Here’s hoping that the new year brings you all the irrepressible joy of making angels in the falling snow in East Texas. Happy New Year!
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Christmas Day this year marks the end of my eighth year in Australia. I arrived on this continent on 25 December 2003, having flown straight through and missed Christmas Eve, due to the time variation between here and home. I spent that first hot summer’s day with my future husband, Robin. We took a walk in Westerfolds Park, and enjoyed a swim in the Yarra River, under the protection of tangy-smelling eucalpyts, and squadrons of screaming sulphur-crested cockatoos. Christmas lunch with Robin’s family included abundant fresh seafood – shellfish, salmon, and king prawns – a variety of salads, beautiful Australian wines, a selection of traditional cakes (plus a delightful Pavlova), dessert tarts, and hand-made chocolates. This was an all together different realm from my usual Northern Hemisphere holiday experience. Everyone was in short sleeves and there wasn’t a turkey in sight!
Our Living Christmas Tree
Celebrating Christmas with Two Australian Icons: Michael Leunig and Phillip Adams
td Whittle
Posted on December 24, 2011
Christmas by Michael Leunig I see a twinkle in your eye, so this shall be my Christmas star and I will travel to your heart: the manger where the real things are. And I will find a mother there who holds you gently to her breast, a father to protect your peace, and by these things you shall be blessed. And you will always be reborn and I will always see the star and make the journey to your heart: the manger where the real things are. From Poems, 1972-2001
Tom walked out of the 7-11 with two coffees in his hand, one for himself and one for his wife, Gayla, who had waited in the car while he pumped the petrol. He stopped for a moment to watch children clambering on the Wonder Wall which made up the west side of the shop, and which Tom supposed caused more parents to stop here for petrol and soft drinks than might otherwise. The wall interested him because walls were his business. Tom was a manager in a company that rendered residential and commercial exteriors. Usually, as jobs go, it was pretty good; but this year had been tough. He regretted the decision they’d made two years ago, as an executive team,…
Isn’t that plane flying awfully low…
Listening to the radio the other day I was surprised to hear a story about stilt walking. I was even more surprised to be taken back to a recurring childhood dream. In the dream I’m standing in our yard just off the front porch when a man on stilts rounds the corner from the back yard. Sometimes it was my father on the stilts, sometimes some other man (or men); I either don’t remember (or never knew) who. The feeling the sight evoked was a mixture of beguilement and distress. Although the sight of someone on stilts was exciting, it was also somehow just wrong. That memory started me thinking about the other recurring dreams I’ve had–and there have been several, aside from the naked at church/school/work dreams and the forgot to study for finals/go to class all semester/show up for work dreams.
spirited coffee
“The Angels were all singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting wind up the sun and moon Or curb a runaway young star or two.”
~Lord Byron
~Lord Byron
Della’s sneakers hit the asphalt as she stepped off the bus from school, and immediately she regretted not having worn her better shoes. The rubber soles of this pair were rubbed so thin that the heat coming off the street seared the bottoms of her feet. “Like two catfish in a frying pan,” Janice would say later over dinner, laughing when Della told her the story. “I told you to stop wearing those ugly things a while back, didn’t I?” Janice was good natured, and would not give Della too hard a time about it; nevertheless, she relished handing out an “I told you so” to her daughter on occasion. Della lived with her mother and her six-year-old brother, Cayce, in a…
This is a shelf in my medicine cabinet. I couldn’t tell you exactly when it became so, to put it politely, non-utiliariarian. It holds a postcard from a coffee shop that no longer exists, a postcard from a place I’ve never been, my everyday perfume, a couple of Escada perfume samples I rarely wear because they’re a bit heady for my daily life and, the newest edition, a box of worry dolls. The dolls, a gift from the last hotel I stayed in, are supposed to take away worry and allow peaceful dreams and came with instructions to transfer one worry into each doll before bedtime. Of course my first thought was I’m going to need a bigger box of dolls.