Thursday, August 17, 2006

Leap Year

There's a saying I've had taped to the inside of one of my notebooks for a long while. It goes 'Leap, and the net will appear'. I've always loved that phrase. I've long held a fantasy about using it in one of my classes, well, when I taught classes, wowing my students with such a succinct little gem. One day. One day. And in the meantime, I've been thinking I've not done much leaping recently, not much at all. Well I've had alot to think about. Actually it's quite easy not to think about anything much at all, for several years in a row, when you're looking after a child... Anna-mouse. My little one. Two-year-old bundle of wonder. And when you've gone from single, hormonally-challenged sad girl living in garret flat in Camberwell to married mother of said bundle living with Bim (Big Irish Man) in Kent Town in the space of four years. I've only just now drawn breath. So here I am, wondering about leaping, only leaping of a different sort, all over again.

This time it's for me. It's for the heart of me. It's for where I draw breath. It's about that thing you can convince yourself doesn't exist until you try to deny it: a creative life. There, that's the nub of it. I'm a middle-class, middle-aged hormonally-challenged older mother who had a whole creative thing going for nigh on 40 years until love struck and she decided to follow the personal rather than the creative. Not that it is not an extraordinarily creative and joyous thing to spend your days poring over Postman Pat stickers and face painting tigers - it is! But... these things are about another, and I have unfinished business with myself which won't go away. And so sets up a tension I had only ever read about before, which I'm hoping leaping - I mean writing - here, will change.

The Bim has just come home (weird late shift). Finding me ensconced in the dark in the spare room I tell him about setting up the blog and swear him to secrecy. He finds this pernickety, given half the world can read it if they want. Oh I don't mind them, I say, just no-one I know...

Sensing my new-blogger's euphoria he suggests we celebrate with sex. Can't, I say, surprised he'd even go there. Why not? he asks. I haven't finished my blog! I cry. Now that, that, is a first, says he. And off he goes to commiserate with a cup of tea and a biscuit. Which is of course why I love him.

Welcome to Livvy's life.

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