My best friend and I have never lived in the same city.  Well no, that’s not true.  We have, but we weren’t best friends then.  We sat across from one another in art and tried to out-do one another with sarcasm and wit.  I didn’t like her head full of hair accessories nor her penchance for drama and she didn’t like my..um, I don’t know actually, what she didn’t like.  But we made a sport of irritating one another.

And then one unexpected day, my Grandmother died.  At that point, while my parents worked overseas, I lived with my “ma”.    While trying to find my lost self in that Whole New World called Grief, I found a friend in Jennifer.  She’d lost her Grandad, she understood.  We spent an afternoon in this park.   It was 1989.

We’ve been best friends ever since.  And most of that time has been spent far apart.  But we make do..and for every step of my adult life, Jennifer has been there.  For all the good times.. the holiday times, the squealing down the phone “I’m pregnant” times.   And for the very, very bad times.   She has not faltered.   “I’m not going anywhere“..she’s told me too many times to count.   The distance is irrelevant.

In 2002 we both found out we were expecting girls.  Three weeks apart.   We marveled and rejoiced.  We planned and dreamed and come nine months later, we birthed.  Aria and Ava.  Our girls.   They met but twice.  As tiny babies and as three year olds.   And they connected like sisters.  They shared a love of all things pink, princess and sparkly, and of the word “bumba”.    They held our hopes for a lifetime of friendship to mirror our own.  The distance was irrelevant.

One of our many plans for our girls included a garden tea party .  We dreamed up all the details, the pretty pink china had been bought, the location discussed over glasses of wine on holidays late at night.  I could see it all so clearly in my head.   More than a simple tea party though, it felt like a celebration of our own friendship.  The planning was half the fun.    And, along with so very many other things, we never got the chance.

The missing of Ava never goes but the details of the missing change every day.   The lost moments fade in and out..the turning of four, the start of school, the first ballet lesson.  Ava’s Tea Party, and the missing of it, have never faded.  I yearned for it the week she left, I yearn for it now.  What has changed is that I took my missing and handed it to Mandy.  And a little while later,  she gave me back this.

To have turned my sadness and my missing and my regret into such beauty, to have shown me what this day might have looked like.   I can hear the chatter, I can smell the forest.  I have sat and stared and breathed in this moment.  It leaves me without words.

It’s not just Ava’s though, this belongs to Aria and Jennifer too.  While I’m so honored to be able to share this illustration, the story behind it is also too precious for me not to share.    I see it and am reminded of what I already know..that there is not always tomorrow, that I am eternally grateful for best friends, that life is surprising, that days with our children are such a gift and that distance is irrelevant.

S xx

ps Mandy has very kindly donated the A4 print to me to make available for sale at a special price.  I’m thrilled to say that you may purchase Ava’s Tea Party here.

This week, loving:

The Mykonos dress from Anthropologie.

Not just a little bit, I mean really loving.   This is so everything I adore.   But $358?  Surely I can fly to Mykonos for that?  If you happen to wander past this in a bargain bin one day, I command you to purchase it.  And send it to me.

Letterpress Anything.

I spend too much time I don’t have letterpress browsing.  From imagining hanging it on my walls/having stationary printed/getting remarried just to do wedding invitations, I am in love.

If we’re going to be talking handmade, I can’t leave out this jackilope feltidermy creature.  That’s right.    Adorable, no?   I’m a little too fixated on all things felt and blanket stitch.  Oh to be crafty.

And something else that’s made my heart sing of late – this gorgeous Alice in Wonderland bracelet I had custom made in childs size for Aria by Just Be Designs.  I also had a Wizard of Oz one made for Ivy :)  Thankyou so much Bianca – the girls (and their Mummies) love what you created for them!

I can’t leave out this person, who, with bed hair and sleepy eyes at first light today, made me happy.

I do have one more thing to add to my list but need to wait one more day before I can share :)  I’m so excited though..I shall return tomorrow!

S x

Initially, in those early months of 2007, Ava’s Daddy & I talked about the mixed feelings that went with Ivy not knowing Ava.    She was just twelve months old when Ava left.   They had not gotten the chance to learn about one another, to play dolls, to fight, to share secrets.  It broke our heart to know those things could never be but at the same time,  we were relieved that she could grow up without the missing that we, and her brothers, would have to endure.

At that time, I held some vague notion that one day, when Ivy was possibly nine, or twelve, she would come to me and say “So, Mum.  This Ava person?  Tell me about her.”  And I would sit down and tell her about a sister she had..for a short while.  Ava.   I’d  show her the special things.   Perhaps open those creaky  armoire doors and pull out some faded dresses.   And how, against all I believed possible, we survived losing her.  Maybe she’d sit quietly and absorb and feel a pang of missing she may not have had before.   I don’t really know but the hazy reel played something like that.

And then, a few short months after Ava left,  I began finding out that Ivy had an awareness of her sister well beyond what I realized.  At just 15 months of age, sitting quietly on my lap in the lounge one night, she suddenly sat straight up and looked over my shoulder.  She started to point and asked me to get up, in toddler babble.  I was not very keen and she was not giving up.  So, we went, her pointing the whole way until we reached the cup cupboard.  From it swung a Xmas ornament with Ava’s photo attached and she demanded that I remove it and give it to her.  I was baffled, so I did.  She promptly kissed it and handed it back.  That was it.  A brief moment in time but for me it shifted how I perceived their relationship.  The reel rewound,  just a little.  And it scared me.

Since that night, there have been so many moments in time.. Together they’ve created a picture of a little girl who very much knows, and misses,  her big sister.   Who pleads to wear her dresses, who asks to visit her in Heaven, who tucks treasures away so that she can “give them to Ava when she comes home”.   I was not ready for this awareness.   It’s not that we constantly mention Ava, we don’t.  We’ve had to find a balance for our children where we include their sister but we allow them to live a life that does not include grief every day.  We would never want that for them.

It still scares me.  I don’t want Ivy to miss Ava.  I don’t want a day where she cries, I mean really cries, for the yearning of her sister.  I don’t want to have to explain where she went, and why.   I don’t even know why.   I feel so guilty that she will grow up with even a little bit of the wishing and wondering that we carry.  I see her playing alone and it makes my heart hurt.    To look at her, to see how very, very much she resembles Ava, to imagine two of them – so similar – side by side.  My heart hurts all over again.  To think of my own life, growing up with a constant playmate, a confidant, almost a part of my self, called sister..

There is a place in my grief that belongs to Ivy alone, and some days it’s just so much bigger than the rest.

The Explore Workshop is in full swing, a great bunch of girls who I thought were going to be amazing – and they are.  Time has flown, friendships have formed, photographers born!  I do love my job.

The bathroom renovation is also well underway, with a little bit of destruction, a lot of noise and the beginnings of some lovely taking place back there.   Ivy is a most welcoming host to the tradesmen, greeting the tiler with an audible sigh and  “Oh, you again?” this morning.

In The Booth joins the list of good things that are happening of late..Our friends the Austins launched their very swish photo-booth here in Brisbane and have been just a little busy ever since.

I’m not sure this fits into good things, maybe not-very-well-thought-out-but-so-very-funny things?,  but here I am  attacking decorating Kate in the booth the night before launch.  She did say I could do whatever I wanted but I don’t think she was prepared for me to whip a marker out of my pocket as the camera counted down.  I don’t think I was prepared to read the word permanent on the side of it a minute after either.   Oops.

S x

Sent to my by sweet Linda and totally hilarious.. This made my day!

I can’t wait to show this to the boys who will no doubt double over with shrieks of “Yeeaaaahh, right” but in the mean time, I can dream can’t I?!

Thanks again Linda :)  I hope you all had a beautiful day!

S x