I took all our Christmas stuff down this morning.
The tree, the decorations, the lights, all the little vignettes I had created in various parts of the house — everything was bundled back into boxes and put away.
To be honest, it’s not a task I particularly enjoy. It might not sound like a big job, but given that I have managed to accumulate baubles and tinsel in every colour of the rainbow, not to mention all manner of decorations from tiny timber cottages to little green pine trees to sprigs of lifelike mistletoe to shiny bead garlands and butterflies and bows and even an angel we call Shazza that I use to decorate our home come Christmas time, it is actually more onerous a prospect than one may think.
At the beginning of December, I keep adding Christmassy bits and pieces all over the house until I feel it looks suitably festive (and also completely out of season, since it’s high summer here in the Antipodes). Come the end of the month, removing it all takes considerable time and effort, and the sort of self-discipline that is required when you’re sorely tempted to chuck anything and everything into an oversized container rather than making sure it’s properly stowed. The whole process inevitably ends up with me covered in a tonne of glitter and cursing when I discover one last recalcitrant string of bunting or a rogue wreath hiding where I forgotten I’d put it.
Despite the drawbacks, however, putting the Christmas away it is a job I tend to do on 31 December every year. It helps me make space for the new year. And every year — especially in the years since we rebuilt our house — I find myself delighted by the all the space that opens up once the tree and all the decorations come down.
This year, it felt positively E X P A N S I V E.
Like a massive, audible sigh of relief…perhaps that 2024, which has been a challenging year in ways I never expected, is about to make way for a new year.
So, as I wandered around the house this morning, collecting decorations and sorting them into colours and stowing them carefully away, I found myself reflecting on some of the things 2024 has taught me.
The Best Way Out is Always Through
I thank Robert Frost for this old thought, because it’s still a good one — and I found it applied to 2024 in several ways. For me, 2024 will always be the year I FINISHED WRITING MY NOVEL! I can still recall writing the first sentence of my book, which has remained (quite remarkably) unchanged after all these years. But I suspect I will never forget the spine-tingling excitement that accompanied the moment when my fingers typed the last sentence, and I knew it was the last sentence, and that it was a good finish. I might have even taken a photo of the date and time in the corner of my laptop screen, so momentous did that occasion feel…but that is a tale for another time.
The phrase has also applied to my husband battling some health challenges in 2024, and to the various operations and tests and bits and pieces he’s gone through over the year. We know it’s not over yet, but the best way out is always through has a ring of truth to it about that I find myself trusting in. The Bloke and I have weathered storms before, and we will ride this one out as well. (Go us).
Water is Really, Really Good for You
This may seem to be an obvious statement, especially coming someone who has been on the planet for the better part of five decades, but it is something I am still learning. Just typing that line reminded me to get up and pour myself a glass of water. Being better hydrated is life-changing. If nothing else, it provides a fabulous boost to your skin care regime. But for me, water has been helpful in other ways too. Showers are particularly therapeutic. So is swimming the our backyard pool (especially if I’m alone and if it’s been recently cleaned and it’s a clear sunny day). And if I’m feeling down, looking at the ocean always makes me feel better, even if only for a few minutes.
Unpacking Intergenerational “STUFF” is Useful
I’ve been fortunate to have had great support as I’ve navigated this year, from friends to professionals who have enabled me to get through (which we now know is the best way out) and to see things from different perspectives. One thing that changed me for the better in 2024 was identifying some of the patterns of behaviour I had been raised with which, for better or for worse, have impacted the way I live and raise my own children. Please understand I am not suggesting I had a traumatic or abusive childhood — far from it. But I think there are learned behaviours every person takes into their adult life from their formative years, and I have found it worthwhile examining or re-examining my own behaviours to see if they fit with how I want to live my life today.
It’s as the late, great Maya Angelou said: Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. The older I get the more I am aware of how much my life is a work in progress.
Live Music is Genuinely Amazing
2024 is a year in which I went to two massive concerts: Taylor Swift and Coldplay. I got to see them both with Marvel Girl, one with Miss Malaprop and one with one of my dearest friends. And about 80,000 other people on both occasions.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of rocking up to a gigantic stadium to see an artist perform. They are doing what they love, you are there because you love what they do. And everyone else is there for the same reason. Being at a concert is one of the most joyful experiences in the world, and can be (even for this introvert) the best expression of being in a crowd. In Sydney we’re lucky that when major events are on special trains and buses run, so even getting to and from the event is a positive experience, shared with people who are just as excited to be going/have been to see and hear someone whose music they love.
Other Random Learnings from 2024…
- My favourite cocktail is a French 75.
- If you ask for what you want, you should be prepared to get it.
- The unmistakably awful sound of a small child attempting to play a recorder is a complete and total nuisance in your house, but can be quite funny if it’s happening over the back fence.
- I really like dresses with pockets.
- I’m waaaaay too old to keep up with my kids’ slang.
- Persistence pays off.
I’m sure there are plenty of other things I learned this year, most of which will come to me right after Ihit the publish button, but those are the random musings that came to me this morning.
And, since I love books, I thought I would leave you this year with a blessing for the new year from a great fantasy novel I read recently, because it’s full of passion and integrity and ever so slightly over the top — and those are all good things to be in this life.
May you be strong and courageous. May your enemies kneel before you. May you find the answers you seek. May you be victorious and spirits-blessed, and may peace follow as your shadow.
Mind yourselves,
BJx
I love the Hilltop Hoods and the raw honesty of their hip hop. But I also grew up in a house where we listened almost exclusively to classical music, and have an abiding appreciation for many things orchestral. Operatic, not so much…despite my eclectic tastes.
Initially I wondered whether I should include something in this list that appears, on the surface, to be completely mundane. But then I realised this is exactly what finding delight in life is all about: when the minty scent rushes out of a freshly opened box of peppermint tea, I never fail to smile. I feel enormous contentment. My heart sings.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, to paraphrase Jane Austen, that an Australian is in possession of a pair of feet is only ever in want of a pair of thongs. Or ugg boots, as the season dictates. Part of the great wonder of living in the Land Down Under is our love of informal footwear — surpassed only, I suspect, by our preference for going barefoot whenever possible. During the summer, this phenomenon extends in the beachside suburb where I live to clothing: it is not unusual to see people down at the shops wearing wet swimmers and, at best, a towel…definitely no shoes. After all, they’re probably only at the shops to pick up a Golden Gaytime or a Chocolate Paddlepop, so what’s the point in getting dressed?
Staying in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s high time I acknowledge one of the great delights of the Asia-Pacific Region: Jacinda Ardern. Let’s face it — she sorted out Easter for concerned citizens the world over when she answered a question in a press conference regarding the current employment status of the Easter Bunny. Clearly stating the Easter Bunny was performing an essential service and would be able to deliver multitudes of chocolate eggs set the minds of many small people at ease, and explaining there might be a slight delay in delivery due to current social distancing measures was a masterstroke appreciated by parents who hadn’t quite managed a supermarket run in the leadup to Easter Sunday.
It’s been a while since I put fingers to keys, and I’m a little overwhelmed by how different a place the world has become in the past six weeks. These here are crazy times, to quote an old Boom Crash Opera song — which no doubt shows my age (but also proves I’m not old enough to be included in a high risk category based on the number of years I’ve been kicking around the planet).
We all have favourite songs and tunes we could listen to on repeat for days. But every now and then, it is an absolute delight to listen to a whole album in its entirety: just as the artist wanted you to hear it. In the age of the playlist the album is easily forgotten — but you can bet your last roll of toilet paper the artist who recorded it thought long and hard about which songs made the final cut and what their sequence should be on a record. Here are some albums I think benefit from listening to uninterrupted:
On the flip side (SUCH a bad pun it’s almost delightful), snippets of song lyrics sometimes stop me in my tracks and produce a moment of sheer delight. Here’s one I rediscovered lately when listening to the Foo Fighters’ song “Times Like These”…
I used to joke my kids know the only two things I have regularly delivered to our house are books and wine, but since I’ve ditched the drink the only things likely to turn up on our doorstep are boxes from Booktopia. Book deliveries are, to my mind, full of the promise of good times to come — particularly becase they are also likely to involve my favourite armchair and a cup of tea.
I still read aloud to my kids. I’ve done so ever since they were newborns and I suspect I will continue to do so for as long as I have literature to share with them and they have the time to hear it. For years now, most of what I have read to them would probably be considered to be above their reading level but which I think they’re capable of understanding. In any case, since we’re reading together they can always ask questions if there are things they don’t comprehend on first hearing.
Oh! Delight in a seashell…especially at the tail end of summer. We are so spoilt with our seafood around here, thought in the interests of sustainability we try not to go overboard with our consumption. Even so, The Bloke is and always will be a sucker for a prawn roll — not the variety that looks something like a spring roll, but the kind where you cut open a fresh bread roll, butter it (in most cases generously, in his case obscenely), fill it with freshly shelled prawns and slather those with seafood cocktail sauce. Yum.
Anyone who follows this blog with any degree of regularity will know I am a bookworm. Nothing makes me happier than curling up with a book in my favourite armchair: a deep blue velvety wingbacked piece beside my bedroom window, which places me within easy reach of a sill to put a hot mug of tea on and in the path of the beautiful sea breezes that grace the Sydney seaboard at this time of year. And while my beloved armchair (quite obviously) qualifies as an object of delight in my life, so does the recently acquired Libby app on my iPad.
Ice cream — particularly, in my case, the non-dairy variety — is generally delightful.
Summer in Australia has been marred this year by destruction and devastation on a scale so vast the word “unprecedented” has nearly been worn out. Parts of our extended family have been directly affected by the bushfires, though mercifully their homes and most of their properties have been saved.
Now that the kids have gone back to school, I’m turning my attention to achieving some of my goals for the year — including timetabling and prioritising regular exercise. Getting out for a walk during the cool of the early morning was something I enjoyed doing with the girls when they were on holidays (well, mostly…when they weren’t whinging), but now I have more time to myself I have been getting out my mat and doing some yoga via YouTube.
Delight!
But it also struck me, in that moment, that it summed up my way of looking at the beginning of 2020, in all its bright shiny newness and with all my bold resolutions.
Blue Jai: 