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
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 01, 2020
Sunday, March 11, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Dear Mother-in-law
Thankyou so much for your call this morning and your rude sarcastic tone when I informed you that no, your son was not at home mis-spending his time with me but out working in the cyclonic wind and pouring rain. Your assertion that you would call him on his mobile(to check if I was telling the truth) shows again your complete understanding of his busy schedule and your naturally kind and thoughful nature. Your continued consideration of his health and happiness was again evident when you did not bother to enquire as to how he was or whether he indeed had any time to take your long and self-serving call. Your insistance that you will attend the State of Origin match with my husband's infirm father is interesting when in the very next breath you proceed to damn, detest and deride him. This is especially so when you have repeatedly stated over the years that no-one would drag you to watch such a pointless revolting game, as "My time is rather more valuable to me that that!". This decision to attend is also despite your clear knowledge of the thrill it would give my husband to go, especially given that it is his blood relative(not yours) who is likely to be honoured at this match.
My husband's phonecall to me, following yours to him, was again filled with the choking pain you always leave him in. I hope you enjoyed your morning of spreading spite and poison and look forward to your continued complaints against my son for his not doing enough jobs around the house for you, kissing your putrid feet nor being the fictitional totally unrealistic son that you think you wanted him to be. Evidently, the indesputible fact that you are the mother of a truly beautiful person has escaped you yet again and any small showing of a mother's love and kindness is beyond you.
I can only thank you now for the vitriol you spat at me when first, in 1988, you backed me into a corner in your hallway, stabbed me in the breast with your pointed finger and told me that I was NOT the daughter-in-law you wanted. Indeed I would likely detest myself if I WERE the type of person that somebody like you did approve of so you will understand my thankfulness in this matter is heartfelt. Coincidentally you nor are you the Mother-in-law that I hoped for! I also appreciate your advice at the time that your son was a horrible person and why anyone would want to marry such a dreadfully disagreeable, drug addled dropout was completely beyond your comprehension. It seems that despite your oft touted law degree and constant air of superior intelligence, many things are.
I will also take this opportunity to thank you for your part in creating the sensitive and well adjusted man my husband is now. That you have reached this pinnacle of achievement through cruelty, selfishness and downright evil has only served to ensure that your son is the complete opposite of you. His lifelong battle to break away from everything you are, has been a constant torture and the pain and guilt he feels now in acknowledging his rejection of you, is in contrast to your complete lack of regret at past horrors or consideration for anyone other than yourself.
Another aspect for which I am eternally grateful to you is the luxury that I have of blaming every one of his small and insignificant faults and every one of the equally insigificant hiccups within our marriage entirely on you. Any disagreement that we have are obviously again the result of his rebellion against you. His refusal to put the toilet seat down is your fault, as is his occasional excessive alcohol consumption and his sometimes mildly irritating passion for football. I am left in no doubt as to your culpability for any actions he has taken over the years which have been in any way cold or remote or have shown any disrespect to women. You must be so proud.
Clearly I have much to be thankful for. It is a shame that you too cannot be thankful he is not like you, for if he were I can only imagine the fireworks as the two of your fought to force your will upon each other.
So I will thank you again for your phonecall. I appreciate these calls, seldom and succinct as they may be, as they serve only to remind me of all that I must be truly grateful for.
Your one and only...
daughter-in-law,
Alice.
Apologies for the long and poorly structured sentences, anger doesn't like to spell-check.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Romeo & Juliet
The best memories of all were when my siblings and I were all home from boarding school and perhaps my cousin James was out on a university break. We would spend the days sitting in the sunroom reading "Reader's Digest" jokes out loud to each other or trying to fathom a mind bender that my cousin had heard at Uni. I only remember one of these well. The idea was that he would give us a few details of a scenario and ask us to work out how it came about. We would ask him questions but he could only give us yes or no answers.
This time He said;
"Romeo & Juliet were found dead on the floor. How did they die?"
It took us a few days but eventually we worked it out. If you don't know this puzzle please feel free to ask away and 'play' with me.
I adored my cousin. He was a lot like my father I think, just a younger and better looking version. He had made quite a fuss of me when I was small and would swing me around and throw me up into the air then catch me again as I squealed with delight. I distinctly remember the visit when I had become too big for this kind of treatment and my adoration of him had begun to get on his nerves. In the sun room he gently but firmly refused my access to his lap, when I knocked on his bedroom door he ignored me and at dinner my excited chatter went unheeded and as he concentrated instead on whatever my sister was saying. I was gutted.
My sister was smug about it, a look of victory on her face, the same look she used to get when we were smaller and our great uncle favoured her over me. I didn't understand why Uncle preferred her but I can't remember it bothering me overly much. I had so much love from Grandma which Cassie clearly resented, our big sister Julie would always take my side and big brother Robert chose to bully me over her(It was easier I suppose) I can understand so clearly now how she felt so overlooked in our family and how my arrival, when she was aged four, unseated her so badly. This is why it was so easy for him, our great uncle, a man in his fifties who never married, to prey so evilly on that little girl. What strikes me now is the fact that although we all grew up in the same household with the same environment, our places in the family resulted in us having such monumentally different childhoods.
James has four lovely, well adjusted daughters of his own now, our uncle was killed in a car accident in 1976 at about the time of that holiday I guess.... and then there was Romeo & Juliet....
This time He said;
"Romeo & Juliet were found dead on the floor. How did they die?"
It took us a few days but eventually we worked it out. If you don't know this puzzle please feel free to ask away and 'play' with me.
I adored my cousin. He was a lot like my father I think, just a younger and better looking version. He had made quite a fuss of me when I was small and would swing me around and throw me up into the air then catch me again as I squealed with delight. I distinctly remember the visit when I had become too big for this kind of treatment and my adoration of him had begun to get on his nerves. In the sun room he gently but firmly refused my access to his lap, when I knocked on his bedroom door he ignored me and at dinner my excited chatter went unheeded and as he concentrated instead on whatever my sister was saying. I was gutted.
My sister was smug about it, a look of victory on her face, the same look she used to get when we were smaller and our great uncle favoured her over me. I didn't understand why Uncle preferred her but I can't remember it bothering me overly much. I had so much love from Grandma which Cassie clearly resented, our big sister Julie would always take my side and big brother Robert chose to bully me over her(It was easier I suppose) I can understand so clearly now how she felt so overlooked in our family and how my arrival, when she was aged four, unseated her so badly. This is why it was so easy for him, our great uncle, a man in his fifties who never married, to prey so evilly on that little girl. What strikes me now is the fact that although we all grew up in the same household with the same environment, our places in the family resulted in us having such monumentally different childhoods.
James has four lovely, well adjusted daughters of his own now, our uncle was killed in a car accident in 1976 at about the time of that holiday I guess.... and then there was Romeo & Juliet....
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Evil , insanity and why we should move to the other side of the world.
Dear Mother and Father-in-Law,
I can truly say from the deepest part of my soul that I think the two of you are the most revolting despicable people on earth. The manner in which you have treated all five of the poor souls who have had the misfortune to call themselves your children makes me want to vomit in your faces. From your decision to abandon two of your disabled children one as a baby and the other as a toddler, to care facilities while you lied to your remaining children and for all intents and purposes pretended the other two did not exist sickens me beyond belief. Although in the past I have had great sympathy for you and have tried my best to be understanding as to the reason for your decisions, I now find, given the clear picture you are now giving of the true state of your hearts, that you do not deserve my sympathy nor my understanding.
Your two sons are both wonderful people but you seem unable to see this and instead are determined to cause them as much pain and agony as you can as you constantly deride them and express your dissapointment in them for not fullfilling some completely unrealistic ideal of what your warped minds think your sons should have become. That you somehow believe, after all of this, that your sons, in any way, owe YOU respect is beyond me when you have never shown either of them one iota of respect in their entire lives. Then there's your poor adopted daughter. The poor girl must ask herself what on earth she did to have been cursed with such unbelievably evil and incapable parents. Surely the world could have found her a normal family as not only does she have to now endure the knowledge that her real mother was unable to care for her for whatever reason but also that she was supposed to be some perfect substitiute for the imperfect children that you did not want and that anything less than perfection from her would never be tolerated.
You both make me sick and I truly hope I never again for all eternity have the misfortune to be in your company. The words in the letter that my husband received from you today were beyond belief. You most definitely do not deserve him as a son and your greatest fear that we might "keep the children from you" is now about to become a most definite reality. Unlike your children, my children absolutely adore their father and unlike you he respects them and he deserves their adoration.
Your EVIL* daughter-in-law
Alice
*I feel poisoned right now, my heart feels black and hollow and it sickens me. That the actions of these people make me feel emotions that are as evil and sick as them sickens me, I have to write all this anger down because I feel that if I don't put it somewhere it will overtake me and I will do or say something that I will regret.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
April 1973 - AM
Like in any home almost anywhere in the world the kitchen was the life of the house. In the centre of the narrow room, under the windows, was the ‘Everhot’ slow combustion stove. I can still hear the creak of the firebox door, and my memory can feel the emanating heat, in summer, in winter, early in the morning and late at night, the constant unwavering soul of our home.
Until I was about thirteen I was awoken every morning to the sound of my father chopping kindling to stoke up the fire. I didn’t have a bedroom; instead I slept in the ‘sleepout’, which was basically an enclosed verandah. It had a door that opened onto stairs leading into the side garden. Out there the lemon tree, the orange tree, the peach trees and the plum crowded against the louvered southern wall. The door was weathered though and rather than strain it against the torn green linoleum to force it to a shuddering close each night, it was just left open. As I woke each morning to the sharp splintering sounds of my father’s axe work the open door afforded me a view of the woodheap and the child’s timber and chain swing alongside it. Of the wattle trees and the ironbark silhouetted against the white early dawn of the western sky. I would lie there as my eyes gained focus gazing at those dancing leaves. I saw them filled with creatures and faces. Laughing dancing girls and stern pipe smoking grandfathers. Yapping excited fox terriers and proud contented cats. In centre, facing me, cross-legged I saw an aboriginal man, holding his didgeridoo and staring hard into my face as he made his silent tribute to the beginning of the day.
All this as I listened to the firebox-ready wood crash and tumble into the woodbox by the back door, then the squeak of the firebox door and the scrape of the stoking tool as my father searched for still-warm embers amongst the ash and then laid out a few torn sheets of newspaper with the splintery tinder over it. In moments I would hear the roar and crackle of flames followed by the decisive slam of the firebox door as my father deemed his task as complete, a job well done.
It was wise to wait for a moment until the kettle was boiled before throwing on the warmest clothes I could find. Scrabbling through my ‘lowboy’ for any ill-fitting hand-me-downs from my three siblings and five cousins, the legacy of being the youngest in the generation. It is well that I was not concerned with fashion then, as I must have looked quite lost and unkempt. I rarely wore shoes, so I would run to the warmth of the kitchen before my hardened little feet had time to feel the cold.
Up above the high cupboard was where the ‘Milo’ was kept and I was allowed two teaspoons of the malt chocolate mix in hot water, one sugar and milk if we had any. If not, I would top it with tablespoons of lumpy powdered milk that became a treat in itself, sweet chewy globs of milky goodness. I would have to hide to eat that though, sneak out to the cold front verandah where my mother could not snap at me for being wasteful and greedy. “When I was a child.” Her voice would drone on endlessly.
We lived in the same house that my mother had grown up in. She reminded us every single day how lucky we were to live in such comfort, in a house with running water and painted walls. With fresh bread delivered twice weekly instead of damper made on weevil infested flour, with an actual kerosene refrigerator instead of the air-cooled ‘meatsafe’. According to my mother, everything was better when she was a child. Living on corned beef and unsweetened cocoa, believing that cheese was a treat as wonderful as chocolate and teeth could only be cleaned properly with charcoal was some form of utopia that she seemed to be forever guilty of depriving her children of. Meanwhile I spent my every waking moment straining to hear the sound of a vehicle or an aeroplane, dreaming of what it would be like to have a neighbour that lived closer than 10 miles away or a shop that was closer than sixty miles away. Civilisation called to me like some shining beacon in the far distance, on those cold mornings around the stove in that tiny kitchen my utopia was a land of homogenised milk in a bottle instead of manure laced in a bucket; of electric lights and doors that closed; and most of all of other people. It seemed that even then, my mother’s idea and my idea of the way life should be was somewhat different.
After I had swallowed down the last sweet chocolaty drops of my morning Milo and my mother and father were leaning, smoking cigarettes over the stove and sipping their hot tea I would carefully pour a cup for my Grandmother. She had a favourite cup and saucer and she drank her tea white with none. My feet would feel their way across the wide worn cypress pine floorboards through the dining room across the gold linoleum in the sunroom and to her door.
“Good morning Sunshine” she would say as she unhooked her sliding door and let me in. I loved the mornings in my Grandmother’s room. The “His Master’s Voice” radio and her dressing table top drawer filled with exotic earrings and untouchable pills. My cousin took one once. I always imagine it was one of the little red ones. They bundled her into the car and rushed her to the hospital. An hour and a half of stressful dirt road driving all the way to town. I assume they pumped her stomach when they got her there because she lived to climb the rafters in the shed another day and swallow some strychnine so that the whole panicky process could be repeated. Another survival to add to the family story archive, told and retold until nobody can remember exactly how the original story transpired.
As she drank her tea my Grandmother would tell me stories. Answer my questions about her childhood in Scotland and traveling to Australia by ship to grow up in Brisbane. She would allow me to gaze at my reflection in her magnifying mirror so I could imagine what I might look like when I was all grown up. So there I would be, perched on my grandmother’s bed, with my mismatched hand-me-down clothes, my chocolate ringed mouth, excruciatingly painful screw on drop earrings reflected in that mirror into the future while I thought about Scotland, castle, cities and ships. A world away from the morning bellow of the cattle in the yards, waiting to be fed and milked and drafted in a ritual that comforted and infuriated me all at once.
Grandma would shoo me away while she got dressed for her day and I would race across to the yards with the others. Most mornings I rummaged through the old shoe box by the back stairs, hoping against hope that my feet may have grown enough during the night that one of the pairs of dusty old riding boots might fit me. My mother would snap at me in her panicked voice to check for red-back spiders before I put my feet into danger. So I would use my hand to check as she insisted. That logic still baffles me? I never found a red-back and those boots never did fit, so I would stay barefoot, running across the sharp spiky dry grass as fast as I could so it wouldn’t have the chance to hurt my feet.
The yards were warm with animal respiration and busy as we worked, mixing grains, filling troughs with water and feed drums with hay. Mucking out the bull stalls, milking, letting calves in and out and. It was all hands on deck and conversation was king as we performed our tasks by habit. An hour or so of teamwork every morning and evening without fail. Back at the house Grandma would have a cooked breakfast ready on the table when we returned. We always came into the house through the kitchen, leaving boots outside or scraping the manure from our feet. The kitchen would be warm and filled with the smells of cooking as we crowded through to the bathroom to wash our hands and feet then quickly dress in slightly better clothes for school.
I never remember having to rush yet even after that leisurely two-course breakfast every morning where we delved into the cornflakes for the hidden toy and argued over how many omelettes we each had eaten, we seemed to have time to burn. We helped Grandma clear the table and wash up. Four kids fighting over who was wiping and who was putting away and my brother gleefully flicking me on the bottom with the wet teatowel. The drive to school was eleven miles. We always drove seven but my parents took it in turns with another family to drive the last five. So we met at the “Black Gate”, a gate thus named after it began its life soaked in Linseed oil but had long since grayed in the weather and the sun. We played hopscotch in the sand there as we waited for the other family and then for our parents to stop talking about the weather and the government and the price of fuel.
Then it was time for another day of school.... I hope you have enjoyed waking up with me on some unremarkable day in 1973?
Until I was about thirteen I was awoken every morning to the sound of my father chopping kindling to stoke up the fire. I didn’t have a bedroom; instead I slept in the ‘sleepout’, which was basically an enclosed verandah. It had a door that opened onto stairs leading into the side garden. Out there the lemon tree, the orange tree, the peach trees and the plum crowded against the louvered southern wall. The door was weathered though and rather than strain it against the torn green linoleum to force it to a shuddering close each night, it was just left open. As I woke each morning to the sharp splintering sounds of my father’s axe work the open door afforded me a view of the woodheap and the child’s timber and chain swing alongside it. Of the wattle trees and the ironbark silhouetted against the white early dawn of the western sky. I would lie there as my eyes gained focus gazing at those dancing leaves. I saw them filled with creatures and faces. Laughing dancing girls and stern pipe smoking grandfathers. Yapping excited fox terriers and proud contented cats. In centre, facing me, cross-legged I saw an aboriginal man, holding his didgeridoo and staring hard into my face as he made his silent tribute to the beginning of the day.
All this as I listened to the firebox-ready wood crash and tumble into the woodbox by the back door, then the squeak of the firebox door and the scrape of the stoking tool as my father searched for still-warm embers amongst the ash and then laid out a few torn sheets of newspaper with the splintery tinder over it. In moments I would hear the roar and crackle of flames followed by the decisive slam of the firebox door as my father deemed his task as complete, a job well done.
It was wise to wait for a moment until the kettle was boiled before throwing on the warmest clothes I could find. Scrabbling through my ‘lowboy’ for any ill-fitting hand-me-downs from my three siblings and five cousins, the legacy of being the youngest in the generation. It is well that I was not concerned with fashion then, as I must have looked quite lost and unkempt. I rarely wore shoes, so I would run to the warmth of the kitchen before my hardened little feet had time to feel the cold.
Up above the high cupboard was where the ‘Milo’ was kept and I was allowed two teaspoons of the malt chocolate mix in hot water, one sugar and milk if we had any. If not, I would top it with tablespoons of lumpy powdered milk that became a treat in itself, sweet chewy globs of milky goodness. I would have to hide to eat that though, sneak out to the cold front verandah where my mother could not snap at me for being wasteful and greedy. “When I was a child.” Her voice would drone on endlessly.
We lived in the same house that my mother had grown up in. She reminded us every single day how lucky we were to live in such comfort, in a house with running water and painted walls. With fresh bread delivered twice weekly instead of damper made on weevil infested flour, with an actual kerosene refrigerator instead of the air-cooled ‘meatsafe’. According to my mother, everything was better when she was a child. Living on corned beef and unsweetened cocoa, believing that cheese was a treat as wonderful as chocolate and teeth could only be cleaned properly with charcoal was some form of utopia that she seemed to be forever guilty of depriving her children of. Meanwhile I spent my every waking moment straining to hear the sound of a vehicle or an aeroplane, dreaming of what it would be like to have a neighbour that lived closer than 10 miles away or a shop that was closer than sixty miles away. Civilisation called to me like some shining beacon in the far distance, on those cold mornings around the stove in that tiny kitchen my utopia was a land of homogenised milk in a bottle instead of manure laced in a bucket; of electric lights and doors that closed; and most of all of other people. It seemed that even then, my mother’s idea and my idea of the way life should be was somewhat different.
After I had swallowed down the last sweet chocolaty drops of my morning Milo and my mother and father were leaning, smoking cigarettes over the stove and sipping their hot tea I would carefully pour a cup for my Grandmother. She had a favourite cup and saucer and she drank her tea white with none. My feet would feel their way across the wide worn cypress pine floorboards through the dining room across the gold linoleum in the sunroom and to her door.
“Good morning Sunshine” she would say as she unhooked her sliding door and let me in. I loved the mornings in my Grandmother’s room. The “His Master’s Voice” radio and her dressing table top drawer filled with exotic earrings and untouchable pills. My cousin took one once. I always imagine it was one of the little red ones. They bundled her into the car and rushed her to the hospital. An hour and a half of stressful dirt road driving all the way to town. I assume they pumped her stomach when they got her there because she lived to climb the rafters in the shed another day and swallow some strychnine so that the whole panicky process could be repeated. Another survival to add to the family story archive, told and retold until nobody can remember exactly how the original story transpired.
As she drank her tea my Grandmother would tell me stories. Answer my questions about her childhood in Scotland and traveling to Australia by ship to grow up in Brisbane. She would allow me to gaze at my reflection in her magnifying mirror so I could imagine what I might look like when I was all grown up. So there I would be, perched on my grandmother’s bed, with my mismatched hand-me-down clothes, my chocolate ringed mouth, excruciatingly painful screw on drop earrings reflected in that mirror into the future while I thought about Scotland, castle, cities and ships. A world away from the morning bellow of the cattle in the yards, waiting to be fed and milked and drafted in a ritual that comforted and infuriated me all at once.
Grandma would shoo me away while she got dressed for her day and I would race across to the yards with the others. Most mornings I rummaged through the old shoe box by the back stairs, hoping against hope that my feet may have grown enough during the night that one of the pairs of dusty old riding boots might fit me. My mother would snap at me in her panicked voice to check for red-back spiders before I put my feet into danger. So I would use my hand to check as she insisted. That logic still baffles me? I never found a red-back and those boots never did fit, so I would stay barefoot, running across the sharp spiky dry grass as fast as I could so it wouldn’t have the chance to hurt my feet.
The yards were warm with animal respiration and busy as we worked, mixing grains, filling troughs with water and feed drums with hay. Mucking out the bull stalls, milking, letting calves in and out and. It was all hands on deck and conversation was king as we performed our tasks by habit. An hour or so of teamwork every morning and evening without fail. Back at the house Grandma would have a cooked breakfast ready on the table when we returned. We always came into the house through the kitchen, leaving boots outside or scraping the manure from our feet. The kitchen would be warm and filled with the smells of cooking as we crowded through to the bathroom to wash our hands and feet then quickly dress in slightly better clothes for school.
I never remember having to rush yet even after that leisurely two-course breakfast every morning where we delved into the cornflakes for the hidden toy and argued over how many omelettes we each had eaten, we seemed to have time to burn. We helped Grandma clear the table and wash up. Four kids fighting over who was wiping and who was putting away and my brother gleefully flicking me on the bottom with the wet teatowel. The drive to school was eleven miles. We always drove seven but my parents took it in turns with another family to drive the last five. So we met at the “Black Gate”, a gate thus named after it began its life soaked in Linseed oil but had long since grayed in the weather and the sun. We played hopscotch in the sand there as we waited for the other family and then for our parents to stop talking about the weather and the government and the price of fuel.
Then it was time for another day of school.... I hope you have enjoyed waking up with me on some unremarkable day in 1973?
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Home on the land....my mother would be proud.
This trip has been exactly what I needed. Out here I am so completely at home, all the bits of me seem to fall into place and I feel truly happy. There are of course so many memories, happy and sad. I can feel my father in the un-renovated rooms, down by the shed where he fiddled with machinery or by the empty creek where we used to sit together and fish. My grandmother is in the air, in the crisp sheets that we carried in from the line together or in the garden where she traced the teddy bear rhyme around my palm. Four generations of my family have now called this home, have let their feet become caked with mud while catching huge lobster sized yabbies from the dams or let the harsh dry scrub scratch their arms as they trekked up the the aboriginal cave in the hills. I had been told the hand paintings were gone, but it wasn't true. They are still there and I felt like singing with joy when I found them. It was enormous fun to show them to my Japanese guest, sharing something often makes it better I think. Super Son has enjoyed it too, I can tell, as slowly the tension of keeping his 'cool' face on eased and he has relaxed. He ran over the rainbow coloured rocks, the sheets of dry gum bark cracking crisply under his converse. He's going to need a new pair after this trip. I feel like I haven't seen him so animated in months.
I also found an aboriginal axe on the first morning here. I have been looking for one all of my life, I had just shown Ink the grooves in the sandstone down by the water hole and tried to explain to him that these grooves were made as the stone axes they used were sharpened, as we walked back towards the house over the ridge where I played so much as a child and felt such peace as a teenager an axe just lay on the ground in my path. Perhaps a cow had kicked it out of the soil, anyway it almost feels as if I was meant to find it, as if the land finally accepts me as it's offspring. Ha, that sounds stupid but thats just how it is.
Today is our last full day out here. I hope to catch some more yabbies, maybe climb the highest mountain so we can see one hundred miles around us (almost), perhaps we will go and collect nuts from the huge Queensland nut tree in the 'park', right now I am taking the binoculars and checking the water tanks for my brother. He is happily on the coast with his family so perhaps for the first time in over twenty years, this place really does feel like my home. I feel lucky.
On the phone my daughter tells me that she is moving to Sydney very soon. She is going down in a few weeks to try and find a job, I feel a little sad but resigned that maybe this is something she feels she has to do. Maybe I will come to Sydney for a visit soon? I can't think of any greater contrast than this place and Sydney.
I also found an aboriginal axe on the first morning here. I have been looking for one all of my life, I had just shown Ink the grooves in the sandstone down by the water hole and tried to explain to him that these grooves were made as the stone axes they used were sharpened, as we walked back towards the house over the ridge where I played so much as a child and felt such peace as a teenager an axe just lay on the ground in my path. Perhaps a cow had kicked it out of the soil, anyway it almost feels as if I was meant to find it, as if the land finally accepts me as it's offspring. Ha, that sounds stupid but thats just how it is.
Today is our last full day out here. I hope to catch some more yabbies, maybe climb the highest mountain so we can see one hundred miles around us (almost), perhaps we will go and collect nuts from the huge Queensland nut tree in the 'park', right now I am taking the binoculars and checking the water tanks for my brother. He is happily on the coast with his family so perhaps for the first time in over twenty years, this place really does feel like my home. I feel lucky.
On the phone my daughter tells me that she is moving to Sydney very soon. She is going down in a few weeks to try and find a job, I feel a little sad but resigned that maybe this is something she feels she has to do. Maybe I will come to Sydney for a visit soon? I can't think of any greater contrast than this place and Sydney.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Posting and Reposting...Kitchens and Memories...Deleting the wrong files....
Last week I decided that I needed to clean out my laptop, delete files, programs etc. I did the full back-up first, of course, but did not realise that the toshiba "my safe" folder I kept all my writings in wasn't going to back up correctly. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have managed to lose most of my writings. Pretty stupid hey? I have been able to find some though and stumbled across this post, below, written for what would have been my father's 78th birthday a few years back. It is rather similar to the previous post but I thought I would share it again anyway.
Seventy-eight
In the evenings it seems now that it was always just Dad and me. We would sit up late and play cards in a wonderfully comfortable quiet. When I longed for home during long freezing winters at boarding school, I longed the most for those evenings with my father. There was something in me that he understood, a thing that set us apart from the others.
He taught me to play euchre so that wherever in the world I have travelled he is with me. I feel my hands holding the cards the way his did and I rest my finger on my chin to consider my chances, as he did.
He liked a whisky late at night over those cards. He never drank more than a tiny glass or two, so I could never think of my father as an alcoholic, as my mother claimed he was. He was more a binge drinker when the cattle sales were on in town and when you consider his binges were often many months apart, for the most part he was a calm, patient and hard working man.
Every morning he woke me as he chopped the wood for the fire. I would wait until I heard the thump and rumble of the wood, and tinkle of the tinder landing in the woodbox. I would wait for the splash and crackle and roar as he lit the kerosine splattered firewood. I would listen for the sounds of his sock covered feet shuffle to the taps and fill the kettle, the scrape and grating squeak as he removed the fire cover and set the water over the new hot flames to boil. These memories of sound are like gold to me. The kettle would not take long and I would hear him feed the fire with chunks of increasing size, the final hollow pressured thump as he became satisfied with the health of the fire and rammed the firedoor shut. I would wait for this, then stumble out to the kitchen, warm now and welcoming.
We would lean inside the oven door together and let our cold hands sit on the white enamel insulated (asbestos probably) stovetop covers. His first hand rolled drum cigarette would be sending spirals of blue smoke into his eyes, and he would gaze quietly over the back paddock. I wonder now what he was thinking about. I suppose we must have spent this time talking and it seems wrong that the sounds of that room are so acute in my memory but his words seem to have drifted away and dissipated into the black soot on that vj lined ceiling.
Dad would have been seventy-eight last week. I knew even then, I think, that he would not last that long. He often joked about his smoking, that we would see the smoke rising from his grave but I looked last time and there wasn't any. I imagine him laughing and reminding me that he did give up in the end but not until two weeks before he died. It annoys me now that the doctors didn't let him live his last few weeks with that small joy. Instead they pumped him full of nicotine to stave the cravings and his weakness for just one more cigarette placed too much stress on his poor heart.
His dear heart.
Seventy-eight
In the evenings it seems now that it was always just Dad and me. We would sit up late and play cards in a wonderfully comfortable quiet. When I longed for home during long freezing winters at boarding school, I longed the most for those evenings with my father. There was something in me that he understood, a thing that set us apart from the others.
He taught me to play euchre so that wherever in the world I have travelled he is with me. I feel my hands holding the cards the way his did and I rest my finger on my chin to consider my chances, as he did.
He liked a whisky late at night over those cards. He never drank more than a tiny glass or two, so I could never think of my father as an alcoholic, as my mother claimed he was. He was more a binge drinker when the cattle sales were on in town and when you consider his binges were often many months apart, for the most part he was a calm, patient and hard working man.
Every morning he woke me as he chopped the wood for the fire. I would wait until I heard the thump and rumble of the wood, and tinkle of the tinder landing in the woodbox. I would wait for the splash and crackle and roar as he lit the kerosine splattered firewood. I would listen for the sounds of his sock covered feet shuffle to the taps and fill the kettle, the scrape and grating squeak as he removed the fire cover and set the water over the new hot flames to boil. These memories of sound are like gold to me. The kettle would not take long and I would hear him feed the fire with chunks of increasing size, the final hollow pressured thump as he became satisfied with the health of the fire and rammed the firedoor shut. I would wait for this, then stumble out to the kitchen, warm now and welcoming.
We would lean inside the oven door together and let our cold hands sit on the white enamel insulated (asbestos probably) stovetop covers. His first hand rolled drum cigarette would be sending spirals of blue smoke into his eyes, and he would gaze quietly over the back paddock. I wonder now what he was thinking about. I suppose we must have spent this time talking and it seems wrong that the sounds of that room are so acute in my memory but his words seem to have drifted away and dissipated into the black soot on that vj lined ceiling.
Dad would have been seventy-eight last week. I knew even then, I think, that he would not last that long. He often joked about his smoking, that we would see the smoke rising from his grave but I looked last time and there wasn't any. I imagine him laughing and reminding me that he did give up in the end but not until two weeks before he died. It annoys me now that the doctors didn't let him live his last few weeks with that small joy. Instead they pumped him full of nicotine to stave the cravings and his weakness for just one more cigarette placed too much stress on his poor heart.
His dear heart.
Monday, March 24, 2003
Cold call
When the phonecall came through I was standing in the kitchen, I can't remember the room well now, only that there was a breakfast bar and it was the kitchen that had been put in by the company who used a photo of my sister and her first husband in their catalogue.
My oldest sister was hugely pregnant and sitting on a breakfast stool. I think she was wearing her dressing gown, she was enormous; it was fairly early in the morning cool and crisp as it always was in that house and so very, very clean. My sister's houses are never anything like that anymore.
I think I had just woken up and she and I were drinking cups of too hot coffee. She always made it too hot for me, and then after a few sips she would put hers back in the microwave to heat it up again.
.......
I see her face as she listens to the words from the caller. "Yes, she says, Alice is here with me" Her voice strains at the end of the sentence. I can hear her fear.
I know that someone has died, when a call like that comes through there is never any doubt.
I sit down and I am prepared. Grandma would have been 85 then. I had been preparing myself all my life that one day she would have to go. I reach my hand out to my sister and ask if it is Grandma. My sister's face is grey, she is still on the phone, I cannot listen though, all I can hear is a rushing of blood in my head. "It's Dad", she croaks. She muttered into the phone some more and the chair beneath me seems to push up into my body. I want to have misheard her, I know that she is wrong. He is only 61, there is a mistake. I stand up and run into the bedroom where S is asleep. I wake him and tell him hurriedly then I hear the alarm in my sister's voice calling me back.
As I run back I am numb and I see her there, crumpling into herself. I hold her and she moans with fear and shock.
The phone is back in it's cradle. The sounds she is making feel remote, silly almost but I stand firmly and I comfort her. I am thinking about the baby due any minute. I am thinking that I need to go outside and run. I want air in my lungs. I am numb and I am suffocating and my sister needs me.
.......
I don't remember much after that, only more phonecalls and my father's sister saying he was better off now. I wanted to ask her how the fuck she came to that conclusion?
All I really felt is an overhwelming need to get out of that house and away. I wanted to be home on the property where I could run away into the paddocks for miles and scream and scream and scream. Instead I walked sedately down Wilson Street in Oakleigh to the train station. S is walking with me and he is saying the wrong things and I want him to shut up.
.......
We catch the train into the city, past the MCG and we climb out at Flinders street. We walk up to the mall and I am walking too fast but no walk is fast enough for me. Everywhere I look people are doing what they do every day and I am in a bubble and everything feels wrong. We reach the mall and go to the lebanese cafe around the corner. It is like the old cafes in my home town with booths down each side and chrome edging on the tables. We don't go inside to eat because I need to be in the open and I don't know why. We buy falafel rolls wrapped in white paper and we need to find a place to sit to eat, we go the the post office and sit on the stairs.
The juice from the roll drips down my chin and I don't care. I want to scream and cry but I can't. I am surprised that I can eat, that my hands look the same and the sky is still there, where it was yesterday.
We were supposed to meet our friends 4 weeks ago in Ulladulla, they never showed, so we have driven on to melbourne. To my sister, to other friends, to jobs. In that moment with the falafel juice on my chin, and reality smacking me in the face, a line of tall travel-weary surfers trudge up the stairs in search of mail from home.
It is good to see them. They say that Jim who I am scanning for, has gone to my sister's place looking for us. So they get their mail and we go to the closest pub. Which is what we usually do and this does seem right.
The pub we go to is a step or two down from the street. It is dark and there is dark timber and loud carpet. We stand at a round shelf built around a pillar. I have a VB. This is the worst beer in the world, after this week I will never drink it again. S talks happily with our friends. Bob asks me if I am alright and I nod. They don't know what to say to me and it is alright.
In this room I am having a beer with my dad. He would like it here, I turn my shoulder slightly to shut off the others. I picture him standing beside me and in my head we have a conversation and as always he cracks jokes and I laugh and I worry that the haircut I gave him isn't perfect but he is happy and he is smiling and I don't want to turn around when the others talk to me because when I do that, I will be back in the real world and I don't like it here anymore.
.......
Later on we went to meet Jim and when I saw him I looked at him pleadingly for understanding because I know he has lost his parents. Later I think how cruel that was of me, but at that moment I was so desperate for understanding that I did not see that. I don't remember what he said to me but suddenly I realised I had left my hugely pregnant sister all alone and I had to go to her.
.......
She tells me they have decided that the funeral will be the next day, because if they waited an extra day, they would be having it on my birthday. They want me to stay in Melbourne with her because she cannot fly and it is too far anyway. I agree but I will wish so much that I hadn't.
.......
What sort of daughter doesn't go to her own father's funeral?
I don't remember ever crying.
On my birthday I didn't want to go out but S insisted. When we got there I couldn't do it, instead I spent the evening on the side of the road in the back of Jim's truck with the dogs, while everybody partied on watching some band in some pub in some suburb in some city called Melbourne.
My oldest sister was hugely pregnant and sitting on a breakfast stool. I think she was wearing her dressing gown, she was enormous; it was fairly early in the morning cool and crisp as it always was in that house and so very, very clean. My sister's houses are never anything like that anymore.
I think I had just woken up and she and I were drinking cups of too hot coffee. She always made it too hot for me, and then after a few sips she would put hers back in the microwave to heat it up again.
.......
I see her face as she listens to the words from the caller. "Yes, she says, Alice is here with me" Her voice strains at the end of the sentence. I can hear her fear.
I know that someone has died, when a call like that comes through there is never any doubt.
I sit down and I am prepared. Grandma would have been 85 then. I had been preparing myself all my life that one day she would have to go. I reach my hand out to my sister and ask if it is Grandma. My sister's face is grey, she is still on the phone, I cannot listen though, all I can hear is a rushing of blood in my head. "It's Dad", she croaks. She muttered into the phone some more and the chair beneath me seems to push up into my body. I want to have misheard her, I know that she is wrong. He is only 61, there is a mistake. I stand up and run into the bedroom where S is asleep. I wake him and tell him hurriedly then I hear the alarm in my sister's voice calling me back.
As I run back I am numb and I see her there, crumpling into herself. I hold her and she moans with fear and shock.
The phone is back in it's cradle. The sounds she is making feel remote, silly almost but I stand firmly and I comfort her. I am thinking about the baby due any minute. I am thinking that I need to go outside and run. I want air in my lungs. I am numb and I am suffocating and my sister needs me.
.......
I don't remember much after that, only more phonecalls and my father's sister saying he was better off now. I wanted to ask her how the fuck she came to that conclusion?
All I really felt is an overhwelming need to get out of that house and away. I wanted to be home on the property where I could run away into the paddocks for miles and scream and scream and scream. Instead I walked sedately down Wilson Street in Oakleigh to the train station. S is walking with me and he is saying the wrong things and I want him to shut up.
.......
We catch the train into the city, past the MCG and we climb out at Flinders street. We walk up to the mall and I am walking too fast but no walk is fast enough for me. Everywhere I look people are doing what they do every day and I am in a bubble and everything feels wrong. We reach the mall and go to the lebanese cafe around the corner. It is like the old cafes in my home town with booths down each side and chrome edging on the tables. We don't go inside to eat because I need to be in the open and I don't know why. We buy falafel rolls wrapped in white paper and we need to find a place to sit to eat, we go the the post office and sit on the stairs.
The juice from the roll drips down my chin and I don't care. I want to scream and cry but I can't. I am surprised that I can eat, that my hands look the same and the sky is still there, where it was yesterday.
We were supposed to meet our friends 4 weeks ago in Ulladulla, they never showed, so we have driven on to melbourne. To my sister, to other friends, to jobs. In that moment with the falafel juice on my chin, and reality smacking me in the face, a line of tall travel-weary surfers trudge up the stairs in search of mail from home.
It is good to see them. They say that Jim who I am scanning for, has gone to my sister's place looking for us. So they get their mail and we go to the closest pub. Which is what we usually do and this does seem right.
The pub we go to is a step or two down from the street. It is dark and there is dark timber and loud carpet. We stand at a round shelf built around a pillar. I have a VB. This is the worst beer in the world, after this week I will never drink it again. S talks happily with our friends. Bob asks me if I am alright and I nod. They don't know what to say to me and it is alright.
In this room I am having a beer with my dad. He would like it here, I turn my shoulder slightly to shut off the others. I picture him standing beside me and in my head we have a conversation and as always he cracks jokes and I laugh and I worry that the haircut I gave him isn't perfect but he is happy and he is smiling and I don't want to turn around when the others talk to me because when I do that, I will be back in the real world and I don't like it here anymore.
.......
Later on we went to meet Jim and when I saw him I looked at him pleadingly for understanding because I know he has lost his parents. Later I think how cruel that was of me, but at that moment I was so desperate for understanding that I did not see that. I don't remember what he said to me but suddenly I realised I had left my hugely pregnant sister all alone and I had to go to her.
.......
She tells me they have decided that the funeral will be the next day, because if they waited an extra day, they would be having it on my birthday. They want me to stay in Melbourne with her because she cannot fly and it is too far anyway. I agree but I will wish so much that I hadn't.
.......
What sort of daughter doesn't go to her own father's funeral?
I don't remember ever crying.
On my birthday I didn't want to go out but S insisted. When we got there I couldn't do it, instead I spent the evening on the side of the road in the back of Jim's truck with the dogs, while everybody partied on watching some band in some pub in some suburb in some city called Melbourne.
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