In summer the song sings itself wrote William Carlos Williams. As one year ends and the next is filled with plans and dreams, we enjoy long blue days in the company of loved ones.
In the middle of January, perhaps we are camping at the foreshore or visiting relatives or staying at a beach house or just mooching around at home in the suburbs pleasing ourselves. We might be reading the latest Booker or playing long games of Monopoly or enjoying those delicious, snatched snoozes occasioned by the holiday hiatus, that gentle somnolence that suggests that life is good, despite reports to the contrary.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of bathing as summer’s sovereign good. He must have imagined our Australian summers and the cavalcade of life on the beach exhibited with dare and with down-dolphinry and bellbright bodies. What a joyous picture postcard of us at play.
The beach – that great gritty winding strip of egalitarianism where all can be purified in the frothy font of foam. We are stripped down to our togs and towels and a less self-conscious version of ourselves. We dip and dive and slough off the old year’s worries and woes. We submit to the abrasive tingle of the surf and are reborn for the new year. Our sins are washed away in the tide. With this, we emerge dripping and hopeful into the promise of the possible, a year not yet written on… or written off.
How beautiful the bodies of youth, aflame with life, gilded and glad as they dip their toes into adulthood. How beautiful the tableaux of grandparents keeping an eye on water-winged toddlers as they begin to create beach memories. How beautiful all God’s children, in their infinite variety, in their multitudinous shapes and sizes, taking to the water and letting it unify them in the gift of simple pleasure.
We surrender to this transfigurative rite, this collective seasonal baptism, this blessing of the waters. Mermaid forty-year-olds, daggy dads in boardies, jellybean babies, trysting teenagers – there is room for all on the giant gritty welcome mat by the sea.
Centuries ago, the Bard opined Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Yes, we live different lives in the heat of these few short weeks as another summer is added to the infinite almanac of heavenly blue days. Across the nation sandcastles are imagined, built and washed away, their turrets tumbling to the tide.
We have this small sliver of time, before the working year starts up again and we resume our other selves, to acknowledge our many and varied blessings. The days slide into the mystical mauve of a warm dusk and the sky closes over the sea. Above, the stars twinkle approvingly, gleaming and constant in the indigo swatch of our celestial neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, for me, Australia Day marks the end of my usual summer idyll. I have watched the Australian Open final, admiring the athleticism and agility on the court, the speed of aces, the good-natured barracking of the crowd, the honeyed evening walks locally, the languid and long-limbed days at the beach. The real business of life has been suspended and now becomes a part of cherished memory.
This year, I will be tuning-up to a different rhythm. After thirty years of teaching, I am “retiring” from active employment. I like to think that I am “repurposing” myself so as to be useful and productive in other ways. I have not made any hard and fast resolutions, just some wider wishes that I will work towards, perhaps a little bit of reinvention, some travel, some caring duties, time to think and read and write; time to relish this time in my life where I still have lots of capacity and agency and the energy to do other things.
My days will be full.
Phillip Larkin, in his poem, Days, asks the following:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
These are the days of our lives and we have a duty to be as happy as possible. This is not to dismiss those times of grief or disappointment as they are part of the warp and weft of our days, the days we get through, endure, eventually acknowledging that some part of our life is forever and irredeemably altered.
Many of our days are routine and uneventful, happily humdrum. But there is a beauty in this ordinariness, a holy holding pattern, that encourages us to be grateful for the many blessings we have. I will continue to look out for the little delights, the flock of colours John O’Donoghue writes about in his blessing for the new year.
These are the colours of my life; the pearlescent shine of moonlight, rainbow lorikeets nestling in the banksia outside my balcony, the pink blush of dawn, the poetry in all the shades of green in leafy avenues, the yellow of beach buckets, the blue of plastic backyard clams where toddlers can shimmy and squeal, the colour of love and red roses on Valentine’s Day, the faded colours on the spines of favourite books, the crisp white page inviting words to be written on what Anne Frank called the patience of paper – as distinct from my efforts on the laptop here.
The Psalmist writes in 139:16 that all the days ordained for us were written in God’s book. In Jeremiah 29:11 we read, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
In 2025, we have the chance to live lives that offer something back to God and to neighbour, in whatever way we can.
We each use the gifts we have been given. We have our own plans this year; the events or commitments or meetings we must attend, the paperwork we must keep on top off, the people we must keep in the loop, the neighbourly connections and the tug and tie of family life.
Every day we have is coloured in hope and builds towards the future. Our days are written in God’s book, chapter and verse, maybe footnote or headline or marginalia or erratum, prologue and epilogue, our unique soul stories told over thousands of days.
They are ordained.
Let us use them well.
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Liz Tehan says:
This was such a beautiful piece to to read Anne. Thanks so much for sharing it. I will look forward to further articles sharing your thoughts on the transition from paid employment to your future repurpose.