Eventide (2020)

I associate the smell of woodfire with autumn giving way to winter, dark wet cobbled streets, treacherously slippy fallen leaves, damp socks, dim bike lights, painful chapped hands. This is the season of course that heralds Christmas, the turn of the year, and thus it felt so natural to me that it took a few seconds before it jarred against the reality of warm summer air and blue skies. I could smell wood-smoke on Christmas day as I crossed the railway bridge into work and I could smell it again today at the beach. It is also the smell of Christmas here, I realise: summer barbeques and long days outdoors with family and friends. I suppose in time it will take on this other layer of meaning for me too.

For the past few years I have taken the occasion of my birthday to spend time writing and reflecting on the year gone and the year ahead. I enjoy reading similar reflections from others, largely for the insights that they afford into those people, occasionally as inspiration in their own right. So I thought I would share a few.

Things That Brought Me Joy in 2020

Writing Letters / Receiving “Post”

I love the thrill of receiving letters and postcards – the postmarks, the stamps, the handwriting. The way envelopes become weathered on their journey. The thought of what that journey entailed – days of travel, flights across oceans. I keep a shoebox full of blank cards that I am always adding to, the collection itself brings me delight, so much so that I often buy one to send and one to keep. This year I have tried to be more deliberate about what I send. There is something so intimate and touching about receiving post from family or friends, something very comforting in knowing that you mean enough to someone that they went to the trouble of finding time to actually sit and write to you, filling whole cards and pages, sharing images or thoughts that made them think of you, carrying an envelope around for days (- in my case often weeks!) until they find a stamp or time to stop off at a post-office. A lot of love goes into the whole.

Reading

I struggled to find the words to write about this one. Many deleted paragraphs. In some way it seems pointless to keep trying: people who understand already know, those that don’t won’t. I read so hungrily as a child: anything and everything I could get my hands upon, especially English words in those early isolated days of living in France. And then I went to university and for months at a time I would go without reading anything for the pure enjoyment of it. I started reading again the year I started work. And in the five years that have followed I’ve been slowly rediscovering the ways I used to read as a child: in the gaps, before bed, at traffic lights, with frozen hands, wrapped up in a blanket outside in the cold. My finger always jammed between the pages read and those to come. I am learning what I like, what it is I like about it. I’m collecting words, passages of words that make me cry, stop me in my tracks, arresting in their truth or beauty. I savour and look forward to afternoons or evenings where I have no other obligations, where I can just read read read, emerging hours later with strained eyes and a heart that aches from the immensity of it all.

Discipline

I thought to temper this with “/ Freedom”, or to entitle it otherwise, something softer, something along the lines of “tending to the mind and body”. But to do so distorts the reality of it, lessens the weight of it. I have never in my whole life been as dedicatedly disciplined as I have this year. In getting up before the break of dawn to make time for the things that keep me human: daily writing, daily movement. In dismantling fears and anxieties layer by layer, working down to the ugliest thoughts at their core, acknowledging the actions they trigger within me, learning how to resolve them, how to heal. In organising and planning the free hours I have as I never have done so before, going against the grain of who I am, to ensure that deadlines are met, stress minimised, opportunities maximised. In carefully selecting thoughts, words and actions to align with what feels right at core, even when to do so feels awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing. In doing all of the above on the days I least wanted to, for the stretches of days at a time where everything felt too heavy and dull. The result is freedom: a strong and happy body and mind. But the process is something much greater, in all senses of the word.

Middlemore

I love this place in the same way that I love anything or anyone truly: with exhaustion. I have given so much of myself to this hospital in the time that I have worked here. Hours and hours of overtime, dark early mornings and evenings drawn out long after the sun has set through the great glass windows at the end of each ward. And I’ve received so much in return. Such a wealth of stories and experiences, so many tears and so much laughter. In the past few months particularly, preparing for clinical exams, I’ve been so touched by the way in which so many people stepped up to help, looking out for me, going out of their way for me, leading by example, correcting me gently, teaching with kindness, offering words of support when I needed them the most, words of encouragement, gestures of belief, taking on more than their share of the work to allow me to leave on time, helping me reach a level that I know I would not have achieved in different circumstances. I think it’s true of everything that is loved exhaustively: in the process of loving it you are broken down time and again, each time you rise up you are remade a little more in its image.

My Love / Our Life

Wishing you all a very happy new year!