Today we said goodbye to our little exchange student, and we are bereft.

Wrung out.

We miss his big smiling face.  His lively dance moves.  The way he said, “What? Huh?” In a high-pitched voice to everything he found surprising about Australia, and anything we said that he didn’t understand (which was virtually everything).  We miss the way he made us laugh and the way he helped us see our town as if for the first time.  To appreciate the natural beauty, the weather, the faint scent of sugarcane and salt, the heaving sound of the waves.

We miss his enthusiasm to try new things, to stretch himself in ways we couldn’t even know.  He was afraid of many things, here in this slightly crazy space of a country.  The startling insects, the furry animals, the earthiness, the brightness of the stars.  He was surprised by the casualness and the warmth of Aussies (Ozzees), but he allowed it all to infuse, and brew and become.  We called him Watters, and he sent his Mamasan an email saying, “I’m an Ozzee boy now.”

Our throats got lumps in them.

We knew we only had him for a short time, so we stacked the days with experiences and we held nothing back.  We told him what we thought of him, and we allowed him to bury deep into our hearts.  Kind of like the way you do when you know your Dad is dying of a cancer that grows by dissolving vital organs, one by one by one.

But with more laughs than cries.  Because nobody was actually dying.  Even if you might not ever see each other again.

And that’s the thing.  What I found today, is that grieving is not about the death, it is about the missing.  Coco was beside herself when we were saying our final goodbyes.   She is seven years old, so she didn’t want to do it, wanted to just leave without the sting of the final glimpse of her friend.  I suppose she thought she would avoid some of the pain if she avoided the situation.  Which is what we often do.  Liam was completely different, because he said he knows he will see Watters again.  A different protective mechanism perhaps.

And me?  Well, I drove those emotions down nice and deep, somewhere down near my big right toe, where they can stay a while.  I’ll take them out every now and then, have a little look, and slowly and slowly the feelings will become more bearable.  A sense of creeping acceptance will begin to take over, until I can look at the whole experience safely.

I know how this works, by now.

Eventually and eventually you can smile with your eyes again.

And remember the people who scored your heart with their enthusiasm, and the way they could always make you laugh.

Watters.

Thanks for coming Watters.  We’re gonna miss you and your crazy stunts.

…From The Ashers xx

A little dude from Japan has come to stay at The Asher’s for a couple of weeks.  I call him Watters.  He looks at me blankly when I do, even though I have explained that Aussiefying is name is imperative.

He has a little English at his disposal, and we have virtually no Japanese, despite the Evils (they shall no longer be called Geniuses) learning it attending classes in it for five and three years respectively.  My Mum gave us a translation book, which has been both useful and a source of great mirth, as he pisses himself every time we speak Japanese to him.  Personally, I’m a little affronted, as I’m pretty sure my pronunciation is excellent.

I have reverted to doing what I find most useful when someone doesn’t understand me: talk loudly, so they can now not-understand me with sore ears.  As an added bonus, I also use sign-language.  My grandparents were deaf, so in my family that’s what you did if words didn’t suffice: Auslan.  So, yeah, I was signing my little fingers to the bone for Watters, until Liam said, “He’s Japanese Mum, not deaf.”

We were also using a translator App on our devices, but have given that the flick since I used it today to ask him, “If there’s anything else he wants to do in Noosa?” and he nearly wee-d in his Abercrombie and Finch designer jeans.  I suspect I may have asked him something to do with my substantial mammary glands or Nathan’s gastrointestinal ablutions.  He wouldn’t say.  But every time he looked at me for the rest of dinner, he giggled.

He has a great laugh, our little Jappy Chappy, so we try to do things to make him giggle.

So far we have made him laugh at: urinals in male toilets, sparklers, meat pies, toasted marshmellows, a heat bag in the bed at night, kangaroo spit and koala poo, gravy, peas, Coco’s violin playing, five minute showers, the spa at a local resort, warm Nutella on ice-cream, Vegemite, weird rocks on the first Groyne, pelicans, driving a boat, Cheezels on fingers, ‘cranky’ tacos, blue-tounged lizards, our kids not eating their dinner, bacon and eggs cooked on the barbie, Woofa the shitcat, our footy team’s score today (we were NOT laughing), Nath’s singing, various Aussie stuff in shops, Liam’s speedos, pretty much everything at Aussie Zoo and my use of chopsticks.

However, the thing that has made him laugh the most is my dancing.  Again, I’m shocked.  Because I’m pretty sure that my dancing is tres fantastique (I may not have any Japanese, but by gawdy I know me French).

Last night we got out the “deck” which is a pumpin’ little speaker with a DJ function.  We logged in our iPods and went to battle.  Watters has a penchant for songs that are newer and boppier than a woman of my maturity can safely boogie to, and still keep the contents of her bladder retained, but after an aural arm-wrestle over “Blurred Lines” (Him: Yes, Me: Hell NO) we found common ground with Michael Jackson.  Turns out this stylish, crazy, funny little dude from Tokyo knows the words to Thriller- including the Vincent Price bit- almost as well as me (not bad considering it takes fifteen minutes to find out where he went on his last holiday), but, even better, he knows the dance at least as well as The Wacko himself.

So Watters laid out the moves, and The Ashers followed along as best we could.

And his gutsy laughter rang out across our blue, blue seas.

GoodonyaWatters

…From The Ashers xx