Tara – Tara’s thoughts

Library

Content warning: Poos. Like really, so much poos. There’s a wonderland just five minutes walk from our house, a special place of reading and quiet, where the kiddie section often has a slide set up or a few ride-on toys bumping around, just because. A place with kindly people, chilled drinking water, comfy sofas, aContinue reading “Library”

Worms

Once you notice the worms you can’t un-notice them. After every rain they’re there, glistening, flesh-pink and naked, crawling with great determination towards drowning in an overflowing gutter, as blind and vulnerable thing as has ever existed. And once you’ve helped one, picked it up with the stem of a nearby leaf and popped itContinue reading “Worms”

Balloons

I watch my mother tie the end of the balloon shut in a practiced movement of her small, strong fingers. She wants to teach me how but I am too scared to try.

Country review: Spain

On paper, Spain has it all: History! Architecture! Culture! Cuisine! Art! Nature! Beaches! But the reality is curiously subdued. I did not love Spain.

Meet Cute

I’m about to be Maid of Honour at a dear friend’s wedding. On the blessed day I will see friends I haven’t seen in years. When they ask me how I am, I will check that the bride is definitely out of earshot, lean in close, and inform them that love is a lie.

Birth Story

After dinner that night I took a pill for the surgery then went nil-by-mouth. On Friday we woke at five, I fought through the morning sickness that still plagued me at 38 weeks pregnant to take a shower, and we got in the car and drove to Wellington hospital.

Having twins

“Do twins run in your family?” asks the ultrasound technician out of the blue. He barely gives us time to shake our heads before finishing with a practiced “…because they do now!”