It’s March and my daughter is taking her first steps. As I watch her I hold my breath. She steps forward and forward and then falls onto her bare bottom. We clap for her and then she claps for herself too. Her proud smile reaches her ears. I think, oh baby, this is just the beginning.

Brisbane is a beautiful city. We spend days by the big river, walking across the man made beaches, under the flowering vines and spend hours in the library. Alba meets other children here and Papa reads her bird books from the grown up library. We both love seeing Alba happy.

One night I have a gallstone attack. It is the only pain I’ve ever felt that rivals childbirth. I had one in the mountains last year that lasted hours and I thought I might be dying. Back then I talked to my aunt and she told me it was common for the women in our family to have the attacks after pregnancy. I can’t breathe properly and my stomach is as hard as rock. I want it to end but I don’t know when it will. We drive to the hospital. The traffic is bad and time goes very slowly.

Soon after we arrive my lungs begin to open wider, bit by bit. And then like a sail caught in wind I can breathe full breaths again. It feels so incredible and blissful to be well and alive. I am told to get an operation on my gallbladder but the attack already seems miles away. A part of me feels grateful for the reminder of how good it feels to be well.

Every morning M goes for a run up the nearby mountain and Alba and I spend the morning together. For breakfast I make her scrambled organic eggs with lots of coconut oil (for good fats) and nutritional yeast (for b12) and I have chia & oat bircher with almond milk and fruit. When Papa is home we make green smoothies together (kale or spinach, squeezed orange juice & frozen banana). Now that we eat well food is a huge joy for us. Eating a piece of sorrel from the garden sends delicious shivers down my spine. Who would have known that I would one day find more pleasure in a big bowl of salad than an ice cream? Somehow now that we mostly only eat plants, nuts and seeds we eat more diversely than ever before.

We go on a little roadtrip to visit my grandparents. We have breakfast in their garden, picking fresh figs, persimmons and raspberries to eat. Afterwards we lay back on a picnic rug and teach Alba what a cloud is. We forget the camera, so we are careful to not let this memory slip away from us.

As I am picking the raspberries with Alba, I tell M “We need a big garden with strawberries and raspberries and blueberries and mulberries because I could never be unhappy if I had fresh berries to pick.”

We daydream about owning our own land every day. We talk about what we’ll grow and build and how we can live sustainably. I begin planning workshops, a photography book and an app so that these dreams can become life someday soon.

It’s Februrary and Alba is finding her voice. It is sweet and commanding. It reminds me that she is not a little baby any more. We are living with Georgia’s family and making our new house home. Our bed faces the windows so the sun can shine on our bodies. Alba follows the children on all fours like a puppy dog and cries at the door when they leave.

 I spend the afternoons making dinner for everyone in the house and many mornings baking or making nut milks, raw desserts or drying fruit. I give Alba a wooden spoon to stir granola and she squeals with delight and the granola is everywhere.

 Most days I feel like I have too many responsibilities and too little time. I work while Alba is in the garden with Papa or during her morning nap. I know I could be more productive during the day but it would mean not being present enough for her. So I’m not doing as many photoshoots as I used to and the dishes are piling up but we are living and loving as a family every single day.

 Nights can be hard. It’s not always easy to abruptly stop in the middle of answering an email, cooking or editing a series of images to be Mama again. Sometimes when she wakes up and cries my heart sinks and as she feeds (sleepy and safe in my arms) I feel chained. For a while I even tried night weaning.

 It’s easy to forget what is most important in my life. Not those emails, dinners or images, but my family. I’m discovering how to appreciate what I have in each moment, not mourn what I don’t. So last night as I was working on our online store I heard a cry and slipped into our dark, warm bedroom. I curled my girl’s body so her chubby legs were against my belly and I was grateful that she needed me. One day soon she won’t need these night feeds any longer.

 The garden is growing wilder and wilder as the days pass. Alba explores it on all fours or walking with her little hands in ours. A lady bug makes its way across her arm and she holds an earthworm in her open palm. She digs at the surface of the earth with a plastic spade and plants sunflower seeds. She is only small but she is already creating life.

 Me and M are almost always together, it’s the way it’s been since we first met. If we’re ever apart we take time to brief the other on every conversation, thought and event that happened in the other’s absence  We joke that this lets our minds merge back into one again.

 Some day it will be Alba’s turn to fill us in and we will listen eagerly. Right now I can’t imagine ever hearing her talk back to us, but I know the time is coming and I am impatient. I bet her mind is filled with magic. Just imagine the moment you looked in a mirror and understood for the first time that the reflection was you. Imagine being in a world where everything is new and unknown. Babies can teach us so much about ourselves if we just see life through their eyes.

And though I would have never thought it possible, I love her more on this day than the day she was born.

(Birthday cake recipe adapted from My New Roots. Birthday crown by Papa from flowers in our street.)

]]> http://www.theroadishome.com/alba-is-one/feed/ 95 http://www.theroadishome.com/the-hair-cut/ http://www.theroadishome.com/the-hair-cut/#comments Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:24:29 +0000 nirrimi http://www.theroadishome.com/?p=2622

Although I’ve often said I’ll never cut my hair, one day I felt the sudden urge to. A few days later it was gone and I was free.

For so long my growing hair had been a place of refuge and a way to feel beautiful. Every morning and every night I brushed it. Mostly I wore it in plaits to keep from knotting and when I wore it out it was like a special dress. People would often compliment it, envy it and I loved the way it felt against my bare back.

But it only took a day of forgetting to brush it and it would begin to matte in clumps of ugly knots. I was spending so much of my time preserving what I saw as my beauty that I didn’t stop to realise I could be beautiful without it. Or, here’s a new idea, I didn’t have to be beautiful. At least not in the way society convinces me I should be.

The hairdresser took my long tail of hair and cut it from me in one sharp swoop. It was like my head was a fish bowl tight with fat goldfish swimming scale to scale, then the next moment my head was as empty as a cloud. I moved and felt a shock of short hair kiss my cheek. I didn’t expect to feel any different, but what I felt was a high so strange it was like being in another person’s body. I thought to myself, I may never feel this feeling again in my life. My hair had been so heavy I couldn’t wear it up without having a headache, and now suddenly the weight had lifted, I felt like I was floating up. I kept a small plaited section of my hair long, as a reminder, and I wrap it around my head to keep my hair out of my eyes.

I focus on being kind, open and generous now and suddenly people are glowing, because kindness is a beauty that can be shared by all. The wall is gone and though I can no longer hide, I feel less like I have to.

.

Read the adventure.

(I wanted to write this in a very honest way, so instead of writing to you, my dear readers, I am writing this to M. Because he is the only person I can ever be entirely myself with.)

You and I drive our little car out to Toowoomba to collect my 9 year old cousin, Sommer. She is so excited it’s like a light is shining brightly in her mind, making her eyes glow. She hugs her mama tightly and for a long time. There is no shyness in her love. I try to imagine a day Alba will leave us like this but I just can’t.

When we arrive at the airport Sommer wants to wear Alba in the Ergo carrier. This is one of her favourite things to do. She wears her snug to her chest and tells us happily that Alba is in the perfect place to give her kisses.

First we visit your family in Perth, who are coming to Bali with us. Sommer makes friends with your youngest sisters and while they run amok around the yard we sink into the contentness of free time. We slip out of our mutual kindness in Perth, it happens every time we visit. We both lose our patience in the heat and emptiness.

We fill out the immigration forms as Sommer looks out the plane window, casting her soul out over the foreign country. This is the first time she has ever left Australia.  Then suddenly, like flicking a switch, we are in Bali and the air is both sweet and rotten. The smell instantly floods me with the memories of our last visits.

One, a new couple, washed over with the intensity of new love. Making out on the beach, endless cheap ice creams, launching fireworks and speeding down lonely roads on a motorbike in the middle of the night. Two, for a Christmas with your family. Connecting with your siblings and lounging on big boats above clear water.  And three, in hope that the hell that had become us would be healed by a familiar joy. My selfishness, your desperation to keep us from falling apart and the inevitable hurt. And now, four, evolved and loving again, bringing our new family.

Our first hotel room sits right on the pool’s edge. From our private deck we can dip our limbs in and let the cool spread deliciously through us. I feel as though I am so far away that stress and depression can’t find me here. I uncurl myself on the big bed and breathe contently.

Alba, the born traveller, eyes the place brightly and squeals in delight. “Look! Alba is so happy to be here!” Sommer tells us. She disappears into the cool blue water and only reappears a week later with an ear infection and instructions from the doctor to stop swimming. In-between she makes friends with a blonde girl from Finland.

After midnight on Christmas Eve, we have the worst fight we’ve had since the great rough patch of our lives. I love how rarely we argue now that we’re parents, but this time we’ve been so busy that all the little things have gotten bottled up and compressed tight. It all spills out in a ugly mess of accusations and name calling and eventually you leave with anger, and I am so exhausted I do what I used to do, I curl into a ball and cry. The hopeless, messy kind of crying, spiked too with hot anger.

Then suddenly a kind voice in my head reminds me that I am the one in control of how I feel. That’s right, I am. I sit up from the tiles outside our hotel door, wipe my wet face on my wrists and smile. It feels wrong to smile but the smile works its way into my brain until I actually feel happiness. A concerned security guard passes and I give him a reassuring smile too. I let myself back in, fill Sommer’s santa sack with gifts, crawl in the bed beside my daughter and wait.

Then the door opens slowly, like I knew it would, letting a path of yellow light grow into our room. You pull me quietly up and together we retrace the yellow path outside. You hold my face in your hands tenderly, giving me your full gaze, and you apologise again and again. Then I apologise too. I feel the highness of love, backdropped against the recent anger and I’m glad for moments like these where I can feel fully. We recognise each other again. This is the way it always is now, no matter how small the disagreement. We can never stay mad at one another for long and never overnight. We say sorry, we talk it through with new understanding and we melt into one another again.

I have mixed feelings about arguments. On the one hand, it is a way to release energy and speak about issues without boundary, a way to reset love. After all, it is too easy to get so used to love and contentedness that it feels like nothing.

But on the other hand, it is an ugly thing. Doesn’t every child want parents who never fight? Doesn’t everyone want perfect love?

Before I fall asleep I think I hear the jingling of bells. When I wake up a few hours later Sommer is sitting cross-legged in bed, grinning to her ears and staring at her sack of presents. Among other things she unwraps Indonesian flashcards and tells us she will be able to teach her little sisters Indonesian now too. She hands Alba a present and helps her to open it. It is a small stuffed lion. Alba plants a kiss on his nose and then throws him off the bed. We all laugh because that is Alba, her love is sweet but painful. We spend the day with your family, and I love them dearly but I still miss my own. It doesn’t seem like Christmas without them.

We move to an eco bungalow in Ubud. Our backyard is a food forest, with rabbits, goats and chickens. We share big organic salads, fresh from the gardens. We eat well in Ubud. I’m still unsure of where my intense passion for plant-based food came from, but I embrace it here. I watch with pride as Sommer wolfs down a raw lasagna and a green smoothie. And so far, there is not a single food that Alba hasn’t liked. Somedays it seems I’m just filling the time between delicious meals.

Stress begins to creep itself back into my nights, as it always does, wrapping itself around my thoughts with it’s wiry black fingers. I can’t sleep with the fear of things unfinished, emails unreplied, mistakes I’ve made. You feel me tossing and turning in the middle of the night and you murmur in sleep “what’s wrong?” and as I begin to list you say shhhh like you do when you’re calming Alba. “Don’t worry Nirrimi, I will take care of all of these things.”

Still I am unsettled, so you walk me through (with your gentle words) the ways in which you will help my problems disappear. You wrap your long arms around me so I feel as safe as a child held by a loving parent and so I can escape from complex adult worries. We sleep, us three tangled in the warmth of one another, dreams intermingling like passing clouds.

I wade into the clear water with Alba. The creeping crawling of the water through my bathers wakes me. Most of the time I walk around in a haze, in a kind of autopilot. I barely recognise where I am. But now I take it all in. I am standing with my daughter (oh, my beautiful daughter! Ringlets of hair golden in the sun, blue eyes bluer than the sky above us!) in the Indonesia sea. You, the boy I have loved half my life is photographing me, shouting out across the ocean just how beautiful we look. I think I can feel the individual grains of sand beneath my feet and the water current feels like a breeze at my legs. I wish I could feel this deeply forever.

I spin Alba around and she is overflowing with joy. She’s a thrill seeker, I love finding out different aspects of her like that. She also loves to dance, to put on jewellery, to be in the garden, to have her eyebrows traced when she’s tired and to make music. I love the way she always wants to kiss me just after you’ve kissed me, the way she mimics our quirks, her squealing as you chase her and of course, snuggling her into me as she has ‘boobah’.

We move on, to Kuta for two nights. We used to always come to Kuta, but we no longer have room for it’s chaos in our hearts. We are here because it is your sister’s birthday in the Waterpark and this way we will be nearby.

One night, as Sommer and I are walking past the night clubs Sommer yells to me over the music “I will never want to go to those places they’re so terrible and loud! Why is it so loud?” I explain that it gives some people a kind of energy, like a fire inside them. You might want to feel that too one day. She asked if I ever did and I remembered myself a few years ago, going into these same night clubs with you. I was curious and hungry about that world. The constant chase for feeling. “Once” I said “But none of it was very real.”

One day we get lost down a rice paddy trail. For hours we walk precariously by rivers, trek through streams and follow beaten paths. We ask locals for help and end up where we began. Eventually we find a restaurant where they grow all of their own food. We all share a large coconut, scraping the white flesh out to eat once the coconut water is gone. It is the perfect thing for us weary adventurers.

Very soon it is time to go. We hear Sommer as the plane takes flight say “Goodbye Bali.” Australia smells so goddamn good I throw myself into it and spin around in the blue Perth evening. Then Brisbane, big-hearted Brisbane where our home now is. You’ve been gardening, I’ve been cooking, Alba’s been learning to walk and talk and we’ve been settling in with our big new family. Life is good, but it always is, I’m just learning how to appreciate it more every day.

Images part one // part two.

I took these images in Perth of my (almost) sister Ashlin and her best friend Ella. I first saw Ella 3 years ago while picking Ashlin up from school. I asked Ashlin if she could become her friend so I could photograph her and Ashlin said “maybe…” in that shy way she does. I remember she was holding my hand and we were so proud to have each other.

The second time I saw Ella was when I went to watch Ashlin in her ballet recital. Ella was like a star exploding in the dark theatre.

The next day we were eating ice cream together at the beach, running in shallow water and taking pictures.

Somewhere along the way this blog stopped being primarily about my fashion photography work and began focusing on our lives. It became a diary, or moreso a chronicle of our adventures. I can’t think of any better way to affect people than by being personal and real. But lately my blog doesn’t feel personal or real enough to me. It should have all the color and chaos of a real diary, but it feels like I’m following a formula.

I am guarded with my words, because I’ve suffered for being open and honest. I talk mostly of things I find beautiful, because this is what I thought people wanted to hear. I stick to topics I think my followers will enjoy. In other words, I’m not writing for myself and that is where the warmth trickles out little by little.

So here’s my new year resolution. I am going to write this blog from the deepest, bloodiest part of my heart and if you don’t like it, that’s okay. The internet is a big place, with many other voices telling stories you might like to listen to instead.

Thank you for spending time in my world.

Nirrimi.

Modelling by Tessa May @ Priscillas + Eli
Styling by Elle Packham