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.