Agnes and Ecstasy

December 2007

This is turning into such a lovely 'traditional' Christmas. Well, apart from Tom deciding to wear his banned-by-me luminous floral Hawaiin shirt when going Christmas visiting!

Cleaning the silver reindeer ready for its annual outing and bringing in the Daintree pine Christmas tree for its three week Life in The House holiday lead the way into the Christmas season for us. See here for the tree tradition. Then come the fairy lights, decorations, cards bringing news from around the world, plum pudding already made, the big fat turkey gobbling up the freezer space and a generous Tiaro ham on the bone waiting patiently for a delicious glazing.

The Agnes Water 1770 village is very busy as we are well into the holiday season here which runs through until the end of January. Holiday makers are filling up the car spaces, overcoming their traffic light withdrawal symptoms, and basking their vans in the remaining caravan sites. Even quite a few of those endless new 5 star apartments now have neon light streaming out their evening windows heralding more visitors to town.

Dear God - when you read this, please remember the local fire fighters and let them have Christmas day with their families.

We have a basket of gifts under our tree from friends and family (being a stickler for opening pressies on The Day - not before) but one item came unwrapped in the Christmas box from Canberra and I have it at my desk with sunlight shining through it.

Rose windows of Notre Dame eat your heart out - there is no comparison! This exquisite stain glass effect paper butterfly was made for me by my God-daughter, Aditi who is a few months short of 8 years old and currently overseas holidaying with her parents and family in India.

And we are also so impressed with her Christmas card she made for us this year - its theme celebrates the feast of Christmas day with perspective, colour excitement & form.

She is my God-daughter and although I am smitten with her, nevertheless I am objective about her skills. Even Tom thought the card would have to have been created by someone at least 12 years old and he has had four daughters to use as a yardstick.

Aditi is so intelligent, such fun, a great conversationalist and has been a source of love and enjoyment since her birth. The concept of 'god parent' doesn't seem have a natural place in an Indian family as they have a sense and knowlege of belonging to each other that is foreign in our culture. Recently, when speaking with Aditi's Dad about the current overflow of his relatives passing through their new home whilst resettling in various areas, he told me it was not a concern how many rooms the house had, it was the room in the heart that mattered.

So instead of being a God-mother, I am - much more importantly - the Auntie Mummy. Makes me feel just wonderful when Aditi phones to tell me of her many doings at school and her dancing and her music and her latest exploits in the garden veggie patch. But just before leaving for India this time, we had a very long long conversation about The Most Important Matter - a new pup.

Finally her wish for a puppy was to be granted, so that brought forward the matter of how to select and how to train and what to wear and what to feed etc etc. Auntie Mummy having two dogs, became the instant expert, of course.

Hopefully the new addition to the family will be coming home in time for Aditi's birthday in February so there will be much excitement and planning. There is no doubt she will fully reward her parents' faith in her being responsible enough to have a puppy and I am just longing to see her with her very own pup.

I would never have known Aditi or her totally fascinating mother who stands barely five foot high and yet is one of the tallest women I know, had I not been blessed with Aditi's father as my first boss when I went full time into the IT profession somewhat late in life. He could have made things very difficult for me but in fact he smoothed the way and over time, although I moved to other employment, we stayed friends and I was so fortunate to be included as part of the family.

It really is at Christmas time that the heart opens unguardedly and one thinks about family - those dearly loved, those lost through carelessness, those lost cos God had a prior claim, those found through great good fortune and maybe even the family that never was. So my family this Christmas ranges in age from Aditi who is almost 8 to my Aunty who is almost 90 and as fit and bright as a fiddle thank heavens. At one end, the repository of love since I was a little girl - and at the other the repository of love since she first presented herself to this life in February 2000. I cannot tell you the suspense and excitement of watching to see how my God-daughter will meet her challenges and develop her interests and loves.