FROLICKING

Is it already 6 days into the new year? I feel like we've been on holiday for a month. We've cleared out so much stuff from the house - each room dissected and rampaged till it was new again. We could still keep going, throwing out, re-organising, but there comes a point where you have to stop and enjoy for a little bit. I've re-created little niches in the living room for new arrangements - not new pieces, just new arrangements of old pieces. I've framed artwork, and made a promise I would buy more flowers this year, showcased vases previously hidden by other vases, and deleted some objects in favour of others again hidden for too long.

We've been away - twice. To see friends and to see family. The children have run and run and run and screamed and screeched and found new friends and are now exhausted. They have frolicked through beaches and sand and rocks, walked down bush tracks, and watched wildlife. We have cleared branches and weeds from the block of land, and met the neighbours. We have eaten and drunk, and laughed and talked and cooked. I sat last night remembering parties my parents had been to when we were children as we sang and drank more extremely fine red wine - that allusive togetherness you can't always recreate, and of which I often wondered whether my children would ever remember such times as well. This weekend, they had those times - those moments when they look at you and see you as a different person in a different context, doing different things, and when you look at them and see them as different too. Detached, together. What a summer weekend away with friends should be. Unfettered bliss.

To see family again was wonderful - they live away, and we don't see them nearly enough. The relationships they have with my children, completely different to that which I shared with my grandparents. All the more poignant as I returned home today to hear my other grandmother had passed away while we were gone. We are thankful she went quietly, and peacefully. Another notch for dementia and old age. Another generation gone, and a closer family we now share here in this country. Her death is not to be mourned - it was expected and sad, but also a relief. I was not close to her, I have not 'lost' in any sense.

We have moved into the new year shedding - slithering out of an old skin, discarding old baggage and clutter, leaving behind old life. Allowing the bold newness and creation of newness - new habits, new ideas; growth to begin. I had talked with a few people about last year being about transition - this year is about moving past that and developing. And I have to say, so far, it's living up to expectations.