“thus began our longest journey together”
the last week of our trip home.
the pedicure has gone from 8 of my toes…it must be getting close to time.
we are enjoying the summer and family, but we will be happy to climb into our own beds. this trip has been an adventure for all of us and i am going to treasure the last few days.
i can feel it in the breeze on the dock. i can hear it lapping at the hull of the boats. i can smell it in the coming thunderstorm. i can see it as i close my eyes and go to sleep, exhausted from a day on the water…still rocking gently with the memory…
kieran reminds me so much of my brothers…
i guess i dropped a few without noticing and for that i am so so so sorry.
this post has been sitting, incomplete, in my drafts folder for days now as i started to type it and got pulled away by one of my children blessed with impeccable timing and the ability to whine at an octave that will induce migraines in under 30 seconds. i never got back to finish the words or edit the photos that go with it.
i have 3 other drafts under way, but they will linger for the moment as two of my creatures are sleeping and one is with the electronic babysitter… i am praying that buys me enough time to finish this.
i have a secret. i want to live on a commune. a commune with women. there are a few select women i have in mind. we can bring our husbands as someone will need to fix stuff for us while we are drinking wine.
ann is one of those chosen few that i would like to call my sister wife. i mean clover looks more like arlo’s sister than gemma’s sister….
i am not sure how the timing worked out, but our lives have followed similar paths finding each other in our wild youth and again as new mothers. now i am just waiting for her to catch up and realize that melbourne is calling her family. i am looking forward to trekking the exotic locals of our plans with her family.
i can’t believe how much indra and arlo have grown over the last year. it isn’t right that we have missed all that time. when i drove away from ann’s house, she had a tiny infant clutched to her body in a sling and last week i was reintroduced to that baby… he was no longer a baby, but a growing boy.
i mean to be fair, when i drove away, i had two tiny fetuses tucked inside my belly and this time i brought with me real live almost year old twins.
we got to celebrate our reunion at the “dinky store.” the grove was our spot when i still lived in los angeles. the american girl store called our name and indra and gemma acquired tiny replicas of themselves which they both named, dinky. the coffee bean called our name as well and ann and i got highly caffeinated. i looked forward to our grove dates and i miss them terribly all the way from melbourne.
this visit we had a proper lunch date in the american girl cafe (after a stop at coffee bean of course.) i wish they had a party package for “i only have a few days in town and it is nowhere near long enough to fill my heart.” kieran got sick, i think he faked a fever, so arlo was the man for the afternoon. gemma, clover and i were surrounded by my favorite ladies and had an amazing time.
indra even traded a trip to disneyland for the lunch party. that is love.
out of any of my friends, it is ann and her brood who i can actually envision meeting up with us in vietnam or bali. i would love to see indra and gemma experience a new land with each other…indra inspires gemma with her confidence. i would be excited to see what arlo could teach the twins.
ann, i miss you more than i am apparently able to tell you. i love you my friend.
we were able to have one giant week long sleepover in los angeles with our dear friends. it was perfect to be able to come “home” everyday to them.
it does not seem to matter how much time has passed since we have all been together…
it is as if we had seen each other just the day before.
i already miss them like crazy.
i swear we are being followed by a little organ grinding monkey piping out the big top theme song while the smallest members of this traveling troupe of accidental clowns turn one today!
happy birthday babies who were born in winter half a world away from the summery south where they are celebrating today. it just keeps getting better and better. we are so blessed to have you join us for the ride.
ps. chicken, sorry about the double ear infections. let’s make a deal. no more emergency room visits in any country for the next 12 months, ok?
i feel like i have broken up with los angeles and we are now just trying to be friends. there is an awkward familiarity to my days here, but i don’t want to get to comfortable because i know it will never work out between us. california, it is not you, it is me. i have changed.
this trip is harder than i thought it would be and in such different ways. i am physically spent. the twins are so tired that they get up from their sporadic naps yawning and gemma is running on borrowed energy fueled by treats and excitement. i am pretty sure that ardor is going to run out on the plane to virginia. there is not enough time in the california leg of our trip to see everything and everyone we want to see and that is breaking my heart because i know that i can’t make this trek again with the twins and gemma anytime soon. i know i will be back for my photography, but i will have to make those trips solo. we were so spoiled by gemma. she was born to travel and while alec and i were patting ourselves on the back for being such amazing parents to raise such an adaptable kid, the universe was having a chuckle and drawing up the blueprints for clover and kieran. the twins are not born globetrotters and we, as it turns out, had nothing to do with gemma’s innate gypsy tendencies.
the elephant in the yard is this…los angeles no longer feels like home, but melbourne is not completely home yet either. it is a big world to have no center. i miss my bed in australia, but i miss my best friends in america. my kids are aussies, but my mom is in virginia. where does that leave me? it leaves me only one place…this couch in this house in this neighborhood in this city in this moment. it does not mean that i can’t look forward to the wonderful things we will be doing next or be sad that the days of this trip have passed so quickly already, but really it bolsters my enjoy the moment viewpoint.
so who is meeting us half way next time? fiji anyone?
the adventure has begun and i the one good thing i can say about the flight is that my twins were not the worst babies on the plane, no that title goes to the 18 month old girl 2 rows in front of us. while i understand that there is only so much one person can do to soothe a screaming child, i can tell you the one thing a parent (and for sure not both parents) is absolutely NOT allowed to do while their child screams on a flight…they are not allowed to watch a movie while wearing their own Bose noise canceling headphones. i have sympathy, empathy even, but ah HELL NO. unless you brought a pair for everyone on the plane, you take those suckers off, put them on your kid and you stare in exasperated silence at dora or thomas the tank engine with a baby on your lap (even though you bought that baby his [& her!] own seat) for 15 hours like the rest of us.
a few images from the start:
i got a new laptop here in los angeles and while i have calibrated it, i have not yet loaded photoshop. i am working with lightroom and trying to figure out how to edit on this fancy RGB-LED screen. if only the whole world could see how things looked on my computer…it is amazing. even the crappiest photos look like art. that is my disclaimer for any terrible photos that i may post. please excuse me as i get used to this new set up.
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