sunday night.. dark outside. raining
havent written on this blog for ..well, it's been a long long time that's all you need to know.

i lost my nerve...for this kind of writing
wondered who was reading things anyway.
and life rolled out from underneath me.              

a baby was born.. a soft-eyed warm-skinned grand-daughter burrowed out of and into the circle of love that is otherwise known as family widened and

Myrna..

My youngest sister, her husband and their daughter have been travelling through Canada for the last month...Before they left I told my sister I'd send on the addresses of friends I knew when I lived there in 1975.

 

 I was 23 at the time. I’d left home early in '74 and gone to England to work and travel when the chance to visit Canada came up. Through a friend of a friend I found myself on a plane to Calgary.  We caught a couple of buses south and spent Christmas and New Year on a snowbound farm near Pincher Creek in the prairie lands of Alberta... I remember the night I went with Joe to check on a cow that was due to give birth ...He shone the torch on a creature with wild eyes and a quivering,pudgy hole, lying in snow in a paddock next to the barn. A little while later he went away and brought back a set of chains to hook on the thing that was poking out of that hole.. I never forgot how brutal the contraption looked nor how hard Joe wound the handle before the bag of calf slipped out.

While my friend went back to London I stayed on an extra week and during that time decided I'd try and get a job. Canada felt more like home than England did. Because Joe had connections at the Separate Schools Office in Calgary he and Teresa had an idea that I might find work at a school in that city. I went back to the flat in Battersea, packed up my things and flew to Canada.

I needed a work visa and went to the immigration office in   downtown Calgary to fill out a form...First up I was knocked back.  I wasn’t altogether surprised.   It was presumptuous to think I could just turn up with my passport and expect to get one. However, the man from the school board's office, the friend of Joe's wasn't surprised he was annoyed. An unqualified masseur from Germany who'd applied on the same day had been accepted. How did he know that? As I write this now I remember that it was me who told him. While we were sitting together waiting, the girl mentioned that she had no training for the job. The fact that an Australian teacher- for whom he'd guaranteed work -had been refused a permit angered him. I stood outside his office while he made a phone call, then walked back to the immigration building and took a typing test. Two hours later I had a paper in my hand that proved I had secretarial skills and was welcome to stay. The following Monday, I sat at a desk in the technology wing of the Bishop Kidd Junior High and looked out on a class of grade 8s. They were fooling around and though the teacher clapped his hands and told them to sit at a desk and work on their own they chose not to.  Instead they huddled around the book shelves and kept on talking. Mr Wojtkiw gave up and focussed his attention on the few students who did as he asked. Why do I remember what happened in the library that day? Because the first day was the same as every other day I was there. The kids ran the show. The school followed a curriculum based on a thesis the principal had written for his Ph D.  Each week visitors came to the school to see how the Individual Learning Program worked.

 It fell to the vice principal Stan Cecchini to keep up the façade of its success. Just before the visitors were shown around he’d do a lap of the school. The door would be flung open and he’d walk in.  All he had with him was a sentence but it was a sentence of power- and fear. "DUMMY UP YOU GUYS OR THERE’LL BE SOME HEADS ROLLING!!" When I first heard him shouting it I half expected a head to come rolling by my chair to prove how serious he was.    Kids went back to their desks and looked hard at their notes. No one said a word. A few minutes later the principal-whose name I’ve forgotten! - would come in and sweep through the room with the entourage in his wake.. Very good very good. And out they'd go.
The quiet lasted a few minutes then things would be as before.  It was a farce.   


What made my time at Bishop Kidd memorable though was the fact that I met Myrna. She was about my age and whilst I typed and kept an eye on class attendances, Myrna worked as a tutor with some of the students. She rolled her eyes whenever Cecchini came in and just kept on with what she was doing. He’s a jerk she’d say. Forget him.

 

Myrna was bright. She’d gone to uni when she was 15 or 16 and studied political science and was now doing her Ph D.    Myrna was vegetarian and owned a green sports car although that seemed a bit at odds with the sort of life she was living . The car went to school in the morning and home in the afternoons. . On the weekends she told me she didn't do much. The car looked like part of a life she didn't quite have. For much of her childhood she'd been ill and couldn't go to school. Books were her friends.. She knew about Borges and Hesse and raved about a French philosopher called Bergson from the 1920s. She told me I should read him. Myrna also told me she'd been married but that the whole thing had been a mistake. She seemed to know a lot about feminism. Men fell into two groups.. Those so dumb they weren’t worth bothering about –and we were surrounded by this lot at school- or the other group for which she had no name. Myrna gave me the impression that these males were so rare she’d never come across one. I knew they were real though.  When I told her about the boy I liked, really liked who lived in the house where I was staying Myrna listened thoughtfully then told me I had only one option.. I could jump him and that’d be that.

 

 

Myrna was good to talk to.  I told to her about how I felt being so far from home when my dad‘s cancer had returned and she seemed to understand.  Myrna had a sadness in her for which she had no words.

 

 Early in July when the school year had ended, I decided to leave Calgary and make my way back to Australia through the US.  Letters from Teresa and Myrna were waiting for me when I arrived home but it took a while before I could write back.

 

 When I did it was to tell them my dad had died. 

 I got married  and moved to the country and the correspondence fell away.  Now and again I’d think of getting back in touch but it just didn't happen.  

Last week when my sister was due to reach Alberta, I looked up those names from my Calgary days.  I found Joe and Teresa's phone number and even their farmhouse on Google earth as well as the name of the boy I’d liked at the time.. He’s living about 10 blocks from the house where we both stayed!    I typed in Myrna’s name  and found a reference to a book she'd written on Bergson.

There was another link too. Still in Calgary but this time not to a street address or a white pages connection. With one click I was taken to a funeral home and to a list of names under the heading Memorial Trees- planted 1999.   She’d have been about 50. Dear Myrna. What happened?  I could only see her aged 24 driving off by herself in that amazing green car.

My friend Pam died a week or so ago. You might remember me speaking about her over the years? She was a month short of 91.   No funeral, no fuss.  Her wishes, her way. She received an OAM for  services to the local library midway through 2011 but played that down to the point that she told me she only agreed to accept the award because it gave the library a bit of publicity which might encourage further funding from the local council.

I went along to the gathering at her home on Monday after school. It followed a private cremation held earlier in the day. When I walked down the driveway there was a bit of sun playing about the trees and bushes and the whole garden seemed full of life. Camelias by the lounge windows -lovely big trees dotted in pinks, reds and white. The trickle of paths running off to the side lined with winter-roses. Currawongs and wattlebirds darting about.

The front door was open, a mix of family and friends talking in little clusters inside.  I noticed the dining table had been moved from its usual spot -where we always sat because the light was better for her eyes - and had been placed against the window and loaded with cups and saucers and plates of home-made food.  In the middle of the table was a framed photo of a young girl about 14 or 15, hair in thick plaits and she  reminded me of my sister Liz at that age.   A calm clear look on Pam's face. The poised intelligence of the schoolgirl.  

I knew a few family members and neighbours having met them over the years, but it did feel very strange-awkward really- to be sipping on tea and nibbling cake when the lady of the house was in absentia. I didn't feel hungry at all. I took myself off to the garden and wandered around to the side amongst the giant gums and past the white summer house -where she and her husband used to have tea-breaks when they were gardening- then went down to the end of the block  where the foliage spills together and the smell of flowers and bees is like a syrup.

I tried to take a few cuttings - her niece Dee had put plastic bags by the front door for this - but my heart wasn't in it. The loss of Pam too new and unreal.

I went back inside to say goodbye and to take a last look through the kitchen window at the propped up branch of the catalpa tree. We'd sit underneath it on sunny mornings with a cup of tea and a plate of yo-yos a friend had made for her. The magpie she fed used to come dangerously close but she insisted I had nothing to worry about. We'd watch it dipping into the water bucket she kept full beneath the tap.

As I was leaving on Monday, Pam's cousin told me the magpie hadn't been seen for days but had returned early that morning. She'd heard it tapping on the window. It was a story I wanted to hear.


 

 

out of the blue..

Ballinascreen

Ten minutes out of Draperstown Michael taps me on the shoulder “Thought we’d get you something from the town Ma.  You’ve earned it.”

He puts a tape in my hand “Songs and Music of Ballinascreen”. It’s the property of Draperstown Library, where he and Anthony have been for the last hour or so.

We’ve driven from Malin Head the most northerly point of the country to Draperstown in County Tyrone. I’m travelling with my sons and it’s the second last day of the Irish trip. By the time we arrive in the town where my great grandparents once lived I’ve got a headache.  The final ten miles of the trip have been on the winding roads of the Sperrin Mountains.  As we drive, the stony hills give way to thick plantations of pine with their ugly clearings of scarred logs.  The town that’s signposted as the Home of Sperrin Metal has an archway of  trees.  Oak, elm, sycamore?  I don’t know. The branches criss-cross above the bonnet like panels of a green umbrella. Anthony finds a park in front of a butcher’s shop and I stay in the car resting while the boys go for a Guinness and a wander.  That stolen tape comes from the Ballinascreen library.


All I know about this place is that my great-grandparents were born here, and that they left in 1853, the year following their marriage.  My father urges me to go there when I leave home travelling at 23. Although I plan to go to Ireland not long after I reach London, somehow or other  I miss my chance. Now more than 30 years later here I am in the town with two of my sons. What happens that afternoon? Not a lot really. The headache makes it difficult to do much more than lie back in the front seat of the hire car and tell myself I’m resting on the road those Devlins might have gone along a century or so ago.  When the boys are out walking, I get out of the car and walk into the long grass to be sick.  I meet a woman called Mary selling potatoes from the back of an old farm truck who asks if she can help me. Mary is a woman of the fields, and on this particular afternoon tell her the dilemma I’m in about being here at last and not feeling well and she tells me I shouldn’t have waited so long to come to the town.  When I tell her about the Devlins connection she wonders if I mightn’t be related to Brad Devlin in the Post Office and tells the boys to look after y’r mother.  Make sure she gets better and bring her back again.

Then in the car on the road out of town, heading to Dublin  Michael gives me the tape.   I open the cassette cover and find a cream card with a handwritten list marking its lending history. From the first entry in February 85 to the last in May 95, it’s been borrowed 4 times. Something in that tiny number eases my conscience and I slip the tape into the slot and wait.  At first all that comes out is static then silence before the first song begins.  The Verdant Braes of Screen.   I stare out the window over the stone walls to green paddocks that run the length of the road into the hills beyond.  A piano echoes over wooden floorboards and accompanies the thin, high voices of a school choir.  The next song’s better.  A man’s plain, strong voice tells the story of Draperstown 1913.

This afternoon, March 19th 2012 I'm scrolling through old files and find this piece and read it through.  Later in the day the tape turns up.  On my desk.   Out of the blue.  True...

taking her out..

My mother puts her foot sideways on the front step, holds onto my arm and waits. We are going out for the morning. Down goes her right foot then her left. She's slightly unbalanced then steadies and off we go across the verandah to the wooden landing. My sister appears and takes her other arm and like a baby who's taking her first steps, we steer her along, ready in case she stumbles.  My mother is all concentration and daring too on her way to the car. She straightens up while I hold the passenger door open then shifts her hips and turns herself around so she can slowly, carefully lower her body into the car. I've put a pillow in to prop her up in the seat  Now it's her ankles and feet dangling underneath the door and I lift them one by one and feel no resistance as I settle them on the floor.

She slides her hand along the seat-belt sash to the buckle and feels for the clasp.  By the time I've closed her door and gone around to my side she's pushed it in and felt the click.

I drive out along the gravel track towards the  main road. The water, the water's beside us. The big old bay like a grey bowl filling and spilling.  The rain's easing to a drizzle.  She's interested in everything sliding by her window.  A row of old cypress pines, the view they'd get from houses lining my side of the road, the return of a bit of sunshine.  I lean my head towards her  and try to pick up what she's saying but it's hard.  Her voice so soft, the talk of the girls in the back seat running over her words.

We pass through St Leonards and head towards Ocean Grove. I look across at her sitting beside me. Remember this trip. Remember how mum took the morning in. Took it in with the sun and the light talk of her grand-daughters running through the car and paddocks and trees going by so fast on the open stretch between the roundabout and the straight road to the coast. Going so fast and going so slow..

the tree of woman..

 I wrote this a couple of years ago..
Mum can't read much anymore. She finds it hard to see a photo when you show her one and relies on the light being good, really good to pick up any detail at all. She's 91 and has macular degeneration. As she puts it "Oh well, everybody's got to get something"
Her acceptance is one of the loveliest things about her.

On Sunday and Wednesday nights she calls for a chat. Sunday is to wish me well for school and Wednesday to see how I went.

Last night when she rang I was asleep on the kitchen couch. My husband talked with her and told her about his week.  A teacher had fallen off a chair and broken his pelvis (the chair had been placed on top of a table and he'd stood on it to get something off the ceiling....)  Another teacher had a turn in class after a student fainted. The student was dissecting a sheep's heart.  The teacher is 4 or 5 months pregnant.

So Mum had these stories to retell when I called later but she  had one of her own to give me too.  Mum relies on a regional service which supplies talking books.. She can't read the catalogue so the bag that brings her fortnightly tapes is mostly hit and miss.
Yesterday when she opened the package out slipped Patrick White's The Tree of Man.. For two hours she sat in sunshine in her lounge room and listened..
A marvellous story, she said. 
Did you finish it? I ask
Oh no. There are lots of tapes to go.. I'll listen to more tomorrow.

I was 19 when I discovered Patrick White..

she gives me...

 I ring her at 3 on a Friday afternoon and ask if she'd like a visit.  She can't hear what I'm saying at first so I say it louder.  Still she's unsure but when I hold the receiver close to my lips and repeat the question, she gets it.  And yes she'd like to see me! I gather up a few  things.  The blue book, photos of a friend's garden, a couple of cakes.

I wind down the driveway and park under the carport. I remember when her car used to be here. I let myself in and wait.
She's at the top of the landing, stick in one hand, plastic bag of bits and pieces in the other. I watch her coming sideways down the stairs, leaning against the wall, measuring each footstep, willing herself not to trip as she edges towards the slate floor.
The  living room where we sit is warm.  Two heaters taking the chill out of the air.  We make  tea in the kitchen and I carry in the wooden tray.
She takes the book, looks carefully at the cover and flips it to the first page.  It's a secondhand hardback bought at a market stall in January. My future son-in-law has designed a wedding invitation in the form of a book cover illustrated with fine-line pictures that are fragments of five years of love...She peers through her glasses and studies the tiny pictures the way you might examine a china cup.  Every detail in the design is noted and checked. She's impressed and tells me so.
The same goes for the photos. A Bristol garden in late spring.  A fernery.
As we drink tea and nibble on chocolate she's taking everything I've brought today in, in, in.
She's drinking it in, thinking it in, leaving this room...
Later I come away with an easter egg, a jar of humbugs and a near-ripe persimmon. 

nicholson gem..

She slips on a bandaid dropped on the floor.  It's 10.30 at night and she's about to turn off the laundry light when it happens. She falls heavily and my youngest sister and her husband who are staying overnight hear her.  A thud and a cry..   She's in a corner, her head touching a door, her body caught between the stove and a bench.  It takes half an hour to help her sit up and then slowly, carefully they manage to walk her to bed.    In the morning they call an ambulance and off she goes to hospital.   an x-ray shows her hip is not broken but badly bruised.  She's unable to walk.  All day she waits with my sister in emergency and at 10 in the evening is admitted to a ward that specializes in short-term stays.  The nurses tell my mother she will need to be transferred to the rehab unit but  no space is available and though they try to place her in a general care ward, no bed is available there either so my mother stays where she is in a sunlit corner of a ward named Tambo (a wide east Gippsland river)
She is there in the midst of migraines and domestic accidents until late in the afternoon 9 days later when she is transferred to the rehab section.

 ******
Day 16
Nicholson GEM..
 Her room faces a grass courtyard ..
 the branches of the tree outside her window are covered in buds..


am here with mum.  she's just closed her eyes for a sleep. it's 20 to 3.  a mild winter's day.
what's in the room?
A sign at the door that says Wet Floor. Caution.   tiny droplets spread out like a watery map on the  vinyl .
Sheet of paper pinned on the noticeboard beside her bed. The physio program for the week. she's booked for 1 hour on Mon Tues Weds.  
Drawing of an orange cat by Angela, 10 years old, Liz's daughter. The cat is standing on its hind feet holding its front paws out like open arms.  A small grey mouse, a dish and a scratching post are placed at the side. The cat is smiling.
Leaflet advertising the Latrobe Regional Hospital Sensory Walking Track 'For use by Rehab patients and friends of Nicholson Rehab and Macalister Wards'
(Nicholson and Macalister -like the Tambo -are the names of Gippsland Rivers,  we passed over the bridges on the way to Lakes Entrance each year  )

On the bedside table
a jar of curly Barley Sugar.. my grandparents believed these lollies were good for you
jug of water, 2 plastic tumblers - one lidded with a drinking straw.  Mum doesn't drink a lot of water she's never got into the habit of remembering to drink it.
her glasses and a small magnifier..  battery operated..
get well card of pink roses from her sister.  even though Auntie Kath has printed in large capital letters Mum says she can't make out what she's written. I read it to her.
Menu for Thurs -2 days time. we filled it in before
2  biros
packet of textas
sketch book- Mum's drawn pictures of trees..  black wires spool across the pages like broken threads ..the branches..    green red and pink leaves are straddled in mid air like a bonnet of confetti
hardback book of photographs Australia's Remarkable Trees
small black radio.. i notice when we come in that it's staticky. mum fiddles with a dial and then puts it on the table.  abc classic fm ..it's still fuzzy
little box of tissues torn open at the side
tube of Deep Heat Rub- for her hip
jar of lanolin- her feet
small make-up bag
jonquils in a vase on the window ledge
daphne in a vase on the bedside shelf

it's 10 to 3
We talk about Nana and Pupa.  Mum tells me some dates
Tom B. (her dad) born  September 4 1884
Molly B. (her mum) born     June    1887

Dad (Pupa) was 16 at the turn of the century

Mum (Nana) was 13 at the turn of the century



they were married at St Alipius' Ballarat on August 4th 1915
Jack who became a priest  born July 6th 1916
Eileen (mum) born June 5th 1918
Kathleen born Feb 27th 1920
Jim born July 31st 1921

Mum (Nana) was very busy says Mum. 

Pupa died at 89
Nana died at 89
Jack died when he was 71
Mum is 93
Kath is 91
Jim turns 90 on July 31st 


20 to 4
Nurse comes to help mum to the bathroom
she holds on to the walker and tries to lift her feet.  mostly she shuffles

Outside in the corridor a  buzzer goes off
the phone at the nurses' station is ringing
 noone there to answer it

outside the window a tree is in bud.  pink or white? think it's white. i ask the nurse what it is and when she comes back she says she's been told it's an ornamental apple

I can hear Mum whistling in the bathroom.