Swept Away

Mark and the dance at El Arish

For a while I lived in Townsville, North Queensland and for a while I was a fan of bush music. A big folk dance was planned for the little town of El Arish, about 130 km (80 m) south of Cairns. I drove up from Townsville and had a great time learning dances like "Waves of Tory" and enjoying the music the bush band played.

Part way into the night I was pushed into the microphone of one of the performers - and the mike smacked into his guitar. I was horrified and said so. I apologised profusely and he tried to reassure me that everything was alright. That night I slept on the floor with lots of others in the Country Women's Association's hall. In the late afternoon of the next day I drove back to Townsville in my beat up old car.

About three-quarters of the way home I realised that I was being followed. It was a bit scary - I slowed down and so did they, I sped up and they did likewise. I'm the type of person who like to meet things head on so I pulled over to see what they would do. They pulled over, too.

Who should pop out of the car? - The guitarist from El Arish, of course. That was how I came to meet Mark, the man who I was to love the most of anyone in my life. He followed me, he said, because I had been so concerned about damaging his guitar and he hadn't met anyone like me.

He lived in Innisfail and I lived in Townsville but that didn't seem to stop the most amazing relationship I was ever to have. Perhaps because it burned so fierce it was destined to burn out long before it should have. I always thought that we didn't take the time to build a solid foundation - we built a tower to the sky but it was flimsy and destined to fail.

Mark - if you ever read this I want you to know: I love you and I hope my love lifts you up. Warwick is 21 now and you'd be amazed to see him, so different from the baby you knew. You are in our thoughts - love, S.

posted by Susan @ 10:59 pm 4 comments

The saga of the little white house

When I was born, in 1950, my family lived in a very nice house that was, what they called in Michigan, a 'Dutch colonial'. It had a kitchen with a breakfast nook, a formal dining room, a large living room with a fireplace, a sunroom, three bedrooms and bath upstairs and downstairs a basement with a big, scary furnace and a coal bin.

But when I was about eight, my father decided to build his own house and we moved into the bottom half of a rented house while my father worked on the new house. There was a carriage house at the back and myrtle just like at my greatgrandmother's house.

Eventually, the new house was ready. It was all brand-new in a modern style and I had my own bedroom. It was out on the western edge of town and there were all sorts of places a tomboy could have a treehouse, go for a walk or ride her bike.

But, for some reason, after a few years, my father decided to move back into the town. He bought a small white, two-bedroom bungalow. There was a lot of work to be done - steaming wallpaper, remodeling the kitchen, stripping the paint from the woodwork, removing years' worth of rubbish from the basement. Finally, it was ready. I must have been about thirteen.

It is in that white house that most of my family memories are held: the sound of card playing in the dining room when I was drifting off to sleep, making and decorating Christmas cookies with my mother, going out and getting the Christmas tree each year with my dad, eating the fish and game that my father brought home from field and stream, the amazing array of tools in the garage, sitting on the front porch on summer evenings, putting the extension in the dining room table for family meals like Thanksgiving.

And there I lived with my parents for a number of years. I was nineteen when I made the first of my many trips to Europe and it was to that white house that I always returned. In the attic and the back bedroom were stored all my treasures: Beatles pictures, hippy clothes, souvenirs, furniture and household goods.

I loved that little white house and I understood from my mother that it would be left to me.

My mother died in 1991 while I was in Australia. (Sadly, she never knew I was accepted into University.)

My father died in 1999 while I was there in Michigan looking after him. I returned to Australia and my stuff from the house was put in storage. (Well, most of it was.)

The family decided to have everything valued so that when items were apportioned to each of the children it would be fair to all. At that time, I had three sisters and one brother. I returned to Michigan in July 2001 to organise shipping what was in storage back to Australia. A lot of my things were gone.

My brother was one of two executors on the estate (my sister, JU, was the other). Acting on his own and without my sister's signature on the contract, he sold the little white house to my father's housekeeper who had known my dad for approximately five months. He didn't want to wait while I organised finance - he had taken my father's 50 acre piece of land and wanted to use it to get access to a block of land behind it to build a subdivision. He wanted the money and he wanted it without delay. Too bad if my memories were there.

Along with the memories and lots of stuff from the house and attic I've also lost out on lots of other things. When I was tiny, I used to go grocery shopping with my mother and the store we went to was called the A. & P. In the cupboard of the little white house was a tin of A&P's 'Ann Page' brand cinnamon. I'm sure the spice was useless but how dearly would have liked to have had that little tin of spice! My brother took my mother's high school yearbook which I had always kept (stupid me, he asked that everything like that belonging to the family be gathered together at his house - I should have known I'd never see it again). He and his wife took my mother's collection of recipes - including a little book of recipes for children that my mother gave to me. They've got all the family Christmas ornaments, too. Oh, one of the things left to me was my mother's gun but somehow when I returned to pack up my things to send to Australia the gun never materialised. And they had kept at their house a beautiful carved and painted wooden duck decoy of mine and that never materialised either.

Since my father died, my three sisters have all passed away. My brother is the only one left. And it was my brother who made sure I'd never be able to live again in the little white house.

posted by Susan @ 7:25 pm 0 comments

Red-lined on the Honesty Meter

Most everyone will tell you they are looking for honesty in relationships. That's until what I'm guessing qualifies as too much honesty catches them, momentarily, like a rabbit in the headlights. At which point they run, and run fast and hard.

You best not mention this or that or the other for fear of the dreaded sprint. Keep your feelings under tight rein, say only what's socially acceptable and never, never let down your guard.

Was I red-lined on the honesty meter? - only KD and TB can say.

posted by Susan @ 7:03 pm 0 comments

About Théo and the scent of lavender

Théo was a guitarist from New Caledonia who developed cancer in his left arm. Doctors in Noumea told him that the only hope for a cure was to amputate the arm - a difficult decision for a musician. But he reluctantly agreed in the hope of a cure.

Unfortunately, the disease progressed and Théo was flown to Australia. I met Théo in a Sydney hospital when I was in training as a radiation therapist. I was on Théo's treatment team.

The cancer had eaten all the flesh on Théo's left chest - right down to the ribs. What was left of his flesh glistened and oozed - it was difficult to mark out the treatment area. Things got so bad that Théo had to be tied to the treatment table. His pupils danced and jittered in his eye sockets from the pain. The two French interpreters who accompanied him were of no use - they stood in the hallway chatting instead of helping us understand how best Théo could be helped. I didn't speak any French but I knew he wanted to go home to New Caledonia to be with his family, especially his daughter.

One day I picked some lavender and brought it to the hospital for Théo. I held it to his nose and I will never forget the way he said "lavande" and tried to smile.

Soon after the oncologist finally admitted defeat and Théo was allowed to return home.

Three days later he died.

posted by Susan @ 1:44 pm 0 comments

Houses 'swept away'

It would seem that a lot of houses I lived in just don't exist anymore. Take my grandmothers house(s): the house she lived in with my beloved Welsh greatgrandmother happened to be on "the wrong side of town" so everyone in the family encouraged her to sell it. She did. And the new owners proceeded to tear it down in order to build a barbershop. No going back to visit my greatgrandmother's neat as a pin room with it's dove gray walls and white woodwork. And there was myrtle in the window boxes and a glass bowl filled with pheasant feathers and oak leaves - all gone.

My grandmother bought another house, this time on the "right" side of town but, alas, on a terribly busy street. When she died the property was sold and consolidated with the plot next door - this time a gas station was built in its place. No going back there, either!

For awhile I lived with RA on Stanley Street in Townsville, NQ. The house was a beautiful, old Queenslander with balconies all around and the most gorgeous set of steps out front. It faced on the "the cutting" and there were hardly any neighbours. It was such a nice house and such a nice block of land - the house was sold and moved to a large parcel of land south of Townsville and on the spot where it stood, where we had so many dinner parties on the balcony, a number of apartments were built.

My son and I lived for a number of years in Sydney's Italian neighbourhood, Leichhardt. Originally a neighbourhood of close, extended families and fabulous gardens, it became a trendy DINK watering hole with bars, clubs, theatres - and lots of tiny townhouses and units all crammed together with nary a garden in sight. We lived in a very old terrace house on a big block of land - the perfect block of land to squeeze lots more apartments on. So we moved on and that comfy old place is gone.

We were moved on and on and found a little Victorian cottage in Rosehill in Sydney's West. Besides a carriagehouse and stables for two horses was a perfect three-bedroom Victorian cottage. The roof was made of slate with Victorian curlicues and there were plaster-trimmed archways with cherubs, stained glass and two porches. There were roses, French lavender, camellias and a peach and a loquat tree. We had a herb garden and a garden with sweet corn and strawberries. Our Lebanese neighbours gave us a grape cutting and it reached the top of the stables. Maybe due to the busy road out front, the rent was very reasonable. After three years, it happened again. The entire block of ten houses was bought up so that apartments could be built. Again, it was time to go.

But the house that I mourn the most still stands, it's only been swept away in a figurative sense. It's in Michigan and it's the little white house I always thought I'd wind up in. I think it deserves its own post so I'll write more at another time.

posted by Susan @ 7:09 pm 0 comments

for Keith - a song by Sonia Dada

Newspapers lying by the door
and I don’t miss you anymore.
I took the elevator down from the thirteenth floor,
and you ain’t thinking about me.

I read the paper, I played my old Strat,
I spent eighteen dollars at the local laundromat
and the north-bound train ran over my very best hat
and you ain’t thinking about me.

The sky is heavy and the road is wet,
it glistens in the night like a lit cigarette.
I got a dollar in my pocket and how much you wanna bet
that you ain’t thinking about me, anymore.

There’s good times and bad times and something in between
and for awhile you were the best thing that I’d ever seen.
And then one day, don’t know why, you up and turned mean
and you ain’t thinking about me.

I wish I had a headache, I wish I had the flu
or somebody or something else or something else to do,
because the last thing I want is to be thinking about you
when you ain’t thinking about me, no you ain’t thinking about me,
anymore.

You Ain’t Thinking (About Me)
by D. Pritzker of Sonia Dada (© 1999 Calliope Music LP)
Hear this and other Sonia Dada soundclips at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000068Q1H/002-4832778-1004836?tag=itsquick12-20&tagid=itsquick12-20&v=glance&s=music&vi=samples .

posted by Susan @ 1:03 pm 0 comments

Not a pretty sight but one we needed to see

I'm a news junkie. I can't help it - it started with 9/11 and then Afghanistan, Iraq, Bali bombings - I'd check the news on-line numerous times a day and at a number of sites.

When I first heard of the tsunami disaster the death toll was estimated to be 400. Four hundred - if only it were so.

On the second of January I went to Time Asia via the CNN International site. There was a link to a site with high-quality images of the effect of the tsunami on Phuket (http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami). I had a look and read some of the inane comments that some misfits had written. I left the site and returned later in the day. Halfway down the page was a new photo. At the top of the photo was the remains of a building which housed a number of destroyed shops. I scrolled down. There on the beach and in the water was a vast amount of debris - lots of broken pieces of timber, plastic dishpans - all sorts of matter tangled together. And mixed up in it were at least seventy to eighty human corpses: big, little, brown, clothed and unclothed, some bloated and floating face down, some with just a limb protruding. The true horror began to sink in. And with it the realisation that we are being fed a sanitised version of the events - I guess 'they' think we can't (or don't want) to experience it.

Not long afterwards that image disappeared. I'm sure it was a hack, but a hack by someone with a damned good camera and a strong stomach. I wish I had a copy of the photo, sick as that may seem, 'cuz everytime I'd start feeling sorry for myself I'd have a little reality check to view.

posted by Susan @ 8:25 pm 0 comments