A love story for December

and the wonder of new life

Dearest Wild and Wonderful readers,

I hope you’re keeping well in this month of Christmas mayhem.

In this edition — a story about love and one of the most tender creatures, two poems, and a few other things.

If you have been reading along you may remember this story from the November 2023 edition. It’s one of my favourites, perhaps it is yours too?

So many wonderful people have joined us this year and I am bursting to share this story with everyone. I also thought it would be a great story to end the year with — this will be the last Wild and Wonderful for 2024.

I hope reading this letter brings you some relief from the rush of December. A laugh, a lighter heart, perhaps a memory.

Thank you for being part of Wild and Wonderful in 2024. I love writing stories for you and reading your comments and messages of support.

With love and kindness,

Kate x

P.S Scroll to the bottom for a video of our new chicks, we have 12!

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We have a lamb situation.

His name is Frankie and he’s sleeping on my couch.

How did this happen? I hear you ask.

Just when I thought life with four children was ‘almost bearable’ my husband organised a lamb for the family. In the middle of the school holidays. Just for a week or two.

It will be good for you, he quipped, as he slipped out the door, grabbed his bike, and left for work.

*

Frankie arrived at 10 in the morning — a white cloud with two large frightened eyes. He looked almost suburban in a blue collar, floral jacket with velcro tabs, and a disposable nappy. Lottie scooped him up in her arms, patting and soothing him with gentle words. Our cat shot out the back door with her tail puffed up like a door sausage.

I rang my mother. My eldest daughter, Lottie, and I were driving to Grandma’s house in a few hours to join her and the rest of the children. Any chance you have room for a lamb?, I asked. There was a pause. A real lamb?, she chuckled, How old is he?

Four days, I said. He’s an orphan, he needs a mother.

It will be crowded, she replied. But I think we can manage.

You better take lamb off the menu tonight, I suggested, and we both laughed.

On the drive Frankie slept on Lottie’s lap — his head flopped over her arm, his eyelids fluttering under thick wire-brush eyebrows. I swooned, nothing is sweeter than a sleeping baby.

Lottie managed to eat a sandwich with her left hand without waking the lamb. We talked about how we would take care of Frankie.

We have to bottle feed on a schedule Mum, no on-demand feeding, or he’ll become bloated, she told me.

Lottie had spent the morning researching on the iPad. I nodded, goosebumps rolling over my skin as I remembered all the exhausting years of young motherhood.

Would Frankie sleep through the night I wondered?

Was I ready?

Was my heart big enough?

*

And just like that we had a baby in the family again.

We woke to the sounds of hunger in the still-dark morning and began the day warming milk in a jug of hot water, Frankie and the children frolicking around the kitchen table. We timed family outings around bottle-feeding schedules and watched movies on the couch, Frankie snuggled on my daughter’s lap.

Though my mother and I were the ones who mixed the formulae, sterilised the bottles, wiped excrement from the floor, feet, and a woolly bottom, and wrestled nappies over ‘difficult to cover’ anatomy.

In the evenings, after Frankie had his ‘dream feed’ we shared lamb stories. My mother told me about the tiny lambs her mother would place in the warming draw of her wood-fired stove, hoping they would survive the night. And how the ladies of the house would lift their skirts to thaw chilly bottoms as they cooked dinner.

And I told my mother about the black and white lamb at my great-grandfather’s farm that I visited every spring morning when I was five. I’ll never know what happened to that lamb. I guess I made up my own ending — an old sheep grazing in a paddock full of long luscious grass?

*

Or eating broccoli, mint and thyme. Like the culinary choices of Frankie when he escaped his pen — my seedlings trampled, flowering brassica gobbled, and cascading herbs trimmed. I was not impressed.

Neither were the other animals. Our cockatoo is jealous and our chickens are in a flap. One of our neighbours complained about the noise. Is the bleating sheep a permanent fixture? she asked my husband. Have some compassion, I wanted to shout over the fence, he has no mother, he needs love. But I’ll agree, the lamb does have some attitude.

When it rained hard one afternoon, Frankie was at the back door, his tail twirling, his call announcing, ‘I will be coming inside, thank you,’ as he made a rush for the lounge-room and my couch.

I wonder if this is a sign. Should we move to the country?

But mostly, we think Frankie is adorable and the children love him. How could you not?

Last week, we returned Frankie to his farm in Franklin, in southern Tasmania. On the drive back home I felt lighter, with less to do and one less to care for. But my heart yearned —

for a little lamb and his familiar call, the way his tail twirled and milk foamed on his chin as he drank from his bottle, the sound of his hooves clopping on our hardwood floor, and the way he followed us everywhere, utterly devoted.

Under the clamour of caring for a lamb and the children I hadn’t noticed how much I had loved him.

Perhaps it is only after you lose something you love that you discover how much joy it had brought you. And you discover that you have space in your heart to love harder, to share more of your warmth, to give more of yourself.

Anyone who has cared for a fragile, gentle creature — a baby, a lamb, a puppy — knows the joy that comes from loving without requiring anything in return. And the more you love, the more love grows, like a chain reaction, a garland of hearts.

Love reminds us of the way everything is connected. It reminds us that we are not alone.

*

Last night, as I ripped leaves from silverbeet stalks, the sun sinking below the kitchen window, my children hungry and dinner late, I thought of the lines of a poem by Diane Ackerman —

isn’t it enough that all creeks flow seaward;

isn’t it enough that riverbanks come in pairs?

And I whispered to the vegetables, because no one else was listening —

to be busy with love, that is enough, isn’t it?

---

Two poems for December

This poem was shared by

Maya C. Popa

in her newsletter — Poetry Today. I have read it many times this week. Perhaps you need this poem too?

And this poem is a favourite, for the mothers and daughters amoung us.

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Things I’ve loved reading on Substack

• Fruit loops the lot of them by

  Skye Manson
  . Perfect Sunday scrolling with podcasts, reading recommendations, and some fun Christmas advertisement videos.

• For The First Day of Advent, Cinnamon Stars by

  Jolene Handy
  . A recipe and a brief history of advent calendars. (Thanks
  Julia Matusik
  for recommending).

• Part 2: How to change the world by

  Alia Parker
  . How a counter-culture poet inspired the flower power movement.

---

a few other things

• Power reading Seeing other People in an attempt to make it to my final book club of the year.

• Enjoyed this article about Nikki Lyons shearing 395 merino lambs in eight hours and breaking the women’s world record. She’s a mother of four too. Impressive.

• Loved this beautiful December story by a friend. ‘It’s always like this. You fit a year into a December.’

• Busy. Everyone is. What if we changed it up? What if we said — I am so rested. I just had the most wonderful nap. Perhaps I should follow the wisdom of my youngest daughter, who lay down on the footpath and refused to get up. I’m tired, she said, I’m having a rest.

• Afternoon observations — My youngest is cleaning her umbrella with a cloth and a cup of milk. My eldest is watering the plants on the stairs with a balloon full of water. The boys are fake crying — a new skill from school. The pet snails have escaped.

• I am rejoicing the arrival of summer here. But it’s a complicated season this far south of the equator. It’s not all sun and browning grass. Tasmania is a temperate island after all. The ocean is pleasant enough for a dip but neoprene is necessary for a long immersion. And we have to carry a jumper everywhere. Sometimes it snows in the mountains.

• I’ve signed up to a writing masterclass series for 2025 with the Booker shortlisted Australian author,

  Charlotte Wood
  and award-winning writer from Aotearoa / New Zealand, Emily Perkins. I’m joining a few lovely writing friends. Super excited. Link is here, but I think it is now wait-list only.

• Christmas is jingling around our house. I wrote about the rush of December last year here, if you would like to read.

• What I really want for Christmas is a swim in the ocean in the rain. What do you wish for?

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The chicks have hatched

A few days ago the laundry started cheeping. Every morning and afternoon the children gathered around the incubator to watch 12 chicks peck their way out of their shells. My eldest daughter has become an expert in chicken husbandry, sprouting fun facts over dinner — Did you know that chicks make a ‘pip’ in the shell when they run out of air and that chicks have an egg tooth!

Now there are more mouths to feed and small tender creatures to keep watch over. But I am beginning to feel that the wonder of new life is the best Christmas present.

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with love and a little Tasmanian wild

This is the last Wild and Wonderful for 2024. I will be taking a break in December and January to enjoy the summer school holidays with my family. I look forward to writing to you again at the beginning of February 2025.

Until then,

may you sail through December

and into the blue of the New Year.

Kate xx