2025: The year that opened up
This year felt like a turning point.
It was the first full year with both children at school. A magnetic shift that completely changed the shape of my days. After eight years with a small person almost always by my side, time opened up again. At first it arrived in vast, empty stretches, but slowly, as I found my rhythm, it shifted into usable pockets and priorities became clearer. I had enough time to begin making more seriously. Enough time to plan. To dream. To follow the current of ideas, the flow of creativity.
It was also our first full year living in this house. Twelve months of learning its light - the dappled mornings in summer as the sun rises between the mountain and the sycamore. The sharp-edged golden shadows flinging across timber floors in winter. It was a year of observation and of savouring every moment of novelty.
There was Brazil, too. Family. Food. Language. Culture. Connection. Meeting family in person for the first time. Watching the children begin to understand where they come from - not just geographically, but generationally. Seeing how culture and lineage shapes and informs them, how it is so much a part of them, and the joy and yearning of their homecoming.
It was also the year we really began camping in earnest. Slowly refining our setup. Getting better at cooking on the fire, relishing how everything tastes better when it’s cooked over open flame. New camping rituals began to emerge. Long, leisurely days outside, filled with nothing. More nothing. Card games. Reading. Swimming. Exploring. More nothing. Cooking one meal while already thinking about the next. And that particular feeling when the sun has gone down, all of us zipped into the tent together, breathing the cool air, layered in blankets and doonas. The quiet hum of sleeping outdoors.
And of course, there is always the garden. Flowers, vegetables, fruit, then more flowers. This first summer drowned us in abundance: zucchinis, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, dahlias, cosmos, plums, nashi pears, persimmons. The constant daily rhythm of tending and harvesting. Winter taught us many lessons — to sow what we actually enjoy eating, to plant cover crops, to begin earlier. Next year will be better.
I have lost count of how much making there was this year. But not only mine. Rodolfo at the workbench. The children whittling and sanding, knitting and stitching. Busy hands turning ideas into tangible things. Kittens, gnomes, sheds, trucks, trailers, and of course quilts, quilts, quilts.
2025 certainly wasn’t polished. It wasn’t perfectly paced. There were messy weeks, tired evenings, sick days, social media burnout, and seasons that didn’t go according to plan.
But it was full.
Abundant.
Connected.
And for that, I’m deeply grateful.
