Archive for the Category »Thinking with my Heart «

And So This is Christmas

12
Dec 2011
By

I’m hearing the same from so many people around here -  “It doesn’t feel like Christmas.” I must admit I’m feeling a bit that way myself. Unseasonably cold, the rain, the gloomy. I suppose people who stick to the northern hemisphere Christmas traditions are pleased. A roast dinner is much more feasible when it’s not 40 degrees outside.

I’ve never been a big one for sticking to traditions just for the sake of it. Our family Christmas celebrations have morphed and changed over the years. When I was a little one, Christmas was all about my Oma. In Germany Weihnacht (literally Holy Night) is celebrated in the evening of December 24th. My brother Joe and I would be banished from the rumpus room out the back while Oma helped “the angels” set everything up for Christmas. We would lurk about outside, trying to catch a glimpse of them at work. When we were finally allowed in, the room was transformed into a magical wonderland. A big white tree loaded with ornaments and dripping with lametta, the clay nativity underneath, Christmas music playing, and presents everywhere! We were the only grandchildren, so I confess we were very spoiled, barely being able to wait for the singing of Stille Nacht to be over so we could rip in to our loot.

I was 17 when Oma died, and over the next few years Christmas changed, because doing the old traditions just didn’t seem right without her, the heart and soul of our Weihnacht. Now with a large blended family, we started the more Australian tradition of Christmas lunch. Christmas Day was noisy and fun, with up to seven twenty-somethings, descending on the parental home in varying states of disrepair from Christmas Eve partying. I remember one year I crashed at Joe’s place as we’d headed home from town together, and we walked across two suburbs together the next morning to get to Christmas lunch, hung over as all get out, joking about our plight.

Sadly our blended family didn’t go the distance, and Christmas changed again. My little family went back to celebrating on Christmas Eve. Just the three of us now, but bolstered in numbers by our partners and children. It wasn’t the same as the old days of Weihnacht, but we created our own traditions again. Joe and I taking turns to host, and having fun coming up with different ideas for food. I’m afraid I was always outdone by my big brother, who even turned tacos into a gourmet feast.

This year we have to face change again, and it is the biggest and hardest one of my life. I lost my brother in September. Too suddenly. Too soon. A wonderful husband, father and son. Loved so much by his brother-in-law and niece and nephew too. I’ve been too lost to write about it until now. It will be my first Christmas without him –  a big Joe-sized hole in my heart. The rain and cold feels right this year – because “it doesn’t feel like Christmas” anyway.

But now after remembering these Christmases with Joe, I think back to my Oma. She was a world away from her homeland, having left her entire family behind, and it probably never felt quite right to her either. Yet she put so much love into Christmas for the sake of her two beloved grandchildren. So I will continue to create new traditions and keep some of the old for my family – my husband and children, my sister-in-law, niece and nephew and my Dad. We have each other to lean on gently now when times are so tough, and to face this big change together.

 

Category: Thinking with my Heart  6 Comments

Write on Wednesday – I remember…

22
Jun 2011
By

Inspired by the beautiful words I have been reading as part of this challenge, I have decided to make the leap myself. Check out Write on Wednesday’s other bloggers here at inkpaperpen.

Write On Wednesdays

 

I remember her smile. Lipstick red when she was going out – shopping or to the club to play cards with her ladies. She was a good card player. The Major from Fawlty Towers was right. I remember sitting opposite her at the dining table, each of us playing patience. She stuck her tongue out a little bit when she concentrated. We all do that. Dad, then me and now the boy. Funny how it goes.

I remember her fingernails. Long. Manicured. Red or pink polish. She taught me to do them for her when the Parkinson’s became too much. One stripe of colour to the middle then one to each side. “Just three times, like so.”

I remember her voice – her almost perfect English. Not Strine. She was a Dame. Dahm-eh. The German kind. A lady. But I reckon she was a dame too. A classy dame. Well mannered. Brought up right, but with a sense of fun that suited this country that she called home. More Aussie than German in the long run.

I remember how her eyes danced when ever we walked into her house. How she clung to us on arrival, with calls of “Bussi’ge’m! Bussi’ge’m!” Give me a kiss. Even if we’d seen her last week or on the weekend or just yesterday. She smothered us in love. We’d push her away laughing. Enough! Enough! Secure that we were her favourites. Her everything. She spoiled us with food, with gifts and always always with love.

I remember my Oma.

Category: Thinking with my Heart  5 Comments  Tags: , , ,

For He is of the Tribe of Tiger

24
Mar 2011
By

While confined for insanity in St Lukes Hospital, London between 1759 and 1763, Christopher Smart wrote a long religious poem entitled Jubilate Agno. The poem is perhaps best remembered today by cat-lovers, as one section is devoted to Smart’s companion, Jeoffry – a house cat. Known as For I will consider my cat Jeoffry, the section is a numbered list of 74 feline attributes.

I have always appreciated this poem – particularly the line quoted in this post’s title. Anyone who has owned a regal feline will notice the similarities to their large cousins. I have owned many cats over the years, and all of them have been possessed of many tiger-like qualities. Grace, majesty, elegance, a touch of menace, a definite sense of their own worth.

And then there’s TomSelleck:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think Smart forgot a line:

75. For he will display his empty nutsack to the world.

Category: Thinking with my Heart  2 Comments

Sources of Comfort – Old and New

23
Mar 2011
By

My son is away at camp at the moment. I am missing him a lot but I’m sure he’s having a great time. He’s a big kid, happy in his own skin, and surrounded by some great mates. Still big as he is, I did wonder when he didn’t pack his favourite teddy, Godfrey Bear. Perhaps, I thought, ten is too old for teddies. Not quite. When asked, he replied that Godfrey (a gift from my late grandfather about eight years ago) was far too special to take in case he got lost. Instead he took TB – yep – a lime green tuberculosis molecule, who was a big hit with the boys in his cabin last year.

Photobomb!

I guess you’re never too old for a special friend. My daughter is almost 13, but still has a pile of soft toys on her bed, and none is more special than her first teddy bear.  Like millions of others around the world he is just known as Teddy.

Older still is Sergeant Major Edward Bear, who belongs to my husband. Sergeant Major Edward Bear was his first teddy bear as well, a gift from his dad who was in the army at the time. Which means, like my husband, he will be 40 years old next week! Sergeant Major Edward Bear has many stitched up joints, from years of being carted about by a small boy. He’s scratchy and hard, but always the dapper gentleman. Our kids sort of share him – he moves between their rooms with ease, occasionally placed back on my husband’s pillow when they think of it.

As for me – well, my earliest and most treasured love is my well-worn copy of The Cat in the Hat. Coverless and well-thumbed, it might not be as cuddly as the bears of my childhood, but since I am still never more content than when I am curled up with a good book, I think it has earned its place beside other special childhood friends.

Do you still have a treasured toy or teddy bear from your childhood?

Category: Thinking with my Heart  2 Comments  Tags: ,

Today is Wendadsday!

01
Mar 2011
By

Every Wednesday my dad comes to visit. I used to think I was doing him a favour. Getting him out of the house, taking him to the shops, taking him out for a “proper” meal. (He pays of course.) Poor sod. He doesn’t get out much you see. Oh, except for the lawn bowls four times a week at two different clubs. And his regular fancy lunches with a friend in catering. And his weekly jaunts up to “The Bay” to stroll around the marina. And his monthly excursions by train to Sydney to bum around Circular Quay (and take the same blooming photo of the Harbour Bridge every time on his iPhone).

Crap. Have just realised that I have been kidding myself. Dad is actually doing me the favour! Since I don’t drive I often schedule any errands etc on a Wednesday, so he can take me.

He even brings treats for the kids. Oh wait. Not the kids. They are at school. The pets. Yes. The pets.  He brings fresh pet mince for the cats. We only give them canned food. And the dog gets dog chews. The cats usually scatter when visitors arrive, but Wendadsday finds them pacing about the hallway until his car pulls into the drive, then they start meowing furiously.

I’m also starting to suspect that they like him better than they like me:

I suppose I can handle that. He is pretty awesome.

Category: Thinking with my Heart  3 Comments  Tags: ,

First Days

31
Jan 2011
By

handsMy daughter started high school yesterday. As was to be expected she was nervous and excited. Of course I was a little the same way myself. I remember my own first day so well. Unfortunately unlike me, she doesn’t have a big brother to show her the ropes or – to be truthful – completely ignore her. But she is lucky enough to be moving from our local primary school to our local high school, so friends and neighbors abound.

There has been lots of talk about first days around the Australian blogging world this past week. As friends – both online and off – are sending their littlest and biggest and inbetweenest off to school for the first time, I find myself comparing how different my children’s first days were between kindergarten and now.

My daughter is one of those kids who is made for school, and school works really well for kids like her. Bubbly and friendly, she is confident in large groups, academic work is a breeze and she gets great results with very little effort. Even in subject areas where she is not the most adept, she is enthusiastic and makes the most of the experience.

At five and a half she was ready for school, and when we filed in to the kindergarten classroom on her first day, she looked up at me shyly for a moment, then happily took her teacher’s hand and took that first big step into the next seven years of her life. A small tear may have escaped as I returned to the car. That wistful feeling that you get on reaching the wonderful conclusion of a beautiful story that you just don’t want to end.

Two years later it was my son’s turn to start school. My shy, gentle boy with the eyes that took up half his face. The same lad who wept buckets every Wednesday and Friday morning for a year when he was dropped at preschool. How would he cope with the boisterous boys and the chatterbox girls? Would the teachers see how special he was? How clever? He had a tendency to hide his talents, so he didn’t stand out. Yet like his sister he grabbed on to the teacher’s offered hand and took that first step with confidence. I confess I wept buckets myself in the car that day. The beautiful story was ended and this time I had to give the book away.

Yesterday afternoon my daughter texted me to say that she thought she might not be on the right bus home, but she was with her mates and they would sort themselves out. When I called to check whether she was OK, I could hear the joy in her voice as they laughed over their predicament – joy at being with her friends, at embarking on the next amazing adventure. So it seems that the sequels to the stories have been just as spellbinding as those first lovely chapters. As each page has turned, new wondrous facets of the main characters have been revealed, and as the simple reader, I have been entranced by them all.

Category: Thinking with my Heart  8 Comments  Tags: , , ,

Oh Tannenbaum!

05
Dec 2010
By

Every year around this time I think it would be really nice to have lovely Christmas decorations like the kind you see in home decorating magazines. But then it gets hot and the days get busy and the bank balance gets depleted and the shopping centres get crowded and I think “Bah phooey to that!” and drag out the old tree and the old ornaments and we slap them on all haphazard and sit back and drink a beer and feel much better. Phew!

Which is why my tree doesn’t look like this –>Tree-Christmas-Faux-GTL1205-de

Instead we have a nice mish mash of old ornaments, individual ones that I have come across or been given (like the adorable Sister Mary Christmas decoration from Nun of a Kind – nothing says Christmas like a floating nun’s head) and schoolmade creations.

As the kids get older the calibre of their contributions improves somewhat, and I no longer have to keep a straight face while decking it out in all manner of paddle pop sticks, CDs covered in tinsel and my personal favourite: the paper-mache green alien poo: P1000813

The white paper has the artist’s name on it, in case he ever tries to deny making this awesome feat of decorating genius.



What does your Christmas tree look like?

Category: Thinking with my Heart  2 Comments  Tags: , ,

Retro-styled

21
Sep 2010
By

My Dad has recently had a bit of a clear out at home, and decided it was time to trawl through the boxes and boxes of slides he had in the cupboard. We have had a lovely few weeks of going through them all and culled them down to about a hundred that we would like to have on CD for posterity. Mostly family snaps from when my brother and I were little ones. Apart from awwwing over how much our children resemble our youthful selves, a particular highlight has been checking out the fashions of the day.

The early 1970s were a fabulous time for style, as this photo of my mother shows:Grgas079

Seriously chic, right? Just the right amount of colour, awesome paisley and other shots show that the dress was very fashionably mini.

So how did the daughter of someone with such taste and eye for beauty manage to end up in this ensemble? Grgas052 Terry towelling pants, rabbits knitted into jumper pattern and oh yes, I appear to be wearing a handknitted bonnet of some kind. All in the brightest of red and white. I was a massive St George fan (or the brainwashed child of a St George fan) so it is highly likely that I selected these clothes myself. If so, it seems the apple fell far far from the tree.

Oh wait – here’s a shot of Dad around the same time: Grgas088

Genetics: they never work quite the way you want them to…(sorry Dad, but that photo is too good not to share with a wider audience.)

I can’t be the only one with such a brightly hued skeleton in her closet, so I’m laying down a challenge. What was the worst fashion faux pas of your childhood? Post it on your blog and link it here! Come on! Don’t leave me (and Henry the VIIIth in fishnets) here on our own!

Category: Thinking with my Heart  9 Comments  Tags: ,

Superfriends

29
Aug 2010
By

SuperfriendsMy daughter has been having some friend problems lately. To be honest, I think we are lucky to have come right through to Year 6 with this being our first real issue. It is nothing major (although I’m sure it seems that way to her) and she is mostly a happy resilient kid, so I am not marching out to champion her cause. Not yet, anyway.

What I am doing is listening. Listening to her feelings, hugging her while she cries, listening to the things she isn’t saying, but is showing. I’m trying not to do too much talking, because she needs to come to some realisations herself. But one thing I did have to let her know. Next year – at high school -  it all changes. I think we focus so much on the negatives of the high school years and our own experiences, that we feed into the fears that kids have. “It’s so big.” “The teachers aren’t as patient.” “The work is hard.” “We’ll be the youngest kids instead of the oldest.” What I wanted my daughter to understand going in to high school, is that next year is an opportunity to make wonderful friendships. Yes, there are a lot more kids, but that increases your chance of finding the few true friends who you just click with. She seemed a little skeptical, so I told her my own story.

I walked into the local catholic high school with only two other kids from my public primary school, neither of whom I knew particularly well and ended up in a class where I knew nobody. So I stuck with my primary school acquaintances for a while, making the odd new friend here and there, but never really anyone that I clicked with. Slowly over the first few months I got to know more of my classmates and as we got to know each other better, particular girls began to stand out. Girls who always lifted me up and never let me down. Girls who I understood and who understood me.  Then I named three names to my daughter.  Three women who she knows so well because they are like family to her. She has heard me sit and laugh for hours with each of them whenever we get together – whether it is once a week, once a month or once a year. I saw her eyes widen, as she realised how long we have been friends.  And I think she got it. She was certainly a lot more confident and hopeful about her own problems.

So once again my friends have come to my aid. This time without even knowing. Thanks guys! (You know who you are.)

Category: Deep Thinks, Thinking with my Heart  5 Comments  Tags: , , ,

Guest Blog: There’s a Bear in There

22
Jun 2010
By

My twelve year old daughter wrote the following for her school’s public speaking competition, after we were talking about the Bear Grylls in Newcastle hashtag on Twitter. I thought it was pretty funny, so would like to share it with you all. Apart  from removing names and the lovely all-caps and rainbow colours she had going on, all words are her own. I hope you enjoy it:

teddyI was watching a TV show called Man vs Wild the other night. If you haven’t seen it – you’re not living!

In Man vs Wild there’s this guy called Bear Grylls, right? He goes to some of the harshest places on earth, but he doesn’t take a plane like any normal person. He’s Bear Grylls! He has to jump out of a helicopter.  Then he puts himself in the position of a lost hiker or tourist and shows you how to survive. Like all tourists he only takes a few things with him –

  • a water bottle,
  • a pocket knife,
  • his clothes
  • … and a camera crew!

Some of the adventures Bear Grylls attempts include

  • Jumping off a waterfall in the amazon
  • chasing rhinos across the savannah
  • eating a sheep’s eye in Alaska
  • and jumping into quicksand to show you how to get out.

What can I say? This guy’s mental!

Anyway while I was watching Man vs Wild the other day I thought how would Bear Grylls cope being stranded in the wilds of my school?  Well for starters he’d jump out of a plane and parachute onto the library roof. He’d then abseil down the building and CRASH! He’s through the principal’s window. There’s glass everywhere but there’s no time to pick the pieces out from his skin because someone’s coming! Quick! It’s the principal! Bear Grylls drops to the ground. He knows what he must do. He commando crawls out of the principal’s office and past the EVIL OFFICE LADIES!

All right, he could get in easily enough – but how would he survive? If you have ever watched the show you would know that water is essential for survival. That should be easy enough in a school playground – there’s bubblers right? But Bear always prepares for the worst. He would probably pee into his Wiggles drink bottle in case he gets dehydrated and can’t make it to the bubblers. How disgusting is that?!

Next problem is what would he eat? Well he could raid the canteen but he would have to fight off the canteen lady first. And even though he is an SAS commando and has trained in the airforce I reckon she could take him on. Looks like he would have to raid the garbage bin for the last half-chewed chicken chippy. But wait a minute – that sounds a bit boring for Bear Grylls. He’d probably go down to the creek and catch one of those red belly black snakes for his lunch – YUM!

As night falls, the air gets colder, and Bear knows that he has to build a shelter – and fast! He usually finds tree branches, bamboo and palm leaves to make a cover for his bed. But everybody knows it’s an immediate yellow card if you start ripping down the trees!  He could get supplies from the work shed. Hey – he could even sleep in the shed!

Oh well – no one said he was smart.

After a hard night’s sleep out in the cold, Bear thinks he has primary school sussed. He has found food and a water source, but then – the lunch bell rings. It takes all Bear’s survival skills to avoid the herd of stampeding kindies on their way to the sandpit. There are kids everywhere – he has to get out! NOW!!

Finally Bear has an idea. He creeps into one of the classrooms and grabs a desk and a meter ruler. With the desk upside down and using the ruler as a paddle, he rafts down the creek then crawls across the scorching earth of the local soccer grounds to finally make it to civilisation – BI LO!

With all his skills and training, Bear Grylls has conquered some of the world’s most deadly terrains. But I reckon my school would be his toughest challenge yet!

Category: Thinking with my Heart  9 Comments  Tags: , , ,
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