On leaving Berlin

I found this drawing in one of my many visual diaries and I remember when I drew it. I was sitting in a very groovy café on Grafestr – one I would walk past every morning and afternoon taking Toddler to kita but it’s not the pram type of place. I’d sometimes see people that I knew -friends or friends of friends – we’d pretend we didn’t see one another as I was pretty much never really OK.

I haven’t thought much about Berlin since returning – I didn’t feel much when we were leaving – I was just focused on getting out of there. When traveling with a toddler, you don’t have much time to reminisce. I cried very briefly about Berlin when we transferred to the third and final plane in Singapore – but I mostly cried because of how fucking horrible it was to travel such a long distance with a toddler who hasn’t even traveled much in a car.

( I blog about a lot of the nitty gritties but that trip was so awful I thought I’d leave it alone.)

Anyway, whenever Toddler was in kita I’d go to all the places I couldn’t go with her, I’d climb up and down stairs, I’d go to tiny poky shops that I had no interest in purchasing anything from – but just to look and to be there because I could. In this café I sat in a sea of glowing apples ( air book pros ) and talking was hushed like a library. I had ordered a coffee and a slice of food only to get anxious because it took such a long time and I was on my way to get Toddler from kita. So I did this drawing even though I thought it wasn’t very good.

I haven’t really had time to digest our time overseas. I want to, but again, life with a toddler does not allow for remising. It’s the here and the now and then once the day is all over it’s get ready for the next day and try – try – to get some fucking sleep. But as all the photos go up on various social network media of snow, the grey skies, the fog, I think how much I like my 32 degrees. Here when I bump into old work friends, friends of friends and they now have kids and we exchange phone numbers and meet up and some are relaxed enough to say fuck every now and again – I think of how much I like this town and the people in it. I think how old me focused too much on the negatives and now I hardly notice it – unless it throws a rock at my head.

Toddler has had most of her life in Berlin, it’s more important to me than I could articulate but I think about those times where I truly think I was crazy and though I’m stressed now – it is nothing like what I was in 2011. And with everywhere I have gone there are certain people I wish I could have packed up and brought home with me. But it is also good to  know that there are some great people out there.

It’s sad that I felt at such odds with the place, there are somethings that happened there that I still can’t really come o terms with and how much I upset people with just not being OK makes me feel slightly guilty. It’s one of the things I think about late at night still.

But I just wasn’t OK and I was never going to be there.

I hope to be here.

Because this is my home and familiarity is king when you have a child – for me anyway – and everything changes when you have a child. It just took me almost three years to understand that.

The natural progression of things

 

We’ve been going through boxes that we stored almost four years ago – I am unpacking my twenty five/ six year old self.

The things I held onto then I can hardly remember it’s significance now. I do know that I never expected life to take the turns it did – do any of us? – and it looks to me as though I expected to come back home one day like nothing had really happened. I’d just gotten some stamps in my passport, some photos of me standing next to impressive and old shit.

I never expected to have a baby overseas – far away from everyone and everything I knew. But I am glad that I did.

As I unpack and ponder I think that it is good I have forgotten significance. It is good that I have moved further away from that girl.

A natural progression.

I walked the streets of Brunswick the other day – the suburb I grew up in – and it has all changed so much, but hasn’t in many ways. What a weird feeling – almost surreal.

Memories came back to me – racing BMX bikes down the blue stone laneways, friends houses that I used to visit, my first Primary School and all that anxiety when starting school. All the goddamn drawing I used to do!

It sure is a different place now – which is also the natural progression of things.

The above painting is one of the many Gene found the other night. It was so sweet to watch him carefully go through them, looking at them, reading out my oh so daggy poetry about horses. You can see I liked Noddy – but I’ve replaced Big Ears with a cat – I must have thought that a cat is a much more suitable companion.

Tegel

When I was getting ready to leave Berlin a lot of people asked me how I was feeling – if I was sad, daunted, was I looking forward?

The thing is if I was a single entity I’d probably have more time to reflect – but all I could think about was what I could do to entertain my two year old on the long haul flight, what could I feed her so she was still eating something relatively healthy? The weeks leading up to the departure I spent looking for little things to buy her to make the trip a little less awful.

( And it was, it was awful but it is done. )

I didn’t make plans to say goodbye in Berlin or hello in Australia because I couldn’t/ can’t get into that headspace. I can’t justify making Anja sit in a car for hours when I just made her sit in a plane for 23 hours. Her distress has me in tears, so we’re taking it slow.

It’s not guilt – I think it’s just fair.

In Berlin I didn’t travel anywhere with Anja – for all the reasons I have written about over and over again on this blog – so she’s also just not very used to it.

But we’re getting there.

Here Anja already has her favourite place where she stands behind the curtain and just looks – she watches the birds, the trees, the sky. She can turn and say ‘shoes’ – being able to just step out side is liberating on a level I find hard to articulate.

So we didn’t document our journey as planned, we just got through it. I know there are a lot of people traveling about with bubs and kidlets but to be honest – it isn’t for us. Not yet.

I’d like some familiarity, a back yard, neighbours, regular cafés, to be part of somewhere, to be someone. I’d like parent friends, I’d like a mummas group, I’d like my learners, I’d like to call a place home and only leave it for a holiday -

- brief family holidays.

I am here, here we are

 

We arrived early Thursday morning. It was surreal. I have had moments where I truly believed I will never see home again.

( I can be extreme in that way )

But we didn’t go to Melbourne – we headed out into the country – where we will stay for the time being.

I can’t believe how good the air smells – the trees, the flowers – the life.

This place is beautiful.

There’s all these new noises I have to get used to and gaps of thick, dark silence. The kind of silence that helps me sleep.

Anja seems so happy – the views from all the windows and doors are of the outside, of nature, of wildlife. She saw the horse yesterday, and laughed – hysterically – while walking backwards, away from it.

I don’t know what is going on, where we’re going to go. But somethings are surfacing and I hope to find somewhere we can call home.

I’m so happy to be here.

Parting gift – A Berlin Medley

 

Goodbye Berlin.

x

Drawing on the plane

I didn’t want to leave London, but I did.

Green paper crane

It’s Monday and there is not much to discuss today.

Well, not at 8:03AM anyway.

This weekend has been full – coming home to a week worth of domestics done in a day, gigs, housewarming parties, finding each other on the dark streets, watercolours as distraction, reading Sonya Hartnett and everything beyond the month of September being eclipsed by a 20 hours flight with a two year old..

Oh lordy.

 

 

Coming home sucks, universally!

So now we’re back in Berlin, there’s so much work to be done I’m going to go out and see my friends gig.

Perambulator- Pompeii

The pram in Pompeii, Italy.

Naples- The arrival

Naples is a strange and crazy city, it is one of the oldest inhabited cities beginning in 9BC.