Tag: life

The gift

My sister gave me a gift the last time I saw her. She handed me a little red felt box and said, ‘I know this isn’t your kind of thing, but I want you to have it. And don’t sell it.’ When I opened the box, it contained a small brooch, possibly made of ivory. I recoiled. She knows full well what I think about the ivory trade. What to do?

There is a ten-year difference between my sister and me but it has often felt more like twenty or thirty. From a young age, she had to mother me and although we lived apart for many years of my childhood, she still sees herself in that role. I cannot see that ever changing. This has made situations like receiving unwanted gifts difficult between us. I did say that while it was beautifully carved, I would not wear it, but she still pressed it into my hands. So now I have it, along with a large gold pendant with a silver coin from my birth year, and a couple of German porcelain figurines, apparently collectors’ items, stored away in a cupboard.

I keep reading about baby boomers wanting to downsize and give their precious belongings to the next generation, to no avail. Nobody wants the things we have loved and cherished and it breaks my heart to think of my beautiful mahogany chest going to an op shop one day. Of course, I am aware that I will have no say in the matter. My daughter will have enough of a headache going through my books and personal belongings. Why should I burden her with ivory and kitsch figurines as well?

I am loyal to a fault and will probably keep things I do not like because I do not want to offend the giver. Or maybe I keep them because I really do not know what to do with them and cannot make the decision to try to sell the items or give them away. To whom? Many of my friends are of a similar age and certainly do not want anything else to add to their stash. They too are at the ‘Do you want this?’ stage of their lives.

When I think of our house when I was growing up, there were probably no more than a few hundred items in the whole house. I would have more items in my kitchen now than we had in that entire house. My wardrobe consisted of two pairs of jeans, maybe three blouses, a couple of windcheaters, two jumpers, a jacket and a parka. Footwear was a pair of sandshoes, a pair of leather shoes, sandals and a pair of treads. I wore them day in and day out as we had no uniforms at school. Now we would call that a capsule wardrobe.

Reminiscing about times gone by does not help with my present-day quandary. Do I keep the brooch, do I sell it, or take it to the op shop? I am not a Marie Kondo who can say arigato, think nice thoughts and then send it on its way. I have much more in common with the hamster I kept when I was eight. Keep stuffing it in even when it seems no more can possibly fit, then run furiously on the wheel, hoping that if I run long enough, I will arrive at a decision.

Arriving Home

Recently, I had to spend a couple of days away from home. Not for pleasure, although I did catch up with a couple of dear friends while I was away. As always, I enjoy their company and feel looked after and enriched by their presence in my life. Good friends know how to hold you gently. They also know when it is time to let you go.

The drive back home was long and uncomfortable. I stopped at Eling Forest Winery to stretch my legs and have a cup of tea. How many times have I driven past this little gem? If it hadn’t been at the behest of a friend, I would never have stopped. How well she knew that I needed a rest in picturesque surroundings.

The rain pelted down, allowing only brief glimpses of the road ahead. Wind gusts pummelled the car while large trucks barrelled down menacingly from behind. Clenching the steering wheel, I drove on, my shoulders inching steadily upward. There were moments when I dared not breathe. Then, as I crested a hill, we left the wet road behind and were greeted by blue skies. I relaxed my grip, returned to my audiobook and breathed steadily.

There is a particular point on the Federal Highway where Telstra Tower appears in the distance atop Black Mountain. I can’t help but rejoice at that moment. It is as if a banner were stretched above the road declaring WELCOME HOME. My heart quickens every time. There is still another ten or fifteen minutes to go, but my heart has already arrived.

As I park the car, reach for my keys and walk towards the front door, I notice myself exhaling. The key in the lock, the small click as it turns, and I step inside. I am home. There is still washing to do and emails to answer, but for a moment none of that matters. Arriving is enough.

Manna from heaven

It has rained steadily all night and day. Not the heavy torrential type of rain but the soft, calming mizzle that settles on gently on leaves. I woke to the sound of rain pittering on the window and instinctively pulled the blanket around my shoulder. Cozy and snug, I lay listening to that blessed sound, so tranquil and serene.

The past couple of months have been savagely hot and dry. Scorched earth comes to mind. Burnt and withered plants have not survived the heat or ferocious winds. I have pulled out many of them and have limited pot plants on the balcony to four survivors. I had to get used to walking on tufts of grass that crunched underfoot, strangely reminiscent of snow. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine being rugged up and walking along snow covered paths in Europe. Then as I opened my eyes all I could see was tufts of brown baked native grasses stretching ahead of me.

I had been watering a small section along the side of my house where I planted citrus trees. This little patch of green is where grass and weeds have thrived over the past couple of months. As the long dry and heat persisted, I began to notice kangaroo scat close to the trees I had been watering. There hadn’t been much for them to graze lately.

The rain has been a blessing. When I walked the dog, people commented on how wonderful it was to have everything smelling so fresh. No-one grumbled about getting wet. The heady smell of eucalypts was what I noticed first. The rain releases the plant oils together with organic matter in the soil to give that wonderful fresh slightly lemony smell. I took deep breaths, letting the cleansing aroma fill my lungs.

Then the sound of frogs bouncing off the pond like popcorn. I hadn’t heard any for weeks! Even the lone shag on a dead branch overhanging the water seemed to be more alive. Muted birdsong could be heard as they came out looking for worms. A slight drizzle never stopped a hungry bird from foraging!

At first, the paths were filled with puddles as the compacted earth was unable to absorb the water. As the day progressed, the ground became softer and the rain began to seep in more easily. By day two, everything looked refreshed like a house after a spring clean. The dust that had settled everywhere has been scrubbed away. Sometimes, all we need is these small acts of grace.

Surely next time it will be different

Throughout the year, there are many jobs I put off until the holidays. My excuses stretch out like the Eyre Highway. ‘Now is not the time, it would take too long, I’m not in the mood,’ excuses ad nauseum. When the holidays arrive, I will miraculously turn into a person of great action and all the jobs that have been screaming for my attention will be completed without much effort. I will also have time to put my feet up and relax.

Every holiday brings with it the resurfacing of The List. I know I didn’t get it done last time, but this time I will. The stars have aligned, my calendar is empty and I am unstoppable. Until I stop. Or fail to get started. I stare at the list and realise it is impossible to get it all done in the time available. I’ll be lucky to get through a tenth of the jobs.

What did I get done in the last five weeks? I read two books, thoroughly cleaned and reorganised the balcony, made inroads into weeding the side of my house, tidied and sorted through the kitchen cupboards and my wardrobe AND finally edited all 172 pages of my memoir. I have visited friends, seen a movie and attended several medical and dental appointments. Did I get everything done I wanted to? Of course not! The list feels just as long as it did before the holidays!

How to solve this conundrum? Either I accept that there will always be a never-ending list, or I break tasks down to make them more manageable during the year. Or some combination of the two. This isn’t going to be some belated New Year’s resolution, but I am flirting with the idea of doing one small task each week to keep the momentum going. It might be putting up those hooks on the front door or sweeping the back courtyard. Nothing monumental. These modest wins will help me feel a little more on top of the tasks and put less pressure on the next set of holidays. Surely next time it will be different.

Love, Without Anaesthetic

Over the past year, I have replaced all my amalgam fillings. My dental visits from now on would consist of a clean and polish. Or so I thought.

I became aware of a rough edge on a back molar. No matter how much I tried to stop my tongue from exploring the area, it always returned to it like a homing pigeon with poor judgement. On closer inspection, I saw it was my favourite filling.

In December 1987, I was living in Berlin. I had met the man who would become my husband in August of that year, just before I was to fly to Germany for a year. We wrote to each other daily on blue aerograms, as thin and brittle as onion skin. Back then, the postal service worked and I received my replies within a week.

Peter was coming to visit! I began to count down the days. He was taking a train from Frankfurt and would arrive at Bahnhof Zoo in the evening. Unfortunately, I had a scheduled appointment with my dentist, Frau Dr Quast that afternoon. When I arrived with my throbbing tooth, I explained that I would be seeing my lover for the first time in months that night.

‘You can’t arrive numb and dribbling!’ she said. ‘How will you kiss him? We’ll do this without anaesthetic. Tell me when you need a break, Ja?’

Frau Dr Quast kept her word. She drilled, took a break, drilled some more, took a break, until she could finally fill the tooth. It was meant to be a temporary solution until I could go back to have it capped. I thanked her for her forethought and gentleness. This was to be my first non-metal filling. Then, as the tooth stopped hurting, I never went back. That temporary filling has lasted 37 years.

Last week, I kept the appointment with my current dentist, Dr Park. That filling needed replacing. I recounted the story of that December afternoon appointment with Frau Dr Quast. He was impressed. ‘That’s the best dentistry story I’ve heard in twenty years,’ he said, ‘but the love filling will have to go.’

The Hurdy Gurdy of Summer

Black Prince Cicada on a wall

The sound of summer in Australia is the ear-splitting drone of cicadas. On a hot day, different species may be heard, each with their unique song. The sound they make with their tymbals creates the characteristic rhythmic drone. On my walk the other morning, the sound reminded me of a hurdy gurdy used in medieval music.

The closer I listened, the more sounds I heard, including a lower rhythmic quack that punctuated the drone. Intrigued, I recorded the sound and headed home to do some research. The quack quack sound belongs to Red Eyed Cicada and the high pitched deafening drone comes from the cicada affectionately known as the Greengrocer.

The common names of cicadas in Australia are often comical. Here are some of the ones I have come across: Double Drummer, Yellow Monday, Floury Baker and Razor Grinder… They sound like nicknames acquired down the pub after a few beers.

Some years ago, I worked at a school where classes were named after a theme. One year, the whole school was named after insects and I chose for our class to be the cicadas. We collected their shells from trees and learnt about their life cycle. Children often brought in cicadas they had found and after studying them, released them in the playground. At the end of the year, each child was to receive an award which I read out aloud at an assembly. I found 25 different cicada names which I assigned to each child with a sentence or two about their personality. Parents laughter echoed in the hall as I read amusing anecdotes I had collected throughout the year. The kid who liked to tap his pencil on his desk became the Double Drummer, the Black Prince was our Star Wars aficionado. I haven’t thought about that for years.

This year we have had a strange summer. It arrived somewhat late and while there are stinking hot days, the temperatures have also plunged into the teens. It is pretty unpredictable at present. I am not a fan of the hot weather and much prefer autumn and winter, especially in Canberra where temperatures plummet to negative numbers. Yet the sound of cicadas cutting through the summer heat, loud and insistent, brings a measure of joy to even the hottest days.

One word to guide me

We had a little laneway gathering just before Christmas where a good many of neighbours came out and mingled, bringing food and drinks for everyone to enjoy. There were people I knew reasonably well but also neighbours I had only seen from a distance. The ones I knew were the dog owners whom I had met at the park or had been introduced to previously.

We blocked off the lane so kids and dogs could run up and down to their heart’s content. When an unexpected downpour threatened to end our gettogether, we simply moved into one of the garages and continued there until the rain stopped. We visited each other’s gardens to see what people had planted and admired some clever renovations. It was a convivial and relaxed celebration of the year we had traversed.

Most of the conversation was small talk, focusing on questions such as how long someone had lived in one of the two streets that abut the lane, and whether there were animals or children in the household. There were pets to adore and babies were passed around that we cooed over. About an hour into the festivities, a neighbour’s son initiated a conversation with me. He asked whether I had chosen a word for 2026. I admitted that I hadn’t thought about it and we continued to chat about a range of subjects. He moved off to talk to other people but I kept coming back to his question and began to wonder whether a single word may not be a better talisman than a new year’s resolution.

I thought about choosing a word for the next few days and realised that I had in fact done something similar in the past. The difference was that I always chose three to five things to focus on and unsurprisingly, I’d forget by February. The only time I remembered was one year when my phrase was ‘Just do it’ and this was ruined for ever when Nike adopted it as their slogan. It doesn’t help to jump up and down and cry ‘I used it first!’

I tossed around quite a few words, synonyms for words, words that focused on intention and words that act as a charm. I remembered a bracelet I was given for Christmas years ago that had the word ‘fearless’ etched on the band. The colleague who gave it to me recognised that I was often acting out of fear and she wanted me to learn fearlessness.

I played around with this word but recognised that it wasn’t quite right for me. It is not so much an absence of fear that I need but the courage to face it. That’s how I came to my word for 2026.

I want to have the courage to speak up for myself and others, the courage to initiate instead of waiting, the courage to say no and the courage to say yes to what I want out of life. One word held lightly, to guide me through the year. Surely, that is enough.

Wind struck days

Winds have cut through last week with an invisible scythe. The billabong is covered with dust and debris and smells putrid. Tiny flies swarm around the water’s edge. As I look at the devastation around me, I am surprised there are no trees down. Plenty have fallen in surrounding suburbs.

Leaf litter lies ankle deep, mixed with bark stripped clean from trunks. It is as if Mother Nature has sandblasted her children bare. How did young chicks in those swaying canopies survive wind gusts of 80 kilometres an hour? I’ve not heard a peep from them this morning.

The accompanying storms were short lived but the wind continues to rumble and roar like a road train. The little rain that came with it evaporated within hours, leaving the ground just as compacted and impenetrable as before. Any loose soil has been spun around and around like whirling dervishes in a trance. I am transfixed by the spectacle of dozens of whirly whirlies, small rotating whirlwinds forming across the denuded field.

My walk in town yesterday was miserable. The wind fired bullets of grit at my face and eyes. Its fury whipped up loose items on the ground and hurled them at unsuspecting passers-by. Women tacked their skirts as they leaned into the wind, slicing through the air. Children clung to their parents’ hands, wondering what might happen if they let go.

Back home, windows rattled and walls were buffeted. Further north, roofs and even lives were lost. I never felt any immediate danger, only awe at this force of nature completely out of our control. These past few days have been a reminder that nature is not something separate from us but an integral part of our daily lives. We need only to pay attention to it.

Telstra Tower and Other Small Miracles

The other day I listened to Dr Ellen Langer speak about mindfulness as a way of being rather than a practice. She described the art of seeing the ordinary with fresh eyes, of really looking, really noticing. It struck me how easily the rhythm of daily life can lull us into living on autopilot.

Her talk reminded me of the Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh’s definition of mindfulness, doing the ordinary things in life with a sense of purpose and attention, whether that be opening a door or turning on a tap. Each of these little acts can be done either mindlessly or mindfully. Doing it one way we are absent from our life while doing it mindfully we become alive to the present moment. And the present moment, as we know, is the only moment. Whatever happened 5 minutes ago is in past and whatever is coming is in the future. Life can only be lived in the small moments of now.

I have known this for many years but I am not very good at being grounded. My mind takes me hither and dither and I can be quite the scatterbrain. Where’s my phone? My wallet? Did I turn off the lights? Did I just lock myself out? These are daily micro-moments of panic I experience on repeat. My daughter just laughs and says she never gets past counting to 17 before my problem-of-the-moment is resolved!

This morning has been a scattered start. I’m still in my PJs deciding on shower, getting dressed, making to do lists, going to the shop and walking the dog. It really shouldn’t be this hard. Just start with the first logical step (have a shower) and keep going. It hasn’t helped that I am unwell and brain fog has settled in for the day. That’s when I stopped and looked out the window. No, not just looked out the window but really looked out the window. I saw the usual scene before me with fresh eyes. Trees swaying in the wind, leaves like windchimes. Thousands of hushed, eucalypt windchimes trembling on trees only a few metres from the glass pane. I was mesmerised by the bounty of their beauty and then looked further afield towards the horizon.

Erupting in a belly-laugh, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I have lived here for 20 months and have never seen it. Yet there it was, clear as the day before me. The largest structure in Canberra, a 195metre telecommunications tower known as Telstra Tower and it can be seen from my window! How often have I mindlessly looked out and never seen it? How can I miss an obscenely large structure like this? I shook my head in disbelief and couldn’t help but laugh at my selective blindness. Sadly, this is nothing new, many people know this about me but it still catches me completely unawares.

I now have a new landmark to celebrate when I look out the window and I wonder what other delights await me as I learn to look once more with fresh eyes. It’s both humbling and heartening to realise that wonder was there all along. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We all have the ability to look at things with fresh eyes and see them as if seeing them for the first time. If we have lost our freshness, all we have to do is practice breathing in and out to restore it.” (From A Handful of Quiet, Happiness in Four Pebbles.)

And so I breathe in and out and learn an old lesson anew. I laugh at how life patiently keeps offering me reminders and I resolve to open my eyes and look deeply as if for the very first or very last time.

Six Days Horizontal

Getting sick is like sitting down on a chair that’s much lower than anticipated. You land hard and wonder why you didn’t see it coming. The signs were all there – lack of energy, headache, a bit of a cough but it didn’t seem that bad. Until it was. And then the crash landing.

Six days in bed felt like long drawn out weeks. There were nights where minutes felt like hours and hours stretched into infinity until dawn. Unable to breathe through my nose, I sat half upright, sipping endless glass after glass of water in a futile attempt to keep my lips moist. It was pretty grim by Wednesday night. Thoughts meandered irrationally in and out of my consciousness. At one point I was writing scripts for ‘Vera’; trains of clever dialogues rattled by without ever stopping at a station. At other times I was coming up with ideas for Podcasts. Perhaps that synapse of an idea will make this suffering worthwhile.

Being sick for a length of time gave me ample of opportunity to appraise my life. Existential dread arrived on cue between the hours of three and four a.m., no alarm necessary. Had I done enough with my one wild life? Clearly not. My shortcomings lay exposed, expectorating. I was condemned, guilty on all counts. My optimism fled at the first sign of the tempest raging in my head.

The week has been confronting. I turned into a creature I barely recognised. I could have walked out of the pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Any veneer of humour was chipped away, hope no longer resided in my soul. And my old friend, gratitude? She too deserted me and has only fleetingly reappeared in the past two days. A fair-weather friend on whom I thought I could rely. Faith too had deserted me.

Here I am on day eight and the fog is slowly lifting. I am now fully dressed and have even eaten a meal. I’ve stopped trying to wrestle with what I can’t control and settled into reluctant acceptance. My mood has steadied and the storm has eased. I am emerging, somewhat battered but essentially intact. I tell myself I’ll never take my health for granted again, and even as I think it, I know it’s probably horseshit.