When a dragonfly visits...

Change is coming

Paying attention. Image: Monique Mulligan

My house today smells of gingerbread and honey, of smoky chilli and melted cheese, of vanilla and warm bodies. We share a midday meal with our four adult children - the first time all in one place for more than a year. Two weeks ago #3 son moved back from Kalgoorlie, some seven hours drive east of Perth, and we prepared a family feast: Spicy Chicken Bake from Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, spicy chicken wings with blue cheese dressing, rice with black beans, corn chips, tortillas and salad. The air conditioning is on; outside, the final days of spring have been replaced with an early taste of summer, all 36ºC of hot-breath wind.

We gather around our large square table near the half-dressed, twinkling Christmas tree (ready for decorating on the 1st Sunday of Advent) and share memories of younger years, of Christmases past; we talk of the Christmas to come, the food we are planning to share, the workloads we have in this busy time. How we will find ways to slow, calm, be in this busiest of seasons. How we want to focus on what matters - each other - and not on what doesn’t - excess consumption. And then the kids, all twenty-somethings, drift home in their hot, sweaty cars, back to the sanctuaries they have created for their complicated lives.

In my own sanctuary, quiet now, I read a couple of chapters of The Mindful Traveller by Nina Karnikowski, then remember I have photos to download. I don’t plan to write, but here I am, words flowing like a bubbling stream; in the same way, I didn’t plan to take the photos I share below because at that moment I was supposed to be getting ready for work. But sometimes you have to be in that moment … and sometimes there’s an invitation to go deeper.

An invitation to pay attention

A large dragonfly rests on the frangipani in my backyard. A garden fairy with glittery, gauzy wings gives me pause to wonder. I sense an invitation for curiosity, for possibility; I turn off the garden hose and crouch down. I am mere centimetres away from this and it remains still, allowing me to observe every detail; it is still there, waiting, even after I run inside for my camera. Two pairs of gold-rimmed transparent wings, each one an intricate, membranous stained glass. A long, boldly-painted abdomen, bulbous eyes, quivering cotton-thin antennae. I remember reading that dragonflies spend more than ninety per cent of their lives as underwater nymphs, and that their winged adult life is their final chapter; I am humbled to be gifted this moment in this creature’s existence. I am happy that I allowed this moment, this glimmer of joy to be mine.

Resting dragonfly. Image: Monique Mulligan

Winds of change

Later that day, I receive some unexpected news. My four-day-a-week events job will become full-time in May. I don’t react at the time, I keep it inside, but at home, I burst into tears of disappointment and frustration. This is the opposite of what I wanted, what we wanted. We are trying to live a slow, simple life as best we can in the suburbs; we are actively trying to find more ways to make our lives fit with our values of simplicity, of sustainability and circularity, of not having or taking more than we need. As we move into our early fifties, we have been talking of reducing work hours, not increasing them. Of creating more time to do less. Of moving to the country before we’re sixty. Having time to write a book that is hovering at the edge of my thoughts - not a novel, not fiction, but something about pausing to wonder… Sourdough and sewing and painting and growing. Not working more, not adding more busy-ness and having even less time for what matters to us. Less time to craft the life we want to live from now on. Is the universe testing me? Testing us? Seriously?

I drive home through a beaded curtain of moths, thousands of newly transformed insects, awakening after days of humidity. Moths. Also a symbol for change and transformation. I have never seen so many all at once; they fly in my path for twenty kilometres.

My husband tells me this news could be the start of radically changing our lifestyle. What if this is the chance to go back to one income so we can learn to live on less? What if we leap? The more we explore the idea, the more the what if seed grows. And soon the idea has sprouted wings, and we wonder if we are brave enough to fly.

Are we?

A messenger … or not?

I download the photos and think about the dragonfly. Something prompts me to read up on spiritual meanings of dragonflies; words fly at me: change, transformation, rebirth.

And as I gaze at the photos of this transitory friend, I wonder if it was a messenger telling me with its unblinking gaze that it’s time to move out of your comfort zone, it’s time to take a leap of faith, it’s time to make way for the new.

To seize the day - before the opportunity passes.

To pay attention.

To think of this change - because something is going to change one way or another - from a place of possibility rather than fear.

When the dragonfly flew away (which it did after I finished taking photos), was it a sign that I needed to get ready for work? Or was there another message coded in the silent flutter of wings? A simple suggestion … Think on this.

I’ll let you know. For now, I’m off to walk in the bush while the hour is golden. Enjoy the photos.

Images: Monique Mulligan

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