Today I’m looking up at my local shopping shopping strip. Within about 800m we have an Italian pizza restaurant, a Lebanese shwarma restaurant, a couple of Japanese sushi places, a Vietnemese and a South Korean restaurant and a Mexican taqueria. There’s a cafe owned by French people, a bagelry owned by Israelis, a flower shop owned by Russians and a fruit shop owned by Greeks. In the supermarket we have Kosher products alongside halal products, a full Asian spice section and Aussie lamingtons in the bakery.
This isn’t a political statement about immigration policy. I’m not trying to change anyone’s opinion about the benefits of multiculturalism or the number of refugees we should let into our country or whether building walls - literal or metaphorical - is a good idea. Today, I am simply taking a moment to be grateful for the extraordinary culinary and cultural diversity I am able to enjoy without even leaving my suburb. My grandparents could never even have imagined it.
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I spent the last few days on holidays with a friend of mine and her two sons, one of whom is non-verbal. Its an interesting term. This beautiful boy can't speak in the language that you and I speak, but he spoke a universal language that anyone can understand - the language of love. This boy who cannot speak shines love through him. He communicates his love for his Mum in every pull on her hand, in every smile, in every minuscule glance upwards into her eyes.
The notion of a shared we, of a shared space when the I becomes the we, is usually how romantic love is described; but I saw this love the last few days. This boy and his mum are just love. They are their own we. And I can't stop thinking about them as I'm sitting here tonight. My kids are asleep and my friends have gone back to their homes. The house is quiet. I know I should be trying to plough through my backlog of life admin but I keep getting distracted by this view of the sun setting. And this thought. That the only thing equal to the knowledge that light follows dark and dark follows light is that love is not just universal, it is transcendental. Love doesn't always need language, nor touch, nor even time. Love crosses age, religion, gender and location. Love - in all its forms - can be messy and mean and passionate and angsty and confusing and beautiful and can make you at the same time both exponentially happier than you have ever felt before and desperately, unequivocally, sad. Love is the one thing that both continues after death, and can be fundamental to the creation of life. Love is the one sensation for which time means nothing and depth means everything. There is no distance equal to love, even when love needs space to survive. The briefest moments of love will never be fleeting. Love is love is love is love is love is love. They are the words Lin Manuel Miranda spoke when accepting the Tony award for best musical for Hamilton (the music which I call the soundtrack to my year last year). He was speaking to the tragedy of the previous day when dozens of people were killed in a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, simply for being gay. Love is love is love is love is love is love. The speech was a beautiful reminder that there should be no rules to love. No boxes to tick or stereotypes to conform to or expectations to meet. That the very essence of love is that there is no "normal"; that each love, just as each person, is different, its own version of itself that can never be replicated. Each love has its own unique fingerprint. Love is love is love is love is love is love. Its the most famous line from his speech, quoted and requoted, tweeted and retweeted millions of times. Its spectacular in its simplicity. But for me there was another line in his speech which truly spoke to love. In speaking of his wife, Lin said: She nudges me towards promise by degrees. This is the crux I think of love. That all you want when you love someone is to nudge that person towards the best they can be. Whether it be the love for your child, or anyone else in your life, this is all that matters. That together you are better than you are as individuals, because together you push each other to be more, to do more, to feel more and to know more. Whatever more is, however measured or defined. By small degree or with giant steps. Just more. On the first night we were here, my friend looked up and pointed to the brightest star in the night sky. We worked out that it was Venus, the planet named after the goddess of love. We didn't realise it at the time, but Venus is currently shining at its brightest for 8 years... My friend's son is 7 years old. The light of Venus... and love... has never been stronger in his lifetime than it is right now. Every day my friend nudges her son towards his promise. With every loving look she nudges him. He is her shining light and she is his. And the promise that that kind of pure love brings is as guaranteed as tomorrow's sunrise. Day 3/3. Beach 3/3. Each more perfect than the last.
This is Berry's Beach in Phillip Island, Victoria, but as we arrived I was transported back to the memories of a holiday from when I was about 21 that is still one of my all time favourites. It was a last minute trip. A good friend and I spontaneously decided to go to Western Australia. We were 21: despite my Virgo tendencies, spontenaity was still a thing. We met up with two other girls that my friend knew, hired a car and drove north, Thelma and Louise style without the gun. We had a destination in mind, but nothing planned along the way - an 800km journey. I'll never forget the white beaches that went on for miles that we came upon by chance; the water was crystal clear and warm at our feet. We stopped where we wanted to stop, figured out accommodation on the fly in whichever town we happened to be passing in the late afternoon. There was literally nothing and no one expecting anything of us. We had total freedom. It wasn't long after this trip that Matt and I started dating, and from then on I was never as free again as I was on that 2 week break. In many ways I have more responsibilities and less freedom right now than I've ever had before. Although they aren't babies, my kids are still reasonably dependent and I'm still reasonably (ok, a lot) protective of them. Last night I polished off their jar of vitagummies because I felt like something sweet but I didn't want to leave them alone asleep in the hotel room to go and buy myself an ice cream! But today at this beach I did something I haven't done before. I let the kids wander. They climbed over the rocks and jumped into the pools of warm water and picked up sea slugs and shells. They didn't have their hats and probably not enough sunscreen and the pools were technically too shallow for jumping. But I stood back and let them play. Not because I wanted to abrogate my responsibilities - I did it because I remembered that long ago West Australian holiday, and I wanted them to feel the deep sense of pleasure that warm water at your feet and a white beach that goes on for miles and, most importantly, freedom, can give you. I looked out to the horizon past a cloudless sky as I walked through the warm shallows myself, listening to the distant sound of the kids laughing as they played. And for just a moment, for probably the first time in almost 3 years, I felt free too. Today we had one of those detours that turns into a memory.
We parked at the wrong beach. We could have taken the easier option, and got back in the car to drive to the other beach, but instead we decided to walk across the rocks to get to the other side. I usually look up, but the rocks were slippery and I had to focus intently on looking down to keep my footing in wet shoes. One foot in front of the other, each step revealing something new. Black rocks, probably millions of years old, with deep grooves which get deeper each year. Bright green sea grass, soft and feathery but still somehow tough enough to withstand the ocean. Sea grapes, interconnected. Clusters of tiny black clams. As we walked, my daughter said, "mum, we are walking on the sea floor". And she was right. At some points during the day or night this path that we were walking is most likely hidden from view. If you arrived here in that moment, it would be all ocean. This view would not exist, and you would neither be able, nor realize it was possible, to cross to the other side. I stopped and looked up, and I realized that sometimes it's actually in the detours that we find the paths. At some points in your life they're hidden from view; and you probably have to get there at exactly the right moment to be able to see them. Not just the right moment for the path to show itself to you... It also has to be the right moment for you to be willing to see and then take what initially seems like the harder route. Someone said to me today that the conventional path I was on no longer exists for me, and she was right. It's now all about the detour. So I might have to look down sometimes to get to my destination across the rocks. I will have to focus intently on what's in front of me until I find my way there. I will have to recognize the right moment to cross, and I will have to be willing to risk losing my footing and possibly fall. But I know now what I never knew before. The detour can be defining. My son remembers nothing. He doesn't remember to do his homework. He doesn't remember to brush his teeth. He doesn't remember which direction school is - even though we have driven the same route for 6 years.
But here we are in the same place we had one of our last holidays as a family of 4 more than 3 years ago, and somehow he remembers everything. He remembers daddy taking him to the games roomand the swimming pool, and the snake warnings at the koala attraction, and playing with "bongo" (a toy long since gone) on the jumping pillow. He remembers details I'd forgotten, and is clearly enjoying the memories. Next time he forgets something mundane like what he ate for breakfast I'm sure I'll be as annoyed with him as I usually am. But I have to say... I'm also pretty grateful he seems to know what's most important to remember. |
AuthorFiona is a writer, consultant to government and not for profits and former cynic turned yogi. Archives
June 2017
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