Letter for Cam at jacaranda time

Dear Cam

Yesterday you asked me, ‘What’s that smell?’ and I said, ‘Rain.’ And I felt as if my spirit was ‘leaping greenly’ like the trees in the e.e. cummings poem, because you have such a gift for noticing beauty and goodness, and your zest makes it easy for me to abandon myself to God’s deluge of blessings. No matter what I’m worrying about, you inspire me to fling it aside and be present for the sheer loveliness of a particular moment.

So, I wrote these haikus, because the jacarandas are flowering all over the city, and because I love you immeasurably. To give you a context: your day was filled with spilling coffee on our sheets, school, picking lavender and watching out for bees, walking down to Aunty Mel for tea, a tantrum and a smack and time out, fish fingers and chips, shopping with me and Dad (mountains of groceries, you singing and Scott taking off his kit in the trolley…), home and Friday peace and the wind billowing the blinds in beautiful summer gusts and sleep.

An ordinary treasured day

The air smells like dust

And purple and the torment

Of promised rain: peace.

It will be the same

Next year – purple streets, dusty

Rain – but you will not.

We won’t have this day

Again: next purple season

You’ll be different: big.

I don’t wish away

This time: I save it all up

Store you in my heart

All my love

Mom

xx