The sleepover

500 Words: One Moment, This Year

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/63145

She had so wanted to go, this youngest daughter of mine.

I had tried to dissuade her – couldn’t she just have a ‘whole day play’ instead?

No, she assured me. That really wouldn’t do.

And so she went – with her little red rolling suitcase and a beaming smile.

She was going to the warm and loving home of her best friend, after all.The afternoon dragged.

We had an early dinner without her.

No going to the tyre swing tonight – she’s not here to ask me.

No hanging over the back gate, looking at the cows – she’s not here to hang over the back gate with.

Even the dog is sad. He looks up at me with his big brown eyes, tipping his head to one side as if asking where his friend is, the one that always brings his lead out after dinner in preparation for his walk. I pat his head and stroke his velvety ears slowly. I don’t feel like walking him tonight, my heart isn’t in it.Her Barbies are all over the lounge room floor where she left them in the rush to go this afternoon. I pack them up slowly.

I pick up her sketch pad – I flip over the pages she’s been drawing on. A very detailed castle is on the first page. It has three huge turrets. One for the girls, one in the middle for the mother and father, and one for the boys.

My eyes are tearing up and as I flip to the next page, a fat, salty tear escapes.

I flip through more pages of drawings of girls’ rooms and boys’ rooms.It’s all too much. The sadness of my absent daughter rushes up to me. I shut the sketch book quickly and leave it in the middle of the dining room table, ready for her return.I feel torn. Should I ring her? See if she’s okay?

But what if she’s not?

What if she’s sad, missing home?I could go and get her. She’s only 15 minutes away by car.

But she’d be upset about leaving her friend.

She’d be upset about not staying at her friend’s for the whole time.Okay, I’ll ring.

No, no. I won’t ring her.What if she’s really having a lovely time, having fun and then I ring and she starts missing home and I upset everything?

No. Okay I won’t ring.It’s 9pm.

Then the house phone rings, breaking my melancholy. I jump.

I reach for the receiver, trying to shake off my sadness as I answer. “Hello?”

A little voice answers excitedly. “Mummy, it’s me!”In that moment, my heart does a fluttery happy dance, my shoulders lose their stoop and I stand much taller. My face is plastered with the biggest grin ever and I press the receiver against my ear, hard – I don’t want to miss a word.”Hello, you!” I boom into the receiver.

“Are you having a good time?” I ask as cheerily as I can.I plonk myself down at the kitchen table, ready to be regaled with her afternoon’s adventures.

We laugh and giggle. We talk about what she had for dinner and where she is going to sleep. Her friend gets on the line and we discuss toothpaste (they are just about to brush their teeth).

They are going to read books together.We both hang up, happy.

I look at the kitchen clock and work out how many hours till she is home again.

Nature’s trick of the eye

500 Words: One Moment, This Year

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/62786

On the eastern slopes of the Bold Granite Range, the Yowaka River rises. Between Pambula and Eden, the Princes Highway crosses the river and it is at this point that we often take the road on the right-hand side and pull up on the banks of this inspiring waterway.During the last school holidays, we drove to the river just before lunch. Armed with rods and tackle boxes, notebooks and pens, nets and old runners we looked forward to a few hours of river time. A hastily packed esky came along for the ride and doubled as a seat for small bottoms.It’s restful at the river. Time slows down. You can hear yourself think. And we can each do our own thing, separate yet together.Everyone got busy and I wondered if, long ago on the banks of this serpentine river, a platypus built its home and swam along the water’s edge where I dawdled now with my children – my daughter dragging her orange butterfly net through the speckled water, my sons casting pink squidgies into deeper water, hoping for at least one bite.As the idle zephyr picked up and became a stronger breeze, the clunketty clunk of truck tyres over the bridge downstream mingled with the lapping river ripples and the distinct kerplunk of cast sinkers smacking water. On the opposite bank, reeds as high as a man’s thigh bent, tall and knowing, a paint swatch of the colour green ranging from olive to khaki, from lime to emerald. I watched the displays of colour and the activities of my children as I daydreamed about the platypus and its life on the river.After a while, over at the water’s edge, an elongated head bobbed higher then lower, snaking like a miniature Loch Ness Monster. In that moment, with my mind thinking about the platypus and my hopes raised in anticipation of sleek brown fur, leathery duck bill, clever webbed feet and broad paddle tail, I was sure this reclusive creature was making an appearance just for me. I was becoming excited at the prospect of witnessing my first platypus in the wild. I strained to get a good look at the unfolding scene – there was no way I was going to miss a second of this!Instead, I made out a sleek wet cormorant and not a fascinating monotreme.In that moment, I felt utter disappointment, total disbelief. The river had let me down – it had failed to deliver the river-dwelling platypus I had willed to be there.The cormorant, of course, had no idea that it had dashed my hopes of sighting my first platypus and it continued dipping and diving in the cool water of the river. Life went on.Above my head, eucalypt leaves rustled and spun, while the limbs of ancient gums caressed each other and moaned, long and low.The wind strengthened, the loving boughs crooned to each other in less hushed tones, their foreplay becoming more frenzied. Then a creaking, splintery and determined, suggested a climax of breaking branches and that perhaps it was time to move my imagination, my children and my old blue folding chair further down the riverbank into safer space.

Floating

500 Words: One Moment, This Year

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/62096

Cold ocean stabs at my toes. Its chilly fingers pinching at my ankles, creeping up my goosepimpled skin.I pause to savour the sensation, accepting its intrusion.I admire the ocean’s beauty as it stretches before me. I am in awe of its vastness.I wriggle my toes into the gritty, sandy bottom, trying to anchor myself. I smirk as the incoming waves hit the fronts of my legs. I am part of their game. I’m not far enough out yet to be toppled. But the shallow surf continues, unrelenting. It lures me forward as it pounds.I shuffle and sway like an old drunk. The call of the sea is intoxicating.Fixing my eyes on a point further out, I struggle to pull up one foot, then the other from the sinking sand. The gloopy suck of the ocean quicksand is masked by the screeching of seagulls overhead and the human sounds of summer carried on the breeze.I twist at the waist as I lunge forward, against the waves, taking sharp, short breaths as the water gets colder and deeper and the more sensitive parts of my body are tickled by the frothing foamy whitecaps. The heat of my upper half now craves the coolness enjoyed by my lower half. With each beat of my heart, the flush of cold/hot, hot/cold surges through my being, up then down.I lumber forward. More exaggerated steps and the sandy bed falls away. Abandoning me. Releasing me from its stability and its surety.The water is deep and I paddle like an excited puppy, my head still warm and dry as I enjoy the heat of the sun on my face and the cold of the sea on my body.I am weightless. I am powerful. I am perfect.I propel myself up, then out and down, performing an exaggerated duck-dive to finally submerge myself. A full-body immersion. A believer’s baptism. A surrender to the omnipotence of the sea.I kick and bob and splash, over and over, mimicking a precocious seal or perhaps a cheeky dolphin or an engaging baby whale. I giggle to myself. I am at peace.At last, exhausted, I rise to the surface to gulp the salty air and shake the briny ocean from my limp curls.My limbs are leaden and my lungs are heaving. I blow salty mucous from my nostrils and spit out the sea.Now, arms outstretched, legs straight, my body floats on the surface, forming a perfect ‘T’.In the ocean’s lap, my head nestles.And with eyes closed, I worship the sun god above.The strong sea buoys me, lapping at my soul. Rhythmic, hypnotic, mesmerising.In this moment, on the turning tide, stress ebbs away from my body.And into its place flows the sensation of calm.

Goanna man

500 Words: One Moment, This Year

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/60657

When my mother’s friend
died, I remember her daughter telling us about how her mother had
visited her in the form of a beautiful butterfly on her wedding day.
I’m not sure about my
father’s affinity with butterflies and he wasn’t a great lover of
insects in general. But he did like most other animals and I feel he
was particularly taken with goannas after his many encounters with
them during his working life in Australia. Coming from the small
Mediterranean island of Malta where no goannas live, seeing these
big, prehistoric-looking creatures in the wild was, to him, something
very special.
I remember his stories of
his observations of them while he was camping away from home, working
for the railways.
I had never seen any
goannas in the wild and I constantly complained about this to my
husband. We had been living in the Bega Valley for years and not once
had a wild goanna crossed my path. Other people had seen them or had
stories about them, but not me. I felt really cheated – living in
this wildlife paradise and not ever having seen a free-ranging
goanna. Not fair!
When my father passed away
unexpectedly, I was crippled with shock and grief. I
couldn’t believe he had gone. My head felt like it would explode with
memories of him. I expected him to turn up at any minute, back from
wherever it was he’d gone. I wasn’t ready for him to never come back.
So, when some four months
after my father’s passing, a goanna scrambled its way over the
rockery in our garden, in front of the kitchen window I happened to
be gazing out of while I washed the dishes, I thought my imagination
had gone into overdrive. I stopped mid-dish and stared, thrusting my
head as close to the window as was physically possible to get a
better look. And then, I froze!
Here, in my own back
garden was a real goanna! At least seven feet long, with beautiful
markings and fearsome claws, he was gorgeous and ancient and right
here!
I had him all to myself
until our dog began barking and lunging. The goanna didn’t seem too
perturbed and got over a small fence and up a eucalyptus not far away.
He positioned himself in
the fork of the tree and looked magnificent. We wondered at his size
and strength and ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at his beauty.
Our goanna made himself
at home in our gum tree. He had no intention of going anywhere!
Our family thought this
was great and we talked to him each time we went outside, getting as
close to his tree as we could to watch him and enjoy his magnificence
and tenacity.
However, after about the
fifth day of his not moving, I began to get worried and rang our
local wildlife park for advice. Was he sick? Should they re-home him?
Did we need to call a vet?
They assured me that he
was fine. He had probably just eaten a very big meal and as the
weather was quite cold he needed time to warm up in order to complete
digesting his food. He would remain with us until this was
accomplished.
Sure enough, a few hotter
days later, our goanna was gone.
I will never forget the
visit our goanna made to our home. I think it was my father’s
cheeky way of checking up on us and telling us he was okay.