Denham, Western Australia

All Mail to be forwarded to

The Dentist
Leonora
Western Australia

It's the weekend before my drive of 832 km from Perth, inland.
My garden has had the first blooms of pre-spring. It's a bit hard to leave.

The worldly goods I have packed with me seem.. eccentric.
- 
Calvin and Hobbes
and about a dozen other books
music scores
a teapot
and five different teas
handmade cards from mum and Abi
a set of dental Luxators and a suture kit
my grandma's fried shallots mmm
a koh-sized orange jumper


and how much canned food can a girl eat in one month?

Yoyo-ing from glad to sad to glad to sad about this mini adventure has been tiring to say the least, but Jesus' companionship provides the backbone that strengthens my many shortcomings.

I may or may not have regular mobile reception, and I may or may not have regular internet access. We'll see!

Happy Happy Birthday Abi!

I love you.

Jie.

lull

the finest part of any party is the sweetness of its aftermath; my cheeks aching from all the laughs, feet and arms suddenly sore from the hours spent in the kitchen whipping up a storm. my brothers and i, we raise our teacups in a toast, and gaze up at the cranes that transformed our ceiling into a vast sky with several suns.

to spend these kind of moments in these years with my brothers was something that i had never dared to ask God for, something that i thought was intangible, but of course He managed to arrange it anyway. dinners, packed lunches, housework, bills, groceries, laundry, mail- i am astounded at our efficiency as housemates. (save for the ironing). (and weeding). i sometimes wonder if mum and dad are proud of us for transforming from angsty, selfcentred teenagers to our current state, but then i remember that i'm crawling towards the 'mid-twenties' and it's about time we learnt to appreciate each other.

i was pouring water into bright cups for the kids around the table. they munched on their cookies, in sweet silence compared to the yelling 5 minutes pre-cookie time. chomp chomp chomp went their chompers around the light brown dough, eager to reach the chocolate chip bits. we always encourage the kids to say thank you and please and excuse me, particularly when their little fingers and chubby hand grab at the cookies. manners have always confused me. the ps and qs are etched in me (good job mum) so the niceties spuuurt from my lips with relative ease and little thought. on occasion i pause and think gosh, do i really mean this 'thank you' or 'sorry', am i really thankful? am i really remorseful? i believe that to have good manners is certainly better than having none at all, or having - heaven forbid- bad manners. but i also believe that they are a start, a habit, of cultivating gratitude. and sometimes they are a saving grace, prompting us to be thankful when we aren't. sometimes they are the beginning of healing, like the sorry that comes out because it needs to be said and should be said, not because we are really one hundred percent sorry, yet. perhaps it is that sorry that allows civil discussion and conversation to flow once more. but sometimes we should abandon all practiced manners to the wind and follow our hearts.

like the boy whom, upon receiving his little plastic cup of water, that i filled up half-way in anticipation that it would be spilt, looked up at me in the eye and said "I love you"

and  bowled me over. completely.

i love you too, i said.

such sweetness and warmth filled my heart.

children, who have lived a mere fraction of our lifetime, have a knack of seeing and speaking from the heart. God help us do the same. to betray conventions and social norms when passion and honesty would result in greater joy and delight.

photo: on the way home from work, grumpily, in traffic, i spied these two monkeys racing across the bridge..