actually bought new for myself some years ago – a very traditional, teddy-ish teddy – has been passed on to our new god-daughter, Flo, who was born 5 weeks early and is amazingly strong, present and calm, also beautiful. I have kept only the newest one, Snowy, who came from the same Op Shop a couple of months back ... partly because he was the smallest. (Also he is marked unsafe for children under 3 - but that's all right, I'm nearly 5.)

After the frantic effort to clean, pack and vacate the old place asap, we have been settling in here slowly - so no, there are no photos just yet. We're pretty right now, only a few more boxes of books to bring in from the garage. I devoutly hope to get them all on the shelves this weekend.

We have installed a cat door, which was not possible at the former home, and Levi and Freya love the new freedom. Like us, they seem to like the atmosphere in general much better than where we were.

I didn't want carpet but we have only a little, not at all offensive – and it's a Stainmaster! It's an easy-care sort of place, with a well-established native garden, also easy-care. There's a spacious patio area at the back, where we like to sit. Our neighbour is an artist about our vintage and a real sweetie with whom we discovered various friends in common. She has a boarder she's been trying to get rid of, who is apparently leaving soon, and her divorced son is staying with her until he finds a place. We like the son and don't warm to the boarder, but both blokes have been helpful in handyman ways during the move. We're even closer to the shops than we were. And we have now found the quickest and easiest way to get to the beach, after exploring all the other ways first. We love walking on the beach, and have been doing a lot of it.

Hope to catch up with everyone else's posts soonish.

Love and hugs to you all!