3 things: measuring the year | skimming stones | a documentary close to my heart

Have you measured how much your heart can hold?

Raspberry picking at the bottom of the garden

Measuring the year

After school my children run down to the bottom of our garden and hide in the raspberry patch. They devour the plump red fruit that decorates the green canes. The berries hang like baubles on a Christmas tree.

If I’m lucky my children will save a few for me, delivering them, a little squished, in the palm of their hands. Sometimes they gather enough to fill a jug for desert, and always, there are none left. My youngest daughter eats the weak-pink arrivals, just to be sure she won’t miss out.

It has been a wonderful year in our garden. Better than the last, as my children’s red stained lips will tell you.

You hear the same words at your work Christmas party and your child’s school graduation ceremony.

*

December has always been a time of celebration and reflection. We gather to honour success and acknowledge failure, to weigh up the year, and measure our progress. Improvement is intoxicating.¹

Years ago, here in Australia, we measured progress by the number of children we had and the size of the Christmas feast on the table. In the late nineteenth century, in an era obsessed with discovery and exploration — we added education, income, and the size of our house to the familiar markers of progress.²

In the twenty-first century, we could add presents under our Christmas tree, overseas holidays, technology upgrades, a family shack on the coast, kilometres run, even social media presence.

We clutch at these things with our talons, gather them under our wings, like a dragon guarding a nest of jewels. As if power, money and personal prosperity were worth setting the world ablaze, were worth dying for.

Are they?

We shoot for the stars, but in the end they are just dust.

It’s cruel, isn’t it?³

*

What if the measure of things was something bigger, something beyond our material obsessions —

• the people you called because you remembered you loved them once;

• the ice-caps standing solid and firm, and the sea not rising, not one bit;

• that night you held a strangers hand and said it would be alright; and

• you and me sitting by a blue lake, the sky puffy, the water popping, the forest criss-crossing on the other-side in a palette of green.

Things like mountains, lakes, trees, and birds — wild and wonderful, that remind us that we are part of something vast and extraordinary.

And things like love and kindness — delicate and dangerous, that set us going, make us want to live harder and stronger.

As writer Martin Hawes⁴ shares —

We may have the most elaborate technology, the most elegant philosophies and the most enthralling entertainments; but if we have no love, our lives will be shallow and meaningless.

After all, love is why we are all here, as

Jeannine Ouellette

reminds us.

*

As you race towards the edge of December, how will you measure the year?

Will you stretch yourself around the truck of a giant Eucalyptus regnans?

Will you hold your heart open to see how much it can hold?

---

The restorative power of skimming stones

On a bend in the Derwent River, where the city meets the sea, is a beach of grey pebbles. We come here to wander along the coast as a family, share a picnic, collect rubbish and broken glass. Sometimes we skim stones.⁵

Our fingers pick through the offerings close at hand — invariably fat and blocky. My children know the best stones are always harder to find, nestled in places further away.

My son winds his arm back, launches his stone, flicking his wrist, eyes level with the surface of the water. The stone hits the water and leaps in an arc, bounces off the water again and again, a miracle, not once but thrice. I try. There is a plop and a large ripple. I have thrown a ‘duck fart’.⁶ I sit down on the stones that have undermined me and watch the competition.

I’ve never been good at skimming stones. Nor have I improved over the years.

Perhaps I failed to find the right stone? Gave up too easily? Used the wrong technique? Or took it all too seriously, this game of stones, water and gravity? Perhaps I had my head in the clouds, unable to focus on the task at hand, my mind awash with all the things I have to do?

You know the perils of doing too much, of taking life too seriously. Sooner or later you fall below the surface and sink, quick as a stone.

Like the afternoon two weeks ago when I lost my six year old son and fell to my knees in the hallway sobbing, clutching my heart.

I had searched the house, pulled beds out from walls, climbed into tiny cupboards, scaled the fence and rummaged in the neighbours garden, walked along the street, screamed his name again and again. But nothing.

I called in my family, the neighbour, and the police to help with the search. And we found him — you’ll never guess — fast asleep in his bed. It was a moment that was embarrassingly sweet.

In my own bed later that night, I decided my emotional collapse was a sign — I had taken on too much. I needed to ease my journey, to say no, to do less.

As writer

Kate Mildenhall

shared in her post on rest and renewal—

[It’s] worth remembering that we can’t do the work of life without first putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first.

Perhaps we can’t skim stones without first having stopped to do nothing, lightened our heart, eased the stiffness in our wrists, and opened our mind to the possibility of imperfection. Because —

this is how you throw a stone. Over and over again without much seriousness.⁷

*

You should try it. Go down to the water, find a stone, and throw it far out. Watch it hit the water, see the ripple expand, shimmer and fade. Do it again, again, and again. Then walk back up the track and into December.

And after the year is done, visit a shack by the ocean and do absolutely nothing. Just like this beautiful poem invites you to do —

How to Do Absolutely Nothing

by Barbara Kingsolver

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin
but: Do not take your walking shoes.
Don’t take any clothes you’d wear
anyplace anyone would see you.
Don’t take your rechargeables.
Take Scrabble if you have to,
but not a dictionary and no
pencils for keeping score.
Don’t take a cookbook
or anything to cook.
A fishing pole, ok
but not the line,
hook, sinker,
leave it all.
Find out
what’s
left.

---

A documentary close to my heart

Two weeks ago the ABC aired an Australian Story documentary about Professor Richard Scolyer AO⁸ and his mission to test novel immunotherapy treatments on his brain cancer.

The documentary is bright and hopeful, like the Christmas star and the summer sun, but its’ early days, and there is always the possibility of clouds.

As I write this letter, I think of the people I have known that have been touched by brain cancer, many are no longer here with us, many are suffering.

*

I want to believe in a cure.

I want to believe in hope.

What do you hope for?

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A song I’m loving

Little Acts Of Kindness⁹ is a beautiful song about the little things by Tasmanian band Halfway to Forth¹⁰. I saw this band play at the wedding of our dear friends, J and S, and then at J’s 40th. Thanks for sharing your favourite band and the dance floor!

---

May you sail through December

and straight into the blue

ocean of the New Year.

Kate xx

1. Julie Benda, All you need to know to start skipping stones like a pro, PSYCHE, May 2023

2. Colin Bannerman, The Upside-Down Pudding — A small book of Christmas feasts, 1999

3. Thats what Taylor Swift would say

4. Martin Hawes, twevle principles — Living with integrity in the twenty-first century, 2003

5. The objective of "skimming" is to see how many times a stone can bounce before it sinks into the water.

6. A ‘duck fart’ is a stone skimming term for when a stone enters the water and makes a plopping sound. Though I have never heard a duck fart. Some say throwing a ‘duck fart’ is an art in itself.

7. Julie Benda, All you need to know to start skipping stones like a pro, PSYCHE, May 2023

8. Richard is a world leading melanoma researcher and has helped revolutionise immunotherapy treatment for melanoma patients, improving the life expectancy of many. He hopes the experimental treatments will work and extend his life beyond the average prognosis of 12-18 months, and that this could transform treatment for future brain cancer patients. Treatment that has not changed in 20 years.

9. Little Acts Of Kindness is the first single from the record 'Songs From Solitude - The Lock-down low-down'. An album of songs written by Tasmanian Artists in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The music was recorded in the St Marys District School, Tasmania.

10. Halfway to Forth are brothers Dan & Kyle Lizotte. If you head up past the old steam railway, over the river and round the bend you'll arrive at their family home halfway along the road to a little town called Forth on the NW coast of Tasmania, Australia.