Snapshot

Hello!!!!!!! I’ve missed you!!!!!!!!! To catch you up on life since the last post:

< Hazel in July | Hazel in October >

Moses and Hazel both suddenly matured after their birthdays, thus outdating almost everything I wrote in their birthday posts. Hazel now knows far more correct pronouns and tenses and is now chatting to anyone within earshot (my favourites from yesterday were “Excuse me? We having sparkling apple juice and pies for dinner” and “My daddy put my hair really up,” both of which were excitedly shared with a woman in a lift who could not have cared less about either piece of information). She demands that we leave her alone to put on her own shoes, and wishes she could dress herself without help, but isn’t quite there yet. Her face is looking older, too, although I can’t pinpoint how; I think her cheeks have deflated a bit, and she’s looking more like a little girl (our baby's growing up! Waaaaaaaaaaaah!). She’s also been regularly peeing on the loo, and I half-heartedly jumped on this opportunity to get her out of nappies; we bought her some undies and gave them a burl one morning, during which she innocently - but with alarming rapidity - doubled the amount of washing in the laundry basket. I gave up. This summer will last for a while – we’ll give toilet training another go early next year. She’s also realised she can say no, and sometimes calls out to us 15 minutes after we’ve put her to bed and tells us that Moses just woke her up, even though he’s quite obviously fast asleep in the bed opposite.

Moses has graduated from another swimming class and is now learning to breathe while doing freestyle, thus overtaking his father in swimming ability. He’s decided he’s desperate to start reading, and also that he doesn’t want to be a police officer when he grows up because they carry guns. (Swords are okay apparently; his philosophy on violence needs some tweaking before it’ll be completely consistent.) He also lost his first tooth! He bit into an apple last Wednesday and started shrieking that it had broken his tooth, which sent us all into a bit of a panic until Google reassured us that 5 was a perfectly normal age for the first tooth to fall out. After this, Alan and I both started getting a bit sniffly (Our babyyyyyyyy! etc., etc.) while Mo continued to bawl about the fact that something that was solidly stuck in his mouth an hour ago was now quite wrongly wobbling about and yet his mum and dad were looking at him with proud, teary eyes instead of treating the situation as the seriously dramatic dramafest it actually was. 

He calmed down upon realising the tooth fairy would bring a gift, and that this could be his last chance before Christmas to score the Ninja Turtle figurine he’d had his eye on. After some clarification (you only get a toy the first time you lose a tooth, after which the Fairy leaves a coin; maybe the Tooth Fairy actually exists, we’ll have to see!!!!; yes, she’ll still come despite the fact that you have no pillow), Mo went to bed excited, and then spent the next few days madly pushing the tooth this way and that, and asking me to do the same but with more force, and generally tried his darndest to get that stubborn tooth out of his face. Wednesday evening he was distraught over the fact that his tooth was going to fall out; Thursday evening he was distraught over the fact that his tooth hadn’t fallen out yet. Then on Monday morning he went and swallowed it while eating a pear.

Alan’s business is thriving, but he’s been kind enough to refrain from any smug “told you so”s (which I totally would have done if I were him). He’s moving up in the world – he no longer works from our bedroom but has shifted to a friend’s garage at the end of our street (ours has no mobile phone reception), and comes back here to make lunch/use the loo/take a break. It’s possible the heat will drive him into air-conditioned premises when summer officially arrives; we’ll see. He finishes work at 4pm and cooks dinner for us, so I can take the kids to the park after picking up Mo from preschool and return home to an already-cooked meal, which truly is as splendid as I imagined it must be last year when it was me doing the cooking and Alan doing the coming home.

As for me, I’ve just finished my fifth class of ten – I’m now halfway through my graduate diploma. This last class was incredibly intense and killed off all motivation to study anything ever again; I’m hoping the break over the next couple of weeks is refreshing and that my next subject restores some of my initial excitement about the course. Over the last six weeks I’ve read an entire textbook (~600 pages) as well as 50-or more journal articles on the topics of impulsivity and cross-cultural differences in self-esteem and self-presentation. I also read a novel (Life After Life by Kate Atkinson) and a memoir (The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland), but I can only blame myself for those two; obviously I need to find a new, non-reading way to unwind.

Anyway, the reading was more brain-deadening than inspiring. At one point I switched on enough to realise that I’d just typed the following in my notes:

• Shared and non-shared environments
• shared: environments that are shared between two individuals
• non-shared: environments that are not shared between two individuals.

One would hope I’d have remembered that without any help. 

Anyway, after submitting my last assignment 2.5 minutes late thinking I was actually submitting it 2.5 minutes early (turns out the deadline was 11:55, not midnight), thereby immediately losing 10 marks, and after reading the wrong chapter of my textbook in order to prepare for my final exam, thereby wasting three hours of my precious time and adding an extra three hours of right-chapter-reading, I AM DONE. I’m officially on holidays, and am one subject closer to this course being over. I’m not thinking beyond that, or if I do I picture fields filled with unicorns and liquorice allsorts beyond the horizon, rather than three further years of study.

That pretty much brings you up to speed; I plan to be back soon to talk about cakes and Friday Night Lights and anxiety (three separate topics, although thinking about how they may be related will keep me entertained for a little while now).

One Wild Life: Soul by Gungor

Love will swim the oceans deep and blue
Sail across the sky ‘til the sky is through
Reach between the space of solitude
Span all other worlds just to get to you

 (from Moon Song by Gungor)

The Liturgists podcast has been one of the main things keeping the faith-room of my mind/heart (where is it?) well-lit and open over the past year while I’ve boxed up doctrines and theology and shifted them out. (Yes, it’s a weird metaphor, but I have limited time.) Half of the team, Michael Gungor, is also half of the band Gungor, who’ve very recently released an album called One Wild Life: Soul. I’ve stumbled upon previous Gungor albums and songs in various places over the last couple of years; my favourites are Beautiful Things and this one:

So. I didn’t know much about Gungor’s music, but I heard about and related to Michael’s journey through the podcast (the Lost and Found episodes are amazeballs), and I imagined how good it could be to hear what that experience sounded like after having been kneaded into poetry and music by the band, which made me decide to throw caution to the wind and pre-order the album. 

I flipping love this album, I can’t stop listening to it. (Please send help.) It probably is just a coincidence that it turned up in iTunes on the same day I’d read through a particularly awful kids’ Bible (a birthday gift for Hazel) – featuring an excessive amount of people getting injured by an angry God – but I’m enjoying attributing it to divine timing anyway. My first 19 or so listens were mostly about enjoying the sound and getting teary each time the music swelled and slowly piecing together lyrics and ideas; the subsequent 413 or so listens have been enjoying each song as a whole. I love both Michael and Lisa Gungor’s voices. I love the layers of sound. I love that the album draws you in and takes you somewhere, but that it’s equally good just playing in the background. (I have no idea how to write about music – is this clear yet?)

I’ve had numerous moments of finally figuring out what a part of a song says and feeling my insides spontaneously warm with complete understanding and relief and solidarity. One of my favourite moments on the album is about two minutes into We Are Stronger – a song about unity with people who don’t see eye to eye – where it says, at the end of a longer list, “Every gay life matters | Fundamentalists matter | Here's to life and all its branches” and then launches into a full choir-y celebration that makes you (me) want to throw your (my) hands into the air and/or cry with joy. It’s glorious. (The “together we are stronger” part that comes after this gets stuck in Mo’s head all the time, and I love hearing him sing it to himself.)

My favourite song, though, is this one, because the lyrics are perfect and it makes me dance, both of which fall extremely high on my list of criteria for falling obsessively in love with a song:

Prepare the way of the Lord
Wielding mercy like a sword
Every mountaintop will be made low
Know, He holds the earth like dust
And His judgement comes to us
And His judgement is love
May our judgement be love

I also love (LOVE) the song You. And Moon Song. And Lion of Rock. In fact, all of the songs are gold, except for Introduction (I skip this one, but only because I like the second song too much and can’t wait to get to it… I actually have no memory of what the Introduction sounds like. I should listen to it again), and possibly Am I (this one’s growing on me).

Musically, the album covers a variety of styles, which (I’ve realised, since spreading my obsession with this one to previous Gungor albums) could probably be categorised as “Gungor Style” (not to be confused with “Gangnam Style”), so it’s possible that there’s a sound in there for you (it depends who “you” is. There is no death metal on this album). Theologically, this album may be challenging for some, and written off by others. I think it’s safe to assume that the author of the kids’ Bible I mentioned, for example, would find the idea of God’s judgment involving compassion rather than screaming and bloodshed heretical – he would probably not appreciate this album to the same, thrilling extent I do. 

One Wild Life: Soul by Gungor is on Spotify, so you can preview it there, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. It scores 47 out of 5 soaring harmonies.

Pub

from here

Before seeing a band a couple of months ago, my friend and I stopped in at a pub for a quick tipple. To get to the empty seats at the bar we had to make our way through a bunch of older men who were blocking the walkway, talking loudly, obviously drunk. As I moved through the group, one of the men reached out to shake my hand, and I gave it to him, not knowing what else to do. He did not let go. He placed his other hand on my lower back and asked for my name. I told him. My friend glanced around and realised I was no longer following her; she looked at me as if to say, “What’s happening?” and I looked back as if to say, “I have no idea.” I grinned at the man, which is my default expression when I’m feeling ridiculously uncomfortable. It would be far more useful to be able to react, instead, with a look of displeasure and a firm but polite, “Please remove your hands from my body immediately.” But, no. 

The man asked me what I did for work, and upon the mention of children, he released me. As I continued on towards my friend, he called out, “Annelise!” I turned. “You have a beautiful smile,” he said.

I smiled, stupidly, and felt ill.

///

Not long before that, I was down the street with Moses and Hazel. Mo was walking a few steps ahead of me, as he does. There were a few people out trying to raise money for Greenpeace, brightly dressed, pamphlets in hand. As Mo approached, one of the women stepped toward him, and held up her hand for a high five. He watched her carefully, still walking, obviously considering her offer. I looked on, thinking, “High five her, Mo! Don’t leave her hanging!” 

He left her hanging. He continued on, checking behind him a couple of times to see how she was reacting, and still thinking, thinking, thinking. A few metres beyond where she stood, Mo looked up at me and told me what had obviously been playing through his mind: “If I don’t want to, I don’t have to.”

My heart swelled. “That’s exactly right, buddy,” I told him, proudly. Fiercely.

///

Maybe when I grow up I’ll have healthy boundaries like my five-year-old.

Bad things cont'd.

from here

So my laptop now needs replacing. That makes seven things.

Also, in the last fortnight, my mum’s called with news of a close relative attempting suicide and another being diagnosed with breast cancer. My responses to these separate pieces of news very quickly turned from “Oh my goodness, how is she?!” to “Oh my goodness, what does that mean for me?” and then to “Oh my goodness, I’m so disgustingly self-centred.” I now feel a bolt of panic each time I see mum’s name appear on my ringing phone (WHAT’S HAPPENED NOW? I think immediately). You can't get anxious about this, I then think. That would be making this a you-issue, and this isn't about you. Two weeks ago there was no cancer in my family, and now there’s cancer in my family. Apparently it takes three people with cancer for it to be counted as “a family history of cancer,” but maybe I’ll be the second of those three, and my mum or one of my sisters will be the third? Maybe by the time Hazel’s my age there’ll be a family history of cancer. But you don’t have cancer, I tell myself. THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU.