writing

The Author Pics

2009

Share house in Brooklyn, Wellington.

Wry smile

slightly open window

poetic lean

baby face.

Photo credit: David Peters.

2013

A park in Wellington.

My favourite vintage dress

embracing the glasses

looking optimistically

out towards the future.

Photo credit: David Peters.

2016 & 2021

Melbourne backyard with compulsory brick wall.

Middle parting

best dress.

Photo credit: Richard Wise.

2017

Mapua, NZ.

Not intended to be an author photo, just a nice pic my mum took when I was visiting.

Red cardy was hers.

Photo credit: Jan Marsh.

2025

At our house.

World-weary smile

just one of many things

that needed

to be done that day.

Photo credit: Jason Strachan.

The small one loves ducks so much we set off early and head to the creek

but we’ve never been to this creek before.
Rain wasn’t forecast and I tell that to the sky as it darkens and clouds and of course
pours all over us.

I keep checking the forecast and the sky and not quite understanding 
why the information doesn’t match
I’m cold and wet, but Finch loves the rain

I ask if he still wants to go see ducks
and of course he does, why wouldn’t he. We hide under trees wherever we can and he’s safe in the pram and mostly sheltered, but his little hands are freezing.

We see two ducks from under our tree by the side of the creek and I pull him from his pram and lift him to see and make sure the whole business was worth it
of course it was.

It’s always worth it when Finch has something new to talk about.
The rain gets worse before it eases, just like everything and I tell myself this
is an adventure, if you like rainbows you gotta put up with a bit of rain, but of course there are no rainbows

Just the rain followed by no more rain.

We head to a cafe and I get tea and he gets a marshmallow
and we share fruit toast and he smiles and laughs at everyone and I hold his cold hands
one by one in mine until they’ve thawed a bit and when it’s time to go he wants to go to a playground, so we do.

And how lovely to be so small but so in control of the day, the one day a fortnight we have together so of course I say yes to everything.

Like when we get home and he asks for pizza so I make him a little pizza for lunch
and he pulls the topping off slice after slice so he’s really just eating cheese and again
it’s all worth it.

Except at nap time he cries about having to get into his bed, even though he rolls around happily in there and then falls asleep for an hour and a half and it’s enough time for me
to sit in the sun because the sun’s really and truly out now 

and the washing probably will dry after all even though it got rained all over while we were out and I have enough time to do a bit of marking and check my emails and then write all this down. 

And maybe I don’t need a rainbow to reassure me every time, reassure me everything’s going to be fine
because of course, of course, of course it will be.

Debrief

Our eldest has just turned five, which marks half a decade of my partner and I discussing parenting every single day.

It started out as a sleep puzzle to solve. We would wake each morning and assess the quality of sleep, the night’s ups and downs and describe to each other the exact routine we went through at bedtime – how many pats did we give her, how loud was the shushing, how did you extract your arm slowly and gently enough not to wake her when you placed her in her bed and what gentle dance did you create to exit the room without setting off that one sneaky creaky floor board? 

Every morning we debriefed and every evening we tweaked the sleep dance accordingly. An art, a science, nothing left to chance and hope. We believe it worked and by 8 months old our very shouty, very sleep-resistant baby was sleeping 10 uninterrupted hours a night. I know this so precisely because it felt monumental at the time. One of our greatest achievements.

Five years later, we no longer talk about sleep — both the five year old and the two year old chat themselves to sleep and only wake in the morning when we open their curtains — but we still   debrief the day.

We discuss the things we were proud of and the things we were not so proud of, things we saw other parents doing and how impressive it was or strange it was, why we should try and do that in our family or why we would never. We think we parent very deliberately and it is often very tiring to talk about. 

But I’m aware our deliberate parenting style might look like quite the opposite from the outside. Instead of putting things in front of our kids and showing them how to use them, or jumping in when we overhear a voice getting raised or offering help before it’s asked for, we really want our kids to learn to figure things out on their own. Asking questions, rather than always providing answers. Over these intense five years we’ve realised that it’s okay if our kids get frustrated about something and that’s often where the best learning has happened. It’s okay if they express annoyance when something isn’t turning out the way they want it to – isn’t that so much of life?

This morning I helped the small one upstairs to where his sister is and closed the baby gate, explaining clearly that I’m going to have a shower now. The white noise of water calms my brain for a few minutes but when I turn it off Lotus is calling me. I pop my head around the door and ask what’s up. She’s upset because Finch is not listening to her, “I’m the boss of my body and I’m the boss of my room!” Okay, I’ll be there in a sec. 

By the time I dry off and wrap up and head up the stairs, calling out, ‘Are you okay, or do you need some help?’ Lotus has put some toys in Finch’s room for him and is looking him in the eye, calmly saying, ‘Next time can you just say yes or no instead of shouting at me?’ I help him get his diggers out of the cupboard and he asks her to play with him, ‘Yeah!’ she cries, ‘Yeah!’ he repeats. 

They have solved it without me and I couldn’t be more proud. What a gift for their learning and their relationship to sort these things out on their own. And what a gift for me to be given time to write while they happily play upstairs together – some complicated game with blankets and toys and nightlights and important bustling back and forth. I sit on the couch with my laptop and hear them singing happy birthday to a teddy.

Just as I’m really settling into a morning of me time and patting myself on the back for my excellent parenting skills, Lotus screams. Finch is ordered out of her room and when I get there I am too. There are big big tears and I take Finch away while Lotus screeches at the emptying room that she just needs time to herself. Humbled and wishing I had checked in on them sooner, I give Finch a cuddle and prepare snacks for them both. Maybe it’s time we all went for a walk. There’ll be lots to unpack at debrief time.

Summer rain

Our two week holiday ends with rain. Lotus calls it ‘mist rain’ the stubborn drizzly stuff that won’t be moving on until it has emptied the clouds entirely. No wind to push it along, or sun to sizzle it away. It’s been doing this for two days now and it makes me want to go to bed early. So I do. 

But rain highlights some of my best moments in the last two weeks: Jumping into the pool the night before Christmas once the kids are in bed, a gentle thunderstorm rolling past. A sprinkling of rain and a boom or two nearby. The sun goes down as I float lazily and a few bats flap overhead. I wonder if the thunder messes with their echolocation, confuses their navigation. For me it does the opposite and I feel grounded by this very Melbourne phenomenon of a summer thunderstorm. 

It rains all Christmas Day too, but on Boxing Day I strap Finch to the back of the bike and ride ride ride through park after park in the sunshine while he squeals and shouts. I turn briefly to see him pointing at it all, his whole body alert with amazement at trees and people and dogs and cars and just the details of the world really. It makes me laugh out loud. We’re chased back by a proper storm though – thick dark clouds wading through the sky, pushing their way towards home where the washing has already dried in the hot wind of morning. I pedal as fast as I can and I’m the one whooping now, laughing as the big ploppy drops start to fall and loudly reassuring the little guy that we’ll make in time, it’s my mission to get us back inside in time and I do. Buckets upon buckets of rain plummet down and we watch from the safety of the front porch.

There are warm days and cool days and days where nothing much happens, but we’re happy together and what at first felt like a daunting prospect: daycare closed and having to manage the big feelings and big energy of an almost four year old and a just turned one year old, turns to feelings of precious one on one time, making adventures of going to the supermarket together, building duplo towers and going to our favourite playgrounds.

In the last few days we have family visit, bundle ourselves into cars and drive to the museum where Finch again points at all of it with curiosity and astonishment, confusion and concern. There are dinosaur bones and bugs and giant crystals found within unassuming rocks. Lotus is fascinated by it all and I wonder if I’ve ever seen her so excited, engaged with everything, asking questions, pushing all the buttons. She’s wearing her gumboots so on the way to dinner, with our colourful umbrellas above, she finds the best puddles and stomps stomps stomps. Gutters run like rivers and her small hand is warm as she tugs me to the next big splash.

Today the sun is out. We’re up early and ready to go quicker than we ever have been. All of us on the bikes, but the ride to daycare is less than five minutes. Lotus is in the four year old kinder room now, meeting up with her friends and making new ones. Finch spends one hour getting used to the nursery where he will be three days a week. 

Last night in bed the drizzling rain reminded me of home, of other homes I’ve had where it rains depressingly often. The thought of these wonderful little people – loud and brave, curious and intense – going out into the world had me in mist tears, tears that won’t be moving on until they’ve emptied me out. But right now the sun is shining and we have stories to tell our friends.

Waste not

If I were my mother I would cut the brown 
and bitten bits from my daughter’s 
collection of abandoned apples
cook them in a small pot
eat them with muesli and yoghurt.

If I were my grandmother I would never
have given a whole apple 
to a child in the first place, but slivered it 
into sharable pieces
arranged neatly on a plate for all.

I try to be a good mother
never raising my voice or hand
but I’ve always been awkward about fruit.
Buying blueberries out of season
just because I can.

I keep trying to protect my daughter from
the browning bitten parts of the world
but think guiltily of the apple crumble
we could be having as I send
spent, forgotten apples to the worms.

Parenting

I’ve glued my daughter’s hair clips back together
pink fabric ripped, but salvageable and
a small blue heart from my own broken earrings.

I could ride my bike to the mall right now 
buy them ten times over, buy the brightest ones
the most expensive ones, ones that will survive 

small fingers and curiosity. They’ve lasted less than two months 
the trip to Kmart her first time using a public toilet, everything 
an adventure after months of lockdown, everything an adventure 

when you’re not-quite two. I could buy her new hair clips 
every day, but I won’t because one bedtime meltdown
she’d been moved away from the cat, who

puts up with more than he should, though loved
puts up with so much she thinks his tail is fair game.
She’s still learning not to squeeze so hard. I took her 

to her room, wiped streaks of tears sat opposite,
a pale green swaddle from newborn days draped
over her head and mine as she calmed, held 

my face with the gentleness I know she has
gentleness I hope for her, but hope will not be her undoing
as it so often has felt like mine…

Thank you for my joy, Mummy I checked I’d understood, Your joy?
Yes. Thank you for my joy. Thank you for dinner, Mummy.
hands still gentle, the same hands that dissected hair clips

beat fists on the ground, made the cat flinch (but never leave, 
I really feel he should sometimes just leave)
Thank you for my sparkly hair clips from Kmart, Mummy.

So I’ve glued them back together, adding a piece 
of me, knowing we’ll break and renew each other
twenty more times before morning.

An Interview with my Self-Publisher

After having four books published through small independent publishing houses in New Zealand I have just released my first self-published title. My experiences have all been positive, but have ranged widely from the quintessential bookstore book launch, to crowd funding, to author collaboration and carrying boxes of books home to sell myself.

I decided to self-publish Learning to love Blue as it’s the sequel to my debut YA novel Lonesome When You Go and was proving tricky to find a home for. I was also curious about the self-publishing process.

Thanks to some very supportive Facebook groups and an inheritance from my grandparents, I was able to figure out an approach that seemed, well, approachable. I chose to use Ingramspark’s print on demand service, and set up the imprint Record Press

I was interviewed by my self(publisher) over on Medium – have a read!

March 20th

The world is told to self-isolate just

as I might feel like mingling with the world again

I get Friday mornings off to shower, cut my nails

drink tea while it’s still hot. Rainbows in the living room

I walk around the block

 

collect two fallen frangipani flowers

an autumn garden inconsistency. Summer

a blur of pregnancy birth baby

two months measured out in feeds and naps

tears, each week I walk this walk a little quicker

 

each week things get better

before they get hard again, but mostly

there are more good days than tricky days

and never do I call them bad days.

One of my flowers blows to the ground

 

face-plants grass, stem to the sky

the other I hold as I write, bringing it to my nose

with each pause of the pen, sun-warmed

black-clad body, cheap kmart shapewear

holds my weakened core together

 

I swing my briefly baby-free arms about

the scent of good days and tricky days ahead.

I still call writing days writing days

but really they’ve become

sleeping late under a pile of cats days

letting my washed hair dry in the sun days

lunchtime yoga class followed by lunch days

reading poetry in a café, scribbling notes in my journal days

 

slow stride along the bike path back to the space

where maidenhair ferns its way down one wall

devil’s ivy curls its lips like leaves to the light

thick arms of monstera press against the corner window

obscuring a laundry line of last week’s life

 

the heartbeat rhythm of solitude, solace, self-solicitude days.