It is True

(From the archive again, first published 23 Oct 2003) It isn't the same anymore, I know that. They have pulled it all down and they have rebuilt it, but when I walk into the stands on friday afternoon I will know that it is the same place. It is a different game, a different crowd and I am living a different life but I will feel her sitting there. Every sunday with the other wives and girlfriends, she sat there. Sometimes she laughed and cheered and sometimes she ran down the stairs and through the tunnel and rode in the ambulance. He would hold her hand and tell her that she was all that he had. She felt needed. They would patch him up and he would go out and play the stupid game again. Sometimes she wore makeup and sometimes that wasn't enough and she wore sunglasses. He told her that she was all he had, she felt trapped, but she felt needed, I think, but I am not sure. She seems like a stranger, in fact I think I had almost forgotten that she even existed, until my mother called that day in February to tell me the news and at first I wasn't a bit surprised. I think I had been expected a call something like that, all this time. Suddenly there she was. Standing with me wherever I went. I could feel her thoughts and her pain and her anger and frustration. She told me the stories and all the things that happened and she made me cry and she made me remember. I tried to tell her to go away but she wouldn't leave. She told me where the negatives were and I went into the cupboard and sorted through the boxes. I don't know why I had kept them all this time. So I took the small folded paper packet the the 1 hour photos booth. I must have expected the pictures to print out old and worn as if they had been tossed around in the bottom of a box for twenty years because when they gave me the prints, still warm and a little bit tacky, I had to sit down to calm my shaking because she stared back at me with the freshness of yesterday and I was startled by her youth. She barely looked familiar to me at all and had I seen her on the street I would have walked straight past. I looked at her with pity because I knew things she didn't and I knew she wasn't prepared for what was going to happen. Then I looked at her with anger at all the stupid choices that she made and I wanted to tell her she had no right to do the things she did. Then I looked at her with pride because I knew that despite everything she was stronger than she knew and would fight her way out of the pit that she had dug and she would stand here one day looking back. So tomorrow I will walk back into those grounds, that is where I left her. That last time she spoke to him was there, she said goodbye to him, threw the sunglasses into the bin and turned and walked away. I thought that I could forget her but I knew I would not forget him. It is true that I hate him for what he did to her, it is true that I remember that she loved him. It is true that he killed himself in February and it is true that I do not understand why it makes me cry.

On visiting hell - reposted from 2007

The first time she went missing I was on the phone to some nurse, I wanted to be the one asking questions but the nurse was so very slow, quizzing me about information I didn't want to give and stalling on telling me anything medical at all. Later I wondered. "What if she had been faster?" "What if I had just called triple 0 instead?...."

We ran to the car and swung the headlights everywhere we could think then we went up the streets and down them right out to the highway. We couldn't see her anywhere so then we wondered if she had been at home all the time, if we had somehow missed her? Could we have? We didn't ask again once the car reached the top of the driveway because there she was, coming out of her flat all smiles and asking for her friend. She didn't believe me when I said her friend wasn't with us and as relief flooded me we led her into her bedroom and helped her put her pyjamas on. I grabbed the bright blue long sleeved flanelette set for her. She yelled at me, where was the top? where was her bed? Where were her friends? My hands were shaking, we got her into bed and gave her a basin incase she had an accident. Later I wondered if I should have just stuck my fingers down her throat right then and been done with it.

She asked me to take her to the toilet then when I got her back to bed, she closed her eyes and it was only seconds before she seemed to mutter in her sleep.

Upstairs we sat in silence, my husband and I, and the tv droned on enough to calm me. It might have been 10 minutes but it wouldnt have been anymore before I decided I should check on her again. My husband was grabbing the blankets as we had decided it was best we spent the night down stairs with her.

I guess I wasn't really surprised when I found her bed was empty. This time I knew there was no mistake. She was gone.

We ran to the car again, not stopping to tell the boys a thing, we thought for sure that this time we would find her, that she couldn't have got that far. We drove and shouted and peered desperately into the darkness. We checked as far as we thought she could have got before we again doubted ourselves and rushed back home. I ran upstairs while S searched her flat again. I banged on the boys doors and begged for their help. We called the neighbours over and they began searching too, we wondered if she was hiding somewhere in the garden after all, or under their house or in another neighbours yard, or, or, or.....

I checked the floor, under the bed, in the bathroom, everywhere I could think of for her blue pyjamas but they were gone. Then I looked for her favourite shoes and for missing outfits. Nothing seemed to be gone. This meant my daughter was barefooted out somewhere in the night wearing nothing but her blue flannelette pyjamas.

My husband called the police then while my neighbour and I drove around again. We went out to the highway and past the big resort. I felt my skin prickle as I imagined her floating in a golf course water hazard or bleeding and dying after being hit by a car. I couldn't believe she could have reached out of our search zone unless she had been picked up in car. I knew she had no phone or any way of contacting her friends so if she had been picked up it had to have been by a stranger. That just sent me back to searching closer to home. She had to be somewhere close I thought and when the police woman rang back to say that they had more important things to worry about and we were probably worrying about nothing I wanted to believe her far more than she was able to convince me.

When time passes sometimes it is as if it has turned to molassas. I walked around and around the garden, looking underneath, beside, behind...underneath, beside, behind....underneath beside behind. My feet just kept moving, trudging through the slow syrup of frustration, searching again and again. My husband was out in the car somewhere. He came and he left, friends called to say they were looking too. We called her friends though we knew it was impossible that she could be with them. Ink called his schoolfriends and asked those who knew her to keep an eye out. It may have been about 11pm, it couldnt have been much later. We had been searching for her for nearly two hours. I could not understand where she could have gone. I wanted to panic and scream and cry but I just kept walking and walking. I was carrying both the home phone and my mobile in my hands, I strayed too far and I home phone cut out, I checked the neighbours garden again and again and again. I prayed. I felt like I was in hell. My hell was dark and hollow, I couldn't see into the shadows and as the darkness engulfed me I thought my heart was a deflated balloon, I could barely breathe.

Then my mobile rang. It was my son. She had called my husband. She was alive.

She had run six kilometres to the only nightclub in town. She didn't know how she had got there and had only come to when she has asked the bouncer to let her in and looked past him to see people staring at her. The bouncer told her that she couldn't go in wearing no shoes. She looked down and saw she was barefoot and wearing pyjamas.

She ran out of there and into the only open shop nearby. A restaurant. The owner let her use the phone. I guess we owe him more than even he may realise.

Ecstacy & alcohol. Peer pressure and stupidity. I know who gave her the drugs, I know she was too drunk to even know she was taking them. I know I want to call the police and get the stupid little arsehole locked up for life. I know that won't happen but I on Saturday night for the longest 2 hours since my life began, I thought my daughter was dead and now she is downstairs saying that she wishes she was and I am not sure I have ever felt so useless and angry and so very, very sad.

She told me later tht it wasn't ecstacy she took. It was something called 'Pink Skippy' Later still she told me what she took had been laced with acid...maybe she just told me that because she thinks that is what I want to hear? I don't know but the fact that she still seems to think it is reasonable to be taking pills she has no idea/or have any chance of knowing what they contain just mortifies me. "But my friends know what hey are doing"...Right..great!!! I am her mother, she listens to nothing that I say.....Four weeks ago (12 Mar 07) I found out she took a pill again. I was in shock fr a week, now I just feel numb and f*cking terrified

Fish and Chips - Three, 3.

I can’t really remember the guy's face, instead I remember someone else’s and I put it there on his shoulders. He is sitting in the back seat, drunk. You are sober, controlled but I feel your anger simmer next to me like a hidden ember. We are driving home after a club night at the pub. He is joking, being crude and I laugh. I can feel a change in the air, resentment building, I am tired of it and continue to laugh. The car stops and you order him out, we drive away leaving him there on the side of the road. I am shocked but I say nothing. Later after we have settled to watch tv in your room, you stand up and announce you will be back later. You drive out and pick your friend up from where he is walking home and quietly deliver him back to his place. You tell me that neither of you spoke and I mustn’t say anything about it again. For the first time I realise there is an angry side of you that I have never seen before. It is so crowded, Joan Armatrading blasts across the room, I scan the room for people I know and see Brett at a table, he waves, I squeeze my way through the crowd, I am always happy to see him, we laugh and chat. I feel a hand around my arm, tight. “We are leaving” you say. I try to say goodbye, I am pulled from the room, I protest, “We just got here”. Outside I am angry, I don’t want to leave. The backhand across my cheek is a total shock, I fall down and try and stumble away, we argue more, I want to go back inside, but pride stops me, I cannot go in with marks on my face and mud on me. I let myself be pushed into the car and we are leaving. I am stunned; I cannot believe this has happened. We argue in the car, you accuse me of being a slut and tell me that you have heard a story about me from a guy who I dated a few times before I met you. The story is partly true but I am so shocked at this guy being such an arsehole and talking about me like that, that I deny it. You know I am lying and you pull over on the side of the road and hit me hard in the face. I get out of the car but when I realise that we are miles from anywhere I hesitate and you grab me and push me back into the car before you drive home in silence. I am in complete shock and am shaking uncontrollably, I try to crouch in the car until we get back to your place where I eventually meekly follow you inside and crawl into bed because it is freezing cold and I think I have no choice. In the morning when I wake up I am reeling with shock, I am horrified ashamed and terrified. I want somebody to tell me everything will be okay and when I finally brave to show my face in the kitchen I see them look at me then look away, they draw away from me as if I have a disease. Nobody speaks to me, finally later, your mother says “But what did you say to him?” I open my mouth to try to explain to her that it wasn’t justified but the accusing look in her eye makes me realise that I will get no support here. I tell you it is over once I have convinced you to drive me back to my flat. You beg my forgiveness and cry and promise me you will never ever lose your temper like that again. I can’t explain now why I believed you or why I wanted to believe you so much. You let me drag you around the shops and choose your jacket and your shoes; you want me to be proud of you. We buy some clothes that are like what I have seen my sister’s boyfriend wearing. You really don't scrub up too badly. I don’t remember how I feel, except that I am touched that you are trying so hard for me. This is my graduation. I drink and laugh and maybe I have a good time and perhaps not, I don’t remember but in the photos we are smiling. I have a clear memory of thinking that I couldn’t imagine life without football; I am all the All Whites ground. I guess when you put on your jersey and ran onto the field you were happiest. You were very good; you would just push yourself so hard and never care how much it hurt. I remember looking at you lying on my bed after a game. You are bruised all over. You are in agony. I just cannot understand how you can do this to yourself. It makes me feel distanced from you, like part of your life I cannot share; at that time we are sharing everything else. I think a lot about ending our relationship but there seem to be so many reasons not to. I look at you as you lay sleeping and you look so much older than me yet so helpless. I give in, in the end, to my need to be needed. I hate the thought of you playing against Brett’s team. I am terrified you will hurt him; you pay him out and tell me he is “a poofter”. I decide to ignore you, when we get back to the flat one afternoon he has just taken Nadia to “our” restaurant. I am shattered. I cannot let you see this, I hate myself for still caring about him when he cut me off the way he did. I don’t understand why he has to torture me by hanging around and looking at me with accusing eyes. I know I will never be good enough for him any more. I still love him and you know it. I deny it because I think I have no choice. I go to Brisbane with you for your sign on meeting. You take me into the clubhouse with you and they treat me like I am your wife, I am 18 years old. They tell us how much we will love it there. That this suburb is like a big country town so we will feel at home. We are really excited! They tell you they will organise a share house for you with some other team members and a job for you as well. It seems to good to be true. You sign for the agreed fee, and today is the first day of the rest of your life. A few weeks later Brett signs with the same club. When you hear about it you look at me with an accusation in your eyes, as if I had planned it all. ................................................................ I cannot understand why I feel the way that I do, after all of this time, surely of all the things I should feel the very first would be relief? Why do I feel as if my heart has been torn from my chest? You were no longer anything to me, or at least you should not have been. The fact you are gone should not make the slightest difference to my life, and yet I just want to cry. So what does this all mean? That I still loved you? That is almost laughable, after all that happened. I am trying so hard to understand this, so I can get past it and feel normal again. The phone just rang. The line was silent. How many times has this happened since I last knew you? I suppose a few, and every time in the back of my mind I have thought that it was you. Well it can’t have been this time, can it? I have to almost laugh at my imagination. Laugh at the conceit of me to even consider that you would have wondered what happened to me; and then cry because I always wondered what happened to you and now I know and I don’t like it.

Fish and Chips - Two, 2.

Harry was your best friend. He was one of the nicest people I had ever met. He was warm and friendly and always funny. I never remember him having a girlfriend, instead he would hang out with us. You and me in the front of that huge old merc. and Harry sitting in the centre-back his long legs pushing his knees up to the height of the front bench seat as he leant forward to chat and laugh and pass us a bong or a perfectly rolled joint. Harry didn’t drink either. I guess I thought it was a bit weird that you didn’t drink, maybe I thought it was because of your commitment to your football but it wasn’t something I wondered about until later; until it was too late. Harry on the other hand, I found out, was very ill. We visited him in hospital when he was having dialysis, he looked so awful and I could only think of his lovely mother and the pain she must have felt at seeing him like that. We went to his house fairly often. I have photos of your youngest brother and me posing together on the front porch of their house. I have a bad perm and my short sport shorts are somewhat scary in their thigh revealing height. Your brother has a small grin and by his body-language you’d almost think he was fond of me. In fact he detested me and made a point of telling me once. Harry is in the photo too, his arm around his mother’s shoulders and a grin from ear to ear. Months after the Radiator’s concert, we came home to my flat one night and my ex-boyfriend Brett was there with Nadia. I felt a jolt through my soul, a nail in my heart and I knew you felt me flinch. I saw the look you gave him and your jealousy was like a mask you wore. The first thing I thought of was about how Nadia pushed you and I together. I can’t remember now where I met her or how she came to move into my flat. I remember her telling me about your family, how your mother had recovered from cancer and how she used to date your other brother. I remember her taking me to the football in your hometown and afterwards into the pub there. I know I saw you there and maybe this was the day we started hanging out? You were wild and different, scary and strong. I was besotted; you made me feel so special and after the way Brett had treated me that was what I craved. So, when we got home that night and he was there I really thought I could make myself not care, I knew that you cared though. Later, in the dark of night, getting up and knowing that he was there in the next room with her, I felt ill. It felt very wrong. I wanted to shout at her. I didn’t say a word but I felt you watching me and that is when I realized that trust wasn’t a strength that you had. ……………………………………………………. There are 4 or 5 of us in the car, I am the only girl, I sit in the back knitting a jumper, it is funny because I have never knitted much before. It is pink and yellow. Somebody is mulling up and we pass a bong around the car. We drive into the rainforest, it is clear and clean and crisp. I think Harry is driving, you scream to stop the car and he pulls over, you run into the trees and we follow laughing. You lie down in the leaf mulch and we laugh at you. You scream at us to get away, we take sticks and pretend to attack you, laughing. We think you are kidding but you don’t stop. Harry says to leave you. We sit in the car and wait. When you come back we drive on to the kiosk in the national park. I love it here. The air is clean and we get ice blocks and sit on the grass, there are lots of people around, but to me their voices are lost and disjointed, I lie on the grass and watch the sky spinning over me. You are nearby but not close and I lie alone on the grass with the people walking all around me, their voices as high in the sky as the blue. Later I ask you about what happened on the way up, you say you were really frightened and thought that monsters were attacking you, I laugh, but you don’t think it is funny. I feel I don’t have to force myself to be something I am not anymore, when I am with you everything is okay. We relax and cruise along, Saturdays are so much fun, we drive around the countryside in the merc, we drive where we shouldn’t and get bogged and you carry railway sleepers on your shoulders to build a bridge to get us out. We laugh and joke and nothing really matters. You teach me to play pool on a rainy day in some century old pre-renovation hotel somewhere in the hills. I am a girl among guys, being a tomboy and I love it. When I am back in Toowoomba and I see the people I used to know, I feel removed from them; I don’t feel I belong with them anymore, they belong to some long forgotten past that I convince myself that I don’t need in my life. If I stop to think of the things I miss, I quickly call you or roll a joint and then I can let it all fade away again. ……………………………………………………. Then there was that phone call which changed everything. What if she hadn’t called to tell you? But she did and you told me right away. It was only a few weeks later when I got it too. I think you might have tried to blame me, which doesn’t seem very fair but when my doctor handed me the results I decided that I was with you for the long haul. Somewhere inside of me before that I had not ended it with Brett and as I sat there I knew that and I knew that now it was over with him forever and I thought I would have to marry you one day. I didn’t want any more men in my life, I made up my mind that there would never be an ‘after you’. I no longer felt good enough for him and maybe not good enough for you either but I was determined to keep you. Without you, I surmised, I had nothing.

Fish and Chips - One, 1.

Sometimes I think the only way I can understand the way things were, is to go back to before I met you. There somewhere there, I think is the reason I found you. If, if, if…. If so many things hadn’t happened or had happened differently. If I had made some different choices before I met you, then everything would have been different or maybe nothing would have been? I am trying to remember where it was I first met you. Was it at that football club? Telfords must have been dull that night. I think I went there with Nadia that night, was that her name? I remember she was blonde and I thought she was my friend, I doubted that later of course. Anyway do you remember there was a crowd at the football club that night? Nadia must have known someone you were sitting with, a long table in the centre of the room. I have this idea I knew them but not very well but because you were there and Nadia was there I went up and sat myself down anyway and then I found myself flirting with you. You were quieter, tucked down the far end of the table. There is something about you, a sort of magnetism that makes me look your way and direct my talk to you. I want you to look at me and talk back to me. There are jugs of beer on the table but I was not a beer drinker then. Your mates are laughing at how I am flirting with you and then a friend of mine across the room yells out, “Party at Alice’s flat!” I laugh and say why not? You drive me in your old EH Holden sedan. There are people in the back. I am wearing yellow corduroy pants so it must be winter. In the morning I wake up fully clothed on my bed with you sleeping there next to me as if you belonged. I am a little scared of you and I wonder if you are dangerous or if you have tried anything? Once I wake up properly, I relax because there are people asleep everywhere in this pokey little flat. When did I see you again? I looked for you at the Radiators concert at the Institute. Did I see you there? Did you tell me to catch up with you afterwards at that party? I want to say in James Street but I know it wasn’t, though I think you always took James street to get there from the other side of the city though? I remember hoping that you would be there. I am pushing my way through people, familiar faces and unknown blurred together, the music gets louder as I walk down the hall, I probably mingle for a while then push through to the kitchen. I turn my back on the big guy who is trying to look down my top and in the end use my hip to force him out of the way. Then, you are standing there, quiet, solid. There isn’t much noise in here, whoever you are talking to has walked away, I haven’t even noticed their face. I am standing against a leadlight dresser and you are leaning, relaxed against the sink. We look at each other across the room, through the smoke that you blow out. You squint at me and almost smile, I notice that your eyes are very, very blue. Outside the party we sit in your car, I am feeling very happy to be here but a little apprehensive. There is a great unknown quantity about you, you slit your eyes and peer at me through the smoke, a soft almost cheeky smile on your face. I ask you what you do, you probably answer something stupid like “I play football”, when you know I mean what do you do for work, and then you say, “Guess”. I look at you and think, and then I say, “Train driver!” You choke on your smoke and laugh and say that someone has told me, but I say, “No, you are kidding, are you really?” You tell me that you drive a train in the coalmine. It seems to fit you like a glove. In the back of my mind I think of my sister saying you are not good enough for me, and I just want you all the more. As we sit there I am admiring the steering wheel and chrome finish on the dash, I have never been interested in cars but this one has a nice feel to it. You pull out a bag of weed, about an ounce; I have never seen a bag that big before. You are rolling up when suddenly this great big guy with black hair and a clipped beard climbs all over the bonnet leering at us through the glass. I am spinning out a bit but you are totally calm. You laugh softly then you pause and say “Aaarrgghh” and smile into your hands. You lock, then unlock the back door and he climbs in. “Harry”, you say by way of introduction.

What's the point of difference? It's not an actual difference, only what I perceived between me and the people around me.

Why do I feel removed, separate, isolated?

When you asked me to look, only then did I try. I want to go back to the comfort of not caring, the getting lost in the present moment. The concentration on the small things that prevents me from noticing what really matters.

Yet I won't leave this now. I know I must finally take stock and find my way.

In my earliest memory I am not like the others. Perhaps it is because of the age difference. My brother is seven years older than me and my sisters, six and four years. They were all born before we moved back into my mother's childhood home, they had another life I did not share.

My Grandmother is holding me on her hip. She is warming the bottle for me in the silver kettle atop the wood stove. She is arguing with my mother, who is making excuses and saying that the animals needed tending and that Grandma was here for me, so she didn't worry. Grandma tells my mother that I am not her baby, and not her responsibility, that she should not be left to look after me. I know it's seems impossible that as a baby I could remember all of this, but I am certain that I do. This is my first memory.

Cassie is insanely jealous of me. She lies on the floor when Mum is changing my nappy and screams and kicks the door. Nobody goes to her until my mother has settled me into my cot, then I am jealous because I want my mother all to myself.

Air

The air is what I remember the most. It is always the air. The feel of it streaming through my hair, buffeting my open mouth or slapping my cheeks out of shape. We would stand behind the cab of the ute, my sister and I, while Dad took the straight stretches as fast as he could because on the bends he would slow, taking peeks in the rear vision mirror to be sure that his girls were safe.

It was eleven miles to the school each morning and that means it was eleven home again. I suppose there were times we were driven in the car, but it is the ute that I remember the best.

My father had the ute modified. Instead of a standard issue Toyota tray back, he had a timber tray with sides and tailgate that could be removed, and and tilt tray mechanism that would lift the tray at the front, so loads like firewood or gravel could simply slide off when the pulley was lifted. This meant we had a tall mast behind the ute cab, so we could stand full height, toes gripping the fixed front tray end, and our frozen fingers hanging on to the cold metal pulley frame for dear life.

If we wanted to speak to each other we would yell into the wind, but our words were ripped away and rarely heard. I imagined the letters that formed them trailing behind us like confetti, finally falling lost and forgotten on the loose dirt road.

We would come around those last few bends, past the rusty drum letterbox of one neighbour and the clean white painted one of another. Then Dad would slow carefully and pull up in front of the one room school building. We'd jump down before the dust settled, bare feet searching for a sandy landing on the dry dusty verge.

I'd watch wistfully then, as he pulled away and his dust trail shrunk down the road. It would be six long and boring hours until that air would blast my face again.

Missing aloneness

Being alone

Sometimes I miss it so badly it is a knife in there under my ribs, jab, jab, jab. It seems crazy that in the end I only really lived out on the property for 10 years before the name tagging of the clothes and the regimentation and the rules. Before the shared showers, public undressing and horrid realisaton that privacy was something that didn't exist in my world. Boarding school.

I saw the pride in my mother's eyes when she delivered me that day, up the wide red stairs and into my allocated room. Orange chenille bedspread and black iron framed bed, squeaky enough to wake me when I moved in my sleep. I wanted to scream and hold her and never let her go but she seemed so excited for me, so happy to be giving me something she had missed out on. So I kept my face still and brave and we said our goodbyes, a cool peck on the cheek because hugging wasn't something that our family knew how to do. I stood there after she left, I opened my new cupboard to admire my shoes. Plastic fake cork platforms with red green and yellow straps, I had pastel striped bobby socks to match, I straightened them and retied the buckes on my shoes, my head inside my cupboard so the other girls would not see and then I licked my fingertips to place over my eyes and cool them. No-one would know about my tears. I was ten.

I found a place eventually, sitting on the top shelf of the change room at the pool where I could almost be alone. I used to climb up there and hide my tuckshop money before I went swimming, I lost a 2cent piece there once, I went back so often but even with all the poking and prodding, all I ever did was push that 2 cent piece further and further along the top of the concrete blocks until finally it fell down the hollow core of the wall. I lay there and imagined what other children had found that spot and what other treasures might be hiding in that hollow echoing core.

Being alone. I never really knew what it was until I didn't have it anymore.

26

He didn't wake up, on this morning, 26 years ago.

26 years ago! That's more than half of my lifetime now, but on a beautiful morning like this, when I can almost hear his voice saying everyday things as I visualise him here in my house, it could have been yesterday. I have always imagined what it would have been like to have him come here to visit. In my heart this has always been his house. Though if he had not left us, I would never have been able to build it, so, somehow, it is as if he is this house. It is built on his blood, sweat and tears, on his dreams and aspirations, and on his hope and love for us children. I know my father loved me dearly because he told me so. Not everyday or in casual conversation but one night when he'd had too much to drink, and on those nights when I was twelve years old and terrified of the dark, when he came and slept in my room on the dreadfully uncomfortable trundle bed. I will never forget that he did that for me, it meant the world.

So, Dad, I just want you to know that I still miss you dreadfully, I still wish you could come fishing with us, play euchre (WD has just learned and loves it), sit on the deck having a cool ale in the afternoon, all of the things that we used to do, but here, in this beautiful house that 'you built'.

I'm home and it's magic.

I can't believe how beautiful it is here. It isn't that I didn't realise before but now, being back here after never expecting to be, this place has a whole new beauty for me.

In many ways I am feeling the enormous weight of failure. Just under four years ago, we followed our dreams and convinced the bank to lend us enough money to buy our acreage retreat. It was lovely out there and I had a fantastic time with my ducklings, my chooks, my veggie garden, my huge playground of trees and waterfall, native birds and planting loads of trees. Financially though things were not so great. Maybe we were dreaming the whole time, that we could somehow increase our loan and still cope with the repayments? Perhaps if it hadn't rained so much, and that and the GFC hadn't affected tourism so much, or perhaps if I was smarter, or better, cleverer, or worked harder?

Three months ago we made the decision that we would rent out our little country cottage, move back here, tidy the house up and repair it where necessary and then put it up for sale. It was a wise plan. I say 'was' because now that I am here I simply never want to leave, ever!

From where I am sitting right now at our dining room table, the ocean is glimmering almost lilac as it stretches out before me I feel almost as if I could skim right over it all the way to Chile. The trees around the house have grown a lot and the view is different than it used to be, but I feel blessed being hugged by this greenery. It's beauty simply takes my breath away. The neighbours are closer, but not so close that I feel too discomforted. Aside from the creep down the hill, the people next door make me feel part of a community, my community.

I hadn't thought I would be lucky enough to live here again but I thought I was okay about that. I was sure I was okay about that, but now it seems that perhaps I never owned this house, the truth is that it owns me. The lines of this house are so deeply ingrained into my soul that I feel almost as if they are a part of me. It was about twenty-four years ago now, that I first drew this house on the piece of graph paper. I didn't know then the power of that small pencil, that it could somehow bring this beautiful spot into existence.  A magic pencil perhaps?

Missing the telephone.

Afterwards, I felt the raw emotion come out of my chest like a howl. This time I couldn't gloss it over and just pretend that this is how she always was. That this was her being her eccentric self, or her trying to play up her age for attention. I have done that before... This time all that came back at me and slapped me quite fairly in the heart. I feel almost as if I should report her missing. My mother wasn't at the other end of the telephone this morning. Someone else with her voice was there. Someone who didn't know who I was and who repeated sentences to me again and again. Oh we have had all the warnings. I have been told that it is inevitable now that dementia will steal her away, yet I can't accept it and I can't stop that choking lump in the back of my throat, that terrifying fear that this time my mother won't be okay again tomorrow and this time, she will forget me forever.

Every time while and after I am reading a good book I think that I am going to write one too. I take on the authors way with words in my head and I concoct long detailed paragraphs which I then promptly forget and never write down. Sometimes (often) I wish that I had a computer built into my brain so that I could record all these stupid little stories and they wouldn't just fly away the way they do. Sometimes I wish a lot of things.



I was about six when I wrote my first 'book'. I made up a story about a cat and drew pictures to go with it. I stapled it all together and showed my sister and told her that I was going to send it to a publisher. She laughed at me and told me it was stupid and so was I so I took the book into the kitchen and opened the firebox and stuffed it in on top of the glowing coals. I sat on the red and white checked linoleum floor and watched all my dreams burn away and disappear up the chimney. I hated my sister.



At school I decided that I must be retarded and that it was a secret that everybody knew except for me. I thought maybe I was a 'spastic' like a boy who was a son of one of my mother's friends. I felt sorry for him because I knew that the other kids laughed at him. When he came to my house I tried to play with him but he had trouble controlling his arms and legs and I was frightened he was going to hurt himself and it would be my fault. I was pretty clumsy too and I could never do all the things that the other kids could do. It never occured to me that this was because I was four years younger than my sister, it just confirmed to me that there was something seriously wrong with me. I snuck back into the schoolroom at lunch time one day and looked all through the teacher's desk because I was sure there would be papers in there about how to teach a retarded child like me. I never found anything but I wasn't convinced. I decided that if I could make myself smart I wouldn't be retarded anymore, so I started trying to speed read because I had heard about it somewhere. I could read an entire page in 1 minute. I proudly told the teacher so he sent me outside onto the verandah with a page of text and timed me. I read it no problem but then he quizzed me as to what it had been about. I had been so excited about my amazing reading talent that I had forgotten to remember anything that I had read. The teacher called me a liar and smacked me infront of the entire school. There were only seven kids in the school but that just made it even more embarrassing.



Every day at school I got a smack. I think the teacher just started smacking me before school began because he knew I would be naughty later anyway. It was usually because I hadn't done my homework or had got my spelling wrong. Even though I was always getting hit I was still completely terrified of it but it seemed the more I tried to avoid it the more nervous I would get and the more mistakes I would make and therefore get more smacks. I wanted the teacher to like me so much I was still always nice to him and got really excited when my family would have him over for tea. My grandmother always cooked crumbed brains when he came to eat. I am sure they made him gag but my siblings and I would always insist we had them as we were sure that eating them would make us smart and impress the teacher.



There was a school reunion a few years ago and apparently that teacher was there. I didn't go and although I wish I had seen my classmates, I am not at all sad that I didn't see him. He was my teacher for four years. I started school when I was only four years old. Then I thought it was because I was so advanced for my age. I could spell 'blue' and I was sure this was something that the teacher wanted to hear repeatedly all day, every day. In truth they let me start school early because there was another boy due to start grade one that year and it would be easier for the teacher to teach us both at once. I also think my Grandmother was relieved to be getting rid of me. My mother wasn't really interested in children so my Grandmother was my full-time carer. I completely and utterly adored her. I think I almost smothered her with my desperate need for her love.



My Grandmother's birthday was last week. She would have been 106. She died when she was 97. I still miss her every single day.



In the afternoons after school Grandma would nearly always be baking. She had a 32 volt mixmaster and we had to switch the generator on so that she could use it. I was always fighting with my sister over who would get to lick the bowl. I would stay in the kitchen the whole time and 'help' Grandma, getting the things from the cupboards and drawers and licking everything as soon as she finished with it. Meanwhile my sister would do something annoying like throw a tennis ball against the wall outside or draw pictures of cats. She could always do everything so much better than I could, it drove me insane with jealousy. It didn't seem really that fair to me that although I had been the one 'helping' my sister still got to lick the bowl half the time. I realise now that my sister was more jealous of me because I got so much of Grandma's attention. One time she told me that I was stupid loving Grandma so much because soon she would die and I would be all alone. I believed her. I hated my sister.



My sister told me that the powdered milk that we mixed up for the poddy calves was poisonous. I was sure I was going to die because I had been eating a little bit of it. I started washing my hands every few minutes and spitting constantly so that I couldn't be poisoned. I stopped eating and spat almost everything out when no-one was looking. One afternoon the mailman arrived for his regular cup of tea as we were the last on his day long 300 mile mail-run and as I walked out to the front door to welcome him in, my knees gave way and I slumped to the floor. Everything was in slow motion and next thing I knew I was sitting in a chair being given a cup of milo. The mailman said I looked malnourished so a few days later my mother took me to the doctor in town sixty miles away and he said that I was anaemic. I had to take a teaspoon of horribly bitter black medicine twice a day. My sister told my Grandmother that I hadn't been eating and I got in trouble. I decided I would rather be poisoned than have to take any more of the horrible black medicine but even though I got better really quickly my grandmother still made me take two entire bottles of the stuff. I will never forget that horrible taste.



After that my sister told me that there were aliens in the sky in spaceships that looked like big silver 44 gallon drums. We had 44 gallons drums everywhere so I got really frightened and was sure they had landed and were coming to get me. My sister said that they grabbed little kids and took them away and chopped them up and did experiments on them. Of course, I believed her. I spent the next few years hiding in the cupboard if I was home alone and refusing to be left by myself, ever. I hated my sister then but now I just feel sorry for her.

Earthquake

Sometimes spur of the moment decisions can be really stupid. I'm blaming the emotion I was feeling hearing and seeing the earthquake news. It was and still is utterly devastating, my heart is just breaking for all of the people affected. I guess when something like that happens the first thing you wonder is if you know anyone who lives there. I am 90% sure all the kiwis I know live on the north island but then for some reason I thought of you. I actually thought you lived in Auckland or Levin or somewhere? Anyway I typed your name into facebook and bang, there you were. At least I thought it was you, looks too young, but maybe you've just aged incredibly well? The school finishing year seemed right though. So in a spur of the moment decision i messaged you. Why? As I remember things you were pretty disgusted with me last time I saw you. I don't blame you, I behaved so very badly. I was a pretty screwed up girl back then, wasn't I? In my defence, I had just lost my father and I think a lot of it was in reaction to that. Anyway, regardless of all that, i just wanted to say to you that I am sorry for my bad form and I would be grateful if you didn't dislike me for it. Also I wanted to thank you for being amazing back then, I had a lot of fun going to bands with you and I am forever grateful that you made me buy that Chills album. My daughter is a huge Chills fan and she plays it often, I guess that's why you have been popping up in my memory recently. I really hope you are well and happy Mark and I guess I hope you have some good memories too. Dx

He wrote back! <3 p="">

Hello blogland

I've been thinking a lot lately about resurrecting my blog. I never intended to abandon it as I have, I just seemed to stop having enough time and headspace to write. Such is life, I suppose?

It's a magical day here today. I am all dressed up ready to go out and carry out a bit of weed control on our land. Not a very glamourous job but it's still nice to get out amongst the trees and get some excersize at the same time. It's also necessary work as we have had so much rain this spring, more than ever recorded before apparently, which means that, although it's great for the garden and the trees we have planted, the weeds are also going beserk.

This year has been quite insane for me. WD was doing her last year of university, and due to a few accommodation problems in the city, as well as lots of money issues, she spent most of the year at home, where she set up her workshop in the shed and set about creating her final year collection. If you know her name you can seach and read her blog too :) I ended up helping her a lot as she doesn't have her driver's licence so I got roped into the fabric sourcing and repeated delivery of her and her creations to the city and back. I also worked on one of her side projects, making silver jewellery. The jewellery is now (from yesterday)stocked in a trendy little shop in the city. I hope it sells well. I am nervous about it as I hadn't done any silversmithing for over ten years. It's just like riding a bike though, I hadn't forgotten how.

The other major thing going on for me is that we are broke :( I spent far too much money helping WD get through this year, as well as sending her to the UK for her internship. Maybe that would have been okay if we hadn't had such a shocking year with the business. It's a carry over from the GFC I suppose, but we had our worst year on record and S is really unhappy as well. He's not as young as he used to be and is in a lot of pain with the physical stuff. It sucks getting older. He's also been studying, doing really well ofcourse. Once again he discouraged me from studying and I quit, instead slotting back into my 'support for everyone else' role. I feel like a failure, what's new?

Tonight is WD's offical graduation ceremony, so we are back off to the city for that. It's pretty well only an hour from here so it's not too bad. It used to take 1.5 hours when we lived at the beach. The move has been great in so many ways, but stressful as well. I still don't feel settled here but I'm getting there. We go back to the old house quite often as we have friends renting it. The house looks nicer now than it ever did when we lived there, but the garden is dreadful. We need to go and spend a few weekends tidying it up, and trimming trees. The ocean view is almost gone, as they don't trim the hedge like we did. Silly tenants, I am pretty sure the view is the best part of that house.

It is Christmas next week. I don't feel Christmassy at all this year. It's been strange, due to the rain it's been far cooler than normal and I love that but it just doesn't feel like Christmas. I haven't put up the tree, or sent any cards, although I have pretty well got all my shopping done. The kids haven't been home much either. They are both taking advantage of the Christmas rush, working loads and making some dollars. SS wants to get back to Europe in the new year, and visit germany again, Norway, Scotland again and maybe Ireland again. He's deferred from Uni until July so I hope he takes advantage of the time. I wish I could go with him.

Instead I am going to walk up our amazing rainforest gully now, marvel at the waterfall, check my vegetable gardens and see how my coffee trees are doing. Then I am going to just be grateful for all of this. I am so lucky.

Mourning the Matriarch

Before she died in 1999, I thought of my family as a unit, a large umbrella spreading out around dear Grandma who was the central peak. It isn’t like that anymore. In the 10 years since she left us, we have gradually fragmented and strolled our paths to destruction. If I ask myself why this is so, the first theory I arrive at is one based on respect. We respected that woman; we all adored her and clambered for her approval and attention. I always thought that I had gained hers, she always made me feel that I was special; it never occurred to me for a moment that she had the ability to make others feel that way too.

After she was gone my Aunt told me how angry Grandma had been at me at one point in my life; my second sister told me how she considered herself Grandma’s favourite, and my brother related stories she’d told that she had never shared with me. I simply couldn’t believe it. I had always, and still secretly believe, that Grandma loved me the best. I was the one who she told stories; I was the one who she understood the best. I was her favourite!

There is no doubt she had a profound effect on all of our lives. Her paranoia over what the neighbours would think was fed to us before solids, her pride and snobbery have been a ‘log’ on my shoulder for as long as I remember. She is with me every time I hear someone say ‘youse’ or ‘somethink’. She dots my ‘i’s’ and crosses my ‘t’s’, and I stifle a giggle when I realise that three of her closest Granddaughters ended up marrying Catholics, I comfort myself imagining her stifling a wee giggle too.

She left behind her a large and mostly successful family. This family is not without its tragedies, and scandals, but it is without its matriarch. Like all teams, we flounder without our captain. We all play our own game and forget that we can’t win without the support of our co-players. When my eldest sister deleted me on facebook, Grandma was not here to tell us both to mind our P’s and Q’s and pull our heads in. She wasn’t here to stop and listen to why we were upset with each other, and unfortunately, she didn’t tell us how to fix it. So the standoff remains, and I know that it shouldn’t.

Is it possible that the real problem since her passing has not been her absence alone, but the lack of leadership itself? The internal jostling for dominance continues and ideally a new matriarch should take position. Alas, after ten long years of testing, we are too raw and bruised from poor on field behaviour to consider an election. It seems that working together has become less of a possibility. We continue to lose respect for each other as each player’s true colours are revealed. And that’s just it, rather than reforming the old team, it is perhaps more realistic that we should move to take on our own colours, and concentrate more on our own teams…our own families.

News update

Last June we bought another house. It's a wee cottage in the hills, just 20 minutes drive from our old place and the beach. We have 6 acres here (that's somewhere around 2.4 hectares I think?), it's mostly wattle regrowth and lantana, which is pretty bad, but we have started cleaning it up. There is also 2 gorgeous rainforest gullies and high ridges dotted with eucalypt. The land closest to the house is cleared and the previous owners have planted hundreds of trees, some native and some exotic. We have jacarandas which were stunningly beautiful in flower in spring and early summer, we have palms and citrus and macadamia and mango. I have 2 vegie gardens, mostly producing zucchinis, pumpkins, watermelons and cucumbers, but also capsicum, eggplant, chillies and various herbs. I haven't done so well with tomatoes and lettuce, or potatoes and carrots but it might just be cooling down enough to try again. Yesterday got 2 new additions to our little family, 2 lovely Rhodesian red hens. They both layed while I was still setting up their coop. We were lucky, as a friend who is moving overseas gave them and the coop to us. I spent a mad frenzied few hours yesterday afternoon getting it all set up and secure before nightfall. I have seen foxes out here so I am very worried they will try and get my hens. Nasty things.
Next week the new semester starts at uni. This will be my third semester, as I studied over the summer as well. I've done really well so far but they have all just been plemininary courses really. This semester I am enrolled to do two Humanities subjects and officially start my Arts degree. I don't really know why I am studying or what I want to get out of it, I just know I am sick of doing everyone elses uni research for them and not getting any recognition for it. I am still helping them all of course, but it's very nice to do something for myself! S enrolled back into his degree course as soon as I started last year, so now the entire family is studying, quite funny really :)
WD got back from Germany last week, she was away in Europe for seven weeks which was a damn long time. She stayed mostly in Berlin but also travelled to Edinburgh, London, Paris, and Provence. Lucky her! She's come back all motivated to complete her degree this year and then move to Europe. It's all she talks about, she loved it over there so much. I knew she would love it but I guess I hoped she wouldn't plan to go so soon. This year will be huge for her though so there's no guarantee she will finish or that she'll still want to move to Europe at the end of it. Wait and see I guess? She split up with her artist boyfriend when in Berlin early in her trip and then met some Irish bloke just before she came home. He's in a band which actually sound really good. My kind of music, I hope she talks him into touring Australia and we get some free tickets :) The band in currently touring the UK and apparently it's going well.
SS starts back at Uni today, he's done really well at Uni so far too. I am so proud of him. He spent most of his holidays up here with us and I felt like crying yesterday, thinking of his absence. He's a good person but I do worry whether he is a happy person, he's so secretive.
Sometimes I miss our old house and being able to walk to the beach. I've been back there a lot though, as we have rented it to friends and they invite us over every few weeks. The house looks far better now than it ever did when we lived there as we did a lot of work on it just before we left. I think that's always the way isn't it? That you only renovate properly when you are selling or moving out? I am so glad we've been able to keep it anyway and perhaps one day we will live there again, who knows.
Anyway I am off to feed the chooks, though I better do some research first, as I actually have no idea how much to feed them? After that I am going to put the yabbie pots out again. I love yabbies, they taste so much nicer than prawns and we have heaps of them in the dam. I am loving living out here :)

Educational Angst

Sometimes I am just not sure which way I am facing. I want to turn around and look at where I have come from so I can figure out why I am here and see if I can remember where it actually was I thought I was heading.

I know that I am lucky, okay I am not financially very well off but I have a great family and I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Right now I am sitting on my bed at 8am in the morning. It is warm enough this morning that I have my bedroom door opened wide on to the deck and Ardi, my dog, is laying across the doorway, his doggy smell wafting in a little and reminding me that it is high time he had a good bath. The birds are singing frantically in the gum tree that overhangs our deck, the bright green leaves look just too beautiful against the clear blue of the morning sky. Through the silver branches of the tree I can see Emu mountian in the distance and beyond that the headlands of Noosa national park. I guess if I stood up I could probably also see, beyond Noosa, the white sand-dunes of Double Island Point. So, this isn't far from paradise, where I am right now, my feet tucked snugly under me and happy memories of this room surrounding me like a blanket of love.

I have almost recovered, this morning, from the emotional angst of the last few days after arguing with WD while she was home. I had been so very, very angry a her but this morning I woke up terrified for her and wishing so much that I had been more supportive and helpful. She is due at her class in about an hour, she would have been up for most of the night preparing her final presentation for the semester. Her piece is certainly artistic and I am praying that they will overlook the technical shortcomings and give her a pass (or better). I am actually angry at myself for not helping her more now whereas last week I was angry at myself for helping her at all.

Our arguments were mostly over her lack of commitment to uni. I have to take a long hard look at myself here. I am a parent, I want the best for my child. I can't believe that that is a bad thing? She hung up on me one day last week after I had just spent hours helping her by reading over a major assignment for her and checking her references. I suspect that I shouldn't be even helping her that much but it was the desperation in her voice and my pathetic desire to be 'needed'. Then a day or two later she hit me with the.."I am going to quit uni and become a musician". So here is where I really need to take a good look at myself and why her saying something like that is like a blow in the guts for me. I mean, shit, it's not my life, why do I care? She's a great singer, she could have fun with that?

Here's the deal though, maybe some of you remember that a few years ago I desperately wanted to go to uni. I started putting my application together before S shot me down in flames suggesting that I might find it a but too tough and we couldn't afford it anyway. I am not the most confident bunny so I figured money would be best spent on my kids education anyway, not silly old me..... So yea, there it is in a nutshell, I am jealous.

It's pretty pathetic to be jealous of your child isn't it? Is it a common thing though? I mean I just wanted her to have all the things that I didn't have and I have pushed her a bit, some would even think that I haven't pushed her enough. I am pretty lenient and understanding but right now, if she does throw it all away so soon I won't deny I am going to be devestated. I am just off the phone to her tonight (You'll be relieved to now I am no longer sitting on the bed, I did get up and actually had a lovely day). She told me that she will fail her exam on saturday and that she refuses to study for it. That really pisses me off. She could just be saying that to annoy me too, who knows?

I guess I can see that I am heading in all the wrong directions here, that in trying to be a good parent I just wind up being a crap one and in trying to be selfless I may have just wasted a whole heap of energy for nothing and probably would have just been better off doing what I wanted to do for me. Meh.

Belle and the Bell

Belle Breden stole the bell in 1979. I was in year nine and Belle was my nemesis. She delighted in making my life a misery and I simply didn’t understand it. The concept of getting a thrill out of causing discomfort to another has always been beyond me. I just cannot see the point. I suppose, now, Belle would have been described as the classic ADHD child. Mischievous, cheeky, energetic and the most annoying person I have ever known. I saw her a few years ago at a mutual friends wedding. She is ‘horsey’, has a brood of young boys and a husband twice her age. She was warm and friendly towards me. I was coolly polite. I still, on picturing her in my mind, feel the sharp niggle of annoyance deep under my ribs. Honestly said, I still hate her, and I felt some form of glee in seeing her lack of elegance and discomfort in the formal surrounds of a wedding. I would like to think I am ‘big’ enough to be able to forgive her for those years of cruelty to me, but I am not.

The bell woke us every morning. Deaconess Nelsen with her bowl haircut and her flat hard face would thump up the stairs next to our dorm first. Her bowed legs supporting her rounded turtle like body she would ring the bell beside each of our pillows in turn, a smirk of glee in her cold brown eyes. If we pulled the covers over our heads, as we invariably did in a vain attempt to soften the harsh clanging, she would move closer and maliciously give the bell an extra loud ‘dong’ next to our tortured ears. It wasn’t a nice way to wake up.

The dorm I was in that year, when I was fourteen, was in the oldest building. It must have been purpose built back when the school was in its early years. It was a huge rectangular Queenslander style structure. In the centre was a smaller rectangle cut up into about 16 ‘cubes’ filled with built-in wardrobes and chests of drawers. Three or four girls shared each ‘cube’ and inside the wardrobe doors sixty years of names were carved into the timber, painted over and carved fresh by the next generation. Windows ran around the building. Timber framed dormer windows, grand and beautiful I suppose in their heritage style. Our beds ran right around the dorm in a ring, our heads under those windows so that the cold air seemed to forget the glass was there and bite our faces in the night. The school was perched on top of the range so that in winter the winds howled up those valleys and every pane of glass seemed to rattle and whine in protest.

I realise now, that the section of dorm that Belle, four others and I were allotted was, due to its proximity to the matron’s office together with its position next to the main traffic areas the least comfortable, homely and private section of dorm in the entire school. Every boarding student in the school would file past and rumble up and down the timber stairs adjacent. We were the last to sleep at night and the first to wake in the mornings. It is clear to me now why the six of us were given this dubious honour. We were the ‘troublemakers’. The bad girls that had to be watched, accused, and suspected of every misdemeanour that occurred.

In retrospect it probably was a reputation well deserved though the treatment we received only served to encourage us. We were either hardened from too many years living away from our parents, as in the case of Jade, Jessie, Sally and I who had all been in boarding school since our primary years, ADHD like Belle or just plain rebellious like Kim. The six of us were the scapegoats. 

I still feel somehow miscast in this role. I suppose that I never felt I belonged and my discomfort with my position only led the others to ridicule me. They didn’t see me as ‘one of them’ either. I did whatever I could to try and fit in, to try and be happy have fun and keep out of trouble. Unfortunately I wasn’t very good at it.

Boarding school for me was an unhappy experience. Having come from an isolated area I suppose I wasn’t used to having people around me. Perhaps that was why I was always searching for some solitude? That in itself was a crime as any girl who could not be easily seen by the matrons at all times, clearly had to be up to no good. Aside from field hockey every Saturday which was the only thing that kept me sane in that godforsaken place, there was pretty well nothing at all to do. The weekends I spent lying on the grass around the oval, by the swimming pool if it were open, which wasn’t very often, or there were two televisions that we could watch if we wanted. I spent most Saturday afternoons in the Rec room lying about on the synthetic carpeted floor, half watching old Marilyn, Elvis or Jerry Lewis movies.

One afternoon, as I dozed, one of the only two little boys in the school sat behind me. I don’t remember his name only that he was dark skinned, Papua New Guinean I think, with freckles across his nose and tight sun bleached curly hair. I woke to feel him touching my hair, so very different from his own; my straight, silky black hair must have been strangely exotic to him. I managed to stay semi-conscious long enough to appreciate this so seldom felt sensation. The touch of another human being.  Perhaps I flinched when I realised that this child I barely knew was touching my head, overstepping that invisible barrier that we all had built around ourselves. He drew back and I felt guilty, as if I had rejected him in some way. I told him, it was fine that he could play with my hair if he wished but he drew back into himself, sitting against the wall and refusing to meet my gaze. I made a point of trying to always be nice to him after that, smiling when we passed in the hallway or in the dining room, but he would avert his gaze so in the end I don’t think we ever spoke.

My position as school rebel only became more set in stone that year. I had been suspended the year before which was the topic of an earlier essay that I have now lost. In short I was one of a group of girls (Sally, Kim, Fiona, who never came back for year nine, and myself) who had started rebelling in year eight. Three of us had already been in boarding school for more than two years and I believe that is the main reason we were so independent and jaded in our ability to respect the endless rules and regulations that shaped our lives. Kim was just plain naughty. We had started smoking sometime in year eight; hanging out with other older long-term ‘inmates’ and this placed us in a class of our own. The good girls didn’t really mix with us. I suppose the action of sneaking down to ‘smoker’s gully’ below the primary school on weekend for a cigarette filled us with an adrenalin rush that we all became addicted to. So we began to look for something a little more exciting. Kim was something of a ringleader I suppose. She was quite ‘mature’ for her age and having an older brother at the closest boy’s boarding school meant that she knew a lot of the boys. We started sneaking out sometimes to see our ‘boyfriends’. Of course, one night we got caught. Just Sally and I actually, and we were used as an example and suspended for two weeks. That’s a sure-fire way to get a black mark next to your name. It turned out to be written in indelible ink. Some things just never come clean no matter how hard you scrub.

It was Mrs Turner who was ringing the bell the morning that Belle stole it. She came up the stairs doggedly stomping and clanging before she noticed a window slightly ajar and set the bell down for a moment while she attended to the window. I wonder now if Belle had orchestrated the whole thing? Did she open that window? Had she planned with another of the girls to distract the matron while she spirited that bell away? I don’t know if I never knew this or if I just can’t remember, either way, Belle hid the bell and Mrs Turner was flummoxed, she couldn’t find it in our cupboards or under our beds and with her responsibility to wake the students and get them to the dining room on time, she didn’t have much chance to search for it. We held our faces straight and feigned ignorance. Mrs Turner then proceeded to shout the girls’ awake, panic on the edge of her voice. She was so lost without the power bestowed upon her by that metal noisemaker. Belle was then given time to hide it more securely. We were all most impressed. What followed were about two days of bliss as poor old Mrs Turner was left shouting us awake until Deaconess Nelson dug into the coffers and purchased a new one. It was worth it though; even two days of laughs were valuable beyond measure to us.

It wouldn’t happen in any other section of the dorm though, would it? It had to be the ‘bad girls’ who were behind this and so our reputations were further tarnished. Mrs Turner lost any of the tiny skerrick of kindness or sympathy she may have had for us and took extra glee in all her future stomping and clanging when she was in our vicinity. She was extra vigilant in the night when she came around to confiscate our radio cassette players that we would sleep with under our pillows. I resented her the most for this, that music was a comfort like no other through those long, cold and lonely nights.

Despite loudspeaker announcements, daily dorm searches and mounting threats of detention or suspension should the bell not be returned. Belle herself, had managed to hide it so well that it was never found that term. I suspect she managed to gain access to the box room and hide it in her suitcase, then take it home with her, because it was about a year later that her mother found it and returned it with an apology. I can't remember Belle's punishment but I think the many weeks of detention she earned would have kept her away from me, and I would have been happy about that.