The gifts we never knew

I saw them at 7:00am on Sunday. 3 smartly dressed police officers on Griffin street. They had captured three recalcitrant horses that had been spooked by the storms. Thanks to their calming vibe the horses were now grazing happily on the nature strip.

I thought of our police force as I went inside. Like me they probably had no idea what they signed for. Each day had its surprises, challenges, rewards, excitement and it’s tedium. We did not realise that expectations, joys, tears, giggles, reprimands and COVID were all coming.

We never knew what hoary dragons we would slay, or chocolate flavoured liqueur  we would savour. We did not know the emails we would write and the ones we wish we hadn’t. We did not know the friendships we would make, the lives that would be entrusted to us. How fortunate, how lucky, blessed we were; how blessed we are still. We did not know the gifts that would be given to us and the gifts that we would bring. The gifts we never knew.

All the time we were maturing, growing, being pruned, loving and being loved. We made mistakes and sometimes we got it right. We were rewarded not with large bouquets of flowers or limitless cash bonuses, but with that sweet, elusive sense of a job well done and the realisation that no matter the outcome, we could have done nothing more.

And while this cauldron gurgled, our gifts and talents gradually came bubbling to the surface. Shiny, glossy and unexpected. “Oh, I never knew I had it in me”. The gifts we never knew.

In a delicious irony that occurs only once a millennium, the reading that Sunday morning was the story of the three wise men bringing their gifts to the squawking Christ child.

I thought of those three police officers, and the three horses. Again, we had all discovered the gifts we never knew.