understanding patterns; connecting dots

It was this time of the year, 12 years ago that I first walked down this path. The concrete went for about 20m and then opened up onto a wooden deck, I'm going to say about 5m x 5m. All around the perimeter was a bench seat, but the top rail also had a wide rail so you could sit up another level if you wanted. The most obvious thing that made this deck special was that it looked out toward The Pass, one of the most famous longboard waves in Australia if not the world. But it was so much more than a place to assess the conditions. This was a community building piece of infrastructure par excellence. It was where people sat for hours, sometimes alone, often in long slow conversation. It was where we stood, drink in hand, looking longingly at the line up, swapping theories of wind direction and swell size with whoever else happened to be there at the time. It was where every day at happy hour we would meet and watch the sun disappear behind Mt Warning, where we would share nibblies an

It's a really really tough gig being born early. Willow Iris Houston bought tears of joy for Johanna and Luke and the rest of our family on Wednesday 10th June, about 6 weeks before we were expecting. It's impossible to imagine what it's like learning to breath and digest when your little body would prefer to still be snuggled up in the womb. So much beautifulness and vulnerability. So much tenderness and strength. So much love. It's a really tough gig being a parent to a 'premmie.' For nine months you imagine and dream, you plan and anticipate, you design and create. And then the experience of birth and the environment in which you spend your first weeks as a parent is as different to what you'd anticipated as possible. How can you hold so much love and grief at the same time? It's a tough gig being a grandparent to a premmie in the midst of a pandemic. We've run on adrenalin for a week now, having packed up and driven for two long days to get onto