when the wattle is golden

This morning on the drive home over the mountains and through the forest, I thought about the last two weeks, and my blog, and the sort of things I could write about today. The light was streaming in through the trees, Indi was playing music, we stopped once to watch a pair of orange billed white ducks fossicking on the roadside, and then we pointed out baby lambs in paddocks, brightly coloured camellia and rhododendron bushes, and she told me random details as she remembered them from her past few days. Some of her last as a school girl.

For the best part of the past two weeks I have been living in someone else's house, at the base of another mountain, feeling like my own life is on hold.

As a family we decided that for our Indi's last two weeks of proper school, two weeks that were filled with early morning and late night classes, assessments every day and a never ending to-do list, we would stay in a house away from our home. A house ten minutes away from her school which is usually an hour away. To cut out the long commute, to give her more time for study, more time for sleep and easier access to teachers and odd hours.

And over the past two weeks Pepper came and went back home for school and activities, Bren came and went for work and to look after Pepper, and Jazzy and Indi lived there. They ate and slept and worked and played guitar and sang and had friends over and went to school and came home.

As for me, for two weeks I feel like I have driven girls back and forth so many times that I felt dizzy. I have smiled at crazy cackling laughter and comforted through many tears. I have cooked, I have listened, I have edited, I have pep-talked, I have worried and I have celebrated, I have been so in tune with other people's emotions that I put my own on hold.

And while I had some wonderful times: a whole day off alone with Bren away from the farm, a night of knitting with my wonderful friend Elizabeth, a two day visit from my mum...for the most part I felt like I was living some sort of alternate life. Like the life I was living wasn't really my own. Cooking meals from shop bought ingredients that I have in my pantry and garden at home, spending all of my time inside with no farm to tend or forest to walk, watching the television at night for company, no wifi and terrible phone reception, being on standby at all hours of the day, not knowing a soul in the supermarket or cafe, and missing my home and my people.

It didn't feel like my usual life and yet it wasn't a holiday either; so weird.

But it was a blessing to be able to do it for my girl and we all agreed that it was hugely successful. Exactly what we'd hoped for happened. We might even do it again in her exam week.

And as I drove home up the driveway this morning through a blaze of golden wattle, it occurred to me that I don't really have a lot to blog about this week. I haven't had any major revelations, I haven't finished a book or a knitting pattern or harvested anything from the garden. But our big girl was sitting in the car across from me smiling. She's got two months until her final year of high school exams are over. And when she's smiling my whole world is filled with sunshine, so I'm smiling too.

I'm so happy to be home.


I hope you're happy to be wherever you are my friends.
Have you finished anything this past week? A book, a project, a crop?
Have you felt like you've given your life over to someone else recently?
Are you thanking goodness for the weekend?

Big love to you wherever you are.

Love, Kate x