It takes time the time it takes

so ... make a cuppa and chill

My house today smells of dark chocolate and baking; outside the sky is blue and cloudless and the air mild, if a touch warmer than I’d like for late Autumn. It’s a good day for opening the windows and airing out the house, or it would be if not for the smoke haze from a nearby bushfire blanketing Perth’s southern suburbs. I’m trying not to think about the laundry I hung on the line late yesterday afternoon. Instead, I’m thinking about the fudgy and decadent brownies I’m baking (with the added goodness of beetroot harvested from our garden) and pondering the first few days of the new life season that has just begun.

A season ends

On the last day of my 9-5 job, I come home with farewell cards, a new plant, a box of belongings from my desk, and the lingering warmth of hugs from a beautiful team of women. I dump the box in my creative space, skimmed the messages in the cards, and, over coffee, try to make sense of what I am feeling. I don’t get far. The feelings are like a pile of jumbled embroidery threads in your grandmother’s old biscuit tin: colourful, scrambled, mixed. There’s a lot to process, a lot to let go of. I think about the warm weather we are still experiencing in Perth, weeks away from winter. It’s as if summer refuses to let go, even though the leaves are defiantly falling; I have been ready to let go for months, I have been shedding the leaves of my work-based life, but now that the moment is here, I’m not sure what to make of it.

And so I sit on a couch with a flat white, a biscuit and whatever this feeling is.

A season ends, another begins.

It is days before I realise that I am still shedding leaves: busy-ness, productivity, consumerism, scarcity mindset, fear. I fall asleep at the end of my last work day thinking, “I can’t believe I’ve walked away from my job.” I sleep fitfully and dream vividly: we are driving up the freeway and reach a roadblock, all flashing DANGER and STOP signs and men in high-vis shirts. In the distance, lightning splinters a black sky. I wake, unnerved, on what was my regular Friday off, and tell myself it’s fear, not a premonition. In a few hours we will be driving down the freeway, heading south for a celebratory weekend. I peek outside. The sky is clear. Not a single cloud.

Ninety minutes later, when I walk to the medical centre for a long overdue annual health check, I leave the phone at home and notice: tomatoes in a verge garden, corellas screeching in the ancient Tuart tree on the top of the ridge, passing cars filled with people going to work and school. I notice in the waiting room too: the man tapping his feet, the woman scrolling on her phone, the child whimpering.

I am doing well, I think. I am paying attention. Look at me go.

Until I’m not.

Back home, I rush to make the bed in the efficient manner I’ve adopted to maximise output before work, except today I’m rushing so we can get on the road for our country getaway. I race around, throwing clothes, books, toiletries and art supplies into a backpack, forcing myself to ignore the three-quarter full laundry drawer, the dust on the floor, the box of work odds and sods. Friday is my cleaning day, but cleaning and sorting will have to wait. It is only when I’m in the shower that I realise the irony of rushing to slow down. I take three deep breaths while warm water cascades over me. Later, I will discover that I’ve forgotten to pack my toothbrush and phone charger, an uncharacteristic move from this seasoned packer.

We drive until we reach the bakery in the town where I had a car accident three years ago, one that smashed my left thumb. We order brunch - a meat pie for A, a flaky spanakopita pastry for me, buttery and flaky, oozing cheese. We buy a still-warm baguette and an oversized almond croissant to share later. And then, in the Visitors Centre garden, we stop to smell the roses.

Later, relaxed and in our happy place, we strike up conversations with strangers who’ve already escaped to the country; sixty-something Clem, who we meet in the supermarket, and an English couple around our age who we meet on our golden hour walk. We ask the couple, why did you choose here to settle? They tell us that they met in France, wanted to live in Australia, looked up cheap land, and lucked out with undulating views that, with eyes blurred and a hearty imagination, “kind of resemble the Cotswolds when it’s green”. We are united in our dream of wanting a piece of this place too.

A weekend in Bridgetown

The rest of the weekend drifts by like the fog that rises in the Blackwood Valley both mornings. The first morning, Saturday, I squeal like a little girl and rush outside, barefoot, dancing on dewy grass. I wrote about this fog in my first novel, Wherever You Go, which is set in this town, and it never fails to enchant me. On the second morning, we chase the fog to the river, where it swirls and steams and the fingers of God reach from the heavens.

We go for a long, meandering walk along the equally meandering Blackwood river. We go to a home open, a tiny cottage painted hot pink that is definitely not our future home. A naps while I paint autumn leaves collected while walking. We eat cheese and olives and Italian ham with our French baguette and drink Australian wine, a berry-driven Grenache from McLaren Vale in South Australia. I knit neat rows of neat stitches and mess my square up when I try to learn to purl. I work on another project - an upcycled denim pinafore with sashiko stitching - even though my hands are protesting. And then, after two blissful days in the country, we drive home, back to the waiting laundry, to the suburban sprawl. To the beginning of opting out, settling for less. I put on a load of laundry, pack away the farewell cards, sort out the “work stuff” I no longer need.

I’m ready for what’s next. Tomorrow is the official start of the new “more slow, less busy” season.

I don’t exactly know the shape of it, but I know what I want it to contain.

I think I’ll make a daily art journal …

But wait …

Your body tells you when you need to slow down. I’ve become accustomed to paying attention to the signs, but sometimes they are determined to make a point. It’s my first “proper” day on my break/sabbatical/unemployment and there are so many things I want to do. But arthritis and RSI have flared up like an unwelcome speed bump. Both thumbs are aching and there’s pain when I try to grasp anything wider than my glass. I have decided to write morning pages again in preparation for whatever book I might write, but I can only manage two pages of near-illegible scrawl. My left pinky finger is triggering. I don’t have time for this, I tell myself as I walk over the hill for a blood test. It’ll be fine, I say as I listen to kookaburras, magpies, parrots, galahs, wattlebirds, singing honeyeaters and try not to breathe in the lingering bushfire smoke.

It’s not fine.

Back home, I catch up on the life admin carried over from the week before (hello cleaning, vacuuming, dusting), write out a shopping list, and head to the shops. I’m too slow unpacking the trolley, I can’t keep up with the cashier’s fast hands and the rolling conveyer belt. My hands won’t cooperate. I am clumsy and uncoordinated. Moments after I pay, I drop the replacement cat food bowl I’d just paid for. When I get home, I drop my lunch on the floor. The first time I stare in belief; the second, I swear as hot tears rush to my eyes. This is supposed to be fun, this making space to slow down.

This is not how I thought it would be.

It is 2pm. The floor is still wet in parts where I have mopped. A will be home in an hour or so and I have not done anything I wanted to do with this gift of time.

I have not:

• resumed work on the novel that’s been languishing for more than a year

• made a cup of tea

• stitched the boro patches on my denim pinafore project

• cast on a new row of stitches for the dishcloth I want to make

• ticked anything off the long list of “ideas” sitting beside my laptop, the list I scribbled when I got home from the country so I’d have something to start with. In no particular order it includes Domestika courses, make a tablecloth top/dress, start art journal, cookbook for kids, clean sneakers, get dye run out of dress, sort pantry, outline creative non-fiction book …

I started an “art journal” but I’ve already realised it won’t be a daily thing.

I do not feel like a domestic goddess or a contented creator. I feel … flat. Let down (by my own expectations). Frustrated by my uncooperative hands. Annoyed that the day is slipping by too fast. I want to cry but I don’t have the energy to. Instead, I have a pity party. I slowed down. I opted out of full-time work. Why are my hands making me slow down more?

Logic tells me it’s my own doing, I pushed it on the weekend with the knitting and stitching. But there’s a deeper knowing too, a compassionate one that says it will take time to find the rhythm of this season. To allow myself to focus on one thing at a time. To let go of the shiny new projects that sound fun and focus on what I already have going. To accept that I can’t do all the things and that’s OK. This compassionate voice reminds me to go gently. To be in time rather than watch the time.

I don’t need to have dinner simmering, bread cooling, laundry folded, floors shining, a chapter written, and a new dress made by the time A gets home. I’ve lived for decades and still haven’t let go of my expectation to be all things at once. To always have something to show for my day. To use every moment well. To justify this season.

I’m 53. I have heaped these expectations on myself, one weighty brick after another, my whole life. I am opting out of these expectations too.

This will be my learning. My letting go of leaves no longer needed. My season of reawakening.

It won’t be easy.

It won’t be fast.

It will take the time it takes. And then some.

I open the storage closet and dig out my Le Creuset whistling kettle, the one I bought to slow me down, and packed away because it was too slow for my dad when he visited a couple of years ago. The one A wondered if I should pass on, the one I knew I would need again one day.

And then I wait for the kettle to whistle and make the cup of tea I should have made hours earlier.

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