The Pedicure

He is concentrating, intent. His hands are so gentle on my feet, carefully he trims each toenail, I giggle when it tickles and he admonishes me, "Be still".

We are sitting either end of the sofa in his parents loungeroom. His mother is in the kitchen. She is always in the kitchen in my memory, teatowel in hand. His father sits across the tiny room from us, his feet up, newspaper dripping over his legs and his glasses halfway down his nose. Occasionally he turns his head and stares me in the eye, a comment thrown into the conversation or just that look again, the one he gave me when I arrived.

I don't remember where we caught up, probably down the main street or at the local pool. He asked me back to his place though and it was like a time warp, as if everything was alright again and when I arrived his parents greeted me the same way they had for lunch every day. Well, almost the same way. His father smiled "Lissie!" his pet name for me, the only one who ever calls me that, then he peered at me that moment too long. He took in my face, the purple marks, the swelling and his sigh said everything and nothing. She came to the kitchen door. Did we kiss hello? I don't remember but then she exclaimed "What happened to your face?"

I muttered something about friends and hockey sticks, her eyes told me she knew I would lie even before I spoke. She started to comment then pulled herself up and turned and went back to the sink.

We are sitting there laughing, chatting, the four of us feel like a family, like it always was. I want so much for this to be the reality and not the dream, he moves onto the next toenail and chides me again for not looking after my feet better. "This is horrible", he says when he comes to the toenail that was infected when I was fourteen, I flinch because it is sensitive and it grows crooked and scarred and because I am more ashamed of it in that moment than I am of my face. His mother comes to the kitchen door again, she leans lightly on the timber frame of the open glass slider.

She starts a conversation asking me about my work and my flat, then she asks about him. Her words are clipped and her eyes are hard and she tells me that I must know what I am doing. I can't look at her and instead I focus on his fingers on my feet, his hand is trembling and his skin flushes red and white. His dad is staring at me hard again, over the top of his spectacles his frighteningly familiar blue eyes bore into me. Inside I am crumpling, I am screaming, my face is hot with unspent tears. Then the dishes clang in the sink again and the I hear the crackle and flick as the next page turns. The man who writes the newspaper all week and reads it all weekend.

He runs his hands gently over my feet now, a light massage like one I gave him not long ago and aeons ago, his eyes hold mine and his touch sends tingles right through my body. It is one of the most erotic moments in my life. "Come on", he says and we stand and I grab my bag and smile goodbye, I will see you soon and his mother turns and looks hard at me again. "Take care.." she says and his father doesn't look up, "See you, Lissie." and we walk out the door.

We climb into the car. THE car. It has a bench seat in the front, it is impossible to sit in his car without thinking about all the time we have spent in there. He starts to drive and we do not speak, he doesn't switch on the radio or the tape player. He drives straight down his street heading to the school, out of town and on towards the weir, he drives by habit. I cry silently. It is very quiet.

He called on friday to wish me a happy birthday and tell me his mother is in hospital. This whole post might sound a bit foot-fetish like(ewww) but it is really about my love for his parents and something beautiful that had to be broken.

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.

She belongs on stage.

She is happy again, I see a spark in her that has been missing for too many months. She stood the other night, microphone in hand, and let the sound pour out of her, it filled us, it ran through us and it touched us. She knew I was so proud. I looked across at my oldest friends, and looks can say it all.
Later on the phone, "You dreamed her up, she is the daughter that you dreamed of. I can't believe how well she sings" This from one whose talent I have always admired and envied. So I thank them, not just for words of praise but for a look which brought the spark back to my girl's eye.

25 years

The silence is almost deafening now that they have left.
We had late nights and karaoke, beaches and mountain walks, photos and non-stop talking. We had feasts and coffee on the deck, laughter and tears, champagne, home brew and chocolate.
Most of all though, we had renewed friendship and I feel honoured and humbled and blessed.
We sat by the table last night and the candle wax melted away as fast as the years and I listened to their voices, unchanged. The music cutting through time like nothing else ever can. 

Goddess

We are going shopping this morning, my daughter and I. I will walk beside her tall lithe figure feeling slightly worn and shrunken. I will notice the appreciative glances all the boys give her, while she tells me she is grotesque. I can only be stunned, but next to her petite and anorexic looking friends her 5 foot, 10 inches make her feel like a giant.
She is looking for something to wear today, but all her clothes seem to belong to somebody else, another smaller girl who she feels has betrayed her. Her frustration is palpable. I curse fashion and society and being fourteen. She shakes her mane of dyed brown hair over her shoulders, steps out of her room and even wearing all black as she tries to shrink herself, we can all see that she is a goddess. One day perhaps she will see it too.

Afternoon

The afternoon air is sleepy and cool. I am fighting to keep my concentration, not to let my focus slip. Today is making up for other days of procrastination and digression. The computer hums, the phone rings, the words fly and the task list shortens. I am coasting along in my tiny world of order, achievement and calm. A cloud of self satisfied smugness surrounds me. Then, with crashing, a rumbling and a torrent of laughter and words, the kids rush up the stairs from the school bus. The cupboard doors bang and the fridge door swings wide as two hot bodies push for access to whatever is on offer. The television is switched on at full volume, bags are thrown, crumbs are left and in a gradually decreasing flurry of activity they retreat to their rooms, a bedraggled line of possessions in their wake. Now the piano starts in one room and the voice excersises in the other. The television is still blaring, unwatched. I switch it off as the phone starts ringing again, this time not for me. I put work on hold until tomorrow, or later tonight or whenever I find my concentration again. This is an afternoon in my house.

After school

The afternoon air is sleepy and cool. I am fighting to keep my concentration, not to let my focus slip. Today is making up for other days of procrastination and digression. The computer hums, the phone rings, the words fly and the task list shortens. I am coasting along in my tiny world of order, achievement and calm. A cloud of self satisfied smugness surrounds me.
Then, with crashing, a rumbling and a torrent of laughter and words, the kids rush up the stairs from the school bus. The cupboard doors bang and the fridge door swings wide as two hot bodies push for access to whatever is on offer. The television is switched on at full volume, bags are thrown, crumbs are left and in a gradually decreasing flurry of activity they retreat to their rooms, a bedraggled line of possessions in their wake. Now the piano starts in one room and the voice excersises in the other. The television is still blaring, unwatched. I switch it off as the phone starts ringing again, this time not for me. I put work on hold until tomorrow, or later tonight or whenever I find my concentration again.
This is an afternoon in my house

On hold

I am on hold on the telephone. They play some recorded orchestral music, tinny through the handset. I listen half heartedly as I gaze out the window at the leaves dancing in the breeze. Then suddenly, she is there. Her fingers tracing the air as she plays the conductor, the twinkle in her eye laughs at my expression and laughs at her joy in the music, then I see him out of the corner of my eye. He is smiling at her. My memory plays this moment like a scene from a movie and I know that part of the reason I feel so fond of him still is because she loved him too.
She lives so vividly in my heart, she walks through my days in her words and her ways and her love and that she is gone now can never really be true when I feel her so close as I do. Perhaps I value him more than I should because when I think of my happiest times with her, he was there too. When I hear his voice I remember the utopia of that time, which can never be lost as long as I remember. So I love to hear his voice, it may not bring my Grandma back but it seems to bring her closer. 

M-I-L

Lunch - There seems no point to the stress and tension, the careful sidestepping and tactful conversation.
I try to sit back and look upon this scene from the outside, as it plays out again like a broken record. The same false niceties and snide remarks, age providing a respect that may not be wholly deserved. I consider the release and relief I would feel if I could remove my children from this damaging environment, but perhaps the control and self belief required to withstand this charade is teaching them something they will need in life. I bite my tongue.
She can say whatever she likes to me, it does not touch me, but if she speaks to my son in that tone one more time....

Brisbane - The city flies past my window and I promise myself I will come down again soon and visit the friends I haven't seen for ages and walk the streets I never have time to walk. Sometimes I think I want to live here again. I love my town, I love my beach, but here are things that I love too. Live theatre and live music and a little bit of style. I have only been to see a live band once in the last six months. Perhaps I am greedy for life, do I think for some reason that I should be able to have it all? I look at my children, the truth is, I want them to have it all.

Promise

There is a tinkle at the tops of the trees outside, the birds sound pleased that spring is not too far away. The air today is so bright and clean, I want to start fresh and place the grimy shut-inside feeling of winter behind me. Throw out all that sad collection of trash and spent emotion from the past few months and put some flower buds in a jar on the table. They are filled with promise.