Dad

It is twenty years today since my father died. Well since I found out anyway, he died sometime during the early hours of the morning.

The last time I spoke to him I called him from a phone box somewhere on the Southern NSW or Northern Victorian coast. I don't remember where we were or how long before he died it was. Perhaps 3 weeks or a month. That might sound odd now, that I would speak to him so seldom but with communication not so readily available then, as it is now, that was just normal for our family.

I remember he told me he was giving up smoking and that he had had a cancerous spot cut out from near his eye. "Give up smoking Love" he implored. It took me another ten years but I did it in the end. So there is some symmetry for me in today isn't there? It's hard to believe I can measure these huge milestones in my life in decades now and in a strange way realising that it is 10 years since I stopped smoking makes it seem less time since I lost my father. Those first 10 years went mind numbingly slower than the second, such is the age induced speeding up of time I suppose?

My husband went fishing on a friend's boat last night. Boat fishing always makes me miss my father most keenly. He would have loved coming to visit us here on the coast and going out fishing with us. He always dreamt that in his retirement he would be able to do these things. In the end his retirement was only 1 year long. He died aged 61. I feel ripped off, my kids feel ripped off, I think he was ripped off....Dying sucks.

I haven't spoken to my mother or my siblings about my father yet today. I suppose I should and yet my relationship with him was different from theirs. So sometimes talking to them about him takes him away from me and I resent that. I am my father's daughter. As a way of abusing me my mother thinks she is putting me down when she reiterates about how much like him I am. She couldn't be any more wrong. My father was friendly and accepting, loving and generous. I couldn't be more proud than to be told I am like he was.

I miss you Dad.

It is Hot.

Finally summer is here.

There are storms tonight and it feels like November. It feels as if we have been cheated out of summer but, in all honesty, I haven't minded at all. Christmas wasn't the sweat fest that I have come to expect. On New Years Eve the heat hadn't wiped me out before the alcohol did and I actually have a tan this year as it hasn't been too hot to venture outside.

This summer has been very different.

I have walked on the beach every other day. My dog has frollicked with joy down there. If there was ever need to be reminded of how great living near the beach is I only need to look at his eyes. He is my introduction and the other walkers on the beach know me because of him. He takes his stick to everybody(anybody) and they throw it for him because he asks with such sweet innocence.

He gathers smiles for me. I have a fine collection :)

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.

My arm is Aching

It is winter in Paris in early 2000. We take this day to walk the cold, cold air and visit the true tourist spots in this famous city. We line up with hundreds of others as the breeze rips through our insufficient clothing. There is a mist of moist cold enveloping us; our faces burn with it as we stamp our feet like horses, to be warm.

A mime has come by to entertain this unhappy queue, as we are waiting for access to the tower. My son is enthralled by him and walks nearer for a better look. The mime begins blowing up an invisible balloon; it stretches out in the air before him, my sons eyes widen as if he fears that it may burst. The mime checks the size of the balloon, it isn't quite long enough yet, it is a sausage balloon. He fills it some more, and then checks it again. Satisfied, he ties the end and then starts the intricate process of making the balloon into a dog. He makes the ties and checks it then continues, finishing by adding a piece of invisible string. Then proudly he hands his masterpiece to my patient boy. My son returns to us his eyes glistening with pride. He holds his prize aloft and smiles warmly at the admiring crowd.

We move slowly up the queue and finally after what has seemed like hours we take the stairs and then the lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Like cattle we are herded up and on and up. Finally we are there, the light mist blankets the city pink and white and pretty in this bright winter light. We gaze out across the miles, triumphant in having reached this height.

"Mummy, can you please hold this? My arm is aching." My son hands me his invisible balloon.

I dare not let it go.

Sugar Flower

In the kitchen opposite the wood stove was a leadlight kitchen dresser painted white. It had panes of glass, green, burgundy and clear. On the centre door which curved outwards the glass was cracked and the design slumped inwards. I used the wonder if the heat from the stove opposite had melted the lead and imagine that one day the whole panel would drip to the floor.

I stood next to the dresser that day and the ledge where the key was kept was very high. If I stood on my tiptoes I could feel it there with the very tips of my fingers but unless I dragged the stool across, there was little chance I would ever reach it.

I considered the moving of the stool and the noise that it would make. My parents took their midday nap just behind the dresser in the other room. If they heard me I might get the "flapper", a piece of bamboo about 20 inches long, with a folded strap of leather bound with "catgut" to it's end. Mum and Dad would threaten me with it what seemed like every day, but perhaps it was only when I was naughty? It was kept on the front veranda high on the coat hooks above the rifles. All those terrifying items dwelt there at our front door. I wonder now what people thought when they called in, to be greeted by that armoury?

The stool was too heavy for me to lift quietly but I remembered there was another outside. I slowly opened the rattling back door knob, it was dented brass kept shiny from many hands and the sound of that doorknob is more keen in my memory than any other sound I have ever known.

The back stairs creaked slightly and the small yellow stool, made from an apple crate is there.

On the way back my hands are full, the door slams in the breeze and I freeze....
All stays quiet. I carefully place the stool and reach the key. My footsteps through the dining room are swift and sure. I sit down cross-legged in front of the china cabinet and the key moves easily in the lock.

I am not allowed in here. In the very back is a small tin, slightly rusted. Carefully I move the breakables aside, fine china teacups and antique figurines. I grasp my prize. The lid squeaks a little as I pry it loose.

The hard sugar melts slowly in my mouth. I close my eyes in bliss. They won't notice just one more wedding cake decoration disappearing, surely?

dusk

the slamming of the screen door
the koel calling in the dusk
a child's name, a few times in ascending volume
dinner is almost ready

a dog barks and the noisy hum of traffic in the distance continues

this might be the only time of day that I cannot separate the sound of the surf from that of the traffic

it is almost dark

an owl? i could swear i just heard an owl

echoing across the gully I can hear the clatter of dishes in the neighbour's kitchen

i stand and add my kitchen’s own clatter to the evening chorus

Dorm

Along the wall on the left are the wardrobes, my memory exaggerates and I see forty of them or something, but there are problem only a dozen or so all lined up and when I think of them now I wish I had taken a photo. It would have been an arty shot, the peeling old white paint and the doors all ajar in differing degrees of dissarray. In my memory I walk towards them at the head of the pack, footsteps rumbling and stumbling down the winding staircase behind me. I head for mine, my footsteps racing in a panic that I don't want anyone to see. I grab the door and lean into my cupboard it's door a shield for me and for a moment I feel safe. In here they cannot see my tears, they can't see my shaking hands as I pretend to search for some misplaced item. They cannot know how weak I am.

Behind me there is a double sided row of drawers. My two are labelled with my name and number. Across the other side of this long narrow room are our beds. They are metal framed with wire bedsprings supporting our "horsehair" mattresses. They are not really horsehair of course, they are probably coconut husk or some coarse fibrous material like that, I can't remember them as being that uncomfortable as they were pretty much the same as what I had at home. A bed was a bed.

There was a story in the dorm about a ghost who came every fortieth night or so. She was said to drift above one bed and then below the next, stabbing the knife she killed herself with into every second mattress from below. Apparently her knife was snapped so you had to be pretty unlucky to get knifed, I still lay there at night waiting for the sharp pain in my back or closing my eyes incase she was floating above me and leering down at my face. Our boarding house was full of stories like that.

It was usually the seniors who passed these stories on, telling the gullible year eights then watching their eyes widen in fear before they slipped back to their twin rooms snickering with glee. My sister was my dorm prefect when I was in first year. It wasn't a good thing. My dorm scoffed at me for getting preferential treatment while my sister treated me extra harshly so that she would not be accused in kind. She found it wonderfully convenient though, having me close to run her errands and also to wake at five am so she could train me to swim as well as her. She desperately wanted to be proud of me. Alas I was a disappointment and in the end I rewarded her by getting suspended and shaming her name. Given that it was her stupid boyfriend that dobbed me in, I say serve her right.

Remembering the milking yards

I can hear the Happy Families chattering as I hold my arms outstretched either side of me.
The timber beneath my toes feels almost shiny, small bumps where splinters used to be, worn smooth now from the hands and thighs of many bodies, sitting, waiting, watching the daily ritual of "doing the cows".
I look at the beam in front of me and let my feet find their way along with confidence. I am confident, I tell myself, I am I am....but always, as soon as I query my confidence I start to waver and I look at the ground below instead. I choose a spot to place my feet when I have to turn my fall into a jump. I look for a place deep with mud and manure; I know below that mud the gravel is sharp and cruel on my cold bare feet.
As I jump I think of myself as light like a bird and bend my knees quickly to break my fall and then spring up again before the soft skin in the arch of my foot can find the gravel. I am safe.
I hear an order barked from one of my parents.
'Let in that calf.'
The clunk and scrape of the timber gate latch then the squeak of the hinge, in need of oil again. I know every calf by name, they bunt their heads against me and their warm animal aroma is like a balm of contentment to me. I block the others and let the called-for calf in, to feed from it's mother. She lets out an appreciative bellow from above her finished grain bin. The calf knows the ritual and runs in behind the bail, behind the cow.
The cow begins to relax now, and she lets her milk down and we scramble for it. First the young bull then he is led away and I practice my knot tying to keep him aside until the next cow is brought through for him. Then my father sits on the three-legged stool. I watch the muscles in his chocolate brown arms flex and relax as he hand milks the cow, her teats slippery from the saliva of the young bull, I see him fight the calf for the best teat. The bucket fills quickly when my father milks. The deep foam on top, proof he milks well. Whenever I try, my arms get tired before the foam begins to build and I pass it on to him. Yet still now, thirty years later my hands are stronger than anyone's I know.
I pull myself up and sit on the rail where before I walked. In my memory now I can hear the rustle of the animals and the rumble and scrape as the cows lick their grain bins, the rip of milk as each stream hits the foam in the metal bucket. The meow of the yard cats, frantic for a taste of the hot frothy milk.
I can hear the sad desperate bleating bellow of the hungry calves still waiting, the deep bellow of the bulls in their stalls, my mother's voice, talking about this animal or that. I can hear the Happy Family's chattering together.
I can see my father's boots, caked in mud and manure and hay.
I can watch his lips move, but I cannot hear his voice.
In four days it will be seventeen years since anyone heard his voice.

Reposting again - First posted Mar 2004
In fact tonight it will be nineteen years since anyone heard his voice. And excuse that picture, I drew it with the mouse in Corel, and I am not that great at mouse control. Also excuse the slightly morose postings. I just miss my Dad and although I always promised myself I'd try to remember him more on his birthday than on the day he died, it's a hard thing to do, I rememeber him every day.

Sprint Training

In the mornings, after I would wake with that crisp cold air burning my cheeks and the sound of my father splitting tinder at the woodheap, we would crowd around the wood stove fighting for a turn to toast our thick slabs of white bread over the hot coals. My father would lean across the stove, his cup kept warm on the white enamel stove warmers and the ash from his cigarette sometimes landing in the ironstone thunder egg he used as an ashtray and sometimes landing on the floor where he would hurriedly spread it out on the mottled pink linoleum to hide his mistake before someone snapped at him.

The kitchen was crowded and stuffy, the yellow painted vj boards that lined the ceiling, black with grease and soot.

My parents voices starting softly, discussed what would be done that day; the fences to be checked, the cows to be preganancy tested and the performance of the new bull. It seems always that the volume would rise and my mother would begin to speak louder as she sensed my father was not agreeing with her, not bending to her will as she believed then and still believes is the only possible conclusion in all her conversations. Finally my father would dump his cup on the sink, stub out his cigarette and shuffle, sock footed, to the back stairs where his oldest heeled RMWilliams boots would slide over his boot shaped feet and his stained and holey second-best Akubra would land in its familiar groove upon his forehead.

Sometimes I would rush after my father, squeezing my backside onto the stair beside him, working my way through the box of old boots. Always hoping my feet may have grown enough to slide into them like his did but always, in the end, chasing after him my pattering feet wearing shoes of hard skin and painful cold.

His gentle silence and firm brown hands would guide me out past the woodheap, past the feedshed and the utes. Out there, just us in the front paddock, he would spring it on me suddenly. "Race you to the yards?" And I would run on my toes to avoid the sharp frostbitten grass, prancing like Bambi down the hill, reaching out in strides as long as I could make them.

My father never let me win though, he would stay just ahead. He made me try so very hard but when I held out my arms out to stop myself against the rattling hayshed gates he was always already there, slowing to a stop beside me, laughing and puffing and telling me how good I was and how hard it was for him to beat me now.

My athletics coach, my father: 24 January 1926 - 25 March 1987

Barefooted Brats

It started the night before my ninth birthday. Dean and I found the chrome plated cylindrical contraption in the sideboard drawer, all spinning notched disks and fluted brass rods. It had a hinged lid along one side and a scalloped end wheel, which when you turned it would set the fluted rods all spinning. "Here", Dad said, "You lick the cigarette paper and place it in the slot, then lay a measure of tobacco along the length, not too close to the ends or it ends up in my mouth, then you close the lid and turn the end."
So we sat on the floor at his feet, Dean and I and rolled him cigarettes with varying degrees of success, we laughed at our attempts and became loud enough that we were sent the the spare room where we were always allowed to sleep when we had friends to stay. I know it would have been Dean's idea, but there we were hidden by the wall with my father's pouch of drum tobacco and Dean, being the natural ratbag that he was; it was inevitable really.
"Let's roll some for ourselves." he said "We can take them to school and see what it is like to smoke."
I agreed, I always agreed with everything that Dean said, he was bigger than me. He was being nice to me. I would do anything for Dean to be nice to me.
At school the next day we whispered to the others at little lunch and Dean led us all to the chicken coop behind the hit-up board at the far end of the tennis court. We climbed through the wire netting gate into the little pen and found old feed tins and water containers to turn over and plant ourselves on, small relief from the dusty dried out chicken poop, still smelly even a year after all the chooks were gone. Kent demanded the best seat and set himself up as watch peeking between the boards to be sure the teacher was not coming. So we lit the small bent half squashed "rollie" passing it around we puffed clouds of smoke out from our faces.
"That's not really how you do it" Dean told us" You have to suck it right in."
We just looked at him dumbly and kept puffing. Ann held hers elegantly, legs crossed at the ankles. Evelyn swaggered provocatively at eleven years old, swore and spat the bitter tar from her pink perfect lips. I knew I looked stupid doing everything I did, so there seemed little point in trying to be anything other than an untidy little tomboy. At least I was good at that. Little Beth stood defiantly, threatening to tittle-tale to her parents, he carrot red hair stark against the shocked white of her freckled skin. She wouldn't dare, would she?
It became a ritual after that, every day we brought stolen cigarettes to school. We graduated to climbing the tree behind the coop, a better look-out we thought. As if the teacher couldn't see us out the small square window, those little puffs of smoke wafting from between the branches of the whistling pine athol trees.
I remember that time with a feeling of elation, six small children on top of the world. Untouchable.
I can still feel the dread as we watched from our perches that day when he finally stood up from his desk and walked that long 100 metres towards us. I wonder that he left it so long when in honesty he must have known that whole week. Perhaps he simply hoped that we would stop by ourselves. I think a school with six pupils was more than this first year teacher, posted to the back of beyond and an empty classroom of barefooted brats, had ever bargained on. Six defiant, strong minded rebels were harder to control than a normal class of twenty-five.
Watching his slow steady steps towards us that day, we knew that we were caught. I saw Beth's pale white cheeks flush red with fear and defiance, so, she had told on us.
His decided discipline was that we should tell our parents or he would tell them for us. It was the worst punishment of my life.
In time I forgot the punishemnt but I remembered that feeling of elation. The thrill of being naughty and more than any nicotine addiction. That memory took hold of me like a drug. The thirst for that elation has never really left me.
After all, we never inhaled. (Originally posted 27.8.04)

Thank you Waiter

Looking back I still cannot understand what it was that you saw in me. Just the same, I will be forever grateful that you did see something, whatever it was.

I utterly adored you. You came to me when I was at the lowest point in my life and you made me feel worthwhile again. It is true it did not last and you broke my heart but what you took away was nothing in comparison to what you gave me. I wonder if you know this? I suppose reading the letters that you wrote me afterwards it is obvious that you did.

We had so much fun that summer didn't we? At least I did and I am pretty sure that you did too. I have a few highlights that I keep in my favourite memory bank, I wonder if you ever revisit those times? I know you used to because you did mention the pool once....ha!

I remember catching a cab over to West End after work one night, getting the cabbie to drop me in Sexton street and then walking up the back path and hearing your harmonica as I drew nearer. You were sitting up on the windowsill of that sliding window above the kitchen table, your long legs folded up, your knees a support for your harmonica holding hands. You were silhouetted against the light walls of that room and framed by the green and purple panes of glass in those windows that later I spent so many hours beneath. I loved those windows and that night as I walked up to the house I loved you. I don't know if you deserved my love or not but the reality was that I just loved you for being there. At that point in time, that was enough.

You introduced me to intelligent people. It might sound strange if I were to say that I had never met any before and perhaps that would be a lie anyway but I suppose I had never noticed any before and suddenly here you were talking to me about everything and anything and being idealistic and passionate and most of all, making me listen.

You forced me out of the mould I thought I belonged in and proved to me that my life could be whatever I wanted it to be not whatever I thought was expected of me. For that I thank you more than you will ever know.

In my dream I am speaking to my family but it seems nobody is listening. It is then I realise that although I am turning purple screaming my words out in a desperate attempt to attract the attention of anyone who’ll listen, there are no sounds emanating from my gawping mouth at all. Am I mute? I wonder this before I see my hands waving above me, fists clenched, punching the air in anger. My fists? A babies fists, fat and pink, useless and weak. What?

I want to wake up from this infuriating dream but instead I notice the dribble on my chin, cold and wet on my hot angry face.

Fish

The warmth came back yesterday, clear sun on the sandy beach and Ardi frollicked with a new puppy friend and I didn't have to walk home but just clean the sand out of the car when I got back. I wanted to take him down again later, but he is so spoilt he hates the back of the ute and there's no way we were taking him in the front and also last time we fished with him he ate the other fishermen's bait. So we stood in the perfect afternoon air and cast our lines into the little waves and watched the fish darting in the surf. I lost count of how many we caught, we just kept the big ones and let the others flip out of our fingers and back into the water with the energy of terror.After dark when the cold air started streaming in, I carried my big pot of fish soup over next door. The table was loaded, the good plates and wine glasses and happy faces and huge platters of food, grilled fish and baked fish and steamed fish...fish.I drank a whole bottle of red wine without enough help and then listened to myself as my mouth ran away talking too much, words spilling out as freely as the wine spilt in. I should have a hangover this morning but I don't, so I figure it must have been a pretty good bottle of wine. It is a shame I can't remember the label or I would go out and buy some more.This morning it is another gorgeous day, S and the Traveller are back working on the fence, after they put an upright in the wrong place last week when I was out. So after some re-designing this morning, we are back on track and I should stay here and help them but am going to take my son the the shops and meet my daughter there as she stayed at a friends last night and she is going to choose some clothes for the boy because she says if I choose them they will be sans style and she can't have a brother who doesn't look cool.And I wonder if you read all that hardly taking a breath because that is how I typed it. Have a nice day everybody :)

The Waiter

The first time I saw him he was tanned and blonde and strangely exotic, not my type at all. He strode through the kitchen, his steps slow, stretched out and claiming ownership of the space around him. Heads turned as he moved, his energy seemed to glow around him as everyone paused and stared.

He turned the corner and the titter next to me from the other girls proved he had been noticed. "Who was that?" they asked, I grabbed my tray and turned away, I didn't care who that was.

It went on for weeks, like a competition. Every time he turned up for a function, dressed in his black and whites like an arian god wearing the wrong uniform, the waitresses laughed and giggled and smiled coquettishly. He was so far out of my league, I didn't even turn my head.

On Christmas day it was bedlam in the kitchen, I was tipsy from a champagne breakfast with my friends so perhaps my confidence was a little higher than normal. I felt the prickle of his stubble on my cheek as he snuck up behind me and leant in to whisper "Merry Christmas" over my shoulder. I felt his hot body, the day was humid, the kitchen like a sauna, when I turned in total surprise, he smiled and said; "Come to a party with me tonight?", I had a date already. I could see Louise staring daggers at me over his shoulder. He was not my type. I was too tired. I wasn't finishing work until so late. I did not need any more men in my life....

"Yes", I smiled, I'd love to.

He changed my life.

It is 13 years* since I saw him last, I am not sure where he is living now and I don't know if he is still the person he always said he was going to be. Sometimes I get frightenend that something may have happened to him and I will never see him again, but then I think that it doesn't matter,the impact he had on my life I will take with me forever regardless of whether we keep in touch or not.

He was the christmas present that I needed that year. I think he saw me like a project, something broken that he could fix, something small and lost and useless that he could metamorphisise into a new and better thing.

Louise was the one who had propped me up until that day. She had given me refuge when I found the strength to leave my ugly past and I repaid her by winning her crush. I never intended that.

So we went to the party, I fought past my feelings of inadequacy amongst his university friends and I let him drum me up and make me feel that I was someone too. We sat up until daylight talking, he opened a door for me that I never knew existed. It was as if he opened the door to my mind. He made me think. He didn't tell me I was too young, or too stupid or too ugly. He didn't leave me out of the conversation, speak over the top of me or speak down to me. He asked me what I thought and he listened and he took me into a world of new ideas and passion for life and appreciation of little things I had never noticed before.

"Come with me?" he asked and I followed him like a disciple. I met people who had thoughts and minds and rooms to rent and I dug myself out of my suburban pit and moved to a vibrant inner city alternative. At night after work I would go around to his house and hear his harmonica drift out across the lush West End backyards. Calling me like the pied piper called the children to their doom.

"Come with me?" he asked and we hitched the Australian east, drinking beer in western pubs and talking to truck drivers until our throats were sore from helping to keep them awake. One night in a church hall in Tamworth he taught me to dance and to love the people watching. In the Goondiwindi truckstop as we sat at a laminex table he showed me how to fold a map properly, so that every trip I have taken since a little of him has been there with me, being pedantic.

In Melbourne aged 19 I played scrabble for the first time while we sampled Coopers Ale, I had never drunk beer before I met him either, and I looked at him across the room and thought that I was truly happy. The next day he was going fruit picking for a few months and I was going back to Brisbane. It felt okay.

Then he told me.

Two weeks before in Brisbane I had heard him talking to his housemate. He had got a letter he had said..." but I can't tell her, I just can't!"
"But you have to" argued his friend.
"What?" I asked walking in.
His friend changed the subject and somehow I forgot about it.

So after sedating me with a bottle of Coopers that night, he told me it was over.
"I want to say goodbye now", he said, "because in the morning I am leaving at 4am, there won't be time."
I didn't understand, how could I? We were getting on so well.
I withdrew into myself and my shell hardened so much that the next day back at my sisters house in Oakleigh I pretended he didn't exist. I lay in that darkened room, nursing my Cooper's headache, that room I will remember as a room of grief, where the pain of that morning and the pain of the day when my father died all being melded into a hard dark lump. Inside that room.

Weeks later, back in Brisbane, I collected the letter from my letterbox as I walked to the train to go to work. I waited until I was in my seat then opened the pages and the person who I had tried to forget spoke to me in long eloquent sentences of explanations and excuses and reasons. He begged me not forget what we had. He told me that it wasn't all for nothing and that had he known he was going to meet me he would never have asked the german girl to come out here and marry him. "If she had written to say she was coming sooner", he said. "If I hadn't thought that she had changed her mind. If If If..."
I didn't believe a word of it but the tears still slowly dripped down my cheeks, blurring the makeup he always told me that I didn't need. I went to work and quit my job.

I got a job travelling north Queensland and revelled in my new found independence. I didn't think about him, I instead learned to work harder than I had ever worked before and found a new passion for travel and life that I knew I had him to thank for.

Back in Brisbane I became friends with his friends and decided that he was right. It didn't all have to be for nothing. I had learned to think and forge my own path, thanks to him. His friend apologised for him, but I said it was okay, it didn't matter. His friend shook his head at me and would not believe I did not care.

I went back to the football ground one last time then I became a new person, if that is possible.

I met my husband a year later. The first night he was coming to dinner, I had 'evicted' my housemates, lit the candles and put on the music. The knock at the door was a little early and I am not sure what my expression was when I saw that it wasn't whom I expected.

I don't know why he had come around, I never asked him but it was the first time he had ever come around without her. They had had me over to their place to dinner a few times. She had carefully shown me their seperate rooms. It had been strange and I wasn't sure why thay wanted me there, just me and them. So I asked him to make himself scarce that night, while I waited for my boyfriend, he ducked next door for a while, then reappeared and gave my new man the ten questions. I pretended it didn't matter but his approval meant everything to me and his acceptance of my choice sent me down the life path that I am on now.

He surfed with my boyfriend and made friends with his friends. He came and stayed and brought his girlfriends. He entertained and educated me on every turn. His beliefs agreed with my beliefs and when he traveled hundreds of miles to the property for my 21st carrying an expensive gift, I was truly touched. He took the photos at our wedding and wrote long letters from wherever he was.

Then he turned up one summer thirteen years ago without his partner and looked at me in my little life and his eyes told me I had sold out. I haven't seen him since.

It is true I have never surfed the wave of a nuke ship, I have never been arrested for trespassing at Pine Gap, but I don't think I have sold out. I want to know what happened to him after the last time I heard his voice on the radio as he vowed to go to jail for his cause. I want to know why he suddenly put me behind him and why he doesn't write anymore.

I don't seem to have the gift that others have, of leaving the past where it belongs. When I love I love forever. It is not (always) a sexual love, but my soul does not stop loving just because we didn't fit. I don't think my love for him was ever sexual anyway. It was his soul, his mind, that made me feel the way I did.

I accept that it is his choice to take a life path that does not cross mine.
I accept that what he did for me was great and it was awful but I am so very glad I met him. I could so easily have said no that Christmas day, in the hot sweaty kitchen with Louise's green eyes burning hatred into my face.

*This was first posted mid 2003.... I heard last year that he had a going away party about five years ago before he moved overseas to get married. My source is pretty shaky though, a mushroom trip gone wrong whom I really should post about one day too. Other than that no-one I know who knew him seems to know where he has gone. I still hope to see him again one day and sometimes I look for him in crowds. A flash of blue eyes, long brown limbs and a knowing smile. ____ Update Nov 2007..I just 'found' him. He is well, happy and still passionate about his causes and I am thrilled!

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.