I am learning that friendship needs a sustained curiosity to last the distance.  Last week I sat by a pool with a couple of good friends. We sat in the shade, ate snacks and swapped book recommendations between dips into the glistening water.  It has been over fifteen years since we forged our friendship. One of us has an appetite for bike riding, another loves attending live country music and the third enjoys ocean swimming. Perhaps these interests have not changed much over the years, but we have. We attend different kinds of churches, have different strengths and have not followed the life paths that we expected for ourselves when we were in our twenties.  Nonetheless, we enjoy a warm curiosity towards one another that has sustained and deepened our friendship. If we had assumed on being the same people that we were when we met, our friendships may not have continued. 

As a young woman I remember wondering who went to the gynecologist. Women seemed to talk about it in the movies, but I didn’t know anyone who had a gynecologist. I thought maybe it was something Americans did. Now I realise–it’s middle aged women who go to the gynecologist. All my friends are doing it. Things just don’t work quite how they should anymore. Copy and repeat.

“Hurry, make more

Hustle, cut through

Quick, achieve it

Climb, how high?

What can you win?

What can you gain?”

The middle months of the year are often long. The cloudy, rainless days seem to drag on and on. The brilliant colours of summer are over and everything seems brown, grey, unexciting, dull. Daylight is short, and is filled with endless tasks, some that inspire, but many others that must simply be done. 

And yet, even in these gloomy days, there are moments of joy. Of discovery. Of creativity. Of wonder. Oh to wonder as a child does, with even the smallest of things inspiring great fascination and delight!

I started my journey with music at a fairly young age. From six  years old I recall sitting in front of the stereo for hours listening to Celine Dion and Whitney Houston, trying to imitate their melody lines (not bad vocal coaching and ear training!) I made mix tapes on my radio and cassette recorder. Music was my love and passion from very early on. I was drawn to it. It conjured emotions and communicated in a way that was transcendent. It expressed heart sentiments and soul longings that I didn’t know how to express, or even quite what they were. 

But I grew up on a diet of popular music that mostly consisted of love songs, breakup songs, “how will I live without you?” songs. Let’s just say the lyrical (or musical for that matter) depth and breadth of the songs was not particularly vast. And when you listen to commercial radio today, not much has changed. Although these days, it seems there are less straight up love songs, and more “I am bitter/ I really don’t like you/ watch your back” type songs. Songs that express a cynicism or skepticism of love. 

His daughter spoke first. And then his brother. And finally, two of his friends. Several days ago, I turned in at four o’clock in the morning after staying up to watch a friend’s funeral online.  It was the second funeral I had watched in the space of a few days and whilst the formats were similar, the stories were literally worlds apart.  One detailed a life lived in Australia, teaching in theological colleges, a much-loved mentor and friend to many. The other had grown up in a street overlooking Aston Villa Park before a Billy Graham crusade had changed the course of her life. Long before tourists had caught the travel bug to South America, she had moved to Bolivia as a missionary and raised her five children there before returning to the UK. 

“I didn’t know that she spoke Spanish to her grandchildren,” my sister said when I told her about the funeral. Neither did I. We need to hear their stories. We need to hear the tributes. From childhood memories to honed skills, celebrations and losses, untold achievements and comical anecdotes; eulogies may be the hardest speeches to write but they are an immense privilege to hear, often inspiring and encouraging a community of listeners to live well.

Crisp, sunburned leaves. A shrivelled stem gasping for water. Grey, sandy soil that repels moisture—much like my legs in summer. Toss in a grassless lawn for dramatic effect, and you’ve got a snapshot of my gardening track record.

I once thought it was a brilliant idea to plant baby fruit trees during a 40+ degree January heatwave, straight into what could technically be described as “dirt,” but more closely resembled beach sand. Yes, I was that person. Of the three trees I planted, one heroically died and was respectfully composted. The cause of death? Possibly the soil, the sun, the lack of water—or maybe the tree just took one look at its new home and decided, “Yeah, nah.”

There was a Word

Before the seas were drawn

And the earth received her form

There was a Song

Whispered at the first dawn

And hidden in each lightning storm

There comes a stage in pregnancy—the waddle stage I like to call it—where women who have been there before may just ask you: ‘how are you going?’ They give you a smile, they look you in the eye, and if it happens then you feel seen. And loved.  

They know that you are probably not feeling at your all-time best. Probably you get tired just by standing up and existing for a period of time. Probably your pelvic floor is not as functional as it could be. Probably picking up your toddler is becoming problematic. Possibly you are turning the corner towards the home stretch and starting to think that maybe birth is not so bad because at the end the baby is on the outside at last!  

Well, that’s what I’m thinking at least. 

Canoeing down the river

Gentle current moves me.

Ebbing, flowing water

And sunlight, all surrounding.

And as I go 

I’m leaving places,

Tearfully farewelling faces,

But the still, small voice,

He gently whispers,

“It’s time to let go”. 

It’s an object that’s out of place. 

My beautiful, Arab coffee ‘thermos’. It has an elegant gold spout and silver body etched with leaves. It looks like it belongs to a Saudi prince. But it’s actually just plastic and sold in cheap homeware shops. Something like it is used in most Arab lounge rooms throughout the Middle East during formal occasions such as Eid (religious holidays), funerals or weddings. Guests are honoured on arrival with a shot-sized serving of bitter, black coffee, usually cardamon-flavoured. 

But here it sits. This gold thermos looking out of place on my wobbly, dusty, laminated table under a noisy fan. Elegantly sitting between scattered lab request forms, hand gel, paediatric growth charts and my stethoscope. Ready to serve patients who come to see me at the clinic. 

I am playing offense. It is an experiment.

The bus lurches forward in traffic and the standing passengers jostle for space.  The commuters in front of me keep bumping against my feet and I am not sure who feels more uncomfortable.  Dangling my legs out into the central aisle of the bus is clearly not working.  I pull my feet up into my chest and I receive a grateful smile from a woman in front of me.  Sitting in the luggage rack of the bus, I concede that I have chosen an unusual seat.  However, now that I have discovered this hidden-in-plain-sight option, it has proved quite useful on my travels across this new city.

Two months ago, I arrived in a new country with my new husband.  With heavy suitcases in tow, we landed at midnight in Argentina, the country that my husband calls home.  A purple beanie was promptly put on my head by one of our friendly welcomers and in the blur of fatigue, jet lag and the bracing cold of a winter’s night, we were ushered to a waiting car.

For me, the new is always so… uncomfortably new. Like someone turning the light on when you are fast asleep and you awake in a confused fog and not a little bit grumpy. There are of course those who exuberantly embrace their new environment like rolling down a grassy hill.  When they reach the bottom, they jump up ready to do it again, laughing off the grass stains across their clothes.  Of course, they probably don’t have a pollen allergy either. 

See the galahs, the galahs, 

sitting on the powerlines! 

See how they laugh, they laugh, 

like mums on the sidelines 

From laughing

To screaming and crying

Feeling confident and on top of it

To low and flat

I’ll just go sit back in my corner….

Wait! 

I’m not made for that

Pick up the camera

Pick up the phone

Quick snap the moment

And then we move on.

There they were on our front doorstep, just like her text message said they would be. A box of donuts. There were six of them. Krispy Kremes in different flavours—and it was lunchtime. At that moment I thanked the Lord for my mother-in-law, that she loves others through gift giving, and that this particular gift arrived when it did: Husband away for the week, house in a state, kids fighting. 

On Thursday 12th June, after seventeen years of hellos and goodbyes, I said goodbye to my beloved dog Maya for the final time. She closed her weary eyes and drifted off while I hugged her tight and told her how much I loved her and that I was right by her side. The vet left us alone together and, strangely, sitting with my dog’s body didn’t seem too weird or morbid. I knew it was the last time I would ever see her. I thanked God for seventeen years of her faithful friendship and even for all the irksome things (like dragging home many revolting carcasses on the farm), with tears fogging my glasses.

Have you seen the trees,

that stood before my time and yours

Have you walked among them

and felt a peace beyond tomorrow 

Have you placed your hand against their bark

And remembered how to breathe

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a millennial in the prime of their life must be in want of a new hobby. From indoor plants to preserving foods, paint-by-numbers, smoking meats, and birdwatching (ahem, that is a raven, not a crow), social media takes great joy in making fun of millennial hobbies. Yet by the time you reach the end of this article and can quote at least three scientific names for orchid species, you and I will be the ones laughing… Probably at ourselves.