Learning to love the crowds at my summer beach

As a solitude lover, my favourite holiday places are tiny and off-season. Few things fill me with more sheer joy than an empty beach in winter. Or even an empty beach in summer – it’s surprising how you can find these, even during the January holidays. Walk a hundred metres from the hordes on any main beach, scramble over a rocky outcrop or two, and you can have the place almost to yourself.

However. Maybe it’s COVID and close to two years of not experiencing the congregating of human beings, but I find myself enjoying a popular seaside resort at the busiest time of year.

I’ve even swum at the main beach from time to time and am struck by how contented people there are. You seldom hear yelling or whinging by the sea, and I reckon there are clear reasons for this.

More than usual, parents are not doing it alone. Two parent families have both adults on duty, halving the workload. Lots of groups seem to have even more of the traditional ‘village’ in attendance – grandparents, aunties, uncles and friends doing shifts with the babies, trundling pushers in the early morning to give mums and dads a rare lie in, bouncing little ones in the wavelets at the edge of the ocean, hoisting toddlers high on their shoulders, pointing out mewling gulls and rainbow coloured kites, boats and cricket matches on the hard sand at low tide. Kids were meant to be brought up by a clan.

In this country, where the vast majority of the population dwell in cities, on summer holidays, we tend to be immersed in the natural world. Swimming in wild bodies of water is good for us, so is having nothing between our bare feet and the sand, not sitting at a desk eight hours a day, enduring minimal artificial light, precious little squinting at devices all day long.

Maybe, too, after so much time in lockdown, the inhabitants of this state are giddy with delight at being able to escape the metropolis and do what many love to do in the summer – have a week or three with no alarms, no deadlines, no damn zoom meetings.

I can’t quite believe we are here, allowed to swim and walk mask-free, not a concrete apartment or office block in sight, little noise after dark except the sigh of the surf on still nights. In the depths of 2021, I wondered if we would ever get this kind of holiday again. And here we are. And here a lot of other Victorians are, and seem to be as incredulously happy about it as I am.

Published in The Melbourne Age on 7 January

Lower the expectations, heighten the satisfaction

An old boyfriend of mine used to say that one of the secrets of happiness was not to have too many expectations. (Or something like that. It was a long time ago.)

I’ve been pondering that pearl of wisdom recently, when once again we have experienced a COVID-ravaged Christmas. If nothing else, the last two years have taught inhabitants of the modern Western world what the rest of humanity has known throughout history – you can’t expect much, and you can control even less. The burgeoning of the risk management industry notwithstanding, there’s no guarantee against accident, heartache, illness and death.

This second COVID holiday season, almost every family I know has had plans scuppered. Offspring flying in from overseas don’t make it. Local family members are forced into isolation thanks to being a close contact, or they contract the disease itself. Despite the heart-warming tableaus of long-separated loved ones reuniting at airports on the TV news, most tables have had empty places.

Our tribe were no exception. It has been two years since we were all together at Christmas, nine months since we’ve seen our interstate son. He was hanging out for rest and time with the clan after an exciting but punishing year; we just wanted to have him close, let him sleep and watch him cuddling his niece.

We counted down the days, but a close colleague of our son had COVID and he had to quarantine in Brisbane for a minimum of a week.

In a world of climate crisis and refugees in their millions, our disappointment was small fry, but we felt it keenly. News dribbled in via what’s app: a first negative test. A successfully booked flight. Queueing for hours at the testing station, the wait for a second test result that might take days. Then, miraculously, there he was, hugging each of us.

COVID has schooled us to temper our expectations; but it’s also taught us is to treasure the moments when things do work out. We might not be able to travel distances, but a week at a Victorian beach has never felt so indulgent. Having all our loved ones under one roof is nothing short of bliss. We are realising where true contentment lies.

The first night that our whole mob were together, we sat around on the verandah, eating and drinking and yarning and laughing, bagging each other affectionately in the way that families do. As the matriarch, I’m always in heaven when this happens. But I suspect each one of us thought, looking around the table, that life couldn’t get much better. Our expectations may be low, but our satisfaction at the simplest pleasures is profound.

What I learnt in 2021

My life advice for anyone, regardless of whether or not they are a person of faith, is simple. If you surround yourself with good people, you’ll get through the mixed bag life dishes up. Looking back on 2021, however, two other things stand out as this year’s lessons for me.

To tackle the less positive one first, I have accepted that I am always weary, that that’s the way it is at the moment, maybe for the rest of my life as I age, and that that’s okay.

Everyone I know is struggling with tiredness; if you look at the context of the last two years, it’s not surprising. It’s COVID, it’s unemployment for some and overemployment for others, too many hours spent videoconferencing, not having had a proper holiday in many months, it’s not having the shot in the arm that time with loved ones or a change of scene brings. It’s also the profound grief and despair provoked by the climate crisis, and the seeming determination of our leaders not to take it seriously. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling embarrassed to be Australian when I think of our record on both the environment and on refugees.

This year I have learnt something about the wisdom of accepting my context and my age. I’ve learnt something about the relief of understanding that I can do so much but I can’t fix everything and it is hubris to try.

The second thing that has been the basis for everything this year has been my heightened awareness that our God – the God of the Incarnation – is with us in it all.

The last six years have been traumatic for my immediate family, with more than our fair share of divorce, disease, death and a dozen other traumas that are not my story to tell. In the midst of piercing loss and anxiety, there has also been an overwhelming awareness of the love and prayers of others and a powerful conviction that God is beside us in every human experience if we let God in.

When my husband was diagnosed with incurable cancer six years ago, I mentioned to my then spiritual director that, although I shouldn’t have been surprised, I was astonished by the richness and immediacy of my experience of God’s everlasting arms in my intense grief. ‘But,’ I went on to say, ‘of course I ain’t seen nothing yet. He hasn’t really been ill yet, he hasn’t had all the brutal treatment.’ ‘And what makes you think that God won’t be in those experiences just as much, waiting to meet you there?’ she countered.

And she was right. Connecting deliberately and deeply with the big love that is God doesn’t shelter a person from any of life’s slings and arrows and the pain that goes with them. None. But in my experience, they come hand in hand with a heightened sense of God’s presence in every joy, every heartbreak and all the mundane moments in between.

This was published in the December issue of The Melbourne Anglican

Back in the office - exhausted but happy

In theory, working from home should have suited me down to the ground. I’m an introvert and a creature of habit; WFH, with my thrice daily walks around my neighbourhood, an extra hour each day thanks to the absence of a commute, my own, cosy little routine should have been idyllic. But this last fortnight, I have been surprised by a decided lifting of the heart. Once again, there is a spring in my step which has been missing for too long.

Initially I’m mystified: it’s the end of a long, hard year; most of us are reeling with weariness resulting from too many zoom meetings and too few holidays. Then it hits me. The heaviness has departed because I am physically back at work.

I returned with no small degree of trepidation, a little concerned about infection but more anxious about negotiating crowds and social situations. But at the end of my first shift back, I found myself whistling on my walk to the station.

That first day, several of my team were around and we were a lot less productive than usual, greeting each other with enthusiasm, having corridor and kitchen chats, revelling in dropping by to ask something instead of the clunkiness of a teams call, even (don’t tell anyone) hugging. I found myself having inane chats with a goofy grin on my face. It felt so damn good just to be able to natter.

I had forgotten how convenient, how well-equipped a proper office is. My desk is vast compared to the one at home. There is a printer handy. I have two ginormous (compared to my laptop) screens. Everything is quicker and easier and more efficient.

I have felt energised, and I have also been exhausted. Be warned, those of you commuters venturing back to the work place. Twice daily train trips, the grime and stimulation of the city, and cranking up my rusty socialising skills wore me out. I have been shredded at the end of each day. But it’s a good tiredness, different from the dead weight of days and days confined to quarters. Much as I love home and my companion there, human beings are not designed to be confined to one small space with one other person, no matter how dear and how accommodating.

These days, when I reconnect with my beloved, there is so much to talk about. All the goss from the big wide world out there. The people I have seen, the news, the laughs, the conversations to pass on. The boundaries are reinstated. Work is work and home is only home, and I’m suffused with a joyous sense of well-being and gratitude for my ordinary life.  

 This was published in The Melbourne Age on 16 December 2021

We planted a garden

We planted a garden. Okay, ‘garden’ might be overstating it a little.

Almost a year ago, we moved from a lifetime of houses with gardens to an apartment with a 10 X 2.5m terrace. I am so grateful to have an outdoor space that gets rain and sun, but it is, essentially, a concrete box, reflecting our suburb which is predominantly grey and industrial, rather than lush and green.

In the last month, though, all has changed. After a long wait (everyone must be gardening madly in lockdown) we found a nursery that had not only pots and potting mix in stock, but also all the plants we had planned and longed for. A flurry of joyous activity followed and now we have a mini-garden, with a veritable riot of colours to look out on.

We had already planted a row of callistemon in sturdy pots; this fortnight they have exploded into a storm of crimson. We have convolvulus – both mauve and white - that we hope will cascade extravagantly from these larger pots. We have little bursts of seaside daisies filling any gaps we can find. We have climbing fig and Boston ivy trailing up our walls. The lemon and the lime that we planted months ago are replete with fresh new growth. We have flashy, frilly, completely over the top pink lavender. And we have showy petunias – opulent purple, deep red and stark white. It’s a circus out there.

I’ve never been much of a green fingers and anything but the smallest of gardens overwhelms me. To my immense satisfaction and quiet pride, I discover that our terrace is just the right size for me-as-gardener, allowing me to know each plant intimately. 

Every day I go out repeatedly to literally talk to our plants. I ask how they are going. I encourage them to put their roots down, to get comfortable, to feel at home. I reassure them that we will care for them as best we can.

My spirits have lifted, and it’s not just the coming of spring, although a garden, no matter how modest, is most exciting in this season. The green and the bright colours give me a pure, simple, childlike kind of happiness. I feel an astonishment at the generosity of the natural world, a wonder at the mind of the creator. It’s remarkable enough to have utilitarian plants like grain and vegetables, but did we really need callistemon? And petunias? Their only possible reason for existing is to bring joy, and to give us a glimpse into the nature of a Creator who revels in over-the-top beauty. To remind us of Jesus who took pleasure in ‘the lilies of the field’, comparing them favourably to King Solomon in all his glory.

And maybe the Creator God - the Gardener God - is like me with my plants, bending down to each tree and stream and mountain and bird, to each beloved human creature, with delight and gentle encouragement, murmuring tenderly to us, enabling us, with unrelenting love, to become our best, most beautiful selves.

This was published in the November issue of The Melbourne Anglican