the chook house

February 21, 2024

Rottnest 2024

It is the last day of a two week stay.

This is a luxury that few can/do indulge in. We have seen the chalets next to us empty over and over again; the fresh sheets deposited, the cleaners come in, play loud music and bang around indoors. Slam doors. Clean?

Most people seem to only have a few days, and the lucky ones an entire week but we have 14 impossible days. Fourteen! So long, that when the holiday begins there is no counting down. This really does make the unwinding easy.

It is hot, sure here, but worse on the mainland. A plume of heavy smoke rises from the mainland then drifts and fades across the horizon, and a bush fire is presumed. It is a long way away. Fire is frequent. Perth is a tinder box. No longer is it a surprise to hear the radio give a warning to “leave now or be prepared to defend your home”. “It is no longer safe to leave, choose a room with two exits and running water.” Good grief.

Our tenant in Fremantle has a broken air-conditioner. No air conditioner at Longreach and fans with cut off arms that blow mere wisps of warm air. But we have the sea a few metres from our door. From here organising a new Daikin is a challenge. G has Telstra, check the reviews. In this heat the quotes go through the roof. Ten grand! “It’s brutal” writes the tenant:, the heat, even in Freo. We can plonk ourselves in when the heat overtakes us. We can get a fancy Campari drink with a slice of orange and lots of ice and carry it to the beach and sit in the water whilst wearing prescription sunnies and a hat!

If Rottnest were to burn I imagine sitting here in the safety of the blue water, delivered here swiftly through the muscles of others, safe all the same. Different if a plane were to go down I sometimes think. Would I be abandoned by the rush of people to get away from the burning craft and down the inflatable slide. I am amused and thankful the way airline staff instruct me that in an emergency they will assist me, but really? I might succumb. I am ready to go down with the plane.

The water has been clear and the reeds wave underneath as I swim. Languid. Me in slow motion. Mike says it is good swim with me. Slow. No pressure. Sometimes there are silver fish near the surface and bigger blotchy well-disguised ones in the seagrass. The snorkelers know their names. There are rays too. The bird watchers spot a black shoulder kite and a kingfisher.

Something happens around middle age when men (and some women, although decidedly less I think) become fascinated by birds of the feathered kind; seeing them, hearing them, pointing them out, offering the binoculars to the less fascinated. There are binoculars that you can get that tell you the name of the bird you are looking at. Does that spoil the not knowing? There is an app that can identify them by the sound they make. It confuses the hell out of the birds too as they hear some other non existent bird chirping back at them. There is an app that you can point to the stars in the night sky and be told what is the star you are looking at. Jupiter! There is an app that tells you what the ship sliding across the horizon is called and where’s its home port and what cargo it carries. (We keep track of the jilted sheep carrier that has drifted back and forth for over a month now while no one with authority knows what should be done. And the sheep are just fine, far away enough from shore not to pique any nostrils.)There’s an app that Jane uses to teach herself Spanish (it dings and pings) and a word game that Liz plays. G has several to work through each morning and the list is growing

G has a manuscript to read. I have read mine. But first he has worldle and wordle and quordle and squaredle and…

My phone is only receiving SOS and hence I have no apps. App-less. This is a welcomed unburdening. At least I will know about The Fire if it hits.

A misty rain has fallen on the last day and I wonder if the chalk has been wiped from the road. “Henry and Charlie Stop” with a solid line and repeated a few hundred metres further on. Is this a parent’s instruction to small children to not go further or is this part of a game, a race between small boys that marks a beginning and an end? Is this a worried mother who does not realise that there is no need for barriers and rules at Rottnest. As long as the kid can swim.

Tourists get unbearably close to the quokkas. So close they are almost kissing the comatosed marsupial, down on their hands and knees with their phone in the face of the small unmoving critter. We have Federer to blame for this phenomenon. Despite the signage there is still petting and poking, allowing sips of water from takeaway cups, bowls put out beside chalets.

G hates a cabana. He especially hates the blue and white stripes. An almost identical structure, but of a solid colour does not get the same derision as the blue and white cabana.

A bird has pooed on our bedsheet. It must have made its way through the open window to see what goodies could be had. It is a big poo with sand in it and we presume it is a seagull till the raven shows itself as a thief on other persons balconies. Smart not scared, ballsy birds. King of birds. Argh Argh.

On the shore line, a baby seagull, although as big as his mother, beeps continuously at the nurturing bird. It follows and squeaks at her. It bothers her about her bill. She moves her head away and sometimes steps away from him but the baby is always there, right behind or beside her. Clamped on. Mum, Mum. Sometimes she flies off and then the baby is immediately silent as if the cry would tell other birds he was vulnerable and alone. He is only annoying and a cry baby when his mother is right there. Sound familiar?

There was a time when I could climb the hills with the power of my own shoulders but now like others I have lithium. All sorts zoom by on all sorts of powered mobiles and I wonder when as a species we will give up legs entirely. G makes the effort still and despite a back pack the weight of a coke drinking toddler he is determined to make every hill, not rising from the saddle, like Lance’s great rival. No one recalls his name.

Mother to small school age girls at the stairs that lead to the beach:

“Look where you are?”

“Your friends are back in Perth on the oval, the oval!”

“You are by the ocean!”

She pleads with them not to splash her, she’s exhausted.

She gets up from a cross-legged position effortlessly, no hands.

This is one of the things I am looking for. How easily do people get up and down from the sand? Do you have to roll over onto your hands and knees and push up? Do you ask your partner to give you their outstretched hand? This skill might save you from an old person’s home. Practice now. Get up off the floor and keep doing it. Whatever way you can. On your own.

Instead the older people stand on the beach. They contemplate getting down. You can see it cross their mind. But then wonder if they will ever get up again. It is along way down and even a longer way up. Instead stand around for a short while, make like you want to dry off, that you don’t like the sand, then go back to the chalet. Or buy a chair.

Small child to other small child on balcony:

“Josh, if there is a fire on the balcony, what would you rather? Burn or Jump off?”

For two days I have pain. So much pain that I could hardly roll over in the bed. I lay there and wondered if I should go home early. But that would mean busting in on J and his lemon tart party. G is at the golf course while the fog still hangs across the greens. Why be here in pain? Like the school children. Look where you are. If you can rise from the bed? Can you see the ocean from the bed? A swim helps, stretches, pain killers. Swimming. The ocean the great healer. Each stroke. A balm for more than muscle.

We talk about swimming. Always how? How to continuously stay afloat without pain, with breath, without exhaustion, with ease. Imagine swimming the Rotto Swim? He has filmed me. Really am I that slow? Did you take it in slow motion? No. I film G and later we look at the film. It is a blurred pink thumb of mine across the lens. His stroke is there, somewhere, behind my thumb. Ha. We laugh. Really laugh, deep down in the belly. That is good for your swimming. Laughing.

Tonight the sea breeze is in. We haven’t had it for days and mostly the bay has been a hazy blue and purple. It has been slick and smooth. Cataract blue. There is the slap of the waves on the shore line and the incessant thwack of flyscreen doors that cannot close properly. We have new neighbours and their children freely roam the beach and paddle out to a boat a father has motored over in. There was some early tension over the getting of the key and the usual palaver over credentials not sighted but all is recovered now, tinnies of Swan draught collect about the legs of the chairs. The oyster catcher is the only lone creature on the beach; his red bill deftly pokes the sand as he carefully places one foot down followed by the other.

April 12, 2020April 12, 2020

Covid Times 4

The streets of Fremantle are largely deserted except for the homeless and depauperate. They mill. They don’t maintain social distancing. They don’t comply. Their benches have been plastered with signs saying CLOSED but they peel these off and sit anyway.

White cockatoos are masters at mass gathering, from the lemon scented gum to the olive, eating the fruit and partying. Mess makers. Squawkers. Marauders.

It is Easter and the church services are happening online. The annual street arts festival has been cancelled. The town is eerily quiet and the streets invite being walked on, smack down the middle. Our own street is usually busy with pool-goers but it has been idle so long that we feel we own it. We walk on it, skate on it, play ball on it, the dogs even sleep on it. The side walk has not been blown of seed pods so it is carpeted by the crunchy droppings. At night, as the street lamp catches them, they shimmer like discarded fish scales.

We experience the hottest April day ever and the beach is very enticing. People go, of course they do, but they spread out. They veer from each other, as everyone is perceived as potentially contagious, carrying the lurgy, deceitfully in their sputum, on their hands, in the vapour they emit. A friend tells me it took several years following the Spanish flu for people to begin engaging freely with others again. How long will it take for us to remove the “stand here” lines from the supermarket floor after this has passed? When will the Keep Cup be allowed to touch the milk frother’s nozzle? Will cash be ever handed to you again?When will you no longer wince as some one extends a hand towards you or offers you a receipt that you then refuse?

But as much as people try to avoid each other, they also crave what they are missing – companionship is deeply healing and people want to say hello. They want to smile and have a conversation unfettered by perspex and closer than 1.5 metes. Somehow the replacement virtual world has yet to feel tempting. I prefer to brood, unhelpfully.

My own anxieties have switched focus from disease to loss of income. I don’t fear becoming ill, but I do vex as pay checks dwindle and income seems to be out of my control. I think of anxious dogs and how I tell clients anxiety is so much worse when an animal feels a lack of control and predictability. I am such an animal now – my life has lost its rudder, and one week can be very different from the one before. As a list-maker, as a person who loves order and routine, I find myself all-a-jangle and sometimes close to weepy. My son tells me it is Easter and I should stop fretting. But this goes by unheeded. What’s wrong with you Mum? That oh-so-helpful question to the ill-at-ease. We argue instead about what happened to Jesus on the various days of Easter while eating more baked goods with cream from a spray can. At night I can’t sleep as I lie awake with the machinations of the various ideas I have to make my income more reliable. I try to stop thinking, but immediately find myself at the beginning of the spool once more, working through the same problem. Graham tosses and turns too but he is sleeping. He is reading Camus’ The Plague and I wonder if he dreams of pestilence.

Our neighbourhood has been baking, and all sorts of sticky cinnamon creations, eggs and sugar, are divvied up to be tasted, smuggled across the no-mans-land of the driveway. Covid contraband. Yeast is toilet paper, when it comes to scarcity, and Kate discovers that her current yeast is only expired by 8 years in the midst of the buns supposed rising. Not rising. Paul has bought ten kilos of flour. Food Works has yeast – he has a kilo of it now. We bake, despite the weather. Ovens heat kitchens. Tommy spins with sugar and chocolate.

We finish watching Tiger Kings but is has no soul. In the end it lacks warmth. There are no human characters to care about. The demise of the people, fuelled by their own greed and narcissism, is souring. At the very end the lead character, Joe Exotic, is remorseful that he has deprived two chimpanzees of each other’s company and physical touch for ten years. He has caged them separated from each other. One of the last shots is of the apes, finally rehomed to a better zoo, embracing, their hug so human it hurts.

Graham and I watch A Ghost Story and I am moved and nurtured by the beauty of the long slow shots, by the lack of dialogue, by sombreness, by the strange unfolding. Film and story wrap around me. I remember that story is everything. Weave with words, with images. Afleck mumbles. Rooney eats. They nuzzle. Lips, softly, on nape of neck. It is surprising and spectral and fitting for the Covid times.

Then comes the call for Pavlova on the narcos’ driveway.

April 5, 2020April 5, 2020

Covid Times 3

when we were still allowed to gather, we spread out photo by Paul Kavanaugh

All day the helicopter drones on. It is checking on the cruise ships, hovering over ahead like a sticky fly. It is the background to an otherwise peaceful day. A man picks olives on the oval – last year there were groups of people doing this. Now, just one lone man with a tarpaulin. Then there is the drug-affected woman who is lurking in the driveway, then raiding the lemon tree of every green lemon – about thirty of them, then tipping the bins over and strewing the rubbish all over the verge. Fremantle. This could happen in non -Covid times too. It’s more a Fremantle thing.

I finish the spherical jigsaw and we call it the COVID globe.

Cases: 278 Western Australia, 3635 Australia wide.

Italy: 660 deaths in one day. More than 80 000 infected. We are still a long way from “going full Italian”.

The background noise of Covid is beginning to normalise. It is just there now. A dread, but not as urgent, or pressing as before. Everything is finding its new normal. Hand washing has become routinely diligent. I am aware of every time I touch my face. Soon we will be able to see if the social distancing measures are actually flattening the curve at all. Any effect to the rate of infection will take 7-14 days to be seen.

I can no longer bear the sound of Norman Swan’s voice – once so beloved to me. I have to switch him off. He is so foreboding. Too doomsday, although I think we will all owe him for marshalling us so obediently.

Our son does not need to learn to be socially distant – it is encoded in him. If anything he needs to learn to be able to hug, and be hugged, but it can’t happen now. As Uni has all gone online he has had the opportunity to make new friends taken away from him. Social isolation is enforced, but replaced with excessive contact with your parents. Not good for any teenager. Sometimes all three of us are like a boil about to burst.

Viral load – the new term I learn – how much virus you are exposed to at the point of becoming infected can effect the severity of the illness that follows – hence why you want to avoid being close to lots of infected people at the one time like what might happen in a hospital situation for doctors and nurses. You want your health professionals to be able to wear masks and gowns, to be able to protect themselves.

****

It seems that WA might be so good at their control measures that we flatten the curve so much that there will not be a safe time to release the pressure, or take the foot off the brake. So many euphemisms.

Pumpkin – so much pumpkin. We order a box of vegetables that are picked up from a nearby alley. There are heirloom tomatoes of all shades of orange, red and green. They pop in your mouth. But there are kilos of pumpkin too that when cooked is dry and tasteless. Covid food.

The daily infection rate has slowed considerably since the increased rules came into effect. First we are told to keep to the 4 square metres of space per person rule and venues work out the numbers of patrons they can have. But that quickly changes and they are forced to close. Now there can be only TWO unrelated persons together, outside of family, in social gatherings. Many businesses are asked to stop trading. We now maintain the distance between the neighbourhood adults but the frequency with which the children interact could make this null and void. Balls are still kicked, boomerangs still thrown and hands still held.

Spain overtakes Italy in a daily death toll of greater than 800 and the pain and exhaustion on the medical workers is hard to watch. Disused buildings become morgues. People cannot hold funerals.

In Australia and world-wide there is innovation as companies that used to produce something else now make face masks, gloves, hospital equipment. Takeaway containers turn to N95 masks. Ansell stocks go up in value. PPE – we all know what it stands for now. Gin distilleries become hand sanitiser manufacturers. 3D printers will make ventilators. Car manufacturers make respirators. Retired nurses and doctors are asked to rejoin the health system and the private hospitals will become public if needs be.

Our anaesthetist neighbour says the system is ready. Hospital workers have had their flu shots. Elective surgery has been cancelled. Now they wait. Check their facebook.

The Artania ship is docked and refuses to leave. As immobile as a toddler who has plonked down on the floor, unwilling to do what a parent has beseeched. She has 450 crew on board and wants to wait another two weeks before leaving. Our state premier sounds exasperated and wants her pushed off shore, like a paper boat sent down stream to fall apart on the rocks. The infected could overwhelm us if they all become ill. But they also can’t be sent to sea to die.

I now have a corona virus App and can see in a couple of clicks how many cases we have in WA: 392, Australia wide 4860.

Norman Swan is on Skype because he likely has a cold. We await his result. Italians seem joyful from their balconies. They sing. The Spanish too applaud their health care workers from their windows. Little European dogs wearing harnesses can be lowered to the grass below to relieve themselves and then be hauled up.

I am doing consults in a warehouse. Sometimes it is me and the client, the dog and then, via Skype, another related client and another trainer. It is cumbersome and a bit distracting. We talk over one another. It is not personal and feels detached. At the end of the consult when we turn off the technology the in-the-flesh client and I feel a sense of relief. Just us. I can make eye contact when previously I was intermittently screen watching. We can speak at a normal volume and without people watching, interrupting, looking strained and perplexed. As a friend said – being a veterinarian is about a relationship – not that easy remotely.

Hours are spent learning to use new technology for teaching and it is exhausting and largely unpaid. Animals will not be touched. Students will be required to learn by watching others and this is not ideal. They will need to catch up later when the world begins again. We are all waiting, as if at a bus stop for a bus that is not running and without it we cannot get where we want to go, but we can’t leave the bus stop or else we might miss the bus when it does finally come. So wait we must. Sigh we do.

TV shows watched: Better call Saul – with its long quirky shots, Kim with her school girl pony tail, adobes in Alberqueque ; Ozark – blue film, southern drawl, goldilocks Ruth, ice cool Marty, the duplicitous Wendy and the robotic Helen, cartel money. What a field day the feminists would have analysing this; Homeland – crazy eyes Carrie with her rubber face all contorted, Max gunned down in a long shot ; Hard Quiz – ridiculous silliness, sneering; Revelation – sinister priests with white false teeth loose in their mouths talking about jacking off boys. Middle aged men so damaged by the abuse they suffered that they are forever broken. News. 7.30 report. No sports news. Weather – what will Irena be wearing tonight? Jasper watches reruns of NBA best games ever, shows where NBA players compete against each other via video basketball games, Bad Grandpa.

*****

WA 400 cases, Australia wide 5133. The number of cases being reported each day is falling and so therefore the curve is flattening. Less hockey stick. More hillock.

In the shops we are beginning to know the drill. To avoid each other. When confronted by a shopper not following the arrows on the floor you might step back, leer at them. At the check out there is a perspex screen between the attendant and the shopper. Everyone gives everyone else a wide berth and I wonder how permanent our distrust of each other will become after weeks to months of practicing this social distancing. The other day a client proffered a hand shake, out of habit, and I found myself recoiling. How strange it will be to handshake again.

The white cockatoos still screech. The clouds still make themselves magnificent. The rain still wets the pavement. The Artania sits still waiting. Petulant and refusing to move. From her bows and balconies messages saying, “Thank you Fremantle” hang. “We love you Fremantle.” But the love is all one way.

****

Walking the dog on a day where the season is changing. Mornings are cooler now. Sky pewter. There are many people out, as this is one of the things they can still do – with their families, or one other being. The river is quiet compared to last week when people in groups still took to the water in boats. Now single fishermen and stand up paddlers or canoeists dot the river. Dogs are loving this COVID nasty as their people pay them extra attention. At poo collection time there is the problem of not being able to moisten your fingers to rub the poo bag so it will open and then the problem of not being able to touch the bin lid to rid yourself of the poop bag. The playground is abandoned. The skatepark empty. The drinking fountains are switched off and this means no dog water either. Still he checks out the dry container and looks at me, perplexed. His single Covid worry.

Norman had the common cold.

Child care becomes free.

The Artania is allowed to stay for the two weeks she asked for.

WA 436 cases – 55 of them from the one cruise ship, The Artania. 18 people in intensive care. Compare this to New York City where there are over 630 deaths in one day. Make shift morgues. Field hospitals in Central Park. As the world becomes overwhelmed with the virus we are just in a waiting pattern. Our infection rate is low and the death rate piddling to other nations. Our isolation is serving to protect us. Our borders have become hard and we are asked not to even move between regions. We see our family, do our essential work and shopping and that’s all. I am learning to operate by telehealth. Our preparedness may seem overzealous but at least our health professionals may be spared the decision making that has been required in the countries whose systems have been overwhelmed. More and more it seems our doctors won’t need to choose between who is ventilated and who is turned away.

March 26, 2020March 27, 2020

Covid Times 2

The street is quiet like it might be Xmas day, Anzac Day or Good Friday – the only three days of the year that the pool is closed. Within the pool confines I can see James, a senior life guard, going about some maintenance business. There are no swimming bodies to save. The extremely annoying and very loud door buzzer to the gym has finally been silenced. No ear piercing instructions from an exuberant aqua aerobics instructor are heard.

I think of Pam, a woman in her seventies with yellow hair, who is a pool regular in the deep end. Daily she bobs about in a brightly coloured bathing cap and is always cheerful. In the water she moves her legs effortlessly, but on land she lumbers with her osteoarthritic ankles. Only a few weeks ago we contemplated the virus, but both agreed it wouldn’t change this – this constancy of the pool. But it has. Out of the pool she wears a colourful kaftan that billows like curtains in a breeze, but she moves like a person in pain. In the pool her face is bright, her aches diminished. Her legs cycle and her hands make small movements as she watches the lap swimmers in the lane beside her, smiling at them if she catches their gaze. She speaks to the life guards and they stand by the pool and talk to her as she loosens her joints. How she must miss this, I think. I wonder what she is doing now with this void.

The children are becoming used to the pool being closed and bicycle on the road. Down the driveway of the now empty businesses careens Tommy. There could be a permanent cricket pitch on our cul de sac now.

A friend sends me a video of a rat gnawing at her laundry drain from within its dark confines. There is a maddening, incessant tapping of teeth on the metal drain that woke her in the night. The rat’s body is twisting and twirling while the teeth are determinedly working on the steel. She boils the kettle and then pours it down the drain to the screams of the rat. She didn’t know what else to do to make him go away. I can’t think what I would have done either. But I wish she hadn’t sent me the video. I can’t erase the image from my mind. She then ran the tap for minutes hoping the body would flush away with the water.

There are 1098 cases of Covid 19 in Australia as I write this and 90 in the State of Western Australia. They are contemplating turning Rottnest island into a quarantine station. The AFL season has been suspended after a weekend of farcical play. They started out with the usual handshakes but by Game 2 were elbow bumping and making hand gestures in the direction of one another instead. Weirdly the game sounded like any other suburban competition being played – the empty stadiums turning amateur the players’ calls. Even American audiences tuned in as there was a scarcity of sport world wide.

Trump keeps calling Covid 19 the “Chinese virus” in a tit for tat with the Chinese who say the virus was brought to China by American soldiers. What is wrong with his mouth? What a ridiculous way to move your lips while you speak. Either way the Chinese restaurants were downed first. Now everyone will hurt as pubs and restaurants are asked to close and soon will be forced to. For a week some attempt to do take away. The streets grow quieter and the traffic less. Children reclaim their suburban streets.

I am naming us the “covidees” – those employed and detained by COVID – run by Covid 19. In a sci-fi way we are all now acolytes of Covid. Things are changing by the day and by the moment. Now there are 231 cases in Western Australia and 2799 Australia wide. I have bookmarked the Health.gov website. I can be there in a single click. Working was possible only two days ago, but now this has largely stopped too. The vets implore policy makers to be considered “essential” but everything is relative and we become less essential as the enormity of what the country faces marches on.

It is our war time. With no bombs.

Vet clinics are asked to donate their animal ventilators for the human use. They too are running out of gloves and gowns. Rottnest rids itself of tourists and holiday makers and prepares to become a quarantine station for the cruise ship arrivals. The cruise ships sit detentioned, just out of the port – ostracised – patiently waiting to be allowed to dock before unloading their passengers who are now considered highly suspicious persons. No one wants them to set foot on land. And certainly don’t touch anything. Previously, seeing cruise ships I thought of streamers and majesty, felt slightly longing and in awe. I always wondered what it might be like to sleep in a cabin with the ocean as your view. Now they feel infected, awash with fomites and supporting the virus on their surfaces for up to 17 days. Its horn sounds. Pleads with the landlubbers.

The streets get emptier as more people stay home. #stayhome. Nevertheless sirens are heard. At the university fellow covidees are learning how to use distant teaching technologies with names like blackboard. Its name suggests something familiar, nostalgic, but it is no analogue blackboard from your primary school. No chalk dust. No nail on blackboard screeches. No puffs of pink powder. Students will be faceless and voiceless. All icons and emojis. They will be somewhere else, as you will be too. The instructor suggests making your lecture appear as split screen so the students can see your quizzical talking head. “50% more engaging for them” he says, whilst pixelating.

I get a tax bill.

I still get frequent flyer emails and I wonder why these haven’t stopped since there are no planes flying and nowhere we are allowed to go. Do Not Pass Peel.

Our tenant loses his job.

The teenagers still shoot hoops, but I stick my head out the gate and instruct them not to handle each others basket balls. I get a knowing nod. Milly and Tom are playing under the hose in their yard next door like it is any other summer day. The white cockatoos are noisily eating the olives and have had no change to their summer routine. The football goal posts have been erected on the oval despite the fact that no one is playing any sport. Still the council mow the lawns.

The things we can do: puzzles, meditate, walk the dog, look at the sky and see it is the same as before but without the planes, run if we are able, swim in the ocean if we can cross the sand, use technology, watch reruns of comedy, watch documentaries, play the ukulele, make stuff, knit, write, do craft, cook, bake, train the dog, look at the internet, listen to podcasts (but not coronacast), dance in front of your son while he tells you to stop, watch the news, apply a face mask (Elsa!), clean, spring clean again, clean better, watch clouds, stretch, garden, paint a picture, breathe, sleep, try to sleep, worry, look at your bank statement, write a letter, look at the sky, sing (not in front of your son), see the tree and admire her torso as her bark turns golden in the light of dusk.

The things we can’t do: see people who are not in our family unless we are doing something essential, sit close on the driveway with our neighbours, hang out at coffee shops, bars, restaurants, raves (if we ever did?), nightclubs (can’t recall the last time), go to parties (never been a fan away), weddings, funerals, bands (can never see the band for all the people), music festivals (find the grass too hard going), book club ( haven’t finished the book), catch ups, markets, sporting events, community clubs, have a massage, go the the physio, visit the hospital, visit old people, visit prisons, have assemblies, dance close, swipe right (that’s a thing right?), stand close to people we don’t know, dance in front of your son, cough or sneeze on them, touch them or hand them money or have them touch you, hug someone whose dog has died.

Being an introvert makes some of these things easier.

Working allows a respite from thinking about the virus and its impacts. For an hour or two the focus is someone’s dog and their issues. For a moment they seem important and worthy of our time. The person needs us. The dog does too. We can make a difference, with our advice and our medical opinion. The brain slips into something it finds comfort in and something that makes sense. Then we are back again as a “covidee”, finding ourselves down the wormhole of what the modelling suggests. The last time I felt this anxious was when I was a newly paralysed person. I was finally conscious enough to grasp my reality and I began to question if my paralysis was fixed, or whether there was a chance it could worsen. As I lay in ICU, searchingly viewing the square of sky through a window, I began to pick at the idea of an advancing, creeping paralysis through idiopathic spinal necrosis and my depleting function over time. I could move my arms now but what if that changed? I could feel my waist but what if that changed? I could breathe now but for how long? I was adjusting to the thought of being a paraplegic but what if I had to imagine being a quadriplegic? Strangely being a “covidee” makes me think of this again and with a deep sadness I recall that chest tightening feeling of not knowing what the future holds.

March 19, 2020March 21, 2020

Covid Times

My neighbour is an anaesthetist and he says the phrase going around the hospital is “we need to avoid going Italian.”

A man sitting in his car by the pool is talking on speaker phone. At first I think he is arguing with someone, but as I get closer I can hear him saying BUY, Buy and then SELL, sell. He is speedo clad and has a gut like something is residing within him. He is making money? Losing it?

There is no toilet paper on shelves and no handwash or sanitisers. I feel slightly contaminated even being in a shop as a child sitting, face-height in a shopping trolley, next to me in a queue coughs towards me. Normally I wouldn’t feel this vulnerable, this on edge. I wince – wondering what virus particles are invading me through my eyeballs.

I am still lecturing and I ask the students to practice some social distancing, but still they are bunched together in a way that makes me uneasy. The phrase “social distancing” dances from lips, a now heavily used term. I am waiting for the Uni to suspend the lectures, since they are all recorded anyway, but there is no call coming.

I touch my face endlessly.

A week ago I was still going to the US in a month, but within a few days the whole trip folded in, pack of cards-like. I sent a query on how the States was going to all my intended practitioners and all responded negatively and warned me to stay away. In the days that followed the travel bans went up and the conference cancelled too. Whilst there was a run on staples like pasta and tinned beans across America and world wide, Los Angeles had people queuing for hand guns.

What doesn’t change is dog walking. It can still be enjoyed as a sole and peaceful outing. The mutt is the same. He sniffs the same. He ambles and scratches and rolls. He kicks the dirt into the air. He, as always, takes no heed of possible infections that lurk on surfaces. In fact he prefers the stinky.

Apparently the virus can live for nine days on surfaces such as door handles. Nine days. It prefers men and even men in their thirties can be badly infected. It kills old people. Some people will require ventilation to survive if they contract the virus. But ventilators, like ICU beds, are of a finite number. Just like face masks and reagents for virus testing.

I wash my hands endlessly. Two rounds of the song Happy Birthday is supposed to be the hand washing length. Making sure each finger piggy backs the others. And don’t neglect your wrists.

On the drive way with the neighbours the conversation is circular, sitting 1.5 metres apart, about the virus and the plans already underway. Some of us can work from home but others are hospital workers and will be front line. All day they have meetings about the future impact despite the fact they are yet to have a confirmed patient. The children still go to school, but for how long and once school does stop how long should it stop for? Children are being taught about hand hygiene like never before, but getting the soap and the sanitiser is not guaranteed.

I still touch my face.

People have now in their vocabulary terms like “herd immunity” and “flattening the curve” – all have become semi-educated on the way a disease spreads and public health. Despite this they panic buy. Public health was a much maligned subject during our vet science degree but governments are seeking the advice of these experts now. No one is yawning when they speak. Everyone is learning some science through necessity and listening to Norman Swan for the low down. But if the science is explored it becomes very, very frightening. The numbers of deaths could far exceed past wars and plagues and the numbers of ventilators required would far exceed the numbers we have. It becomes somewhat hysterical, movie like. I think of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Already I am using Skype to conduct consults for revisiting clients in my effort to stay away from the animal hospital and to keep my clients from venturing out. It is working fine but imagining doing this for another 18 months is hard. I think my business will suffer but maybe still remain afloat. People will always have animals. Animals will always have mental health issues, just as people do. People will always want to care for them. Maybe my patients will find their lives improved with caregivers at home and at their beck and call. No longer will there be an excuse to not train your dog when he is with you all the time. My separation anxiety clients will fall away as people work from home. Their dogs will love that. My aggression cases will disappear too as people self isolate and their dog’s bubble is no longer pierced. My dog reactivity cases will evaporate as dogs stay home with caregivers who are too afraid to venture out. No one will be bitten because they took their dog to Highway to Hell like they did three weeks ago, as there will be no Highway to Hell like events being staged.

I touch my face.

The museums will fall silent and empty. Dust will gather. Instruments will go out of tune. The pubs will close down. The restaurants will go broke. The survivors will be food stores and manufacturers, chemists and drug suppliers, the medical scientists and the vaccine manufacturers. Shelf packers will work long hours. Online ways of delivering all sorts will become more and more the norm. Cleaners will keep their jobs. I will struggle more with being social as I go out less and less. I may never go to a party again. People with mental health issues will suffer. Hoarders will hoard and we will not be our best selves.

Puppies will go unsocialised and dog behaviour will worsen. Dogs will become more territorial and bark more at strangers who cross their path.

Today I have a man cleaning my oven and he too has had cancellations, but with more people cooking at home eventually more ovens will be blackened and require cleaning too. He can see an up side. He has a small yacht so he can always sail away and live in the middle of the ocean he says. The pool where I swim is closing from 8pm tonight and so for me the swimming will stop too. The bathers will lose their elastic. I was still planning on doing my laps as it seemed a safe thing to keep doing, but the decision is gone now. Stretching may have to suffice. How I will miss the water and the buoyancy to the spirit it provides.

After the oven man leaves I wipe down the door handles. I wash my hands. I touch my face.

As the world turns inwards and stays home how free of us must nature feel. Is she breathing a massive sigh of relief? She expands her lungs and she takes in crisp air. The water will be cleaner, the sky less polluted. Animals come into the cities to romp as the sun goes down. Moss grows with no one to tread on it. What will the grounding of the aeroplanes mean for the clarity of the air we breathe? What will the silencing of the cars on the road mean? Has nature sent us this virus to halt us? Did we need this so we would finally stop our polluting ways, breathe, think about how we are connected and our place in this world? Will so many of us die that the world has a chance to recover somewhat? Will the ocean temperature fall? Without us, of course the natural world would rejoice, the weeds would grow tall, the trees would no longer be logged, the buildings would decay away to dirt and rubble and in a very short time it would be like we were never here in the first place. Maybe this is nature’s plan.

November 16, 2019November 15, 2019

Leaving High school

School leaving

So here we are at the end of my son’s final year of high school.

He is unrecognisable as the pale blond boy, with a mother’s bad haircut, who entered Montessori as a three year old. His hair is darker, barber cut, his face longer and more bored. He seldom laughs, at least around his parents. Some times I glimpse the hair on his legs and it’s, “where did that little boy go?” I see the way he is with the dog and am relieved.

He has always been a reluctant school goer – despite changing from different styles of school, looking for the one with the best fit. Years of early education in Montessori, a few years in the traditional public school system and ending with six years of Catholic all boys school. All different, and yet all the same – approached with dreariness and shoulder-slumping.

I remember him making potions like the neighbour’s six year old does now. There was passion in potion making. Passion in spy make-believe, from the high vantage of the limestone wall. Passion kicking between the paper barks, in being Ablett and Bally. But no passion for school. School equated with work and work was something that adults complained endlessly about.

We wonder, as parents, if we could have done something better – his father laments he was too tough on him early. Did he ask too much of him? In moments of exasperation we did yell and holler louder than we wish. We have all wanted to rewind and take back those words that were blurted out at a child who appeared to be doing something just to make you boil over. I think of taking him to riding lessons at the Claremont show grounds – spurred on by his enthusiasm on a mule ride in the Grand Canyon. After a few lessons he began to hate it and cried in the car on the way there. And I drove on. I pleaded with him to finish the term. The teacher, still a girl, spent time on her mobile as he sat rigid, unsmiling on a barely moving pony, circling her.

I wish I had known as much as I do about dog training and behaviour when I could have influenced him more. How might I have been able to shape behaviour better? Maybe give him more choice? Now he seems cast adrift. I watch from the banks and know that ineffectual waving is all I can do. How do you wave to signify “take care”, “I love you”, “you can do this”, “I have your back.” The generic hand in the air is just that. Bye. He is too far out now for him to hear me. I am shrinking, as he slips away, over the breakers and becoming a barely seen blip on the shoreline of home.

He goes to an 18th birthday party when he is seventeen. He tells me it is in South Fremantle. Another parent will drive them and he waits for them on the driveway, whilst killing time shooting baskets. I don’t go out to check on the address with the parent who is driving, although I know this is something I should do. It is, no doubt, parenting 101. I don’t do it because I know my presence beside the car, leaning awkwardly in towards the driver, and perhaps saying something obtuse and embarrassing, will make him wince. He is waiting purposefully outside so as to avoid me speaking to and being seen by the other parent. I have given him money for the Uber home that he says his friend will order and that is all the information I have. My questions swirl about my head, but I have had my allotted two grunts today, and so further questioning will likely only irritate further.

It seems somewhat deserving that I have a son so abashed by me, as I was equally mortified in the presence of my mother. I would have mostly done anything to have the earth split in two and swallow her when she was with me. And yet she loved me with a fervour. Unerring. She seemed oblivious to the embarrassment she caused – effusive and ebullient with strangers, shop keepers and wait staff, anyone. And loud. I did, over time, get used to it, and even come to admire it, but it took me into my twenties and beyond to see that she did it because it was her. People gave her joy.

It has been said that when a parent or loved one dies the relationship keeps going and evolving. It doesn’t end because they’re no longer in the physical world. I think of my mother and feel a deep ache in the centre of my chest for the woman that loved me so intensely. I feel sorry that maybe she never saw how much she meant to me while she was still alive. My love for her has finally caught up to the love she had for me – if we were twin high divers we would hit the water together, in unison, and the entry would make the perfect ripple. People would applaud.

I swim laps in tepid summer pool and remember doing this pregnant. There are fires and droughts across the country. The internet is full of orange skies and burnt koalas. Climate change is real. Even rain forest can burn. I see mothers coming from the toddler pool with little damp limpets clinging to them. A baby sucks his mother’s bare shoulder. When I was pregnant, before I became too rotund, I was able to get into the pool unaided, by falling off the pool deck like a toppled bowling pin. Afterwards, I hauled myself out. Nearing the end of the pregnancy they had a mechanical hoist and I was freakishly lowered in and levitated out. Dead whale. While I swam, I meditated on the growing foetus – telling the little bean that their future would be bright, anything they wanted. I would repeat “you will be fit and healthy and happy” as I stroked up and down the pool. Now I enter via the ramp on an oversized water wheelchair, so plastic and hospital beige. I swim my laps, while the teenager still sleeps on. At completion a signalled-to life guard returns the wheelchair to the water and it is like being an astronaut manoeuvring it – my weightless body and jaunty legs, getting them in sync, before reaching the shallows and the vessel finds its own solidity and can be propelled up the ramp. More little toddlers dart in front of me and their mothers tell them to be careful. Careful of what? Me? What am I now? An old disabled woman, haphazard in the beige contraption.

I have not got enough information about the party. As I hear the car pull away I know this. When the boy/man’s father comes home and I explain why I don’t have this information I know it sounds weak and feeble. I am feeling weak and feeble. Feeble mother. How did offending this boy become something I am so reluctant to do?

We watch an episode of Chernobyl, like the middle aged people we are. We watch the flesh melt off the radiation affected humans and a child born die within four hours of her birth. We watch the conscripted soldiers shoot the abandoned pets, who eye them soulfully, and then tip them into deep pits and pour concrete over their corpses. We see bravery and stupidity. Boron and graphite take on new meaning. TV ads telling of the 16 types of cancer you can get from sugary drinks from the toxic fat in your abdomen need to be muted as I take a glance down at my own waist line. Like the hair on my son’s legs I don’t know how my own belly came to be there.

I think about my own going out at seventeen. My parents watching the Onedin Line. How my mother loved Peter Gilmore. I wonder what my parents knew of where I was going or what I would be doing and when I would be home. Of the contraceptive pill in the drawer beside my bed. They could not ring to check on me. I could phone the boy/man now if I wanted. Did our parents lie in their beds wondering? Did they worry about girls in cars with boys? Did they know that we chugged back cans of asphalt black Kalgoorlie Stout till the Broadway’s bathroom walls swayed in towards our brows?

I go to bed, but not to sleep. I think of alcohol being consumed by others and someone punching him hard in the face. I think of him perhaps wanting to come home but having to wait for his friend, the one with the Uber App, to be ready to leave. Will he be cold? I should have given him more instructions. Just the other day he couldn’t figure out how to open the shoe polish tin and asked me to do it for him. Have I done too much? His father says I have. So there we have it – a mother who has done too much and a father who has been too hard. The push and the pull.

At the assembly we sit close to the rows of Year 12 boys. They are spotty faced and embarrassed by the attention of their parents. Blazers are poor fitting and boys have haircuts called curtains that would displease the dapper principal. The Mark Knopfler track, Going Home starts and the year sevens get to their feet and silently move into position. Parents line the gym’s perimeter and are armed with their mobiles high in the air to catch the moment when their year 12 sons stand, the drums begin and they proceed out embraced by applause. Some mothers shed tears and wipe their eyes with tissues. I see the lacquered pink toenails of the woman beside me and her garish platform sandals. Is her son embarrassed by this?

I post the videos of the last school assembly and a picture of a him and a friend taken when they come back to the house, before going to the beach. His blazer is too short in the arms and too narrow across the back, but he has refused to buy a new one, with so little of school time left. His friend’s blazer is awkwardly large. The boy/man is cross with me for having posted and says I should ask his permission. But I refuse to take it down. It is my memory. It is for me that I post it. I have come through this too. It is a graduation from school volunteering, of sitting and applauding, of listening to prayers and not saying the Amen when others do.

From feeling the pang of leaving a small boy at a classroom entrance. to hearing he has been silent the whole day long. to watching as he trails behind the other lonely child. to wondering why he can’t read when others can and have him reveal that the class helper is on her phone when he reads aloud to her. to wanting to bat away another small child who has made yours not want to show his work at corroborree. to hearing that the male teacher yells at children who are only 10 years of age. to not getting a place in a special program and having to tell him so he runs away and hides in a wardrobe. to hear him say “but what about my career?” to waking up at night saying he is being attacked by numbers when he is in grade seven. to seeing him stand on the sideline and wait endlessly to be substituted in. to hearing he is delightful in class and always asks questions when he is unsure of what to do. to hearing that the deputy principal says he is the epitome of a CBC gentleman. all these pangs criss cross a mother’s heart. little stitches in precious thread.

The party is on the beach and they make a fire. There are girls and alcohol. He says he drinks water. I wonder how hard that might have been. I can’t tell. He gets home before midnight and can hear a murmur of conversation between him and his father who has stayed up. I have not slept. I have turned my phone off silent, just in case. I think next time I will ask for an address and give him a curfew.

July 19, 2019

Rottnest Winter 2019

At short notice I book four nights at Rottnest.

Weather is predicted to be cloudy, raining and cold.

It is all those things. But damp and sodden, the trees turn Tolkien and the earth Hobbitville. Skies are dramatic and brooding to fit with the nature of the teenagers who accompany us. They move slowly, silently except for the synthetic shuffle of puffy jackets and the scrape of ugg boots. Their mouths barely change shape, thick lips hang slackly, despite the grunts that are coaxed from them. Their eyes sometimes glisten at their own jokes, shared between them and their phones. They are big, awkward and take up space – spread out on a couch each, while as parents we shrink, take up less and less space, sitting upright at the kitchen table, doing the nine letter word.

Today, as I look out from the kitchen table to the sea view beyond, the sky and sea meld together – like grey flax cloth – the small ripples on the water the imperfect French weave. There is a grumble of ocean, always. The Rottnest soundtrack. Unlike the summer months the people are sparse, hidden indoors, and hence the noise of humans is rare. Many chalets are closed up and empty. Old people and grandparents come, but families are mainly elsewhere. My facebook feed tells me they are following the sun. Doing cartwheels on beaches. Sipping Prosecco on Croatian balconies.

Here, we watch the storm clouds roll across the horizon and sheets of rain fall like curtains on the sea. Container ships still move with regularity across the straight horizon. We hear there has been a surge in the numbers of quokkas and they seem abundant, but sleepy. They curl themselves into a ball and tuck their heads into their bellies to sleep. Their scaly rat-like tail acts as a stabiliser. Heavy rain has meant they have drunk more than they would and this has changed their biome. Some are suffering poor cellulose digestion and a favourite quokka, who resides near the Longreach shop, is ill and weak. His name is Peanut. He has fallen to his side, cartoon-like, and three vets stand around him. Their expertise comes up wanting. One notes the poor body condition and how this does not look like an acute illness. The desire to give him water must be subdued. The ranger will collect him to see if anything can be done. Later we hear he has been revived, somewhat, and returned, replenished with the pulp from the juice extractor.

In the settlement the seagulls remain fierce, swooping and stealing croissants right from your hand before a mouthful can be consumed. English women and their young girls in metallic coloured sneakers and plastic tiaras shriek about the persistent scavengers. They cover their food with napkins to get up from their table to get cutlery. A peacock hovers too. He fiercely attacks a quokka over a dropped morsel. In order for the mothers to drink their pink wine in peace the girls are watching Barbie on a propped up cell phone whilst intermittently squealing about a watchful bird. We move closer to the shore to escape them and they follow us.

In the evenings there is the Tour de France, Wimbledon and World Cup cricket. India, despite Dohni, is beaten by New Zealand. Riske nearly beats Serena. One night the boys, pillows in knapsacks, go to the cinema in the shed and see Rocket Man. Who would have thought that in 2019 I would have an Elton John song playing over and over in my mind.

At sunset we walk the coast to watch the sun shoulder its way through the clouds, leaving them bruised and longing. The salt lake, with the surprising name of Lake Baghdad, is full and the sun strikes its surface, so it glistens like polished brass. Pines make perfect tree cut-outs on the hills in the distance. The walls of the yellow cottages are more brilliant and the trunks of the stubborn trees are dark and wet. Their bark is gnarly and textured like the fur of creature intent on camouflage. Graham quotes Edward Hopper – “all I ever wanted was to capture sunlight on a wall.” And I think – all I ever wanted was to write about it. The bay is empty of boats and the beach person-less. A large pile of seaweed takes on the shape of a beached whale. Sometimes someone is bravely fishing from the jetty, but mainly it is barren too.

May 25, 2019

Story #1

for Jane

1987. It’s the year when Scott and Charlene get married on Neighbours. The year of the Hoddle street massacre. Bob Hawke is Prime minister and QLD premier Bjelke Peterson is losing his grip on the state. In November MacGyver is to be released on Channel 7. It is the start of summer. We listen to the Bangles Walk like an Egyptian. It is the start of the long dry.

I have just completed a University degree that has consumed my life and I am about to start a career. I imagine mud and striding through fields. I imagine pulling calves in khaki coveralls and scrapping cow dung from the soles of my boots. I dream of soaking in a tub when muscles are sore from physical work. This will be the fulfilment of a childhood dream.

Life changes in an instant. How is it that one back bone can be so brittle and another allow the cord to bungee? Who chooses which spinal cord you have and which way it will bend? Is it soft like liquorice or able to fracture into shards like candy?

Loss of sensation is instantaneous. The swiftness of it disallows any savouring. Round and round the garden like a teddy bear. A mother’s finger tip makes spirals on the sole of chubby foot. One step, two step, tickle you under there. The touch creeps up the calf to beneath the knee. Movement and sensation here one minute. Gone, when the tin can strikes ancient wood. Such a banal way to lose what you have taken for granted since birth.

Moments before shoe-less feet had etched soles on squeaky sand by an ocean. The surf had thrown my body like a buoy and my heart had surged as my feet had lost contact with the sea floor. A bear of a man had surfed a long board and we had all traipsed sand into the little alfoil car. How long can skin recall the sensation of toes curling in yellow beach sand? Only the night before feet had found the cool patch on the sheets, and then cradled each other, before sleep. How long can a mind hold on to what is no longer possible?

An anatomy teacher visits the hospital and brings with him a bone. It is perfectly sculpted, as if it is made from polished pearl. He says it might be nice to hold, and he is right. It is snug in my palm. My fingers trace the valley of the bone, lie gloved by the trochlear groove. The fact that it is the talus of a horse, an animal I will never treat nor sit astride again, brings tears I let fall, after he has gone. I picture myself running a confident palm down the side of a mare’s leg and cupping her hoof. I feel the warmth from her nostrils as she turns to inspect the back of my neck with a snort. I smell the pasture on her breath.

A country vet, across the continent, is the first to take me on. He has no sense of what I can and can’t do and that is likely a blessing. He is the type to give someone a go because someone he trusted has said I can do it, and that someone is Jane. A blonde bob, brown eyes, strong thighs and tanned muscled arms. She has a kind of bolshie. She believes in me. She, too, has no idea. We are three people, inexperienced in paraplegia, and how that transects with being a veterinarian. We know little of what it means to a life either. When I arrive she collects me from the airport and drives me to her home, where she carries me, like a new bride, into the house and then leaves me for the weekend trapped hopelessly by the three meagre steps to the outside.

Before heading across the country a surgery teacher says I should come in and do a bitch spay in the Uni lab – just to check I can. After scrubbing up, betadine dripping from my elbows, I sit at the sink unable to move forward – someone will need to propel me from here. We discover some things are more difficult seated. The surgery table is hard to get under and besides it won’t go low enough. It can never go lower than my lap. I do surgery with my elbows out, like an ill-mannered child seated at the big persons’ table. It is the beginning of becoming a dependant again, in the eyes of others. My chest feels perilously close to the incision and I am, maybe, leaning and breathing into the surgery site more than someone would standing. But doing it is all we are checking for here. It can be done, and so it will. Rick says I can.

In the country the surgery table is difficult to get under too, with its large circular base – so I do my surgeries with the animals as close to sliding over the edge as possible, legs draped across the side, like shirt sleeves off an ironing board. Sometimes the single nurse and I are not able to move a heavy patient, so we time the surgery with the approach of the postman, and ask him to assist with the transfer. I am doing operations partially blind, as an incision in a big dog’s belly is level with my chest. But having done it no other way means I judge it is no harder than it should be. It is just what it is.

Jane and I are both new graduates, but she has six months of veterinary experience on me. I have six months experience of paraplegia and the internal walls of a spinal unit. I have learnt a lot about ceilings and how interesting they can be. I have counted the perforations in ceiling tiles and watched spiders spin webs. I have stared at nothing till nothing becomes something and then turns to nothing again. From a blue cloudless sky I have made poems on hue. From overheard conversations and inhaled smells I have constructed lives. I look differently at the small things and hear whole novels when only a word was whispered.

As vets, Jane and I are learning together, and she is my teacher. We both make mistakes – we are often alone, making them without knowing we are making them. Only later do they slip out from their mirage and reveal themselves – late at night mostly, alone and in a single bed. Sometimes we see the error before it is too late, and other times we are saved by the experience of the boss or the equally experienced vet nurse, Edna. Returning from lunch, I see my boss is doing the pyometra surgery I had placed on a drip without diagnosing.

At the end of a day I wheel the hundred yards home to my single bedroom flat on the same street as the clinic. Often I am swooped by magpies who distrust me, like they do stone throwing children. The flat has orange carpet tiles, the type to prickle beneath a bare foot. I toast bread under the grill and spread it thickly with peanut paste. On call, I answer queries about farm animals I have no experience of, other than as an undergraduate, and offer a disgruntled farmer advice to get him through till morning. I flip through Blood and Henderson for a respectable answer. I watch one-day-cricket. I wheel to the laundromat with a bag of washing on my lap. Weekly I slide across the red vinyl bench seat of the EH and drive along the Murray to the big town, The Smiths wailing from the tape cassette. Girlfriend in a coma. I buy myself a cappuccino and a piece of over-iced carrot cake.

The red-headed lad, who has never had a girlfriend, is consigned to me by Jane. We go to a Divinyls gig in a nearby town. He secures me a space at the side of the stage so I can see Chrissie Amphlett astride and thrusting her pelvis into her microphone stand. He stands just behind me and places a hand on the chair like it is any other bit of furniture. But it is not a chair. It is becoming part of me and I will him to unhand it. I view the crowd. I hate that people are able to dance, to crush up against each other and feel another person’s moving hips, sweating against them.

I stay in the country for nine months till the pain of the metal in my spine becomes too much. It wants out. I return west to my port town to have it removed, as the bone has repaired itself to a gnarly fist, and the metal is no longer functional. Who knows what the cord within the bone is doing. Perhaps it has hunkered down in its den of bone and sleeps on. I keep the shiny stainless steel nuts and screws, like spare buttons, in a cracked porcelain cup.

I apply for a job at the Uni I studied at, thinking that equal opportunity means what it says. The job is the pathology internship and will require that I post mortem animals of all sorts. Three middle aged men, tweed jackets with patches on their elbows, invite me in to see if I can complete a post mortem, unaided. They walk away and leave me with the corpse of a horse, stiff on the slab. I feel so small. I cannot physically complete the task and I can feel the tears, the heat in my face, the crack in my voice. They stand watching, rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet, waiting till I withdraw my application. They say it is better you see for yourself that you can’t do it.

1992. Apartheid is ending in South Africa. Charles and Diana are separating. Native title is recognised in Australia and Paul Keating is Prime Minister.

Alone, I am listening to Nirvana’s NeverMind. I decide I will learn to walk with callipers, as it is something that can be done. It is hard, takes physical and emotional strength, to keep trying to do it, day after day. I rupture all the ligaments in my ankle learning to fall. The tarsal bones slip over each other, like pebbles in a sock. I practice for six months with a young, enthused dark-haired physio and in the end can make about fifty metres. I see that walking with callipers is not walking. It is not freedom. It is lumbering and more disabling even than the wheelchair. Being upright is not giving me anything back. It is precarious and pointless, and I give it away.

In a house with polished jarrah boards and freshly painted white walls Smells Like Teen Spirit is loud and I can sway my upper body, with my arms above my head and with my eyes closed, I am dancing, as I was before. My chair is spinning, silent and fast leaving my hands free. It can dance. It can take me back there, where the memories still synapse.

2019. From my kitchen window I view the neighbour’s child swinging, upside down on the stair rails that lead to the oval. Her legs and feet monkey the hand rail. Her hair gravitates to the earth. A smaller brother kicks his footy into the canopy of a tree and the flimsy branches nestle the ball. She runs over and leaps towards the branch, grabbing it and swinging on the bough. Her weight causes the ball to dislodge and fall to the ground. They run off.

March 6, 2017

Rottnest 2017

It’s all about the silence. Although it isn’t silent when you listen. There is the slap of the sea – constant, background. There is the screech of children. Sometimes a meltdown from the chalet behind. And always the bang of screen doors. There is the latch on the gate, the diesel hum of boat motors, the flip flop of thongs on bitumen. There is the crash of glass bottles entering the recycling bins, the whistle of a boatie to the landlubbers on shore. A father chastises a son for talking back and a mother attempts to smear sunscreen on a wriggling, moaning child. But there are only a few cars. There is a rubbish truck. There are no horns or sirens. There are bicycle bells. There are few telephones ringing, except for those timing the cooking of the pasta.

Rottnest.

The Cairns – they come every second year. They wish for yearly. They are Sydney-siders. Big city people, but lovers of the simplicity of Rottnest. We will always have Rottnest. Rottnest has seen new partners, seen pregnancies and babies added. Beds have been upgraded with bed runners and better mattresses. New tiles, new lights (still too bright), a change in couches (too hard) and outdoor balcony seating. We no longer can move a couch from the chalet onto the balcony, so instead order a foldaway bed and install it out there. The Cairns have a three-bedder and so an expanse of balcony and extra large kitchen and fridge. The three-bedder is looking very good. Another Perth mother arrives with a lanky girl child. She makes wonderful curry and goes to Mass. She talks about her street where she has moved from the wealthy to the poor side, since splitting with her husband, and how wonderfully refreshing the poor side is. They have a gifting shelf in their laneway where people exchange all manner of books and knick knacks. Since separating she has brought back inside a beloved Jarrah table, a family treasure, which was relegated to life on the porch in the home she shared with her husband. A teenager has not come this year – but two small boys are now two older boys, only inches apart. Still boys. Still lovers of cricket and riding their bikes.

Day One Monte stacks it in front of the Visitor centre and requires fixomull to a scraped knee. His diabetes is no longer new. His pump gives him and his parents freedom from needles, but still requires the input of calculations and knowledge of what has been eaten and of how much carbohydrate it contains. It is second nature to Monte to count everything that goes into his mouth. Every chip, every BBQ Shape. “26 Shapes Mumma.” He has a record low of 1.8 one day on the balcony, appearing to the adults unlike himself, a callow meek Monte declares, “I am Low.” Low he is. He is told to sit. Troy gets juice from the fridge and two glasses are downed. In minutes he is back to over 6. We, the diabetes rookies, are nervous and ill-equipped. The parents and the child have it all down pat. No one panics. Juice and jubes and the blood glucose is back on track.

Monte, diabetes or not, is determined to do well. He is competitive with everything. He aims to be the best. He is sore at losing and when things don’t appear fair. He is like a wind-up toy with an Ever Ready battery. He keeps going despite being red-faced and hot. Sometimes his face folds and he hides himself under a Turkish towel on the beach. Sometimes he won’t swim. “Chop Chop young son,” is called to Troy as he stand up paddle boards towards the shore, after-all another man is required on the cricket pitch.

Raff is a harder nut to crack. Brilliant light blue eyes and wry smile. Tells it like it is. He says he is bored, but also that he is having the best time. He rejects the application of sunscreen or the wearing of a hat. He plays cricket but won’t watch it on the telly. He loves school and can’t wait for the holidays to end so he can go back. Both boys love Jasper and he plays with them well, with a patience he does not have for his parents. On the last night they play a game where they must search for each other while trying to get home to the base without being caught. Raff: “The most intense game ever.”

Nostalgic treat – original Tim Tams and Neapolitan Ice-cream.

Middle aged couple pre dinner and lunch time cocktail – Aperol Spritz.

Typical discussion – ailments, need to reduce alcohol consumption, difficulty with reducing alcohol consumption, lack of interest and desire in decreasing alcohol consumption, how lack of alcohol just makes them cranky.

Milly’s laugh – “howabouthoseeagles”

Troy’s story – Snoopy (said with a lisp) and Mr Michaels.

My lip is burnt and it makes me touch it. I worry it with my front teeth.

Like the teenagers. They too have burnt lips. Mothers give them cream, similar to what used to be applied to nappy rash. We swim at Little Parakeet and are joined by other old friends. They too chaperone teenagers. We reminisce briefly at what Rotto was like when our children were babies. When at nighttime they slept and we barbecued attached to baby monitors. They have a teen girl who has taken to “Fuck you” and giving them the finger. We have a sullen, string bean boy. More broody and somber. Disdainful of questions. Irked by any attempt of mine at humour or dance. Even if it will only be seen by him. My mere swaying with the beat can send him into a frenzy of STOP MUM. Strangely it only makes me want to dance more.

So. Two middle-aged couples on the beach while our teens roam about the beach, without energy, without vim. Sapped. Arms flop about their bodies like lifeless limbs. A French couple squabbles with a small boy having a tantrum on the sand. An open hand strikes the boy. Leave him be, we all think. It is easy to parent from afar, when you are not in the thick of it. Perspective is clear, a way forward, so easy to see. But when you are amongst it, not so much. What should you do when they unleash the “fuck you” we ask, but never seem to get an answer. Perhaps they too, don’t know. I guess we will muddle through, like we have with all the previous parenting woes, only to find out later that, despite trying our best, there was indeed a less painful way. Later we joke we don’t know which we would prefer – the fuck you or the silent moping. They tell the story of threatening to remove teen girl’s bedroom door if it was slammed one more time. Slammed hard. Makita comes out. Door hinges unscrewed. Later, on opening their own bedroom door it nearly falls off as teen girl has loosened its screws with a Stanley knife. Touché, thinks Dad. A valid response to authority.

Then comes Australia day.

I love Australia, but not when it’s shoved in my face. I don’t like balconies festooned with triangles of Australian flags. I don’t like boats with massive billowing flags fit for a parliamentary flagpole. Boats anchor – A Salt Weapon, Reel Xtreme. I don’t like Aussie Crawl played over and over again, or Men at Work, whilst middle-aged men in Australian flag hats and boardies sit with a beer and sing the chorus and play air drums. Later said man will wander from the beach to the shops and take a piss on the brick stairs between the chalets. Choice. When two blondes, fresh from their shower, with large glasses of white wine pass under our balcony to join the Men at Work boat, I ask politely if they might relay the message to turn their music down. The glare – long and hard eyed, the clenching of their teeth somewhere behind their closed lips, the lack of a verbal response, the cackle when they reach their friends, their pointing me out as “that lady on the balcony” was all a tacit agreement that we do no longer (if we ever did) like each other. It makes me think of dogs and their mostly excellent reading of each other’s body language. As humans – we think we rely on verbal cues – but we are just as much influenced by a look, a small movement of the lip or eyebrow. So in dog language we gave each other the “look away.” Don’t mess with me.

On the mainland it is sweltering. A seaplane, supposed to be part of the sky show ahead of the fireworks, turns without enough speed for a hot windless day, a wing dips, a motor stalls, and it plunges like a poorly made paper plane, into the river, killing pilot and passenger. We think of Big Steve (back in the US) and of his job sorting out the cause of any similar “fatal.” G says he would hate the way a passenger died, because of a pilot’s inexperience.

The sky did its thing tonight. After a hot day the storm clouds have arrived and made a sunset of rose and mauve. The wind, which was playing havoc with the Big Bash TV reception, decided to fade and allow some uninterrupted viewing. It must be hot on the mainland. Cricketers are sweating. The distant lighthouse stood solid and beige while the sky all around changed and morphed. A big white voluminous cloud puffed itself up and all around it other darker clouds swirled and spread. The sea turned from soft mohair blue to beaten pewter. My raised stinger welt begins to itch. The fan ticks.

I dream that I am entering a lift as someone with a thin whippet style dog is exiting. Some how there is a cavernous gap between the landing and the lift and of course, as it always is in dreamland, this is not abnormal or a surprise. What is shocking is that as the man leaps across the dark and endless gap but the dog does not. He, then at one side and the dog still in the lift, urges the skinny thing to jump across to him and as it does so he pulls on its leash and its head slips loosely from the collar and the flimsy dog disappears into the dark. A thump is heard as it hits the bottom and then nothing. It is somehow my fault, in my heart, that this dog was afraid to jump, failed to jump, didn’t leave with the man. I wake up, annoyed and made itchy by the stinger welt across my chest. I itch it. Stop. Itch some more. Think of John Turturro in The Night Of.. and wish for a pointed knitting needle. Itch some more.

September 14, 2016

Beach Baby

Daily I walk the port. It remains cold, despite the onset of spring. A biting wind. The dog has been let off his leash more lately, but, having found the odd chicken bone or two he has taken to wandering away and searching for himself. After all what is more fun than scrounging. Innate dog. His recall is dwindling and it will need some reinforcing with roast chicken of my own.

Still. Nose to the ground he is searching the grassed areas where people tend to eat and leave their scraps. I see him, triumphant, munching, rudely open-mouthed, on something. Ignoring me. Lead back on. We walk the boardwalk by the beach.

I see a couple – the man has a baby held to his chest. It looks just born – its hair still plastered down like it has freshly emerged from an egg sack. Even from a distance there’s a newly hatched wetness to its slick of black hair. His large hand cups its skull and presses it into that dip between his neck and shoulder.

I think of the wind assaulting it, pushing at its eyelids. On the beach a woman (the mother, I guess) is in all black – leotards and top – and has her legs wide apart and is stretching to her side, this way, then that. He moves around her with the baby jiggling and thrusting its hungry head into his udderless shoulder. Skin-warmth the vaguest of similarities. Leotard is intent on her exercise – staring straight out into the ocean, her hair an angry blonde storm.

The man has baggy brown pants on – probably cheesecloth – and they bristle in the wind. He has long white arms. I wonder how much fun they are having. He looks cold, but ever so patient. I wonder if they have argued about her time, his time. I wonder if this is her saying I need this space. His way of making it up to her after a suburban meltdown.

Take the baby home, I think. Wrap it in warmth. Soothe it with mohair and mother, real milk. It makes me recall my own mother – shocked at the fact that new mothers no longer have a lying in period – where they stay home, after the birth, and simply look after the newborn, propped up in bed with a mountain of pillows, feed sleep feed. I am turning into my mother. Enough exercise already.

I think of Alain de Botton’s new novel The Course of Love and his writing, “love is a skill and not an enthusiasm.” This father has skill, standing back in the dunes watching the mother bend and twist. He hunkers down so the baby is protected and waits. He waits while she struts the sand. Punching it with the soles of her perfect feet. Asking the world why? More bending.

Still. I think do your yoga, eat your chia, somewhere else, somewhere warm. Leave the seaweed-strewn beach that is cold and bitter to walkers of dogs with thick coats. Dogs made for wind and rain.