The Office Secret November 30, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: children, Choices, Family, marriage, office, Relationships
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Writing prompt: compulsion, executive, obtain, wistful, cathartic, naive.
She was a small, delicate woman, who moved about the office with a sense of compulsion. Quick and efficient, yet poised and effortless with it, the younger women could not fathom her at all. She had an almost ethereal beauty, gliding through her purposes with an economy and grace of movement beyond their comprehension or capability.
Marlené had worked for many years as the executive assistant to David Grant, company chief and noted philanthropist. The office girls liked to call her Mar-leen, in their common, dishonouring manner, but Marlené herself would always correct them with dignity, engaging their eyes with her own steady, knowing blue ones, and say with a firm, well-modulated tone and an eloquent smile, “Mah-lane-uh.” She had learned, at the hands of a previous generation of office girls, to pronounce ‘lane’ rather than ‘lay’ as the middle syllable of her name.
Those rumours persisted, of course. David Grant was known to be single, and early gossip questioning his sexual orientation had long been dispelled throughout the company. The preferred suspicion was that elegant, gamine Marlené was his chatelaine.
There was no hint of any such impropriety from either Mr Grant or Marlené within the office. They both conducted themselves with the ultimate in professional courtesy. He called her Marlené of course, but she only ever referred to him as Mr Grant, meeting his deadlines, arranging his itinerary and keeping his diary with fastidious correctness.
There was little hint when Marlené became ill. She still wore her impeccable, stylish yet feminine business suits, yet she seemed to shrink within them. The soft glow of her cheeks became more obviously artificial, and her eyes dulled though somehow became keener still, as if she longed to not miss a thing.
Mr Grant, who had never been unkind to Marlené ever, had sometimes been sharp or urgent in his directives to her in the course of the business day. It became obvious, however, that he began to still himself and speak with the utmost kindness and respect with every interaction he had with her. Instead of buzzing through and asking if documentation had arrived, he would leave his desk to seek Marlené out in person to obtain the information.
Nobody needed to ask if Marlené was sick, because it was very obvious that she was. Sometimes the girls from the main office would take paperwork or messages through to the executive suite, and find Marlené just staring off into space with a wistful expression. They all reported that she seemed serene and otherwise efficient, but all fretted and mused about what could possibly be wrong with her.
Marlené had never been a smoker, so it wasn’t likely that it was lung cancer. Perhaps it was a different form of cancer – but then, there was no evidence of her having any kind of treatment. Some pondered that perhaps she had developed food allergies, while others suggested a heart condition or a liver disease. Nobody ever asked, though, because Marlené did not invite questions of herself. She engaged with all the staff in a professionally interested way, but that was always about executive care of staff and no reciprocation was required or received.
It was a rare morning when Marlené did not arrive in the office. Nobody could recall a day when she was not ensconced, with the executive coffee pot already percolating, when everyone else arrived to populate the office for the day. That she was not at her desk at 8:29am on a Monday morning was most unsettling.
At 8:40am, the pay mistress phoned Marlené’s home number from her file.
At 8:47am, she phoned Marlené’s mobile phone.
At 8:53am, she phoned David Grant’s mobile phone. He was en route to a business meeting in Hong Kong, so all she could do was leave a message.
At 10:14am, the front desk receptionist received a phone call from an unnamed male, advising that Marlené Cossington would not be at work for the rest of the week.
It was very distressing. There were so many little things around the place that Marlené just took care of, or reminded others to take care of.
The office didn’t seem to run as smoothly. People were fretful.
At 4:23pm, David Grant phoned from Hong Kong to say that he would be back in the office on Wednesday afternoon instead of the following Monday.
Beyond that, there was no information. Oddly, there was little discussion, either. Nobody liked it that Marlené wasn’t around. She was the glue that held the place together; the grease that kept the machinery running efficiently, so to speak.
When Mr Grant stepped out of the office at 3:57pm on Wednesday afternoon, his greying hair was as impeccable as always, his suit was sharp and his demeanour full of his usual authority. It was only the last point that caused concerned eyes to snap to attention and wonder what was going on. His current confidence was such a contrast as to highlight that for the last few months, his deportment had held an uncharacteristic sag.
“I will speak to all staff in the conference room in half an hour,” Mr Grant advised the wide-eyed receptionist. As soon as he strode through the door into the executive wing of the floor, she was on the phone trying to figure out how they would fit so many people into the room all at once.
When he walked into the conference room at 4:28pm, the room was indeed jam-packed. The most junior staff were sitting on the floor right before the podium like kindergarteners. The next rows of the most senior staff in age were on chairs, then some sat on the edges of the tables that lined the back walls, and the young, fit men lined the back wall, standing on the tables.
Mr Grant took in the scene before him. “Thank you all,” he said, and they relaxed at the warmth in his tone. “As you are aware, my trusted assistant, Marlené, has not been at work this week. She has, in fact, been in hospital.”
A gasp arose from the assembled 71 staff.
He held up his hand. “She is well cared for, in good hands, and will return to her usual vigour swiftly now.” Suddenly though, Mr Grant sagged. “She is my wife,” he said. “I will tell you our story.”
It was as if the entire assemblage held its breath.
“Marlené is not sick, as such, she is pregnant.”
Questions were voiced, and Mr Grant did no shy away from answering them.
Initially, difference in their ages (nineteen years) and Marlené’s non-Catholic religion barred their union. Out of respect for his mother, they avoided relationship completely for a number of years. Mr Grant explained that although Marlené had been naïve, she had always been highly principled. They simply worked together cordially, then parted company at the end of the day.
It was during a rail strike and a torrential downpour that Marlené accepted his offer of a ride home. He took her out for dinner on the way, they talked, laughed, and at last admitted the depth of the attraction between them. For three years they conducted an unconsummated courtship, only ever outside working hours, until on a weekend drive in the country, he proposed.
Marlené explained that she knew she would never be able to have children, due to an untreatable medical condition. Mr Grant’s mother, a true aristocratic matriarch, would not accept a daughter-in-law who was not ‘of the faith’. For some time, the situation appeared completely untenable.
Then, over dinner one evening, Marlené offered a solution. ‘I enjoy my independence, as you do,’ she explained. ‘We are legally able to marry. We could do so, and spend the time together that we do now, but with …’ As Mr Grant explained it, her words trailed off, and everyone understood. Thus, their wedding took place and remained a secret to all, save themselves (who never forgot) and the officials (who performed their ceremony then moved on to the next pair, rapidly forgetting all the names along the way).
They had been married for seventeen years already, Mr Grant still officially living in his family’s generational mansion with his mother, and Marlené still in her tiny cottage in a very different part of town. Somehow the arrangement worked.
Neither of them expected to be parents. That was a miracle. It was a huge shock, and it was the shock more than morning sickness that had made Marlené seem so gaunt and frail, especially at first. Then, Mr Grant had begun to insist that this eventuality was just the cathartic jolt they needed to tell his mother about their marriage and their expected baby. They had fought about it again just before his departure for Hong Kong.
“She stopped to speak with a neighbour on her way to the train station on Monday morning,” Mr Grant explained to the office. “She fainted, the ambulance came, and she has been hospitalised since. It was a male nurse who called in to advise of her absence from work.”
Mr Grant seemed much relieved to have told his staff the truth about himself and Marlené, and was flooded with congratulations regarding both his marriage and impending fatherhood. He squared his shoulders again as he entered the lift, ready to face his mother.
Nobody ever knew how that meeting went. Mrs Grant senior died within a week of the news, and in due time Marlené became an elegant mother who appeared in society pages. She did not return to work as her husband’s assistant, but her young male replacement found that despite their diminutive size, hers were indeed very large shoes to fill.
The staff noted the extra jauntiness in Mr Grant’s step thereafter, and if Marlené did visit the office with little Jonathan, he was openly affectionate with them both, in his dignified way.
They all wondered why they’d never guessed. How such love had escaped their prying eyes for so many years. The wiser ones amongst them concluded that it was because they had no right to know. The older, more prideful ones assumed a retrospective knowledge, and the younger, romantic ones all dreamed of one day finding a love like that.
For David, Marlené and little Jonathan Grant, however, they just smiled at each other and enjoyed the next phase of their lives, being together openly and living properly together in their new mid-sized suburban home.
Insurrection November 25, 2009
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Writing prompt: London 1821 … ‘A most heinous crime…’
The morning I remember most from my childhood was absolutely glorious. Healing, in fact. My parents’ fight the night before had been their worst ever that I could recall.
I spent a lot of that beautiful morning out on the sand dunes, feeling the wind whipping through my hair and watching the dark people down by the shoreline. I never spoke with them, although given my childish curiosity, it is a wonder.
“They’re not civilised,” my mother told me. It made me wonder if being ‘civilised’ was a good thing. These people seemed to laugh together and work together in a way I didn’t see often in my own home.
My father was always saying, “Don’t tell your mother,” about things we did together, and my mother was always saying, “Don’t tell your father,” about cheques she had to write or letters I had to post for her. I often sat and watched the darkies, and wondered if there was a lot of ‘don’t telling’ going on between them. I certainly never saw any of the yelling and screaming down there that went on between my parents. I wondered what, really, people did to be considered ‘civilised.’
My grandmother in particular was most insistent on things being ‘civilised’. She used to give me lectures about growing up and choosing a husband from ‘good stock’. “None of that riff-raff!” she used to insist. I remember making her very cranky indeed, asking if we came from ‘good stock’. I’m not sure she ever gave me a direct answer to that.
I remember looking up ‘civilise’ in the dictionary when I was at school. It meant: to bring out of a savage, uneducated, or rude state; make civil; elevate in social and private life; enlighten; refine. The darkies didn’t look savage to me, and although they didn’t go to school, they knew a lot about fishing and about conducting their own lives. I had to concede, though, that they held no social standing, and nobody I knew would have considered them enlightened or refined. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that seeing as they’d been here a lot longer than us, that they could help us learn how this land works, rather than trying to make it ‘just like Mother England’ all the time. Even as a child, I knew that the end of Malabar backing onto La Peruse was a far cry from whatever the seemingly ubiquitous Mother England was.
I must have been about nine, the morning I remember so clearly, coming in from my free time on the dunes with my feet all covered sand and clumps of it through the pockets of my sundress and in my hair. Mum, livid, hosed me down, naked in the back yard that day. Maybe that’s why I remember it so clearly. Or maybe it was because it was the last time we saw my Grandmother.
Mum was so angry with me because I’d been in my best dress when I went wandering on the dunes, and she aimed to catch the next bus over to visit her mother. Great Grandma was to be there for afternoon tea too, so we all had to be freshly pressed and neatly dressed. Except Dad of course – he never came to Grandma’s house with us – he usually went to the pub instead, and yelled a lot once we got home.
I was hastily dried off and reclothed in my shaken-out dress and best sandals, and my wet hair was scraped back into two tight braids down my back. Somehow we caught the bus, but Mum was tight-lipped and tense all the way, and wouldn’t put up with any nonsense from my wiggly younger brothers. They had to sit on their bottoms for the entire trip, rather than being up on their knees looking out the window like they usually did.
Grandma’s house was big and made of large stone blocks. It was beautifully cool in summer, and large open fires kept it friendly and warm in winter. The grounds were large and the gardens beautifully kept, and although I don’t ever remember it being mentioned, I’m sure she must have had a gardener, just as she had a cook and a maid. There were extraordinary views out over Sydney Harbour from her house, too, although I never paid much attention to them as a child – they were just there, and taken just as for granted as was everything else about my life.
George and Frank and I were outside on the verandah, drinking lemonade and eating every last morsel from the tray of delicacies that the maid bought out to us, when the voices inside became raised.
“We live there because it’s all we can afford!” Mum asserted, and I gathered, not for the first time.
“Well, if you’d married Grainger Cartright instead of that riff-raff!” my great-grandmother sniffed indignantly.
The boys left their seats and ran off to play in the garden as Grandma sniffed loudly about the humiliation of her only daughter being married to a grave-digger, but I crept closer to the open French doors and strained my ears to hear every little thing. I’d never known before that my dad was considered ‘riff-raff!’
“Your grandparents were convicts, for goodness sake!” my mother was saying, and I snapped myself out of momentary consternation about my riff-raff paternity to pay closer heed again. That’s what the answer to her secretly sent letter said.
Mum must have been addressing Great Grandma, because it was she who cried out, “They were not!” in utter outrage.
“I did some checking,” my mother said in a voice that was even and definite, not full of the hurt and despair that usually accompanied such arguments in this house. “Your grandfather came out on a convict ship called the Shipley. It left London in 1821.” She considered that information to be money well spent, but Dad was furious – hence all the previous night’s yelling.
“He was crew on that ship!” Great Grandma retorted, as if anything else was completely out of the question.
“I checked that too,” my mother advised. “His crime was insurrection.”
I had no idea what insurrection was, but by the fury provoked in my grandmother and great grandmother, I knew it was considered a most heinous crime indeed.
Not long after that, my mother came to the door and called out into the garden for us to come quickly as we had to leave. Either she didn’t see me, crouching at the doorway, or she chose to ignore me. The boys and I met her at the front door pretty quickly – she’d used a tone we all knew wasn’t worth messing with.
We had to wait ages for the bus to take us home again, and almost nothing was said for the entire journey. We only got seats for the last few stops, and Mum didn’t even tell George off when he climbed up onto a seat in order to pull the cord so the bus would stop at our stop.
Dad wasn’t even drunk when we arrived home. Instead, he greeted us at the front door, and just touched the tops of the boys’ heads and my shoulder as we walked past him, but keeping his eyes locked on Mum’s face. I could feel instantly that the intensity in him was entirely different in nature to anything I knew.
“It didn’t go well, hey love?” he said gently. Dad had never spoken ‘gently’ to Mum in all my living memory.
I turned in the front hallway and saw Mum shake her head. I saw the tears in her eyes too, as she let Dad draw her into his arms. It was a new tenderness between them, and it made the boys and me look at each other in almost horror – we had no idea what it meant, or whether it was good or bad.
“Pop the kettle on, will you love?” Dad said to me over his shoulder. He led mum through to the kitchen and sat her down at the table, and all three of us kids gathered around too – we’d never seen either of them like this.
“I just thought that knowing that you came from good stock, but we came from convict stock way back when … that it might help them … accept you!” Mum wailed as I made a big pot of tea and set out cups for all of us. Frank and George and I weren’t usually allowed to drink tea, but I made ours very milky that evening, and neither of our parents stopped us. It felt like a real communion – a real bonding time – as I remember it.
Dad shook his head sadly. “It’s time to accept it, Esther,” he told Mum firmly. “You can’t be working class, and I can’t be upper class. I married up, and you married down. It’s just a fact of life, love. If we really believe that we’re right together, then we’ve got to make our own class.”
I still remember Mum’s face, tear-stained and lipstick-smeared as it was from being buried in Dad’s shirt, as she looked Dad in the eyes, strong and steady. “I married you because I loved you, Sam. We’ve been through some awful trials, mostly at our own hands, but you’re still the same man underneath it all, and I still love you.”
Dad didn’t miss a beat. “I still love you too, Essie,” he said, his voice all choked and husky, which I’d never seen in my life before.
“Dad,” asked George, bold as brass, “are you riff-raff?”
Frank and I instinctively cringed, and Dad noticed it as he turned to answer, dismay sweeping his face. Maybe he’d never realised before that we were often terrified of his drunken rages.
Mum was already decrying George’s words, but Dad held up his hand to make her stop. He answered George calmly, explaining why Grandma thought he wasn’t good enough for Mum, and promising he would never let her opinion of him affect how he treated us ever again.
I’m not sure I believed him at the time, but soon afterwards he got a job on the railways, and we moved out to a little siding called Minnamooka. The boys and I did School of the Air, and Dad and Mum danced around the kitchen after dinner at night, and taught us how to waltz and sing at the tops of our lungs.
I never once heard, “Don’t tell,” from either of my parents again. Never again did Dad and I go to steal fruit off our neighbours’ trees, or wood from their woodpiles. I never had to keep the writing of a cheque or the posting of a letter secret ever again, either.
It became my own opinion that Mum invested very wisely in obtaining that scurrilous information about her ancestor. Only when Grandma died though, leaving all of her estate to a charity, did we venture back to the city or to her house.
Dad drove us all in the family car, and together we walked all over the estate when it was opened for public inspection, prior to auction. Back in the car and driving to our lodgings for the night, Dad reached across the wide bench seat of the old car and pinched Mum’s knee, making her jump, then giggle. “What’s got you, love?”
Mum had been looking smug. “Oh, I was just thinking about Great-great-great-great Grandpa Smith,” she said. “Perhaps a few of those insurrection genes passed down through the line to me!” She didn’t sound in the least bit dismayed about it, either.
The boys and I were mostly all past our teens by then, and within the next two years we’d all be married. I piped up from in between my brothers in the back seat. “I heard you tell Grandma that’s was the crime he was transported for,” I admitted. “I thought insurrection must be just the most heinous crime imaginable.”
Dad laughed. “Oh, apparently not,” he chortled. “Wouldn’t trade it for mindless compliance in our life, not for all the money that estate back there will haul in at auction! That charity can keep the lot of it.”
Mum smiled sideways at him. “So, God bless the departure of the good ship Shipley from London in 1821 with Edwin Horatio Smith on board.”
He chuckled again. “And may the crime of insurrection always be alive and well in our family’s genes.”
“Along with hard work and decency,” Mum amended, ever the moderator of all things appropriate in the family. “And only ever for a good cause, of course!”
I just remember that as we drove through the city traffic, we were all smiling broadly, happy with how things had turned out after all.
The boys don’t remember a thing from the house at Malabar, but for me, I’ve only got to close my eyes and it’s all right there. That one day that I remember so well, to my mind, was the day we became civilised. We might never have been civilised enough for Grandma, but in fact, we did just fine.
Resources
- Convict Ships to NSW 1801-1849 http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/shipNSW2.html
Rednecks November 20, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Boys, Family, Girls, Rodeos
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Writing prompt (came late in the week from one of my sisters, so I just got to it when I could): Choose one of the following and go for it: Can you imagine all those red necks? / Who’s the un-named 4th here, I wonder? / Too easy to gloss over.
“I don’t want to go-o-o-o-o!” the little girl wailed tearfully, as her mother dragged her through the supermarket car park. Every single thing about the child was reluctant, and except for the unmistakable likeness between them, I’d have wondered if the woman was abducting the child.
The back of my car was groaning with groceries, and I lifted the last laden carry-bag out of the trolley and stowed it safely, just as they neared where I was parked.
“I don’t want to g-o-o-o-o-o!” the little girl wailed again, tugging uselessly on her mother’s hand, trying to break free.
By the time I’d stowed my trolley in the return rack and was almost back to my car, a full-scale tantrum was in place, right behind my vehicle. The mother, looking more harried and frazzled by the minute, was trying to lift the child into her arms, but there clearly wasn’t a co-operative bone in the girl’s body, and she was alternating between vigorous kicks of objection and limp, slippery resistance.
“Goodness me!” I exclaimed heartily as I drew near, aiming my tone somewhere between intrusive for the little girl and sympathetic for the poor mother. “What’s going on here? Don’t want to go visit Granny, perhaps?” I suggested to the mother.
When my eyes had first been drawn to the tantrum, the mother had looked young and pretty, in slender jeans and a patterned tank top, with her blonded hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Now, strands of hair clotted against her sweat-damp skin, and her carefully applied make-up looked like it was melting in the sun.
“Oh, is this your car?” the young woman apologised, seeing my car keys in my hand. “Come on Becky honey, we have to get out of the lady’s way.” Her tone was weary and defeated, poor thing.
Becky was clearly paying attention to my presence, but she was still making one heck of a racket. I aimed my next words at her.
“Becky, does Mummy even know what the problem is here?” I enquired, using my best former school-marm tone of authority – the one that’s designed to communicate: stop this nonsense and talk to me properly, young lady!
Mummy answered for Becky. “We’re going to the rodeo,” she sighed. “Becky was fine with it until the bloke in the supermarket called them a bunch of rednecks and told her they were cruel to animals. Now she doesn’t want to go.”
“Obviously!” I said, somewhat drily. “Becky, I need you to stop this performance and listen to me,” I said sharply, hoping what I wanted to do was okay with her mother. Mum didn’t object, so I could only assume that it was.
Becky sat around with her legs crossed, after a moment or two, and looked up at me, like a sullen child in a kindergarten class. My guess was that she was a bit older than that, but she clearly recognised the tone of voice.
I opened the tailgate of my station wagon, and patted it, for Becky to sit up on it, closer to eye level, just so that I wasn’t too imposing. Her mum helped her up, and continued to hold her hand while I formulated my words. I ferreted around in box and found some apples, gave one a rub on my shirtfront, and offered it to her. She munched into it happily enough.
“Do you know,” I began, “I’m going out to the rodeo myself!”
“You are?” Becky looked me up and down dubiously. I don’t suppose I fitted the image of the average person attending a rodeo: ironed, good quality slacks, teamed with a light knitted cotton top, with pearls at my neck and good quality leather boots on my feet.
“Yes,” I replied firmly. “My son rides in rodeos, and this is his home show.” I glanced up at the mother. “I help run one of the food stalls out there, just when he’s in town.”
“Oh, Becky’s dad used to ride!” her mother said, a little sadly, I thought.
“But he’s dead,” Becky said flatly, more as a statement of fact than an emotional recollection of truth.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I aimed at the mother, hoping I hadn’t brought up anything awkward.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “It wasn’t anything to do with rodeos. He got in a fight in a pub and got hit the wrong way. It was back when I was pregnant with Becky, so she doesn’t even remember him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, gently this time, and direct to the young woman who suddenly appeared so vulnerable.
To ease the awkwardness of the moment, I turned my attention back to Becky. “Do you know, Becky, that my son tells me that some horses just love to kick? Some horses are really wonderful at jumping, and others are incredible runners, but others are truly just amazing at bucking, and those are the horses that are chosen to be used at rodeos. And when they’re not in the arena, they’re really treated very well indeed. These days there are all sorts of regulations about how animals have to be treated, and they have inspectors who come to every rodeo, just to make sure that the animals are being treated properly.”
Becky was clearly disbelieving, but she chewed on her apple and nodded sagely. “But why do all the men have red necks?” she asked, as if that was the really troublesome question.
Despite myself, I laughed. “Probably because they’re all silly and butch and don’t like to put sunscreen on at all, let alone on their necks!” I exclaimed, thinking of my own tough-nut son and all the lectures I’d given him about sunscreen over the years.
“So is your son a redneck?” Becky wanted to know. I could tell by the change in her tone, and the cessation of her sniffing, that she was wondering about changing her mind about aborting their plans for the day.
Her mum seemed to seize on the idea, and laughed aloud. “Oh Becky! Can you imagine all those red necks? And all because they’re too butch to wear sunscreen!”
Becky eyed her suspiciously, then turned back to me, waiting for the answer to her question.
I was laughing, too. “When Adam forgets his sunscreen, yes!” I told her. “But he’s not a real redneck. He was educated at a private school and played piano and sang in a boys choir until he was a teenager. Then he learned to ride horses and did proper dressage, and at one stage we even thought he’d go to the Olympics.”
On the other side of my car’s tailgate, Becky’s mum gave a disbelieving little chortle. “So how did he get from gymkhanas to riding at rodeos?”
With a shrug and a resigned smile I told her, “We sent him off to my brother-in-law’s property one summer to get a taste of country life, and he helped them break in a bunch of new horses. He did jackerooing for years when he left high school, and somehow ended up riding in rodeos. Not what his father and I would have chosen for him, but he’s very happy, so what more can we ask?”
We chatted a little longer, and finally I realised that I’d be very late helping get everything ready if I didn’t get a move on. Becky seemed happy to attend the rodeo again, and I told her mother where to find our stall if she wanted some healthy food for them during the day.
They did come to visit me to buy some lunch, and Becky seemed to be having a whale of a time. I saw my large, sweaty son soon after that, too – his neck predictably red.
“Do me a favour,” I said, pushing him away from his sweat-sticky bear hug and looking up into his laughing blue eyes. “See that young blonde woman over there with the little girl?”
His eyes followed the direction I pointed in. “Whew! Too right!” he breathed. It hadn’t occurred to me before that jBecky’s mum would be considered pretty hot stuff by the likes of my son.
“Go over and tell them you’re my son,” I suggested, staying focused on my own intentions, “and show your bright red neck to the little girl. Her name’s Becky.”
He didn’t waste any time complying, and I continued to serve hungry, thirsty customers while I kept an eye on my son and his introductions just a little way away. He pointed in my direction soon after his arrival at the table where Becky and her mum were sitting, so I waved when they looked, but then they all seemed so enthralled with each other for the next hour after that, that I doubt they remembered I was there.
When I saw Adam stand to leave, at the call over the tannoy for the next round of riders, Becky’s mum stood too, hastily scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to my son. Then he bowed with comical panache and proffered his hand to take Becky’s which he promptly turned and kissed. It was that gesture that reminded me, he’d always said he’d have a ready-made family, or none at all.
I felt quietly pleased with how the day had unfolded, I have to say. Having a ‘redneck’ for a son might not turn out to be the void-of-grandchildren wasteland I’d long feared, after all.
Endurance November 16, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Boys, conferences, Family, Girls, Relationships
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I was a bit stumped for a writing prompt this week – the one in my book didn’t inspire me, and both my sisters seem to have lost a little enthusiasm of late, with no prompts forthcoming from them.
My solution was to log onto Facebook and ask my friends for suggestions. Shari, Lindy, Heather and Isaac, God bless them, came up with the following for me to see what I could do with: Ocean, Grass, Floriade, Swings and Picnic? lol; Endless expanses of wonder… ; What is the exercise?; Toyota?; A frog; Me? (Isaac); Douglas Adams
HELP!!!
I woke up with a stiff back to the sound of a kookaburra laughing it’s head off out there in the bush somewhere. Clearly not very far away. Certainly not far enough, as far as I was concerned. But that’d be right – even a bird that didn’t know me or care about me was having a shot at my misery.
Oh Lord! I wonder why the bunk beds in these wretched conference facilities are designed to make you grateful you’re not a prisoner of war somewhere. Between the snoring of my room mates, the thin-ness of the blankets and the unyielding stiffness of the mattress, I momentarily wondered if the Geneva Convention should be informed. Did they still exist? Ah, they wouldn’t care anyway. No more than that wretched kookaburra did.
Breakfast, predictably, was stodgy. Porridge with golden syrup or brown sugar and full cream milk, greasy eggs and bacon, and only butter available for the toast. Ugh.
I should have been more thankful for it, I suppose, given that our early-morning team-building exercise was a five kilometre bushwalk over a horrible track. I couldn’t help thinking ‘Kokoda,’ even though I know that would have to be worse – that track kills people, and no matter how out of sorts I was, I did know that the happy little jaunt I was forced to go on just after first light this morning wasn’t going to do that. I’m just not much on all this heartiness. Hearty food, hearty exercises, hearty lectures … Lord, what I wouldn’t give to be back at my desk just getting on with my job, sipping on a skinny latte from the coffee shop downstairs and looking out the window over the ocean at Bondi to stop me feeling stressed if I needed it.
“Doesn’t this place just make all your muscles go ‘Ahhh?’” sighed dreamy Delana from Accounts.
Isaac from Purchasing looked at her cynically. “More like ‘Aaarrrggghhhh!’” he grunted with dramatic wide eyes and a comically tortured facial expression.
That was this morning, and since then we’ve endured a lot.
First up was a session about the future of the company (it has one), followed by a stodgy morning tea of overly-strong tea or bitter instant coffee, accompanied by endless fat-laden sugary cakes and sweets. The only fruit they had was either not ripe yet, or blemished and bruised beyond redemption. Yuck. After that was another session, teaching us all how to be sweet and smile at each other while we castigate each other for our inefficiencies. Oh, that’s right, we’re supposed to ‘encourage higher quality efficiency’ from one another. Uh-huh.
Lunch was an array of sandwiches, thankfully on fresh bread, but with fillings such as ham sliced with all the fat left on it, or eggs curried with too much mayonnaise and cheap curry powder. By then I was beginning to think I really would die. But then, I do every year at these wretched things. Annoyingly, I survive. Or at least I have so far.
For free time after lunch, I ran away from everybody I knew – not literally, though. That would have hurt after all the physical torture they’ve put us through since we arrived last night. Across the grass and through the trees I went, and down to a really pretty fallen tree by the little creek that I’d spied on our morning walk. I got myself set up there with my book, a freshly opened bottled water, and a nice crisp apple that I’d had the foresight to bring with me.
That part of the time, at least, was refreshing. There was even a frog or a cricket or something nearby, and it seemed to have the knack of croaking just when I got to some interesting part of the story. Douglas Adams books always make me laugh anyway, but I nearly fell off my perch (the log I was sitting on) when, just after I’d read Slartibartfast’s words, ‘Doing the coastlines was always my favourite. Used to have endless fun doing all the fiddly bits and fjords,’ my companion-frog croaked loudly. It made me laugh out loud, because it made me re-read what I’d just read a moment earlier, and wonder if that’s how God felt when he created the Earth. It was like God himself had said “Amen” to Slarti’s words. I wondered if God was ever astounded at all the endless expanses of wonder that He created. Did He ever sit back and go, “Yay Me! Hey angels, come and check this out!” I wonder.
Annoyingly, I heard somebody calling my name. Glancing at my watch, it was obvious that I’d already missed the predictably indigestible afternoon tea, and my lack of presence at the afternoon’s boring session had been noticed. I showed myself to Delana, waving so she’d know I was on my way, and just as I was heading back up towards the grassy area, a message beeped on my phone. I read it while I walked.
Mum. J & I kids taking 2 Floriade 2moz. Cum down after conf so we can c yr fancy new Toyota. Kids want swings & picnic 4 tea: meet lakeside 6pm. P, T, K & N cumn 2.
I was always amazed that my spelling-fanatic mother could bear to use text-talk. I knew she was economising so that everything she wanted to say would fit into just one message, but I was still stunned.
But! Mum and my sister Janelle were planning to take Janelle and Pete’s kids to Floriade tomorrow (that’s Canberra’s annual bulb show), then have a picnic by the swings at the lake for dinner. Their friends Ken and Nell were coming too, as was Pete’s mate Tom!
Suddenly, my world was a happier place! Perhaps I wouldn’t die after all.
Time with my nieces and nephews is always fun, but Tom, who’d been partnered with me at Pete and Janelle’s wedding about a decade ago, was coming to yet another family do! I was only fifteen when Janelle got married, but it had been obvious to everyone that I’d had a huge crush on Tom, who was finished uni and working in IT or something. Tom and I had managed to avoid each other completely from the wedding until a few months ago – and the avoidance was mutual, because I’d nearly died of embarrassment when I realised that everyone knew about my crush including the victim of it. Since last Christmas though, Tom and I had bumped into each other every time I visited my family in Canberra. And he doesn’t seem even the least bit inclined to run away any more.
Wanting to see the new car indeed! Huh! I quickly texted Mum, saying that I’d try to make it (knowing very well that I wouldn’t miss it for anything!), and hurried into the conference session.
“Okay, so what’s the exercise?” I hissed, sliding into a seat beside Meriden and taking in the scene before me. A dozen staff members were crawling over the floor, retrieving coloured lengths of metal. It certainly looked odd to me!
“It’s a team-building exercise,” Meriden whispered back. “I think the bosses are trying to figure out who’s a leader and who’s a follower. They actually have to figure out how to build a pyramid out of all that lot.”
I groaned. Didn’t we do this every year? Same ruse, different exercise? Oh well, with the joy now set before me, I figured I could endure this round of torture after all.
The MiNiBaBug November 9, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Ancestors, baking, Boys, children, Exercises, Family, Girls, Growing Up, houses, Memories, people
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Writing prompt: “This is what I do at 2:30 in the morning when I can’t sleep.”
Our house is an odd shape, I suppose, but it never occurred to me before that it was quite like the house I grew up in. The place that Greg and I bought as newlyweds is an inner city house on a long, narrow block, whereas the place I lived in growing up was a massive block of land on the outskirts of a country town.
Our place is typical of worker’s cottages of the era, and typical of the renovations that were done a few years ago. You walk in the front door, past a bedroom on either side of the long hallway, then past another bedroom on one side, and a bathroom on the other, behind which is the ensuite for the master bedroom. The third bedroom was probably the lounge room when the place was first built. Then you walk into a big lounge room that’s the full width of the house, and through that into an expansive family area with a laundry and galley kitchen down one side. The back wall of that is concertina-style glass doors, opening out fully onto a deck and entertainment area that in the early days housed a kiddy swing off one of the rafters, and a clamshell sand-pit that never seemed to successfully retain its load.
The place we grew up in had the front door opening up into a long wide hallway, too, past rows of bedrooms on either side, then into a lounge room on one side and a dining room on the other, jutting out a bit both sides so that extra stained-glass windows caught extra light. The kitchen and bathroom were just tacked on at the back of the old house.
That place was an odd cross-shape from the top of the old gum tree, and although when we bought it I thought this place was just a long narrow box, it too is an odd cross-shape from above. I don’t need to be up high anywhere to see that, I just know it.
When I was a kid, Mum always kept the bickie tins full. We’d catch the bus into school from the front gate of a morning, and come home to either chilled home-made lemonade in summer, or steaming mugs of sweetened cocoa in winter. Alan and Deirdre and I would always consume at least half a tin of biscuits between us before Mum popped the lid back on and slid the tin back onto the top of the fridge where all those tins lived. She’d then bustle us along to get changed and hurry outside to play, so that we were ready to settle down and do homework by the time Dad was home and she was cooking dinner.
I was a teenager before I realised that Mum worked, just like Dad did, and that she didn’t have time to bake during the daytime. “So when do you make all the bickies, Mum?” I remember asking.
“Oh, while you lot are all asleep,” she said dismissively.
By then, none of us were in bed before midnight, by which time Mum and Dad had both been asleep for a couple of hours, so that didn’t make sense to me.
“Oh, I always did shift-work when I was first nursing,” Mum said, addressing my unspoken consternation. “I think it ruined my sleep patterns. For years, I’ve woken fully up, bright and sparkling, sometime after midnight, and I used to always be really frustrated that I couldn’t get back to sleep. When you kids started coming home from school ravenous, I realised I could put the time to good use with baking. So since then, this is what I do at 2:30 in the morning when I can’t sleep. I get up and bake, and then, for some reason, I can go back to bed and sleep like a baby.”
I wondered if Mum was pregnant when she was first bothered by the sleeplessness.
Vaughn, our first son, was due to be born a week or so hence when I started thinking about all this – I was on maternity leave from my own nursing job again. Brittany and Annabelle were asleep down the hall, and of course Greg was snoring loudly beside me. I wanted to blame him for my sleeplessness, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that baking a batch of biscuits might be just what the doctor ordered in terms of sleep therapy.
As it turned out, I loved it. I was baking, which I’d always loved, I had time to think my own thoughts and be in my own kitchen without anybody else being under foot, and Greg and the girls certainly enjoyed my efforts.
Vaughn, as he grew, could eat a batch of biscuits almost entirely unaided, and I started having to do what my mum had done: putting the lid back on the tin as soon as the lemonade or hot chocolates were finished, and shooing the kids off to play before it was time to do homework.
It was never my intention to have a home for our children that was so like the one I grew up in. It’s just happened that way. The funny thing is, I think it took Greg about a decade to figure out how the bickie tins stay magically full all the time. He’s never objected, though, and the kids just think I’m strange. They’ll get over it, though. Who knows? One day the Middle of the Night Baking Bug might just bite them, too.
Casting the Spell November 2, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Boys, Choices, Discernment, Family, Grannies, Growing Up, home education, University, Wisdom
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Writing prompt: Write about casting a spell.
Nanny hadn’t been retired very long when I went to live with her. To be honest, I don’t really think she wanted to resume parenting at the age of 61, but both my parents were dead, and the alternative, as far as Child Services were concerned, was a family on my mum’s side of the family who lived up at Nyngan on a property, and Nanny wasn’t at all sure what they grew there. All she really wanted to do was play in her garden and grow proper plants, but as she always told me, “blood is thicker than water.”
I’m told that I was with a foster family for a couple of weeks, but I don’t remember much about that. I just remember walking off a plane holding the hand of a big woman who smelled of stale cigarettes, and into a large echo-y room that was the lounge area of our local airport. It’s long been refurbished, but the way I remember it, it was huge and terrifying.
The big woman handed me over to a kinder looking woman with grubby jeans and paint splattered shoes who smelled of freshly turned earth and gardenias, and I drove home with her to a weatherboard cottage with a brilliantly blooming garden. It was spring in the garden, and I moved from a season of winter loneliness in my heart, to one of life and vitality, freshness and sunshine.
Nanny kept me home with her for those first months. I dug in the garden with her, and climbed trees and had afternoon tea with her friends. She wasn’t much of a cook, she said, but I remember sitting down every afternoon on the verandah with a cup of ‘tea’ and either a biscuit or a piece of slice or cake that Nanny and I had made, and we’d talk. I would tell her about the things I’d seen, and she would tell me … oh, all sorts of things. I heard about my daddy when he was a little boy, or what brave reporters he and my mummy were, going into war-torn countries like they did. I heard about Pappy and how he used to have grand ideas for the garden, and sometimes I heard about when she used to go to work.
Perhaps I was hard to impress as a small child, but it only dawned on me in my mid-teens, that my Nanny had led a very adventurous life. As an archaeologist, she’d spent months in exotic locations at digs, years writing papers and giving lectures, and then, as she began to feel her age and Pappy (who was much older than her) died, she took on lecturing at one of the universities. She had published a number of books, yet somehow managed to remain quite unfazed by her own remarkableness.
What seemed to stump Nanny, however, was my education. When I started at kindergarten, it quickly became clear that school and I did not get on. I was always getting into trouble for fidgeting in class, or ducking outside to run around the building a couple of times, or talking when the teacher was talking or had commanded quiet.
“You could educate him at home, you know,” a friend of Nanny’s told her as they sat on the verandah. They didn’t think I was listening, but I was digging in the dirt, and my ears were burning hot with the tales of woe I was hearing about myself.
“Oh, I doubt they let you do that, these days,” Nanny told Gail. “They’ve got the whole system sorted; there’s no room for renegades.”
“No, my niece is teaching her kids,” Gail told Nanny. “She assures me that the government know about it, and so long as you can show that the child is progressing, it’s all fine.”
I didn’t go to school on Monday, and Nanny spent a lot of time on the phone. The next day, she sat me down at the kitchen table, and started teaching me herself. I’d like to say that it was all fine from then on, but it really wasn’t. Nanny was used to teaching university students, and I didn’t like to sit still. Most days, she’d get fed up and send me outside to play, and then after a while, she’d come out and start digging in the garden too.
One afternoon – I was about eight, I think – I came in from playing with the boys down the road after their school had finished, and Nanny was sitting at the kitchen table playing with an odd, rubbery, spiky ball.
“What’s that?” I asked, sitting down with her. It looked interesting.
“It’s called a koosh ball,” she said, looking me directly in the eyes. “You know James, I think I owe you an apology.”
“You do?” Nanny was very sweet and kind, even though she got mad at me a lot about my education.
She nodded. “I’ve been puzzling about how to help you engage with your studies,” she said. “Today, I remembered a seminar that I went to some years ago.”
“What’s a seminar?”
“It’s like a class for adults,” Nanny said. “You go to learn about things that will help you do your job better. There was a woman speaking at the seminar I went to, who had been an educator for many, many years.”
“Really?” I was puzzled that someone would want to try to educate kids for a very long time. None of the kids I knew liked learning any better than I did.
“Yes, and she was very wise. She talked about how everyone learns differently. People all take in information in their own unique way, but there are three main ways: seeing, hearing and doing.”
I stared at Nanny, who was still playing with that funny ball. “What’s that got to do with the koosh thing?” I asked.
Nanny smiled. “James, I’d like to tell you a story,” she said. “I want you to play with the koosh ball while I talk. You might feel like it’s annoying – if that’s the case, just put it down and keep listening. If you feel like playing with the ball isn’t annoying you or helping you, put it down when you realise that. If playing with the ball helps you listen, keep playing with it.”
“Okay,” I nodded, and took the ball from her when she held it out. It was rubbery and soft, and it felt interesting while she told me about a dig she’d been on in South America, and how she’d felt when she began to unearth metal implements that weren’t made out of any sort of metal that modern-day metallurgists know how to make. When she finished the story, I was still playing with the ball and although I was quite oblivious to it in that moment, the spell was cast.
She began to ask me questions about what she’d just told me, and I kept playing with the ball while we talked. Finally she said, “James, I’m really sorry. You’re what’s known as a kinesthetic learner, and I’ve been trying to make you learn as if you were an auditory or a visual learner.”
“Okay,” I said. I was eight, and I didn’t really know what she was talking about. All I knew was that in the wake of that, I did a lot of origami while Nanny talked, or I built things or drew things, and somewhere along the way, I became curious and began to entirely relish our discoveries and adventures together.
In about half an hour from now, my own son will get home from school, and I am preparing myself to have a conversation with him while he plays with a koosh ball.
After the Christmas holidays, my wife and I will job-share a role as engineers with our employer, and we will also share the home education of our son. It’s funny, but sitting here at our kitchen table, I have no doubt that as we share with Toby and enjoy him, we will capture his imagination, just as my Nanny did with me, helping me to love learning and figure out how to turn my passions into practicalities and still enjoy them.
Nanny died about ten months ago, and one of the things she specifically left me in her will was the koosh ball. She was indeed a remarkable, insightful woman.
The Fundraiser October 26, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Artists, Exercises, fundraiser, Growing Up, people
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Writing prompt: “The Fundraiser”
Oh my Lord, you’ve never encountered such a fuss in all your life! I tell you, if anyone was just born to make a fuss it’s Nerida Pickle – I swear, she came out of the womb fussing and she’s never stopped since. Rarely stops to even draw breath, my Jim reckons.
The Fundraiser Fuss started when Pittypat Henry got sick. Well, of course, nobody even knows if Pittypat even has family – as far as any of us know, he came down in a rainshower one year, and has just been in residence ever since. Lovely old bloke, he is. When we were kids, he used to tell us stories about sitting in his cave and listening to the rain pitter-pattering on the rocks outside. He’d get us all up on our feet creating dances and making ‘Pit, pat, splitter, splat’ noises – Lord he was fun! I don’t suppose he was very old then, but to us he seemed to be. I only got to play with him when we were in town on holidays, but I’m sure I loved him every bit as much as the local youngsters did.
Anyway, when the Doc said Pittypat had kidneystones and needed an operation, but that the public list would mean he had to wait months to be out of pain, Nerida and Perdie and I got our heads together. None of us had a real lot of money, but we reckoned if we did some kind of fundraiser, we could come up with the money the old bloke needed in no time.
The arguments! Perdie thought an Art Show would be a good idea, but none of us knew any really famous artists, and of course Nerida didn’t think any of my stuff was worth anything. Nerida had her heart set on some kind of dinner and a show, but even hiring out the club was going to cost a fortune, and then there was the problem of what kind of show we’d put on. Nerida wanted to sing, but Jim told her flat that nobody would pay for that – they’d be more likely to pay her not to sing. Personally, I think that’s when the mucky stuff hit the fan. Nerida and my Jim have always been at logger-heads all the time I’ve known them.
One afternoon, I got talking to Penelope-Ann Cunningham – she’s our mayor, although the locals all call her Pac-man because of her intials and that she’s round and she’s always got her mouth open chewing someone out over something. That afternoon when I was talking to her though, she was really concerned about Pittypat. She’s campaigned in the past to get him evicted from his cave, but everyone loves him so nobody supported her. She must be resigned to his place in the local community, because she suggested that the council could let us have the footie ground for free for an evening, and we could have an auction. People could bring a family picnic, and we could get local businesses to donate items to be auctioned.
Jim loved the idea, so Nerida hated it. Jim started getting donations from people and having it advertised on the local radio, but Nerida had to be seen to be the organiser. I started painting a banner to hang across the main street to advertise it, and Nerida argued about the colours I’d chosen and the dimensions I’d been given by Barry from the Chamber of Commerce. Perdie started organising items into an order of sale for the night, and Nerida came in and rearranged everything.
So we got to the day of the auction, and Pittypat had another episode. Doc had him in hospital and on pain killers before the gates even opened and the local families started streaming in.
Perdie was selling balloons, and Jim had all the goods under lock and key in the back of a big truck supplied by the moving company. Nerida was fussing around, making sure that the p.a. system worked and that her list was in the right order. I spent time cooking sausages and making sangers over with the Rotary barbeque, but when time drew near for the official part of the evening to start, I excused myself and went to make sure that Jim had something to eat before he needed to be lugging things out into clear view so that people could see them at the same level as the stage (which was the flat bed of another truck).
I came around the corner of the moving truck in time to see Jim give Nerida a big shove. Jim’s a gentle giant of a man, so I had no idea why he would need to shove anyone so roughly, but something made me just stay in the shadows for a moment.
“Just leave me alone!” I heard Jim snarl at Nerida.
I glanced at my watch. Uncle Jed, the local hillbilly band, was just finishing up their set, and Nerida would need to get on stage. She was still fussing at Jim, but I drew breath and marched around the side of the truck. “Just about time to get yourself on stage,” I told Nerida cheerfully.
The movie camera of my world zoomed in close on Jim and Nerida – she was trying to kiss him, or something – and then pirouetted around them before panning backwards fast and disappearing off into outer space.
When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at a ceiling. It took me a few moments to realise that I was in hospital. “What am I doing here?” I said aloud, before realising that I was probably alone.
Warmth at my hand stirred, and Jim raised his head from where he’d apparently been sleeping, holding my hand and sitting in the hospital chair at my bedside. “You fainted at the fundraiser,” he said blearily.
“Oh, that’s right,” I agreed, after thinking about it for a moment. “You married the wrong girl.” I’m sure I heard Nerida say that. I was only good for painting things and making them look pretty, not organising anything or even producing babies, she said.
I won’t repeat what Jim said about that, but I wasn’t left in any doubt that he didn’t agree. Reassured, I wanted to know what happened at the fundraiser.
“Perdie texted me. We raised more than enough for Pittypat’s operation.” Jim sounded a little cagey, I thought, even though I wasn’t very with it.
“Did you used to be in love with Nerida, did you?” I knew it, even as the words slipped from my mouth. Why is it that that girl’s presence in every single situation creates fuss?
“When we were teenagers,” Jim admitted, looking embarrassed. “I wasn’t even sixteen when I realised she was a disaster, but she’s never really let it go.”
“How come you never said?”
“Because you were friends with her.”
“We’ve been married for eleven years, Jim,” I said. I wasn’t really angry. Jim’s a big hearted man – even though he didn’t like the girl, he wasn’t about to do her any harm. “Have you noticed that she and I aren’t really friends? Truthfully, I don’t think there’s a human being on the planet that irks me as much as she does.”
Jim looked relieved. He opened his mouth to say something, just as Doc bustled into the room. “Shame you two missed the fun last night,” he grinned. “Anybody give you all the juicy details?”
We looked at each other, then at Doc, blankly.
He grinned broadly. “Oh, by the way, your paintings raised the most, young lady. Anyway, apparently at the end of it all, Nerida looked around and announced that there was nothing else to auction. Then she straightened herself, brushed off her clothes, and said that she, personally, was free to a good home. My goodness, the place was in an uproar!”
Jim burst out laughing, although I felt quite aghast. Talk about a drama queen! “What happened then?” Jim snorted.
Doc shrugged. “Oh, I hear there were a few bids from some of the young men in the crowd. But then Elroy Finch stood up.”
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“He had a thing for her in high school.” Jim said absently. “Left to do university, made a fortune on the stock market, and recently bought that palace out on the point, to ‘retire’ in.”
I blinked at Jim. “At thirty-five?”
Doc and Jim both assured me that that was right. Doc went on: “He stood up, right there in the midst of all his family and the rest of the town, and he called out so everyone heard him, ‘I’ll give you twenty thousand to organise a simple wedding, Nerida. Then you will stop your fussing, settle down and be a good wife to me for the rest of our days.’”
There was a lot of hilarity, and we all agreed that such a scene would have pleased Nerida on a lot of levels, not least her love of the dramatic.
When we calmed down, Jim looked at Doc and asked, “Can we go along the corridor and tell Pittypat? I reckon he’d get a good laugh out of that story.”
“Sure,” Doc nodded. He helped Jim get me out of bed and they both made sure I was steady on my feet. He was making notes on my chart as we got to the doorway, but he thought of something. “Oh!” he exclaimed, making us halt in our tracks. “You might want to tell him that he’s got a new reason to hurry up and get better, too.”
“What’s that?” Jim and I said in unison.
“In a few months time, he’ll have a new adoptive grand-baby to teach rain songs and dances to.” Doc was grinning at us quite stupidly, although it took us a little bit to get his point.
After all these years? Jim and I stared at each other, our eyes suddenly brimming, and our grins more wobbly and stupid than Doc’s.
Oh, but right at the same time as Nerida would be planning her wedding! Oh! Talk about a fuss! I clapped my hand over my mouth and looked up at Jim with wide eyes. “Should we move to Timbuktu?”
Jim still looked quite delerious. “No. We’ll just manage our own fuss, and leave Elroy to manage Nerida’s.”
Oh, but I tell you, the more I think about it, the more I think Timbuktu is a good idea. Can you imagine? Nerida’s bridal shower will have to be more important and bigger and grander than our baby shower. And this baby better not pick a day to be born that’s anywhere near Nerida’s wedding day! Maybe Elroy will pine for the city, or whisk Nerida off on a trip around the world. I wonder if we could organise a fundraiser to encourage that – I’m sure a lot of people would give gladly. Oh, but Elroy’s rich, isn’t he? Maybe we could have a fundraiser to build a high fence around our house to keep Nerida out … or build a fence around that castle of Elroy’s to keep Nerida in.
Or maybe I could stop being silly, and just concentrate of Jim and our baby and Pittypat. Hmm. Now that’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time! I think I’ll go with that.
Canteen Girl October 21, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Boys, cafes, Girls, people, proposals, Relationships
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The prompt for this week is: “When I opened my mouth to sing …”
Nerida snuck in through the back door of the Autech staff canteen, hoping the women cackling over the huge pots of lunchtime slop wouldn’t notice her. She stowed her handbag and cardigan in her locker, tied her apron in place, straightened her hair and make-up, and took a deep breath.
She still felt wildly embarrassed. If she could have skipped this job and gone straight to the lab for her real job, she would have done, but her car needed a new engine, and she needed the extra money.
“Ah! Here she is!” called Doris, who must have spied her as she tried to scuttle through to the front of house to turn on the bain marie. She’d then get the pies into the warmer, and make sure that everything was spick and span before ten floors worth of research scientists, their assistants and all the administrative staff of Autech began filing through for lunch. Nerida didn’t respond to the chorus of greeting that erupted behind her as she scuttled.
Just get on with the job, she told herself sternly. It doesn’t matter. You’re here to do a job. Just suck it up and do what you’re paid to do.
Shirley brought through the first of the trays while Nerida was out in the café area, wiping down tables. Nerida kept her back turned to the kitchen and worked hard to remove a smudge of dried chicken curry that had been crusting up over the entire weekend. When she finally returned to the serving area, the bain marie was laden, and it was only moments before the doors would swing open and the hordes would descend.
For two hours, Nerida worked non-stop. Doris and Carol worked beside her, giving cheek to the customers and answering questions about the food, one or the other of them periodically doing the rounds of the tables and between them keeping the industrial dishwasher in the kitchen humming. Shirley and Nerida took turns on the coffee machine, and Val worked the till.
“There we go, that’s the lot of them,” Doris exclaimed with satisfaction, as the last of the stragglers left their tables and headed back out through the swinging doors to their offices.
“No it’s not,” Shirley said with certainty. She lowered her voice so that only Doris and Val could hear. “He hasn’t been in yet.”
Doris chortled, and Val hurried out the back to make sure that Carol knew. They’d all gathered that Nerida hadn’t spoken to him since Friday night – that much was obvious. Nerida tried to hide at the kitchen sink.
At ten past two, the cafeteria doors swung open again, and a cheery male voice called out, “Am I too late? Will the kindly ladies of the canteen take pity on a starving scientist and feed him, even though he’s running horribly late?”
“No worries, love!” Shirley told him. “I’ve just gotta get this meat out the back and cut up. I’ll just give our Nerida a hoi. She’ll be out to serve you in a tick.”
The handsome face of Anson Blakely beamed at her. They both knew that he wasn’t really there for the food.
“I’m not serving him,” Nerida hissed, scrubbing hard at the baking tray that the roast beef had been baked in.
Shirley tried to insist, but in the end, she had to return to the counter herself. “So, what can I get you, love? Nerida’s up to her elbows in muck out there.”
Anson’s blue eyes twinkled at her. He raised an eyebrow. God, he’s a handsome devil! Shirley thought. Makes me go weak at the knees!
Nerida was scouring away viciously at one particularly stubborn corner of the baking tray when Anson walked through into the kitchen, followed by the wide-eyed and broadly grinning Shirley.
“Y’know,” Anson said, leaning his jeans-clad backside against the stainless steel of the sink and folding his arms across his broad, tee-shirt clad chest before looking sideways at Nerida, “the most embarrassing thing happened to me on Friday night.”
Nerida, startled, leapt back from the sink and tossed water over herself, the wall and the floor, although fortunately it missed Anson completely. She felt the blush that flooded her cheeks with redness even more hotly than the temperature of the water. “It did?” she squeaked, reaching for a teatowel with one hand and a mop with the other. Even the tops of her ears were glowing scarlet – she could feel it.
“Uh-huh,” Anson confirmed, his eyes still twinkling.
Nerida dried herself and started mopping the floor.
Finally, Doris said on Nerida’s behalf, “What happened to you on Friday night, love?”
Anson flashed her an appreciative smile. Gawd, he’s a honey! Doris thought. No wonder the poor girl’s all a-flutter!
“Well, I went to the pub on Friday night,” Anson told the gathered womenfolk, “with a few mates after work. After all, my girlfriend had a full social calendar for the whole weekend, so what’s a bloke to do, right?”
The gathered womenfolk all nodded. Nerida was lovely and lively, and she always had a full calendar. Usually she and Anson did numerous things together, but this had been just one weekend when they had separate things all weekend. The canteen ladies had already discussed how healthy they thought that was.
Assured that everyone understood, Anson continued: “We had a few beers, the steak was good, and then we went through to the karaoke. Some of it was good, some of it was bad – you know how it goes. But when my mates finally convinced me to get up and sing … well, I tried … but I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not, love?” Carol prompted, realising that Nerida’s blush hadn’t subsided and that it was entirely unlikely that the girl would speak at all.
“Well, there was really only one song I wanted to sing … but when I opened my mouth to sing … no words came out. Nothing.”
“Really love?” Doris prompted. She looked around at Shirl and Val and Carol. They all knew that, because they’d been there. “Why was that, d’you think?”
“Well, see …” Anson was now trying to catch Nerida’s eye, but she’d wrung out the mop and was working away at the baking tray in the sink again. She wouldn’t look at him, so he shrugged and answered openly. “I don’t really know why I wanted to sing this particular song, but when I got up, the girl I wanted to sing it to wasn’t there any more. There wasn’t really any point singing it to anybody else.”
“What was the song, love?” Val was the one who couldn’t stand the suspense this time.
“For some reason,” Anson replied, now looking intently at Nerida’s profile, “it was Billy Idol’s White Wedding. I just wanted to tell Nerida that today’s a nice day for a white wedding.”
For some very long seconds, the only sound in the entire kitchen was a single drip from the tap into the murky waters of Nerida’s industry.
“You mean that Friday was,” Nerida said. “This is three days later.” She sounded cross and she sounded like the only reason that she was still there was that her shift wasn’t over yet.
Suddenly Anson seemed to be quite over the game of this little scene in the kitchen. “Come on Nerida,” he said firmly. “Dry your hands and talk to me properly, will you?”
“I don’t want to.”
“But for goodness sake, why?” Anson demanded, sounding more oblivious than annoyed.
Nerida kept working on that baking dish, until she realised that it was as clean as it was going to get, and that Anson wasn’t going away any time soon.
“You weren’t supposed to hear what I sang,” she said, taking a deep breath, drying her hands, and turning to face him squarely.
Anson thought back to Friday night. He and his mates had walked through into the karaoke room when a girl was singing a woeful version of Abba’s Dancing Queen. As they got settled at their corner table, a sweet, pure voice had begun a haunting version of I Honestly Love You. Along with the rest of the room, he’d stood to applaud, only realising then that it was Nerida doing the singing. He hadn’t realised before that the pub where he and his mates had chosen to go was the same one where the Canteen Social Club was having their quarterly get-together.
A broad grin spread across his face. “Hell, Nerida,” he laughed. “We’ve been dating for six months already. We’ve known each other for nearly a decade! Isn’t it about time we got that honest with each other?”
Nerida was blushing again, but at least she was meeting his eyes. “I didn’t want to be the first one to say it though. I wouldn’t have sung that song in a million years if I’d thought you were even in the same suburb!”
Anson was chuckling though, and drawing her into his arms. “And it was the thing that made me realise I want to marry you. I’ve even had time to think about it all weekend, and I still want to.”
So, while the rest of the canteen ladies clapped and cheered, he dropped to his knee and did his very best Impromptu Romantic Proposal.
Six months later, the same canteen ladies lined up down one side of the pathway outside the church, holding pots and pans aloft, forming a guard of honour opposite Anson’s workmates with microscopes and bunsen burners. At the reception, they danced to White Wedding and later, they even sang I Honestly Love You to each other. And this time, they both sang just fine.
Future Unfolding October 18, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Chinese, Choices, Exercises, Girls, Letting Go, people, Relationships, The Meaning of Life
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Writing prompt: “Your future starts here.”
‘Your future starts here.’
Really?
I toss the scrap of paper from inside the fortune cookie across the table and let my friends get all excited about who got what inside their little, sweet, baked and shaped wafer cookie.
Ah! Fortune cookie never wrong! No idea what that quote is from, but I vaguely remember that it’s famous. Maybe it was a line from a television commercial or something. Who knows?
In this case, however, I seriously believe that the writer of fortune cookie proclamations was having a bad hair day. It’s kind of a stupid statement, isn’t it? Your future starts here.
The future doesn’t have a beginning and an end. It doesn’t stop and start. My future wasn’t on hold when I walked into the Chinese restaurant tonight to have dinner with friends, any more than it leapt off a cliff and committed hari kari when Steve walked out of the church in the middle of our wedding ceremony last year. I nearly performed the ceremonial suicide in reaction to the utter humiliation of what happened, but my future didn’t. It continued to unfold, moment by moment, one day at a time.
In the darkness and despair of the moments, hours, and even months that followed the disappearance of Steve’s cowardly carcass down that beribboned and flower-festooned aisle, I did seriously ponder the failures of my life. I did wonder if the world wouldn’t be better off without me after all. It’s been the message of my life, really. Siblings bemoaning their diminished quality of life because of my existence. Parents sighing their displeasure at the failure of my life to glorify them before their friends. Steve’s flight to freedom no clearer statement of his belief that his life would be richer without me.
It would have been really easy to allow all that rejection to dance itself into a ceremonial frenzy in my head, until it was so powerful that I had no choice but to shed my own blood as the only worthy sacrifice in homage to the truth of it.
But.
Three little letters.
B is for Bullshit.
U is for Utter Drivel.
T is for Total, Absolute, Downright LIE.
Even worse than the fortunes inside Chinese baked goods.
When it comes down to it, it really doesn’t matter who else does or doesn’t value my life. All that matters is that I do.
That horrendous day last year, with the priest hyperventilating with shock, my bridesmaids wailing their dismay on my behalf, my father fuming at all the money he’d wasted, my mother wringing her hands and my siblings telling each other that they’d told each other so, Steve actually did me a huge favour.
I didn’t get to say “I do” to the bloke I’d thought of as the man of my dreams for so long. Instead, I got to face things that I’d believed about myself: that I wasn’t worth anything; that I was a waste of space; that I contributed nothing to anybody’s life of any value … the list went on for quite some time.
Moment by moment, though, the mists cleared, my breathing resumed, and the sun came up. It wasn’t a single moment, it was just an unfolding – like the slow unfurling of a red carpet inviting those who choose Living to live – to take another step, to investigate more broadly, explore deeper, move further away from all that poisons.
So there was no formal “I do” to a man. So what? Instead, there was a smiling acknowledgement, a quiet agreement of “I do” to myself. I do believe that I’m a worthwhile human being. I do believe that I am worth knowing. I do believe that I contribute, both to society and the relationships in my immediate life. Most of all, I do believe that my life is worth living.
“Mandy!” my friend Imogen exclaims. “Was this yours? What do you think? Your future starts here.”
I laugh across the table at her. “Yes, but does it start now, because you read it out loud, or did it start five minutes ago when I read it to myself?”
Imogen’s boyfriend Greg laughs at the consternation that my question provokes, particularly amongst my girlfriends. He leans across the table and says to me, “Would you consider going out with my mate Jack? I reckon you and he would get along like a house on fire.”
It’s funny, but nothing could have surprised me further. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I hear myself saying to Greg. “I’m really just enjoying being me at the moment. I don’t really want to date anyone right now.”
It’s a good feeling, that. Knowing that you like who you are, and that you have every right to step along with your future in the way and at the pace that seems right to you. A very good feeling indeed.
Back in the Day October 12, 2009
Posted by Anna in Exercises.Tags: Aging, Grannies, Letting Go, people, Relationships, The Meaning of Life
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Writing prompt: “In those days …”
In those days Gina walked a lot. She walked from home to the bus stop, from the bus to the train, and from the train station up the hill to work. Occasionally she caught the bus for the last leg of the journey – when it was raining or she was just tired – but mostly she walked.
Those were the days when she went home to an empty flat, cooked a small meal just for one, and pondered the inconvenience of having a cat. She never took the plunge and bought one, though. She liked her independence.
Then came the days of being a newlywed, walking the stretches between public transport to and from work, but also walking hand in hand with Paul through parks and on beaches, or even walking holidays through bush land with packs on their backs. They’d discovered so much in those days, as much about each other as about the countryside and the forests and the cities.
Of course, parenthood followed, and walking was replaced by running. Running behind a pram, running behind a slippery toddler, running around after a thousand schedules, running kids to ballet and football and drama classes and shopping trips and interviews and jobs. She certainly hadn’t put on any weight during her full-time mothering years – she’d been too busy!
These days were different, though. They’d moved from their busy city life to ‘retirement’ in the country. Paul had his longed-for back shed, where he could play with model planes, and a paddock where he could fly them. Gina didn’t.
Gina didn’t have her children, or her grandchildren, or her friends, or her committees. She just had Paul. Who was already happily occupied. She had a lovely home, and a very beautiful garden, but still she felt empty.
That’s when the weight began to creep onto her hips, and her thighs, and her arms – oh dear Lord, those arms! Gina heard Oprah call them ‘angel wings’, but to her, they were ‘bat wings’. That’s what she felt like – a cranky, ugly, fat old bat.
Of course she tried to talk to Paul about it, because they’d always talked about everything. It wasn’t very useful, though, because now, without the pressures of work and children and juggling finances, he didn’t have distractions to keep his head out of his models, so that’s what he thought about pretty much all the time.
Gina wailed about the loss of the old days – the children growing up and getting their own lives, the grandchildren not needing her, the committees replacing her easily, the friends who still caught up without her.
Paul did pat her hand and nod sympathetically, but all he said was, “These days are not those days, Gina. These days are these days.”
She watched him head back out to his shed, anger welling inside her so that she didn’t know whether to scream at him or cry. Instead, she had a flashback. She and Paul had had almost the very same discussion when she’d first given up her job towards the end of the first pregnancy. She was bored and lonely then, too, and he’d pointed out that she had to figure out how to make this phase of her life work. Just like he was doing now.
Gina knew she was a go-getter. She always had been. She wasn’t a wallower, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be now, either. It took her a few days, but the next time they drove into town, Gina pinned a brightly coloured notice to the community board outside the supermarket.
GRANNY’S WALKING CLUB the heading proclaimed. Beneath, Gina elaborated. New to the area granny would love regular guided walking tours with other local grannies, or if you’re like me and you haven’t yet discovered the hidden treasures of this wondrous part of the planet, come with me and let’s do it together. Coffee and cake afterwards, my place, your place, or the café in town. Of course she put her name and phone number too, and by the time she and Paul got home with their groceries, there were already three messages on the answering machine.
Gina’s club became a regular thing, and it wasn’t long before half a dozen grannies or more knew that when Gina was just a young woman she’d loved walking, and those days had sowed the seed for the camaraderie and laughter that they were now starting to share together.
The Grannies Walking Club proved to be the beginnings of some very beautiful friendships indeed. Oh, and fitter grannies too, although their shared enjoyment of cakes didn’t do much do diminish any waistlines.
