Kirjahaku

'I write to make it real.' How often I have said that over the years? I didn't make it up to sound clever, it is what I do and who I am. In a life filled to overflowing with richness and challenges, there has been much to write about and I have. Flower Child was born when I was thrust unexpectedly back sixty-something years into my childhood by the perfume of a flower in a quiet room. Flower Child is a tiny glimpse of a time, the place and some of the people that laid the foundations of who I was to become. It is where I learned the standards and values that I have lived my life by. In the doubt-filled aftermath of a recent challenge to the core of who I am and how I live, I have again found healing in writing. These are my memories.

The question is, how did I become a seventy-two-year-old woman, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, wife, stepmother, editor, poet, essayist, artist and friend who ends every single day sending her prayers of thanks to the moon? A frank and moving reflection on how a shy English child fulfilled her potential in Australia.

As a child, I drove my mother to distraction with my never-ending stream of 'Whys' I knew I had reached the end of her patience when she answered with 'Why? Because.' My stream of questions has never run dry, rather I have learned over long years to accept that most things have only a temporary answer because more and new information and understanding will appear as I read and experience more. In the world of sea, wind and sky, questions have become more like musings and these days I don't need anyone to give me answers - I am content to witness and be part of the mysteries of the intangible.

Vivid memories prompted by hearing a few stray notes playing sent me wandering through my very rich life to renew my love of particular pieces of music and songs. When I started writing poems, I recognised that, for me, music is like ekphrastic poetry. A composer responds to something and in turn there is my response to the composer. From my own experiences, I was reminded how my mental image or emotional response to a piece of music was not necessarily what the composer had in mind. Being more aware of the silences throughout a piece of music or when it comes to an end, I started to write about silence. In doing that, I realised that in our ordinary lives it doesn't exist. What is silence? It appears to be a momentary pause between one sound and the next - a heartbeat. Even if everything else can be blocked out, we can still feel or hear our own heart beating. Having got that far, I explored places where there was 'silence' and discovered what I could really hear.