The confusion in the plant world is perhaps an apt metaphor for the confusion we have all felt this past year

For those of us who live in Sydney, we are scratching our heads over the arrival of autumn. Did we even have a summer? The hottest time of the year has been more like an in-between season with cooler temperatures and a lot of rain. I’ve only used the air-conditioning once and, instead of restless nights tossing and turning in the stifling, humid heat, I’ve slept comfortably with a light duvet and my ‘weighted blanket’. (My weighted blanket consists of three black cats of 5kg each, who purr each time I move!)

The plants in my garden are mightily confused. The clivias, which normally bloom in late August, are in full colour now and a pink camellia that usually blossoms at Easter was covered with flowers at Christmas.

The confusion in the plant world is perhaps an apt metaphor for the confusion we have all felt this past year when we learned to expect the unexpected – and to adapt quickly.

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory

The unusual summer brought me a particularly poignant moment: The return of ‘The Southerly Buster’. This famous wind was a natural conclusion to a hot day when I was a child. It would charge up the coast in the late afternoon, slamming doors shut and rattling blinds, before exploding into a thunderstorm and a deluge of tropical rain. It was such a normal occurrence that DH Lawrence wrote about ‘the Southerly Buster’ when he visited Sydney in 1922. But with the change in climate over the years, I haven’t experienced a true ‘Southerly Buster’ in a long time. When it came as a force one afternoon last December, the smell of fresh rain falling on steaming hot bitumen had me closing my eyes and thinking back to my childhood. I saw myself racing home from the park, my older brothers striding ahead of me, as rain pelted down on us. We tumbled into the kitchen, soaked to the skin, to find my mother with an amused look on her face. In my recollection I could feel the texture of the towels she handed us, dried in the sun and smelling of lemon. ‘You couldn’t outrun it, could you?’ I heard her laugh and watched as she set out glasses of pineapple juice for us and along with plates piled high with Neapolitan icecream.

It was a recollection that flashed in my mind just as lightening flashed across the sky last December. I don’t have my beloved mother and eldest brother anymore, but I do have treasure chest of memories of them. And interestingly, many of my dearest memories are of the most ordinary of moments.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson any of us can take now that the uncertainty that we have always lived with is so apparent to us. Dr Seuss expresses it succinctly: ‘Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.’

No matter how ordinary your day may seem, savour every one of your precious moments. Like ‘Southerly Busters’, we are all just passing through.

Belinda

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