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.

two weeks ago..

september 1st 2011
spring in the blossom over the fence
a light blue sky at 5 in the afternoon
Leonard Cohen by my side

two weeks ago today
Tanya 36
a woman from the next street
walked over the railway tracks
into the path of a train
bound for the city
just on lunchtime
just like that
leaving
seven children
and a husband
to carry her broken hallelujah..





just found this.. i wrote it in 2009..

How do I remember her?   Some years ago she lived across the road.  A tall girl, stalky if I had to describe the way she looked.  I noticed there were a lot of kids and they were younger than ours or seemed to be.  It was hard to know how many there were. They were quiet, I remember that.  Our kids would be out in the street kicking the footy or riding bikes or skateboards and the kids across the road hardly made any noise.  The house had been rented out for as long as we’d been living here and people had come and gone.  In the early years Peter would go over with a couple of cakes as a welcome to whoever had just moved in.. I think he would have gone over to say hello to them but I can’t be sure.      So when I went over to say hello, they’d been there for a while and I’d had time to observe her a little. I noticed she always walked to the shops and brought the groceries home in plastic bags.  She’d go up late in the afternoon.  She looked more like a big sister going out to get a few things after school than a mother.