Category: Memories

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Waiting for a Biopsy Result

I am eating toast with strawberry jam and thin slithers of tasty cheese on top. This is something Graham claims to have taught me but I tell him we did it in my family too. He never believes me. The dog is chewing his feet with his incisors. Gnawing at their underside, between the pads, despite his expensive cyclosporin medication. Next door, the neighbour’s new baby cries like a wind up toy. I wonder if she feels the same ineptitude I felt at a baby’s crying. I get a phone call from a woman who used to be vet student in the clinic where I work. She wants me to be a referee for a job she is applying for. She has had two children and hasn’t worked in a while. She also wants my advice on her son. He is four and she thinks he lacks self esteem. I have a son too so perhaps I will know how to help her. How do you make a boy confident in himself, she asks me. I feel like every day is an experiment I am conducting, trying to find the right way, she says. It is like a one take movie making, she says in her Chinese accent. She is wise without knowing how wise she is. I tell her to find something he likes to do and help him to succeed at that. I think it is advice I have stolen from one of the many parenting books I read in those crying years. John Marsden perhaps. I tell her to get him Lego. Her phone call has taken my mind of the fact I am waiting to go to the doctor for a biopsy result. I think it could be the last morning before I start bargaining with God and in a hour everything could be different. I chastise the dog over the continued licking.

PS the result was – it was benign.

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Jasper at Home from School

There is giggling coming from the lounge room. He, the home-from-school-boy, is watching Megamind. It is animation so typical of this era. I give him a bowl of strawberries, washed and cut. The strawberries are enormous. Unreally so. They need to be cut in quarters. I remember when strawberries were small and sweet. Popped into your mouth straight from the backyard bush.

I have taken the home-from-school-boy to the doctor to be told it is most likely viral. There is nothing to do but to rest and drink plenty of fluids. Animation has advanced in leaps and bounds but there still remains no cure for a common cold but to stay at home and sip lemon and honey.

When I stayed home from school I watched Play School, even when I was way too old for what else was there? Besides, I still loved Big Ted and wanted to look through the round window. Most of the day I had to stay in bed, out of mother’s way. I have no memory of where she was or what she did as I dozed.  From my bedroom I could hear the going ons in the kitchen; a clatter of pans and washing up, a drone of radio. The Country Hour. She would go to the shops and leave me alone. Most mothers would have done the same. But not these days. Someone might ring the door bell, the child might answer, he might be kidnapped, the house could catch fire.

My mother grew quickly impatient with a sick child. Especially if I vomited. Somehow vomiting, especially when it was all over the bed, left my mother nonplussed and likely to start yelling. My stay-at-home-boy seems a lot less sick than I had to be to be at home. He has complained of a sore throat and he has a temperature, detectable on the battery operated ear Thermoscan. The thermometer became an essential item when Jasper was a baby and headlines of children dying from meningococcal disease seemed common. My mother detected a fever with the back of her hand across my forehead. If you had a temperature you stayed in bed, might not even be allowed out to watch Play School. You didn’t go to the doctor since she knew what to do. Fluids and plenty of rest.

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Did a blogging course

I was doing a blogging course. Why would I be nervous- it is supposed to be fun. But it involves finding a room in a unfamiliar building, not believing it will have wheelchair access and a disabled toilet, despite checking with the coordinators in the lead up to the day. A woman with two white yappy dogs discovers me looking for the entrance. She has been sent to check I find my way in, up a ramp and to point out the toilet that is normally locked and unavailable. So far so good. We will be in the FutureSphere with thousands of dollars worth of Apple Macs, their screens fingerprint-stained by teenagers. Contrary to its name the building is not futuristic. No lift. Drab beige seventies brick work. Concrete stairs. The Apples with their massive monitors are the only sign of the future. And then there will be the scary other students. What will they be like? Young groovers, ears lobes made large with spacers? And the tutor? A black belt web master? Perhaps I don’t know as much as everyone else. Perhaps their blogs will be superior and I will be shown to be a fraud – a writer who is masquerading as a blogger with a site that lacks cohesion and purpose. Asked what my site is about I can hardly answer the question. For what is more than writing? The blog is a place to go and tap about on the keyboard and send self out into the ethernet. I don’t understand how it gets out of my computer and into someone else’s. It is a form of magic or wizardry. Something both medieval and sci-fi at the same time. Like a cauldron, my Apple, the wicked soup the words. A chookhouse is a home for hens, so concrete and real. So yesteryear. It is dirty and organic, smelly and full of squabbling birds. It is earthy and uncomplicated. It is what it is. And yet I have called my blog this- so the blog is about what this word conjures to me. A homely comfortable place. Maybe I can make the web my chookhouse. The other students turned out to be the same as me; no spacers, some like me blissfully unaware of what SEO or RSS even stands for. They want readers too.We are in search of the real and the tangible connection with other bloggers, but we use this virtual, whimsical medium that few of us really comprehend. We could just as well tap it out on a typewriter of old and post it in your real life mail box or sing it in an alley way, waiting for eye contact, for an outreached hand.

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I love Bananas

I am working in the library close to the children’s section. Bad choice; lots of distractions. A child of four or five stands in front of the shelf with the children’s DVDs. He wears camel corduroys and has similarly coloured hair. He is awash in beige, with milky skin. He has a cowlick. Beside him stands a groovy Grandmother, he calls Nanna. He has selected Bananas in Pyjamas. She says Oh no, not Bananas. I love Bananas, he says. She selects other DVDs and hands them to him but he keeps hold, in one hand, of the Bananas in Pyjamas. On the cover are the two yellow Bananas in their blue and white striped Pyjamas – what fun they are having.  His response to every DVD she shows him is, I love Bananas. She says Bananas is for little children.

Oh NO, I love Bananas, Nanna.

She shows him Peter Rabbit. This looks fun. Nanna says, You can watch Bananas on Television. Let’s get something different. Bananas is for Babies.

No it’s not, he says. I love Bananas. I sense a foot stamping coming on. The Bananas are dancing on the cover.

Nanna lays out the six choices she has made on the stool in front of him and says they can select three. She chooses. Still holding the Bananas he says, Bananas is for babies and puts it quietly back on the shelf. She turns, sees me watching and gives me a wink. She thinks I am a colluder. I want to say I love Bananas.

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Hawaii – Part 5

We drive on towards Volcano and the National Park, where our accommodation is on the outskirts. It is getting dark and the place is hard to find. The Crater Rim Cabin is cute and neatly done out. The hosts, Barry and Jim, are rightly proud of their redwood cabin in the lush tropical garden. Barry greets us like royalty, shows us around inside and is impressed with the manoeuvrability and compactness of my chair. He wants to hear how his place compares with the Cliffhouse and is eager to tell us he offers chocolates too. That we never met the hosts he believes is an oversight- for greeting the guests is why he runs his accommodation in the first place. We note the tea towels under the appliances and between the saucepan and their lids. It is here that Jasper discovers Frosties.

That night after dinner at the Thai restaurant we drive out to the viewing platform to see the distant glow of the volcano. It is orange like fanta, fizzing and smoking in the distance.

The next day we explore the National Park and Jasper completes a work sheet that will result in him becoming a Junior Ranger and getting a badge. The promise of the badge makes him realise he has lost or misplaced his badge from Pearl Harbour. He becomes sulky in the way he does when he loses something he has coveted – and somehow it becomes all about the lost thing. As the mother always asked to carry and look after the stuff it irks me that he has not looked after it in the first place. I can see it in my mind on the back seat of the last rental car. The car that no one can remember checking for lost things. Who knows where the thing is? We will all be forced to look for it to rid Jasper of that face. Let it be a lesson to you to look after your own things. Look after your damn things.

In the afternoon the boys do a hike across an extinct volcano crater, stepping lightly across honeycomb rock. I watch video footage of Jim in the 1980’s at the height of his volcanologist career as he leaps about filming rivers of lava – getting the shot. I watch whole landscapes change as lava engulfs them, whole townships disappear. Some residents slice their house in two and take it away, other evacuate and let it be consumed. From the cabin I can see Barry working alone in the garden. He works with a shovel diligently, swiping away mosquitoes as it gets darker. I can’t help but imagine he is digging a grave in which to dispose of the Jim we have not yet seen. Then we meet Jim and learn Barry is slowly ridding the garden of a noxious plant.

Returning the hire care we check on the possibility of locating the missing Junior Ranger badge. Not likely. On the flight back to Honolulu the woman next to me tells me her husband is heavy. She has his ashes in her carry on luggage and is taking him back to Wisconsin. She has fibromyalgia and is too weak to do her seat belt up – perhaps I can assist her she asks.

The last two days in Waikiki we must spend without Graham as he meets Jon to organise the final preparations for the sailing trip to Samoa. We are staying in the Sheraton with its generic resort feel. The days are stretched to breaking point with boredom. Even Jasper is over the whole affair. Over the pool with its slide and landscaped fake caves and rock pools. Over the room with its myriad of channels. Over the marbled shining shops with trash. Over the super air-conditioned malls and hotel rooms. Over the thin as sticks Japanese and fat as butter Americans.

We buy a ukulele for Jasper and I to share and go to lessons in a shop in the foyer. We watch King of the Hill and Tron from the double bed in the hotel room. If I smoked cigarettes I couldn’t do it in the hotel but it is the kind of thing I feel like doing while looking out from the balcony at other bored persons on other resort balconies.

Jasper and I get a taxi to the yacht to see the boys off. Already the men have a smelliness about them. Already without shirts, leaping skilfully on and off the yacht. The boat looks sea worthy, ready with lots of diesel tied to the deck. Jasper gets a tour of below deck but within minutes claims to feel seasick. Farewell photos are taken. Jasper has a final swim with Graham before we say good bye. In the last embrace his body is cool from the ocean, wet and smooth. I miss him already.

Jasper and I have shave ice and walk slowly back towards our hotel. On the way we visit the huge shopping mall that is a reason why some people like Waikiki. We find a Barnes and Noble and Jasper is excited beyond belief. He has inherited my love of  bookshops. A man sits in the coffee shop inside the bookstore with his headphones in, a large bucket of coffee in front of him, and a pile of beads and jewellery making equipment with which to work.

I am sick on the final day and Jasper must amuse himself most of the day in the hotel room. He manages to do this with a cardboard tube, paper cups and a few toys -pretending to annihilate an imagined enemy with explosions and all manner of arsenals. We make numerous trips to the laundry on the 18th floor, bless the Sheraton for its infrastructure and its fully functioning disabled room and take more immodium than is good for you. I locate the previously disappeared and now magically returned Pearl Harbour Junior Ranger badge and receive suitable accolades.

 

 

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Hawaii – Part 4

We fly to the Big Island. I am pleased to finally be able to pronounce a place name. We collectively decide that I would never be able to live on Kauai because I cannot say it correctly. We are sad that here there are no free roaming chooks which give an island that run down, lay back feel of Kauai. The inter island airports are small and have a sixties feel. The furniture is retro cool, the floors spanking polished vinyl.

In Hilo we are on a mission to buy Graham’s Kanile’a ukulele before finding the Cliff House further up the coast. Hilo has a rundown, Cuban feel to it. The weatherboards are harassed and shops disheveled. Flaky paint and uneven sidewalks. No Honolulu high-rise, no condos. It is altogether a different, better feel than Waikiki.

The music store is perfect. A ukulele paradise. Floor to ceiling instruments. The storeowner has a sister who lives in Fremantle. He has been around. He’s played and drunk with ACDC, back in the day. Now he’s sober. He advises on the best instrument for Graham while we all have a strum and a pluck. A concert Kanile’a is chosen made of solid koa wood.  He restrings it for a left-hander. We ask him for his recommendation for somewhere to eat lunch and have a great meal, although slow, at Ocean Sushi in Keawe Street.

We have a bit of a drive to the Cliff House in the Waipio Valley. The drive is lush and tropical, a reminder of Northern New South Wales. We collect the keys from the Art Gallery and make our way to our accommodation down a grass driveway, past another house and a paddock with two chestnut horses. The host has prepared the house with fruit and chocolates and a pantry with many essentials. The view is so magnificent that we decide to stay in for dinner and cook on the BBQ. We ring Richard, the owner, and he suggests we drive into the town shop for some Spencer steak. After all the Big Island is known for its ranches and herds of beef cattle.

The house is all-alone on the cliff face. It stands on stilts, a twelve-step haul for Graham, but is on the level once inside. A verandah faces the ocean and the sitting room has an enormous six-foot square window that frames the Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet below. Whales can be seen often from this vantage but we are staying at the wrong time of year. There is mist and storms further out to sea and the horizon is smudged and indistinct. There is the distant sound of the ocean on the shoreline below. The valley is an ancient, sacred place for the Hawaiian people.

We feel privileged and lucky to have found this special place. Everyone who stays here feels the same. Reading through the visitors book are the oohs and ahs of welcomed travellers. Graham is straight away on his ukulele. It is an instrument suited to him. Easy to hold, to carry, to transport. It makes you smile. It is happy, joyful, friendly. Jasper is writing an adventure tale, based roughly on the travelling he has done so far. It has vomiting in it.

We have homemade fruit salad for breakfast made from all the in-season fruit left to us by the owner. Pawpaw, pineapple and banana. We are driving today around the Northern part of the island and will check out some beaches. First Jasper and Graham do a hike down to a black-pebbled beach while I read Joyce Carol Oates in the car. I watch as car after car stops and people pile out to do the trek and then return sweaty and red faced an hour or so later. We have lunch in a small town, green mango salad and chicken kebabs.

The beaches give the impression the hotel and condo complexes that line the coast privately own them but they can be accessed. We can get reasonably close and then Graham piggybacks me the final way across the sand and into the ocean. It looks like he is about to dump me on a rock submerged beneath the surface as my unspectacled eyes detect a dark shadow. But then a mottled head appears and we realise we are right next to a giant sea turtle slowly making its way along the coast. The ocean is clear and warmer than we are used to back home. The swell is gentle and mild.

The sand cannot compete with the pristine whiteness we are used to and take for granted. Here the world is new, geologically speaking, and the sand still fresh from its volcanic beginnings.

We check out some other beaches and stop on our way home at an art gallery to see a famous painting by Herb Kane of Captain Cook and his landing on the Big Island. We stop at the supermarket and are appalled at the lack of quality fresh produce, but then again we are only in need of Spencer steak, potatoes, onions and red wine before driving back to our cliff house for another night of BBQ and ukulele on the verandah. Jasper has made friends with the horses and we need a carrot to hand feed. A horse quality carrot can be purchased, luckily. As well as the much needed exercise notebook to write his adventure story. Leaving the car park the Stop sign reads Whoa.

We leave the next morning and on the way out of town have the local Hawaiian donuts so heavily commented on in the guidebook and visitors book. Plain with cinnamon sugar voted best.

We are heading for Volcano, the other side of the island, and are going to stop at Kealakekua Bay where Captain Cook met his death. We take a long road down towards Napoopoo pier to a car park where some locals have kayaks that they hire out to tourists. Kayaking across the bay is the only way to reach the secluded spot where the Hawaiians bludgeoned Captain Cook to death and where also some of the best snorkeling can be done. Jasper is both cautious and eager. You can see the tug inside him. Yes I want to see what Dad’s talking about, his interest in Captain Cook’s voyage spurred on by recent readings on this Hawaii trip, but the look of the choppy ocean in the bay and the dots that the kayaks turn in to as they disappear across the water holds his enthusiasm back. But Graham gives him no time to focus on why not. They are out of the car, they have warm gear in a waterproof bag, and they are off.

They are dumped in the ocean off the jetty and are paddling. Jasper sits in front, Lord Muck and Graham paddles from behind. I watch as the orange boat bobs along across the bay. I get a wave. Beside me in the car park various pick-ups come and go. Locals have a few kayaks they must try and rent out in between beers. More men, more beers. Special hand shakes. Fuckn this, Fuckn that. Board shorts, cap backwards, tight brown belly. Islander life. The man who Graham got his kayak from comes to check on me, like he’s concerned for me amongst the swearing locals. Xcuse me Ma’am, you ok? Just checking on you. They are not doing much trade with their kayaks. They sit in the open tray of the pick up. Mother fuckn Billy the Kid. A postcard is handed around and a discussion about how he died ensues. Burps like a blocked drain clearing.

I watch as kayaks returning come into focus. I can detect two paddlers. Not them. Eventually I spot them, making good ground across the choppy water. Yes they stood where Captain Cook fell. Snorkeling was luscious. Fish with yellow and blue stripes. The monument to Captain Cook had been defaced….

to be continued…

 

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Tennis lessons

While school age children play tennis the mothers and the small children, too young for instruction, mill around outside the courts under the pergola. They have been brought from day care or preschool from where they have been cooped up. Now they are free and run amok. There are geraniums in bloom ready to have their heads pulled off. Fuchsia pink petals spatter the grass. There are spare tennis balls ready to lob over the cyclone fence and onto the lawn courts that they are not allowed on. The precious flat grass dotted with fuzzy yellow.

The squealing children squeal. A reminder of piglets having their tails chopped off. A pink fairy outfit, over sized with a ribbon tying the shoulder straps together at the back, does nothing to soften the squeal.

The mothers are oblivious to the squeal. Piglets having their eye teeth pulled. It is the type of sound that puts off childless couples and cements their choice never to reproduce.

Two teenage boys arrive early for their lesson and must wait amongst the toddlers and mothers. The boys both wear glasses and are not the athletic type. But they can do tennis. Pimples and all. They have stated to grow upwards but their muscles lack definition. They have custard thighs, creme fraiche arms, cream cake cheeks.Their sneakers are enormous, feet already bigger than their fathers’? They hit some balls against the beige brick wall, feet heavy, no deft touch, till all the balls are lost over the roof of a shed and then they plonk down on a wooden bench seat, face in phone, thumbs working hard.

 

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Hawaii – Part 3

At night a gecko barks.

Another thunder storm. All night. Heavy rain. We wake up and worry about our helicopter flight booked for later in the day. We remember to wish Jasper a happy birthday. Nine. There are lots of low hanging clouds obscuring the tops of the mountains. We take the road to Lihue and continue on to Popiu Beach. Here Jasper can try out snorkeling. It is windy and warm. Life guards sit atop their towers. One, as brown as gravy, offers us the use of a beach wheelchair. But the water is rough and not inviting so I will sit out under the beach shades and watch.

The boys disappear under the surface.

The wind picks up a beach umbrella and tumbles it over the sand. It is caught, one handed, by a man as it flies past. He gives it back to its owner who has come chasing after it. He takes it back to its rightful spot and again pokes it in the sand. It doesn’t want to stay. He must hold on to it. But he will not give in to the wind. The flimsy rainbow coloured brolli turns inside out but still he refuses to take it down. It is not providing shade. He sits determinedly on his deck chair, gripping the umbrella pole.

Other beach goers congregate in the communal shade of the beach shack and a couple preparing their assault on the sand pack their belongings into their bag after changing into their bathers in the toilets. A man says to his wife, “Don’t lose my teeth out of there. They’re zipped in the side.”

By the road side are Tsunami warning sirens.

The boys emerge from the sea having seen an eel slithering through rocks and numerous fish.

We are killing time before the helicopter flight. Walking by the ocean that has been browned by the recent heavy rain and run off from the rivers.

At the helicopter reception we watch a film on safety and then we head out to the airport where our chopper and pilot awaits. We are directed on board. Jasper will have a window seat and I will be next to him and Graham on the other side. Jasper seems sedated by the anti nausea tablet we have given him. Uh oh. The chopper takes off and arches over the airstrip, Hawaii Five O style. Every motion picture with helicopter vision in it comes to mind as we swoop along. Apocalypse Now. We have headphones on and communicate with each other and the pilot. In the background there is a sound track of ephemeral music to add to the viewing pleasure. Our pilot gives a commentary. After the recent rain the island’s waterfalls are abundant and everywhere are silver streaks of water coursing down the steep slopes. We hear how a single family, the Robinson’s, own one third of the island after an early purchase from a Hawaiian King and how their commitment to conservation has meant it has remained unspoilt and undeveloped. The Napali coast is where Pirates of the Caribbean is filmed and we weave our way in and around canyons and gorges. Like a marble in a wine glass the pilot rotates the chopper to gives us a three sixty view. The steep cliffs appear covered in soft green moss but really it is trees and bushes we are seeing from a distance. The pilot tells us how the Hurricane of 1992 blew down all the chicken coops and since that time the chickens have run free. After the hurricane not a single leaf was left on a branch and the entire island was brown.

Jasper is pale and sighing. I know he isn’t feeling good. The pilot has already told us of the whereabouts of the comfort bag. I ready it. Up comes the fried chicken from the take out. He will not want to eat that again. I am trying to keep one eye on the scenery, afterall it is costing us $250 each as well as hold open the vomit bag and hand out wipes. We are nearly at the end.

Jasper says he still had a good time, despite the nausea.

For Jasper’s birthday dinner we go back to our favorite Baracuda but it isn’t as good as it was the first night.

Next day, we drive out to Waimea Canyon, the Grand Canyon of Hawaii. Tourist buses snake up the hill side and oversized Americans struggle up the paths to get to the look outs. We are listening to IZ, Somewhere over the rainbow. From a viewing platform we watch as white tropic birds sail the current winds of the canyon. The canyon, unlike the Grand Canyon, is green and lush, but lacks the spectacular jaw dropping surprise one feels when coming across the Grand Canyon’s gaping enormity.

On returning to our beach house we discover that Goong Goong has died. Opening the emails I read from the top and mistakenly get a message from my sister giving instructions for the funeral parlour before I read the email telling me of his death. Of course it cannot be a surprise. Only this morning before leaving the house and once again checking emails for news of him we all remarked how odd it was he was still alive. Jasper said, believing it to be possible, perhaps he will hang on to you get home Mum. He’s pretty strong, is old Goong Goong.

I have no tears. I ring my mother. I cannot remember what I say to her. I think I say I am sorry to be away from her, for her sake. I tell her if she needs Lisa to come she must ask.

We head out to dinner at the Dolphin for Alaskan crab, white grilled fish and sushi. We talk about Dad and toast him. In the distance is the sound of the river, hurtling by, so alive, so free and full of force. Water is a vivid reminder of life and energy and now a reminder of death too. We toast him for his dependability, his devotion to us, his small family. Like a loyal dog that doesn’t much care for outsiders but is warm and tail wagging with ones he loves. We must brave the road again because of the lack of footpath. Imagine being run over now.

We want an early night because our plane leaves early from Lihue in the morning and we must make the 45 minute drive to the airport and return the hire car. But we have locked ourselves out of the beach house. We had two keys and one was initially hidden outside but because we didn’t want to forget to replace it in the morning I put it in my bag and my bag is now locked in the house too. I blame the stress of my father dying. Graham’s iPhone with all the rental details is locked inside too. The Californians that rent upstairs are out. It is raining. The road is full of mud. We huddle under the carport and imagine what it might be like to spend all night here waiting to get inside. Graham does a reconnoitre around the house trying to ascertain if we can get in. It is too secure. He goes across the road to see if we can access our email from another tourist’s computer and hence find the owner’s number to ring her. We know she doesn’t live in the village but I recall reading an emergency number on an email. Our upstairs neighbours return but their key doesn’t fit our lock. I ring a trusty school mother knowing it is 3pm Perth time and give her my hotmail details so she can search my email for the owners details. I think I tell her my father has died too. Saying it is like trying it out.

Do you remember saying “I’m a virgin”?You only get to say it for a short time with any feeling. With any real impact. To the boy that will take that virginity from you and perhaps to a few prior you don’t give it up to. My father’s died is a bit the same. It is a short lived sentence. You can’t really say it to strangers. If you do they offer their condolences and you automatically say it’s okay, like it’s not their fault. It’s not what you mean. You want to thank them for their sympathy but instead you say it’s okay. Like you might to a waiter who is apologising for bringing you burnt toast. There never seemed the right time or the right someone to say, “My father’s died.” Perhaps it would be something that just swirled around inside my head, that I said to myself till I believed it. Knew it had happened…

to be continued…

 

 

 

 

 

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Hawaii – Part 2

The beach house at Hanalei is serviceable. It is one street back from the bay and an easy walk to town. The bathroom is smaller than we expected and, because of the positioning of a vanity, I will not be able to get into the shower . Somehow I blame Graham for this. There is thick spongy carpet (his fault too), mats everywhere and bulky furniture. The bed is made up with dark brown sheets. You guessed it. There is no tea. All of which ends up making me sullen and sulky. Luckily there is another shower in the carport- of the outdoor variety – but it’ll do. And I can make it to the toilet.

We walk into the town. There are no footpaths and so we are on the blacktop, but there are few cars. What traffic there is is enormous and clearly very heavy. Squashed flat chicken, squashed green frog – suggesting the road is not safe for smaller less visible beings.

The town is just one main street and touristy, but backed by a mountain laced with waterfalls and covered in dark, luscious forest. The top of the mountain gets lost in the clouds and mist. We have a drink at a bar where a man plays the guitar, while still managing to watch the ice hockey game on the TV screen. Two televisions at either end of the bar; one with the hockey, the other with rodeo, hijack most people’s attention, but he plays on, robotically.  Afterall he isn’t even inspiring himself. We go elsewhere for dinner; to the best restaurant in town – Baracuda. It is tapas style and really good. The chef has moved here from San Francisco. We eat pork belly and Greek style donuts for dessert.

The next morning we realise that overnight Osama Bin Laden has been killed in a raid in Pakistan by the Navy Seals, Unit 6. His picture is on the front page of the newspaper and the headline reads DEAD. It could have read “Got ‘im”. Graham plans a picture of Jasper holding the paper in front of his chest in a mellow street in Kauai, where news of Bin Laden’s death couldn’t seem less important.

 

Graham and Jasper will go off hiking a trail at the end of the road and I will stay in the beach house, reading Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir, “A Widow’s Story.” In it, after the sudden death of her husband from E.Coli pneumonia, she grapples with her loss. It is the kind of writing I like. Unhurried, clear and to the point, but open and honest, not scared of itself. She worries and prods. Over and over. She tells of their close lives; enmeshed, embedded, despite the fact that he never read her work, ever. “but he did not read most of my fiction and in this sense it might be argued that Ray didn’t know me entirely – or even, to a signifigant degree partially… For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom.” I think of Graham and his failure to get around to reading so much of what I write. It heartens me that I am not alone in this and that it is not a marker of a doomed marriage. Afterall it doesn’t bother me – but rather frees me. For concern for readers is a writer’s death.

Intermittently I turn on the TV to see what the news is saying about Bin Laden but there is only so much American patriotism one can watch. Only so many times you can hear a force described as “elite”. Bin Laden’s killing could be the saving of Obama’s presidency as commentators show him with furrowed brow, behind the scenes and praise his cool headedness.

I go into town and over hear a man on his mobile talking to his doctor. An MRI has revealed bulging discs in his spine. He tells his doctor of his excruciating pain whilst bending forward. What a holiday wrecker. If I was Joyce I would insert an exclamation mark here. I order a Mango Madness smoothie for lunch from the organic shop. It is impossibly thick and takes a lifetime to suck through the straw and  I hear another Californian having an exasperated work conversation on his mobile, pacing around the grass outside the lunch bar. Chickens peck and rake at the lawn around him like he is phoning from chook yard. Some people just can’t leave their lives behind. And yes, he has reminded me, I must ring home too.

I speak to Mum. She can’t hear me. I am shouting. How’s dad?  Because you can’t really shout, Is he dead yet? Yes the Royal wedding was marvellous. Simply marvellous. The best television she ever saw. Dad is just the same. Yes we’re having a wonderful time. I envy the writer overhearing me.

I begin to wonder how long he can go on like this. Could he survive the entire time we are away?

The boys return. Their walk was long and semi strenuous. They swam in pristine water at the end of the trek and made beach scultpures with rocks and pebbles.  We go to our local beach for Jasper to try out the surf board. But the attempt to surf is short lived. Jasper’s not really the type to enjoy the surge of instability the lifting wave gives the board. Dumped a couple of times and bedraggled he drags the board back to the shore. Instead he invents a game involving explosions, bombs, shootings, fist fights – but it is all imaginary and the outward effect is of him hauling and flinging himself in the breaking waves, running through the foam breakers and collapsing on the water as if he is throwing himself onto a bed.  A man walks the beach with freshly woven green straw hats. He stands in front of women in Brazilian bikinis, while they lie on the sand, doing his best to make a sale.

At night the thunderstorms come, heavy and pounding. There is the crack of thunder and the flash of lightening bursting through our sleep. In the morning we are woken by bird song and see Red Crested Cardinals hopping about the garden. More waterfalls cascade down the mountain and white tailed tropic birds sail high in the curves and crevices of the mountain.  The water sodden hill side is like a billowing ballgown, with its green velvet folds and waves. We meet the two couples who are staying in the flat upstairs. I have a conversation, in the car port over the washing machine, with Tom and learn how he works for Campagnolo (explains the cyclist’s calves) in San Diego, how he grew up here with his parents who built this very house hoping to retire here before his dad, who was an eminent cardiologist at UCLA, got early Alzheimer’s and died prematurely.

Back in the town centre we watch a dog nearly get run over and killed on the main street. A group of boys straggle behind trying to catch it, but it keeps its distance. It veers away from them, dangerously close to the road again, tail tucked beneath its belly. We have gone to the shops to buy motion sickness tablets ahead of the planned helicopter flight tomorrow for Jasper’s ninth birthday. Jasper gets a super hero sticker from a vending machine and the dog appears. It won’t come to Graham and tries to follow two girls leaving the shop, but they get into a car and it is alone again in the car-park. We call it to us and it begins to follow us away from the road into the safety of  an alley way. It likes small boys. It wants to be close to Jasper and sidles close to him and gives a tentative, small wag of its tail. We talk softly and calmly to it. A black guy approaches and we ask him if it is his dog. No, but he is following it too. He is trying to get hold of it, he says, but it takes off when he gets close. I think it is fearful of men, I say. It likes girls and children. It continues to sit beside Jasper as he strokes its head. The black guy is called Gerard. He kneels and beckons the dog to come to him. But it has glued itself to Jasper. Another man, watching, says “Careful, you’ll get bit.” The dog is stressed; yawning, licking its lips, grinning. We tell Gerard that we’ll keep it here if he goes gets a lead. He lopes off. When he returns with a rope we tie it around the dog’s neck and the mongrel is his. He had a dog once, good one too, but it got lost in the bush and he’s bin looking for a new dog. This’d be a good dog, he reckons. So this is how you get a dog in Kauai – just find one in the street and get a rope on it. We feel good about the rescue from the road, the wet night and pleased for Gerard to have a companion. He says he is going to buy it some food and we ask him what he is going to name it. We suggest Dingo…

to be continued…

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Illness

Yesterday was a lost day.

Before bed we watched “28 weeks”, a movie set in London when it is attacked by a zombie virus. In the movie the virulent infection turns the humans into raging, attacking maniacs whose faces are covered in blood as they rip open the eye sockets of their victims. It is “good” sci fi, but I went to bed a little nauseated and thinking of the movie over and over as I fell asleep. Then, I woke with a pressure in my guts. Deep. I had the shakes and shivers. I threw the bed clothes off. I groaned enough to wake Graham. Get the thermometer, I said. Perhaps I had a temperature like when I got cellulitis in my leg. Whenever I am sick I think of that time and how I had failed to notice the blotching of my leg that was the tell tale sign of bacterial infection. But that’s another story. No temperature.

I get Graham to cover the chair with a towel and race to the bathroom. Even though my sensation within my abdomen is incomplete I get the sense that it is the source of my illness. I am leaning forward on the toilet and groaning my death groan; the one I do when I am about to vomit. At times like this I wonder about how I would ever be able to have chemotherapy or the like. I just am the worst at nausea.

There is the sound of someone throwing buckets of water on the bathroom wall behind me. If I had sensation I would know that this is coming from me, but I don’t and it’s the weirdest thing. It is weird, till I realise I have sprayed shit all behind the toilet and down the walls. Weird, till I am attempting to clean up while still feeling vaguely outside myself and blurry. I have taken my glasses off, a good thing. The foulness is muted by poor focus. But the stench. I am yelling Oh My God and asking for towels and garbage bags. Graham is passing things through the door and I am saying Stay Back.

In the hour that follows I am washing down the bathroom and having showers as I ooze uncontrollably. Everything is foul. Jasper wants to know why one of his toy catalogues from the bathroom is in the bin. Because it’s got shit on it, says Graham.

Being vets might help us handle a morning like this I think. We are used to shit. Dogs with parvo; where their guts literally come away from them and spill out in shredded globs of blood. But there seems nothing more foul than human excreta.

I use lots of Radox for Men that Graham brought home from Woolworths by mistake when the check out girl put it in our shopping. I use it several times that day so it will always be a reminder of the day of illness. It is a dark green, like bathing in algae and smells strongly of male deodorant. I go back to bed, lined for safety with towels and ball up. I can’t get comfortable for most of the day. I drift in and out of sleep, groaning, when it seems the only thing that will help. Outside there are men at work on the oval planting trees. I can hear the thud of the shovel on the earth.

I can hear Graham in the kitchen playing his ukulele.

He brings me gastrolyte and an enormous vomit bucket.

Luckily school duty can be left to him. I am a bundle of illness. I think of nothing but my stomach. It takes all my thought. I try laying one way and then the other. Nothing is comfortable. I am cold and then I am hot. I can hear the thump of Jasper’s basket ball in the lounge room when he gets home from school. I can hear him asking Graham to go outside to play. I can hear Graham frying onions. I can smell the bolognese cooking and I hate the smell of it.

I hear them outside calling Murphy, who is not coming, and I think they have not taken treats with them. I hear the front gate swing open and know they have got him inside, contained in the front yard now, and they are probably kicking the footy. The paper barks  being their goal posts. Murphy will be standing at the gate wishing to be out but they cannot be bothered to watch him as well as play their game. I can hear Charlie and Sally from next door. In my musty bedroom I feel the haze of illness here under the sheets with me.

It is not a real day. There is no thought of doing anything but surviving it and getting through. How strange it is that when you are sick it seems difficult or impossible to recall being well. The feeling is so far from you that you cannot capture it. It is like you have been ill for your entirety and will be ill for ever more.

Jasper is very disappointed that I will not be getting up to watch Masterchef. It is proof that I am really sick. It is dark when they get back from piano lessons. I hear them run through the new song, then later Jasper reading Dr Seuss. Still the smell of Bolognese wafts up the hall. I hear them hoop and holler as Lleyton comes good at Wimbledon. Graham makes up the spare bed in Jasper’s room to stay away from me and my cloud of illness. I eat a banana. It is heavenly sweet and I take small mouthfuls. It leaves my mouth furry but I am beginning to feel better.

A dog is barking on the oval outside my window.

I am taking sips of water.

It is a new day. Today I will air the bedroom.