Deluge, despair and deliciousness

Milton Road - an ocean view

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

"A Tale of Two Cities" - Charles Dickens, 1859

Disbelief.  Shock.  Sadness.  Horror.  Numbness.  Anger.  Futility.  Helplessness.  A tinge of Despair?

It’s been a week of mixed emotions and many of them have been raw, red raw.  Impossible to tear our eyes from the coverage of the floods, Queenslanders have lived out many of these emotions...and more.  While I, my immediate family and my extended family have been fortunate not to suffer from these floods, many friends, near-neighbours and favourite businesses have been taunted by this wicked mistress, this occasional demon that we know as the Brisbane River. 

And still, it is worse.  It is inconceivable to me how those bereaved people are managing to cope each day, every day, day by day – the ones who lost their children, their mothers, their husbands, their brothers, their loved ones.  The state, country and world weep for the people of Toowoomba who suffered the most and must still be dazed at what has happened to so many of their local communities.  Simply, our hearts break...

                                                         The boys arrive!               


Neighbours bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” - Harper Lee, 1960

And yet, there is wonder, beauty and goodness EVERYWHERE in our midst.  Look, for example, at the repeated images from around the state of men, women and children, neighbours, friends, colleagues, customers and, best of all, strangers, helping one another to dust it all off, get up and start all over again.  How can this be?  More adjectives appear – incredible, amazing, caring, giving, bighearted.  They all apply.  People giving so, so generously of their time, their efforts and their money to help other human beings.  Even the cynics amongst us cannot fail to be moved at these sights.  It shows the human spirit at its finest and its most basic and I simply love it.

Digella, spreading the word on 'Baked Relief'

From little things big things grow, from little things big things grow...

“From little things big things grow” - Paul Kelly & Kev Carmody, 1991

While I have neither shovelled any mud nor lifted any sofas, I’ve tried to do my own little part, as best I may.  I’ve joined a wonderful cause and, not surprisingly, it’s related to food.  More specifically, baking – no trophies for guessing I’d be keen for this!  ‘Baked Relief’ started a lone woman (aka Digella) taking some late-night cupcakes to her local SES Station and has grown into a city-wide co-ordinated movement with people baking, baking, BAKING to provide the wonderfully kind volunteer workers with food to nourish both their bodies and spirits.  If you haven’t joined the cause, get out your recipes, butter and flour and start your ovens!  I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret secret....Digella had me at the word, ‘cupcakes’! 

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So, as a city and state, we continue.  One of the children my sister and I looked after today (while his father was cleaning strangers’ houses in knee-deep mud) has a birthday tomorrow.  I was honoured to quickly make a birthday cake for him, to give to his father, so that the lad can blow out some candles tomorrow and songs may be sung to him.  Life does, and MUST, go on.  When I spoke to this boy’s father tonight, I spontaneously started a sentence with, “When things get back to normal...”.  I stopped speaking and we looked at each other.  “What will normal mean?” we both exclaimed at the same time and I wondered...  When will people go back to work?  When will the traffic lights work?  When can we be assured that Coronation Drive will not slip into the river and create another tragedy?  When will our children have their school back in a fit, clean and complete state?  When can the grieving process begin properly, respectfully, so that those lost may be mourned with the dignity and love they deserve?  Questions without answers....

As I said to my beloved children when we surveyed the seemingly endless ocean that was, bizarrely, Wednesday’s Milton Road, “Poor old Brisbane.  She’s going to need a bit of a shine-up after all of this, isn’t she?”

We’re onto it, old girl, and we’ll get there.

xx

                                                    Our community's beloved school