AFL Grand final yesterday.

We turned up at Elsie’s to watch the drama unfold.

Hawks versus Swans.

Who are you going for? Jess asks me.

Well not an easy answer, at least not for me.

I have been known to swap teams mid game

and I make no apologies for that.

It’s a shame they can’t both win said John as the camera panned the dejected faces of the hawks players.

I want to go to South America,he said  where somewhere he read about they play games and it isn’t about winning, it’ s about everyone competing with themselves.

We used to devise games like that here when the girls were growing up, games that tested them individually and also allowed the more skilled ones  to help the littler ones achieve  the same goal .

I used to make up quizzes in which there was no wrong answer.They would be about our adventures or stories we had heard .

The girls would argue with me that it wasn’t right for everyone to be right, that’s how much school had already contaminated them but I persisted and they humoured me and we all learned to play and laugh and ‘win’ together.

The funny thing is in a culture of winners and losers we have difficulty imagining another way we could organise our competitions. We assume to compete means to win, well yes but no.

We have difficulty in thinking outside of this box.

But that is always the challenge is it not? to consider other, to examine ideas and dreams by turning the multifaceted crystal around in our hands and seeing from all the different angles, by walking a mile in anothers shoes.

it is not a world of black and white no matter how often my  father insists,it isn’t.

It is rainbow, it has so many colours hues and tones that we are like babies exploring a universe we can never ever come to the end of.

And so maybe I was going for the Hawks admiring Buddy, Sewell ,Cyril and Roughhead but then I have a special connection with Sydney because I have seen them play at Manuka Oval in Canberra and what is there not to like about Goodes and O’Keefe and Jetta?

When I came out a few years ago and pronounced that I had fallen in love with AFL many of my friends were shocked, you are joking right? said Heidi.

Well yes but no I said.

I followed it diligently for several years reading the sport pages listening to crackly broadcasts on my tranny and discussing finer points with the footy side of the family.

Then Kingston was born and  I lost interest, at best now I am a lukewarm fan able to join the family for an end of year hoorah and recognize a few moves,shout a few unintelligible comments and cringe when it gets down to the wire in the last nail biting hiding behind the cushion moments .

And then it is done for the year.

 

John is up in the boatyard early this morning  working on having the boat ready .

His birthday wish is to take his family sailing and we are fingers crossed that it is done and a perfect sailing day coincides with the Birth Day.

It is nearly there and Kingston is being sized up for a life jacket.

We have already moved onto the menu or at least the cake aspect of it.