Fidelity

My mothers garden is looking terrific and my amateurish photographs do not do justice to it.

It wasn't always 'her" garden though. It was planted and nurtured by Dad who was the gardener of the family. She however has taken on the challenge of learning how to care for a garden as her way of honouring his memory and two years after his death here it is flourishing. Not without some wobbles along the way but her solution to most bugs, diseases and pests is to spray with soapy water. So far it seems to work.

To me it just goes to show how important love and faithfulness is. Even plants and gardens absolutely flourish under a faithful, loving hand.

First Rain

Last night we had our first rain of the season.

We were all outdoors in a flash watching the thunder and lightening storm their way across the night sky. Then came the rain. Teeming down. Welcome. Joyous in its drumming on the roof. Swirling in the storm winds. Oh the smell of rain on hot, dry tar and dirt and grass. The temptation to strip off and run about in the rain is almost overwhelming.

Up and down the road people could be heard celebrating the rain. Children went late to bed but on the night of the first rains of the season that's ok.

One hot October night

It is October. In our part of the world that means hot, still and DRY. The last time we had rain was in March. Everything wilts under the relentless heat, the grass is sere, the sky is opaque with haze even  the Jacaranda trees mauve flowers blend into the sky. Only the bougainvillea give splashes of bright colour in our colourless world. We wait breathlessly for the rain.

But the evenings are wonderful and last night we spent the evening at a music concert at school. It was a wonderful evening with families picnicking before hand and plenty of space for little children to race around playing tag on the only green for miles - the cricket pitch. The crowd was incredibly varied, old and young, a mix of races, those with connections to the school and those who had none and had come for the music alone. Wowed by a range of music that included opera and pop, country and western and jazz, and choirs. Music both sacred and secular, the artists covered a range from young to old and included  a young Jesuit in training brought the crowd to its feet with his magnificent voice singing music from The Mission.

I thought to myself that Ignatius would have enjoyed the inclusivity of the event. Here God was revealed in a common shared experience, by a crowd who put aside their differences for one night to share in something wonderful. And the performers offered us of their best, sharing a stage together in good humour and generosity.

The Class of 2012

 An end of the school year always has its occasions and none more so than my sons one hundred and eleven year old Jesuit High School.  We have had Prize night, made doubly poignant by the departure also of the Headmaster after forty years at the school as boy and man.

We are yet to do one of the other teary moments, the blessing of the Leavers in a special Leavers Service devised and led by the boys themselves.

Yesterday the Class of 2012 had its last official teaching day, and is now on study break ahead of their external Cambridge based examinations. I thought that the two and a half meter banner, hung from the tower, reflected what they had learned in six years of Jesuit based education, with a nod to Nike!

She doesn't know.....

A friend remarked to me today as Ossie played with great vigour, roaring up and down the passage and terrorising the other cats that of course she doesn't know that she is deathly ill. I know, and I am devastated but she doesn't and so life goes on for her. She is fully engaged in the present, playing and eating and sleeping and doing what just grown cats do.

It is me who is peering uncertainly into the future, who knows what must come and that she will reach a point where she will have more bad days than good.

It is me who knows that cancer is a painful killer.

It is me who grieves and is angry and is disbeleiving for something that will happen in some as yet uncertain tomorrow.

But she doesn't know.....and so she is just present to today's joys and pleasure.

Ossie

My dear little black cat Ossie in her favourite sleeping place

Ossie and Bubble sharing - a rare moment

Still

It is early summer, well before the rains. Today the wind has dropped and it is hot and still and humid.

Despite the heat my precious little black cat is stretched across my lap, her breathy purr faint in the silence. I reflect how much I have come to love this fluffy little cat. She was a gift just under a year ago from Small. His way of easing me into his last year at high school and preparation for his departure to University in January next year. He said that he had read in the internet that a new pet could help ease a mothers feeling of "empty nest" and is typical of his thoughtfulness.

My iPad wobbles and typing one handed is frustratingly slow, yet I am disinclined to move her, and she purrs on, content. Memory and love swirl. Her insistence on climbing on to my shoulder to be fed when she was small and had not been properly weaned. A persistence that continued so that she snuggles there each morning as I say my prayers. Her love of food and crafty raiding of the other cats food and milk. Her dislike of the cold, resulting in her curling into the crook of my legs on a cold winters night. Her lightening fast race up the passage to bounce whoever she found in the kitchen, - cat, dog or human, guest or visitor. Only for her to leap away laughing.

On Wednesday the vet told me the the lumps I felt under her skin were a malignant lymphoma.

And disbelief wars with anger.

I choose stillness and quiet to let the violent emotions bleed out into.

And I ask myself........

How will I pray without her?