Reflection…

I am just an ordinary person. Today is just an ordinary day and I am going on with life and doing all those ordinary things like worrying about sick kids, doing the dishes, and feeding the chooks. We were not threatened in the fires. We don’t know anyone who died. I am not a religious person, I am not even sure I believe in God…. Despite all of these things I listened to the remembrance service on the radio this afternoon.

I felt compelled to have it on, to listen while I got the kids some lunch, cleaned up in the kitchen and put the small boy to bed. Some times it was merely background while I settled an argument or responded to a need, but sometimes I stopped still to listen…. mostly to the music, sometimes to the words. I would walk away to deal with the minor things of daily life then drift back to listen…. overwhelmingly my feelings were of luck.

I am not sure if it is politically correct or even appropriate to say it, but it is how I feel. Lucky. I look out of my window and I can’t see our mountain for the smoke haze today, yet I know it’s there, still green, still covered in trees, still home to towns and people I know. Our mountain didn’t burn…. maybe it will some day, everyone says it will, it has been so long since the last bush fire up there, everyone in town says it will burn, but it didn’t… not last weekend… The wind was blowing in the other direction, the fires began further north or east and it didn’t burn and we are so lucky.

I sit here in my house looking out my window and I feel sad, a little scared but overwhelmingly, just lucky.