One day, you’re sitting on the fence being young and electric and doing young things like eating ice-cream and staying up late playing Nintendo and rock guitar and thinking this is the way it's going to be forever.
Then you fall off the fence and suddenly you’re rolling around in the tough grass of old age.
Suddenly things have changed.
I've been self-isolating on the verandah more than usual lately because when the world is changing so rapidly, it's a good idea to slow down and drink it all in.
What I've realised over the past few days is that some changes are obvious — like all the things we took for granted have now disappeared.
Other changes are slow and relentless — like going bald.
Then some changes only become obvious years later — like the moment you realised that life is actually all about accepting change.
Fifteen years ago my boy said to me at tea-time that he had to collect a specimen of really filthy water for science the next day.
I asked him how filthy is filthy?
He said so filthy you could see live bacteria with huge thoraxes and proboscises flailing around under a microscope. Right, I said — have a bath and take a bit of that with you.
He smirked and looked out of the window at the billabong over the fence.
It was one of those early autumn evenings glazed with soft yellow like a Van Gogh wheatfield. Well, that's how its stayed in my memory.
I followed him outside and he was over the fence before you could say de-oxygenated slime.
Then came my fence moment.
It wasn't a big fence. It was a metal see-through job about waist height.
I always cleared it in one bound when I chased escaped dogs or particularly annoying children. But that night, in a strange way, it looked a bit taller than usual.
I weighed up whether to take the safe option and stand on a log next to the fence placed there for old fuddy-duddies who can’t jump because of their hernias or football knees.
Personally, I had never had to use the log before. But friends over 50 usually needed a bit of support when they jumped my fence for a bushwalk, so it had been sitting there exactly for people like that. Not me.
Jumping a fence is a mental thing. A bit like a parachute jump without a parachute — if you get my drift. You can’t decide halfway through to take the easy option.
You either shout Geronimo and go for it, or you decide beforehand to climb it with dignity like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music.
Either way, you can’t pussyfoot around when you decide to jump a fence. Before you go, you have to decide what frame of mind you are in.
On this particular night, I thought look — you’ve just had tea, you’ve put in a huge day in the chair with Google as your only friend, and here is your boy standing tall and perfect in the long grass with the sun behind him and he’s looking at you from the other side and waving with that deathless nerve of youth that says BEAT THAT OLD MAN.
So I used the log. I stood on the log and carefully swung one leg up on to the top of the fence and then the other leg, and then I jumped.
I landed perfectly and smacked my thighs. I don’t know why I smacked my thighs but I did.
Then I stepped in a hole and felt my ankle twist like a knotted towel. I disappeared into the long grass and rolled around shouting. My boy laughed and then said sorry.
But he wasn’t sorry for long. He collected his filthy water and when it came to jump the fence on the way back he offered me his hand.
He was on the other side and, for the first time, I took it.
Things had changed. But it was okay. It was time for a change.
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