A new phase

Wednesday, 3 January 2007

10:45 pm

Today was the first day with Michael back at work, the first day in the long stretch of time before the kids go back to school in early February. We have never had the kind of summer vacation I rarely had myself had as a kid, the kind of unscheduled, kids-at-home summer vacation my cousin Tara used to have and in which I used to participate when I visited her. They don’t have summer camp here, don’t have organized summer activities. I keep asking parents what happens over the summer, and they say that kids go to the beach and they spend the night at friends’ houses and they hang out and read books and get into fights with their siblings. So today, we tried those things. We stayed home and the kids wore their PJs for most of the day. We made new year’s cookies (everything we used to do before Christmas has gotten bumped back a few weeks) and listened to Harry Potter on the i-pod and the kids sniped at each other sometimes and sometimes played beautifully. We had to hang around the house and wait for Naomi’s new furniture to be delivered (a wardrobe—her room has no closet—and a desk, both from the used furniture store in Paraparaumu) and my new elliptical trainer to come and get set up (ah, to work out again!). I caught myself doing unhelpful things like counting the weeks left of summer vacation (did I mention that today was really the first day?) and the number of days until we could hope our container might arrive (MARCH). And that is the recipe for falling into a funk.

Which I did. The kids were really fine and the weather wasn’t even so bad (just chilly but not raining at all) but something about the whole thing made me so exhausted that I had to actually take a nap. No one here can remember the last time I took a nap. This afternoon the kids hovered around me, alternately climbing into bed with me or standing next to the bed looking at me. My favorite moment was when they stood in Naomi’s room and yelled at each other about not waking me up. It wasn’t a very restful nap…

And there were non-napping moments, too. We discovered that whatever you might say about NZ chocolate (and it might not all be so nice things that you were saying), NZ food color is way better than US food color for dying sugar to sprinkle on cookies (the yellow and blue actually make a lovely green, and—more unlikely—the blue and red made a pretty purple). Naomi got an invitation to go to ANOTHER sleepover tonight, and off she went. (“It’s hard to say no to a sleepover with a new friend, you know, Mom?”). The nuns from next door (the house on the corner is the retreat house for the Sisters of Compassion) came to thank us for the cinnamon rolls we brought them yesterday and tell me with great joy about the 100 anniversary of the order and the celebration they’re planning. And Michael came home and he and Aidan and I had a lovely walk up the beach at sunset. Everything seems possible and good when you walk up the beach at sunset. And so another morning, and another night, and we still somehow live in New Zealand. Go figure.