Naomi Bulger: messages in bottles

_You could be forgiven, if you spend any amount of time at all reading blogs, for sometimes feeling the need to express the odd bout of what I like to call “peony fatigue.”

Peonies are undoubtedly favourites of bloggers at every corner of the Internet, and these lovely flowers can show up in almost every conceivable iteration. This is especially so at the moment, as the northern hemisphere slides happily into early summer (that's peony season, folks). Blogger + peony = somewhat of a cliché, it is true. But if that is the case then I guess I’m a cliché*, too, because I adore peonies.

_I love how gloriously big and fulsome and womanly peonies are. They are delicate but not demure. Feminine but not frail. They are the Rubenesque ladies of the floral world. I love the heady fragrance they carry. And I love that when peonies are pink, they are wholly and unashamedly pink.

Last week I spent 11 hours on a hospital bed, toiling in a labour of love to bring my beautiful daughter Madeleine into the world. Around mid-morning a nurse came in, her head and torso hidden beneath a floral bouquet, overflowing with roses and lilies and an abundance of buds and half-opened peonies. They had been sent by Mr B’s team at work, assuming our baby was already born. The nurse put them on a table directly in front of me, and I focused on those flowers as each new contraction tightened.

Later that night, after I was wheeled into the ward and lay in a fresh bed with my child in my arms, overcome with exhaustion and love and wonder and shock and pain and awe, they carried the flowers into my room, too.

At 4am when I woke to feed my child, I could smell the blooms.

And at 7am when they brought in my breakfast and opened the curtains to the cold Melbourne morning as my little girl curled warm and drowsily on my chest, I saw the peonies had opened. Another birth. They were magnificent.

Mr B came in not long after and bent to sniff them. “What did you say these are called again?”

“Peonies,” I told him.

“What? Penises?!?”

“Peonies!” Yeesh.

Once the name had been clarified, we agreed that they were beautiful beyond any flower. “For the rest of her life, peonies will be Madeleine’s flower,” we said.

Madeleine and I left the hospital to come home on a windy morning four days later. The last of the yellow oak leaves whirled in gusts along the tramlines and pathways, and winter clouds scuttled across the sky in an ever-moving patchwork of sunshine and shade. I sat in the back seat with Madeleine, but I could see Mr B’s face in the rear-vision mirror. His smile was as wide as mine.

The front gate creaked as we opened it onto the herb garden that fronted our little house, and Mr B reached into the letterbox to check it as we passed through. Inside was a postcard from my new friend Kate, who I had met at a blogging conference a couple of months back, welcoming Madeleine into our family. Kate is sending out 100 postcards in 100 different Pantone colours. Guess which colour she happened to pick to send to us?

_*I read once that a cliché only becomes a cliché because it is the best way of expressing something. There could be something in that, don’t you think?

And one more thing: THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for your sweet comments and wishes on this post. I feel truly blessed to have so many friends met and unmet, near and far. 

My baby girl. She has a head of dark hair, eyes the colour of a storm at sea, and a bottom lip to die for (and kiss).

We are both recovering in luxury, well cared for by her proud dad and big sister, both of whom were magnificent during labour and delivery.

I look forward to bringing you tales of Madeleine's adventures very soon.

_Emily Rose is my stepdaughter, although none of us like to use that term since it seems so cold, and doesn’t even come close to conveying the sense of family that we have. Next month, she will be 14.

Emily Rose is beautiful, intelligent, complex, passionate, affectionate and deeply loyal. She drives me crazy. Crazy with a love for her that makes me feel so proud, so possessive, so fiercely protective of her that I am churned up in a constant internal battle of emotions versus reality ("I cannot be her mother. I should not be her mother. She already has a good mother. But, dammit, I feel like her mother").

Are you a step mother or step father? Do you know this beautiful, terrible, unquenchable conflict?

Emily Rose is wonderfully creative, and she and I share a love for many projects, like photography, film, writing, cooking and craft. We also share similar tastes in movies, television and some books, something that I like to think makes Emily Rose particularly mature, rather than me immature. Disagree if you dare. We drive Mr B crazy on road trips, telling and retelling our favourite moments from Flight of the Conchords, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Harry Potter, comparing new music we've discovered, and sharing where we’re up to in the latest Frankie mag or The Hunger Games.

But Emily Rose is also a teenaged girl, which means she comes with other attributes. She has strong opinions on everything and isn't afraid to share them. She is incredibly messy, unceasingly hungry, tireless when it comes to shopping for clothes, has about a zillion friends, and is obsessed with taking photographs of herself and said zillion friends.

_You can’t predict Emily Rose. From her father she has inherited a palpable charisma, an entertainer’s love of humour and performance, a head of stunning curls, and a furnace-like temper that’s as quick to flare up as it is to subside.

Sometimes I find it hard to navigate these extremes, both in Emily Rose and in Mr B. I’m a slow burner. Slower to rise in temper but, I am ashamed to admit, a lot slower than either of them to apologise or forgive. It takes me a lot longer to understand my own emotions, let alone anyone else’s, and the ‘thinking time’ I require in the interim teeters dangerously close to the edge of sulks (and has been known to tumble over at times).

Anyway, the thing about Emily Rose is this:

She is to blame for the splints on my hands that make it so difficult for me to type this post. For the fact that I am sitting in a rocking chair with one leg elevated and a thigh under an ice pack to ease the searing pain. She is the reason that I cast a shadow roughly the size of a garden shed, and have to pee just about every half hour.

You see, I never wanted children of my own. I liked children, I just didn’t think I could give a child the life it deserved. And I lived such a rich and wonderful life, full of love and travel and adventure, that while I knew I would miss out on one experience by not having a child of my own, I still had so much for which to be thankful.

Emily Rose changed all that. Through her I had a taste, just a little taste, of what it would be like to be loved by someone for whom you would lay down your life. Because at the same time that I was discovering that I loved Emily Rose more than I ever believed I could love anyone, she gave me her love, too.

From the day I met her, in London when she was just nine years old and her beautiful sister Meg was 14, Emily Rose welcomed me into her family. In time, that welcome turned to friendship, and then love. And the sweetness she showed me, her affection, her acceptance, completely changed my outlook on parenthood.

So when my little Baby B enters the world, she can thank Emily Rose not only for being the best big sister a baby girl could desire, but also for her very existence. Because Baby B is as much a product of my love for Emily Rose as she is of my love for Mr B.

E + me, 2008 to 2012 L-R:
At Hamleys in London; Disneyland in LA; at the Plaza NYC; at Tullebudgera Beach on the Gold Coast; by the Eiffel Tower Paris; on the Spanish Steps in Rome; reflected in a fountain in Nice; and on the tram in Melbourne just this weekend, listening to music

Dear Lennon and Maisy, how have I not seen/heard you before? I am in love!

What would you do if you’d never been to Paris before and you had one day, just one, precious day, to see as much of this magical city as you could? Where would you go? What would you see?

That's the content of my post on the English Muse today, here.

What to do on a cold Sunday night in with two teenaged girls to entertain and nothing good on TV? Host a cupcake decorating competition, of course.

I mixed up a batch of my favourite vanilla cupcakes and plain buttercream icing, using an adaptation from the Magnolia Bakery (NYC) recipe that I love so much. Mr B went all out at the supermarket, buying up natural food colouring, sprinkles, edible sparkles and tubes of coloured piping.

The girls were incredibly creative with their designs. There was a blue-sky rainbow scene, a glowing eye, yin and yang, and even a scooped out bowl of pasta with candy spaghetti bolognese (a tribute to the delicious spag bol we'd eaten earlier for dinner, courtesy of Deb from Bright and Precious). We were very impressed, and Mr B sure had a tough time judging the winner.

It was just lovely to sit in the other room and listen them quietly chatting with one another as they mixed up colours and textures and patterns. It's so nice that, despite being in Years 8 and 9 respectively, they still take so much pleasure in these types of activities. (And I confess we all took pleasure in eating them, later, too.) 

Why do so many of us love snail mail so much? It's not convenient, it's not immediate, and it's not free. Email can be all of the above. So can IM and even SMS (depending on your plan). So what's so great about the mailbox?

A few years ago, we thought the digital age would end snail mail altogether. Like, video killing the radio star all over again. Yet today, the sight of a handwritten letter in the mail makes many people leap for joy. Letter writing projects and cooperatives are springing up all over the world, fuelled by folks who love to stay in touch.

Why?

Is it nostalgia? Do we yearn for the days when things were done slowly, carefully, and by hand?

Or is it the personal touch? Does the sight of pen-on-ink, wonky handwriting and lines through mistakes bring us closer to the writer than their spellcheckers, SMS shorthand and emoticons ever could?

Is it the tactile nature of snail mail? The crunch of autumn leaves underfoot as you walk to the letterbox, the creak as you lift the lid, the texture of that envelope as you hold it in your hand, weighing it without realising you're doing it, judging by thickness and shape what you might find inside.

Or is it as fundamental as novelty? Now that our key mode of written communication is digital, does good, old-fashioned mail simply represent the allure of the unusual?

I don't have the answers. But I can tell you I love receiving mail, AND sending it.

I am not fast. It takes me a while to write to my friends. To think about what I want to say to them and then write it down. To decide what to include with my little letter. To plan how I might make the envelope pretty, something special to receive. I put the 'snail' in snail mail.

These days, I even make snails look speedy. There are many people I want to write to right now, but the carpal tunnel syndrome that has dogged my pregnancy makes it even harder to hold a pen or pencil than it is to type. Soon, my friends, I promise to write to you. Or maybe I will succumb and type my letters for you. But that just wouldn't be the same. Would it?

These photographs are of a wonderful little package I received in the mail last week from my pen pal in Germany, Astrid. She sends the most glorious mail. I love unwrapping the surprises she sends me (so does Ruby the cat).

_ps. Astrid recently put her creativity to work and opened an Etsy shop. You can find her sweet, handmade items at Flora Likes Soap and if you buy something, tell Astrid I say hello. She is just a lovely person.

_I finished work this week, so I celebrated by schlepping around in my tracksuit with no make-up and unwashed hair, reading books with my feet up on the couch, cleaning the house, doing a bunch of yoga stretches, setting up the baby's nook, and packing the baby's and my suitcase for hospital.

This was good timing because Baby B also reached full term this week, meaning that even though the due date is still a couple of weeks away, she could choose to arrive at any time and not be premature.

It is also rather nice because I can now use some of the 20 percent use of my hands the physiotherapist tells me carpal tunnel has left me to write blog posts and work on my novel, instead of writing for my clients.

However if I’m honest, I’m still probably pushing things a bit. I’m wearing great big splints on both hands (Mr B says I have “cyborg arms”), and I’ve lost most of the feeling in my right hand as I type this. The pain woke me up again last night despite the splints, the massages, the ice packs and the regular visits to the physio.

Another reason I’m kept awake of late is that Baby B is pressing on a nerve in my pelvis, which creates a sensation not unlike a searing hot frying pan resting on my thigh. There are moments when this sudden burning has brought me to my knees, almost vomiting from the pain.

Yet, I suspect that if this is the sum total of my pregnancy suffering, I have fared very well indeed.

And then there are the other sensations.

Like when, mid numbness or searing pain or both, Baby B rolls over and elbows me in the ribs. Or kicks me hard in the side. Or I feel my entire uterus constrict in those strange ‘practice contractions’ they call Braxton Hicks.

And I think, WOAH, there is an actual HUMAN CHILD growing INSIDE me. And she is ALIVE.

And I am overcome with wonder.

From the start, my body knew how to nurture this child into life. Baby B is big and strong because my body took care of her. It knew what to do although I had no idea.

And now my body is preparing to send my child into the world and straight into my cyborg arms. I cannot wait.

Baby B's kicks are a reminder that I am playing my own part in the miracle of eternal life.

So it is with these lofty thoughts for company that my little neurological ailments come to mean almost nothing at all. “It’s only pain,” I tell myself, which is all it is. Just signals from my brain.

If I were a genius I could probably even turn those off, too. Or change them into pleasure signals, or something.

It was a last-minute decision to grab a last-chance getaway before Baby B turned our life into glorious, love-filled, sleep-deprived turmoil. So on Wednesday we made the booking and by Saturday morning Mr B and I had turned our faces to the hills for a weekend away in the Yarra Valley.

"It's so peaceful!" we kept saying to each other, in a kind of wonder that came from the knowledge that we were less than an hour outside of the city. And I kept saying "It's so green!" in the same awed tones, because I grew up in the country during a 10-year drought.

We travelled and bumped down little dirt lanes for no other reason than they looked appealing.

We strolled through rows of grapevines, all asleep for the winter, and watched our breath form clouds in the late afternoon air.

We wandered in and out of tiny galleries and quirky craft stores.

I developed somewhat of a crush on a collection of neon-coloured crayons made in the shape of little Lego men.

We feasted on chocolate coated strawberries, then laughed through dinner with friends.

We slept in.

We took books and newspapers and read in companionable silence over a leisurely breakfast of fresh eggs and steaming coffee.

Neither of us did any work.