The title suggested by younger son when wishing me happy Father’s Day (another story) with whom I briefly discussed my new blog idea. Based on the general interest in “Escape to the Country”, “Escape from the City”, “I want a life less ordinary life” movement (?), especially popular with my cohort. In this blog I want to explore my experience of actively choosing to stay in the family home in a Brisbane bayside suburb.
I moved with my three kids to Wynnum Manly in January 1999 and we moved into the family home in mid 2001, so I think I can call myself a local now. How you relate to your local community and the environment informs your feeling of roots. It is no mistake I am living by a big body of water, Moreton Bay (aka Quandamooka) the eastern most reaches of a modern city. Knowing that I can access a vast expanse of nature so easily is comforting and invigorating. There is also bushland, some virgin, some regenerated, that I walk to in under 10 minutes.
My home is on a generous 720 square metre block of land (28 perches in the archaic measurement previously favoured by Queensland surveyors). Over the years I have transformed the backyard into a bit of a forest. I planted many local indigenous trees, shrubs and sedges that I purchased as tube stock from Indigiscapes. They have generally flourished and provided habitat for many animals, especially birds, creating a pleasant refuge from the hustle and bustle more than the suburban norm of green lawn and Hills Hoist would, at least for me.
3 weeks later
I’m taking an opportunity to finish this blog while I await service in the public health system (nothing important, just a blood test). I did actually finish it on Saturday but I lost it to cyberspace… not happy! But it gave me pause to examine my reaction to the disappointment. I certainly could sympathise with the students who tell me they’ve lost their assessments and yet I had only a self-imposed deadline. And as a lot of what I had written was about being in the moment and feeling, seeing, hearing what was happening right there and then and trying to capture the mindfulness, which is elusive enough, to have it go to the ether seemed fitting.
My Saturday afternoons are now booked on my calendar on never ending repeat, to offer myself a creative space. Anything creative really… cooking, sewing, gardening, an unfinished project or something more recreational like reading or meditating. So far it has been really good. I have enjoyed seeing it come up on my phone to remind me, ensuring I have a loose plan of what I might do and avoiding filling that time with something else.
5 days off
It’s the beginning of a nice chunk of time away from work. I had a long walk with Ruby this morning in the bush nearby. Highlights included Ruby’s frolic in the creek and her meeting a white pony that was just as interested in her.
Now she’s crashed out on the front verandah and I’m enjoying the neighbourhood sounds as I contemplate what I might do over these days off. I will probably finish The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s recent release, a sequel to the successful The Handmaid’s Tale. I definitely need to do the usual housework and I intend to practise “don’t put it down, put it away” as I continue my decluttering process. I’m no Marie Kondo, but a house that has been a home for nearly 20 years needs to be decluttered periodically. It’s amazing the stuff we accumulate… sometimes useful, sometimes sentimental. Letting go is an involved process. It’s emotional work. But it is satisfying.
I am going to finish this here as a kind of memento to mundanity. Perhaps I will have less plebeian things to say in the next post.
Presence in Place 