Today would have been Peter’s birthday. He died a ways ago, so I guess it doesn’t really count as a day of celebration any more, but still, it’s nice to have a day where you take some care to remember. I created a lovely day for myself: did some jobs early so I could feel smug, had a beautiful brunch in the sun with a friend who knew him well (we didn’t talk about him, nor did I tell her what day it was- it was enough to know that if I did tell a Peter story she would get it- sometimes I wonder if that’s the whole point of my life- to have people around me who get it), and then came home in time to take a moment on the top deck and look out to sea.

Peter was my Dad-not-dad. He wasn’t the one who donated the DNA, but he was the one who got into my head and heart and made my DNA worth something. He indulged my love of books, teaching me that it was okay to love what I love. He championed my writings, telling me that I had a voice that was worth listening to. He sat patiently and taught me maths that was beyond my comprehension, showing me tenacity, patience, and that I was worthy. He encouraged and helped me set up my first practice despite me being so very green, reminding me that I could do anything I put my mind to, and that he believed in me. He bought my records from me when I said that CDs were the NEWTHING and vinyl was passé, showing me (years later: this one took awhile Bluey) that not everything that is old is rubbish, and that there is value in things past, and that yes *sigh* after it all, it seems that your music taste (Tom Waites, Chain, George Thorogood, Bob Marley) may have been better than mine (Bucks Fizz, Duran Duran, Wham).

I could tell you so many things that I learnt from my Dadnotdad.

And today on his birthday I am trying to decide which one is the bestest.

It’s hard to figure, because the learnings have become mixed with the person I see as ‘me’, so I’m left knotted in what was already here, what he helped expand, and what would have died a little if it wasn’t so carefully tended. I know I’ll never unravel the tangled truth, but as I sit here on my balcony, I give thanks to the man who met a woman and fell so deeply in love with her that he took on three feral children* as his own, doing it so gently that they never had reason to rebel against him or say they weren’t his. For the man who was such an unobtrusive supporter of the woman he loved that we didn’t even realise how beautifully he held her until he died- the subtle cough as he touched her shoulder and reminded her that he was there, that he had her back, and that he would always support her? THAT is a rare and precious gift.

Perhaps most of all I give thanks to the man who taught us how to savour the moments. The man who diligently worked himself up from the mailroom to state-manager, the man who came from a rougher area but never let that become a chip to carry, the man who was never too proud to sweat and toil to pay yet another bill, the man who would always look to bring others up with him as he rose.

When I had my own family my Dadnotdad would come to our home, make some reason to spiral up to the top balcony, crack open a beer or pour a good red, and look out to that big blue that matched his eyes so well and say, “I wonder what the poor people are doing?”And every time it would make us laugh, and we would say, “This. The poor people are doing this.”

And how they love it.

So yes, this afternoon I am sitting up here and savouring, and thanking you for all of it.

Happy birthday Peter.

* Well two really- I wasn’t feral, but the twins sure as heck wanted to be.

Every Friday was book day in our house. Well, not for anyone else, but for me. Every Friday my Dad would head off to work, like he always did, suit and tie, polished shoes, moustache blazing. And every Friday afternoon he would come up the driveway, tie a little loosened, moustache a little awry (it was a magnificent mo’ and probably deserves a blog of its own) with a brown paper bag tucked under his arm. I would watch him from the front room, trying not twitch the curtains too much as he came up the path with that slow loping gait of his. Unhurried, unflustered. That was my Dad.

He would come in the door, put his bag gently down, acting as if there was nothing unusual happening. He would continue on with his languid movements, kissing my Mum hello and pretending that he didn’t have a bounty of adventures under his arm. Meanwhile I would be hopping from one foot to the other, almost peeing my pants with excitement, and trying to act nonchalant (this was part of the charade we played) waiting, waiting. Hoping the paper bag was book-shaped and for me, and not Darrel Lee chocolate-shaped and for my stinking little brothers. Spoiler alert: it was always book-shaped.

I don’t know when bookdayFriyays started, but I lived for them.

And I don’t know if my Dad knew how much they meant to me. I wish now I’d told him. I wish I’d told him how I would wake up on Friday mornings with the delicious hope that today I would get a book. For it wasn’t like Christmas, when despite the threats of parents about good behaviour, we knew deep down that we’d at least get something. Bookdays weren’t guaranteed. Bookdays were a treat. And there is no day in the world that isn’t improved by having hope.

Eventually he would do that little cough he did before all important conversations, and say, “What’s in this bag, I wonder?” By then I’d be ready to lose my mind, but instead I would say, “Um, is it a Trixie Belden?” And for thirty six amazing weeks it was. Apparently as Trixie gained popularity among girls of a certain age, some of the books became difficult to source. So not only did he have to remember which one I was up to, but to find it in the bookshop after his “Friday business lunch” (it was the ’80s remember, and Bob approved of such things), no matter how elusive volume fourteen was. As the years went by the books changed, but to be honest, it’s the Trixies I remember the most.

And though I know that bookdays can’t possibly have been every Friday, when I rewind through the years, it feels like they were. It feels like I spent hours waiting by the window, and then even more hours reading on my bed, then later, under the covers, binge-reading by torchlight. I’d read it cover to cover on Friday, and then again over the rest of the week, savouringly. My Trixie addiction taught me to read for content and then for context, where on the second read I’d notice language constructs and finer details that I’d missed the first time. I still do that now, dog-earing pages, underlining, re-reading, and looking for treats that some authors leave for people like me who love the way words are put together.

People sometimes say I read a lot, and it makes me tilt my head to the side as I wonder what they mean. Compared to what? Compared to whom? Reading does so much for me: it’s where I learn, it’s how I make sense of the world, it’s my form of mediation, it’s where I make new friends and catch up with old ones, it’s where I go on adventures and lose my sense of self. I’ve lived a thousand lives through words laid carefully on pages, honed by wordsmiths. To read “a lot” is to live fully.

I do wish I’d had the chance to tell my Dad about the lives he’s helped me live. It’s been a wild ride: it’s been big and bold and full of bright colours. My lives have stretched through the centuries and even through the worlds: “there are other worlds than this.”* and my Dad gave them to me in a brown bag.

I hope he knew.

*From the Dark Tower by Stephen King

She’s had a life..

It was Easter Monday, and we had been away in Brisbane for the long weekend, spending time with Mum and our manchild who has moved out (so he’s probably just “man” now).

When we have small stays away we have an amazing young girl- Little A- come and mind our cat. She comes and stays for hours, forcing pats on Woofa The Shitcat, and just hanging with her. Sometimes in life you meet people who are true animal whisperers, and cats know them, and know them well. You see, this little sunshine came to live next door to us when Woofa was spending one of her 482748972957892759 lives. In those weeks I was feeding her Ziwi pellets like they were tablets and giving her water in a syringe. Little A was right there with me much of the time. Cheering Woofa on, and sending her the good juju.

Once Woofa recovered (no one fully knows how) Little A was there to give her ear rubs and toe tickles. Woofa was a cat who loved very few, and Little A was one of them, and for that I am grateful. For the next part of this story is not so nice.

Warning: Not nice stuff to follow. 

When we got home from our trip, Woofa did what she always did- as we bought in the cases, she shot out like a bullet to make her ablutions. She would abide the shitty-litter when needed, but she always preferred a fresh air toilette. Before too long she was back inside to spread her fur over as many of our black clothes as she could- marking our legs with her scent and making us angora-like. I used to find that annoying, or at least the depilation that was always required after a Woofa encounter. I would take that annoyingness now.

As I was starting on the washing, Woofa decided she needed another run outside. It was nearing dark, and I usually wouldn’t have let her out, but she had been inside all weekend, and I thought, “Why not?” Why not indeed. Sometimes in life you have to be cruel to be kind, and other times you think you are being kind when unbeknownst to yourself you are actually being cruel. This is my guilty cruel.

I let my cat out for some freedom and to let her breathe the cool night air, and within minutes the massive cat-killing-listed-dangerous-dog next door; the one who is not allowed to be unmuzzled or in fact off its lead, EVER, had my little mate in his mouth, crushing that night breath right out of her.

Crushing her little lungs until they couldn’t draw in one more ounce of air.

Crushing her and crushing us at the very same time.

Flashback:

We got Woofa at a time when life was tricky. My Dad had died earlier that year, and I had a gaping maw in my insides that didn’t feel like a hole at all, but a lump of bluestone; just as heavy, just as cold, just as grey. I didn’t know quite how to grow around grief back then (oh what a thing to know: joy not joy) so when I looked into the blue eyes of that tiny kitten and I felt a little chip of bluestone fall away, I had to have her. Don’t get me wrong: I pretended that she was for the children (MOTY, me) but I think we all knew she was for me.

And so she was.

She was the one who sat with me through the long nights of worry about Coco. I would sit on the couch in Coco’s room, watching the rise and fall of her chest in the eon-nights before the horror-relief of transfusion day, trying to decide if she was doing the “puffy breathing” that constituted an emergency (what the hell is puffy breathing anyway?) and Woofa would purr a rhythm of a normal life. Some nights I could even believe her song.

She was the one who sat on my feet and kept me warm all the nights when Hayls was crook and I didn’t have the words to cheer her on in a way that she would feel buoyed. And then after. She was there with that same warmth in the after, when she cajoled me to believe that one day I would feel warmth in my blood again. And she was right, that cat of mine.

Or perhaps I was hers.

I guess that’s more true. I was hers. She owned a piece of real estate in my cells in exchange for all of the things she gave me.

By and by and through the years my life got easier and less grief filled. Less death, less fear, more life, more fun. Things got easier and harder and easier again, and all the while, any time I had sleepless hormonal nights, or early morning wakings, she was there and there and there with me. I’d open my lids and there she’d be, right up close and staring at me with those blue eyes saying, “It’s okay. You’ve got this. You’ve always got this. Now get me some food. And by the way, I don’t really give a shit about what ails your mind, give me the food. Now would be good.” I would raise myself from the bed and the so-familiar-it’s-almost-unnoticed ba-dumph of her hitting the floor would follow me to the kitchen.

Flashforward: 

There’s now been a little time since the Cujo next door killed my mate. Enough that you’d think I’d be used to going to the pantry without being accosted for “meo-ore food, meo-ore food”. But I still reach for the bag.

Enough that you’d think I would have stopped dream-thinking there is a little warm comfort weight on my feet at night. But I still feel the heft of her.

Enough that you’d think that I would have stopped half waiting for the ba-dumph. But I hear it in my mind.

Death is a strange and cruel thing. It allows your brain to leave you with things added: guilt that you let your cat outside to be picked up by a monster, fear that you might lose it like George at the murderer’s owner if she dares come near, anger that some deaths can be so so simply avoided, and yet they are not.

But the reaper? He leaves you not with things added, but with things taken away:

your comfort,

your solace,

your little friend,

and perhaps most of all the ba-dumph as she follows you, to salve your heart.

RIP Woofa Shitcat Butterball Popsicle Asher. You were a Goodcat after all.

I’m sorry.

I think I’m a bit of an ‘in the moment’ kinda gal. I love to dream, and in fact I set aside weekly daydreaming time in my diary to make sure I get my fill of fluffy future times, or as Joe Dispenza would say, “Creating a memory of the future” but outside of that, my family life and my work compels me to be all Fat Boy Slim. I simply can’t allow the past to determine my future, nor can I think too much about what may be. In the moment all the way, baby.

Which means once something is done, it’s done. I think about it a little, make some meaning from it, and then move along folks, nothing to see here.

So the idea of people having a heavenly birthday, although quite lovely in its intent, isn’t my jam. The age that someone “would’ve been” means very little to me. I’m a bit black and white. They aren’t here. So that’s that.

Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday.

And it kind of snuck up on me. I was busy trying to think of other things, and yet it came and went anyway. He’s been gone a good number of years now. More than a decade, less than a score. Long enough that I have been able to grow around the space he left in my heart, but not long enough that I’ve forgotten the way he cleared his throat before he spoke, the way he rested his hand on my mum’s shoulder when she needed his support, the way his eyes twinkled intelligently when he was patiently and carefully considering a new idea.

So many years, so many moments. And then time compresses down and it was yesterday that he was pushing our kids on the swing (way too high by the way) and saying, “Zoom zoom” whilst they squealed with pure terri-joy.

So what do you get a man who has everything is no longer here?

You get him a red wine emoji in the family chat and think of all the peppery-chocolate scented Henschke he tipped down the sink because it “tasted funny” when he was wracked with cancer cells. You get him some space in your thoughts as you sit on he couch and stare at his-now-your records, and think of how he taught you to slide them out of their crinkly sleeves and reverently place them on the turntable, closing your eyes as you wait through the first crackles to where the songs burst through. You give him your hairbrush so that he can gently brush the knots from your wet hair as you thaw out by the fire-at least it feels like you can do that, even though you can’t.  You give him immortality, by yet again mentioning his name.

Again and again.

Even on the days when it’s not his birthday and even when the people around you have grown tired of hearing about him.

Especially then.

Happy heavenly birthday Peter.

Happy Birthday Peter

Last week was a week of recognition of a life well lived. The life of a quiet gentleman. My Uncle Robin. Rockin’ Robin. Dizzy. (And no, I don’t know why he was called Dizzy. The Uncle Robin I knew was the opposite of Dizzy. Maybe it was one of those weird Aussie nicknames- like when you call the guy with the red hair Bluey.)

We took some time out of our usual life to be elsewhere- in minds and in bodies and in emotions. We took a break in normal programming to simply be with each other, Mum and I, and all of those who loved him best.

It was a guiltysad funeral.

Guilty that you are, for a brief moment, glad that it’s all over for him, and for those closest those who were witness to the slow ebbing away of the things that made him unique. For as the body slowly dissolves with cancer, you see a dissolution of essence. The skin loses it’s luminescence and a greying pallor replaces the vibrancy of healthy skin cells. Eyes that once sparkled with mischief and wit cloud over a little. And the affairs of the living- the minutiae of life along with the wonder of broad vistas- are no longer of interest to them. The healthy and hale share those many moments with those we love, trying trying to use our Siren Song to lure them back to life with us, even as we watch our words wash over them. They are here with us in flesh for fleeting moments. Their being tells us they are mostly moving on to whatever is next. And yet we try to hold fast to them as they continue to float away from us. The only solace for us is the serene way in which they drift.

Being at a funeral is always surreal. Torn between not wanting to be there at all, not wanting to feel the constriction in your throat that is keeping the grief from surfacing, and not ever wanting to leave, as once you exit you know that a chapter has closed. That your person will no longer be spoken about as much as they are, this day. I once heard a quote by Ernest Hemingway:

“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.”

And so we mention and we mention and we mention their name. We share the moments we had with them. We tell and re-tell those stories until they are as careworn as their now-still faces.

The celebrant at my uncle’s funeral reminded us of the importance of this moments. That is what we truly remember: moments and interactions, feelings and the ways they touched our own hearts. Moments are recalled more than whole days or even weeks. This celebrant said that if each of us wrote down one moment they had with my uncle, then we would have a book. And he was right. We would have the book of his life. The real book. The book that told of his intellect, and wicked sense of humour. The book that told not only of what he did, but the way in which he did. The meticulous care he took with detail and organisation. The unhurried way he looked into your eyes when you shared a story. The dedication to a routine and a rhythm of life that was composed of precisely everything he loved, culled of things he did not. A life of design where nothing was wasted, and nothing was frivolous.

There’s lots to love in a life like that. A life where you know exactly who you are, and the people you surround yourself with. Where you do precisely what you love, no matter what it looks like to others. Where you are safe, secure and loved enough to be able to offer that very same thing to those around you.

A life where others know if they are included in your circle, then they are valued.

I think it is the kind of life I want to live.

Vale Uncle Robin.

You are one of life’s true gentlemen.

Getting egged on to take a big sip, by a professional.

I have been thinking a bit about people that I used to know this week.  People who have died.  I always do, I suppose I’m  a bit of a dweller, but perhaps a bit more lately as I’ve been writing some stuff about cancer.  All my dead people except one had the big C.  So that’s a fair bit of C.  A fair bit of watching people you love being eaten from the inside out, until everything collapses in on itself.

I watched a movie in the late 80s called Less Than Zero, and the chick in it said she had a creepy feeling that her dead loved one (Possibly her Grandfather? My memory is a bit sketchy, it was the 80s after all) were watching her doing stuff.  She was a bit weirded out by it, mainly because she was having lots of sex.

I too think of the people I know who have died, and I imagine that they too are sometimes watching me, but I have made some rules up of what they do and what they don’t see.  Even dead dudes need boundaries.

They don’t watch me in intimate moments, like, going to the toilet or yelling at my kids.  They give my some privacy.

They don’t follow me around when I’m doing boring stuff like waiting for the car to get serviced, or doing the food shopping, although, apparently they do hover when I’m clothes shopping.  Particularly when I NEED those jeans on sale in a size 8.  (They find them and then pour me into them.)

They do sit nearby when I’m upset about them dying, especially when I’m in a secure little place like the car or the shower and think I might have a little cry.  I feel their warm breath in my ear telling me it’s okay to miss them, but that it’s okay to be happy if I want.

The hang out with me when I play the music they like, and I think I can hear them singing along, faintly, just faintly, at the blurry edges of my hearing.

They come and visit when I need a hand with something, especially if it’s a protection-type thing, or something that mortals can’t really help with.  They have superpowers to bend things a little if required.

I have given them some other powers too: they can read minds, so I don’t have to seem like a nutter, having my conversations out loud.  They can also organise things for me if I ask, like shuffle my appointment book around, or to help with the kids.  They can get my kid good blood on transfusion day, as well as a competent doctor who will hit the vein up first go. They keep an eye on my kids when they are out in the world, and help them to be safe.

They help me with; the plot twists of life, being graceful in defeat and they give me a nudge when I need some help to step onto a stage and be unafraid to share my heart. They help me to keep on going when I want to stop, to remember to dream, to let the sun shine on my face before rushing off to the next thing, and to take the time to simply be present for a moment. Most of all, they remind me that no matter what happens, life is a gift and the present is something that must be held gently and sweetly as it’s the only thing I truly have.

Noosa River- My thinking place