A New Year, and No New Resolutions

The red tree is flowering and 2023 is here

So finally we have reached the end of Christmas/ New Year celebrations. Sitting in the shade under the playground at Geordie Bay, Rottnest ( no space on any of the chairs and tables as this small island is filled beyond capacity). It is definitely a time to take stock .

Taking Stock is a serious business , even for cats

I wonder why we go on about making resolutions each new year. After all, many of us have not achieved the ones made 10 years ago. I admit that I have trotted out the same goals/ intentions/ resolutions each year for a very long time . Always recycled, sometimes discarded, often modified and occasionally partially achieved , initially anyway . But we know how hard it is to change habits so why do we keep making new resolutions . Hey , I’m sticking with the old ones, just chipping away .

I’m sticking with the old while recognising the hard facts that age and circumstance play a big role in achievement. I have always had a list of very specific actions related to broader themes. ( Yes I have in the past spent too much time on SMART goals and have fiddled around writing and re -writing lists within lists within lists…..). Dance has been on my list under FUN. I have named types of dance to try , where they are, how often sessions are held, cost . . But 10 years after that first sortie into change , or rather regaining my sense of being , I really struggle with moves in swing dance and flamenco , both of which I love .

That original spurt of attachment or insight remains . I am not altering my earlier enthusiasm for real dance to embrace “ over 55’s” exercises or ‘ chair yoga’ or whatever the current marketing pitch for the aging population . So I’m stubbornly keeping that resolution in my head and pondering , doing little bits . What I have to do is drop the bar : I am not going to be a wonderful flamenco dancer or do those smooth, fast and fun Swing moves. But I can do a modified , albeit fudged version , of the dances I like. I can just incorporate whatever bits of whatever dance style into my dance. !

Dancing 💃

I blame Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project ( Harper:2009 . Many revisions) for years of writing specific goals. Despite my somewhat dismissive tone, her book is worth reading. Just because of offering a structured yet flexible approach to adjusting some of the eternal niggles of family life. Her central premise “if my life is so wonderful , why am I not happier?” Is a useful jumping off point . . Only now do I recognise that happiness is not a constant; chasing happiness is like chasing rainbows, or shape shifting entities . The endpoint rarely meets the imagined. Nonetheless human beings are pursuers of happiness, with all its myriad of meanings , interpretations, contradictions and imperfections .

So my drive towards a happier, better life has always revolved around kindness ( good to have a core value thrown in ), having fun and being adventurous . Curiosity I believe is the basis for being and feeling alive . Pretty simple , and I don’t need to overanalyse and prescribe and measure . I’m happy now but may not feel happy just now or tomorrow. Unadulterated happiness is rare and wonderful . If it were a constant it would be another pretty ordinary part of life. So…

Just this instant I have bought a bright headband and a striped skirt at Rottnest’s Indianic clothes shop. Overpriced, but it’s the beginning of the 2023 me in action: Brightness and FUN. Adventure and kindness will follow.

Surely brightness ( sic goodness) shall follow me …..( psalm)

Merry Christmas,Merry Shopping

Target greeting

I was Ok with 🎁 presents shopping , sort of list in hand. Until I entered Target.

Greeted by red versions of merry Christmas, lollies and rolls of Christmas paper, decorations , and reams of things to buy . Yes, and the requisite jingles to do my head in .

I’m bewildered. I’m looking for a Marvel? Lego set that doesn’t cost over $100 . My grandson needs at least a 15 yrs up set . First I have to find them in the collection of toys that takes half of the top floor, then I have to find the right one . In the meantime, on the way to the toys where there are other zombies wandering around squinting at shelves, I am distracted by the baby clothes. Neither of my grandchildren need clothes, but these little shirts and shorts are soooo cute.

I haven’t been inside here for ages . I must admit it’s quite refreshing to be looking around in a non op shop. It’s refreshing but also confusing and guilt making. Here am I attracted to goods I don’t need, while some people are scraping together coins for food ( or a smoke the cynical middle class , justifying me whispers )

I make it to the Lego holding just one thing : an electric jug for visiting family . A bright red cheap one that will work ; op shop ones sometimes do sometimes don’t. They are not red, and at current op shop prices not all that much cheaper ( see how I can rationalise )

Made it to Lego

After half an hour of wandering around squinting like everyone else, and there are more squinters now as it’s getting later, I leave minus the Lego . However I have $54 of coloring in books, crayola crayons, a hair band and a cute little matching shirt and shorts set;and the electric jug.

And back tomorrow ?I’ve done Target .Merry Christmas .

A Lesson from Figs on Gaudete Sunday. A Post For Christmas Eve.

On Guadete Sunday 2023 I looked again at last year’s post. Because I love the name Guadete, love the the readings on this last Sunday of Advent: John is again a witness speaking about the light to come, a light “to bind up hearts that are broken,” to free us from the things that blunt our joy. Guadete is a reaffirming of the power of light. For some of us, it places the story of Jesus and Christmas in a cosmological framework .

So this year the fig tree is not yet fruiting but is doing well. I’ve put compost and pea straw around it again ,and chopped off the branches that hit my head every time I tend to it

. So here’s the post, a bit late and the heralded Christmas is here.

I was out on the garden again fiddling with my suddenly huge fig 🌳. I’m surprised at how it has still managed to sprout new branches , despite vigorous pruning a few months ago. Moreover it has secretly been producing figs. Maybe it is hiding them from the cockies that eat them every year, but I only spied the nearly ripe ones when I reached under the canopy to remove weeds.

Today is Gaudete Sunday in the church calendar. The third Sunday in Advent . Rejoicing Sunday. Even for non believers it’s a lovely term, containing the joy in this lead up to a special birth. For once in the liturgy there are no threats or bribes or reminders of the horrors facing non believers.

Let the wilderness and the dry-lands exult

let the wasteland rejoice and bloom

let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil

let it rejoice and sing for joy,

( Isiah 35 v 1,10)

There are lots of biblical quotes about fig trees putting out branches. I realised today that all the water and pea straw and care I have spasmodically lavished on this tree might be irrelevant .

The tree has its own mind and I can chop and water and care or not care, but it spreads where it will and grows fruit regardless. The figs I picked before the birds are not ripe. So they’re on the window sill to ripen, hopefully.

Waiting

Lesson from figs over .

,

Performances Around Our Fathers

Fun nights even when he was older

The pre Christmas season is bringing up lots of memories for me, as I guess happens with a lot of people. Maybe it’s the 3 straight nights minus even the 2 or 2 wines , but words are just queuing up in my head . So cousins in UK, brother in Washington DC , cousin here in Freo, what do you think about gathering some of the songs we sung during our family get togethers? Particularly around the dining table. Very early on I think there was a piano : but uncle Michael , the remaining sibling – he would remember,

Remember . I know some of the songs are are published but not all together, and I suspect that many of those songs we sang as children and younger adults were embellished or re -drafted to suit. Sometimes there were short performances and skits. The Death of Nelson for example, my own fathers favourite when he had had a good few beers – the one where we all waited for mum to say “ ….shh Really . No , NO … “ And my father paused to incorporate her intervention into the performance . Then lying on the ground with one hand on his eye he gasped “ “Kiss me Hardy “

He quickly hoisted himself up again and uttered the final insalubrious line. Despite my mother.

The other favourite was Three Old Ladies Locked in The Lavatory( Sorry Aunty Flora and Aunt ? Long dead then , but the butt of my grandfathers annoyance) We laughed 50 years ago . Others were about babies disappearing down the plug hole. I said they were not socially acceptable , not now anyway . Then there were a few Salvation Army ones ( words changed to incorporate family members, or enemies) , and the rousing Rule Britannia* , commencing “Sons of the Sea, bumping up and down like this “. By this time adults were at risk of missing the chair as they leapt up and plonked down again. I just remembered too some of the songs came from Great Uncle Reg , a Boy Scout Leader and veteran of the First World War. He worked as a diplomat in WW2 , a lot of the time in Paris . Hence the innocent songs of that era , with the belief system of duty and responsibility , dibbing and dobbing.

The 3 brothers, Uncle Michael, Uncle Bill , front , and my father . The faded writing at the back says 1937.

Common camping,scout and some army songs were sung with enthusiasm and varying degrees of seriousness : well known Pack up your Troubles, It’s a Long Long Way

Military . Uncle Reg , my grandfather, my father . No date but my father was 15 yrs old in the Home Guard and 18 when he joined up and started officer training

Look they were not all rude, my mothers term . There were a lot of old war songs like Blue Cliffs of Dover and the more rumbustious Siegfried Line * , suitably modified. Other war songs quite racist, sexist, anarchistic , whatever . Understandable if you’d fought in the war or if you’d lived through one and it’s aftermath .

Dad and my grandad beginning of war

My mother loved the lyrical songs and her party piece was Green Grow the Rushes Oh with movements.We all joined in , tripping over each other as we vied for attention .

There were many more and I have forgotten them . As my last uncle is over 90 it’d be good to get a few of the more obscure songs and acts together. Uncle M has written a lot on the family history and I’m sure he will remember some . How about it , all of us cousins and brother?

Postscript

*Songs of the Sea (1897) is a British WE1 Naval song . The parody ‘bobbing up and down like this ‘became popular at Boy Scout Camps , and has been adapted to football songs . Uncle Michael , served in Navy , would know more about the adaptation .

*were going to hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line “ ( 1939) Written by Jimmy Kennedy while he was Captain in early stages of W W 2 . BUT am sure the words were different ! My mother intervened a lot here.