Good news and reflections of the festive season

I see images of Christmas holidays of my childhood in my mind now as clearly as back then, bathed in the brilliant, sun bleached technicolour of a Queensland summer, writes Mike O’Connor.

The southern Gold Coast – the location of many fond summer memories.

Buckets, spades, white zinc cream on my nose, a striped beach umbrella, sand which burnt your feet and Dad emerging from the surf in his burgundy trunks with his comb-over hairdo draped over one ear like seaweed.

I see these images of the Christmas holidays of my early childhood in my mind now as clearly as back then, all bathed in the brilliant, sun bleached technicolour of a Queensland summer so many years ago.

I treasure the memories of those faraway years, of the two weeks spent at Greenmount in a pale blue fibro holiday flat which looked across to a playground and the beach and the surf break that stretched beyond.

Family finances didn’t run to owning a car so we’d pile into my grandparents’ Holden – my grandfather, father and me in the front seat and my grandmother, mother and my two siblings jammed in the rear – and be driven to the coast, our departure resembling a royal progress as our neighbours gathered on the footpath to wave us goodbye. No car, no phone, no television, no credit cards. Lord, how did we cope?

I remember the light, so bright it hurt eyes already stinging from the saltwater and Dad coming to Mum’s rescue, hauling her to her feet as she was rolled and tossed, giggling with delight like a child, by the shore break.

The clang of the shark alarm would send parents sprinting to the water’s edge, hauling children from the surf and signalling frantically to those further out to get to shore as the lifesavers launched the surf boat and heaving on the oars, pulled out through the breakers in search of the marauding shark.

The falling tide would create lagoons which in my child’s mind became oceans on which I’d sail pieces of driftwood, ships which in my mind I would sail when I grew up. I never got around to buying the boat and I suspect it might be a bit late now.

I’d be sent to the bakers first thing in the morning and come back with a loaf from which a lump had been carefully excised from one end and if you’ve never tasted a chunk of thick white bread still warm from the oven that all but melts in your mouth then you haven’t truly lived.

We’d go for walks in the evening, strolling beneath the tall pines that lined the esplanade and continue around the block and past the hotel, the smell of beer and cigarette smoke and the sound of loud male voices lingering in the stillness of the night as we passed the public bar, the golden glow of its lights shafting across the footpath.

“It seems like such a long time ago and as if took place in a different world but that’s probably because it did,” I thought to myself, the images rolling through my mind as I sat in the medical specialist’s waiting room last week and reflected on my life, convinced that I was not long for this vale of tears and that this Christmas would be my last.

We newspaper columnists, you may have noticed, are self-appointed experts in all matters and are not known to be shy when it comes to sharing the distilled essence of our perspicacity and general genius with our adoring public – okay, there might be the odd critic- but it is a genius that has its limits and should never stray into the domain of medical diagnosis.

Eventually my name was called and I went in to learn of my fate. “You’re good to go” said the specialist as he concluded his examination. ”There’s no lumps, no bumps, nothing bad going on.”

“Really?” I said, half expecting him to say: ”No. Just joking. You’ve only got a week to live.” “Absolutely,” he said. “There’s nothing there” as my diagnosis of terminal disease, aided and abetted by Dr Google, evaporated.

I paid and uttering a prayer of thanks, walked out into a world that suddenly seemed brighter and lighter for if anything focuses the mind on the good things in your life, it’s the fear that they are about to be lost to you.

It’s been a tough year for many but here’s to a happy holiday season for all and the good things in life – family, friends, love and compassion – and cheers to all those who persevered with this column throughout the year as well as to those who didn’t.