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.

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

It’s the day for it, isn’t it? The day when all of your chosen media are full of everything you should-would-could do to make yourself more shiny from this moment forward. The implication being that somehow this whole last year was crappy, and were all personally in need of some kind of therapy. Depending on the algorithm and, what you have been looking at and liking of- it could be your body, your mind, your finances or just your shoes.

I don’t hold with that at all.

I think that almost everyone I know did the best they could in each of the moments. I know for me, some moments were better than others in the Champion Of All Things awards, but on balance, I did okay. And I bet you did too.

The end of the world year can take on portentous feelings if you buy into it all too much. The endless lists of how-to and what-to and who-to can become overwhelming if you let the whelm come anywhere near your neurones. And it will try to flow over you. That’s its nature.

This morning we chose to pop over to the beach for the last time this year, I thought I would take some really cool pics of the kids frolicking in the gentle waves, and Nath getting barrelled. I imagined the sun would be rising over the water, creating diamonds of significant rays all ready to be captured. In my mind’s eye I envisioned a significant moment. Perhaps we would hold hands in the water and send out a frangipani, singing Kumbaya and Auld Lang Syn (neither of which any of us know more than two lines of) and say fare you well 2016. Something to mark the passing of the year, and the passing of my Dad.

Shit. I wasn’t going to mention that, but I have and I have and I have, and of course I always do, for the end of the year now always brings more to it than just the end of the year. It is also the end of a life. Which is why I attach more significance to this day than just an arbitrary date. For if we are to be real and say the truth, there is no inherent meaning in the moments from 11.59.59 to 12.00.01, other than the meaning we chose to make.

Ever since my Dad passed away on the first day of the brand new year, I wake up on the 31st feeling scratchy. Sometimes half a day goes by before I acknowledge the reason why, but whether I chose to look at it or not, the irritation is there from the moment I open my eyes. Sometimes I think I’d like to hurt someone or have them hurt me back, just so I can let the constriction in my throat burst out, and the prickling behind my eyes slosh away.

So we went to the beach. Like any other day, but like a day that I would like to be different, significant, something.

The beach was a fairly windy, which is never a good omen for me because: FRIKKEN WIND, and the surf was little more than a blown-out shorey with a massive sweep. The sand was too hot for children who had chosen not to wear their thongs, against my best recommendations, so: all.of.the.whinging. And then on her first ride, Coco cracked it because the salt water was too rough and TOO SALTY. Liam tried to paddle out the back a few times, couldn’t, and came sloping over to me, shoulders hunched in the posture of defeat.

And that was about where I lost it. Not in a major way, and not out loud, but in enough of a way that everyone knew to ‘Stay away from Mummy right now’.

I went up the beach a ways by myself, and wrote ‘2016’ in the sand with my big toe, and the waves licked it up.

I noticed the toe-nail polish from my Christmas manicure glistening in the sunlight and I thought it looked pretty.

I felt the despicable, messy wind on my two-day-old sunburn and I liked the slight cooling feeling.

I looked out to the horizon and saw a white yacht bobbing over to the edge and smiled at the memory of all the drawings the kids and I have done together over the years.

I saw Nath standing with his back to the dunes, hand up shielding his eyes, watching the waves, watching the kids, watching out for us in the solid, stable and careworn way he does and I realised that even in the shittiest moments, in the seconds where I feel the most broken and fragmented, I have this wonder of a man in my life.

We didn’t sing Kumbaya or even One Love. There were no petals set free. The kids still carried on about things that kids do. My sunburn still stung and we still have ants in our bathroom. There is still paperwork to be done, and tomorrow I will probably have a slug-like hangover rather than fluttering into the new year on rejuvenated wings. And my Dad is still dead.

But there is coffee for tomorrow and champagne for tonight, and we all do the best we can with what we’ve got, and some of the moments will be mundane and muddy and magical. And so it goes. Come by here and Kumbaya.

Fare You Well 2016.

Fare You Well Peter.

Fare You Well, Regular Reader. Travel Well, Travel Light, Smile When You Can.

…From The Ashers

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

On one side of my family there is a pretty big age discrepancy between me (the oldest) and all the rest. They are all adults now, having their own kids and such, but I still think of them as little rugrats getting all liquored up on red lemonade and my Nan’s tooth-achingly sweet slices, every Christmas.

My Mum just sent me a link for my cousin Jarrod McShane’s website, and it turns out, that somewhere between sitting at the kiddie table at family dinners, travelling to The US with us in 2003, and now, he has become an extraordinary photographer.

Wonderful photography amazes me, in this digital age of fast, sharp cameras and accessible filters, where it seems everyone can take enough pictures to get something decent. But true photography is something else, isn’t it? Real photographers somehow manage to tell you a story, take you on a ride, urging you to leave the couch and step inside the frame with them. They make you experience the world in a new way, with eyes that don’t belong to you. I think that is a rare thing, something you can’t get with just a fancy camera. For that you need heart.

So when I went over to Jarrod’s, I guess I expected to see a couple of cute snaps of this or that (he’s just a kid remember), but instead he took me along with him to Alaska and Melbourne and Canada. Places I have been and places I haven’t, experiencing them all in the heartfelt way of my quiet, thoughtful cousin. Seeing details that my own eyes would have passed over, capturing moments that I would have rushed by.

The excursion made me smile, in a benevolent old-lady kind of way, proud of what my kid-cousin has grown up to be.

It also made my heart ache a little, as I know my Dad would have loved to see the art Jarrod has created, and I know he would have had thoughtful things to say about it. We would have sat together and looked through the gallery, recognising familiar places, and making up stories of the spots we didn’t.

I would have liked that.

So I did it by myself instead, imagining his voice in my head.

And I liked it anyway.

Thanks Jarrod, I think you have a gift. I appreciate you sharing it.

This might be my fave, but it’s hard. There are so many. It’s very Melbourne though, and I do love that old bird.            …This pier has a story or two to tell…

How about you, which pic is your favourite?

What does it say to you? Where does it take you?

…From The Ashers xx

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