So how’s your year been? Mine’s been pretty harsh. To be honest, I just wanted to bump that last post out of the top of the blog.

I gotta say, these here shiny kittenses helped a lot.

Nurse Karen: It’s great that you two have such a good relationship with your mother. I envy you. I don’t have that.

Sarah: She is the best mum in the world.

Mum: I don’t know what I did.

Me: You always took our side, even when we were in the wrong.

Sarah: You loved us unconditionally.

Me: You took out a second mortgage so I could go to college overseas.

Mum: Did you know, I’d forgotten about that!

Me: AND THEN YOU FORGOT ABOUT IT.

I’ve slept on Mum’s pull-out sofa bed the last couple of nights. I am expert in the use of Mum’s TV, DVD and breathing bed. I have the freedom of the hospital kitchen.

I leave for an hour or two at a time, to spend time with Dad (whose dementia doesn’t comprehend the severity of Mum’s illness, a perverse blessing), to hang with my therapy wolf (who put a vast paw through my rose gold necklace, but I found the charms in the grass, so it’s okay), to swim endless slow laps at the pool.

Mum’s still funny and brave. From my Twitterstream:

• Nurse: “I thought, when I looked in the other day, you look like a family on summer holiday in a motel. I thought, I wanna sit with them!”
• Somewhat difficult night but “I’m all right really, you know,” says Mum.
• Sarah: “I’m going to make zucchini slice. I feel like a zucchini slice.” Mum: “You look like a zucchini slice and all.”
• “Sarah’s coming over in five minutes.” “Is she bringing the Bailey’s?” It’s 8am.
• “Mum, you’re amazing. You are so strong.” “People keep saying that. How else would I be?”

So my darling old catty chose a fine time for her kidneys to fail. That’s not entirely sarcastic: I was dreading making final decisions for her, and now Jeremy will do it for me. He brought her home and is giving her fluids and she’s feeling better and will have a peaceful death surrounded by love. Still, yesterday was not easy, and when I said goodnight to mum and she hugged me I was shaking.

“Shh, shh,” she said, stroking my hair.

“Oh no, don’t comfort me or I will start to cry, and if I do I’ll never stop.”

“Yes you will,” she said serenely, and rubbed my back.

In one way yesterday was magnificent. She has had the pump installed – it’s called a syringe driver – and now she is on a continuous dose of morphine. For the first time since she got sick, last May, Mum has zero pain.

Before Big left he said: “What’s humbling is, she isn’t just content. She’s happy.”

My brother and I arrived to find Mum with her pain under control: radiant with delight at the sight of us, quick to laugh, interested in everything. The palliative care room is beautiful, with a sofa for guests and a door onto a patio. We brought in the quilt that Mum’s friends at the Claypan made for her and it lights up the space.

We talked and talked.

Me: “I asked Dad what he liked most about the years you two were traveling, and he said: ‘Lizards.'”

We all fall about.

Big: “…although lizards are cool.”

Me: “They are!”

Sarah: “Remember the big goanna in Townsville?”

Mum: “With the plastic bag?”

Sarah: “That was amazing.”

Me: “I don’t know this story!”

Sarah: “This goanna – he was huge, like three or four feet long – apparently he hung around the picnic ground a lot, and the day we were there he turned up with a shopping bag wrapped around his head and caught in his jaw.

“So Dad lay down on the grass and the goanna, this wild goanna, it came up to him.

“Everyone in the picnic ground stopped talking. Dad carefully unwound the bag, and the goanna opened his mouth and let Dad lift it off his teeth. Everyone was staring. You could have heard a pin drop.”

Me: “WHY. ARE THERE. NO PICTURES.”

Mum: “We were just caught up in the moment.”

Sarah: “This was before people had cameras all the time. The thing could have savaged Dad. I remember it as being four or five feet -”

Mum, laughing: “Not THAT big -”

Sarah: “No, but in my memory, it’s a Komodo dragon, you know, dripping blood off its teeth.”

Me: “With WINGS.”

Big: “Breathing FIRE.”

(Dad blogged it!)

What a year, eh? I said goodbye to Bella and to Jackson; they’re both knee deep in clover, eating their adorable heads off. Dad’s a little worse, Mum’s much better. I called her during her birthday party yesterday. We get another Christmas in Barraba with mah jongg and too much marzipan and Baileys. After that, who knows? Claire and Julia are happy at their respective schools, although they don’t like doing homework, an attitude I am not necessarily helping to overcome when I mutter to them that “Homework is boring.” Although I did vow before I had them never to lie to them, so.

A crowd of us piled into my living room yesterday to drink tea and champagne and watch spellbound the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, and it could have been written for me, it touched so many of my id vortices: my older and younger selves trying to reconcile with one another, not necessarily in chronological order; my rampant survivor guilt. Plus it soared over the Bechdel test and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart is probably my favourite character in the entire canon, because Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is my mental model for the grandfather who died three weeks before I was born. And then the curator came in, and I said: “I know that voice.”

Fall is the most beautiful season in San Francisco and the city has never been more spectacularly lovely. We hiked around McLaren Park, which is like having Golden Gate Park almost entirely to yourself. In a meadow studded with daisies we were struck dumb by a great blue heron that took off and soared right over our heads. Last night on our way to and from her swim lesson, Julia and I gazed at the Golden Gate Bridge just before and just after sunset. Your mind cannot comprehend the scale of it, not even when you have seen it a hundred times. “Did we build it to there or did they build it to us?” she asked. “We started at both ends and met in the middle,” I said. She said: “Oh my.” This morning as Claire and I ran over the hill and back along Precita, the morning sun slanted across the dewy grass in the Coso triangle and made it sparkle.

Things I will miss about Jackson the horse as he enters his well-deserved retirement, a non-exhaustive list:

That he likes to shake his head when I take the headcollar off, and if I let him do that, he will stand quietly while I put his bridle on.

That he likes to stand for a moment when coming out of the shed row to let his eyes adjust to the sunlight.

The way he showed me how to sit in the saddle.

The way he talked to me through the reins.

The way he would reach forward with his outside hind to step forward in a perfect canter depart.

The way he would swagger when he’d jumped a perfect round, swinging his back and showing off. “I’m a good horse!”

The way he grew another four inches at the show, so proud and happy to be there.

The way he would turn around and put his nose on my boot when he needed reassurance.

The way he would neigh crossly if I stopped to pat Zelda the barn cat before paying attention to him.

The way he would press his nose into my back when I gave him cuddles, cuddling me back.

The brilliant Sumana made this exact point to me two weeks ago:

Butler creates woman protagonists (such as Lilith in the Xenogenesis trilogy) who are seen as traitors for consorting with their enemies or oppressors. Her stories have the capacity to make the so-called traitor’s motivations understandable, often showing a willingness to negotiate as the product of a stubborn sense of hope for the future that can take the form of a commitment to nurturing a new mixed race.

From the book I cannot put down, Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression: A Public Feeling. Cvetkovich has also introduced me to Jacqui Alexander’s phrase “radical self-possession,” an idea that instantly caught fire and ran down every blood vessel and nerve in my body like music or healing grace. I asked myself what radical self-possession would look like, and Future Rach (who drops by occasionally to give me hints) said:

“Like me.”

Kirsty is a force of nature. I’ve been meaning to go up to Edinburgh since Alex and Ioanna moved there from Ireland years ago, but the details eluded me. When I mentioned it in passing to Kirsty the whole thing was organized in what seemed like sixty seconds. I flew in early for the London conference I come to every April, and Kirsty and I caught the train to Edinburgh.

The journey was gorgeous and fascinating. “Green and pleasant land,” I tweeted as we left London, then “dark Satanic Mills!” as we crossed the midlands and I saw four huge power stations (Eggborough and friends maybe?) belching steam into an otherwise cloudless sky. As we sped to Scotland we saw Durham Cathedral, the Angel of the North (which I have loved since first seeing pictures of it and which came as a completely unexpected treat), beautiful steampunk Newcastle, Lindisfarne like something from a Miyazaki film or happy dream, the sun sparkling on the mouth of the Tweed at Berwick, and the looming bulk of the Torness Nuclear Plant.

Motion sickness got to me after a while. (The hangover from the night before probably didn’t help. That was Grant’s fault.) I thought I was going to hurl all over Waverley Station. I took my first steps in Scotland trying not to puke and telling myself “Don’t mention their accents don’t mention their accents,” so of course when I called Alex I blurted out “you sound very Irish.” I guess at least I didn’t vomit?

When I had recovered myself somewhat Kirsty and I had fun storming Edinburgh castle, and when we finally did make it to Alex’s house the awkwardness of nine years’ separation did not survive its first encounter with a pretty decent Sangiovese I’d brought out from California. Alex made osso buco. It was delicious. Ioanna is delightful and their daughter Lena is so best. We figured out how to fix capitalism but I didn’t write it down, so that’s a pity.

She earned her first degree brown belt today. She also made the finals of the River of Words poetry contest, and won a medal for that.

As part of ongoing efforts to live a more makerly, human life, I resolved to make a thing a month this year. Not a vasty thing; something small and manageable. In January, I cross-stitched a little constellation embroidery for each of the girls. In February I hand-wrote a letter to a dear friend.

This month I will try out the Kintsugi repair kit that J gave me for my birthday. It repairs ceramics with a mixture of glue and gold dust. I will test it on some of our table china, and when my technique is alright, I will fix a chip in the beloved bowl I brought home from Avanos, in Turkey.

When I first read about Kintsugi, I cried. The chance to be more beautiful in the broken places feels like a gift, like grace.

I’ve been thinking, for complicated reasons, of things I have that are irreplaceable: the rosettes I won on Alfie and Noah; the Onkaparinga blanket Sarah gave me to take with me to Ireland, and which is wrapped around my knees as I type; the ring my father-in-law gave me; the bronze horse on my hall table, which was a present from my mum. Big Ted, Alain’s bear when he was a child, who is beaming fondly down at me from his shelf.

For that matter, the bears my mother gave to Claire and Julia: Topaz and Bess. Topaz spent three days lost behind a shelf at Claire’s pre-school, and another two days in the back seat of a taxi in New York. Our miracle boy.

For a day that began with Hedwig having to be towed to the garage for the third time in a month, today turned out very well. I succeeded in having Front Porch grits for breakfast, I consigned five bags of old clothes and, after I had disposed of the car, we wandered around Bernal in the sunshine and met up with Carol and Tim and Ruby and Zoe and Yoz and Dexter. There are Water Contraptions, made of plumbing parts and galvanized iron basins, outside a house at the top of Alabama Street, that we would never have seen however many times we drove past them.

Yesterday was also memorably splendid: a good ride on Jackson, with one circle where I felt myself weighting the outside stirrup in an effective way; lunch at Inka’s, and being asked my opinion on a saddle by a passer-by who had it in his truck, because he recognized that I was still in my breeches and riding boots;  dropping the kids at their piano classes while meeting Cecil the cross-eyed cat at the SPCA, and being struck by his temperamental likeness to Ross’s Oscar, the nicest cat in the world. Salome took Cecil home. He is now Cecil B. de Milstead.

We had another dinner at the Playhouse last night for the remnant population: Mum, Dad, the Marretts and the Fitzhardinges. Haddon made chicken in a mushroom sauce with broccoli and perfect roast potatoes like Mum used to make – that is, parboiled then deep fried, so that the insides were creamy and the outsides were golden crisp.

Conversation was flagging until I realized it was the eleventh anniversary of another Feast of the Epiphany, also known as the Worst Dinner Party I Ever Threw, Oh My God, Now That I Think About It That Story Doesn’t Reflect Well On Me, At All. I made my way through a bottle of Oyster Bay Marlborough sav blanc and tried to tell the sorry tale. I told it very badly, but it encouraged everyone else to tell stories of terrible parties, and then to share memories of great ones, like Sarah’s 21st, at which Dad skipped around the Bluegum Crescent house for hours, filling peoples’ glasses of champagne.

And so just for a little while, last night was one of our great parties, too.

DSC_2774, a photo by Goop on the lens on Flickr.

Yup. That’s us all right.

In Sydney. The flight over was great, because the girls are big now and self-entertaining, and because J gave me noise-canceling headphones so I slept nearly all the way to Auckland. A puddle jump to Sydney and then roast lamb and summer pudding and presents with the Fitzhardinges. Jan gave me a new piece by Rachel Honnery, to my delight. In the evening I looked over what Claire had packed for the trip, and as a result this morning we caught a taxi to Bondi Junction to stock up on clothes for her.

I’m chagrined to say that shopping in the Boxing Day sales has been one of the best parts of Christmas so far. We got Claire a super cute new wardrobe for basically no money. She bought a present for Jules. J and I got shorts and J got a new pair of shoes. We had flat whites and babycinos and talked about the likelihood of Cory Booker running for president in 2016. Bourgie enough for you?

It’s overcast and rainy but still way warmer than San Francisco. I am deeply, deeply tired, still shaking off the long tail of my cold and the end-of-year push at work, let alone the jetlag.

My phone fell out of my jeans pocket and into the toilet yesterday, which is kinda tragic as they just don’t make decent hardware-keyboard smartphones any more. I’d known this for a while, and the phone was on its lastish legs anyway, so I felt rueful every time I looked at it. (“I love you, neti pot. Too bad you’re already broken.”) After its brief immersion it turned on valiantly twice before starting to light up in wrong places. Now I am charging Jeremy’s old phone, which he bought at the same time as mine, so it has a comforting familiarity that feels illegitimate, like making out with your boyfriend’s fraternal twin.

I haven’t been writing because I’ve been obsessing about horses, obviously. I had this stretch of weeks in the late fall where I was riding Bella and Jackson and spending time at Salome’s barn with the girls, and it was excellent. The weather held on fine much longer than anyone could have hoped. I had a ride where Jackson stopped at almost everything, and it turned out that he had a giant stone in his hoof, and upon reflection I realized that he had jumped around most of the course for me even though the stone bruised him every time he landed. That changed our relationship in two ways: I trusted him more, and he found out he could stop. We worked on the stopping problem for weeks before we finally had a ride where we flew every fence.

He’s lovely. The whole three months of riding him and learning his quirks and ironing them out one at a time, and getting to the point where we can do beautiful forward soft round flat work, and then jump a 3′ course without breaking a sweat (he enjoys the bigger fences much more) has been one of the greatest treats of my life. Christi keeps rolling her eyes at me because he doesn’t have his flying changes, but he’s my big rawboned Thoroughbred snuggly bear and I love him. Christi: “YOU’RE SO EASILY PLEASED.” Guilty as charged.

“I think we should get married and have babies.”

“Okay.”

“And live in a tiny apartment in the middle of an awesome little city somewhere, and I will have horses.”

“Sounds good.”

“And you can work for Silicon Valley startups, and we’ll make friends with a bunch of people who build killer robots for fun.”

Laughter.

“I know, I know, that’s just asking for TOO MUCH…”

I can’t remember if I mentioned this at the time, but it was watching Gilbert enjoy himself at Jeremy’s fortieth birthday party up at the Big Yellow House that revealed to me the secret of a happy life, which is to have friends you unreservedly like and then to play games with them. Since Salome has been teaching and riding at Sun Valley, she’s taken to calling me with reports of her rides, as I not infrequently give her reports of mine. We spent a long time today discussing natural horsemanship and in what contexts it is awesome and in what contexts it is bogus and arguably a tool of the patriarchy, and the horses available to her and which of these might best meet her riding goals, and indeed, what exactly those goals might be.

I was just thinking how lucky I am to have a friend who shares my most arcane and indefensible passion, when she said: “I am so glad to have you to talk to about all this, because you get it.”

I said: “I don’t think I tell you often enough how much I like you.”

She laughed. “You tell me every time we talk to each other that you love me.”

“Yes, but I love you and like you, and that’s so rare!”

Raena Lamont for President, 2036.