October already and as students start charging ahead with their studies and the shops are filling up with Christmas goodies I thought it was time for me to have a bit of my time. My time being catching up on reading, doing the mending, writing a blog post every day, taking a stroll around the neighborhood and having delightful tea parties sitting outside under the shade and discussing all and everything that comes to mind.
Instead there seems to be a huge rush to get things done and as fast as best plans are laid so dates are changed and all the arrangements so carefully noted and discussed go to the dogs and seem to lie on the front lawn amidst a collection of old dog toys, tennis balls and half chewed bits of rawhide and hoof that seem in some strange and inexplicable way to keep canine teeth white and shiny.
Here one must note that this is such an environmentally good way to clean teeth. No plastic packaging, no boxes to hold new tooth brushes and pastes, most important of all no taps running while water is being sloshed around the mouth and a generous rinsing is being done. Do not forget after all of this to please rinse the basin, another huge waste of that precious commodity water. Please someone out there try it and let us know, thank you in advance!!!
However we digress, back to the subject at hand, seasonal changes. For the first time in many a year I will not be hosting the family Christmas Dinner Party, instead my daughter will have the pleasure. My grandson has already made the most glorious Christmas pudding, and as it sat in the pot boiling merrily how all the delights of the festive season came back to softly tease my mind.
Here in South Africa when mid-summer arrives all the flowers in the garden seem to lose their scents and unless one rises with the Sun we tend to forget what pleasure Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, fresh spring roses, jasmine and lavender bring to our noses on the slightest breeze. Yet come the time to bake the Christmas cake why is it that the smell from the hot oven seems to waft down the road and remind us all of good things coming in the near future?
I do not know what Christmas will bring to me and mine, I do not know which friends will be invited to the dinner. I wait patiently for lists of what the family really want as gifts and think long and hard about what I would like to receive, here the choice always seems to come down to which book or CD do I really want at the moment.
There is family talk about moving homes, changing schools, what is needed and what should be discarded. Why is it so hard to part with something we have forgotten we own and have not used for months? Perhaps in another lifetime my family have all been related to magpies and have not yet lost their talent for hording at that glitters and a lot that does not!
Then, when I take all into consideration, is it me that is the magpie, trying so hard to keep all together with an invisible piece of string? Me not wanting to have the changes that are part of life and growing up and growing old? Me sitting so contentedly with so much that I love around me?
Me that wants things to stay the same all for the sake of feeling secure!!!
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