5.12.24
That’s it. I thought it was a little leaf remnant, I touched it and it scuttled away, but it is another new experience. It’s like a consequence of the “Children Using My Bag As Dumping Ground/Storage Place” chesnut. I don’t imagine the caterpillar was stored directly in my bag, but there is a whole load of branches, leaves, flowers, rocks and other “findings” that could easily been vehicles for the caterpillar.
To a certain extent life in Chile is the dream I was searching for. It is outdoors. When we come back from school, the kids jump out the car on the way back to where we are staying and it can easily be that I don’t see them until supper, which is always late, because it is light until late. A childhood of play and moreover outdoor play. A consequence of outdoor play, is they are in bed so late, that waking them up for school has become near on impossible. Each day this week we have broken our own record of late-ness. This does not sit well with me, but no one has said anything yet and if they have, I haven’t understood it.
From the small amount of Chile that I have been exposed to, it is very different from Colombia. The weather is different. The people are different in nature. It’s hard to pinpoint how. In Colombia many people were excited that we were visiting their country. They were eager to share information about the country, where to visit etc. Here I don’t get that sense. This is an apples and pears comparison though. Here in Chile, we are in a town that over doubles in size in the high summer and winter season, with Chilean tourists, but also international tourists. The mindset and starting point between here and Chinchina, Colombia is completely different. In Chinchina there was very few leisure activities that people seemed to have time for. Life was more about not exactly survival, but day to day, lower levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Here there is a greater focus or mindset of the highest level – self actualisation. There are rivers to raft on, or swim in, there are volcanoes to climb, sled on, ski in the winter and general hiking.
The summer is about to start. The kids break up for their 2.5month summer holiday in two weeks. We have rented a ‘cabana’ for the month of January. This is really where my dream begins. It is virtually on a river. A river with an entry from just by the house, into a shallow part. A river with a board to jump off into a deeper area. A river we can fish in. Not that I’m into fishing, but Negev is. A stream leading into the river that the kids can follow. On the land that the Cabana is on, there are another couple of houses. One house has a cat, who had three kittens a month ago – the kids (and me) are in heaven. And the piece de resistance…..there is a huge chicken coop. Two chickens live there already and we can get our own chicks, keep them there and leave them there when we leave. Once a week, or every other week, four horses come on to the property to ‘mow the lawn’. It is a little dream. I am picturing my summer, in January, with the children off playing and being outside and making friends with local animals and children too. I wonder what I will do.
Whether this dream comes into fruition in quite the way I imagine it, is anyone’s guess. In fact, I would put money on it, that it won’t be how i’ve described it. It’s already enough though. I have seen a change in the kids in the last couple of weeks. There seems to be a bit more breathing space before they lose their sh*t and they are losing it less. I have also discovered a way to get them to do what I want or need them to do. Obviously not fool proof and completely and utterly random, but they seem to respond much more favourably when I speak to them in a heavy northern accent. A mixture between Yorkshire and Mancunian. It’s nuts. It also helps me, when I’m about to bubble over, if I dig deep and find my inner Northerner, I seem to simmer down. I can’t always find it. In those times, I default to familiar pattern; shouting, impatience etc and then I wonder why everyone is flaring up so much. It’s amazing and annoying that I have so much power to alter the mood of the family with my tone and words. It means I have to continually be on and aware of myself, grrr.
For the first time since we left in August, I am beginning to feel at ease a little. Instead of watching my family and kids disintegrate before my eyes, I am beginning to see the beginning of them thriving. Which interestingly has left me feeling great about that, but a little restless. I have understood this to mean that it is time to add something in my life for me. I have spent the majority of the last 10 years focused on everyone else and putting my needs second, third, fourth, fifth or anywhere else. Of course, I’ll spend a lot of time doing the usual, making sure everyone else has what they need, but I’m beginning to feel there is more space for my needs and that I have an opportunity to work out what they are and get something more out of this time. Or maybe just being here is enough? We are after all human beings, not human doings. Not my phrase to copyright, but it’s a winner. Doing is much easier for me and much more of a default than being. Being is a skill I’m working on.
Apparently Chile, being so far away from the rest of the world – it really is far, it takes more or less the same time to get to Miami from where we are as to get to London – is the home to some inexplicable phenomenon. It also seems to be a place where people embark on spiritual journeys and that ritualistic mind opening plants are used for said journeys. Not that I’m going out searching, but I’ll keep my ears open. And if not that, maybe I’ll get into wood work and building. Our very awesome, interesting, welcoming and Chilean-vibe effected friends have a lot of power tools. They are actually leaving, post an eleven year stint here, in a huge van that they have adapted, by hand, into a home and will be driving north, to the east coast of the US over the next six months, where they will be settling. So maybe I’ll learn to use them. Meanwhile, I am wallowing in my gratitude.
P.s. For those of you wondering the fate of the computer caterpillar, it hid beneath the warmth of my phone as I wrote this, then post a photo-shoot in which it took a tumble onto the floor, it is now safely ensconced in a plant pot, hopefully recovering from shock and on it’s way to living it’s best life.