Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
irish times..
The Irish adventure begins with a promise written on a paper napkin in a pizza place in Carlton. A few days after having a family meal there I get a text message from Anthony, my 25 year old son.
Did you buy that ticket? Ireland! Was not kidding about that pact mother. And we had witnesses! And an angry Italian outside.
Last thing first.
A middle-aged Romeo is sitting in a car in the side street a couple of metres beyond the restaurant window, with a young woman lying in his lap. Anthony has drawn back the curtain near our table to catch more of the late light and inadvertently interrupted a private moment.
The meal is memorable for more than this, however, and his text message proof that a deal of another kind was made that night. We talk about going to Ireland together, of meeting up in England after he’s backpacked through Asia- and include the possibility of getting together with his older brother Michael, who’s been working in London for the past year. Making a journey with two of my sons seems remote and fantastic as we sit around the table talking. Given it’s been about thirty years since I’ve travelled overseas, the idea of going on the road with anyone feels close to revolutionary.
Six months after this Carlton conversation though, on a cool July morning, the impossible has happened. I’m looking out the window of a Ryanair jet en route from Stansted to Dublin. Below there are tiny boats inching along on the bluest of seas and beside me are my two non-imaginary traveling companions. Anthony’s in the aisle seat studying the Lonely Planet and Michael is dozing, his head nudged against my shoulder like a warm rock.
As we touchdown at the Dublin airport just on 9, the first sign of Irish life is a hare loping through long grass by the runway. There is nothing special in this I suppose, but the sighting excites me.
A small brown truck with“ Serving the Sewing Industry” painted on its battered doors passes by the bus window on our way into the city as does a dowdy matron’s outfit from head to toe that’s on display in the window of Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop. My sisters have told me that going to Ireland is like stepping back into the past and right now I wonder if they could be right.
We decide to hire a car and to stay in youth hostels for the ten days we’re here. Apart from the one request I make that at some stage of the journey we’ll visit Ballinascreen, the Northern Ireland town where my great-grandparents were born, we have no firm plans about where we’re going.
The trip starts with the realization that we’re so lucky to be alive. At the Dublin tourist bureau we hear of the London bombings. The woman who is helping us find a room for the night disappears after calling us up to the counter and comes back waving a mobile phone in the air as a way of explaining where she’s been. It’s her son she tells us, calling from Soho to let her know he’s okay. She puts the phone to the side of her desk and picks up a pen but after writing down our names says she’s too distracted and sends us off to the lower level of the building where a young fellar will finish the booking.
Outside on the street I get messages from home asking where we are and if we’re safe but the line drops out before there’s a chance to reply. It‘s only later when we reach the hostel that we find out what has happened. The dining room is packed with people staring up at the television on the wall. For the next few hours we sit at a table in the Four Courts hostel watching the Irish RTE One coverage.
Anthony goes upstairs to sleep, Michael stays by the screen and I go out on my own. It’s hard to know what to do. I’m torn between feeling terrible about the bombings and over the moon at being on the footpath where James Joyce once walked. The hostel’s just across the road from the Liffey and under a light blue sky, the river is dark and slow-moving.
O’Donovan, Grattan, Ha’penny and O’Connell.
The bridges have names that remind me of old men. I go over the Ha’penny with a crowd of Dubliners on their way home from work. Someone’s dropped a 1920’s style bicycle in the muddy shallows below the embankment probably for the effect. Stephen Dedalus can never be too far away.
A woman lies curled up on the steps of the Franciscan church next door to the hostel, like a cat on a stone mat. I notice her on our way to check in and she’s still there when we go out for a meal some time later. Most of her teeth are missing and even though it’s a mild day, she’s wearing a thick coat and a couple of jumpers over a long dirty skirt. I look at her eyes and face and realize she’s not much older than me.
There are pubs advertising live music all the way through the Temple Bar district. We find one with a wall of windows facing the sun and go in. For the past year Anthony’s suffered bouts of chronic fatigue and has had to adjust his life around the illness. He rarely drinks anymore. Says alcohol’s not worth it as it knocks him about for a couple of days afterwards. It’s hard to see him like this, so tired all the time. I feel guilty having fun. This night though, he sips on a beer to celebrate the fact that we’ve begun the Irish trip. I hand my camera to a woman standing near our table and she takes a photo of the three of us with froth on our lips sitting under a 1948 poster that says “Guinness is strength.”
We wander past shops and down cobblestone laneways looking for somewhere to eat and find a café above a paper shop. The room is crowded and the tables are hardly bigger than the dinner plates but no-one’s complaining. They’re too busy talking. They could all be eating cream so thick is the brogue. M and A pull faces and nod and nay like cheeky schoolboys while they eavesdrop on other conversations and pretend to be listening to me. It’s late by the time we finish our meal and on the way back to the hostel we link arms together. Although the London events are still swirling in my head, I realize I’m cocooned in the happiness of the moment. As we pass the Franciscan church I put some coins on the steps beside the homeless queen and she opens her eyes mumbles blessyoublessyou before she brushes her skirt down and slips off around the corner.
Anthony and I climb into our sleeping bags while Michael stays downstairs watching more of the news. Around midnight he brings me a Bailey’s in a mug to help me to sleep.
In the morning we pick up a car from the Thrifty depot. I’m hoping for a book of Irish road rules along with the keys, but there’s only a brochure about car hire and a small travel map available according to the German uni student who serves us. At least she can’t find anything under the counter that looks like a book of rules. It’s her first day at work. By the time we’re walking out the door, she’s managed to come up with three suggestions to help us on our way. “Don’t drive on der right. Don’t speed. Don’t drink too much ven you’re driving, I suppose?” I’m amused by her advice but I’m also confused when we leave that office. Neither of the boys has any intention of paying the extra costs to include their names on the hire form yet I know they’re intending to share the driving with me. Anthony just shakes his head when she asks if there’ll be more than one driver. He looks at me sideways to confirm what I should already know. We’re travelling on the cheap. Even the fact that we’ll be going to the North for a few days will remain a secret.
I turn the key in the ignition and fiddle with the gears while Anthony spreads the map of Dublin out on his knees and tells me I worry too much. As if to show me what he means, he leans across the steering wheel and toots the horn at the mechanic as we take off..........
Did you buy that ticket? Ireland! Was not kidding about that pact mother. And we had witnesses! And an angry Italian outside.
Last thing first.
A middle-aged Romeo is sitting in a car in the side street a couple of metres beyond the restaurant window, with a young woman lying in his lap. Anthony has drawn back the curtain near our table to catch more of the late light and inadvertently interrupted a private moment.
The meal is memorable for more than this, however, and his text message proof that a deal of another kind was made that night. We talk about going to Ireland together, of meeting up in England after he’s backpacked through Asia- and include the possibility of getting together with his older brother Michael, who’s been working in London for the past year. Making a journey with two of my sons seems remote and fantastic as we sit around the table talking. Given it’s been about thirty years since I’ve travelled overseas, the idea of going on the road with anyone feels close to revolutionary.
Six months after this Carlton conversation though, on a cool July morning, the impossible has happened. I’m looking out the window of a Ryanair jet en route from Stansted to Dublin. Below there are tiny boats inching along on the bluest of seas and beside me are my two non-imaginary traveling companions. Anthony’s in the aisle seat studying the Lonely Planet and Michael is dozing, his head nudged against my shoulder like a warm rock.
As we touchdown at the Dublin airport just on 9, the first sign of Irish life is a hare loping through long grass by the runway. There is nothing special in this I suppose, but the sighting excites me.
A small brown truck with“ Serving the Sewing Industry” painted on its battered doors passes by the bus window on our way into the city as does a dowdy matron’s outfit from head to toe that’s on display in the window of Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop. My sisters have told me that going to Ireland is like stepping back into the past and right now I wonder if they could be right.
We decide to hire a car and to stay in youth hostels for the ten days we’re here. Apart from the one request I make that at some stage of the journey we’ll visit Ballinascreen, the Northern Ireland town where my great-grandparents were born, we have no firm plans about where we’re going.
The trip starts with the realization that we’re so lucky to be alive. At the Dublin tourist bureau we hear of the London bombings. The woman who is helping us find a room for the night disappears after calling us up to the counter and comes back waving a mobile phone in the air as a way of explaining where she’s been. It’s her son she tells us, calling from Soho to let her know he’s okay. She puts the phone to the side of her desk and picks up a pen but after writing down our names says she’s too distracted and sends us off to the lower level of the building where a young fellar will finish the booking.
Outside on the street I get messages from home asking where we are and if we’re safe but the line drops out before there’s a chance to reply. It‘s only later when we reach the hostel that we find out what has happened. The dining room is packed with people staring up at the television on the wall. For the next few hours we sit at a table in the Four Courts hostel watching the Irish RTE One coverage.
Anthony goes upstairs to sleep, Michael stays by the screen and I go out on my own. It’s hard to know what to do. I’m torn between feeling terrible about the bombings and over the moon at being on the footpath where James Joyce once walked. The hostel’s just across the road from the Liffey and under a light blue sky, the river is dark and slow-moving.
O’Donovan, Grattan, Ha’penny and O’Connell.
The bridges have names that remind me of old men. I go over the Ha’penny with a crowd of Dubliners on their way home from work. Someone’s dropped a 1920’s style bicycle in the muddy shallows below the embankment probably for the effect. Stephen Dedalus can never be too far away.
A woman lies curled up on the steps of the Franciscan church next door to the hostel, like a cat on a stone mat. I notice her on our way to check in and she’s still there when we go out for a meal some time later. Most of her teeth are missing and even though it’s a mild day, she’s wearing a thick coat and a couple of jumpers over a long dirty skirt. I look at her eyes and face and realize she’s not much older than me.
There are pubs advertising live music all the way through the Temple Bar district. We find one with a wall of windows facing the sun and go in. For the past year Anthony’s suffered bouts of chronic fatigue and has had to adjust his life around the illness. He rarely drinks anymore. Says alcohol’s not worth it as it knocks him about for a couple of days afterwards. It’s hard to see him like this, so tired all the time. I feel guilty having fun. This night though, he sips on a beer to celebrate the fact that we’ve begun the Irish trip. I hand my camera to a woman standing near our table and she takes a photo of the three of us with froth on our lips sitting under a 1948 poster that says “Guinness is strength.”
We wander past shops and down cobblestone laneways looking for somewhere to eat and find a café above a paper shop. The room is crowded and the tables are hardly bigger than the dinner plates but no-one’s complaining. They’re too busy talking. They could all be eating cream so thick is the brogue. M and A pull faces and nod and nay like cheeky schoolboys while they eavesdrop on other conversations and pretend to be listening to me. It’s late by the time we finish our meal and on the way back to the hostel we link arms together. Although the London events are still swirling in my head, I realize I’m cocooned in the happiness of the moment. As we pass the Franciscan church I put some coins on the steps beside the homeless queen and she opens her eyes mumbles blessyoublessyou before she brushes her skirt down and slips off around the corner.
Anthony and I climb into our sleeping bags while Michael stays downstairs watching more of the news. Around midnight he brings me a Bailey’s in a mug to help me to sleep.
In the morning we pick up a car from the Thrifty depot. I’m hoping for a book of Irish road rules along with the keys, but there’s only a brochure about car hire and a small travel map available according to the German uni student who serves us. At least she can’t find anything under the counter that looks like a book of rules. It’s her first day at work. By the time we’re walking out the door, she’s managed to come up with three suggestions to help us on our way. “Don’t drive on der right. Don’t speed. Don’t drink too much ven you’re driving, I suppose?” I’m amused by her advice but I’m also confused when we leave that office. Neither of the boys has any intention of paying the extra costs to include their names on the hire form yet I know they’re intending to share the driving with me. Anthony just shakes his head when she asks if there’ll be more than one driver. He looks at me sideways to confirm what I should already know. We’re travelling on the cheap. Even the fact that we’ll be going to the North for a few days will remain a secret.
I turn the key in the ignition and fiddle with the gears while Anthony spreads the map of Dublin out on his knees and tells me I worry too much. As if to show me what he means, he leans across the steering wheel and toots the horn at the mechanic as we take off..........
at ireland two boys..
The trip made me young again. From the moment we talked about it in a pizza restaurant off Lygon Street the idea of Ireland carried energy. It was six months before we met up.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
winter afternoon..
Drumbeats on the tin roof. I pull back the curtains and study the sky. Dark clouds everywhere and pin-straight lines of rain falling through the leaves of the apple tree beside the house. Two crows swoop from the neigbbour's roof and into our backyard. The washing’s soaked. Overhead the drumming gets heavier and louder until just like that it eases to a tip-toeing then silence. The sky’s an empty white. In the space beyond the window, a large insect appears. Gliding like a small helicopter between the dripping branches it seems to be looking for a place to land. There are no other creatures here except that insect and me. I watch it hovering and then settle its feet on a leaf.
Feels like peace.
Feels like peace.
two smiles..
Earlier this week my niece Emmeline had a baby. Patrick. I saw her on Sunday afternoon at a family get together on the beach in St Kilda. Ten days overdue, she laughed and tapped her belly telling us it was all a phantom. She looked tired but in the way of most women in the last stage of pregnancy she had an extraordinary beauty, like a luscious rose about to drop its petals.
On Tuesday my brother sent a text just before 8 in the morning to say that the baby had been born. His first grandchild. That message probably went all around the country as he let each of us – his eight brothers and sisters- know the news. I went off to school feeling incredibly happy.
The next night an email arrived with three photos taken in the hospital room. The first picture opened slowly on the screen from the top of my brother’s grey flecked hair across his pale face – a face I realize now, with features much the same as Dad’s- down to his arms where he’s holding a tiny baby wrapped in a bunny rug and wearing a white beanie. My brother’s fingers are spread open across the baby’s chest like wave-lines on a map. One hand spanning the life of another.
The second photo showed four generations of the family - great grandmother, grandmother, aunt and newborn. All eyes are on the baby.
In the last picture, Emmy’s wearing a red t-shirt and her long blonde hair’s pulled back from her face and held in a pony tail. She’s lying sideways on soft white pillows on the hospital bed. Just beneath her, tufts of golden hair escaping from his beanie is tiny Patrick. Lips curled upwards, his smile is a perfect copy of the grin that spills from her eyes.
On Tuesday my brother sent a text just before 8 in the morning to say that the baby had been born. His first grandchild. That message probably went all around the country as he let each of us – his eight brothers and sisters- know the news. I went off to school feeling incredibly happy.
The next night an email arrived with three photos taken in the hospital room. The first picture opened slowly on the screen from the top of my brother’s grey flecked hair across his pale face – a face I realize now, with features much the same as Dad’s- down to his arms where he’s holding a tiny baby wrapped in a bunny rug and wearing a white beanie. My brother’s fingers are spread open across the baby’s chest like wave-lines on a map. One hand spanning the life of another.
The second photo showed four generations of the family - great grandmother, grandmother, aunt and newborn. All eyes are on the baby.
In the last picture, Emmy’s wearing a red t-shirt and her long blonde hair’s pulled back from her face and held in a pony tail. She’s lying sideways on soft white pillows on the hospital bed. Just beneath her, tufts of golden hair escaping from his beanie is tiny Patrick. Lips curled upwards, his smile is a perfect copy of the grin that spills from her eyes.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
in the valley of love..
For the past year my daughter Pip has been in Japan. Chikusa, the village in Hyogo where she's lived and taught lies in a deep valley more than five hours to the west of Tokyo and is reached by rail and road. The first picture she sends home comes via her mobile phone on the afternoon she arrives and is the view from her first floor window. Mountains and forest, rice fields, a narrow road winding across the valley like a pale yellow scarf, a bridge with wooden railings and two trees beyond the rice fields in the shape of lollypops.
At the local junior high school she commences her teaching career and in the tiny rural community regarded by many as the Tibet of western Japan, her year begins to unfold. Sorachi-san, the elderly neighbour in the downstairs flat becomes the friend with whom she walks in the evenings after school as well as the friend who shows her how to separate rubbish into six different groups. Hashimoto-san the school tea lady leaves a note on her desk "There are many extra milk in refrigerator. Would you like use home?" and takes her to her son's baseball game where the crowd sings R-R-R-R-RR! to the tune of We-will-we-will-rock-you! Pip joins the Chikusa choir and learns to play taiko drums and makes chocolate truffles for her students and all along the way in her phone calls and emails she takes us with her. Her brothers and her dad and I move around the Chikusa valley like shadows following sunlight. Her stories are the dances that take her away and bring her home. On the first weekend of July she swims in the Sea of Japan and in the last batch of photos we receive, there she is, grin from ear to ear, in her board shorts and t-shirt standing by the water pretending to surf.
Now after a year in Japan it's time for her to leave.
This morning, twelve months and two days since she left Australia I woke to an email from her, written at Changi airport as she waited for a flight to Edinburgh where she'll be for a month or so.
quickie frm changi
To: mum
woke up at seven, feelin kinda strange, bare walls, fridge etc.. a shell.. having my mornin coffee i noticed a few students walking down the hill from school, then a few more, and before i knew it, all of them were walking..... hmmm...... ohmyGOD!! they came to my apartment ma, the WHOLE school, staff too, to send me off, give presents, sing the school song!!!!!! can you even comprehend how overwhelmed i was/ still am???
love you, speak soon..
I read her message over and over and let the pictures roll in my head. If I could I'd have been there too, singing that song at her door.
At the local junior high school she commences her teaching career and in the tiny rural community regarded by many as the Tibet of western Japan, her year begins to unfold. Sorachi-san, the elderly neighbour in the downstairs flat becomes the friend with whom she walks in the evenings after school as well as the friend who shows her how to separate rubbish into six different groups. Hashimoto-san the school tea lady leaves a note on her desk "There are many extra milk in refrigerator. Would you like use home?" and takes her to her son's baseball game where the crowd sings R-R-R-R-RR! to the tune of We-will-we-will-rock-you! Pip joins the Chikusa choir and learns to play taiko drums and makes chocolate truffles for her students and all along the way in her phone calls and emails she takes us with her. Her brothers and her dad and I move around the Chikusa valley like shadows following sunlight. Her stories are the dances that take her away and bring her home. On the first weekend of July she swims in the Sea of Japan and in the last batch of photos we receive, there she is, grin from ear to ear, in her board shorts and t-shirt standing by the water pretending to surf.
Now after a year in Japan it's time for her to leave.
This morning, twelve months and two days since she left Australia I woke to an email from her, written at Changi airport as she waited for a flight to Edinburgh where she'll be for a month or so.
quickie frm changi
To: mum
woke up at seven, feelin kinda strange, bare walls, fridge etc.. a shell.. having my mornin coffee i noticed a few students walking down the hill from school, then a few more, and before i knew it, all of them were walking..... hmmm...... ohmyGOD!! they came to my apartment ma, the WHOLE school, staff too, to send me off, give presents, sing the school song!!!!!! can you even comprehend how overwhelmed i was/ still am???
love you, speak soon..
I read her message over and over and let the pictures roll in my head. If I could I'd have been there too, singing that song at her door.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Poppies..
Three dollars a bunch from the man at the Sunday market. I buy two, bring them home and unwrap the purple tissue paper.
Some go in the kitchen in a pottery vase on the table, the others in a glass jar by the front door. Just before midnight on my way to bed I notice that the tallest poppy has opened. She's taken off her coat – dropped it from her shoulders onto the table to reveal the fold of her dress. A swish of apricot taffeta. The woman beside her is muffled and stiff. Her lemon skirt's scrunched inside her hood -or is it an arm poking out of her sleeve? Another has her head lifted towards the ceiling-the green coat tangled around her neck. The one beside her can only stare at the dress leaking out from under her like blood ready to spill.
The women by the front door are too chilled to move. Mouths stuck for words - waiting on warmth to speak. The sun should wake them.
In the morning I take a handful to school and put them in a vase on my desk. Just before lunch, Niamh the little Irish sweetheart stops as she's reading her work aloud and asks "what are dose things?" Niamh has a slight lisp. da for the, pwease for please.. Poppies I tell her - but they're really girls about to go dancing when they're warm enough. They'll slip off their coats and dance in the sun.. "Ohh" she squeals and touches the petals. The boys on her table come over to look and Niamh tells them the story. By the time the bell for play has gone the last two women have had their coats taken from them. The crisp green hoods are souvenired then lost on the classroom floor.
###
Mum sticks poppy petals on to a home-made card .."your favourites".. The petals have the feel of paper and look like butterfly wings. Pollen dust smudges my fingers when I open the envelope.
###
Colours of fire, earth and sun,
Creased, pressed, still.
Tongues tied up inside mouths waiting to speak-
they are holding the peace.
Drooped folds, gathered skirts.
They nudge each other in the water.
A bristle of hair,
A mouth split open to show a puckered smile.
Tiny capes on the table.
Fine yellow needles, dusty tops, cup waists.
These women are strong, stooped, bowed, looped, stuck, tucked, short.
They lean into each other's arms-
Thin bodies standing in the deep.
Drinking in sunlight- held in the moonlight.
###
A week later they’ve lost their looks. I take them out to the garden and lay them under the eaves.
Buy two more bunches.
Some go in the kitchen in a pottery vase on the table, the others in a glass jar by the front door. Just before midnight on my way to bed I notice that the tallest poppy has opened. She's taken off her coat – dropped it from her shoulders onto the table to reveal the fold of her dress. A swish of apricot taffeta. The woman beside her is muffled and stiff. Her lemon skirt's scrunched inside her hood -or is it an arm poking out of her sleeve? Another has her head lifted towards the ceiling-the green coat tangled around her neck. The one beside her can only stare at the dress leaking out from under her like blood ready to spill.
The women by the front door are too chilled to move. Mouths stuck for words - waiting on warmth to speak. The sun should wake them.
In the morning I take a handful to school and put them in a vase on my desk. Just before lunch, Niamh the little Irish sweetheart stops as she's reading her work aloud and asks "what are dose things?" Niamh has a slight lisp. da for the, pwease for please.. Poppies I tell her - but they're really girls about to go dancing when they're warm enough. They'll slip off their coats and dance in the sun.. "Ohh" she squeals and touches the petals. The boys on her table come over to look and Niamh tells them the story. By the time the bell for play has gone the last two women have had their coats taken from them. The crisp green hoods are souvenired then lost on the classroom floor.
###
Mum sticks poppy petals on to a home-made card .."your favourites".. The petals have the feel of paper and look like butterfly wings. Pollen dust smudges my fingers when I open the envelope.
###
Colours of fire, earth and sun,
Creased, pressed, still.
Tongues tied up inside mouths waiting to speak-
they are holding the peace.
Drooped folds, gathered skirts.
They nudge each other in the water.
A bristle of hair,
A mouth split open to show a puckered smile.
Tiny capes on the table.
Fine yellow needles, dusty tops, cup waists.
These women are strong, stooped, bowed, looped, stuck, tucked, short.
They lean into each other's arms-
Thin bodies standing in the deep.
Drinking in sunlight- held in the moonlight.
###
A week later they’ve lost their looks. I take them out to the garden and lay them under the eaves.
Buy two more bunches.
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