A Story and a Wee Catch Up | April 2024

Puke City, hunting down hope, and the cutest passport pic you ever did see 👀✨

Hello hello from Puke City! If you’re wondering what it’s like to inhabit such a place, just picture yourself sitting down on the edge of your bed when an adorable little person climbs up behind you and folds their arms around your neck. What comes next is not the snuggle-fest you anticipated, but is, in fact, said little person leaning forward and projectile vomiting straight into your lap—with splashback on the walls and everything. And they are not the first person to do it that day.

This letter comes to you from my kitchen floor, the only surface in my home on which my offspring haven’t been sick.

Anyway. Enough of that. I came to tell a story that will (hopefully) be a little easier on the stomach.

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It’s a new school term and for me, it comes all the appointments with all the professionals. To the best of my ability, I am polite and charming and banterous, but when a meeting with one of my son's teachers comes to an inconclusive end, I drop all pretences.

“It feels like I’m on my knees with nowhere else to turn, ” I begin and notice her bristle at my vulnerability and decide to keep going before she can fob me off, “It feels like I’ve joined the long list of people who’ve failed my child and I’m running out of hope at this stage.” I follow the teacher’s eyes to the floor where I’m on my literal knees, reckoning with a toddler who ransacks my backpack. I hold her gaze, daring—no—begging her to say something. Anything. But she just laughs. And then asks about our weekend plans.

The next day, on a grey barren Saturday morning, Paddy and I take the boys for a walk at Titanic Quarter and the whole thing is, quite frankly, a hot mess. I hope for a quiet moment to fill Paddy in on the week’s appointments but the moment doesn’t come. What does come, however, is a chance to duck into the Dock Cafe–one of my favourite places for many reasons but, most of all, because they ask if you’d like your coffee normal or strong. 

Strong, always strong. 

While we’re there, the boys disappear into the prayer garden and do the opposite of anything quiet or meditative. They return to us with a fluorescent yellow sticky note they’ve written together—“I love you, Mum and Dad”—which I decide is a prayer of sorts.

On the walk back, I clutch the note tightly in my knuckles. But in the 0.5 seconds it takes me to bend down and pick up an upset toddler, the note takes on a life of its own. Before I realise what’s happening, Paddy is halfway across the old shipyard chasing the note as it whips about in the wind. 

When he finally catches it, he turns around and fist-pumps the air, waving the note triumphantly. We are in hysterics. The satisfied smirk on his face tells me he was most definitely chasing the lols in an attempt to redeem the tension of our earlier walk. 

But I also know how desperately we both need to hold onto that note. How desperately we are both chasing hope.

On the rest of the walk, the boys skate and scoot and holler and laugh and I release many silent prayers of my own, watching them take flight.

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A Wee Catchup

One of the great loves of my life turned three <3
And in this bin fire of a world, this guy has been such a kindness from the Lord in my life. I adore him as much as he adores cinnamon buns and since he is turning out to be quite the Swiftie, all I will say is: “I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, but I want ‘em all.”

Easter Sunday 2024. Paddy loves a dawn service before church on Easter Sunday morning, but daylight savings did a number on us and 6 am = 5 am (God knows we had a baby learning to walk along furniture at midnight). So we didn’t make it out at dawn, but we did make it out at dusk and my kids ate a lot of sand and I was thinking about how Jesus appeared to his friends on that Resurrection Sunday evening, maybe at dusk, and he showed them his wounds. I was thinking about how this year, Holy Week has felt alien and irrelevant to my daily life. I have gone through some of the motions and completely abandoned some others. I have felt far and fuzzy, numb and hollow. I have wounds, as fresh as Monday or Tuesday, that I can’t seem to reconcile with the faith I pin my life on. But then I thought about seeing Jesus face to face someday, rising because he has risen—wounded and scarred, but not far or fuzzy, numb or hollow. Wounded and scarred, but new and whole. I thought about the concrete hope beyond fading light and deepening darkness and for a moment, dusk was the holiest part of my week. 

Sorry, but Jesse’s passport photo is killing me softly and I had to share.

Paddy was able to be the one to take Asher to his Speech and Language Therapy over the Easter break and he sent me this photo afterwards. And I don’t know guys, in that moment I was just deeply thankful that he could be the one. That he can be my husband and a dad to my sons. It wasn’t always this way.

A precious friend got married and I will never not get all misty-eyed when a bride walks down the aisle, but this was a particularly leaky one.

^ I am still not over this.

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Stuff I Can’t Stop Thinking About

This poem, for every mother who’s had a Spring baby <3 And this one by my friend Amy captured the everyday beauty of marriage so perfectly. I sent it to Paddy as a love note. Kristin Hannah did it again with her new book but, hot take, I think Winter Garden is the unsung hero of KH books and doesn’t get enough love. Hello Beautiful rocked my world. None of This Is True isn’t my usual genre and it was creepy AF but I finished it in a day and have zero regrets. So so good.

F.Y.I. I am going to need 5-7 business days before I have fully processed my thoughts on Taylor’s new SECRET DOUBLE ALBUM but she had me at this line (not that she didn’t already have me but, ya know).

In case You Missed It

The Coffee + Crumbs Spring Collection is here and it is a stunning work of art worth savouring piece by piece with a piping hot cup of tea. I am honoured to have an essay published in it and feel very thankful to have such a safe and generous space to share my words. This essay is the personal story of a fought-for friendship and the universal story of what motherhood takes from us—but also gifts to us, when we need it most. It’s part love-letter to a BFFL and part anthem for female friendship.

“With a pit in my stomach, I share my biggest regret—that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most. In return, she confesses she didn’t, couldn’t, fully understand everything I was carrying as a mother. Perhaps we are here now, side by side, because we are older and wiser. Because she moved near me or I asked her to be my bridesmaid. Because she is no longer sick, and I am no longer a single parent. Because our husbands play pickleball or because we got pregnant at the same time. 

But I think it’s more. 

In motherhood, the sweetness of a fought-for friendship buoys us. In the swell of shifting routines and needs, it holds us up—every version of us that has come and gone before. Motherhood has taken from me, yes, but it has returned a missing friendship. And thank goodness, because it’s not possible to do this blood-and-guts, beautiful and broken calling without it. Without her. 

Later, Anna texts, I feel icky for bringing up the missing years—don’t let it take up precious space in your brain.

My thumbs move quickly to assure her, You were missing and very much missed. 

We’re back together and better than ever, she replies. 

We know we can’t rewrite the history of our friendship or delete the missing years, but let the records show we can redeem them—one sofa squeeze at a time. 

Better than ever, I repeat.” Read the whole piece here.

Lastly, for the Lols: This has me roaring every time. As does this (me before the wedding), this (the straw is too real) and this (it’s the comments for me).

Now, if anyone needs me I’ll be under my duvet, hiding from my family and de-coding all of Taylor’s new lyrics. Feel free to reach out if you, too, consider this to be a public holiday weekend and we can nerd out together.

Lots of love,

Reb x

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