The selectiveness of memory

Yesterday morning Mum called to tell me a longtime family friend -- one of the stalwarts of my childhood -- had had a severe heart attack the day before and his kidneys were shutting down. Later that day came Dad told me he had died. By happenstance, I bumped into him last week, perhaps the week before. We traded words, a bit of banter couched as lighthearted, affectionate insults. That was our way, something we had done since I was a child. I walked away, frowning, thinking how frail he had grown. My parents' generation are falling. My mother speaks of what it is like to know she is next (generationally) in line. It's not something I like to contemplate.

Today, Mum composed the death noticed. We to-ed and fro-ed on it: whether to add the strange little joke we'd shared with Nev, the one that no-one else would get but that would have made him laugh (we didn't). Tonight, my parents came over, and we reminisced. Nev was the third of eight children. Only three remain. Mum was talking about the trip we made to his sister's once in South Australia when I was small. Perhaps five? It came up when she was listing his brothers and sisters, and was talking about one I didn't remember, though I knew her name. Mum said I should remember her from that trip as we'd stayed with her.

I cast my mind back. Even now, I remember just three things. I remember going in Nev's station wagon, the long, lonely kilometres (or was it miles?) as we drove all night long. My brother and I were crammed into the back area, with beds laid out, but it was bumpy and cold, and I remember looking up at the glittering stars -- so many stars -- and listening to the voices talking, watching my brother sleep and knowing then that I wasn't going to sleep in this forever night. That car was one we'd go down to Shelley Beach (the Back Beach) in, and we'd all line-up, sitting on the backrest of the back seat, and Nev would slam on the brakes so we'd all go flying. Not like these days where everyone is belted up, and no-one does anything irresponsible. (I remember Nev telling me he never trusted a driver who needed two hands on the wheel, something I often think about when wondering if I'm being irresponsible driving one-handed.) So there was the long lonely night drive, under a thin blanket, being jostled and jounced with every rut in the highway: that was the first thing.

The second was having breakfast at a diner in a service station, and having baked beans on toast. We never had hot breakfasts, so that was something special, something wildly decadent. Why I should remember that all these years is beyond me, but there it is: number two.

And no. three? No. three is a beach, a beach with long, flat yellow sands, too shallow to swim in. And the men going crabbing. Catching big crabs, crabs of a size I'd never seen before, crabs more than a foot wide, mind-boggling crabs for one who was well acquainted with their smaller variety. Hundreds of people harvested the beach. The walk out to the water took forever, and I desperately wanted to swim. I've always joked that I could swim well before I could walk (although strictly speaking it's not true), and talked of the year I went swimming every day with my dad, right through winter. These days they have a name for the people "brave" enough to do it, but in those days it was just something you did -- we did. Neville often came with us. Sometimes his brother, Kelly, too. But that day in South Australia, I didn't get to do more than wade. It felt like we walked through shallow water for more than an hour and never got past our ankles. But when the tide came in, the whole area flooded in a matter of minutes. I'd never seen such a thing -- so different to the miniscule differences (comparatively) between low and high tides at Williamstown beach. Everyone had bucketsful of crabs, and that time I ate crab for the first time. But that's another memory -- discovering how tricky it was to extract meat from the legs and pincers of the crabs, trying to crack them open.

As I'm sitting here, a few more things come to mind. Sunburn. That day I was burnt -- my arms and shoulders and face, tender for days. And I think they had a seesaw -- not the standard type with a wooden plank that used to be so common, but one you sat in, in a big metal frame. Or perhaps it was one of those groovy swings, I used to love, that would seat four people facing one another? Something anyhow. But that's it. There's a vague memory of a woman in a white and blue dress, but that could be pure invention.

And other memories (not of SA) of course. Going to his parents' house in Albert Street and being allowed to play on their piano -- or make noises on it, because I had no idea how to play. And, when my mum tired of the sound and forbade me banging on the keys, playing with the metal crocodiles on the floor -- about a foot long -- lifting their tails made their mouths open. And their mum, who always seemed small and doddery (in a way neither my grandmother nor great-grandmother were) would make us fizzy lemon drinks based on bicarb. How strange. I didn't really like them, but they were so different from what we ever got at home that I quite looked forward to them.

There are so many memories attached to Nev. The summers down at Port Campbell. Summer barbecues at Somers. Perhaps, more than any others, theirs was a family we belonged to by default, and he, more than any other, to ours. Nev never called my mum anything but Aunty. He was hard when he played with us, rough (in a masculine, acceptable way), didn't have kids of his own (at that time -- that came much later), and all the kids loved him and perhaps were a little bit scared of him. We used to taunt him: "Bombev Nev, Bombev Nev". None of us knew what it meant, but we'd hurl it at him and squeal and run, hoping he wouldn't catch us.

I remember him holding me out over a blowhole once, and being scared but trusting him implicitly. He would do things like that -- things that challenged us. We could show no fear. My dad tells the story of sending him overboard on a fishing trip once -- no accident -- and how Nev did the most elegant swan dive. Dad never fessed up that it was done on purpose, but Neville knew, and the two had joked about it for years. There's the story about how he got between our lab, Kim, in a dog fight and got bitten by accident. A severe bite, but not done intentionally. Memories, so many of them -- and as I write they well up, things I thought I'd forgotten. Strange how they do that. Strange how so many wait in there, stacked away in some dark recess, seemingly forgotten until something drags them back into the light.

The stalwarts are falling away, leaving behind holes that will never be filled.

A few more from the top!

And some pics from the top

Some pics from the Rialto tower

Views from the bottom

How exciting is this

Last Tuesday, as part of the school holidays, we went up to the viewing platform of the Rialto, which happens to be one of my favourite Melbourne buildings. Sir Talkalot, who'd been up before, was not at all keen to go because he wanted to go up Eureka instead. (For those who don't know Melbourne, the Rialto was for a long time the tallest building, but has recently been surpassed by the newer and much taller Eureka tower.) But we had cheap tickets (through a newspaper voucher) for the Rialto. Watch this space over the next few days, and I'll put up some of the photos. I'm very attached to place, so took lots of photos, and I love them all.

Anyway, while up there I found this groovy wall thingy (and didn't I wish I had an SLR with a polarising filter so I could cut the reflections, but I didn't so I couldn't, so my apologies for the crappy photos). Okay, so it's a world map with all the time and date zones, but it also shows what parts of the world are in sunlight at any one time. Now, I have never seen this before and found it wildly exciting, something that completely baffled and mystified my kids, who got to see their mum in all her geeky nerdiness. But I love this device. Look at the sweep and curve of sunlight -- how it portrays the seasons too. This wasn't quite the winter solstice for us, but fairly close. Now I'll have to go see it near the equinox.

The strange, the good and the tragic

(i) I get up this morning, and there's a pumpkin floating in the pool. We don't have a vegetable garden or any pumpkins. (Well, we have one now!)

(ii) Sir Talkalot wants to enter a competition. He's not completely happy with his entry. Segue to yesterday: we run it down to our local PO right on closing time to find out about express posting it. We compare this to the option of running it in by hand ourselves, which would give him time to improve his entry. The PO people explain if it has to be in at 5 pm, it can be picked up at any time during the day because the post is delivered at 6 am, so the boxes can be cleared any time after this. I get their point, but it seems a bit immoral if the conditions say that 5 pm is the cutoff, that the judges (or admin people) might turn up eight hours earlier...

Sir Talkalot decides to go the hand-delivery option. We are supposed to run it over this morning, only he decides to completely redo the entry. We have other commitments today. Finally, it's ready, but we have to run to catch a train and can't take it. We just miss the train home and get back at 4.20 pm, which gets us home a few minutes later. It's a half hour drive to where we have to go -- on a good run. We'll be picking up peak-hour traffic. But we can use the pay road, which may get us there a bit quicker. We leave the house at 4.35. It's really why-are-we-bothering territory now. We get stuck in traffic where we shouldn't, but then also have a good run where we shouldn't. We get there at 4.59. Pull over. Dash across busy road. It's 5.00. The PO is shut, but there are people inside. One in leaving lets ST in. He holds up his parcel, and the lady behind the desk nods. Strangely, it costs him $5.40 just to pass it across the desk! But it's in. He made it. He's happy.

(iii) A friend's daughter rings up to say her mum is really ill. In the last six months the daughter has lost her father (who didn't live with them) and her grandmother (who did). Now it looks like she might lose her mum. I'm really sad. I can't believe it.

Recently, another friend was talking about a mutual friend of ours who has this same illness and said our friend doesn't deserve it, and I said no-one ever does. And it's true. Life just sucks sometimes.

Surrounded by id... Nah, I'm not gonna say it

So, picture this. You are lying on the couch trying to take a nanna nap because you've only had a few hours sleep the night before, and when you've been trying to write the words are blurring, and your eyes stinging... In the distance, as you lie there with a brain too active for sleep, you can hear a conversation. It is your husband and your son. Your husband is telling your son he can drive the car (already in the driveway) further up the driveway. Your son is only thirteen. He's never driven a car before, and this car's a manual. You think, should I get up and tell him (the husband) not to be so stupid, that if he asks the son to do this, the son will put the car through the fence? You consider your answer. While you do, there is a sound. You know this sound. It is the sound of a car crash -- the sound of a car going through a fence. You get up, but you already know what you will find. You have taken too long. Your warning is moot. The horse has bolted. (Metaphorically, speaking.) The fence is broken -- the crossbeam broken and all the pickets out. The car is several feet into the garden, and the dogs are just staring. Lucky they were further back. You hear your husband blaming your son for this. Time to have a little discussion, you think.

Daily life with a twist

We currently have no lighting -- nearly a week now. We do have electricity, but only one light in the whole house is working; it's obviously on a different circuit to all the rest. And we also don't have a hotplate (oven's okay though) or pool pump, or any electricity out in the shed. It's not a fuse; I know this because we have circuit-breakers not fuses.

Happily, we still have TV, the fan on the heater (or I'd have moved out by now), and my computers. It is curtailing what can be done in a day though -- especially when you're trying to get a book finished. Grrr. There go the evenings. Still, imagine if I didn't have my computer! I don't think I could survive.

The bathroom's still full of candles, and we have a couple of lamps around the house -- and the kitchen lighting is currently via the rangehood. How lucky are we that we changed the globes the weekend before last?

I suppose it really is time to call an electrician. Mind you, I was out with a friend last night who told me she had friends who had no lighting for three years. Three years! Imagine that. Just don't let The Gadget Man find out, or he might use this as the latest let's-cut-our-bills-down scheme. Actually, perhaps not. He's not very good at turning lights off!