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..

That was then, this is now

When I was eight years old I got my first pair of roller-skates.

I woke up on Christmas morning with anticipation that shimmered in front of me like the gauzy curtain of a boudoir. I ripped it aside with nary a thought of how it may have been thoughtfully placed to create a mood, such was my desire and my need.

I ran to the box that was the size and the shape and the heft of the things I had been wishing for since at least November, which of course was the same as forty-seven years in my eight year old chronoestimation. I held the box in my hands and waited a century-second before hungrily tearing off the slippery-gaudy-cheap paper. Skates. At last. Skates.

The wrong skates.

My heart stopped beating for a moment-year, and I buried my face in the remnants of that gaudy paper, ashamedly scratching away the look of horror, before my parents could see what the face of an ungrateful child looked like.

The skates were white, yes. The wheels were red, yes. They were boots, yes. But they were Hang Ten. I wanted Redstones. More than wanted: I needed Redstones. In that moment of complete and total disappointment, I knew that there was nothing I could do, and that I would never have Redstone skates. The part of my forebrain that somehow knew things that adults knew, was aware that this was probably my one shot. My one chance at owning Redstone roller-skates. And now it was gone. So close / so far.

I forced a smile to my mouth and to my eyes, and carefully laced the hideous wrong-skates. My parents were overfrothing with the happy that comes from seeing their child truly love the carefully-chosen gift so much, that they can’t even speak. I couldn’t speak.

To keep my hands from shaking and my from eyes crying, I began the soothing task of lacing, and once done, I slowly made my way down the slick cement front steps. Each step was heavy with the despair of the wrong-skates. I took a deep breath, bent my knees slightly to get my centre of gravity just so, and pushed off down our driveway.

The skates rolled forward like nothing I’d ever felt before. They had a power of their own. I barely needed to push- I was gliding, gliding, flying, gliding.

“Am I flying? I think I’m flying!” I screamed so the people two streets over, behind the Henwood’s double storey house could hear. “These skates are AMAAAAZING.”

I skate-flew out onto the road, and lifted up to the touch the lowest lying clouds with the three lateral fingers of my left hand. From my place above the world I looked back to see my Mum and Dad below: she leaning into the space at the front of his chest where she fitted like a nesting cup, he with a grin that threatened to split his head open like the watermelon on that weird knife ad.

I think I heard him shout, “I know you wanted Redstones, but the Hang Tens have better bearings. They’ll roll better.”

I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but that day I knew without a doubt what considered, quiet, caring, love meant.

It meant Hang Ten skates.

The very best kind of love. Love that makes you fly.

…From The Ashers

*This was created from a prompt from Liz Gilbert’s creativity challenge: What did you most love to do when you were eight? It was supposed to take 20mins. I failed- this took me 37minutes. Oh well. Close, as they say, but no cigar.

What did YOU love to do when you were eight years old? Do you still do it?

Why not?

I mean that- why the hell not?

Sometimes the beauty is in the spaces, isn’t it?

The pause between when you tell him you love him for the very first time, and you wait, one beat, another, and there is that delicious-scary anticipation, before you hear what he will say back.

The gap between the notes in your favourite song. You know precisely how long to hold the silence. You take your breath, before the lyric unfurls the next layer of story.

The very first moment when you become aware of yourself in the morning, when for a second or two you are no-one and nowhere, your brain is furry and unfocussed, and there is no cancer or death or pain that cannot be taken away.

The beauty of the space.

This week two more of my people died.

I know this is inevitable. That with every moment that passes, every beautiful space that passes me by, I draw closer to another death. A bigger space. Another one that can never be filled.

Those deaths take my breath away, every single time.

This week two more of my people died, and there is a space in my heart that can’t be filled, and nor would I want it to be.

What do you say when someone dies? Do you say: passed away, passed over, left this earth, deceased? I don’t like any of those. I say they have left a space.

And so I mark it.

In my appointment book, which is the thing that runs my days, I write their name, where the time for their check up would normally be. My Dad comes in most Saturday afternoons. Hayley comes in every second Tuesday night. Geoff comes in once a month on a Saturday morning, and Bob has 9.15am on a Tuesday, every fourth week. Don’t worry about my tenuous grip on reality, I know they aren’t actually coming in, but I can’t bear to erase them, to take away the space they held in my life.

In the beginning, the space is almost unbearable. The allotted time stretches out from my toes to eternity, and I think I will never endure the tock-tock-tocking of the moments passing. After the passing of months, that if joined together would wrap around the equator eleventy-million times, the space takes on a new form. The time morphs and passes faster, or perhaps it just has less barbs to be ripped out of the gentle skin of my forearms. The space holds itself, it never de-ceases, but I find that I have a fortitude, a fort, that I never knew I’d built, and I can sit in the space, and put the jigsaw pieces of my heart back together.

Some of the pieces are missing.

There are spaces where there once was a picture.

But there is beauty in the parts that are now missing. They are the memories of my very own. Invisible to another, but clear to me.

And they are wondrous.

…From The Ashers

They used to be in a box. (Sigh) Progress.

I saved and saved up all my pocket money to get my Dad something special for Father’s Day. Mum took me to the shops and I went directly to Darrell Lea, running off before she could offer advice involving socks or cheap whisky. Darrell Lea in those days was an absolute mind bender. Tiny glass bottles filled with striped tooth-cracking sweets. Rows of glistening caramel fudge. Straps of liquorice in vivid black and, get this: red.  Shelves and shelves of cellophane wrapped delicacies to make taste buds zing.

I walked round and round, breathing in the sugar infused air and forgetting why I was there, until my eyes lit upon the tiny eggs of excellence, known as scorched almonds. I knew I must have them. I counted out my silver and copper and secreted them away, ready for the big day.

My Dad looked at my face when he opened his present, and so he knew how special I thought it was. He looked at my eyes, and not at the wrapping, and so when he carefully tore it open, he saw a way to build me up and create another blanketing of self confidence, his mouth turning up a little at the corners as he told me scorched almonds were his favourite things ever.

I will never know if that was true, or if it became true with time, as the years added up, every time I remembered. And every time he pretended to be surprised that the familiar box, with the comforting clunks inside, were his scorched almonds. “You remembered my favourites,” he would say, and my chest would puff up, prouder than an airbag, and I knew I could arm-wrestle the world right there, and I would win.

It has been a few years since I have been able to give my Dad his scorched almonds. A few years since we have been able to sit together in silence, eating our almonds in our own ways. Him: crunching through the thick chocolate to get to the nut quickly and eat it all as one. Me: slowly sucking the weird, shiny layer off first, then allowing the chocolate to dissolve and dissolve until finally chomping the almond, with tiny traces of chocolate remaining in the grooves.

It has been a few years, and still, every year I buy the almonds, and every year I eat them alone. Alternating between his way and mine. Remembering all the times he built me up a little bit and then a little bit more. Until the layers of confidence, resilience, tenacity, strength were as thick as the bitter-sweet chocolate, buffering, protecting the nut inside.

Vale Peter Cartney McShane, and Happy Father’s Day.

It still hurts like a bitch.

…From The Ashers xx

The kids have been jumping all about, getting excited about Father’s Day, and their chance to show Nathan their amazing homemade gifts.  I haven’t seen what they’ve made, but let me tell you,  it will be hard to beat the laminated, hand drawn “tie” from 2012.

I asked them this morning what the best thing about their dad is.

Liam said, “That he can make anything. He’s a carpenter you know”.  (Yep, I picked that up, thanks.)

Coco said, “How he tickles my feet with his scubble (sic) in the morning, and how he calls me Snickers, but he doesn’t call me Snickers anymore because it makes me want to eat Snickers, so yeah, not so much the Snickers thing, but the scubble thing, that’s funny.”

So there you go Nath, I couldn’t get anything else out of them.  Beards and construction.

I’ve got a few more ideas though, and yes it does look like a list.  This is why I think Nath is the duck’s nuts:

• That he is honest and fair and trustworthy and loyal and dependable, and his children know that
• That he is a hands-on Dad, and the kids know that he’s an equal parent
• That he cooks their dinner, reads them books at bedtime and gives them big, big hugs
• That he is always available for chats, or games, or mucking around
• That he knows how to make them laugh
• That he follows up on his promises, and keeps his word, so they can trust him
• That he is fiercely protective of them, and they can rely on him to keep them safe
• That he makes them billy-carts
• That he plays Sylvanian Families, spots possums and kicks the footy
• That he knows many, many, really crap kid-jokes
• That he loves them best
• That he truly believes that everything will work out in the end, so they catch his calm
• That he takes them fishing and surfing and camping, and teaches them how to do it for themselves
• That he dances with them, sings with them, so they love music too
• That I suspect he really wanted to breast-feed Liam himself, and calls him ‘my little mate’
• That he cried and cried along with me when we were learning about Coco’s diagnosis way back when
• That his arms are strong, his soul is open, and his heart is big.

Happy Father’s Day Nath, you rock.

Does the Dad in your life rock?

Did you have a happy day today?

..Pop in tomorrow for Father’s Day, yet to come

This Sunday is Father’s Day.

Some of us have them around to celebrate with; to buy them shonky gifts or, to make even worse ones, or as I used to do; to buy the same old Scorched Almonds from Darrell Lea just to see if: 1. they were surprised, and 2. I had any change left over for some Bo Peep lollies for myself.

And some of us only have the memories.

I’m going to share with you the page I wrote for my Dad’s eulogy.  Sounds a bit melancholy, I know, but I guess if you are playing along with me here, I’d like you to know what an amazing father he was to me.

Lessons From the Heart

Some people in the world try to teach others by lecturing or instructing, and some just quietly clear their throat, take a pause, and  gently lead by example…

When you brought me home a new book every Friday, no matter what kind of day you’d had, I learnt to value intellect, and to deliver on promises made.

When you quietly sat back and taught me to drive, without yelling even once, I learnt the value of calmness and patience.

When you would put down whatever you were doing, to help me with my homework, I realised the gift of letting children know they are more important than anything else.

When I cheated on your Rubik’s cube to get ten dollars, and you found me out, and just quietly said you were disappointed, I learnt to value of integrity and honour, and never cheated again.

When you took me on the Mad Mouse even though we were both terrified, I learnt to face my fears, and that sometimes we can lean on each other when things get tough.

When I saw all the things that you would quietly do for others, without need for accolades or repayment, I saw how wonderful things come from bringing happiness to the lives of others.

When I saw how you looked at my Mum, and I heard the phone ring for her every day, I learnt what it is to love someone with all your heart.

When I saw you hold our tiny babies, so tenderly and so naturally, I realised how much you sacrificed to be part of our family.

When I saw the joy you had guiding and playing with our children, I saw that unconditional love really does exist.

When I saw your silent suffering and the pain behind your smiles, I understood what true courage is, and how much you loved us, to try and spare us from your agony.

When I saw you take your last breaths, I learnt that the most important thing on this Earth is to live fully and love completely, and then to let go.

Thank you, my wonderful teacher.

 Happy Father’s Day to you all.

…Pop over tomorrow for Father’s Day, Present