she comes for lunch.. she comes with her husband on the train.. just before it reaches the station she calls.. I press the receiver hard against my ear to hear a jumble of train clatter/broken whistling/the phone fading and coming back and in all that her voice is there so polished and fine -so English- Where do we go? her directional skills are wobbly so I stand in the kitchen and put myself in her shoes stepping onto the platform.. tell her to look back from where they've come and go right.. right and I hope that's enough.
it is.. my husband picks them up and brings them home and we lean into each other on the doorstep like late blooming roses.. friends from 18 to 58.. years of sunshine and rain..
asparagus from kooweerup / rocket / ham/ tomatoes / crumbly cheese / cracked pepper / mayonnaise /balsamic vinegar/ multigrain/ whitebread
vino/ beer(cuba59) water/ juice/ tea
strawberries/ kiwifruit/ bananas/
hazelnut wafers
tea in a pot
good talk/family photos/stories
we watch 2 films Dan's made
i take them for a drive to the gravel-edged road over the hill and not far from town where the green silence comes to me..
they get it too..
time to go..
on the way out she notices the garden.. it's been hot this week .. day after day of high 30s.. roses all wilted..
and now in a warm kitchen on a saturday night.. rain pouring on the roof, at the door and all around the garden..I'm on my own inside the wet music.. a train tooting at the end of the street ..I just want to say that she taught me something else today..the art of deadheading geraniums.. meditative she said.. under the eaves and all along the fence the geraniums had flowered and tossed their pink heads in the heat.. I'd wished the colours back but hadn't thought of doing much to look after them.. just expected they'd come back in time. which they do.. but home in Bristol she has to keep the gs in window boxes and told me if I kept cutting them back they'd flower on and on..
so, after they left I went out and stood in the garden ..the rain had come.. couldn't believe how many geraniums there were.. spindly knitting needles with tufts of pink, red and white petals that came off so easily in my hand.. I tossed the broken stalks back into the leaves and stayed outside breaking off those old spent flowers holding the umbrella like a wand in the other hand until it got dark..
it's meditative she said...
it is
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
walking with my dog..
most nights i walk the dog. i think i do it for his sake as much as my own. i like walking and sometimes i believe it wouldn't be such a hard thing to actually walk around the whole of australia. bit by bit i think you could just keep going until you did the circuit.
probably just a silly thought really but i do enjoy walking along and i think i've always been like this.. but having a dog who needs a walk/loves a walk helps..
tonight about 6.30 so still quite light.. after i'd had tea and the house was all silent-nightish what with Dan out filming and PC at the ballet with Pip i took Paddy up to the petrol station to buy a copy of the Herald-Sun.. M has his regular weekend pieces in but until someone at school told me i didn't know he had his photo as well so was keen to see it for myself..
walked up alright but they'd sold out and the grumpy attendant in the shop told me he didn't have any idea where i'd get the paper .. he was so blunt i was out of the place tout de sweetie..
decided to go back home via the car yards.. lots of little garden delights on the way.. no interest in the cars .. humvee hohum..
as i passed a driveway i noticed a black scottish terrier was wandering about with a long red lead dragging along beside him. he got a bit frisky with paddy but nothing too risky in fact i saw how overweight blackie actually was and i had a quick mental picture of a tubby scotsman wolfing down another chocolate cupcake while i was pulling paddy away and on the path to home.. noone about so blackie kept on walking with us.. waddling really... and after we'd passed 2 houses as a threesome i began to worry that the owners would wonder where he was.and why i was taking him.. i picked up the lead and started walking back with the two terriers.. i got to the open gate and a thin sickly looking man was standing there .. actually i could tell straight away he was drunk.. pock-marked skin, strong liquor smell all around him and pie-eyed but so friendlylike.. i held out the lead and he tried to take it. it dropped on the ground as i passed it over so there was this lost time while he scrabbled around and got it in his hands.. so grateful he was.. then he looked slightly worried and motioned further up the street with his hand and said "the other one is where??" in the distance i saw a large black ridge-back next to someone in a wheel-chair and they seemed to be moving away from us.. by this time i'd started walking off and called back to the fellow and told him his dog was coming back.. the wheelchair person was crossing the road and i could see the dog must have been lead by them ..we got closer to each other.. i could see it was a woman in the wheelchair, with a bright orange flag flapping above her.. she was on her way back and had a great soft smile on her face.. i told her i'd taken the other dog back and she was just so pleased.. a real goodness in her that i saw..
i was just glad i'd gone out walking..
probably just a silly thought really but i do enjoy walking along and i think i've always been like this.. but having a dog who needs a walk/loves a walk helps..
tonight about 6.30 so still quite light.. after i'd had tea and the house was all silent-nightish what with Dan out filming and PC at the ballet with Pip i took Paddy up to the petrol station to buy a copy of the Herald-Sun.. M has his regular weekend pieces in but until someone at school told me i didn't know he had his photo as well so was keen to see it for myself..
walked up alright but they'd sold out and the grumpy attendant in the shop told me he didn't have any idea where i'd get the paper .. he was so blunt i was out of the place tout de sweetie..
decided to go back home via the car yards.. lots of little garden delights on the way.. no interest in the cars .. humvee hohum..
as i passed a driveway i noticed a black scottish terrier was wandering about with a long red lead dragging along beside him. he got a bit frisky with paddy but nothing too risky in fact i saw how overweight blackie actually was and i had a quick mental picture of a tubby scotsman wolfing down another chocolate cupcake while i was pulling paddy away and on the path to home.. noone about so blackie kept on walking with us.. waddling really... and after we'd passed 2 houses as a threesome i began to worry that the owners would wonder where he was.and why i was taking him.. i picked up the lead and started walking back with the two terriers.. i got to the open gate and a thin sickly looking man was standing there .. actually i could tell straight away he was drunk.. pock-marked skin, strong liquor smell all around him and pie-eyed but so friendlylike.. i held out the lead and he tried to take it. it dropped on the ground as i passed it over so there was this lost time while he scrabbled around and got it in his hands.. so grateful he was.. then he looked slightly worried and motioned further up the street with his hand and said "the other one is where??" in the distance i saw a large black ridge-back next to someone in a wheel-chair and they seemed to be moving away from us.. by this time i'd started walking off and called back to the fellow and told him his dog was coming back.. the wheelchair person was crossing the road and i could see the dog must have been lead by them ..we got closer to each other.. i could see it was a woman in the wheelchair, with a bright orange flag flapping above her.. she was on her way back and had a great soft smile on her face.. i told her i'd taken the other dog back and she was just so pleased.. a real goodness in her that i saw..
i was just glad i'd gone out walking..
Thursday, November 5, 2009
birthday wishes..
It's my dad's birthday today..The day after the Melbourne Cup and the feast of St Charles Borromeo.. If Dad was still alive he'd be 96.. Because he died at 63 I have trouble picturing him as an old man.. Would he have shrunk in height? have any hair left? be able to see? hear? read? write? still drive? have a walking stick? sound really Aussie when he spoke? (he had a flat, plain voice though he could hold a nice note when he sang) Would he still be going to mass every day? Praying the rosary (his favourite prayer)? Reminding all of us that our main job on earth was to know love and serve God?
I wonder if he'd be outside watering the garden or cutting roses for the lounge room table.. Every now and then he'd have a dance in the kitchen with mum..there'd be hardly any room and she'd have an apron on but there was always a lightness in the way he held her.. she could have been a china vase.. As he got older would he have kept on doing repairs around the house? (he was so practical and could work out the way to do most jobs by himself that it was probably only the installation of an oil heater which never quite came off.. ) Would he have come and stayed with each of us in our homes after we'd married? I'd like to think he would. I wonder if he'd have been close to the 29 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren who now make up the Devlin clan. Would he have read them stories? Taken them for a walk to the paddock? Shown them how to milk a cow? Mow a lawn? Paint a wall? Would he have encouraged them to barrack for the Tigers? C'arn the Tigers he'd say and he'd look like the boy he must have been in his inner city days.. all energy and camaraderie with his footy going mates..Sport was the one part of his life where he could turn off from the pressure of politics and work.. I wonder if he'd have tipped the winner of this year's Melbourne Cup? The race often fell on his birthday and I still think of it now as his special day.. At night in the week leading up to the race I'd see him studying the form.. He used a technique that involved listing the horses which had been selected only once by the Age and Sun tipsters to come 1st 2nd or 3rd, He'd examine each horse's form over recent starts before finally coming up with his choice. He used to say that those tipsters had some inside information that few people knew about.. This was the knowledge he was looking for when he sat at the table with the papers.. Afterwards it was only a matter of acting on that knowledge with a good bet at the TAB on the morning of the race.. I remember the few times when those leads paid off and he did a jig with the trannie in the kitchen after the race was over.. I liked seeing him this happy.. I liked seeing him relaxed..
I wonder if over the years he'd have become a little less rigid in his approach to life? I hope so..I think he'd have found it hard to change but maybe - that lovely double-sided word full of desire and possibility that lingers in the air when you say it slowly- MAY BE the happiness in the lives of his children might have lead him to think there could be other ways of living.. It was in his nature to think deeply about the purpose of life and he was often intense in conversation which affected his relationships with us.. For him there was just one reality and that was the truth of our Catholic faith.. Nothing else really mattered beyond the journey we were all on..He spoke about the state of grace as though it was a physical place we had to be in..Always..
Were we? Could we be? Was it really all that mattered?
I wonder if he would have ever got to the stage where he worried about the world a little less? Would he have softened his views about the Australian Labor Party? Probably not. I don't think he ever forgot the years before and after the Split.. How astonished he'd have been at the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communism! I remember how sad our house was when the Hungarian revolution happened.. I was just a small kid but the black and white photos in a Time/Life magazine haunted me for years after I saw them .. His fear that some similar thing might happen in Australia if the Commos took over scared me as well. I took so much notice of what he said.. So often he seemed to be right in the things he spoke about.. I knew he had no interest in wealth or position, he'd say all he wanted was a fair go .. Mum said he changed from the time they were first married when she recalls he was a lot more easy going.. His work with the trade union movement and later the National Civic Council seemed to bring out the worrier - and the warrior- in him.. He was always ready to attack Communist ideas or defend his Catholic beliefs..It just seemed like a hard way to keep the peace..
And so today November 4 2009 it's his 96th birthday.
I hope I see him again and I hope when we meet he'll know me as the daughter he loved as well as the woman I've become. I'd like to look once more into his grey-green eyes and see the part of him I loved .. his humility, his humour, his wisdom, his warmth.. I'd like to think he'll say he missed me too..
I wonder if he'd be outside watering the garden or cutting roses for the lounge room table.. Every now and then he'd have a dance in the kitchen with mum..there'd be hardly any room and she'd have an apron on but there was always a lightness in the way he held her.. she could have been a china vase.. As he got older would he have kept on doing repairs around the house? (he was so practical and could work out the way to do most jobs by himself that it was probably only the installation of an oil heater which never quite came off.. ) Would he have come and stayed with each of us in our homes after we'd married? I'd like to think he would. I wonder if he'd have been close to the 29 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren who now make up the Devlin clan. Would he have read them stories? Taken them for a walk to the paddock? Shown them how to milk a cow? Mow a lawn? Paint a wall? Would he have encouraged them to barrack for the Tigers? C'arn the Tigers he'd say and he'd look like the boy he must have been in his inner city days.. all energy and camaraderie with his footy going mates..Sport was the one part of his life where he could turn off from the pressure of politics and work.. I wonder if he'd have tipped the winner of this year's Melbourne Cup? The race often fell on his birthday and I still think of it now as his special day.. At night in the week leading up to the race I'd see him studying the form.. He used a technique that involved listing the horses which had been selected only once by the Age and Sun tipsters to come 1st 2nd or 3rd, He'd examine each horse's form over recent starts before finally coming up with his choice. He used to say that those tipsters had some inside information that few people knew about.. This was the knowledge he was looking for when he sat at the table with the papers.. Afterwards it was only a matter of acting on that knowledge with a good bet at the TAB on the morning of the race.. I remember the few times when those leads paid off and he did a jig with the trannie in the kitchen after the race was over.. I liked seeing him this happy.. I liked seeing him relaxed..
I wonder if over the years he'd have become a little less rigid in his approach to life? I hope so..I think he'd have found it hard to change but maybe - that lovely double-sided word full of desire and possibility that lingers in the air when you say it slowly- MAY BE the happiness in the lives of his children might have lead him to think there could be other ways of living.. It was in his nature to think deeply about the purpose of life and he was often intense in conversation which affected his relationships with us.. For him there was just one reality and that was the truth of our Catholic faith.. Nothing else really mattered beyond the journey we were all on..He spoke about the state of grace as though it was a physical place we had to be in..Always..
Were we? Could we be? Was it really all that mattered?
I wonder if he would have ever got to the stage where he worried about the world a little less? Would he have softened his views about the Australian Labor Party? Probably not. I don't think he ever forgot the years before and after the Split.. How astonished he'd have been at the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communism! I remember how sad our house was when the Hungarian revolution happened.. I was just a small kid but the black and white photos in a Time/Life magazine haunted me for years after I saw them .. His fear that some similar thing might happen in Australia if the Commos took over scared me as well. I took so much notice of what he said.. So often he seemed to be right in the things he spoke about.. I knew he had no interest in wealth or position, he'd say all he wanted was a fair go .. Mum said he changed from the time they were first married when she recalls he was a lot more easy going.. His work with the trade union movement and later the National Civic Council seemed to bring out the worrier - and the warrior- in him.. He was always ready to attack Communist ideas or defend his Catholic beliefs..It just seemed like a hard way to keep the peace..
And so today November 4 2009 it's his 96th birthday.
I hope I see him again and I hope when we meet he'll know me as the daughter he loved as well as the woman I've become. I'd like to look once more into his grey-green eyes and see the part of him I loved .. his humility, his humour, his wisdom, his warmth.. I'd like to think he'll say he missed me too..
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