My phone sits in a bowl of rice on the kitchen counter right now, the product of it being soaked in a torrential downpour last night. It was our third New Year’s Eve in Sydney, but somehow also our first: for the past two years we have landed at the airport that morning, and jet lag kept us from staying awake for festivities. This year, though, our feet had been on terra firma for a good three days after a week in Hawaii. We were rested (somewhat) and ticketed, for a celebration with friends at the North Sydney pool to swim, drink cans of wine, and watch fireworks. So we did.

Several bouts of thunder and lightning led to several pool evacuations, during which we ducked under cover and/or headed to the indoor pool behind the stands where our belongings sat, getting drenched. Once the rain finally lifted, we returned to our seats to grab some food (wine cans) and assess the damage. While the band played a medley of Mamma Mia hits in the background, I surveyed my poor lifeless phone. Then I jumped into the pool with the boys and bobbed around to the sounds of “Waterloo.”

And now, the morning after, I’m tempted to assign a New Year’s-sized batch of meaning to the fact that this morning, I was forced to drink my coffee without checking Twitter, and instead watch the boys playing. I feel the familiar urge to check my phone, to grab it and place it on the bathroom counter while I shower, to press Play on a podcast so sounds can fill the silence. Each time, the urge gives way to the realisation that the only thing touching my phone for the next few hours will be rice.

I went on a run with an old iPod The Husband found, one full of infant songs that I’d bought when The Kid was fresh and new, and I downloaded my own stuff but set it to shuffle, which left me fast-forwarding to the former soundtrack of my days, passing through hits like “Mommy Train” and “I Have a Doll!”. It’s the same feeling I had when the boys asked to watch Fireman Sam the other day for the first time since we moved here two years (!) ago: a crystal-clear nostalgia that invades through memories, memories of TK being tiny and me being so tired and fearful and confused by new motherhood; memories of hot days spent pushing TK and Little Brother through our new suburb, ten thousand miles from our old one, in a season that should be winter but was somehow summer. Newness drenching all the memories that, because of the arrival of new years, are now old, but can still hit me with the force of having just occurred.

Time is such a weird thing.

Our last night in Hawaii, I stood on our hotel balcony, twenty-one floors up, and saw the city to my left full of lights and the ocean to my right, dark yet full of its own life. It reminded me of summer nights on the beaches where I grew up, sitting on different balconies looking at an ocean of a different name that somehow still connected to this one. The days of our lives have been likened to sands in an hourglass, but I think of them more like water, passing by us yet never lost, connecting where we were then to where we are now. My newborn is now a wobbly-toothed seven year old; his brother so much more than an anxiety-filled hope enlarging my belly. That night as I sat on the balcony, they were feet away inside, their exhaustion giving way to sleep while mine gave way to frustration and irritation and, as usual, anxiety. It was time to return home, and my vantage point gave me views east and west. Two directions, two homes, with us in the middle.

Two directions. Two homes. Two years. Two kids, who, despite my shortness of temper and regretful outbursts, greet each day as though it’s brand new–which it is, but I of course forget–a shiny thing full of possibility. And last night, those faces bookended mine, with TH beside us, as the fireworks we’ve missed the last two years exploded right before us. Those two small but growing faces resembled TK’s one Fourth of July while LB was three months out from his first appearance: lingering smiles and eyes full of wonder. My own eyes collected tears at the true wonder of it all: how a place, and people, can be old and new at the same time–how all the best ones are, their history surpassed only by their promise. How grace keeps transferring us from one fireworks show or ocean or home to another, all of them still somehow connected.