Pania & Toad Hall of Course!

Busking boys plonked themselves down in the middle of the Sunday market & made enough to pay for their petrol to get home in an hour or two when they came to visit over Christmas time.

 We spent a bit of time together in Napier.

 It was fun..

 Just around the corner, one of our number became extremely animated when he spied this sign...

suddenly dreaming of halcyon days, leaning out over this very balcony.

 Indeed, Toad was quite entirely beside himself when we rounded the corner & came across this contraption in the middle of the road.

 "Oh my, oh my!!" he kept exclaiming, with a far away look in his eye.

Our little visitors were so taken with the ambience & delights of Napier that we agreed to return with them for a Vintage Picnic one evening last week.

"Just down there looks like a grand spot", Ratty suggested.

Swathes of green clipped grass spread before us long. A fountain playfully sprinkling distantly & the sea air gently cooling us from off shore, we settled down on the splendid picnic rugs,  

tiffen tin temptingly waiting

& a fine picnic was quite soon unpacked.

"Oh how delicious!" cried Mole ecstatically. 

 Such a pretty spot on the Marine Parade in Napier.

The festive flowers of the pohutukawa still signaling summer..

As we told the Willows, the Tom Parker Fountain was set in pride of place on the Marine Parade a very long time ago, in 1936, at the time of the rebuild & restoration of the city; after the catastrophic earthquake of 1931 that redefined the history & re-characterized the layout of the whole province.

The land came up & the sea went down & lots & lots of buildings fell over or burnt to the ground. 

The Sound Shell has a busy life hosting concerts & harbouring budding performers.

The spent pohutukawa flowers create a gentle, meandering carpet of carmine threads along the foreshore.

A little farther along..
"Whoever is that?" the boys wanted to know.

"Why that's Pania, Pania of the Reef," explained Pop.
"There's a Maori legend that tells of Pania the beautiful sea-maiden who married a Maori chieftain, but things didn't work out so well & Pania drowned just off the beach..families! There are those that say you can see her in the waves to this day," he told them.

 "Oh, that's so terribly sad," cried Ratty. "Do you think perhaps we could sit here at her feet while you take a picture," sniffled Mole? "No problem at all," Pop replied. And here they are all tucked in the midst of Pania's bronze feet:

Cheerio, better go!!..we seem to have mis-placed Toad, after all that. It is suspected that he has found his way home to Toad Hall, in fact, there have been murmurings of emigration, so enchanted with New Zealand is he.
Much love to you all x0x0x0x

Roast Beast Feast Celebrations & a Mishap...

Hello everyone. 

Well as many of you may know, we are delighted to have three small visitors staying with us at the moment . Ratty, Toad & Mole are on the last leg of a very grand & rather exhausting world wide galavant.

 Once they became accustomed to the concept of Christmas & new year beginnings in the time of summer, they joined in splendidly.

Some things were still perfectly familiar wherever one wanders in the world.

oh dear, Mole is still a little topsy-turvy after removing his night cap/Fynn's sock.

 They had a quite a long wait one evening (it doesn't get dark until 9pm at the moment) before Pop could take them out to see the sparkly Christmas lights he'd put on the front of the house.

 Oh what ecstasy!
How thrilling indeed!!
.. was the Roast Beast Feast of Christmas day lunch.

 They were a bit perturbed when they couldn't find the gravy & roast potatoes but were impressed with the other colourful dishes..

 & delicious desserts that came to the Christmas table & soon quite forgot the old ways.

Other busy boys were boiling,

 after all that running & playing & jumping around.

Cousins that rubbed along a little like siblings, but pleased to see each other none-the-less.

 The Willows really feeling the heat of our glorious Hawke's Bay summer, thought that they might like to dip their toes into a little cool water.

And that is how Toad came to wet his pants..

I'll let him explain..

 Funny how there are familiar "places" all around the world, isn't it.
We've all spent a few late afternoon's cooling off on the banks of the Ngaruroro river.

 It's been a popular spot.

 And a grand place to celebrate the season & the moment.
 Friendship, adventure, travel..

 and fine rivers & their banks.

 Other animals feel very much at home in the summer flow too & glide past waggling joy.

A you will have noticed.. it doesn't take more than a blink of an eye before Christmas has passed

& the beginning of a new & shiny year comes around.

 We, all five, gathered under leafy bowers & spotted umbrellas..

to while away some most pleasurable time indeed.

A perfect, still & peaceful evening..

we chatted about the year just been and all the adventures & mishaps.

We noted the quirky imperfections of our joined lives.

 And celebrated the gifts of those imperfections..wet pants that create rainbows on your head & the such-like.

We all concluded that life is for lapping up wherever you find yourself...even if you're visiting.

 Kaitiaki came to play on Tuesday.
He was delighted to meet the Willows for the very first time.
The Wind In the Willows Word Book was an excellent place to begin to know them better..

Oh dear, we're all feeling just a little weary.
Off for a short walk in Cornwall Park & then to bed.
Cheerio for now from us All
x0x0x0x0x0x

Chimidunchik

Chimidunchik.

One of my favourite words.

What is it?

Well...

baggage, really.

We all have it, whether we admit it or not.

I discovered "chimidunchik" in a book called "Broken Open" by Elizabeth Lasser.

She tells a story... 

"There's an old yiddish story, a bit slap stick of course, about a man who gets on to a crowded train & all the seats are taken except for the seat next to one particular man..he asks him if he'd mind moving his luggage so he can sit down, no reply..so after a while he asks again but still he gets no response, by now he's fuming so he starts yelling at him "move your chimidunchik, move your chimidunchik!" still the man does nothing so the annoyed passenger picks up the bag & throws it out the window, turns to the man & says "there what do you think of that!!??" The man shrugs & says it wasn't my chimidunchik."

Did you ever think about what your chimidunchik looks like?
No, of course not, you've never heard of such a thing until this minute, right?!
But think about it..
Is it a crazy huge container full of all kinds of random useless/toxic junk?
Or would that be all neat & tidy, labelled, categorised & orderly?
Or just maybe, you are one of those rare people that has managed to come through life..

 

   bearing only the lightest of luggage, filled with happy memories & good legacies.

 If you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about, then this post probably isn't for you.

Some of us have been loaded up with baggage so high we can't see if the sky is blue or gray & the crazy part...most of the stuff doesn't even belong to us, only, no-one ever told us that we didn't have to store it nor carry it for some one else our whole lives.

Every object has a story, a bit of history & got given to us or collected somewhere in the journey.
I guess, I've been on an unpacking mission for the last 23 years.
When I started out my life looked a lot like the picture above, only the room was about 10 times as full. One day I began to really look at the conglomeration & I realised that it was nearly all, really ugly, dumb stuff...
 not mine,
 & that's not mine
 & neither is that!
So, I started throwing it OUT &/or giving it back!
 I soon discovered, not many people are too keen on you doing that.
 They'd rather you just kept all their crap & didn't tell, even when the stuff is suffocating you & there's no room left for you to live your life around it.
I have found that when you don't own your own stuff; face the pain & the failures & the broken-ness, then most likely, your children will have to wear it or your grandchildren will suffer & have no idea why.
Through the years I've been told to "pull my socks up", "just try to be positive..focus on all that you've been given", "be grateful", "let it go", "just give it all to the Lord", "just relax!".
I have also heard a million times oh "yes BUT children are SO much more resilient than you think".
Rubbish!
 No-one blames their autistic child for being autistic, or an asthmatic daughter for her condition so why do kids from broken homes so often get left to fend for themselves?
The mess is not there fault!
I was born a long time ago, to young, unsupported parents who failed to find their way in marriage or draw the threads of family together. Before it barely began, the family was shattered & broken & I was subsequently left without any sense of value or knowledge of my place in the world.
In the interim decade before I left "home" I was largely displaced & mostly miserable & I shall simply say that my step-mother's mantra "if you haven't got anything good to say DON'T say anything at all" didn't work out well for her, or for me.
I married at 19.
Life was immensely better for finding a soul mate.
 Rob & I muddled along together learning & loving & growing quite well for a decade or so & I felt reassured that life would improve for me now that I had a kindly christian mother-in-law, but sadly, it turned out that she was more toxic than anything else I had ever encountered.
I did all the good things like praying a LOT, being nice, forgiving, accepting...did I say being nice.
It didn't work..I got sick & stayed sick.
And nobody cared.
I lost two decades of my life.

And then I timidly, quietly started blogging &
soon my darling husband gave me a little camera
& then something remarkable began to happen..
At the beginning of 2012 a brave woman wrote & owned these words:

"liberate - grant freedom to; free from confinement

set free

liberate
free, release, rescue, save, deliver, discharge,
redeem, let out, set free, let loose, untie, emancipate,
unchain, unbind, manumit

so I am ready .... 
ready to liberate from:

any chains that are bound around me

carrying the burden of other people's choices and actions

things I cannot control,

worry about what others think of me

unnecessary expectations of myself and others

worry that if I do it ... it could be all wrong

prejudices, negative thoughts, the gremlins

worry of "not being good enough"

jealousies, all the "shoulds" that I lug around day to day."

And I said yes..yes that's for me too.
It's time...time for liberty.
Largely because of you (& a very good homeopath)
...my kind, sweet, friendly sisters,
 I have found the voice, the courage & the inspiration to live this..liberty.
Thank you!!!!
I want to hug you all & shout thank you!!!!!!

Funny though, even as I write this, I "hear" a knock at the door & I go to see who's there, only to find an old familiar suitcase. I lean down to pick it up & stop abruptly, oh my goodness, I nearly bought it back inside; just in time I realise...it doesn't belong to me, it isn't mine...
 & I turn & walk away.
I can now stand at the threshold of a brand new year with gratitude in my heart & in the knowledge of a new, gentle confidence that everything will be alright..
I call it intentional grace (thank you Angela).
Intentional grace will be the "colour" of 2013 for me.
If you read all that...you're amazing!
Thank you & bless you!

♥♥♥♥♥