Let's Celebrate!

When we have birthdays in our house, we stretch out the celebration over days or even weeks if we can find an excuse to do so. Celebrations are less about actual dates than about taking time to find the special in the ordinary and in stepping out of our regular routine. Last Christmas we had a very quiet day all to ourselves and this year it will be a treat to be with family we haven’t seen in a while. We decided to declare today Christmas Day for just the two of us. 
Neither of us had a lot of presents for the other so we decided to use the stockings that usually hang merely as decoration. That way we could avoid having to wrap anything. Richard stuffed my stocking last night and I got up before he did and stuffed his stocking this morning. Since it’s a Saturday, we figured we wouldn’t get the nuisance phone calls that have become so common lately. 
We gave ourselves permission to do what we have done the last few years on Christmas Day.  We stayed in our pj’s until after lunch. Richard drank coffee and I drank tea while we discovered the contents of our stockings. We had carols playing and the tree lights turned on even though it was light outside. After admiring our presents from each other we had another cuppa and chatted. We brought Odie into the living room so he could be with the flock.  Often in the morning we sit in the dining room where he is. Today we wanted to be where the tree was. The phone didn’t ring. Later, we tried to go for a walk but there was a fog warning and, although it was pretty out, the sidewalks were quite slippery. We made it around the block and then decided that neither of us wanted to carry the other home, so we opted to cut the walk short. 
I did some laundry. No, that isn’t part of my regular Christmas routine, but I thought it a good thing to do before going visiting. We fed the bird, watched a movie on Netflix and warmed up leftovers for supper. I finished boxing up the Christmas presents for friends and watched some YouTube videos. I drank some of the newest batch of kombucha. It was a quiet, uneventful, perfectly wonderful day. 
I confess to being on Facebook to check what friends were up to and to post. I always find something that makes me laugh and, at times, I find something that I want to write down. Today I found both. A friend posted a Celtic wish. I wrote it down for future reference.
“Blessed be your holidays
Cozy be your hearth
Merry be your family
Peaceful be your hearts.”

Not what you want to come home to

I always seem to get more contemplative around Christmas time. I remember many nights sitting alone in the living room of this or my mother’s house, looking at the lighted Christmas tree and just thinking.  Some years there was a tremendous sense of relief at having survived another semester of teaching and marking even though I usually had a brief case full of assignments to mark over the holidays.  Nowadays that reality seems very far away except in my dreams where I’m called upon to put in report card marks and I haven’t marked a single assignment.

More recently I look back over the time since the last Christmas tree stood alight in front of the living room window and think of the changes that have happened. This will be our first Christmas without Richard’s dad. This year I’m making an effort to see people who are important to me and whom I don’t often see in the daily goings-on. We have had dinner with neighbours at our house and dinner with two sets of long-standing friends at their houses. I have had my regular bi-weekly lunch with a one good friend and tea with another at her house. Tonight we took pizza to a friend who is in new digs, turned off the lights and watched from his window as plane after plane came into our field of vision before disappearing from view as they landed. Monday I will have coffee with someone I haven’t seen for months.

Spending time with friends feels good, and these gifts of time and attention given to me heighten my appreciation of this Christmas season. To quote Joseph Campbell, “When I retired from teaching, I knew that I had to create a new way of life, and I changed my manner of thinking about my life, just in terms of that notion — moving out of the sphere of achievement into the sphere of enjoyment and appreciation and relaxing to the wonder of it all.” I think that’s a wise way to look at things.

Emergency vehicle's lights

 Last night we were out at a movie, something we rarely do. When we came home there were four fire engines, two fire investigative units, one ladder truck and two police SUV’s on our street. One fire engine was parked directly in front of our house lights ablaze.  Since the street wasn’t blocked off, we drove down it to see if we could determine what was happening.  We quickly saw that our house was fine. From our living room,  I kept an eye on the street and was  thankful for the fire fighters and police officers who were quietly and competently going about their jobs.

 There is very little information in the media. Firefighters were called by neighbours who spotted the fire. The fire was in the back of the house. One individual was found in the house, was transported to hospital and died of ‘fire-related injuries.’ Firefighters continued to fight the fire from outside of the house when the main floor collapsed. Police and firefighters remained over night to control any hot spots and make sure the fire didn’t spread.


This morning when I got up all fire and police vehicles were gone and today our street seemed back to normal. For the family and friends of the person who lived in the house that burned, there will be no normal for a very long time. The movie we saw last night was A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The movie and the fire: two reminders, one gentle and one not so gentle of the importance of cultivating our kinder natures, of appreciating the moments that make up our lives, and of the importance of doing what we can to encourage kindness and gentleness in the world. Wishing you peace.

Moon rise on flight path

The world is smaller now

Centennial Park

Last night I saw a TV news clip from Sydney about the continuing bush fires in New South Wales. Because I’ve been there and have stood looking up at the bridge, I react differently than I otherwise would have. We spent a week in Sydney on our own after our tour finished. We stayed at a small apartment hotel, bought Opal passes for transit and, more-or-less, figured out how to get around the city. We revisited the Taronga Zoo and spent more time in the bird enclosures surrounded by trees and shade. My camera served as an introduction to locals who also photographed birds and were able to tell us where birds hung out. One woman with a Canon camera and a long lens tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out a wallaby lying in the sun on a ledge. I, and everyone else, was facing the opposite way looking at a pair of parakeets.  

En route to the flying foxes

One of the owners of the hotel suggested we visit Centennial Park because there were lots of birds there and it also was home to a colony of flying foxes. Again, I was having a lovely time with my camera. I found the flying foxes fascinating and extremely noisy! On one of the lakes there were several black swans and we hung out on a bench in the shade while I tried to get the perfect shot of swans. As I focused on the swans, Richard pointed out half a dozen turtles who sunned themselves on a log and then slipped back into the water.  After a while a man approached us, and we started to chat. He told me he takes part in a bird count every year. He also told me that there was a tawny frogmouth nesting in a grove of trees on the other side of the road.  He said the owl on had been on its nest for the last several days when he passed by and led me to the spot where the nest was visible. Unfortunately, the frogmouth was not in residence that day. I thanked him and he headed off in the direction of the train station. Although it was still early spring, the bush fires had started and the colour of the sun was tinged with smoke.

Supper in Manley

The next day the smoke was thicker, and we decided to take the train to Woolongong where, according to the weather report, there was less smoke. We wandered about Woolongong for a while and then got back onto the train and went back into Sydney. From there we took the ferry to Manley and had supper in a small café while watching the surfers.

A couple of days after that we were on the plane heading home. From the report I saw on the news the smoke in Sydney the other day was 12 times what is normal. On the one hand, I’m glad we were able to get home before the smoke worsened. On the other hand, I feel concern for the people I met who are going about their days in the smoke and for those I didn't meet whose lives are forever changed by the fires.

Sydney in a little bit of smoke

In the title of this post I said the world seems smaller since I have travelled. Perhaps more immediate would have been a more accurate description. I can never again see a news clip about what’s happening in Sydney without imagining myself there. Sydney has now become part of the geography of my mind. I am closer to it than I was before, even though the physical distance is the same. As I travel there are fewer and fewer places ‘out there’ and more and more places ‘in here’ so that as I grow older and travel in smaller and smaller circles I will be able to return in my mind to the places I have been and feel at home here in a different and richer way. For that I am grateful.

The flight of the SD card

My little nest in business class

Inconsistent could be my middle name. After three posts from Down Under that were fairly close together, I’ve been silent for a long time. It was a great trip and I got caught up in the daily adventures. As I get older, I find I have less stamina than I once had and a number of times during the holiday I went to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 which is unheard of for me. So, thanks to those of you who have gently reminded me that I haven’t posted for a while and you’re waiting. Many of you will already know this story so feel free to skip this and wait for the next post. No promises on when or what. When I make those predictions I don't seem to follow through.

We went to NZ and Australia business class. We decided that on a flight of 13 ½ hours it was worth trading some bucks for relative comfort. It was absolutely worth it! Instead of arriving exhausted we looked at each other and acknowledged that the flight hadn’t been that bad and we weren’t as tired as usual. It was still 4 a.m. local time when we arrived, and we weren’t exactly kicking up our heels. Still it was worth the money.

The thing that has stuck with me most about the trip is the loss of the SD card containing all of the images I shot on my mirrorless camera. It was on the way back and I thought I’d get ahead of the game and do some editing before I got home.  I used Richard’s computer and edited a number of photos directly on the SD card. I was trying to save work and duplication by doing it that way. I was absorbed in what I was doing and one by one the other passengers in the cabin had their beds made up and turned in for the night. I was about the only one left sitting up and I came to a spot where I had edited most of the parrot photos and was about to start on the photos of the boobies we saw when visiting the Great Barrier Reefs.

The birds were separated from us by a rope and as long as we weren’t stupid about it, they seemed pretty happy to go on with their lives and ignore us. I was kneeling in the sand about half a meter from an adult and chick.  The chick wanted to be fed and, I gathered from the adult’s reactions, that junior had already had dinner. The youngster was persistent, and I got a number of phots of it in various begging poses.

There were also terns taking off, flying and landing. When I wasn’t looking at the boobies, I was chasing the terns with my lens.  I was just as fascinated with the southern ones as I had been earlier in the summer with their Arctic cousins. I don’t know how long I knelt in the sand completely captivated by what I was trying to capture through my lens, but eventually Richard suggested that perhaps we should go. I looked around and there were very few people either in the water or on the shore. I think we were on the last boat back to the ship.

This is a kiwi and it's stuffed but it's a photo of a bird.

On the flight from Auckland to Vancouver I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the parrot phots and decided to leave the ones of the terns and boobies for the next morning. I took out the case for the SD card, popped the card out of the slot in the computer, and was just about to put the card in the case when it slipped out of my fingers and down the side of the couch. In the pods there is a lot more stuff going on below the surface you sit on than in economy, motors to move the couch from a seat to a bed and electronic controls for the entertainment system.

In deference to those sleeping around me I refrained from letting a loud expletive rip, but I had a bad feeling about being able to find the card.  I put the lights on and then looked with the flashlight app on my phone while trying to move as little as possible hoping that the card had caught in my clothing.  I went through the pocket beside the seat, took everything out and then moved further afield. When I couldn’t see anything, I pushed the button for the flight attendant, and she looked. We decided to leave it until morning when a couple of other flight attendants looked and told me not to worry, that they would get engineers on board in Vancouver to take the seat apart and find my card.

You get the gist. The engineers arrived. I left my contact information and before we boarded our flight to Calgary a very kind woman from Air New Zealand called to tell me that engineers had worked for quite a while and didn’t find the card. Richard did his best to cheer me up and I went into the washroom and sulked. Not backing the photos up was dumb and I know better. In the privacy of the cubicle I did a fair bit of swearing, still at low volume.

Somewhere on that plane is my SD card

Now that I’m home and have had some time, the sting of losing six-week’s-worth of photos is not quite as acute as it was. Intellectually I knew the moment I lost the card that it wasn’t particularly serious – incredibly disappointing- but not serious. We weren’t hurt or sick. We didn’t lose our passports or our luggage. I had very much enjoyed taking the photos and I had gotten a lot of practice with my camera. Telling myself those things didn’t make me feel one bit better at the time. Now I can accept the truth of all that. There’s still a twinge of regret when I think of some of the parrot photos and I’m not sure that will ever totally go away. I used to tell the kids that the only serious mistake is one from which you learn nothing. I’ve learned that particular chance I took didn’t pay off.  I’m not sure how I’ll handle my photos on the next trip. I find manipulating them among various computers is awkward and I may just resolve to leave the card in the camera until I get home. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for more intuitive ways to handle my photo files while on holiday.

I do have some photos that I took with my phone. I used my phone when I wanted a wide-angle shot or when I was taking something specifically to put on social media. Having spent time with the bird photos, I have them in my visual memory. I can’t share them with you, but I can look back and enjoy the good ones whenever I want to. Things could have turned out much worse.