1. I spent most of the week in Chicago, a city I love for no reason other than that J and I once spent a very happy weekend there. The light over the lake and the severely beautiful architecture always bring back how giddy I felt then, gazing at the Chagall stained glass in the Art Institute, laughing because we had both noticed that the lake sounds like the sea but doesn’t smell right.

2. Despite which, I barely slept the two nights I spent in my (stunning, lake-view) hotel room. By the second night, with my throat raw and my dreams shallow and repetitive, I realized I had caught J’s cold, which he in turn picked up from Julia. I sat through a presentation on Thursday morning with cerebrospinal fluid leaking out of my nose. The plane landing in SFO almost made the left side of my face collapse into a neutron star.

3. This morning when Claire made her customary plea to be allowed to stay home from school, for some reason I agreed, and I’m glad I did. By ten she was feverish. It was a gorgeous dry sunny San Francisco spring day, with all the nasturtiums and roses already in bloom, but the loveliness was largely wasted on us. We ventured out only briefly, for coffee and soup and cold medicine. Claire has spent most of the day asleep on the couch, I on my bed, attended by our faithful kitten doctors.

4. I tried several times to expand on my winter soldier post with a description of how 1980s Australian patriarchy worked, but remembering the microaggressions is painful, and trying to convey their emotional weight is difficult. Pinned down in words, they are dry and seem manageable. It is only the accumulation of hundreds and thousands of them over the years that buries and suffocates you in the end.

5. Turns out I would rather remember the micro-non-aggressions, the people who startled me by saying exactly the opposite of what I had come to expect them to say. Gregan saying Well you are a nice person, why wouldn’t I like you. Professor Brown saying You were one of the most highly qualified candidates, we are glad to have you. Alex saying That must have been difficult. Grant, most of all, saying lots of things I still cherish, but mostly just scooping me up into the sunshine of his solar system, showing me a way to be happy that I had never thought of before. Four cheers for non-toxic masculinity.

Moments, too, where I cried because the pain stopped; like the first time I heard Mary Lambert’s “She Keeps Me Warm” and read that Mary is an out lesbian Christian. Well, why not? This one is fresh in my mind because Skud mentioned the other day that she’d met a member of the Sydney Anglican liberal resistance, and I thought, what a glorious thing to be. But then I realized that I was always a member of the resistance, even when I didn’t know it.

I want so many things back that I can’t ever have, not only Mum and Dad but being young again and in a world so full of possibilities (the twilight sky above Dublin such a rich and light-filled blue, Bjork in her own before-time singing “I don’t know my future after this weekend, and I don’t want to.”) Most of all I wish I could have been in less distress so that I could have been kinder and more kickass. But I did make it out alive and here I am, with my cats and my children and my J, our sunny little village in the city, our found family, perspective, time to read and think and make sense of what happened so that maybe one day I can write about it without jumping all over the place like this, without having to glance quickly into it and then just as quickly look away.

1. I don’t know what to tell you about my father. I’m very sad.

2. I took Boo Bear the horse to a show – the same show Gunther and I prevailed at last year. Boo Bear and I did not prevail. He refused many, many times. I was mortified. The next day, with another, much better rider, he was even naughtier and ended up galloping around the ring with no rider and no bridle on. Eventually he remembered that he is lazy and walked over to Toni, asking to be taken home. Shaming as this all was, it makes a significantly funnier story than my uneventful outing with Gunther, and I have been dining out on it ever since.

3. In reflecting on this it occurred to me that Gunther is Gryffindor (bravery, daring, nerve and chivalry) and Boo Bear is Slytherin (ambitious, cunning and resourcefulness.) I ended up putting all the horses I have ever loved into their houses. Bellboy, Alfie, Noah and Rhun: Gryffindors. Bella and Ruah, Slytherin. Roland, Ravenclaw. Dear old Jackson, Hufflepuff.

4. Julia aced her first piano audition and Claire is setting up her Etsy store. I love my nerdy, awesome kids.

5. There is no fifth thing.

While they are equally cute and dear to me, my cat Alice appears in pictures as an inkblot with eyes, whereas my cat Thimble is photogenic as hell. I’m just sayin’.

I get the impression my sister would prefer it if i did not have tragic song lyrics at the top of my blog for weeks at a time. So here are some pictures of Alviso Slough.

I drove over after a work thing to see if looking at a ghost town would have any effect on my profound grief for my father. And it did.

Alviso was a bustling port town until the Bay silted up and the wetlands reclaimed the fishermen’s houses and the cannery. Now ducks nest here, and coots turn upside down in the water, only ten minutes from the Superfund site that is Silicon Valley Ground Zero. It was rush hour, but there was some freakin’ insane birdsong going on.

Places like Alviso, and the Exclusion Zones around Chernobyl and Fukushima, are comforting to me. They remind me that even after everyone I know and all humans and even the mammals and birds are dead and gone, there will still be rocks and water and sky.

Time continues to pass. Wednesday would’ve been Mum and Dad’s 55th anniversary. Thursday morning, I learned Terry Pratchett had died as I drove myself to the dentist. I bawled my eyes out, and as a result my pain tolerance was too low even for the water pick. My hygienist, Lisa, was super sweet about it. After that I had to meet with my tax accountant.

Being a grownup? Sucks.

It’s Pi Day, by the inexplicable American reckoning. I was kicking myself for not organizing pies – the line at Mission Pie is doubtless out the door, it was last year – when I remembered that we own the means of production! Claire’s hard at work on her Key Lime Pie, and I have the makings of a strawberry/apple and a tarte tatin, when she’s done.

We first saw the Old Faithful geyser in January 2008, and I’d always wanted to relive that happy day. Most do-overs are anticlimactic, but this one wasn’t.

The geyser geysed.

Such geysing!

“Everybody smile! Milo, leave your brother alone.”

Then we visited the Petrified Forest and saw this majestic California oak springing from the fossilized remains of its ancestor. Plus a bunch of trees.

I wheedled our way into the hot springs but my phone was out of juice, so you’ll have to take my word for it that they were even warmer and more jewel-like and delightful than I remembered.

Nearly forgot the best part. The sun set and Venus and Mars shone by a Cheshire moon. Salome and I discussed the physics of such a moon until it set, orange, behind Coit Tower.  I said: “City’s always beautiful, but that was… Unf.” Salome said: “I arranged it all specially for your birthday.”

photo by Jules Ellingson

• Not getting up till eleven this morning because trapped by the cuteness of the cats sprawled on the end of the bed
• We still have most of a panettone and about a third of a box of peppermint bark left
• Seeing Big Hero 6 again and loving it just as much the second time and then unanimously agreeing that we needed teriyaki for lunch
• Ending the year as I began it, actually mansplaining things to the mister
• This year I reconnected with a couple of old friends I had thought I’d lost for good

Twelve years ago, I personally made this. It was one of my better days.

This year Julia giftwrapped herself for me, so now they are both my Christmas presents.

Then we went out for dim sum. Brand new old family tradition.

I’m very lucky.

Me: trying to find the perfect version of o holy night, so far it’s a tie between sufjan stevens and tracy chapman
story of my life

Her: Oh no it’s not! It’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I listen twice a day. I sit quietly and cry. It’s sublime. Truly.

Me: fall on your knees, o hear the angel voices
is pretty much everything right now

Her: It’s funny you’d be listening to that. I mean, I’ve seriously been listening in silent meditation twice a day for about two weeks. And in my head I hear that line all day.
What are the odds, really?

So we went to see what all the fuss was about.

The first night, we stayed at the Wawona.

The absolute highlight of which was this handsome fellow vogueing in the shrubbery.

Next morning, brunch at the Ahwahnee.

Then El Capitan, or as I like to call him, Steve.

We stormed around the Merced River for a bit, which was painfully scenic.

Then I don’t even know, a meadow and some rocks and stuff.

A waterfall of excruciating beauty.

Tea back at the Ahwahnee with a mama mule deer and her twin fawns.

Pinot grigio on our balcony at the Yosemite Lodge, with our own personal mountain.

And our own personal sunset.

Glacier Point on the way home, for one last overdose on grandeur.

Buh-bye rocks and stuff!

I guess I would characterize all the fuss as “not wholly unjustified”.

We chose the most beautiful morning imaginable.

Even @karlthefog had come out to Alcatraz.

The flock of kites in prison made me think of my Dad.

The Lego portraits made me think of playing with my brother as children.

Each portrait is of a prisoner of conscience.

I was ashamed at how few of the names I knew.

It’s a powerfully angry and compassionate body of work.

We are all one family.

I love it immoderately.

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.

California is so crazy beautiful.

It really, really is.

Thought we might go hawking.

His name is Don Diego Alejandro Inigo Montoya del Gato.

We like him very much.

I woke at dawn, beset by bird life: galahs, cockatoos, King parrots, rainbow lorikeets, magpies and currawongs all yelling their fool heads off just outside my window.

I’m staying with Jane. She and Darcy and the twins live in one of the lovely old Federation brick houses on the hill above the river. Her spare room is vast, with a high ceiling and a glowing wooden floor and nothing in it but a shelf and a bed, and it opens onto an east-facing verandah. It is so exactly the quiet refuge that I need that when I saw it I was struck dumb. No idea how I can ever thank Jane and her family.

Quiet, that is, except at dawn, with the birds.

I sat on the verandah and glared at the birds and called Jeremy as the sun rose. When Darcy and Jane came out for coffee their dog Chicken came too. She’s a Scottish staghound but she looks a little like the Anatolian shepherds I saw in Turkey and a little like a wolf. She’s bigger than I am. I cleared off the sofa I was sitting on and Chicken kissed me and put her arms around me and her hairy cheek against my face.

“She was bred as a pig dog,” Jane explained. “She could track the pigs and hold the pigs at bay, but she just didn’t want to kill them. They even gave her some piglets -”

“To tear apart?”

“Yeah that was the idea, but she played with them instead. When I heard that, I knew she was the dog for me.”

How do people get through this without animals? Sarah picked me up and I went to Henry Street to snuggle with the creatures there: four dogs (Jake, Peppa, Jess and Toby) and three cats (Oskie, Missy, Tiz). I always thought it would be me with the menagerie.

When we got to the hospital Mum demanded mahjongg. Big had forgotten the rules but not so much that he didn’t win the third game, after Sarah won the first and Mum won the second.

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.

I find a note she wrote me:

“For Rachel
Gwen Harwood
Poet
Bone Scan”

She doesn’t even remember writing it.

I look it up and find:

In the twinkling of an eye,
in a moment, all is changed:
on a small radiant screen
(honeydew melon green)
are my scintillating bones.
Still in my flesh I see
the God who goes with me
glowing with radioactive
isotopes. This is what he
at last allows a mortal
eye to behold: the grand
supporting frame complete
(but for the wisdom teeth)
the friend who lives beneath
appearances, alive
with light. Each glittering bone
assures me: you are known.