Bath to bed

There is a soft sweet connection with my Grandpa calling me his gingerbread-girl and the Scrappy Girl I now find myself to be in mid-life.  One that’s wholly different in its tone to anything else in my big rock-pool of relationships but resonant nonetheless. 
Let me tell you about crucial memories of childhood- about dinner, bath and bed. 

This triptych of the family album still takes up much of my time.  I used to be a part of it, now I orchestrate it. Now for me and us in my home it’s a ritual of early dinner, dessert offered to the sprog while the bath runs, into the tub with toys and tall tales, then a mad final dash of little limbs, squeals, monster-tickles then coercion into the bedroom for a final half-hour of three stories and certain things said: “ I love you all the way to the moon and back, my good boy, go to sleep my good boy, goodnight, goodnight.”

Here are my Scrappy girl’s memories of:

Dinner

The kitchen had a big pine table with yellow vinyl chairs to match the yellow vinyl benches. The room had the warm 70s glow of brickwork and wood-panelled walls, of dark vinyl floors and the crocheted brown owl on the walls. And yeah we had those two-toned orange-and-brown biscuit barrels and the set of canisters labelled ‘rice’, ‘flour’, ‘sugar’ and ‘tea’ with the little gold knobs on top.  Mum cooked plainly-well and to a cycle (Oh no its chop day!) with roasts, snags, cutlets, chops and mash all featuring in with her early attempts at curries and pasta sauces.  Mum grew a chilli plant on the balcony in 1978, and nearly killed us all with her first ever ‘chilli-con-carne’.  Back then she was a plain good cook. But even then were nights when bro and I would be sent to bed at 7.30 despite the incredible excitement of Dad preparing the drinks-trolley with small bottles of colour and tall bottles of spirits, with ice buckets, tongs and an array of garnishes.  I recall Mum wearing a floor length Grecian gown of the most beautiful powdery deep blue. It had a wide rhinestone belt to hug her slim waist and it draped off one pale shoulder. Her dark hair with auburn lights would be teased up all 70s, and she would let me watch her put on perfume from a bottle with a puffer.

Dad had sideburns and a wide silver tie against a dark shirt. They were a couple being glamorous and entertaining ‘the boss and his wife and some work-people’.  My bro and I would eventually sleep (having helped serve nibblies in our PJs- so CUTE) to the sound of giggly drunken adult-hum and the smell of Cigars and Stuyvesants.  And in the morning we would wake and find those tiny square ‘after dinner mints’ on our pillows where Mum had popped them.  For those times she cooked lavish concoctions involving shrimp entrees  and beef wellington mains. She was bloody good at it all. She looked gorgeous, made cocktails, cooked and served all whilst doing a flirty banter.  She was a child of the 40s who was taught her womanhood in the 50s who discovered her own kind of feminism in the late 70s.  By the 80s she was telling Dad “to take them out for Chinese!”.  But I love my memories of their glamour…

At the main table though, on most days, I recall arguing.  Both parents trying to talk to both kids, but just too much heat and tension between them because she was a Thinking Housewife in her mould and he was a Cocky Provider in his mould too.  I would eat half of my food, secretly pass half  to our Jack-Russell pup, then skiv off to hide in my room with kids-own-adventure books like ‘Famous Five’, ‘Trixie Belden’, then later as the years passed and décor changed, ‘Sweet Dreams’ high school- romances.  I don’t think I read anything serious until about age 13, and then it was the discovery of poetry.  All the classic and literary stuff.  I found it through my Grandpa Ken, the Scotts one, who would read Robbie Burns and Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson but also Percy Shelley, Judith Wright and Robert Lowell.

Looking back he read from popular anthologies of the Romantics, Renaissance and 20th century; they were his bents.  So I got my first reading of ‘The Wasteland’ at his side, nodding off.  He read magnificently. He was tall with a full quiff of white hair. He didn’t have the burr of Scot but he had that depth of voice and he took real pleasure in reading. I was spoiled. He was a bit posh, looking back. Or old-school educated at least, with a learning that covered the classics.  Years later in my mid-teens he  would play me opera only after  he’d told me the story many times so I could enjoy it: ‘Rigoletto’, ‘Il Traviatore’, ‘ La Traviata’, and ‘Carmen’.

But I’m digressing (aint it grand to digress?).   Dinner at home was good food and bloody foul company from which I wanted only to escape. Here perhaps is where a love of aloneness began, and in its ‘tent-and-torch-reading’ where the writer began.

Phew!  Bath and Bed may have to wait for next time…

Paul the sauasage-maker

(alert- not for vegetarian or vegan reading)  I wrote this one after attending an intimate local evening that involved beers, snags and some intriguing character observation...

‑Paul the sausage maker

 

Paul wasn’t an old man, but he was a tired man and a lonely man. His postie job had left his legs bowed as if always on an old motorbike. His early hours meant he went to bed early, too early for evening movies and dinners out with friends. And who were his friends anyway?

So Paul was middle aged, tired, lonely and a bit sad. But God could he make sausages.  He made sausages from scratch and doing it right was his passion. He ate sausages from every butcher he found. He researched the making of sausages. He experimented. He tested. From the moments his rounds finished until his supper time and into the early evening he chopped and sautéed, simmered and stirred, then packed his concoctions into the machine and turned a handle to stuff the skins. Mild lamb with parsley and sage he grew in pots. Comfit of duck with oranges steeped in aged brandy. Robust lamb with Moroccan seven-spice and olives. Peppered rabbit and celery.

And as dusk became eve and all good pets should be home with their owners they would instead begin to come, drawn by the delicious savoury aromas. Dogs of all kind: from plump Labradors to skinny terriers. Cats both well-groomed and feral. And in an odd-looking ensemble they would all line up at the back door of Paul the postie, who at night became their hero, Paul the sausage man.

And each night, Paul would pick one furry creature to come inside, share his plate of sausage and watch TV. And for a night he would know the comfort of touch and company as he scratched the ears of his newest friend.

Until a dreadful night when no animals came. You see, Mrs Betsy had gotten sick of calling her cat to a bowl of crunchies that never got eaten. Yet her cat had become fat, something Mrs Betsy with her super-tanned and taut limbs would not tolerate. So Mrs Betsy had followed little Shmoo-Shmoo her Persian Blue, and seen her welcomed into Paul the postie’s house with a plateful of sausages. Sausages! Ugh, how…fattening.

So Mrs Betsy started a campaign of whispers amongst the neighbourhood pet-people, and soon they were all shutting in their animals by 5pm, before the first eddies of delicious aroma teased the dusk breezes. Small children heard some adult whispering too, and in that way that small children do turned them into black gold, a sinister thing, the urban legend of the man who took people into his home then minced them for his sausage machine.

Paul was shunned now by animals and children too. He grew a little more bowed, a fair bit tireder, and a lot sadder. Yet he continued to make sausages; what else could he do?

One evening he wrapped some sausages in the local paper to take to the local vicar. Paul wasn’t religious but the vicar herded a group of church women who ran a Sunday sausage sizzle to generate funds for community groups. He was lovingly wrapping a mixed two dozen when he saw the world ‘sausage’ on the paper.  It was an advert that went:

‘Do you make sausages?’Do you like to eat sausages and drink beer? If you like either then come to the Princess Hotel, May 1 st, for our annual sausage makers competition. Enter your best 2 dozen, or be part of the judging crowd! No charge for entrants, eaters just $5.’

On the night he went he felt nervous.  But at the hotel courtyard he was greeted warmly by the publican and his wife who was a chef. ‘Ooh these look GOOD’ said Roberta. ‘Do you trust me to grill them? The judges are getting pretty eager’ and she held his arm and steered him into a small crowd of friendly faces.

And ‘grab a beer mate’,  said Simon. ‘First one’s free for entrants.’  Simon stood close beside him and said ‘So tell me about your snags mate’. 

Soon Paul’s face was grin-split as he talked to ‘Jacqeline but call me Jack’, a plumply pretty English cook who wanted to know about his knife technique for fine-mincing and what cut of lamb did he use for that one?’ Then two Sicilian brothers Agnostino and Angelo pulled him into a conversation about cereals and spice-blends.  Paul had three beers and was holding a sausage dripping its good grease into a crusty bread-roll. Paul was happy.  As he watched the judging begin as people in the crowd were handed sausages and score cards he became anxious. He knew his tasted good and had good texture too, but what was the ‘presentation’ factor?  He asked Angelo.

‘Mate they just want to see you make a nice-shaped snag, the right size for how much punch it packs’.  Ahh.  The three men and Jack watched in silence as first tastes were taken.  They saw heads nod and lips get licked. It was OK. The eaters kept smiling, nothing was spat out. All around them other sausage-makers exhaled, the music went on, and more beers were bought.

After he won second prize, wedged comfortably between Jack’s first and the Brother’s third, Paul was still a middle-aged man, but he was not a tired man or a lonely man.  On the pretence of planning to murder him for his spiced lamb sausage recipe, Agnostino dragged him into the wildness of Italian family life most weekends. When his kids had birthday festas Paul was there with sausages, as new bubs heads were wet with wine and blessed with song, Paul shyly bought his old guitar and joined in.  When Roberta and Simon celebrated a year of running the little pub, Paul was there cheering them on from the warm local community they’d helped to build.  And Jack was there too. As their head chef she was proud, rounded and sated with good food and love. Paul was so good to her. 

One night he was wrapping their four dozen sausages for the church ladies while Jack was cleaning up from their cook-fest. He saw the word ‘sausage’ on the local paper he was using.  ‘Hey love’ he called out, ‘the Butcher in Willi is looking for a sausage maker; reckon its time I quit the post?’

Life was good, like that classic trio of onion, celery and leek where the salt brings out the sugar.

River Time: Murchison.

River-town:

So here I am on New Years Eve 2012, in the caterwauling bird-loud dusk at 9pm. With mozzies eating me alive.  A gorgeous afternoon, wonderful friends and food, a tire-swing hanging from a gum, a tepee in the yard, guitars and singing Beatles songs. Wine and more songs and new friends and old. Kids in bare feet with sticky hands playing wars with big sticks. My little angel in amongst it hooting like a demon, loving this land he has inherited into his cellular self, sneaking lie-downs under a rug, and then bounding up again at the call for icy-poles.  Goodbye everyone, lovely!

 I leave the party fulfilled and take my tired little guy in arms and walk the short road to the caravan. We tussle over bed and there are some tears and then the days' joys, seated heavy in his bones, drag him under the thick doona and into the syrupy- sweetness of a justified sleep.

 Me on the grass surrounded by the somnolent hum of other talkers, their smoke so strong in the still air, the birds crazy- loud.  And ah, after the pressured heat now a breeze flutters the leaves in soft relief and as the sky  darkens bugs climb the screen and the sounds drop to a mere  whisper and scuttle of small creatures drawing in or heading out.

And there is no mobile reception, no free wi-fi anywhere; this becomes the blessed and blissed tech-less break. Timely, a good and timely reminder that people used to wait 6 months for letters, years for news of loved ones off to war or other countries.

 

River- run:

At seven a.m. I run the old soft gravel along the river-bank and road. Cows meander the banks and mellow gold sunlight streams in between trees of gum and scribbly-bark.   It is the first day of the new year and no-one is awake. The world is mine and the animals' and I am running, doing lamp-post intervals to learn how. Seven posts at run, one post to breathe slower, seven posts to run.  In the rhythm of my feet and blood-pumping mantras always begin. Today it is some good Doctor Seuss; "I  like to run, I like to run, I like to run in the morning sun!"

The road is wide and elm- lined when I reach town, an arrow-road that leads to the beautiful red and white church, over which a dusty morning moon peers.

AS I learn this running business my shoulders today find their natural order in the run, they like to move just a little, my hands are loose and clasp their fingertips to form light circles.  My spine is learning to lengthen when running instead of bunch. It all feels good, just the breathing still to master.

There are awakenings on the way home from the town.  Each time I pass a flowering- wattle drunken bees hum at me in warning to not crash their party.  Bull-ants are starting the days' work under my feet, little red bodies walking perfect straight lines.  In the houses behind huge gardens full of old roses I hear showers start up, occasionally a car slides by, so slow, nothing to do, its bush-time, old time.

As I write I am in the bakery holding a fairly good coffee but a better bacon and egg roll. Happy New Year to me!  Four kilometres then today.  I will get fit in temperament and actions, feelings and deeds. I will learn to pace myself in life.

 

River day:

Back at the friend's house early and I magicked the kitchen. Dreamily, dozily, dazily washed and put to drain, dried and put away. In the yard the overnight campers begin to emerge. I have no hangover, so help pour the tea, make the coffee as they drift back outside to the warming morning.  The kids get icy-poles for breakfast and I return to the house. At the skink huge windows overlook a front yard full of bicycles and my friends beautiful garden, she is so gifted in her gardening.  Finally the peace swells over me, soft as the dust-chalky and  grey-green land.

I wash and dry, then she emerges, my gorgeous glowing friend of almost twenty years. She is sorely hung-over and delighted at her emerging kitchen benches!  I convince her towards a sangria for breakfast, and she fires up and we play music and shoot the shit oh so gently.  My little boy  gets hit in the head by a big boy on a swing, there are tears and cuddles and special toys bought out to distract. Then the whisper in my ear 'I love you mum but can we go back now please?’

Our friends need their break too, we'll be together again all arvo, beers drunk slow as the yard now empty of all save their kids and ours begins again its crawl into shade and the flies dip lazily into the chip-bowl. There will be pool- runs and the preparing of dinner. Old-fashioned and unembarrassed us women will sip cool wine in the kitchen with salad-making and the men will yap out in the yard.

Peace.  Quiet joy.  Natural rhythms.  All possible.

 

River Evening:

My friend G finally goes to bed, it doesn't take much urging come 4pm, she's had a round of guests arriving and leaving around her sleeplessness and hangover.  I sit the kids left in front of a movie, they're tired and happy to zone out in beanbags in a darkened room.  We scrabble together a cheats dinner of nachos made from loads of leftovers, the kids pick at it and spaghetti as we pick and sip coronas and tiny shots of good tequila.  In a wash of flies and gold  light I traipse the property with camera in hand and click the minutiae that appeals:  dropped bikes, swing-set, a  blue-dressed doll, sunshine/ rainbow/haloes over  the old shed, the tire swing.  Capturing those images of my own childhood and my husbands, and what will become our little boys flicking movie- reels of road trips.  A seasoned traveller now he has partied hard, learned to do a dog-paddle in the wonderful old local pool, killed lots of flies, eaten like a feral cat finding scraps and treats aplenty, and slept deep on a straight hard road that arrowed through the blonde grass and harsh noon light.

I walk him home again on my hip and he clasps my neck with damp and limp hands that twine for comfort.

 

River women:

It makes a simple kind of sense to me that G has ended up here, living an elegantly simple life in a quiet river town.

When I first knew her long years ago her beauty almost intimidated me. She is tall, statuesque with a swimmers shoulders. She has breasts that bounce and sway, a tiny high waist above straight hips and long strong legs. She has a classic pre-Raphaelite profile, truly pretty, and a tumble of dark blonde wavy hair.  She used to nude-model for life-classes.  Once she came to a ‘deviants and debauchery’ party with a punk-haired Lesbian friend on a dog leash at her heels.  She has done the uni-days alongside me,  and the dancing days alongside me and now does the mothering and working days, and she was and is good at all of them. She has high standards, makes a beautiful home, cooks well and  gardens well. She is well-read and a feminist, who shrugs her shoulders, creates ease about her, listens to reggae and loves getting giggly.

Her children are raised slow, good kids with sparky attitudes and polite manners too. Their mum and dad are local teachers and locally liked, the kids tumble in the yard, play at the pool and eat all meals at the table.

In the late afternoon I creep into her and his room. I hold a big glass-full of the deepest yellow aged and oaked chardonnay, a really good wine, and super-cold. She is dozing on the bed but had wanted to be woken by five so we could pull the evening's meal together.

The room is in her beautiful style, pale muted parchment colours against strong teak and oak furniture, groupings of Japanese ink-sketches and Chinoiserie objects displayed against hung silks, the window full of dark green movements from the tree outside. A cool,  dim, country- room.  I pull into the bed and tuck my knees under the sheet and in slow sotto voice the delicious lazy chat begins, women's chat.  We dip and circle, touch on subjects, mutual friends, books read, our kids, our husbands, back to each other and our own selves and wants.  The room breathes softly around us, it is creakingly hot outside and the wine is cold and lovely, the sheet rumpled and crisp.

 We leave the bedroom, and soon we begin again the dance of meal-time,  placing food, dragging the kids from the lounge where they are watching a film with their little bodies tangled together in a tired heap. 

We pour champagne and murmur, two tired but happy couples,  as in the distance  gum-trees crackle, their sap too hot for the limbs to bear anymore.   Soon it will be dark and my little family will traipse back to the caravan, to play a tight round of chasey with the son, then to fall into bed in contented and bone-weary heaps…