Here & Now with S Sorrensen

Lismore. 
Saturday, 6.15pm:

How can this be? It's the Lantern Parade and it's not raining. Nor is it bitterly cold. That's weird.

What next? Floods in Goonellabah? Parking spots in Byron? Smoke-free zones in Nimbin? Vegan Week in Casino?

The way the world is going makes me nervous. And a tad depressed. While people bury their heads in their iPhones, their oceans become barren, their precious water is fracked, and their kids watch soft porn on Saturday morning television.

Sometimes I wonder whether we even care about the future beyond our next mortgage payment. We don't celebrate life, we struggle through it. And what about the kids? What are we giving them?

Okay, call me Mr Negative, but the way things are, if you're not depressed you're insane.

But not tonight. Tonight Lismore lives – not in pokey pockets of private establishments but in its own public spaces. And knock me over with a mining boom if I don't feel, well, ebullient.

It's not quite an Arab Spring revolution, but there's something refreshingly empowering for people when they take to their streets, whether it be to protest the recklessness of coal seam gas miners or, as tonight, to participate in the Lantern Parade; to enjoy their town; to do something special for themselves and especially for the children.

So, here they are, Lismorites out in their thousands, resplendent in their diversity, making Lismore CBD at night feel like a living, breathing home for people rather than the desert it often becomes after 5pm when drunken shouts, police sirens and the testeronic revving of a P-plater are the only indicators of human activity.

People are lined eight-deep in Magellan Street as the parade passes by. The bagpipes that led the parade have faded towards the river. But the sound of children squealing with delight has not. It rises and falls with each passing lantern. The children's joy washes through the crowd, igniting smiles on adult faces, and reaches even me.

I'm seated at an outside café table. On the table, a bottle of cabernet sauvignon awaits my attention. From this vantage point, I see the backs of fathers with children riding their shoulders. I see a mother pushing a B-double pram loaded with twins into the forest of legs. I see three teenage girls texting and giggling as they run to some rendezvous (with boys, probably).

A boy on Dad's shoulders holds a windmill with flashing lights in one hand and points with the other at a giant pirate ship. The little fella rocks and shouts with glee. Dad smiles. A barrage of drumming replaces the final bagpipe lament and punches a syncopated rhythm into the night air. Stiltwalkers dance elegantly on long legs.

Opening the bottle, I raise my eyebrow to both women at my table – one a birthday girl, the other a returned traveller – and they push their glasses towards me.

A nearby young girl shouts, “Oh look! A gnome!” and slips into the leg forest with a skill born from years of being small.

A gnome, spotted mushrooms, a giant kangaroo, a dinosaur, a lumbering turtle – the kids are wide-eyed with excitement. Through the eyes of these children I rediscover a wonder that I had all but lost. Children remind me – us – of the magic of being alive. We owe them for that.

So, tonight, Lismore is giving something back to the kids.

I fill the glasses. Three glasses are raised.

“Happy birthday,” I say. We all chink.

“Welcome home,” I say. We chink again.

“And Happy Lantern Parade,” I say.

Three chinks for Lismore.