We’re standing at the end of the year and the countdown to Christmas has started. For many, especially for children, it is a joyous prospect. For others, it is a road to despair; an event with just way too much pressure of the this-is-how-it-used-to-be-and-never-will-be-again kind of pressure.

So, we set out on this road with trepidation, wearing blinkers, not fully being present on the journey because the destination blinds us. The remedy is a simple prescription, pretty much like those in Nina George’s ‘The little Paris bookshop’: One poem before bedtime. Repeat it nightly until the symptoms ease. But not just any poem. I’m thinking of the Greek poet Constantine P Cavafy’s 1911 poem called ‘Ithaka’.

 “As you set out for Ithaka / hope your road is a long one, / full of adventure, full of discovery. / Laistrygonians, Cyclops, / angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them: / you’ll never find things like that on your way / as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, / as long as a rare excitement / stirs your spirit and your body. / Laistrygonians, Cyclops, / wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them / unless you bring them along inside your soul, / unless your soul sets them up in front of you.”

The poet says not to hurry the journey and to enjoy the mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, the sensual perfume of every kind along the way so that when you reach your Ithaka, you’d be wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Okay, so here are the riches on my road; the ones I could suddenly see because I took off the blinkers: The unabashed purple of agapanthus in the summer sun; the delicate blue of the plumbago flowers in my hedge; the way the pebbled path around the jacaranda tree glistened in the rain; the smiling dolphin faces my dogs make when they greet me; giggles from a red-tailed African Grey; the morning my cactus plant opened up a fragile pink flower that lasted a mere day.

The deep orange full moon as she rises in the early evening; the weird light just before a thunderstorm; the unnatural greens and blues as birds struggle against the wind to find shelter.

The clouds, white mountains chasing each other across the blue expanse; the lambs and clowns and witches’ faces they pull at me; the dusty pink of them behind the sun’s bald head.

I started remembering the screaming green of the first new leaves that shout so loudly to an eye accustomed to winter drabness; the sweet smell of the early jasmine’s promise of spring. The way the golden winter grass move in the wind, like a synchronised team of Olympic gymnasts. The thick ripples on a dam so blue it feels as if you’re touching a piece of sky when you dip your fingers into the water.

Standing under a tall tree, looking up at the dappled blue that peeps through branches dripping with green. The icy smoothness of a river pebble in the palm of your hand; the way its silky cheek starts picking up your body heat.

And, just like that, I could face all the roads to Christmases past and understand what French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette said: “What a wonderful life I’ve had. I only wish I’d realised it sooner.”

I can remember the exact shade of brown that was my love’s eyes, the shape of his fingernails, without dying of the memory; the muted half-meow that a long-ago ginger cat made as he curled his tail around my lower leg; the swoop of the swallows we watched from our balcony as they played in the late-afternoon sky; the unexpected velvety softness your fingers find on the side of a horse’s nostrils; the tiny rabbit that suddenly sprinted out in front of us with a tuft of grass in his mouth.

“So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end,” Colette writes, “but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.”

Here’s to commonplace little miracles, dearest girlfriend. Blessings on your courage. May you have a merry Christmas! – Angie Kleijn