It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas. We're in the middle of a heat wave so as I step out into the backyard, I can hear the loud, constant background buzz of cicadas and the hum of my neighbours' airconditioners all working hard in the sweltering heat. There are bushfires in Victoria and I have a constant nagging worry from my Melbourne daughter and her family living in the Yarra Ranges.
After feeling tired and overwhelmed by the thought of Christmas, I'm now starting to reflect on the opportunity given to us over the Christmas period to focus on values and beliefs that are important. With all that's been happening here and overseas - all the violence, fear and the overwhelming and ever increasing number of refugees, it's good to take a quiet moment and reflect on what we hold dear and why, to be thankful and grateful for where we live and all that we have.
For the first time, I am celebrating Christmas with two new grandchildren, Emilia (9 months) and Harry (3 months) and it makes me think of how special it was for my family and I when I was growing up to spend Christmas with Grandma and Grandfather Roberts. It was a huge road trip for us from where we lived in Inverell in northern NSW to Guildford, Sydney. Mum and Dad piled three kids (and then four when my youngest brother came along) into the car and pulled a trailer for the 10 to 12 hour trip (we had to stop often because we were terrible travellers). The first stop was generally at Tamworth where we had the novelty of buying Heinz spaghetti on toast for breakfast at the roadside service station diner. We later moved to Cowra and thankfully the road trip was greatly reduced to about 5 hours (again with lots of stops). Grandma and Grandfather lived in a two bedroom house at Guildford where my mother had grown up with her older sister and younger brother. I loved staying there and slept in a tiny sleepout on the back verandah that had been built-in. Grandma and Grandfather lived by a simple domestic routine that revolved around a huge vegetable garden down the back which provided seasonal vegetables for Grandma's beautiful meals cooked in a tiny kitchen on a green Kookaburra gas stove top and oven. There was no hot water other than that from boiling a jug and lighting the gas water heater over the bath (which often lit with what seemed to us to be a dangerous explosion). There was a toilet outside down the back steps in the laundry. Grandma still used an old washing machine with a mangle to squeeze her washing, which was rinsed in the laundry tub and then put through the mangle again, before being hung on the prop clothes line that ran from the back door down the back path towards the shed. Washing day was Monday and the clothes were sorted and folded with great precision. The ironing pile was dampened down with a sprinkling of water before being ironed often with spray on starch. Grandma always had a knitting project underway and for many years kept all her grandchildren in jumpers for school and also for Sunday best. She darned socks and did the mending each night while watching her favourite television shows in the lounge room with Grandfather. I remember Brian Henderson on the channel 9 news and Grandma religiously watching the weather forecast which determined whether she went out the next day or not. Coming from country NSW where you were lucky to get the ABC and perhaps one commercial station, it was a novelty to choose from ABC and three commercial stations. We loved the cartoons with Tom and Jerry, as well as the Cisco Kid, F Troop and Hogan's Heroes.
Christmas Day was spent at North Rocks with mum's sister Mari's family so we had three cousins to play with and spent hours in their backyard pool, playing hide and seek and lots of board games, which cousin Brian mainly won. Uncle Keith was known to pop a garden sprinkler on the roof of the carport to cool the area while we ate from long trestle tables covered with plastic Christmas tablecloths. Grandma Roberts always made the pudding and put sixpences in the pudding which we could cash in for five cent pieces. I later discovered that she always checked that an even number of sixpences went into each piece of pudding for the grandchildren. So there were stories and yarns told, jokes swapped, up dates about absent friends and family, lots of talking over the top of each other, lots of beautiful food and most of all, lots of freedom to play and play and play. No doubt, the adults left us kids to it and retreated to wherever it was coolest and quietest for a nap after lunch. When it got cooler, they would sit in the shade and watch us kids playing in the pool and then leftovers for dinner. Boxing Day was at Pymble with my Skinner cousins. Dad's brother, Bill, and his wife, Wendy, had three children much the same age as my brothers and I and we loved our Boxing Days at their place. We usually didn't see each other much during the year but it didn't matter, we just picked up from last Boxing Day as if it was only the week before.
I reflect on the fact that it's been over 30 years since my Grandparents moved into a retirement village and then died in 1988. Aunty Mari and Uncle Keith moved from North Rocks into a retirement village 10 years ago and Uncle Bill and Aunty Wendy have both passed away years ago. My parents moved from their last family home nearly 10 years ago and Mum has had a stroke and is in a nursing home. I truly miss the traditions of these Christmases past where we had simple routines, beautiful food and lots of family fun and time just spent together. There is no home to go to now that has these memories and it makes me realise that I'm now the Grandmother to start these Christmas traditions, to give rise to a new generation of happy memories and time spent together as a family.
It's been a huge year and a tough journey at times but made in the company of good friends and family. But I've made a fresh start, with a new job and new resolve to make a simple home with what I have. I have two new grandchildren and have just adopted a dog so there's lots to be thankful for and to look forward to.
So as we prepare for Christmas, take a moment and think about what you hold dear. I wish us all a truly happy Christmas where we enjoy moments of quietness and stillness, where we can be filled with love, hope, and joy. Let us be gentle with our family and friends and find ways of expressing our gratitude with generosity and kindness.
