O, Come all ye faithfull...

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together." ~ Garrison Keillor

For 20 years Christmas officially begins for us with the Island carol service. Traditionally this in held in the Anglican hall, a high set, old~fashioned wooden building with a set 0f 20 rickety steps, small windows & fans that barely move the languid air. Into this small, cramped space half the island attempts to squeeze wielding insect repellent, mozzie coils & wads of paper to be wielded as fans. The other half stand on the steps & smoke.

Ditz, who has yet to master any of her times tables, studiously applied herself to being able to rattle off the names of all Santa's reindeer for every year Joyce asks the same lot of questions & every year we are the only one's waving our hands excitedly in the air. Well, Ditz & I wave our hands excitedly while Liddy pretends she doesn't know us. I won myself a packet of chips [which Ditz gave away to a 2nd cousin] for knowing whose birthday we were celebrating! Ditz won one for knowing where He was born. Liddy ate a packet of chips & pretended she didn't know us. Meanwhile Ditz waited anxiously for the reindeer question. She waited so anxiously that twice she had her hand up frantically before Joyce had got around to even asking her question & twice she was deferred. By the time the question actually arrived Ditz was practically popping out of her skin. Joyce tried to warn her that she had the list right there & would check but Ditz barely heard her, frantic to get all 8 names out before she forgot one!

I think we rather spoiled Joyce's party. In the twenty years we've done his nobody else, child or adult, has managed all eight names & Joyce has taken great delight in informing us all! I also think she mistook Ditz for Liddy remarking that it had taken 18 years for the child to learn this. Both Ditz & Liddy were mortified, if for different reasons, but Ditz got another packet of crisps which Liddy eyed off hungrily.

Both Liddy & I were starving. Very, very occasionally Dearest gets a hankering for a take~a~way meal, which can be dicey on the island. There are only two places at present where you can get meals unless you want pizza: the RSL or the Bowls club. Of the two the Bowls club usually has the better reputation but Dearest wanted a seafood basket & Ditz just wanted a hamburger so we ordered that from the RSL & went on to get Liddy & I chicken Cesar salads from the bowls club. The chef has changed but a Cesar salad that is mostly iceberg with a few stray pieces of bacon & chicken, the odd crouton & a poached egg is one thing; anchovies hidden amongst it is quite another! I can't stand seafood & at the first taste I was spitting a mouthful of food over the verandah & gagging like mad. If you don't like seafood, & I don't, anchovies are the worst thing out. Liddy doesn't eat seafood either so we packed the meals up & back we went to complain.

Liddy was not a happy Liddy. I was ho~hum until the chef tried to tell me anchovies were standard in a Cesar salad. Then I got steamed. Cesar salad is one of those things I order a lot; it is light & filling & usually fairly harmless though I've never had a poached egg over one before & certainly I've never had anchovies. Who in their right mind adds a seafood cocktail to chicken?! Liddy didn't go there. She pointed out the anchovies were an optional extra & shouldn't have been there at all. We were offered another meal but by then we were out of time so wanted our money back instead. The upshot was we went to carols without having eaten. I'm a light eater & used to erratic meals but Liddy is what's known in the vernacular as a 'good eater'. She can mow down half a cow with no problems & she likes her food at regular intervals. We laugh like maniacs at all the people who suggest the child's anorexic. Liddy loves her food & appreciates it in ways that totally escape me.

Which reminds me, I want breakfast & as it is blowing a gale, overcast & chilly I will appreciate something hot & that 2nd cup of coffee. Tomorrow I must remember to check the t.v program, which I rarely look at, & see if Ditz is actually going to be on t.v this Christmas. It will certainly solve the problem of which channel's carol program we watch.

the twin thing

I may be a twin but I'm one of a kind. ~Author Unknown

Back in the days...I first read Heidi's Children back in primary school & I became enamoured of the whole twin thing.

This is a singleton phenomena & as little girls do, when playing *happy families* mine always included a set of twins. I was aiming for a mixed bag. What I got was identical boys. I would not recommend this to anybody.

I love my boys but there is no getting round the fact original sin got doubled in their case. Oh yes, they look like angels. The blue eyes & blond hair is how I know for sure without blood tests & DNA tests & all sorts of other tests that they are identical. All the other kids got the brownish green eyes like an Irish bog.

At one they invented their own language ~ which they then taught to Liddy. My middle 3 are not native English speakers! At 2 they were dismantling their cots, the dividing wall in their room, & the plumbing caps on the toilet . At 4 they were killing the car with a tent pole straight through the radiator a la St George & the Dragon! At 6 their teacher was rolling her eyes because they had no singular pronouns. Everything was us, ours, we. Personal space, personal property were foreign territory to them. By 12 they hated each others guts enough to request they share no classes together even though each other were the only people they knew at their new high school! At 15 they said things like, 'You try this on so I can see how I'll look in it', or 'Get your hair cut this way so I'll know if it will look any good on me.' By 16 Dino had dropped through the cracks in the school system & we packed him off for Western Australia to go trawling with his cousin. It was the best thing we could have done for the boys.

I never bought into the *they're identical & it's sooo cute to dress them the same* philosophy. I can't think of anything more aggravating to the psyche. Twins have enough identity separation problems. I know. We watched the war unfold in our house. It was not pretty. I will never forget them parked in a corner of our living room taking it in turns to slam each other's heads into the wall! It was rare for them to fall out to such an extent when they were little but it was a foretaste of things to come.

Identity was such an issue that they didn't even have a separate name. They referred to themselves by a meld of their Christian names. I worked hard to combat this ~ everything from buying different gifts at Christmas & for birthdays even when I knew they would both like the same thing, to never dressing them the same, to sending them to visit their grandparents separately, eventually even separate schools & separate sides of the country & it was like blowing in the wind. They may have 2 souls but they are one in spirit.

I know there is a massive downside to being one of a pair & never being seen for yourself. It is aggravating to always be referred to as Mr Dino because the teacher can't tell whether you're you or your brother. It is maddening to be he focus of unwanted attention & insensitive curiosity... until you find out how useful it is.

I am not supposed to know but I do, that the two of them changed classes, then schools, then sports teams on a whim. All the kids knew but the teachers never twigged. I've lost count of the times one's claimed to be the other because what difference does it make after all?! He's me, I'm him. Not in law, bucko!

Mothers of twins often seem to remember the sleepless nights & the running after toddlers headed in 2 different directions. People who don't have twins goo & gush & say, 'Oh, how sweet! Twins!' Twins are not sweet. They are interesting & fun & unpredictable & aggravating, double trouble & twice as nice. Like anything else in life there are compensations & drawbacks but I would not wish twinship on anyone. Despite the fun & uniqueness I think it is very hard for twins to see themselves as separate identities & sometimes even harder for others to see them as individuals. That matters when it comes to spiritual things. We each stand alone before God & are accountable for ourselves. I think more than most twins find that almost impossible to do. From conception they live in each others shadow. When one dies he leaves only half a person behind. No~one wants to live as half a person.

Fruit & fires.

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there. ~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Tropical nectarines! My very favourite & this year we have no fly. We are, however, losing fruit because it is bursing out of is skin on the tree. The tree needs a heavy prune & I am just waiting on the last of the fruit to ripen before I do it then I will fertilize & mulch heavily & hope for wonderful things next year. The anticipation is terrible & mostly goes unfulfilled.I don't know how many years we have tried for water melons only to watch the flowers wither & die, the vines shrivel under the schorching sun & all our hard work come to naught. This year we look like being luckier. The fruit is swelling on the vine like a pregnant lady; they are the size of softball already. The vines are running all over the garden & are still looking incredibly healthy.

What I do have is an influx of grasshoppers & am busily trying to kill them off before they do too much damage.
We are also doing the whole fire thing now we have our fire pit back. We need the boys to scrounge some decent sized logs that will burn all night & give us the sort of coals that mean the marshmallows won't burn. What is Christmas without a BBQ, a roaring fire & marshmallows to end the day with?

On the first day of Christmas...

“This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.” Oscar Wilde

We've done it. We've got the tree up. It's all we've done but it's a start. Ditz has gone all avante guard & done a minimalist tree this year. I was rather impressed. She's gone for 'less is better' so most of the decorations are still in the box & she chose those things that matched her colour theme of gold. I have yet to work out where I'm putting the stockings but I'm sure Ditz will have some good ideas for that too.

This year Ditz declared she was too old to decorate the tree but of course once I started pulling out the boxes she couldn't help herself. She is nowhere near as jaded as she would like to think herself. Ditz trying to contain her excitement is like having a live hand grenade rolling round your floor. I'm not overly keen on live hand grenades.

Because I am a mean mummy & the music scene these days is fraught with questionable morals & *colourful* language Ditz is only allowed to listen to either the Christian radio station or the classical radio station. For a musical afficiando this is paramount to child abuse but was not enough to prevent her entering a competition for free movie tickets. *sigh* How that child does complicate my life!

I would never in a thousand years have chosen to go & see Bolt. If I did go & see Bolt I would not have travelled all the way in to town to see it. As I pointed out to Ditz, parking was going to cost me more than the tickets were worth. God is going to great pains to ensure I know my way round Southbank! *big sigh* The mind boggles at what next year may bring!

Naturally the premier was on a Monday night. Monday's Liddy works late. This meant I could not take the island car because Dearest needed to pick Liddy up. Monday the last boat is 10pm, which meant we were tight for making it back in time. Ditz knew I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about this whole venture but she'd won herself the tickets so I agreed to drive her in to town. I think I mentioned somewhere that I thought Ditz needed some frivolity in her life. I'd like to rescind that.

And this people is why our eating habits just get stranger & stranger. 3.30pm is far too early for tea. It's not even snack time. No~one is hungry then, especially if, as so often happens, lunch occured between 2 & 3. By 6pm, when we arrived in town, it is another matter entirely. Anticipating this, & knowing Ditz had sweets in her bag, I walked Ditz into Southbank for Pizza & ice cream The pizza was terrible but the ice cream was pretty good. It just nicely filled the gap between parking the car & finding our seats for the movie. We did not get lost, caught in traffic or cross unknown bridges so the time I had allowed for these crisis was available for eating at a leisurely pace. We saved all that for coming home.

I know it's clever & everything but I'm just not a big fan of animation & frankly Bolt is anything but cute & cuddly. He is one very ugly looking mutt. So I wasn't expecting to enjoy myself, you know. If Liddy had been available I'd have sent Liddy in with Ditz. How wrong could I be?! Bolt was really, really good. Good message, great story, funny, funny movie & I didn't notice anything even remotely questionable. Ditz positively glowed. She felt like she'd given me a real treat & given that she seems to suffer a guilt complex from all the running round I do on her behalf she was chuffed beyond words to be able to do something nice for me. The child has quite good instincts.

It was after 11 by the time we got home. I have no idea why I attempt to give this child a well regulated life with a designated bedtime that will ensure she is awake, bright eyed & bushy tailed, at a civilised hour. Every year we become more decadent, staying up later & later, gallivanting all over the countryside, hob~nobbing with questionable sorts. It is heady fare but so far she's still pretty grounded; total air head but she knows what the important things in life are. Nah, we had a great night together. "I'll go get my ball!" *maniacal laughter*

Food 'n' phones.

If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things that are missing. If you don't have love in your life, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.” Ann Landers

I have love & I know I am blessed to have it. It is not always convienient, but when has love ever been convienient.

Liddy arranged for us to go out to dinner with friends...only she forgot to inform us till the last minute. Dearest didn't feel well enough to go, Ditz is tired & I rolled my eyes because apparrently I was supplying dessert.

Making dessert is not normally a problem. Dessert making falls into one of the *easy~peasy* categories in my life. I just don't normally do it round here or we'd all be as round as barrels. I collected my ingredients & Ditz & began the noisy process of making my mum's no bake cheescake, which is deliciously yummy & a standard celebration dessert. It is also incredibly easy to make so that even Ditz can make this unsupervised.

Just when I was at my stickiest the phone rang. Ditz was busy licking out the condensed milk tin so I picked up to find I had my Dino on the other end. My boys aren't the sort to ring home regularly & I figure if I'm not hearing from them all is well in their lives. If something were wrong they would ring, right? Apparently not. Dino had rung to chat ~ & not idle chatter either. He had some very specific religious questions he wanted answered. I do not find it easy giving religious instruction to an extremely pragmatic child over the phone. Dino is one of my practical ones. If he can't see it, feel it, taste it, hear it, it doesn't exist. My mind works quite the other way ''Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ''
Lewis Carroll

We have some very interesting conversations as you can imagine! I have a lifetime of reading & understanding the scriptures behind me & I am very secure in my beliefs but Dino asks deep questions & is too impatient to wait while I condense my theology into a logical nutshell. I am logical because the scriptures are logical. Having thrown some spanners into his works & helped him untangle his spiritual knots & given him some tough meat to chew on I discovered I'd missed getting Libby's lunch up to her. She, of course, had tried ringing without sucess!

Meanwhile the cheescake still wasn't made. Ditz had wandered off & the cat was eyeing off the cream. I tried again & managed to get the cheescake finished & in the fridge to set before doing raspberry pots. This is an even simpler dessert & a firm favourite but so rich & unhealthy I very rarely make it. Whip one large container of cream Add enough icing sugar to sweeten it & fold in a packet of frozen raspberries. It takes all of 10 minutes to make. Five minutes into the whipping the phone went! It was obviously going to be one of those days. I had Theo & Theo was also ringing just to chat seeing as he is on his own down Ballina way working & anxious to know what plans were in the pipeline for Christmas. Theo never believes I can organise anything properly & feels much better if he is supervising. Why I do not know. It never makes any difference to what we do & no matter how many times I say, 'If there something specific you want let me know in plenty of time,' he never does & then wants to know why such & such a thing hasn't been done.

Liddy, who enjoys being the only worker in the house & enjoys having her lunch paraded to her through the shop was quite put out. Now all I need is for Jossie to ring but somehow I can't see that happening this year ~ or any time soon. Life is too short to have people missing who should be there.

Disremembering.

We do not remember days; we remember moments. ~Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand

I have been busy & that is a good thing. I don't have time to remember. Christmas is not the happiest season for us. As Ditz says morbidly, 'All your family dies at Christmas.' Unfortunately it is her family too. She gets a little antsy around Christmas, especially if the phone rings at odd times. It is better to keep busy & let the anniversaries pass unnoticed. There are enough unguarded moments when the sight of a silver head, the drone of a light aircraft engine, the pungent smell of turps & thinners, brings memories surging to the surface, raw & sharp as a scalpel so that taken unawares I weep uncontrollably in public places. This alarms my girls. It alarms the public. This is not how one is supposed to grieve. Who made up these rules anyway?

I have found healing to be a painfully slow process. My head has never run very well in harness with my heart. Logically both my aunt & my father had a surfeit of days, good lives, much love, more than many people in this world ever have & certainly that is something to be grateful for. If only Eve had had the sense not to chat with snakes in the garden! If Adam hadn't been such a wimp! I blame Eve less. A talking snake would certainly intrigue me enough I would stop to chat. I'd still stop, which just goes to show I have learnt nothing from the past.

Mark is completely un~understandable from a worldly viewpoint ~ & I'm not doing well from a Godly one. Mark, who was social in every cell of his being, whose witness reached more people in a day than mine is likely to in a year, who was gifted in expressing his love for Christ in ways most people could understand & had everything to live for. Little brothers just aren't meant to die before their big sister! They aren't meant to die before their mother ~ or their wife! But he did. Mark should be annoyingly alive & bigger than life ...well actually he is, just not here, but here is where he was expected to be.

So from my birthday in October, when my aunt departed this world after a last tea~party with long dead relatives, to my father's death exactly a month later & Mark's in December, we traverse a Christmas season fraught with unexpected landmines. Amidst the commercialism & the gaudy trappings, the canned music & the greed we are acutely aware of the fragility & brevity of life; that at any moment it could end. That we have these moments together, a time to share & enjoy each other, surpasses all the Christmas glitz

We have always celebrated with restraint. We don't go overboard with decorations & food & I've had Christmases when celebrating anything is the last thing I've felt like doing. My children, for the most part, aren't touchy~feely sorts but for all of us, at the back of our minds, in the hidden places of our hearts, ghosts walk. We won't talk about it. We won't be sad & gloomy, which would be silly because our family isn't a sad & gloomy lot & certainly Mark was the life of any party. Heck, he often was the party! Just the same we will be acutely aware of the gaps where someone once was in our lives.

I'm funny about Christmas anyway. I find the way we celebrate peculiar. Certainly Christ was born but he came to die. Christmas was only a means to an end. Surely Easter should be when we break out the champagne & celebrate.

I am reminded of the closing Seder prayer: this year on the island, Next year in Jerusalem. This year our loved ones are celebrating with the promised Messiah. Next year...? None of us know what next year will bring. At the heart of Christmas lies the heartbreak of Easter & promises fulfilled. If not next year, one year. We can face the future with hope & confidence for He has given us the peace that passeth all understanding ~ even in the face of death, even in the midst of grief, & out of that peace flows joy unspeakable.

Alone again.

What is a home without children? Quiet. ~Henny Youngman

Ask the cat. Liddy has gone some place with the sort of rides I don't go on to celebrate a friend's 18th. Ditz is at Jupiter's, the big casino on the Gold Coast, as she likes to tell everyone, participating in Abba Mania; she leaves that part out. The child is not adverse to stirring the bucket.

I ran Ditz into town to be picked up by the courtesy bus then picked up the second table & chair set before heading home & I can tell you I'm really not sure what to do with myself. The cat is somnolent in the heat. I don't have Ditz blathering constant nonsense in my ear. There is no Liddy suffering from angst. The boys haven't arrived for Christmas yet. It is just Dearest & I, a taste of things to come?

There is lots I could do ~ like put up the tree or put together the 2nd table or do a load of washing, mop the floors but where is the fun in that with no~one to distract me from my purpose & no~one to trash my work as soon as it's done? What I would like to do is garden but it is too hot for that & by the time it is cool I will be travelling again to pick up Ditz. I am alone so rarely one would think I could use the time far more profitably but it just feels so abnormal I can't think what to do with myself. Adjusting to a childless house could be harder than I think.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. ~Oscar Wilde
Ok, I don't necessarily agree with Wilde but I do find him funny & it is a tart reminder after a day at the shops indulging in Christmas purchases.
I can only get one set of these in the car at a time but this is the first of three small tables & chairs that will adorn the deck for Christmas in the hope that the weather will actually be dry & we can eat outside. I prefer the smaller tables but apart from anything else in the event of a cyclone, & we do get the occasional one this far south, I wanted something I could lift myself & move indoors quickly rather than needing several very hefty men & an engineering degree.

There wasn't a lot of choice so I was pleased to get something in black, which was my preferred colour choice. Liddy, who is quite mechanical, put the table together for me & we ate our Friday night pizza on the deck in the cool of the evening.

Way back in October my mother gave me a little money for a birthday indulgence. It is perhaps still a little premature but I have bought the birdbath & set it up under the sapling growing through the deck. Everyone is referring to it as Issi's new toy. Hm. Dearest wants it on a plinth so it will eventually be even higher but luckily Iss, being male & incredibly lazy, isn't much of a hunter. I have visions of hanging a feeder in the tree when it is big enough but the girls are horrified thinking that all I will be feeding is the cat!

I have started the Christmas shopping too but neither Ditz nor I are shopaholics so by lunchtime we'd had enough & bolted for home. Ditz resorted to scare tactics this morning & informed me I only had 5 shopping days left till Christmas. She got my attention but luckily she is wrong. I have longer than that to finish getting my act together.

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree...

"At daylight came a hideous chorus of fiendish laughter, as if the infernal regions had been broken loose...'' C. H. Eden, 1872

The kookaburra, a medium sized [18''] member of the kingfisher family whose diet consists of lizards, mice, insects & snakes. I've seen them bat round a decent sized snake before eating it.

Here has a link where you can hear the *fiendish laughter*. They are pretty common all over & despite the formidable size of their beak it doesn't really hurt to be bitten by one. We get a fair few birds braining themselves on our big glass windows, including these fellas. I run a rescue mission before Issi, our cat, can make up his mind to eat them. He knows he's not allowed & because he hesitates he's lost.

They are pretty social birds & not afraid to congregate around humans. They also mate for life & like rainbow bee~eaters the young of one season help raise the next lot of chicks so it is not uncommon to see family groups. They weigh about a pound so a group of these rattling around on a t.v antenna is not good news!

"Only in souls the Christ is brought to birth, And there He lives and dies." -- Alfred Noyes

This year's cards have koalas on them. For some reason tourists seem to think these beasties are cute & cuddly. I should like to point out they climb trees & have a formidable set of claws! They are also usually pretty grumpy customers & any school unlucky enough to find one on the premises has to keep the kids well clear as they will attack & are quite vicious fighters. They make cute cards though.
Several of our species are renowned for crying like babies: koalas, possums, & curlews amongst them. I grew up with possums. Before we moved into the house my parents built we lived in a shed on the property & each night as we fell asleep possum eyes glowed down at us from the rafters. They are pretty noisy & used to chase each other up & down the roof. Every so often there would be a wild shriek as one overshot the mark & hurtled into space.

My mother used to put out scraps for our regulars. She still tells the story of hearing a knock at the door one year & opening it to find no~one there. The second time it happened she was pretty cross about it until she noticed mama possum. It was mama possum doing the knocking so she could show of her brand new bubba to mum.

The wildlife is opportunistic. One year we had hordes of kookaburras congregating on the t.v antenna. It was the best perch for diving into our pool but it created an awful lot of snow on our screen & I can't say we were all that impressed.

Just the same it seems daft, given our weather, to send out cards wreathed in mountains of snow when the mercury here is in the 90'sF & the humidity has finally reached 100% in a precipitous deluge & some themes are universal: stars, wise men, presents carol singers. OK, so they're koalas but hey, a little credit for originality!