we're all making our own sense of things
Today, the mister, he be forty three (43).
Now, I know, as does he, that 43 comes after 42, which is preceded by 41 and that by 40, which, ten years before was 30, which, in turn, is 15 after 15 and so on, and yet and all the same
forty three (43)
DID NOT SEE IT COMING.
Happy birthday, my love. You know, you’re the oldest person I ever lived with.
The gauge has said thirty five for two days in a row, and so we know that winter, or what passes for it, has now passed.
It is lucky that said decisions have been decided for any decision I make in the heat of anything over thirty cannot be trusted.
I share an office, but all of my colleagues are away today. On a scale of 1 to 10, how evil would it be to eat that packet of chips which one of them has left on his desk. (One being not so evil, ten being plenty evil).
There were decisions which had to be made. Decisions about all manner of things none of which could be made singularly but each of which remained a decision of its own with its own right to be and its own particular timing. The decisions, which I present without question marks and allow you to make of that what you will, included such things as: where will the lads go to school next year; how much longer should we, would we, can we stay; where will we spend the summer; should we move from this apartment. These are the kinds of decisions which, once started, spiral into others (should we renew our gym membership or just buy a per-visit card, should we think about finding a different gym move to a different club) and if you aren’t very careful, you will soon be asking, Should I bother getting out of bed.
Except…huzzah! I am not as easy to confuse as I once was. I would not claim to be as Buddha, but such is the state of my current mental strength that truly through all of this month and the one before, I have not cried once. Well, maybe once, and possibly even twice but not, you know, every day. And when I have said, ‘Well, let’s just wait and see’ or ‘It’s no use worrying about things that haven’t even happened’ I have meant it. I really have.
On a related note, but not so related that I can think of an elegant segue, a lot of the thinking that I am doing at the moment is done with the understanding that I have just turned 42 and when my mother died, she had just turned 46 – an age to which I am now so close that I can smell its perfume. Woody, with a touch of something citrus if I’m not mistaken.
It is not a bad touchstone, not a bad point of reflection, but I’m glad that my mental health is as good as it is, and that I have been able to look at this in a polyanna way. Because reflecting on our decision to stay here one more year, I see that it was made by a mind and a spirit which are fuelled not by the spectre of just four more years, but by the optimism of many more. Because if I really thought I had just four years more, I would go home right now and spend them with my friends.
‘Mum, I’ve got this strange feeling in my throat.’ My youngest child tells me this without any doubt that I will explain it to him. ‘And also here.’ He rubs at the small of his back. If I told him I could take the pain away he would believe me.
I have been struck by his innocence several times these last few weeks and I wonder why I have been noticing it, his innocence, his inexperience. Is it me or is it him? And then I think, He is eight years old. Perhaps it is not his innocence I see, but its fading.
These days, my eldest boy lives in a time of recognised ignorance. The age of known unknowns.
‘Mum,’ he said some weeks ago. ‘What’s a version?’
I knew, because he was looking in a bag he had already emptied, he did not mean version.
‘It’s okay,’ he said without giving me time to reply. ‘Oscar told me.’
‘It’s a person,’ I tell him, because who knows what Oscar said, ‘who hasn’t had sex.’
‘Yes.’ His head is buried still in his empty bag.
‘But you know that’s not something you have to think about if you don’t want to.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said and looked at me. His voice is ten again, his skin is clear, his eyes are dark and wide. ‘I was thinking maybe people who are thirty. Or maybe eighteen. I was thinking eighteen at least.’
I have never heard him say ‘at least’ before.
I nodded, because the specific number doesn’t matter, he cares only that it is an age so far in the future that it cannot be imagined even if he has no doubt that it will come.
And now we are sitting, the three of us, strange feelings in our throat, aches in the smalls of our backs, waiting for time to pass, our energy to be restored. The loungeroom is overflowing with pillows and quilts, the floor is littered with lego and crumbs and drops of nurofen. We watch James and the Giant Peach, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Goodies. I hang loads of laundry which have been soaked in double doses of dettol. I make bread and butter puddings. I kiss burning foreheads and rub flushed cheeks. I tell them, ‘Tomorrow will be better. A long sleep always helps.’
It is as if they are preschoolers again, and my days are filled with them, finding their clothes, dressing them, feeding us all, feeding us all again, refilling their drinks and mopping up the ones that they didn’t mean to spill.
So strong are my memories of those days, that I could be reliving them. I could be in a three bedroom bungalow I haven’t left for days, a parquetry floor and those bloody cornice troughs. I would not be surprised to open my eyes and see a window framed by a Queensland frangipani. I would not be surprised to hear the phone ring and to hear my father say, ‘It’s me.’ I would not be surprised if he arrived with bags of chips and cans of cool lemonade and told me to go for a walk.
And on my walk, I would cry for my father and his liver arresting his song.
This virus, these aching bones, reminds me that we are all older than we were. My babies are not babies and I am not a child.
News from friends filters into our home, and there will be a farewell on Thursday afternoon. By Thursday night she will be gone. Another piece of unexpected news from home. Earthquakes, floods, cancer, coups. We come from Egypt, New Zealand, Pakistan. It could be any one of us. We all have plans in place. Just in case. I try to tell her I understand, that she is not alone. But of course, for now, she is.
Such strange days, inky and tinged as they’ve been. But I’m not ungrateful for them. My father did not ring of course. And yet, he called.
…..
on a boat off the coast of Oman
My old employer rang to ask whether I’d be interested in doing my old job for a couple of months. We conducted the conversation by text, because I was, at that moment, sitting in the cafe of the Imperial War Museum and it would have cost a fortune to conduct the conversation by phone what with roaming charges and all.
The timing of the call was good because: a. I was sitting in the cafe of the Imperial War Museum thinking, ‘Oh, my, London is incredibly expensive and we’ve still got ten days to go’; b. life as a trailing spouse* in Abu Dhabi is a little boring; and c. it is a long time between now and my next break at the end of the school year in June. (I’m not sure if this is a healthy approach, but I survive life here by planning escapes).
I was supposed to start work tomorrow, or maybe even today, but youngest has been struck down by a rather nasty virus and the mister has a series of meetings he simply has to attend, so I might not start until the day after tomorrow. Kind of funny, kind of not.
On the morning the lads and I left Abu Dhabi, we were glad of the jumpers we were wearing, but in the twelve short days we were away, ‘winter’ ended and I doubt we’ll be needing those jumpers again. It is rumoured that yesterday’s temperature reached 36. For sure, it was hot. Sort of like one of those exam weeks in Adelaide. Thankfully without the hayfever, but my fingers have swollen, and my ring must be pushed over my knuckle where only last week it could be slid.
Spring doesn’t even start until tomorrow.
Because the trip to London was somewhat impromptu, the only cheap flights made a stopover in Bahrain. The time in Bahrain passed without incident for me, which is how I like my time to pass these days. I seem to be sending many ‘thinking of you’ messages these days, and it feels ridiculous to be doing so, because I mean, really, how does that help someone who has just seen a boulder, loosened by an earthquake, come crashing through their house? But I do, I do think of them. In the middle of the night and first thing in the morning and all through the afternoon, I think of them.
It occurs to me that it is almost two years since my novel was launched and I have published nothing of substance since. I am thinking that perhaps I am not a writer after all. I don’t feel as sad about that as I would have imagined I might, but the realisation that I don’t feel sad is making me think in a thunky kind of way. I think perhaps I will open my word processing programme sometime soon.
How’s things in your neck of the woods? she asks, but does not demand a reply.
*real, actual term used to describe a person such as myself
On our first day in London, we went to The Imperial War Museum. We would have gone anyway, because our current living situation involves a lot more glorifying of war than I would like, but the visit came with the added bonus of Once Upon a Wartime, featuring five children’s books, War Horse, The Machine Gunners, The Silver Sword, Little Soldier (with which I was not familiar but have since read it, and think you should too) and, one of my most favourite childhood books, Carrie’s War. I was tragically in love with stories of the evacuation as a child, and also with all of Nina Bawden’s books which I must have read hundreds of times each.
‘But I want to see this first,’ Youngest said as we passed through the auditorium across to the exhbition. ‘I don’t want to go to a boring old exhibition.’
I should have anticipated this, because it is a captivating room, filled with rockets and tanks and, since I was last here, the melted wreck of a car bombed in Baghdad. With a glass ceiling, two or three stories above, there is more light and air than you might expect.
My youngest child’s response reminded me that on my first visit here, I stood in the entrance of this auditorium and texted my father, the type of left-wing history teacher with whom John Howard held such little truck. He, my father, had gone home from hospital by then, recovering not so much from his first surgery, but from its long list of increasingly dramatic and spectacular complications. Neither his life, nor my trip, had, even a week before, been certain. The words of the text are long since lost.
Inside the exhbition, the lads sketched horses and swords and then we stood, the three of us, in front of the machine gun which is light enough for children to hold (gratuitous link to control arms campaign here). Eldest drew it in his journal and wrote underneath, ‘I don’t like it.’
We arrived, after the stories exhibition, and after drawing a bomb, and after the submarine, at The Trenches Experience. ‘You wait here if you like,’ I said to Eldest and pointed to the chair. ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ he said and sat.
We walked through the trenches, youngest lad holding my hand, until, back at his brother, he reported, ‘It stinks and its dark. You would have hated it.’
We stood in front of the dial which, each time it gets to the top, shows the death of another person from conflict. ‘I knew that would make you cry,’ eldeest lad said and took my hand.
We treated ourselves to lunch at the cafeteria. I had pea soup and the lads had pigs in blankets.
In the souvenir shop, they are selling combat fatigues that fit children and I suppose because I was taking a photograph of the display, the woman who was checking the sizes in reponse to her little boy’s ‘coooool’ smiled at me.
I let them pull the suitcases off the belt and arrange them on our trolley. They aren’t heavy. We have three jumpers between us and six pairs of trousers. Two years in Abu Dhabi have left us ill-equipped for winter trips.
‘We’ll catch the underground,’ I tell them. ‘Trains are much more fun than cars.’
‘We want to get a taxi,’ youngest says. ‘We prefer taxis.’
‘It’s cheaper on the underground,’ I say. ‘Faster too.’ I can’t do a sum to prove either of those things.
‘I always have a murky feeling in my heart when we land,’ eldest lad says and rubs his palm in circles on his chest. ‘Do you get that?’
I put my arm around his shoulder. He has grown so tall that he can almost rest his head on mine.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘We’ll be in our apartment soon. Before it’s even dark.’ I don’t tell him, ‘Yes, I do.’
The mister told me that from time to time he looks at me
and knows
that I would rather be
anywhere but here.
I think, but do not say, ‘Your job is making buildings stand
My job is thinking thoughts.’
Did I tell you that these days the mister gets a text from the bank whenever I withdraw money or use my credit card? On account of, you know, it’s not my bank account. If the mister were to sign a No Objection Certificate I could get my own bank account, texts from which he would not receive. But the energy for setting up another bank account? Where would I getz it?
Sometimes, especially if I’ve done his ironing, the night before, the mister rings me after I’ve paid for my lunch but before I get to the car and says, ‘So, did you enjoy your lunch at Dome?’
Such larks, being man and wife.