68) Little kid
Yesterday morning while making breakfast I could hear a mob of New Holland honeyeaters rioting in the lemon tree and through the jasmine which is just beginning to flower. It was a warm start to the day for late winter, and I stood for a while watching them dart around the back garden. Just then, one alighted on the handle of the watering can. A perfect photo if my phone had been to hand. Instead, I stood motionless taking in the moment of grace and greeting. But there was more to that moment. It was an invitation. The weather is mild, the weekend will be wet, so seize this day.
Six hours or so later, having completed everything I needed to do at the office, I jumped into the car, picked up a friend, and headed out to the Mallee in search of rare orchids. Of the three rare orchids we hoped to find, we couldn’t spot two of them, and the third was still a week away from flowering. But that didn’t matter – there was magic in every step through the late winter bush. In every glance, the welcome return of old friends – like the Blue Fairy Orchids which have been so plentiful this year – with their joyful colour after the greens and browns of winter. In all, we spotted nine species flowering that afternoon, plus a couple in bud.
Back at the office, my heart lighter from time in nature and time with a friend, I replied to some messages, made some calls, prepared a few things for Monday, and then headed out for the weekend. I was tired from the week and that afternoon’s hike, but I stopped for a glass of wine with a good friend on the way home. The perfect start to any weekend.
Right now, it’s Saturday night. The rain has arrived on schedule and is beating down on my tin roof. I’ll sleep well under the noise of it. Aside from the deluge, the house is quiet. Soon I’ll set about switching off lamps and checking the front door is locked, before saying Compline and heading to bed. In these routine moments of settling and laying things down, I can’t help but feel grateful. The orchids are reappearing in the bush. The rain is needed. The neighbourhood is calm. My weekend routine has seen the house clean and the fridge full and the garden tended.
All is stillness and gratitude tonight.
But it wasn’t last Wednesday. I told my friend last night over that glass of wine how I had woken up on Wednesday with a sense of dread that stayed with me all day. The folks I care about all safe and sound; there’s no reason for any alarm. And yet, all day last Wednesday I waited for some hammer to fall.
It’s not new, this anxiety of mine, which is always there and occasionally floods. Old school reports mention it. My closest friends since my teenage years have all been aware of the list of things that make me nervous or scared. Moths, butterflies, empty chairs in bedrooms, walking past people playing ball games in case a stray ball comes near me… the list goes on and on. In some roundabout way I guess it has its positives: because of it, I’ve always been diligent, always given everything my best shot, always tried to make everything I do at least as good or as heartfelt as the previous effort.
Tiring though, the checking and re-checking that I’ve done enough, that I’m good enough, that I am enough.
When I was ten, my hair fell out. At least that’s the common story told. But it’s not true. I pulled it out. Slowly and over time. I still remember the night my mum discovered the bald patch. I don’t want to dwell on those days – the fragile kid abused by a teacher who then rocked himself shut like a clam. But the trauma found its way out, hair pull by hair pull. I told my sister all about it, but we were grown up by then and at a safe distance. He went to prison for a list of other abuses. I had the opportunity to add my story to the list but chose not to. Old ghosts. And now only half-remembered ghosts at that, as each merciful year goes by. Forty-five years and ten thousand miles of distance now. Let those bones lie where they fell.
But it’s strange that feeling of dread. How it reappears without warning. And how it surfaced again last Wednesday. All the awful possibilities right there in my imagination – bad news, a telling-off, failing, losing, the end of something… From dawn until dusk.
Ah, listen now. I can hear the rain hammering on the roof. The forecast is for heavier rain tomorrow. I’m glad for that impromptu hike yesterday with a friend. Its joys will carry me through a rainy Sunday at home. Not that I mind a rainy day at home – I’ve built a nest these past ten years in this little cottage with its quiet rooms and flower-filled garden where the birds play.
If I saw the ten-year-old me now, I’d say, It’s going to be alright, kid. Even though on and off you’ll spend your life worried and anxious, you’ll know peace. Many of your worst fears will never transpire. And though your hair will start to disappear again in your 50s, it’s only old age creeping up. You’ll love and be loved. You’ll be a kind man. You’ll know how to forgive and how to trust. You’ll talk to birds in your garden and orchids in the bush. You’ll see there is beauty in this world. A trace of God in all of it. And the God who is love will never be far from you. Not one moment will fall beyond His remit or His gaze.
The things I’d tell the ten-year-old me.
The things I told myself all day last Wednesday until I handed over the day’s worries at Compline and slept.
***
Olly Ponsonby, August 2026