Everybody has a place they go to when they close their eyes. A place that has meaning, that reasonates when the real world becomes too much. Where is it you go when you take a breath? When you take a moment? When you are so overwhelmed the only thing you can do is shutter yourself by shutting your eyes? We all have somewhere we escape to in the darkness that closing them brings, and with it peace or happiness or respite from the things that worry or haunt you. Maybe it’s somewhere you’ve been, maybe it’s somewhere you’ve made up, maybe it’s somewhere between those two. Wherever it is, in your mind it belongs to you and it is yours alone. Behind the pinky black of my eyelids, I am in a sunny bay. Bush covered hills protect my back. Along the ragged edges of the beach are a tribe of ancient pohutakawa spreading their arms open in welcome and dipping their leaved fingers into the golden sand below. The curving headlands hold us close within their embrace, a cosy little cove with only a hint of the endless coastline beyond. No need for great explorations they say. Stay here. Stop trying so hard to get further, to move faster, to climb upwards and onwards and ever distant from the things that make you happy. Be still. You can be contented here, they say. They offer up crabs, mussels, kina… munificent to the bounty hunters who scramble barefoot up their rough black rocks. Children stand with fluorescent hand reels dangling into the water. There’s no shop here, no dairy. A man in an ice cream van plays greensleaves as he winds down the hill every day, the familiar chiming drawing little ones out, coins hot and sticky in eager hands. On the kitchen bench are tins of cake and biscuits and rich Christmas treats and nobody notices or cares if a slice or two disappears, even at breakfast time. Bowls spill over with glossy cherries and almost-over-ripe strawberries leaking sweet red juice into the blue patterned china. Fingers stay stained pink for weeks. From early in the morning till the late summer sunset you can hear the gulls calling and little chattering voices drifting up on the breeze. Babies are rocked to sleep in the shade and rocketed to the water to be rinsed, small cities in sand leap up along the shore, the speed of industry rivaling the greatest of developments, older bodies haul themselves up from the sand in pieces to throw themselves in the lapping water. In the hazy sunshine nothing happens and everything happens. Everything is simple and momentous. The way skin prickles with the salt as it dries. The way fish tastes, fresh and subtle and secretive, when it’s come off your own line. The scratchiness of sand between sheets at night. The air smells like coconut sunscreen and citronella candles and barbecued sausages. Treasure builds up in piles at the feet of dozing parents: soft edged glass in jewel colours, shells with twisted passages, necklaces of popping seaweed, blue-toned feathers. Life falls into a kind of rhythm, suggested, but not dictated, by the gentle too and fro of the waves we are drawn to. Days are long but easy. Nothing is demanded except payment when someone loses another hand of deal and another beer whenever the next person stands up. Days pass in movable feasts, in cloudless skies, in books read in one go. They drift by in lemon flavored cordial sips, striped beach towels, exuberant sandy kisses from happy little girls. This is the place I come to when I close my eyes. And right now, when I open them, I am here too.
I love being here at the beach but at the same time I find it very hard to be away from home. It’s hard explaining every nuance of my condition. It’s hard to find an easy, understandable, uncomplicated and unemotional way to respond when people ask what I’ve been up to. It’s hard spending an entire extra day in hospital because they’re slow and unfamiliar with my protocol and untrained in the skills needed to implement it. It’s hard having to go in an extra day early. It’s hard that half my holiday is wasted in hospital. It’s hard that my nieces and nephew have to be told to be quiet with me, to be gentle, because I get too tired, too worn out by their excited, affectionate, sweet but demanding attention. It’s hard that we miss out on adventures or that if we go, I lose another day recovering from it. These things are hard, maybe even made harder, in a place that is so easy.
It has been hard, hasn’t it? For all of us.
Today is January 1st, 2017. Yesterday we had a brilliant day; saying goodbye in the best kind of way to a year that has been fraught and funny and frustrating and triumphant and terrible all at once. For me it has been a year of painful waiting and too-and-froing and complications and hesitations and, finally, two days before Christmas, the news that my surgery has been confirmed and in the new year I will get a new kidney and a new kind of life. It’s the second best present I ever got (the first being my two youngest siblings, mum was thrilled I kept asking for them). I haven’t told many people yet because it has taken me a little while to get my head around the fact that it is real, it will happen, but here, now, in this little blog that has become so precious to me, I’d like to share. 2016; the year of trouble, the year of shock, the year of pain and fear and seemingly endless despair for many around the world, brought me: a home of my own, a funny little kitten, even deeper and greater friendships, quality time with my beloved family, the joy of seeing loved ones commit their lives to each other, a garden to tend, new learning and better understanding, and this; not just the hope of a new future but the promise.
This year will be a big one. I’ve no doubt it will be challenging. There is a little fear here in my heart, I’ll admit. And it is still difficult to fully imagine or comprehend what these changes will mean and how completely they will alter my life. But, as I sit beneath the shade of this big, old tree, on a scarlet carpet on the sand, I feel good. I feel strong enough and brave enough and so desperately eager that it’s hard to quiet the dreams and plans and longing that are building up in my chest. My head is reeling with thoughts of all the lives I want to make and lead and have. I feel full and expectant and happy.
Every year I pick a word that describes the way I want to live in the 365 days that belong to it. Previous years’ have been to be intentional, mindful, kind, grateful. Last year I wanted to be more open and I think, especially in this blog space, I have been. It isn’t easy for me to let people see me struggle or hurt or be anything less than my expectations of myself but I have learnt a great deal by being more vulnerable and more honest. I am grateful for every one of you who reads my writing and is gentle with me. You have all made it possible for me to let my guard down and to share my story. I hope that my words might speak to you or express something you might also have felt. Or that it has helped you better understand someone you care about. I hope that in some way my openness has or might help you to feel you too can share your story. I promise you, if my experience has been anything to go by, you will be both surprised and incredibly moved by the support and love you receive when you let people know you a little more deeply. I have been surprised by you, by your love, by your support. I am an optimist by nature, a bright-side-looker, a glass-half-fuller, but even I am consistently astonished at the amount of kindness there is in this beautiful, flawed world that we live in.
In 2017 I am deciding to live bravely. And for me that means to continue being open, to continue being intentional, to continue being mindful and mostly, even when it’s difficult or costly or complicated or demanding, even when it scares me, to continue being kind. Because of everything, that’s what I want to be remembered for. Even if (and it won’t I’m sure) something in this major change doesn’t work out the way we want it to, 2017 will be a year to remember. And when people remember my role in it in their own lives I want it to be for that.
The title for this blog post comes from this beautiful quote:
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lightly, Lightly 