New Beginnings

If you’ve been reading my latest blogs, you would know that we recently moved house from a home surrounded by bush and nature on the edge of the city, into a smaller house in suburbia.  After almost 30 years of  being woken by white cockatoos, kookaburras and currawongs, my alarm clock is now a single dove which sits cooing outside our bedroom window.

Surrounding noises are also different. The occasional helicopter or low flying plane and close-by neighborhood day to day sounds, although so far I’ve got to say that it’s very peaceful.

While my morning walks are lovely, they too are different. I am yet to find one animal that needs rescuing. All dogs seem to be safely behind locked gates but there was one persistent little fellow who insisted on sticking his nose under the gate one morning to greet me. There are also brightly coloured parrots in some of the park trees and one morning there were three pink and grey galahs on a nature strip, seeming to have lost their way.

So far, the new beginnings have been wonderful and I’m not missing Warrandyte too, too much. Last night I was talking to my old Warrandyte neighbour (mother of Rhani) and at the end of our chat she held the phone towards Rhani for me to say hello. Apparently Rhani jumped straight up, knowing and hearing my voice. That was nice, but sad-nice.

It’s now time for me to write new stories with new characters in new places and even while I’ve been packing boxes and unpacking them again and then moving that same painting to one more spot, I’ve been writing. Aren’t we lucky to always be able to escape into our words, no matter what chaos is happening around us?

from my beautiful daughter

Thank you.