A gaze on arrivals

And recognising when we've reached the passage.

Last weekend, I become my father and my grandfather all at once.

From left to right: my paternal grandmother, my grandfather and my father

I showed my kids how to cast a fishing line into Sydney Harbour, how to hook bait and to lose all expectations.

Long ago, Sydney aquarium ran an ad campaign in the nineties with the tagline believe and the fish will come.

I can never un hear the child voiceover. The bubbly sound effect at the end.

Believe and the fish will come has become my lifetime mantra.

For when things feels impossible.

The only way to get through is to build demand.

Attract, not chase.

Keep bounding in an unexpected direction for the rewards to come.

i. seaweed

I grew up by ocean rock pools where my relatives would fish and dive for abalone.

My mother tells me I would nap in my pram, lulled against the sigh of waves. The earliest memory I have is eating fresh sea urchin with my cousin from a styrofoam cup.

In the eighties, we would drive in the early hours for high tides.

And then a whole day spent by the sea. In warm rock pools.

One time, at the end of the day – I was freshly dressed for home and stepped onto a carpet of beaded seaweed. Instinctively, I had to feel the textures underneath my feet.

But it was masking a deep pool and I found myself stepping into nothing. Sinking.

My woolly clothes pulling me under.

I was a very shy child but manage to find capacity to call out.

Someone wrenched me out.

Last piece, I wrote about a fear of drowning and I realise today, it has little to do with falling into the rock pool as a child.

It’s about seaweed.

I fear trickery.

ii. the heirloom

My grandfather was an exceptional fisherman. Growing up, our freezer was always stocked with fish and we grilled most nights.

One time, as a teenager I asked to go deep sea fishing with him.

My grandmother said a staunch no. It’s no place for a girl.

The boat was tiny, the men would piss straight into the water. I didn’t understand what any of that meant then.

I learned when my grandfather passed, during my father’s eulogy that he too wished to go deep sea fishing with his father. Even as a young man in his twenties, his father said no.

And continued to say no for the longest stretch of time.

When the time finally came, when my father was invited to join his own father…

My dad realised, my grandfather had picked a day with the calmest of sea conditions.

I became my father and grandfather last weekend to mitigate any fear from my children to understand what it really means to believe. And the fish will come.

iii. the terror of eating

Last weekend, my daughter C persistently cast off again and again, and again from the wharf.

The tide was pulling out and we were unlikely to catch anything. But she managed to catch a puffer fish.

For lunch we grilled over charcoal our friend’s bounty from the day before. A pre-managed, pre-scheduled and contemporary way to spend the day.

But C could not eat.

It brought back another childhood memory of my uncle spearing a fish.

A silver flint flapping in the light.

I could not stop shrieking whenever he came near.

iv. in the blood

It used to annoy my husband to no end whenever there was a rod – I would inevitably catch a fish.

On a house by a river, he spent the whole day trying to catch fish visible to the surface of the water.

I simply dropped a line in and caught one within minutes.

Another time, out on a boat at a friend’s place in Toukley, I caught one in the rain when no one else did.

We used to joke, it was in my blood to fish.

But it’s in my head and being, to believe and the fish will come.

v. the ultimate pull

At the start of the year, I pulled two cards from a tarot deck.

Subconscious on the left, and conscious mind on the right.

Clarity is king.

I am now awake.

For the first time in my life, I feel such a clear gateway in connecting belief to understanding.

I can understand why many of us are turning to craft or movement. To physical hobbies that bring us back into our selves. To follow a recipe or process with a variable result every time.

It’s not the pursuit of the outcome.

It’s the pursuit of the arrival. The portal to where we connect belief with understanding.

Js.