A wise old owl

A wise old owl sat in an oak.

The more he heard, the less he spoke.

The less he spoke, the more he heard.

The wise old owl was a wise old bird.

 

(I don't know who wrote this little verse, it wasn't me, but I think it's worth sharing)

Note to self: you will NEVER be this young again

Today is my husband's 40th birthday and it's got me thinking about age. Even though 40 seems like such a big number (and I was 40 a couple of years back now), this day, today, I realised that I am younger than I will ever be again.

It seems obvious, right? But I'm sure it's something we forget in our day-to-day scrabble through the density of life. 

I tend to look in the mirror nowadays and wonder who is this middle-aged woman looking back, especially because I feel the same inside as I've felt for 20-odd years.

But it's dawned on me that some day in the future I will look back at the photos of myself now, and probably notice how young and fresh-faced I was 'back then'. Haven't you done that with photos of your parents, or your grand-parents? 

I am at a line in the sand that I will never come back to. So I just wanted to say to any of you out there who, like me, have despaired when looking in the mirror: youth (and beauty) is all relative,and completely subject to reinterpretation in hindsight.

 So smile and enjoy now. Because you're worth it.

Who has a post-apocolyptic skill-set?

Every now and then my mind wanders to what it might be like in a post-apocolyptic world. Am I the only one? Just like in science fiction, I imagine the whole system we rely on for food, clothing and shelter has collapsed; infrastructure is destroyed; shops are looted; travel is only possible on foot; food is scarce. I know it's a horrendous thought, and I only entertain it to, well, to entertain myself. Like watching '28 days' or 'The Road'.

The way the thought experiment goes in my mind is, if we were to find ourselves living in post-apocalyptic world, what would we do? Say we woke up and our house was crumbling around us, buildings everywhere were destroyed, and only a few people had survived. What then? Would we seek out other survivors and band together? How would we be if there were more people than resources? Would we turn on one another? And then, would we have the skills to find food, clothing and deal with illnesses. These days we all have skillsets that pre-suppose infrastructure and a functioning economic and health system, so how would we go if we had to shift to survival mode?

Recently I've come to realise how little I know about my own environment (even with a zoology degree). I don't know which plants can be eaten and used for medicines. Is there a natural asthma treatment? I really don't know how to go about hunting and butchering a roo or a deer. Some people would find this easy (my husband included), me not so much. I hope my husband survives (for more reasons than your skills with dead things, honey).

The only skill I can claim to have that could possibly be useful (besides knowing how to use a mortar and pestle) is spinning yarn and knitting. I learnt to spin wool on a peddle-driven spinning wheel a few years ago, whilst living in darkest, coldest Alaska. I used the soft, warm under-fur of pre-historic looking, ice-age-surviving muskoxen (quiviot) and learnt to spin it into a heavenly soft brown, multi-ply yarn. I then knitted the yarn into the warmest scarves I have ever known. Even though I won't be harvesting quiviot, I imagine I could learn to spin any type of wool and I could be the town yarn-maker.

I also imagine the apocalypse survivors would start again with an economic system of exchange - once the dust had settled.  I hope the surviviors might include friendly folk who know how to make electricity, build a functioning fridge, melt down all the metal that can be scavanged and turn it into useful things. I know some pretty enterprising folk. I reckon the surviving women of my town would quickly set up an exchange arrangement: I can see a roster for child minding so a hunting party could bring back a carcass; I can see communal meal-cooking (hopefully the some of our local Megabatch women would be apocalypse survivors). I can barter my yarn for that all important asthma treatment.

So I'm not advocating preparing yourself for the apocalypse; I don't think we should be stock-piling canned food and building bunkers. And I especially don't think we should live in fear of such an unlikely event (or even live in fear of a likely event, but that's a whole 'nother story). That said, I think a little sharing and swapping within our communities never goes astray.

The processing of my inner-grrrrrrr

Today I'm cranky. My whole body is abuzz with crankiness. A bunch of things have happened that are culminating today in - well, just in 'grrrr!'. I won't go into the causes, but now I have to decide what to do about it.

Mostly I feel like having a gigantic adult tantrum and throwing stuff. I feel like firing off angry emails. I feel like burning bridges. I feel like it's my turn to be angry and self-indulgent. To make other people walk on egg-shells around me. But I know that's not really going to solve anything. And isn't a good look to the kids ('mummy wants you guys to learn to control your tempers, but don't watch while I let a whole wolf-pack of aggro off the leash').

Another option is to just keep my head low, ride it out and maybe the grrr will just pass. The problem with that option is that I'm on a knife-edge all day and any little thing could send me postal. That's not a good way to spend the day.

So what else? I often find writing helps me process, it's a way of letting go of whatever's in my head, so that's why I've turned to this blog. Welcome to the processing of my inner-grrr.

Here's how it's going: all the little and big things that are getting my goat have already happened, and can't un-happen. So, when I look at it with open eyes (and try to do it with an open heart), all I can really do is change my reaction to those things. Right now I'm still too cross and don't feel like opening my heart; but I'm going to take a deep breath (or 10, or 100 - the way I'm feeling it might take 100) and start by letting go of as much of the grrr as I can.

So if step one is to breathe. Step two is to let go of the reigns a little. Today I'm going to say 'yes, sure, why not?' when the kids ask for little things, things I would normally disallow: 'yeah, sure, you can watch TV today, have another ice-block, stay in your PJs all day. Why the hell not, hey? Let's all stay in our PJs today'.

Step three (and I'm working this out as I go) is to say 'no' a little. That sounds contradictory to step two, but it depends on what the questions are. If people are asking more from me than I feel I can give, today I'm going to say 'no, I'm sorry but I can't right now'. This feels like it stops the slings and arrows from coming in over my fortress walls. These three steps are already helping me feel a little lighter.

Step four: I really want to take some time to look at the stuff that got me to this point. Who knows, maybe I can learn a little. I'm not going to do that here, publicly, but I am going to pull out my diary and write it all down. I'm going to have a good ole rant. I don't know why it feels better to write it out, maybe it just gets it out of my head a little. And I feel like someone is listening: me. And that's all that really matters.

Step five: I'm giving myself permission to feel low today. Not every day can be an up day and I think it's important to be realistic about that. Is it possible that we are so pummelled with images of an ideal world, of happy, happy, joy, joy (in advertising and all around us), that we feel like we're not doing it right when the happy, happy isn't happening for us? We can't be up all the time - the up would loose it's up-ness without a down every so often.

So, the verdict is a bit of breathing, riding it out, processing, having a PJ day, saying yes and saying no, and letting that all be ok.

Ahhhh, I'm feeling a little better already - thank you blogosphere.

The natural order of things

In my twenties I spent a lot of time tripping around this amazing planet. I was considering leaving the world of finance and, as an antedote to the boozy lunches and to the stockmarket ticker in my head, I went to some raw and wild places. Places like Africa, the Amazon, the Galapagos. I count my blessings every day that I've seen such wonder. Those places were like a drink of crystal clear water. Those places awakened me to nature and to a yearning to understand what I was seeing. I wanted to know why the boobies had blue feet, and why the boy and girl boobies wave their blue feet about when they're deciding whether to 'get it on'. Why do boy frigate birds have big red balloons blown up under their throats and then fling their heads back to show their balloons to the girls who fly above, choosing who to shag. And how did that outlandish behaviour even start? And why do zebras like to hang out with wilderbeest but not so much with elephants? I needed to know more; had to have explanations, patterns, boxes to put things in.

So I returned to Australia, gave stockbroking the old heave-ho and enrolled in zoology. Like any mature-age student, I buckled down to take it all in. I learnt some amazing things about natural systems and behavioural evolution. I categorised the wild into family, genus and species. Patterns had names, the world fell into a whole bunch of categories. But one thing that has stayed with me: it's all connected; the world is dynamic - nothing stays the same for long. Change is everywhere, everywhen.

Fast forward to the here and now: I have two kids, a house, dog, cats and chickens. So far from Africa, but still so much the same. I often forget that the laws of nature apply here too. But every now and then I realise that we're all part of it. Of course my kids' behaviour has an evolutionary basis. Of course their play is a way of learning skills they'll use as adults. Of course the dog guards me like a resource and growls at the cats if they come near.

And, the big one, is that in all of nature (and so, of course, my home is not excluded), order tends to chaos. And there's not a bloody thing we can do about it. That concept is helping me cope with the crazy so much better. And like everything, the crazy will change. Probably I'll miss it when they're grown.

Does anyone else think sleep is kinda interesting?

The dog is whimpering, her feet are trotting, she's huffing and puffing, twitching, her ears moving back and forth. What on earth is she dreaming about? "Chasing rabbits", we used to say about our old labrador. Probably was. And for this dog it's probably chasing balls. And the backyard cockies.

I just want to say that I think sleep is pretty bloody interesting. And so is dreaming. We don't really know why we do it, but we all do it, without question. We understand why we eat and drink, what's happening inside our digestive tract and how food creates energy. But what do we understand about the physiology of sleep? Not very much, is my guess.

It gets dark, we say goodnight to one another, lay down in our warm beds, across the country, the streets empty, the lights go out and it is quiet. We all sleep. And then the sun comes up and we all stir, climb out from under our blankets, rub our eyes and say 'good morning' and off we go again. Have any of you ever thought - say, in the middle of the night - that pretty much everyone in your town is lying still right now, asleep? Like we've all agreed that's what we do at night. Like robots; machines shutting down for regular maintenance.

Birds do it: my chickens put themselves to bed at twilight every night. If we disturb them (say to grab the eggs from underneath their warm bellies) they hardly stir, like they're totally away in another zone. Chimps make make fresh beds every night out of leaves and curl up in them. But do bees sleep? And sharks? Don't they need to keep moving to stay alive? Cows and horses sleep standing up - how does that work? Why don't their legs collapse under them?

And what's the go with anaesthetic? Why is it that you can sleep and realise time has passed, but if you go under an anaesthetic it's like you awoke an instant after you nodded off. The doctor says: "I'm going to count down from ten and you probably won't hear me when I get to one: ten, nine, eight, so how was that? The surgery all went really well, how are you feeling?". So what's different about sleeping under anaesthetic?

I know we need sleep, that we function like drunks without it, but what is our body actually doing? What's the process that's going on when we lay down, close our eyes and drift away? Are our cells repairing damage? Can they only do that when we stop most of our other functions? What is going on in there?

And dreams? Are we sorting the day's events into memory folders, is it just leftover random noise from our busy minds all folding together to make a weirdly disjointed stageshow in our heads?

So many questions and I don't really have any answers. If I could choose another career (and I've already swapped about a few times, so I think I probably won't), I'd definitely look into sleep. That is all.

The stories of our parents' lives - so much we don't know

I've decided to embark on a new project, and I thought I'd share it with you - that way I've said it out loud and feel more accountable for making it happen.

I figure everyone has at least one story in them, probably many more than one. And so often those stories go untold. My mum has spent the past couple of years piecing together our family tree. In the process, she's discovering snippets about her rellies, little bits of information that let her build a picture of who each person was. It even seems a couple of the sly dogs had more than one wife (at a time)! Scandalous!

All this picture-building got me thinking about my own parents' stories. What did they do with themselves before I came along, what were their aspirations, their favourite ways to spend time, where did they travel, and why? What made them choose a particular path over another? I also feel the need to know my husband's parents' stories. These people are so integral to our lives, so special to us, but there are a million things we don't know about them, their lives. What made them who they are?

So, here's my project: I'd like to spend a whole bunch of time with each of them and record their stories. I think it's called taking an 'oral history'. With their permissions, I'd like to share a few highlights here.

So watch this space.