self portrait tuesday

i took this on new year's eve in canberra. i was reflecting on our life there (we lived in canberra from 1991 to 2000, we bought our first house there, our 2 older children were born there and we have many good frineds who still live there. but i had pushed to the back of my mind how deeply unhappy i was for the first couple of years - we moved as relative newlyweds to an alien and friendless town. it wasn't until we stopped on new year's day to buy petrol in the first suburb we lived in that i felt a glimmer of that unhappiness and i remembered.

of course it got better and we made friends and the landscape grew more familiar. and i made things - i knitted and embroidered and later sewed.

i look at my hands 16 years on and think of what they have done - written miles of policy documents and reams of advice (any of it taken i wonder?), they have caressed and given comfort and patted to sleep and changed nappies and planted and weeded. they have manipulated needles and wool and fabric - cut and unpicked and measured.

they are looking more like my mother's hands - the skin is a bit looser than it was, they're definitley not smooth - the sinews stand out on the backs of them and the nails rarely get longer than the fingertips.

their most important task? communicating love - by making things for people i love as well as by just touching.