Lulu Carter

today

I'm not sure about today.I think if I could go back to yesterday and had actually slept last night, today might be going a little smoother.Perhaps the realisation that next week we fly home ,and that once there it will all be just as we left it,is compounding things for me.Perhaps its just the wind.Either way I found myself thinking of this poem which I truly do not think I have had cause to think of since my school days.Funny that a modern day film about olden day romance would help me find some rhythm in my day.

grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

the courage to change the things I can

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr

For some reason I find it a little " arghh" that this is the prayer used by AA and other help programs but then again that is the beauty of it.It can be applied to anything and in its simplicity lies its magic.

Clear and simple.I do so wish that life was like that sometimes.Just a little.

 

Being 9

I think it must be rather tough being nine.I don't remember it as a specific time when I felt more capable or able to challenge barriers, but I see this in Henry and I can imagine the same emotional roller-coaster was perhaps going on within me at this age. I grew up in a different environment and I have strong memories of feeling unable and utterly incapable of being myself.I do remember feeling fiercely defiant about things in my mind though.

I was sitting on the leather couch in the lounge room in my brown zip up boots.I didnt have my boots on the couch, but when my mother came in she was adamant that I had to take them off.No.I don't even think I said it out loud but I remember looking at my mother and thinking it.It was purely because she was telling me too and at that moment I felt old enough to decide if I could have them on or not.I have the funniest memory of the battle that ensued as she tugged at my boots to get them off and I shook my feet so she couldn't get at the zips.I'm sure it was around the age of nine and I'm sure that I remember it so clearly because of the feeling of independence that surged in my head.

Yesterday Henry had an afternoon with my sister which is something that really fills him up emotionaly.He is positively buoyant when out alone with adults and really does appear taller and happier.His little brother is his constant companion, his partner in crime we often say as they are literally inseparable, but he has always been someone who craves time alone with an adult. So..yesterday as he enjoyed feeling grown up and very special I guess he felt able to tackle things that perhaps normally he wouldn't.

In the London science Museum is an incredible 3D flight simulator.Apparently they queued for about half an hour watching others get in and out and flip,spin,shoot for the moon or plummet towards the earth.The sign said you had to be nine.I suspect that you also need an adult with you if you are freshly nine.Given that I am going to be an auntie this year, my sister was not allowed in the machine but assured him she would take lots of photos.They discussed what he might do once inside.A nose dive.Hmm.

Henry entered,was strapped in,locked in and switched on.He put it into a nose dive.My sister took photos as the unit went vertical.Bad move.The controller turned the machine off and cleared the crowd.My sister said she thought he might have hit the emergency button by accident until they opened the hatch and she saw his face.No tears.Just clean,sharp terror.Right at that moment he needed saving and cuddling and he didn't care who saw or what they thought.Later at home he was embarrassed.A new awareness of what others may think of you and how that makes you feel.How I wish he never had to go down that road.Life would be so much happier if we never learned to curb our feelings and behaviour because of that.

This child of mine swings between needing to be scooped up for kisses and assurances to outright rudeness and refusal of any request that has been put his way.Tantrums that explode in an emotional frenzy where,admittedly, he is not the only one with a fierce look and a raised voice.Yet he will come soon after and apologise with contrition.He is aware of the unpleasantness and also ( astoundingly) the alternative outcome that was possibe. 

Is this adolescence? Is nine the diving board?

I look at him and I see my sweet faced baby and other times those brows come down and the blue eyes darken and I think-who are you?? what have you done with Henry?

The thing that makes me sad is that he really doesn't know what comes over him.Of course I do.Its hormones and a growing mind and an instinctive need to assert himself.He just doesn't know how to do it yet.He gets stressed and angry and like a giant wave it surges through him.Its not all the time thankfully as he doesn't like it any more than we do and I see him try so hard to not react.Other times it is of course a battle he won't win. I don't know how to help him relax and just be happy and silly.I don't know how to treat him like the big boy he can be but also parent the small boy he still is.It is a very fine line and as he swings back and forth in his maturity,so does the level of reasoning,discipline and responsibility bestowed on him.And he feels persecuted.That is how I have summed up the devastation on his face when he feels wrongly disciplined and it is heart breaking.Shoulders slump,his face crumbles and I remember that feeling so well from my own childhood yet here it is again.Only its on my babies face and I see his heart breaking from the let-down. 

He has been skipping along lately delighted by the prospect of turning ten at the end of this year.It must sound so wonderfully grownup. I noticed him looking at a boys bedroom in an interiors magazine the other day that he told me he was big enough for.It was the room of a twelve year old and whilst the boy in the magazine looks delighted with the room,I know Henry would crave so many aspects of the comforting space that he currently sleeps in.Perhaps nine is the age of rocketing forth into the land of being (seemingly) independent and leaving childish times behind.I do hope not.I treasure the silly things he still appreciates and needs from us. I love that he can be a complete goose one moment,then discuss the most obscure topic with passion and skip off to bed to re read one of his beloved Tintin books. The fact that tucked into one of those moments might be the delightful term " whatever" tossed my way is surely parental collateral damage.The hormonal tornado that popped in for just a moment and then left us alone again.Watching all this is like watching him peel off his little boy sweetness.What replaces it? Or does it merely battle within only to hopefully emerge intact yet matured? 

I want to put him in a tupperware container and pop him in the freezer.I'm not ready for my little boy to decide to be big just yet but I clearly don't have any say in this one.I just hope I can help him through the woods without tripping him up too often as I fumble with how best to be the mother he needs and let him be the big boy he is surely becoming.I just hope it doesn't hurt too much.Either of us.

while sitting in the kitchen

Tonight I found myself explaining the seemingly impossible to a seven year old who saw a photo of a little boy pop up on the news as they talked about his funeral.The same little boy who sat on the roof of his car and told the resuer to save his younger brother first which he did.The cruelest fate made it impossible for this boy and his mother to be resued in time.Unimaginable.

A seven year old asks a lot of questions.They listen to our hushed and horrified conversations so, when you begin thinking you will get by with a fast and simple ( childproof ) answer, you find yourself explaining that nobody could swim against the whoosh of water that literally ripped children from parents arms and stole adults through the back wall of their timber home.They want to know about everyone and everything and the friends and friends of friends who had to be evacuated from their homes.They want to know every detail.They don't believe what you tell them because it is too shocking.Despite the censorship you apply to the story, you are relieved that they dismiss most of it and will sleep nightmare free in their bed.

I'm sure you have all read about the devastating floods.They were not the only horror to happen around the world that week but they are the one I can direct you too if you think you might like to do something.

There are various auctions:

Toni  -this is the master list for online auctions

Anna Maria Horner - she has a very gorgeous quilt up

Corrie - Corrie has a quilting sew-a-thon happening here

and of course you can go straight to the Premiers Flood Appeal if you would rather.

 

what can I say-2 in a day-sometimes its been known to happen

In under two weeks we will be back.Back to what, everyone tells me, has been a hideously wet and sticky summer so far.I thought I had better do some summer dreaming as the reality will be my very white skin hidden under floaty layers in some attempt to hold on to the good it does me to be over here with an ozone layer.Plus I might frighten someone.

Go and have a play at polyvore.Its a good way to kill the time it takes for your children to stop trying to kill each other and fall asleep.

I made those eyes

I must say I like the way the newly nine year old is using them.Last night I cleared Henrys photos onto this computer but I did not have a good look at them until a moment ago.Silly me.

Above are shots he took in Rome and the last two were yesterday at the Tate Modern(more on the Tate later)

Some have a pink hue which explains the fiddling he was doing on his camera.I have no doubt that the pink is a mistake but I really like it.Isn't it interesting to see what they see?

 

 

 

learning

to accept flying even though it terrifies me

 

*england on boxing day covered in a blanket

 

that the reward is amazing 

*ummm..i think you all know this one!

that i will indeed walk into a place i never really thought i'd see and that i would be so overwhelmed with choice, i would only take home a couple of things

( p a t h e t i c ! )

*central park looking back to 5th ave and upper east side

that my boys will not only be fine for a week (our first nights ever apart) without me but they will be taken on a road trip to places still on my list and come home with passport stamps and memories their mummy doesn't share

*coming in to land at fiumicino airport in rome

looking out my window while flying in to rome and being thrilled that the landscape actually looks like italy

that we can never eat pizza outside of italy again and have it taste as good as being in this moment

that people build the most incredible structures using their hands and imagination 

 

that some places are just how you imagined them yet, at the same time, your wildest dreams could not have prepared you for the reality

that star wars clone troopers must come with us everywhere and that ruins make excellent battle fields for them

As you can see we are still away and having an incredible time.

You might also have popped in and thought " who's this" ?. I realised that one of the reasons my blogging became so sporadic was that I felt that I could only visit you here if I had something interesting to show you and with the craziness of last year my "making" time all but vanished.This year I have restructured things to allow myself time for things I want to accomplish and, while doing this, I decided that this little old blog of mine would suit me better as a journal.I'm not suggesting that I won't make things to show you but I won't rely on that from myself-especially as there are bloggers out there who are truly crafty and I can't compete with that nor do I want to.They doing an amazing job and I simply don't as I have too many other things I want to share with you as well.It was an interesting revelation!

So perhaps we could say that coming up to my third blog birthday I am finally finding my feet. I'm not sure how you could describe this blog of mine from now on but hopefully you will find a thread within it that you connect with. Its what I am also hoping to find myself. This travelling we have been doing has not felt like a holiday as such but more of an awakening especially from myself.I have never travelled as an adult and, until New York, my husband and I had never travelled together.Work has always got in the way and the nature of working in the film industry is that you work when it is there so, naturally, life gets bumped in favour of the job.We miss weddings,birthday parties,milestones,holidays,dinners with friends and much more.This trip has shown us how unbalanced that has become.How much is out there and how great we are when seeing it together. Occasionally life must bump the work in order for you to connect and grow.Not just with each other but with those around you. So that is our 2011 aim.To feed the really important things.All of us.

 

clear,crisp and full of possibilities

Happy New Year!! How fast it zips by us already as the first week of the first month is already nearly over.How does that happen?

I really love the end of the year.The anticipation with the children and the making,decorating, squirrelling away of treasures from "you know who" and the endless chaos that somehow always makes sense.

But January.I adore this very first month with all the possibilities that flow from it and the cleaning away of all that we have finished with.Its like a gift still unwrapped.You can do anything with your year in January.You write your dreams and plan your successes and you declare that this year will be the year.Perhaps none will come to be ,perhaps they will.It doesn't matter. What matters is that right now,anything can happen.

So 2011.Welcome.Lets see what you might do.