Fitzchalmers family shoot 09

Originally uploaded by quinnums

Thanks Q!

I have a big post brewing but in the meantime, have you noticed how much better things are under an Obama administration? There is life on Mars, and when people fall out of the sky over New York City, they live.

These days when I get noticeably emo around the blickets, even Julia blinks at me with her lemur eyes and says “Do youse miss yours mom?” I say that I do, because missing my mother is as good a synechdoche for what I do feel as anything else.

Ever since my very happy week in Barraba, my pointed longing for Mum and Sarah and Kelly has taken the form of mah jong mania, since that’s all we did over the break: eat my Dad’s Christmas cake and play and play and play. Jeremy had to pry me away from the tiles to go to the airport.

As part of my efforts to fall in love with San Francisco again – efforts in which San Francisco and the Bad Cat are colluding, the city by turning on the fragrant lemon-yellow angled winter sunlight I can never resist, the Bad Cat by sitting on me and purring loudly – I wandered up Grant Street to buy myself a mah jong set. I knew exactly what I wanted: brocade, trays, finely carved tiles, a good lurid bird for One Bamboo. My Dad’s set, in short.

It quickly became clear that mah jong has fallen out of fashion in the new China. There were lots and lots of blobby ugly plastic tiles in plastic boxes. There were a few more interesting bone tiles in boxes apparently lined with old Chinese newspapers. There were no sets I wanted.

I walked halfway to North Beach and found an antique store, transparently covering some kind of money laundering operation. The very helpful Russian gentleman who ran it dug up an original 1950s E S Lowe Bakelite set, complete with the marbled plastic benches. It was marked for sale at $8,100 but he offered me a deal: “You pay cash? Visa? $1500?” I told him I would have to go away and think about it. “How about $500?” Ordinarily I would be very pleased with a $7,600 markdown, but it’s selling for $26 right now on eBay, so…

My set was in the last store I looked in, almost back at the office, long after I had given up hope. It’s not perfect and I devoutly hope the sweet Chinese woman was incorrect when she told me the tiles are ivory and bamboo – it’s almost certainly bone. The case is shabby and sun-faded and frayed, but hey, so am I. Who wants to play?

We had the annual Three Rachel Dinner this evening, and the restaurant was sweltering. I sat next to Rach H, who is pretty and delicate and who has little blue birds to help her get dressed in the morning, and I felt like a sweaty elephant. Still, the food was good – roasted figs and goat cheese, kingfish with potatoes fried in duck fat – and the company was even better.

Jan looked after the little kids. They all baked together, and when Jeremy and I got home the children were sprawled asleep and Jan was a little floury and frazzled, but happy. We sat in the playroom with the door open to the terrace. When the weather changed at midnight, a great cool mouthful of blue-green air stroked my back like a friend’s loving hand.

Run.
Write.
Listen.
Be kind to Jeremy and the girls.
Be cheerful and competent at work.
Have dates with my girlfriends.
Count my blessings.

On our way back from collecting Jeremy in Tamworth, we passed a huge sand monitor on the southbound lane of State Highway 95, also known as Fossickers Way. I thought it was alive; Dad and Jeremy said it was dead. Dad turned around to look. I was all “Be careful!” but my big atheisticky skeptical papa said “He’s my totem animal,” so that was the end of that.

The goanna was dead of course – half his poor head was gone – and he stank to high heaven, but he was so beautiful, his patterned skin almost unmarked, the green double-chins still iridescent in the sun. Dad got a little shovel out of the back of the Terios and put him over on the side of the road, so that the carrion-eaters who fed on his carcass wouldn’t also be hit by cars.

Dad says they are called racehorse monitors because they can run so fast, and that he once knew a pet one called Phar Lap.

As this year winds to its ignominious conclusion, I am defiantly focused on the things in my life that I am happy about. These include but are not limited to Claire, growing like a weed, gap-toothed, volatile, brilliant and charming; Julia, rose-lipped, wide-eyed, white-haired and implacable. Jeremy, muscular from wushu and still as funny and even-tempered as ever, continues to put up with me despite my cranky shenanigans. Australia is beautiful, my favourite beach golden and opal, the air full of sunshine and birdsong. Mangoes here smell like childhood and hope.

We still have all four of the childrens’ grandparents, and fine grandparents they are too. All siblings are likewise present and accounted for, and most are happily pair-bonded to boot. My niece and nephew Kelly and Ross are delightful and intelligent and obviously closely related to my own daughters. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a bit wet, but he’s no John Howard, and for this we are all extremely grateful. Similarly Obama, while under more pressure than any one man should have to bear, has shown an enviable track record of steely nerves, and his cabinet appointments are thoughtful and encouraging.

The world is full of books to read and films to watch, meals to make and eat, music to hear and play, science museums to explore, valleys and forests and mountains and beaches to hike and camp at and loll upon. I’m glad there is a Kiva.org and a Human Rights Watch and a Medicins Sans Frontieres, a St Luke’s Hospital and a Monroe Elementary School. The same Pacific washes Sydney and San Francisco. The same tide that washes my past away carries me forward into my childrens’ future.

I brought all my summeriest clothes and it is overcast and a bit cool. But we had a memorably splendid Christmas. The girls were up at six and their presents were opened by seven. The clan Fitzhardinge assembled in Pymble for a bang-up lunch of cucumber soup and cold cuts and sweet chili jam and glazed carrots and potato salad and greens. Claire got yet another birthday cake, and then the sun came out and I lay on Aunty Jan’s lawn to absorb its healing rays and listen to the rosellas and the cockatoos.

The childrens’ behaviour has been delightful for days. I cannot imagine what’s gotten into them, but it’s making me beam inside.

Completely failed to Nanowrimo yesterday or today; a bit distracted deciding the election the way I fly every plane I passenge in – KEEPING IT ALOFT BY PURE FORCE OF WILL.

The best thing about leaving San Francisco is always coming home. Today we ventured as far as Mountain View! The horror! But we zoomed back up 280 into a perfect golden evening over the Sunset District. Everything was bright and clear-edged as it is in southern France.

After I dropped Karin off and turned Hedwig for home I realized that I would see Jeremy and the girls soon. It was a great warm wave of joy.

XTREEM CUTENSS ZOMG

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Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

World’s sweetest toddler meets world’s sweetest puppy. Everyone in range dies of teh cute.

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Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

I feel almost human again.

Julia and I are having a love affair. She will gaze deeply into my eyes before declaring, “I LOVE you mama,” and kissing me on the lips.

The other day Blanca left when we were in the bath. Jules was disconsolate upon finding her gone. She said:

“I am sad because Blanca went home and I miss her.”

Are two year olds supposed to construct perfect sentences with two conditional subclauses? Just wondering.

• Last night she fell asleep with a book open in front of her, again.
• She can recognize her own name written down.
• This morning as we were getting on the bus, she touched my hair. “Your hair is wet?” “Yeah, from the shower.” She grinned all over and stroked my face so gently. “You all clean!”
• She’s an unbelievably tender kid, always stroking your arm or face or tracing flower patterns on your skin.
• When we were in the emergency room for Claire’s cut head, she sat quietly next to me and kissed my belly. She knew it was a difficult situation, and wanted to help but not be in the way.
• She has taught me that two-year-olds can be tactful.
• I can never do enough good in my life to deserve this blessing.
• It’s all about the possessives. “My mummy!” “My friend Claire!” “My prilly dress! Right? Okay!”
• A recent song:
  

  “My friend Daddy, my friend Daddy, we’re going to Rainbow!
  “My friend Daddy, my friend Daddy, he’s mummy’s, I know.”

• She gives the best kisses.
• She likes soup. “Yay! Soup!”
• Underestimate her at your peril. Her superpowers include mightiness, a will of iron and extreme volume.
• Bebe the hellspawned cat genuinely likes her.
• It’s as if the white lights of Burning Man and Mardi Gras had become a small girl, and walked among us.

I come home from a run to find an audience of toys on the sofa. I join them for the cabaret!

Miss Claire Fitzhardinge, “I like to laugh”

I like to laugh, I like to laugh
because I am a kookaburra!
If you see a laughing bird, that is a kookaburra!
If you see a laughing jaguar, that is a kookaburra jaguar!
If you see a laughing person, that is a person who is funny sometimes.
If you see a laughing oyster, that is a kookaburra oyster!
If you see a flying jaguar, that is an eagle jaguar!
If you see a flying cat, that is an eagle cat!

Miss Julia Fitzhardinge, “I am a princess”

(Sweetly) I am a princess
That is all.

Mr Jeremy Fitzhardinge, “Slugs and winter”

Slugs hate the winter because they get frozen.

(Claire: Not slugs and winter. Sleds and winter.

Jeremy: Oh!)

Mr Jeremy Fitzhardinge, “Sleds and winter”

Sleds don’t like the winter because they have to do all the work.
They like the summer because then they can sit in the shed and think
Mmm, it’s warm!
And when a man gets old and remembers his sled, he says
“Rosebud!”

Entire cast, “Sleds and winter” reprise

Rosebud!
Ro-o-ose bu-u-u-d!
Rose BUUUUUUD!

Curtain.