'I need a great idea.
There's no point in delaying,
I'm off to find Ikea!'
The Rocking Chair
By Marci Dahlenburg
His face was lined and dusty like a peanut shell. Thick hands wrapped around the plane, sending oak curls to the floor. His fingers were creased too and would bleed at the cracks near the cuticles had they not been packed with sap and wood.
As the sun faded and his shed became dim, he rose from the work but his back remained bent. His feet shuffled toward the window where his tepid tea waited in what would have been a mug if it had a handle, but it didn’t.
He eased his body into the rocker that had been fashion from his hands years ago, much as he fashioned the half finished chair before him. He rocked, and like a rock he sat, thick and heavy, allowing his weight to ease to his toes and back to his heels. Allowing the ache of his bones to settle and remind him of the good of his work.
To work the wood, to create something that wasn’t before... to make a chair that could bring peace and comfort... well it was almost like breathing life back into a tree long dead, he thought.... and he thought of the babies rocked to sleep and the fathers reading the news and mum’s with their knitting and teenagers with their iPods; each rocking for their own reason, each finding their own peace, just as he did now.
THEME: TRAVEL
Stories by Laurie, Nene, Sara, Robert, Marc
Anticipation
By Laurie Gilbert
My latest travel started with the glint in the mind, an ambition to be somewhere else. Wasn’t sure where that would be. How wonderful to savour the possibilities. How long, how to get there, when to go? Will I arrange it myself or have the travel agent fix it up? I waver.
Such fun in the anticipation of choices, wading through brochures and the internet. So many places I haven’t been and such curiosity to satisfy. Things to do, places to stay. One country? More than one place? Stay put and be immersed in a new place? Or try for a sample of a few or a lot of places? Not an easy choice. Both are tempting. I opt for the second because of lack of time. The years are catching up and time is running out.
For the same reason I give the bare bones to the travel agent –he has more time than I do, and he is the expert. Well, that is what I thought for a while. It didn’t quite turn out that way, and I had such anxiety about it all being done in time. I made compromises because it couldn’t be sorted without penalties. Scandinavia and Canada had tempted the most – I’ve seen bits of both, but so much else to explore. Eventually an itinerary came together and eventually I have two packets of documents that make it real. One for flights, and one for vouchers and tour details. Not exactly what I’d asked for.
Never mind. I am ready. I haven’t started yet, but I am still travelling in anticipation. I’ve found the hotels on the internet and worked out how to get to the places I’m interested in – so many of them are free – and within walking distance. The beauty of city choices. But I have my tickets and information now and details of the tours that will take me through the countryside to dreams and myths and legends and history of old civilisations. They draw me. And I know the reality will be bigger than the dreams. No hiccups please. Or only serendipitous ones if they happen.
Travel
By Nene Davies
Airports are the most emotional places on earth. Human behaviour is often at its most real and unselfconscious in these strangely thrilling, crowded, noisy buildings.
The atmosphere in an international arrivals hall is charged with excitement and an undercurrent of tension, which explodes into cries of joy and relief whenever a loved-one emerges from behind those rather sinister sliding doors. Compare this happy hum of expectation with the vibe around departures. A mixed bag of feelings is tangible here; the sorrow and pain of separation jars awkwardly with the nervy thrill of a new adventure. Hearts are heavy. Hearts are light.
A dangerous place, an airport. Fears, real and imagined really live here and pulses quicken - whatever the reason.
We love the place, we loathe the place; the glittering shops, weary travellers and all. So much to drench the senses.
And that’s even before we set foot on an aeroplane.
Travel tribulations...
By Sara Sutherland
I hate travel! There, I’ve said it.
Lots of people tell me they find the journey as much fun as the destination. I’m sorry, but to me the journey is the horrible bit. I just want to get where I’m going. Which makes me wonder why I ever agreed to go on a cruise... after all, cruising is all about the journey...or is it? The journey is the destination! The places you visit are just incidental, really. And no, I didn’t really enjoy it – too many people wanting a Good Time, based mainly on alcohol and letting their collective hair down.
Okay, I’m a bit of a cynic, too.
I suppose I travelled a lot when I was younger, and yes, I did go to some great places and see a lot of wonderful things. But getting there was always uncomfortable and exhausting. I remember once getting lost in Paris, trying to find the Gare du Nord, missing my train to Rome and sitting on my suitcase, crying because no one would help me. (I was rescued by two lovely French ladies who guided me to where I was supposed to be.) Long, tiring plane trips, squashed into a seat and having to fight your way out to go to the loo. Even worse, interstate bus trips in seats not conducive to sleeping, with tired and cranky kids to amuse. Interstate car trips ditto! I drove my kids to Melbourne once and I think they coined the phrase “are we there yet?”
So when friends tell me they are off travelling, I envy them the destinations, but not the getting there.
The best part of travelling, to me, is getting home again.
Travel
By Robert Caffrey
Sitting here in the early morning, sunshine rising just above the trees. Background noises of birds singing and greeting the new day as I contemplate filling the hours till the sun sets again. The birds chorus of sounds brings me joy as each different sound reaches my ears.
A breeze drifts past me, cooling my face and neck, before the rising of the sun brings the humidity with it.
This calming scene is disturbed by the unrelenting roar of traffic. Periods of nature competing with the busyness of cars and trucks, which command the bitumen. Rushing headlong to their destination. Single occupants sit in these metal contraptions mostly intent on the task at hand. This frenzy increases with each minute, as they travel past.
Travelling with L Plates
By Marci Dahlenburg
I don’t think you have really travelled, until you have travelled in the passenger seat, as the parent of a learner driver. When you are pregnant they will tell you the horrors of nappies but never the horrors of the drivers’ licence!
Let me say my daughter is a good driver, good... but green as a gourd.
I should be patient, but I scream. I scream when she turns into the middle lane of a 2-lane road, straddling the white line between the car’s wheels. “Don’t scream!” she says and I know she is right, but it is an impulse not to be stifled when one fears for their life. And it doesn’t help that her sibling blithely asked on our way out the door, “Mum has anyone on L plates ever killed anyone?”
“No!” I scowl... well maybe.... come to think of it probably... come to think about it DON’T think about it!
She tells you that her paid driving instructor says she is ready to drive to school. You remind her that he has brakes on his side of the car.
And it sends me right back to my father teaching me to drive. He screamed, “Put you foot on it!” as we wound around a back road with curves like the nude ladies in the paintings hanging on the walls of museums. And I did put my foot on it... the accelerator.... he should have been more specific. We spun out and lost a hub cap! I was not near so capable as my daughter.
It brings you full circle. The road you are travelling now is not about the driving. It’s about rites of passage; beca
use you know when she has mastered this, she will move effortlessly and irrevocably to independence. It is the road of her autonomy that you are on, and there is no turning back.
And thankfully, you travel this road together.
THEME: WINTER
Stories by Sara, Nene, Laurie
Winter in England
By Sara Sutherland
Winter, to me, is my childhood in England.
The austerity of boarding school. Meagre heating turned off too soon, with frosts still on the ground. Frozen feet creeping slowly into icy sheets, attempting to create a warm spot; curling up in the cold bed.
Shivery walks in all weathers, fog and freezing wind and rain. Chilblains and runny noses. Gathering in the Common Room around an inadequate gas fire, blowing on fingers.
Christmas in London, where we longed for the romance of snow, but only got rain, until January when it snowed and turned to dirty slush.
Ironic to think of this now, living in Brisbane, where winters are comparatively balmy. Yet we rug up like it is Antarctica, (or Melbourne!) Before we know it, Spring comes back to warm our world again, and we take it for granted, because this is Queensland.
Thinking like a child
By Nene Davies
St. Paul got it right in his epistle to the Corinthians; I think he had love nailed, but there’s one part of his letter, with which I disagree.
As a child – yes – I spoke like a child, I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child. I’m with you on all that Paul. But when I grew up I didn’t put all my childish things away. I changed my mind about a lot of things, but something that’s stayed the same for me my whole life, is the way I feel about winter.
Winter and I have a special relationship – and not just because we’ve known each other for over fifty years, catching up for three or four months at a time. I was born in the northern hemisphere where November is mid-winter. Cold, dark, dank, November. I spent my first forty-one birthdays in the cold - and I loved them.
Imagine waking up to snow on your sixth birthday. Running downstairs in that steely grey light, having peeked through your curtains and glimpsed the garden draped in glistening cotton wool. That first gasp of delight as the freezing air hits your face at the back door and then the curious feeling of excitement as you crunch around the lawn, scoping out a spot for the snowman. Imagine hands so cold that you can’t feel them any more. Imagine your ears so frozen, they burn. Your toes resemble blocks of ice. Your cheeks are pink, your teeth are chattering. Imagine thawing out, cosy and safe on the sofa, clutching a mug of something lovely. Something hot. And then – how about a game of monopoly? Monopoly by the fire with your family. Funny how you always win at Monopoly on your birthday.
So Paul, you’re right but I’ll say this again. When I grew up, I didn’t put all my childish things away. I still love the winter. I still love my birthday. I still love snowmen and I still love winning at monopoly. I haven’t really put those things aside – and to tell you the truth, I hope I never do.
Old, and cold on the inside
By Laurie Gilbert
Winter used to be a tame affair, hardly different from summer as the changes were subtle and we adapted easily as temperatures eased down. Maybe we’d use a single bar heater for an hour or two on the really cold days. Sometimes there might be a frost until the sun came up. That was Sandgate in Queensland in the 1950s.
But Scotland was a different story. So hard to adjust, so many different ways for winter to affect my life. New things to learn about keeping warm and safe. Two winters stand out; the ones for 1961 into 1962, and then from 1962 into 1963.
I was a student midwife in Lanarkshire, working in a small hospital near a steelworks (now long gone). The hospital building was old. The work was wonderful, full of learning, new insights into social conditions, disease matters and the exhilaration of new life a constant. Not so good the occasional death, a couple of severe cases of eclampsia, and a really serious post-natal psychosis requiring admission to the local mental hospital. And sadly some botched backyard abortions needing repair and support. Times were different then.
Those two winters the cold was intense, so bad that there were icicles on the insides of the windows. The advanced practice of mothers and babies rooming-in (it was advanced and unusual then) had to be abandoned. Babies to the central nursery which was safe and always warm; no outside windows. The mothers went there to feed their little ones. Not such a bad thing as they were able to joke and share their worries. Times were hard, many unemployed.
For us students the worst thing was when the heat went off. OK when the janitor was there. But one of our lessons was to restart the generator. This entailed a trip into the dirt-floor basement, a torchlight stumble to kick a pipe in a particular way, and check the gas pilot flame. Scary enough, but the janitor delighted in yarning about the souls of the dead babies who were supposedly kept there until post mortems or funerals. Not true of course, but we didn’t know that straight away.
And then the walks home after a late shift when the public transport was off and taxis were immobilized by snow and frost and petrol shortages. Five miles for me, of whiteness and cold, slidy footpaths, and lamplight flickering through snow flurries.
By then I’d learned about sheep-skin lined boots and layers and layers of clothing. There never was any fear. Nurses were well regarded. The knots of men on corners and the spark of their cigarettes were comforting. Shift-workers lived a dislocated pattern of activities. The red and yellow glow from the steelworks and a blast of warmth in passing reminded that many had jobs. That was good.
Lots of other winter tales to tell, but these were the earliest years of drama.
THEME: GOING IT ALONE
Stories by Laurie, Graham, Nene, Sara
Full tilt
By Laurie Gilbert
The boy stood on wobbly legs holding on to the side of the stairway, fingers curled around the smoothness of the round, upright railings. He stared towards the woman who was crouched on the floor looking at him, anxious and imploring at the same time. He let one hand wave in the air and his expression was mischievous. With a toothy smile of pure delight he plopped his bottom on the carpet and edged backwards to the beginning of the staircase. He pulled himself up with both hands, back so straight, and wobbled a moment before gaining balance with absolute concentration.
The woman had not moved. Her focus was on him, loving the chubby rolls around his thighs and belly, his nappy threatening to loosen. She willed it to stay in place. He was nearly there.
Two steps along, holding on with one hand. Then he took off, four steps in a rush and he was in her arms. Laughter, and gurgles of delight. He was going it alone. An hour later, nothing could hold him back. He was walking without help and had learned to run. He was going it alone and hurtling into life. Full tilt.
Leaving in peace
By Laurie Gilbert
The room was quiet. Soft lights that changed colours, swept over the walls and ceiling. The sensory room they called it. Peaceful. My mother’s breath was coming in fits and starts. Consciousness had gone early in the day, but she was settled now. Her temperature had eased and the little fits had stopped. I was sure she knew I was there.
The others had left to get some sleep, we’d stayed with her through last night and it was dark again. My sister would come to take my place in an hour or so. I found my eyes closing at times and dozed in short snatches.
When awake, I held her hand and talked softly telling her about the family, and who had come to see her over the hours. Somehow I think it got through. But something held her. It felt as if I needed to help. I wasn’t sure what to do, until I said, ‘Mum, if you want to leave now it is alright. You have done everything you need to do for all of us. It is time to do what you want. We are happy for you to follow any path you’d like to take.’
I was almost asleep when she sighed a huge sigh. I felt the life leave the hand I held. She had departed
. I was glad I had been there. She was going it alone to the place of mystery.
Going it alone
By Graham Thomas
It can be very scary, going it alone. After all, why would one want to do it? Is it a necessity of life? That’s what Alice thought after she and Dave had gone their separate ways. All those shared intimate moments – once bonded them together – but now? Ah, and now?
What should she do? Contact him, maybe? After all it had been three months at least since they last communicated. Well, two months and twenty-six days to be precise. Would he realise that? Probably not. Why should he? It’s of no significance.
Her finger hovered over the speed dial button on the ‘phone. It would take but the briefest of seconds to press and only a little longer to connect. She pushed the hair away from her wet cheek, realising as she did so she was crying. Not sobbing but crying silently, teardrops trailing down her face and strangely, onto the back of her hand - the hand hovering over the telephone.
Alice remained standing stock still, each teardrop plopping portentously on her hand pressing it harder and harder, pushing it relentlessly downward. She resisted in an attempt to give herself thinking time. What if he wasn’t in? Should she leave a message? If so, what should she say? But what if he was in and answered? What would she say then? Maybe he’d listen to part of the message and pick-up after she’d spoken a sentence or two.
She pressed the button. A woman answered. A young voice, full of vitality, energy and excitement.
Alice put the ‘phone down. She really was going to have to go it alone.
Giant red letters
By Nene Davies
For how long am I going to stay angry? It helps in a way – pumping adrenalin effectively puts up an impenetrable screen. No way to get in and no way to get out.
Lessons learned? Yes – if I’m looking for the positive. Years wasted? – Yes, if I’m not.
Keeping one’s chin up ought to be simple enough - I’m British for heaven’s sake. But between the stiff upper lip, the hard line of my mouth and the growth-spurt of my backbone, I’m beginning to feel like a freak.