Awake and Dreaming

My head is heavy but my heart is so light. 

So full of gratitude and honestly joy hanging out with these kids of ours. 

I can see that light of how your kids become your friends. 

They are FUNNY. So witty and quick off the mark. 
And the hilarity kicks up a notch with a splash of jetlag added in. 

G is trying desperately but still managed to lose his phone on the first flight. We were lucky to have the ground staff retrieve and return it to us while we sat waiting for our transfer at Sydney airport.

Two days later it was his travel bag with epipen, phone and sunglasses left in a friend's car. Again, he's lucky we were able to get in touch with our friend within 10 minutes and he came back with it. He's now very aware it's third strike, you're out, and we won't be helping him get it back next time so it's all on him. We'll see how that goes!

Turns out both the kids are emerging as both great photographers and posers. 
Mr Evan's is loving his new camera and has got some great shots already but an unexpected bonus is that it's beautiful watching the kids wander off together and then they return with photos of each other. 

 

I also feel like I'm pretty constantly being paparrazi'd but it's a small price to pay for recording all the beautiful places and memories so I'm embracing it. 

Dubai was something else.
Sweat dripping, glitterati, large scale everything. 

It was so sweet to see old friends and if it had been 5-10 degrees cooler, we would have loved to stay a couple of weeks as we barely got started on the conversations with them and had just a glimpse of what makes up the city. 

But onwards to Madrid.

We landed five hours ago and we're wrecked.
There's a one night stopover here before the 1 hr flight to Malaga tomorrow and everyone's passing out at various points in our shared double beds. Boys on one, girls on the other, we're ordering room service and then falling back asleep. 

Now all three of them are fed and sound asleep so I've taken a long hot bath and am sitting here marveling at how we're smack bang in the middle of the dream. So I'm gonna add a little sleep to this one and see what tomorrow brings...

This time feels like redemption. 

This time feels like a triumph and we haven’t even quite begun. 

The first big trip we did quite literally on a wing and a prayer. 

Full of idealism and dare I say it, a unknowing hint of white saviourism.

The second we were flush with new business. Ambitious, burgeoning and struggling with more growing pains than I can even share. 

There were many times between. Almost nine years of time which seems impossibly long.

We dreamt up adventures over and over again, but we were isolated.

Shut in. Shut out. 

Meanwhile, we have consolidated and built. 

Expanding, growing children, larger by the day it seems, meanwhile, I've been getting leaner.

I have dropped more physical weight than I knew I could and somehow the emotional and spiritual baggage lost was more than 10x that. 

I’ve faced the devil and cut the fucker out for good. 

I’ve called for myself and let her in again. 

Meanwhile, they have commented how this new way I’m talking makes them sad.
Good girls don’t curse. They don’t talk about sex. They don’t walk away like I did. 

But I knew all along. 

This is not a surprise to me.
This was always going to happen. Because wild is not something you put on.

It lives inside you and you can only cage it so long.

Sometimes though, even for wild things, waking is a slow process. The light filters in and half shut, groggy eyes slowly make sense of the world around them.

Waking up looks like the unraveling of midlife. Dreaming in psychedelic colour for the first time and wondering how you never knew it could be this good.

We are older, I hope wiser, but I suspect we are really just beginning sometimes. 

Ready for the hot sun that never quite burns. 

For the language that makes me feel like a child and gives me a whole new life.

Ready to walk hand in hand with my loves.
Slowly, with eyes wide open, wondering if it can all be true. Knowing it to be so. 

Awake and Dreaming. Again.