after Simone de Beauvoir
Rough draft 3
August 2020
I’m standing by a wall. It’s a brick wall. It’s tall and long. The bricks are many different shades of old red brick, there are pale ones and stony ones. The grouting is missing in some parts. And some of the bricks are painted white and the paint is wearing off the bricks. And I am standing quite close to the wall and maybe the wall is a cemetery wall. I’m wearing a pale-coloured, faded cotton summer dress. There are seaside daisies at the bottom of the wall where there is some soft, short grass, and there is a path, worn alongside the wall.
Mum comes along the path. She is about 6 or 7. She is on her bicycle. It’s pretty new, this bike, and she is really happy with it. And we have the same hair cut. Straight hair. Only hers is darker. And a fringe. And she’s really happy. And she loves her bike, and she’s been able to get out of the house and away from her baby brother. And she’s pretty clear that it’s just a wall. And what’s to worry about a wall? What’s to worry about a wall when you have a bike?
The wall opens. It just fades open. It melts open. On the other side is Tasmania. There is a beautiful valley stretching out before us, not a tight valley, a kind of open plain valley. And to the right are a series of hills, and to the left. And ahead is a walking track.
You can’t take a bike on a walking track. It’s too clumsy. Too cumbersome. So Mum takes her bike and joins Susie and Uncle Robert and the others, and they travel down the East Coast on their bikes.
I follow the walking track. It is at right angles to the Overland Track. At right angles to the path she followed. It is a good path. When we hit the Overland Track, we stay the night, camping outside the hut. We talk to the ranger about our packs and then we walk to the old Pelion hut and in the hut is a facsimile of the visitors book, and I can feel it, my mother was here, I’m looking for her entry. I’m trying to figure out the dates, but I can’t because I haven’t paid enough attention.
I remember her saying that if there is a rat in the hut, or a mouse in the hut then that’s quite good because it means that there are no snakes in the hut. But if there are no mice or rats, then there’s a snake around. Keep your eyes out for the snake.
One: My Birthday
Hi Mum, how are you?
Cazz?
Yeah, it’s me. How are you going?
Oh, alright
Are you having your gin and tonic yet?
Yes
And what’s for dinner?
Oh, I don’t know. Some crap
Are you feeling ok?
Mmmm. What’s the problem?
Nothing, I’m just checking in. I’ll see you in the morning. I’m coming to help you have a shower.
Hmmm.
Ok?
Mmmm.
Ok, well, I’ll see you tomorrow.
Look forward to that.
Bye
Bye
She lies, Mum lies in her bed. It’s the morning, 9.20am. It’s the morning for the shower.
It’s my birthday. October the 14th, 2019. A Monday. I park in the street, near the house, and even though it’s warm, I choose a spot which is not under a tree so as to avoid an avalanche of bird poo. I open the heavy wrought-iron front gate. The gate utters its characteristic greeting, somewhere between a squeak and a groan. No getting through that gate without someone hearing you. The cats: Kara, then Ralph and Larry, then just Larry, always knew that someone had arrived, even right down the other end of the house. Their whiskers would twitch. Ears alert. All the gates in the Parkville street have their own sounds, marking the passage of neighbours in and out, in and out through the years. A neighbour hears the gate. Their whiskers twitch.
The gate slowly closes behind me as I go up the five bluestone steps. The house faces the west, so too does the little front garden. The sweet peas have gone wild over everything, as they usually do, and they are, at last, beginning to produce another colour on top of the pale pink and white ones which have dominated so far, and which Mum is not so fond of. These new blooms are purple. The Spring Racing Carnival has begun. The most significant religious festival in the family. And the roses have begun. The roses are particularly beautiful this spring. This late spring. All over Melbourne, and here too, in the front garden. A couple of Mr Lincolns, a few blooms on the Peace, and the Spirit of Peace, and lots more strong buds on the way. And there’s also some Cecil Brunners. Tiny, pink, and so sweetly scented.
I pick up the newspaper from the doormat. The Age. I unlock the wire door and I unlock the front door. I step inside. It begins. The morning ritual. Getting Mum out of bed, getting her up, getting her ready for the day.
She’s there in the front room, lying in bed, under her eiderdown with the little pink and blue flowers on it, looking peaceful. I’m not quite sure where the eiderdown came from, it’s old, but still beautiful. From one of the Aunts, or maybe my Gran. I’ve always loved it. Sometimes when I arrive she’s awake, and if so she smiles sleepily at me. But today, she’s asleep. I can hear the gentle sound of her breathing and the sound of the air coming in and out of the mattress…a slow creaking sort of sound.
Mum sleeps with her curtains open. She likes to look at the sky. She doesn’t like to be hemmed in. She spends quite a lot of hours in her bed now. Not during the day, unless she’s really sick, but at night she’s often in bed by 8.30pm, and not up again until 9 or 9.30am. That’s why we needed the hospital bed with the air mattress, so that she won’t get pressure sores at night. The air mattress has alternating air flow into different cells in the mattress. That’s what accompanies her as she sleeps now, or as she lies there quietly awake watching the sky through her bedroom window, the creak and wheeze of the mattress.