THE Easter miracle occurred early, on Tuesday this week, days before Australians wake up on Sunday to eat chocolate before breakfast and largely ignore the season's Christian significance.
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Hardly a soul was up on Tuesday to witness my early Easter miracle. The sun had barely blinked its way through the trees to the north. It was so early even the cat wasn't whining for something to eat.
She sat impassive as we waited for the sound of the ute that stopped in front of my house. And then another ute.
Then came the Easter miracle. A man called . . . I forget. So stunning was the moment that he will remain anonymous, but it was momentous anyway. He had arrived.
He was a plumber, standing in my house, ready to do a succession of small plumber-type jobs that have accrued in the four years I've lived here.
It wasn't quite Easter Sunday, and it wasn't quite as impressive as Jesus Christ rising from the dead and ascending to heaven, but it was a plumber keen to do the jobs and leave with a smile and a wave, and it was a miracle.
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The fact that the plumber arrived on time and on the date arranged was even more remarkable because it was the second time in a week such a thing had occurred.
A few days earlier there was another miracle, probably too distant in time to attribute to Easter, but striking nevertheless.
It was an electrician on that day, whose name I've also forgotten because I didn't actually meet him. I left in the morning with the promise that by the time I arrived home a list of electrical jobs would be completed. And lo, it happened.
There was a new front door light with sensor; two hanging light fittings in the loungeroom to replace the ugly ones I've disliked since I bought the place; double and four-socket power points to replace single power points throughout the house; new light switches to replace old ones that blinked when they shouldn't have, or had lost the ability to remain off without sticking plaster, or were otherwise troubled.
There were two double power points in my office so that my feet no longer rest near a tangle of leads, power boards and double adapters.
It wasn't quite Easter Sunday, and it wasn't quite as impressive as Jesus Christ rising from the dead and ascending to heaven, but it was a plumber keen to do the jobs and leave with a smile and a wave, and it was a miracle.
I don't have to stretch to turn on the washing machine power point in the laundry anymore. The kind anonymous electrician put a new one at a sensible, average-person height.
Suddenly daily living is, if not dazzling, at least less regularly annoying.
There are plenty of days when you don't even notice how long it takes to put a key in a lock and open your front door in the dark because you don't have a sensible functioning front door light. And then there's the other days when it is the final annoying thing that tips you over the edge until you . . . well, do nothing but get really cranky, which is when the cat knows not to press too hard for her dinner. At least for five minutes.
The Easter miracles occurred after my son and daughter-in-law moved in for a few weeks after selling their house and waiting for settlement on their next one.
My middle son is a carpenter and former chef. He has the perfectionist streak that's necessary if you're going to be good in those professions. He also has a conversational style that's short on actual words but remarkably clear when he wants to make a point.
"What the @#%! is wrong with that shower?" he said after emerging from the downstairs bathroom for the first time a few weeks ago.
Fine. He had a point. The shower space is too small, the hob needs to be moved about half a metre out and the shower head had gradually reduced the amount of water available so that showering was probably very environmentally-conscious, but occasionally miserable in its waterly mean-spiritedness.
I just put up with it after a few unsuccessful attempts to find a plumber willing to do a list of little jobs.
"%*&#@ that," said my son.
He said roughly the same thing about the useless front door light a couple of Sundays ago, after a struggle with the front door key in the dark that ended with my daughter-in-law being woken up from sleep to open the door for him.
Likewise the upstairs bathroom taps that needed the washers changed, the downstairs toilet that has an under-performing flush and the drain that's suddenly decided to be whiffy in a way that drains shouldn't be.
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Start rattling off that list to a plumber you've chosen at random and you can almost hear their eyes rolling, as they tell you they're busy for the next week but they'll call you back on . . . it doesn't matter really, because they never do.
That's no disrespect to plumbers, electricians or tradies in general by the way. I come from a family of tradesmen. My area has been a hive of building activity for months because of storm damage, new builds and renovations. A woman ringing about her dripping upstairs tap and whiffy drain would have to go on a queue with a very long tail.
My son, on the other hand, is a tradie who likes his showers hot and powerful, his lights strong and working and his toilets in top operating order.
He rang some tradie mates.
We come from different generations and different backgrounds. I grew up as the eldest of 11 children in a family with a bricklayer father, where the brick sills on our home were only completed just before it was sold, and 16 years after the house was built. We made do.
My son is busily ordering things to make the downstairs shower a sensible size. The whiffy drain is no longer whiffy and the problematic downstairs toilet flush is but a memory. Miracles indeed.
