Tag Archives: Fiji

December Delights

Posted on by • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Christmas, Moments of Delight, Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 5 Comments

I hardly expected to be writing this from yet another lockdown…yet here we are, stuck at home during the week before Christmas, wanting to be with our loved ones and hoping we might be able to leave our places of residence before December 25th rolls around.

Silver linings feel like they are hard to come by these days, especially on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. And yet, even though the current public health order means I now won’t be able to be with my mother on her 70th birthday next week, I am grateful we are not in Fiji as we had planned to be – especially with Cyclone Yasa leaving a trail of destruction through the islands where we and so many other Australians love to spend holidays.

It has taken me two days to work through feelings that have run the full gamut from genuine dread to garden variety anxiety, and now I am finally ready to turn my thoughts towards the things that have delighted me during December – well, at least prior to 5:00pm on 19 December 2020. I share them in the hope they bring you something resembling joy, and that might you discover delight in the small details that are so often overlooked.

So here, in no particular order, are my December delights:

Dustyesky

I plonked myself down on the lounge in front of the TV the other night, a list of things to do before the school year ended scrolling endlessly through my head, and found myself watching a short piece on Australian Story entitled “To Russia, With Love”.  It featured the MC and choirmaster of Dustyesky, Australia’s premiere genuine fake Russian choir.  Based in the Northern NSW town of Mullumbimby (known to choir members as Mullumgrad), the men of Dustyesky sing in Russian – which they neither speak nor understand – and have made quite the splash around the world, and more specifically across Russia itself. If you fancy fifteen minutes of fun and feeling good, settle in and watch the boys tell their story in a combination of impeccable fake Russian and broad Australian accents here:

Pants with Pockets

I don’t know a single dress-wearing person who, when complimented on their attire, fails to announce “It’s got pockets!” if indeed, their garment does possess such magical accoutrements. Pockets! Who knew they would make anyone feel so good…

Well, as it turns out, savvy active wear producers knew and, after several years of envying strangers in the street with mobile phones casually tucked into their exercise tights, I have finally joined their number. Hoorah! I am now the proud owner of a pair of black tights with not one, but two exterior pockets, as well as pair of super comfortable shorts which feature pockets of the more regular variety. I can now participate in a bunch of summer activities far more stylishly than I’ve managed to before…just as soon as they let me out of the house…

Having a Facial

About a week before the school year ended my skin was feeling patchy (well, let’s be honest…I was feeling a bit patchy, if the truth be told, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it). What I needed, I told myself, was a facial – but I didn’t want it to be with anyone I knew.  Any kind of talking while a treatment was in progress was not going to cut it for me at this late stage of the year and so, on a whim, I booked myself in for a Signature Facial at a salon I very rarely frequent.

It was perfect. The beautician, to her credit, asked me a few basic questions and then allowed me to luxuriate for an hour, pampering me in complete silence. I felt more deeply relaxed afterwards than I normally would after sleeping for ten hours. And my skin? Much, much better…thanks for asking…

Grid Lines on Giftwrap

OK, OK…this is a delight for all those who get a genuine kick out of wrapping Christmas presents. I will say, unashamedly and unabashedly, that I love wrapping gifts: I love the feel of the paper creasing beneath my fingers, the whizzing sound the scissors make as they make the curling ribbon do its thing, and – ultimately – the look of a beautifully, attentively wrapped present.

So, with these salient facts at the forefront of your mind, imagine my delight (complete, utter, undying) when I discovered that the wrapping paper I had purchased for Christmas this year had grid lines on the reverse side of the paper. Be still, my beating heart! Now, I’m a pretty dab hand at cutting a straight line, but GRID LINES! Wonder of wonders…whoever came up with that idea should be given a medal at the very least. An Oscar for Best Performance.  Possibly even a Nobel Prize. I can’t love this idea enough.

The Christmas Tree

I’ve written before about our tradition of creating a new colour scheme for Christmas each year, and it will now go down in family folklore that the Year We Were in Lockdown the tree was decorated in white, gold and hot pink. The smell of pine needles has permeated the house, and we have carried the decorative theme through from the hall table to the piano top and on to the tree itself.  The Angel Shazza has taken up residency at the top, presiding over what may yet been the most subdued Christmas we have ever had, but still reminding us that even in the darkest hour there is hope.

So there you have it, friends: five December Delights for this most unusual of years.

I would love to hear yours, if you have them…feel free to share them in the comments, or to pass this on to someone who needs it.

Wishing you all a very safe, happy and healthy Christmas,

BJx

Terra Incognita

Posted on by • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Travels with The Professor, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , • 2 Comments

map 2It’s been a while since I’ve written about my travels with The Professor — or found the time to write here at all, for that matter. Despite my best intentions, I managed to overcommit myself during the first few weeks of the current school term, which put paid to any attempt to unravel the many complexities of the universe in this, my little patch of cyberspace.

Coronavirus and all its attendant concerns and controversies have made this mad world an even more perplexing place to navigate lately, and they have also served to highlight even more vividly the difficulties our family is facing as dementia slowly and inexorably claims my father’s brain.

Last week we received confirmation the resort we had planned to holiday at with our extended family over Christmas this year will be closed until April 2021. That tropical island getaway had been shining like a beacon of hope at the end of this crazy year, but now that the Trans-Tasman travel bubble has failed to materialise and the thought of any trips further afield has faded away, we are being forced to confront two realisations: one, that our Fijian vacation will, at the very least, have to be postponed; two, that the longer the borders take to reopen, the less likely it will be that the Professor will be in a suitably fit mental state to make the trip.

It still feels like a sucker punch.

So do the times when Dad gets stuck in a loop, and tells the same story over and again, despite every failed effort to deflect or distract or redirect him onto a new neural track.

Or when he has what we call “Alice Days”, and is alone, and sometimes flailing, in his own Wonderland, unable to recall how to answer the phone or what was said only minutes before.

I am grateful that he still delights in words — and wordplay, when he is able to — even if he does recite the same poem or witty ditty he learned as a schoolboy eleventy million times in the course of a single afternoon. I am pleased he still finds pleasure in reading books, despite borrowing the same volumes from the local library time and again because he doesn’t recall enjoying them only the week before.

Sometimes I grow weary of the slow grieving process that inevitably accompanies the Professor’s decline, of watching the ever-closing window and never knowing how much time or lucidity is left before it shuts.

map 3I am utterly humbled by my mother, and am in absolute awe of her patience, compassion and devotion to the previously active and highly cerebral man who once anchored our lives, who now feels like he is floating above us, tethered only by interwoven strings of love and tenacity.

I try, as my mother always does, to meet the Professor where he is.

I hang on to the good days, when the repetitions are rarities, or when he’s not wandering through a mire of memories of times long before my birth.

I find it’s easiest for me to hold his hand on the Alice days, hoping he finds the same comfort in the familiarity of that simple touch as I do.

And most of all, I hope — fervently — that he is not undone by disorientation and distress as dementia erases the lines from the maps he has always known, forcing him into Terra Incognita as the charts fade, into the unknown.

map 4