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Late run and still running

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30 April 2021: I happened upon this yesterday, written three years ago. I haven’t completed but I plug away…

It was hard to fathom why a 64 year old woman (in two weeks), slightly overweight (25 kilos in truth), who drinks wine every night (two standard drinks too many by all the health advisories), who has moved back to the town she had fled forty-five years before, and has resumed smoking after a six year break, would part with a few thousand dollars to sign up for a First Draft Novel writing course.  Talk about making a late run.

Any early potential she had been gifted had long been pissed up against a wall, to her mind at least:  a ready mind, a facility with language, and keen ability to read people.  She explained it as an inability to successfully traverse the cultural divide; between the culturally deprived circumstances of her family and the offerings available to her by virtue of her ability.  A sophisticated explanation for sure, but failure is failure after all.

So instead, her life followed a pathway carved by a series of decisions, or no-decisions, which took her down a very different path than that offered by her early promise.  Instead of the law and the Bar (she had imagined the United Nations at the very least), she opted for the bar, the racetrack, the building site and the characters who resided therein.  In fact she married one, but that’s a whole other story, about passion’s insufficiency in overcoming intellectual and cultural divides.

The first real existential jolt came when her two year-old son became seriously ill.  Recognising that she should take her fate into her own hands where she could, she resumed studies, psychology and counseling this time, and got herself into a decent career stream.  Divorced now, she did OK; making her way through support organisations working with people with cancer, brain injury, sexual assault, women’s health and landed in government.  After 16 years she had enough for a comfortable retirement and embarked on making up for lost time with travel and the arts. 

The second existential jolt came this year, when her 60-year-old brother sustained severe spinal injuries in a farm accident.  With their parents now frail and elderly (but no less difficult), she pulled up stakes and moved back to the small town to care for them and support her brother and his wife through his rehabilitation.  

And so here she finds herself, among all the broken people, stripped of the pleasurable distractions of her usual life, a world away in the parallel universe of her family of origin.  She wonders why it seems to take a disaster to stir her into action, but she can’t afford to dwell.  Best get on with it, she says, no looking back; just begin from here.  She loves writing but has never persevered, so this is what she will do.  Take her interest in people, good and bad, whatever talent she’s retained and turn this time into something constructive and enriching.

By evening, she will have ferried the parents to multiple medical appointments, dressed suppurating skin cancers, fitted compression stockings, entertained equally ageing relatives and friends, cleaned the house and washed up after meals they barely touch.  Then she’ll sit down and try to write. 

She is both excited and terrified but knows that writing lifts her out of the noise in her head.  She has a collection of fragments of things she has written – confetti really.  Now is a perfect opportunity to show up and do the work.  Finally, she might have run out of excuses.

She wants to learn how to craft and build an engaging story and she can tap into a lifetime of learning about herself and others.  Who knows, she might pull it off.  Completion will be her main achievement (she admits herself that finishing has never been her strong point). Anything else, who can tell?  I certainly wish her well. 

Legacies

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While the loss of a parent or parents is an inevitable and universal transition, making sense of the years shared with parents does not always follow a predictable path.  The lucky ones are those who have something to miss.  Then, grieving is a process of experiencing and accepting that loss, and understanding and acknowledging their contribution to your life, and yours to theirs.  Memories are turned over and appraised from all sides, able to be bundled into to a “package” that slots neatly into that place in your psyche reserved for exactly that purpose.  There they become a cherished thread in your life story, that story you tell yourself; a reservoir of comfort and enrichment you draw from as you continue on through life.

Others, whose parent’s emotional legacy is absent or flawed or damaging, mourn for what they needed but never had.  Memories form a jagged shape impossible to fondly process and tuck away.  It is misshapen, with sharp edges, so that the harder they try to fit it in the place reserved for it, the more it cuts and wounds. 

To be able to move forward without the corrosive presence of bitterness takes work, best done with professional support. No matter the age of the mourner, it’s worth doing.

In control

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He never drank whisky before his third beer and then it was always the beer first, with the whiskey as a chaser. That was a rule and he never deviated – a man had to be in control of himself.

He was always one of the first in the bar for the evening session – every weekday the same, 4.45 on the dot.  After twelve years he could get through the workday in his sleep; finish the cleaning at 4.20, pack away the gear and clock off at the hospital at 4.30.

The walk from the hospital to Darling Street took five minutes, seven at the most, depending how he caught the lights. Every day he stopped off at the deli at the top of the hill for a cabbage roll and a sandwich of black bread and strong cheese, and ate them on the downhill stretch to the pub. It was discipline – a man can’t drink on an empty stomach.  He never ate after drinking, so it served as dinner.

Today he turned the corner into Ironcove Parade and strode up the front steps of the pub at 4.43 – two minutes early.

Love after love

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This poem by Derek Walcott (Collected Poems: 1948-1984) came to me from a Facebook feed from Brain Pickings (https://www.brainpickings.org). To me it expresses the work of the third act of life. Some achieve it, some don’t. I’m still working on it.

LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own front door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror

Sit. Feast on your life.

Death in a country town

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My parents both died at ninety and within ten days of each other. Unfortunate (or careless) enough to lose both parents in ten days, I had an intense insight into old age and dying in a small country town.

They had something I am unlikely to have, in that their final care and rites were delivered by people who knew them.  Ageing and dying in a country town is experienced in community, in a network of relationships that cushions both the person and their family from the isolation so often experienced in larger places.  To be known and ‘seen’ by the institutions of old age is a privilege afforded to few.

There were few strangers involved at any stage of their final months; community nurses, hospital staff, and the carers in the nursing home were more likely than not to have known them for years.   Fellow nursing home residents were old friends or acquaintances.   With the network of relationships surrounding them largely intact, their move into care was less of a rupture than a move to a more suitable location.

It is comforting when the person caring for your frail parents shares your history and theirs; someone you went to school with, or whose parents or grandparents were friends of theirs.  My father’s progressive vascular dementia and deep depression made him withdrawn and at times resistant, but because many of the staff caring for him had known the man he had been, they retained their affection and respect.

My mother’s time in residential care was only a few weeks, and she quite enjoyed it.  Dad was in the same building, she had friends in adjoining rooms and even became reacquainted after seventy-five years with a girlhood friend from a neighbouring farm in the isolated upper reaches of the valley.  Like many of the old women living there, she relished the luxury of having everything done for her – no meals to cook, no washing to do, no beds to make.

The sense of being enveloped in community did not end with their deaths.  When I rang the funeral director the morning after my father died, the manager Ken, a local boy and former neighbour of theirs, said simply, “We know.  We already have him with us.” Tina, who came to the house help my brother and me with the funeral arrangements, was the daughter of man I’d known my whole life.  Their funeral notices were posted in the windows of two key shops in town – the newsagent and Dougie’s Takeaway – vital elements of the local informal information distribution network. Their shared grave, in which Dad’s ashes were interred, was dug by my brother’s childhood friend.  

Choosing the headstone was another step in a journey among the familiar.  The options were displayed not in anonymous mock-ups, but in an album of photos of local graves, some of people I had known.  When I stated my preferences for stone and design, Ken said, “I know what you’re after.  You want what Mickey’s got.” Present tense, as if Mickey were still around.  And ‘what Mickey’s got’ was exactly what I had in mind.

A year to the day after my father’s death, the funeral director delivered a floral arrangement to my door, with a printed card that said:  Just a note to let you know we are thinking of you on the anniversary of your loved one’s passing.  Kind wishes.  Ten days later, another for my mother. 

Unexpected but, on reflection, not surprising at all.

The Night House

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The soft sound reached into her sleep and pulled her through that fuzzy place when you weren’t awake but not asleep, and into her little room lit by the nightlight that looked like a glowing pink star.

In the day house she never heard that sound among the clatter and chatter and TV noise. But in the night house the sound of a foot finding the floor was as loud as a bomb. The two feet down, then the walking steps. She straightened her head so both ears were free and listened hard – was it Mummy or Daddy? She hoped Mummy but it almost never was.

In the pink light she searched until she could see Teddy and Jemimah, looking down on her from the bookshelf. Could they see her tears? Please Teddy, please Jemimah make the steps stop. Make the light stay.

She pulled the quilt as far up as she could without covering her eyes. She needed to be able to see Teddy and Jemimah looking over her. Underneath, her sheet was wound tightly around her. She did this every night now – tight, tight so his big fingers couldn’t find her.   She twisted the sheet at her chest around her tiny knuckles. Her hands hurt from holding so tight but she mustn’t let go.

Six steps out into the hall and along to the bathroom. Teddy, Jemimah, make him stop there. She bit her lips together but a little sound got out on its own.   Her breaths went faster and faster, even though she didn’t want them to. Seven, eight steps; he would soon be at her door and her pink light would go out.

Her tongue found the gap where her front tooth had been and moved backwards and forwards over the soft gum. Harder and harder until she felt her tongue sting against the edge of sharp tooth with the wobble. The hurt felt good.

A soft click and out went the light. She looked for Teddy and Jemima but they’d gone back into the dark.

Love is where you find it

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Tash stumbled around the corner from Brunswick Street into Terrace, her ankle turning just enough to toss her just off balance.  She grabbed the street sign, steadying herself.  Whoa, gotta watch that pavement.  Can’t be the Bundys and Coke – last one was ages ago.  More likely these silly fuck me shoes.  Eased against the upright of the sign, she grinned to herself – the shoes had already paid their way.

She breathed in, reliving the smell of him lingering in her nostrils.  Cheap aftershave maybe, but it was a change to be with someone who made some effort.   She could feel his mouth on hers and taste the mingling of beer and rum.  She frowned, trying to recall his face, but she couldn’t summon it through the haze.  She searched for his name, but it stayed out of reach.  Darren was it, or Justin?  A shrug.  Who cares?

Her body memory still held him though.  She could feel the weight of him across her pelvis, and the rhythm of his thrusting.  Over too soon, but you learn not to expect too much.  Tash strained further into memory to reclaim the warmth of skin on skin, his breath in the hollow of her shoulder.

Steadying herself, she looked down the street, with the dark beginning to lift and the houses rosy in the dawn light.  Everything quiet, for now at least.  She wanted to get home before the street stirred – the old woman would be out soon, shuffling to her bin and scratching her broom down the path.  The yuppie would be setting off on his run.  Strange mix this street – faded timber houses next to glass and steel villas next to orange brick with white columns.  The old, the poor, the rich, and her – the nothing. 

The girl and the dogs were upon her before Tash was aware and it was too late to avoid them.  She looked to Tash to be about her own age – 25 maybe, 30 tops – but from some other world.  A world of nice teeth, gyms, overseas holidays and dinners at restaurants with wine served in deep fine glasses. Tash stepped closer to the road edge of the narrow pavement to create space the girl to pass.

It was the dog that stopped her.  It dropped in front of her, running its wet warm tongue over her bare instep and up her shin.  Tash stood still, transfixed by the eyes looking up into hers.

“Sorry” the girl said, giving the lead an ineffectual tug, “but she’s determined to make friends with you.  Maisie’s a bit shyer”.  The second dog was slight and scrawny, and held back, watchful.  “This is Lucy, she’s really taken a shine to you.”

Maisie’s more my style, Tash wanted to say, but her eyes went to the dog still licking her ankle.  Its eyes, half obscured by fluff, locked hers.  It wagged its tail, all expectation and trust. 

“You can pat her”, the girl invited.  

Tash willed herself to walk away but couldn’t.  She was thinking “piss off with your bloody dogs” but her hand reached down to the dog.  It stretched toward her, leaning gently on her shin.  Tash crouched and, taking a hand either side of its face, muzzled it to her cheek.

The Dance

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If Madeleine had known exactly where the dance studio was, she would never have made the booking.  The address was in the Valley, but she had hoped it would be in one of the gentrified pockets beginning to soften the Valley’s hard garish edge.  She felt silly enough, booking in as a lone woman, and at her age.  Now here she was in the edgy side of town in the lowering dusk, gingerly picking her way over rough pavements in unfamiliar high heels.

Brash neon and the roar of early evening traffic swamped her.  Madeleine faltered. What was she doing here? She was a scientist for God’s sake. Her work world was rational, well lit, clean and fastidiously ordered.  Home was safe and predictable, including dear non-dancing Gerry. Why try to recapture romance and grace long past?

Straining to see in a dimly lit alcove, and refusing to retrieve her reading glasses from her handbag, Madeleine made out a sign, “Valley Swing Studio” in flaking gold lettering. A bent arrow directed her to door on the left of the threshold.  Hand on the doorknob, she paused again. Risk the inevitable indignity or totter home to safety and comfort?  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, summoning the near-forgotten joy of moving her body to music.  Grace and elegance.  Rhythm and movement.  Glamour and shine.  She steadied herself, smoothing her dress over her hips. She adjusted her weight on her heels, to throw her hips forward, and stepped inside.

She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light flooding the room.  Across an expanse of gleaming timber floor, a circle of dancers in pairs turned towards her.  She flushed – it seemed there was no spare man for her.

A woman she hadn’t seen called from the centre of the circle, “Madeleine?  Welcome.  I’m your instructor.  Just in time.  Daniel was starting to think he’d be dancing by himself”.  The woman leaned towards the back of the room.  “Daniel! Come over and meet your partner.”

A young man rose from the bench against the wall behind the assembled couples.  His shoe squeaked, as loud as the crack of a whip.  He grimaced and inched towards Madeleine, eyes down.

“Madeleine, may I present Daniel, your partner for the evening.”, announced the instructor with a flourish.

Daniel took Madeleine’s proffered hand without enthusiasm.  He gave the slightest of nods, and dropped his hand back his side.  He was beautiful in the way boys are as their young beauty settles onto their soon-to-be man-frame.  He had yet to fully occupy his lanky body and his movements were those of someone surprised by both length and power of his limbs.

“Hi Daniel, nice to meet you”.  Madeleine could see that he wished himself anywhere but there.  She felt a rush of tenderness at his discomfit and forgot her own.  “It’s years since I danced Daniel.  I hope I’m not too hopeless.”

He looked at her with a flicker of sympathy.  “I’m pretty lame.  We did a little bit at school.”

“You must have enjoyed it to come for lessons?

“Nah, my Mum made me. I have to dance at my brother’s wedding.”

“Gentlemen take your partners.” the instructor shouted over the swell of violins.  “A simple waltz.  Gentlemen, your hand on her waist. Ladies, your hand on his arm just below his shoulder.  Remember it’s 1-2-3, 1-2-3. One forward, two side, three together”.

Daniel held her at the full length of his outstretched arm.  He adjusted his hand on her back until he found an unthreatening spot just under her shoulder blade. She was as embarrassed as he at their proximity, and at the warmth she felt under his touch.

Their first circuit of the room was arrhythmic and leaden, as they struggled to move in unison while maintaining the greatest possible physical distance.  He looked past her at a point in the distance.  She lowered her eyes and concentrated on her feet.

As they rounded for the second circuit, Madeleine sensed a growing resistance in the boy’s stance.  She could feel his hand beginning to retract from hers, as if to wrest himself from her grasp and flee.  She glanced up into his face and saw humiliation and mounting panic.

He steered them out of the circle of dancers and propped. He dropped his hand from her back and began to wriggle his other hand out of hers.

“I can’t.” His voice was strangled. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

She firmed her grasp on his hand and moved her head closer to his.

“It’s OK, it’s OK.” she soothed, “It always feels awkward at first. We just need to find our rhythm as if we’re one person. Let me guide you.”

Without waiting for assent, she took hold of his loose hand and placed it at her waist, in the hollow at the small of her back.  She edged her toes in to touch his, then moved her right leg between his until their inside knees lightly touched.  His eyes widened as her breasts brushed his chest and their hips came into alignment.

She pressed on, “OK, let’s go.  You count and I’ll steer us till we get our rhythm. Then you’ll be able to lead, and I’ll follow you.”

She manoeuvred him with gentle pressure and the shifting weight of her body and felt the tension in his body loosen as he relaxed into her hold and smoothed his movements into sync with hers.

“1-2-3, 1-2-3”, Daniel chanted.  He lifted his gaze over her shoulder. Madeleine turned her face to nestle her cheek lightly against his chest.

“Forward, side, together. Back, side, together.” With the change in his chant, he drew up his shoulders and pushed out his chest. His hand pressed into the small of her back, pulling her into him.

Madeleine yielded to his firm hold. She was awash with the music and intoxicated by the flow and rhythm of her body. They swept the floor as one, in a grand arc, dipping and gliding, swirling and turning, with one last elegant flourish as the music fell away.

His hand lingered in hers as he guided her from the floor.  A slight bow.  “Thank you.” he whispered, his mouth to her ear.

“You too” she murmured.

She was back.  He was on his way.

The beginning

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She saw Michael first at the cricket match.  If you could call it a match;  kikuyu pitch on the narrow flat beside the river; homemade stumps, and the bats belonging to Arthur Fittler, who tended them after each match with sandpaper and linseed oil.  At least the only ball was new, a Christmas present for one of the Sligo boys.  Between the Fittlers, the Sligos and her family the Martins, there were enough kids to field two good teams, with a couple in reserve, and enough left over to cheer.  Umpiring fell to Ronnie Daley, who had no family and could be relied upon for fair decisions.  At least until lunch, when the hip flask of rum came out of his back pocket and his calls took an uneven turn.  An early game was always the best game.     

After that, Michael kept turning up at the house, making the ten-mile round trip on horseback between milkings.  She couldn’t remember when or why it dawned on her that he was coming to see her and not her brothers.  Or when she wanted it to be her.  She had no experience of romance and only understood love as an obligation, a duty to protect.  Like her father tried to do, or even how she felt about her younger brothers, when she didn’t want to strangle them herself.  Marriage was assumed but not necessarily desired, just a different setting for the constant work.  

birthday reflections

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Under the Story Bridge, Brisbane

My birthday started here yesterday at 7am, shaded and cool in Captain Burke Park, taking respite on a warm morning walk. And a couple of sneaky cigarettes. I am indeed fortunate to have this literally at my back door.

My birthday lunch is with the ‘usual suspects’, again looking over the river but this time from the Brisbane Powerhouse around the next bend. A lot has changed since our last get-together a couple of months ago; two of the six friends present have been diagnosed with cancer in the past 3 months, and serious cancers at that. The impacts of their diagnoses, prognoses and treatment, for them and their partners and us as friends, lingered around us. And none of us can deny that any one of us might still be the first to go; that being ‘undiagnosed’ is no safeguard at all.

For me, everything has changed, irrespective of the outcomes for them. Mortality and loss have taken a place at the table and will be an ongoing presence, whether foreground or background, from now on. However long and rich our individual paths ahead as we move into our late 60s (and hopefully our 70s and beyond), our decisions and actions are backlit by this incontrovertible reality.

Our aspirations for the future reflect both our perceptions of a foreshortened horizon – “get back to golf”, “go horseriding at least once”, “live each day fully”, “get to California in 2020”- and our good fortune in having had sufficient resources to realise many goals already.

So what do I take from this? I think it’s to go deep rather than wide. Oliver Sacks, on learning that he was terminally ill, wrote:

“It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking: trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness as well ). …

I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming. … This is not indifference but detachment – I still care deeply about the Middle east, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future.” from My Own Life in The New York Times Feb 19, 2015

Detaching from politics would be easy for me; I have opinions but have never been a very committed or active participant . In any case, the current venal state of politics fills me with such despair and hopelessness that I am often relieved that I won’t be around for too long. However, I need to at least consider what that means should I live as long as my parents and many aunts and uncles; I could well be around another 25 years.

Strengthening and nurturing relationships, as well as being open to new friendships, will be a focus. My son is nearing 40 and I hope would appreciate a more equal and attentive focus from me. My attachment style has always tended towards the avoidant under stress and I probably have a bit to make up for. My avoidant attachment style has been evident in intimate relationships as well, so I have some work to do there.

Having the privilege of homes in both the city and a country town, I want to immerse myself in my surrounding environment and, in the case of the town I will soon move to, I want to understand it as fully as I can: its geography, history, Indigenous heritage, culture and people.

I have a goal to write, although I was too embarrassed to admit that in the discussion yesterday at my birthday lunch. I have made a start but wrestle every day with my output, judging it lame and amateurish. So be it, I’ll write it anyway. And this blog is a start.