A Blessing for my House.
There are ghosts in my house tonight. I feel them in places where they once stood. I remember them standing in places where I’ll stand no more. A flash and laughter
“Quick! Re arrange! Change places. Smile everybody.”
“Who’s not here?”
“She’s at the toilet again.”
“Mu-uum.” We call. Raucous laughter erupts. I swoop down on one of the many lost tissues and hold it up high,
“This’ll do…take the picture before someone else disappears.” And so the picture stands a silent but colourful testament to a moment in all our lives so long ago.
Yes, there are ghosts in my house tonight.
They’re seated about the table that is no longer there. Cutlery clanks and everyone talks at once. We all fit in - with elbows tucked in properly as we were taught but are forced to do for lack of space. Eyes shine and tall tales are told. Babies cry and then grow up and are seen by fewer eyes.
They’re standing jostling in the doorways, gently buffeted by the many breezes which circulate forever throughout the house’s internal tracks. They’re patting little heads which fly past playing a myriad of games from ages gone. Their eyes are filled with love, and not a little devilment at the goings on that are still happening in some time and place I can no longer see or fully remember.
And sometimes the eyes are filled with longing and sadness, which I am beginning to understand, but cannot change. For that I am always regretful, but hope it is resolving in them and me. For soon I too will no longer stand in doorways which show things which are so familiar that I no longer think to wonder at but know like my own hands.
There have been ghosts in my dreams of late. Dreams teeming with people and faces from my life and theirs. I look at them and wonder why it’s been so long and then I wake and know the reason why.
Yes, there have been ghosts in my dreams of late. I even smell their smell and when I touch their faces I feel that touch. I hugged my mother last night, and felt the shape of her against the inside of my arms, and wondered in my dream why I hadn’t hugged her for such a long time, feeling regret at my neglect. Then I woke and knew the reason why.
Soon I’ll be the ghost in this house of mine. Was it ever mine at all or did I just pass through like all the rest who loved it? My daughters said I made them laugh when I was angry because they could tell by the way I walked. My heavy barefoot tread bumped all through the rooms in joy or anger, but they could tell the difference. I am glad it made them laugh. But I sure hope that some poor bloody kid in times to come is spared the sound of my tread, in the dead of night, for it would have to cause them terror, even though its source was anything but terrifying.
Soon I may stand at the side of my house on the white timber ramp and if I see those three white birds fly over as I did in a dream so long ago it will seem so right. But if it doesn’t happen then it won’t worry me much at all. For I know that my dreams are real - sometimes a slip in time, sometimes a parting of the curtains into body, mind or spirit, and sometimes, its just something that I ate or drank!
Yes, let there be ghosts in this house of mine. Ghosts that gently guard the children in their dreams. Ghosts that have compassion for those who suffer fears and imaginings, and see no light. For we’ve all been there and no doubt will be again, and I wish upon the occupants of this house, a kind dwelling. Let any ghosts guard and light the corners that may be filled with the darkness of our misunderstandings.
Let the ghosts of my house be guardian angels so that it easily rocks with laughter, and pulls people together inside its centre, because they want to be together. Let it let go gently of all who dwell in its many pathways and hopefully grant me and mine that same small mercy. For as much as I am looking outwards and into my future, I know inside me that the parting will be harder than I imagine.
I will leave it to the children to come and hope it holds them as safe and gently as it did my own.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Grandma
Grandma
They had all gone out to the dance. She sat in the peace and held her embroidery on her lap. A bright crimson and green Waratah flower had emerged under her hands on the pure white linen – unplanned.
The middle aged hands stopped… for a moment. Her large round blue eyes looked out. Unseeing. Beyond the orderly vegetable garden, the rows of gladioli, the spots of pansies… beyond - they looked into another garden, a garden reached only by her heart and by no other route.
Through a haze of golden light, so it seemed, she saw her father and self turning into the circular drive on a late autumn afternoon. Leaves blew in gusts of colour across the large well kept lawn. She sat in her father’s Sulky, waiting for his return. She was too young to be invited in with the business to be done, but too old to spin away and run into the leaves and wind, as she really wanted to. She sat still as a photograph, her white dress seeming translucent in the strange autumn light. Deep notes of song came from her, unconsciously and ran away from her in circles of sound, with her at the centre. Her Welsh soul resonated with the beauty around her and she felt the rightness of this place.
The large sprawling, faded homestead needed repairs, and would go on needing repairs. In the far corner of the grounds, four young men were bent over playing some game, and erupted in raucous shouting at some regular point in the proceedings.
They had not noticed her, or chose not to, because they could not have missed the stamping of the horse which pulled the Sulky, not the crunch on the gravel driveway as her and her father drove in.
They would have noticed her more had she been a year or two older, but a young girl sitting… a child… no possibilities of interest there. But she saw possibilities no child would see, and as young as she was she had instantly decided that she would live in this garden when she grew up.
As she sung her songs in undertones, she willed herself to be noticed, for one head to turn towards her. Slowly one head turned. Beneath the clump of rich auburn curls his face shone white.
Standing slowly, using his brother’s shoulder for a handhold he turned towards the distant white clothed figure sitting still in the sulky. Borne on the wind, he could just hear the faint strains of her singing. Singing him out – he thought – that’s what it felt like. He smiled towards her, his handsome young face felt as if it were turned towards the sun’s heat.
He was never to know her white shock as he stood and took a step forward. A shock, which she covered quickly and which remained, covered for the rest of his life. He was used to his pronounced limp, a birth defect that few locals ever noticed anymore. Someone who looked like he did, and had his background found many things overlooked in this insulated country town. But for the girl a fierce possessive love flung out at him from the gap between them and he felt it like a punch in his chest.
She would never live in this garden, except in her dreams. Many meetings would take place between them in the wild spot down the back of the place, and a child would be conceived in the faery place.
Now and then, she wondered at what would have happened had one of the other brothers been the one to stand. Where would she be now? Much better off financially no doubt, but would she have felt the love… would she have the memory of that first meeting? With hardened thickening fingers she stroked the embroidered Waratah flower she had made. But another real version was placed into her smooth young hands, and the young man smiled up at her. Whether the feelings were lust, or the faery dust of youthful longing, or love at the time, these two were to draw in to each other, till he was to die, too young for her to become contented with her life.
Her father climbed up onto the sulky and muttered under his breath and snatched the flower from her lap flinging it out onto the road. “You’ll not be setting your heart on a cripple, girlie – lifes going to be very hard for the woman who marries that one.” But all she could see was his face when he alone turned towards hearing her singing, feeling her willing.
“That’s what you think dad,” she thought to herself.
The middle-aged woman slipped her already aching hands into the wooden handles of the buckets. She stood up slowly and prepared herself for the long walk up the hill to collect the run off water from the Meatworks. This was a daily job during this long drought and during this prolonged Depression. For the people living in this small town on the Hunter River, water was severely rationed. No longer could they draw up from the river, which had ceased to run and had become a string of shrinking stagnant pools. Those, whose water tanks still held water, used this only for drinking, cooking and washing. All other needs were being met with the run off from the Works, which ran steadily down the gutter in the main street of the town. The water was tinged pink, and used on vegetable plots, essential for family survival in the harsh times. She used this water for many things, after repeatedly boiling it, and quietly substituting it, as did most.
She was a tall, square-shaped woman. Her hair was straight and sensible pinned to one side. Her mouth had a definite set to it, which reflected how she felt inside about how unfairly life had turned out for her. Her large flat feet were hardened, and used now, to the holes, which had almost replaced the soles of the shoes. Outside the house she wore the shoes, uncomfortable as they had become, to hide the dire poverty of the family.
She had many sources of meagre income, all requiring a superhuman effort on her part, and all necessary for the survival of the family. She kept bees, grew vegetables, and took in ironing and washing. Along with this there were children to care for, to school, to feed, clothe and to love – if there was the time.
She walked deeply into the ruts worn by her many trips up the hill, and her feet scuffed along from an aching, never-ending bone weariness. And bitterness came.
Later in the quietness of the evening her hardened hands would flicker in an out of cascades of exquisite cream lace, or followed a needle in and out of the white linen, she embroidered, for pleasure, for gifts and to keep her hands busy. The tablecloths, a few which would last for generations would remain, bright and beautiful a stark contrast to the embittered old woman she was to become.
She was then still pretty enough, but already the eyes although appearing bright and large, see little hope for her own life, for her own dreams.
Therese Mackay
They had all gone out to the dance. She sat in the peace and held her embroidery on her lap. A bright crimson and green Waratah flower had emerged under her hands on the pure white linen – unplanned.
The middle aged hands stopped… for a moment. Her large round blue eyes looked out. Unseeing. Beyond the orderly vegetable garden, the rows of gladioli, the spots of pansies… beyond - they looked into another garden, a garden reached only by her heart and by no other route.
Through a haze of golden light, so it seemed, she saw her father and self turning into the circular drive on a late autumn afternoon. Leaves blew in gusts of colour across the large well kept lawn. She sat in her father’s Sulky, waiting for his return. She was too young to be invited in with the business to be done, but too old to spin away and run into the leaves and wind, as she really wanted to. She sat still as a photograph, her white dress seeming translucent in the strange autumn light. Deep notes of song came from her, unconsciously and ran away from her in circles of sound, with her at the centre. Her Welsh soul resonated with the beauty around her and she felt the rightness of this place.
The large sprawling, faded homestead needed repairs, and would go on needing repairs. In the far corner of the grounds, four young men were bent over playing some game, and erupted in raucous shouting at some regular point in the proceedings.
They had not noticed her, or chose not to, because they could not have missed the stamping of the horse which pulled the Sulky, not the crunch on the gravel driveway as her and her father drove in.
They would have noticed her more had she been a year or two older, but a young girl sitting… a child… no possibilities of interest there. But she saw possibilities no child would see, and as young as she was she had instantly decided that she would live in this garden when she grew up.
As she sung her songs in undertones, she willed herself to be noticed, for one head to turn towards her. Slowly one head turned. Beneath the clump of rich auburn curls his face shone white.
Standing slowly, using his brother’s shoulder for a handhold he turned towards the distant white clothed figure sitting still in the sulky. Borne on the wind, he could just hear the faint strains of her singing. Singing him out – he thought – that’s what it felt like. He smiled towards her, his handsome young face felt as if it were turned towards the sun’s heat.
He was never to know her white shock as he stood and took a step forward. A shock, which she covered quickly and which remained, covered for the rest of his life. He was used to his pronounced limp, a birth defect that few locals ever noticed anymore. Someone who looked like he did, and had his background found many things overlooked in this insulated country town. But for the girl a fierce possessive love flung out at him from the gap between them and he felt it like a punch in his chest.
She would never live in this garden, except in her dreams. Many meetings would take place between them in the wild spot down the back of the place, and a child would be conceived in the faery place.
Now and then, she wondered at what would have happened had one of the other brothers been the one to stand. Where would she be now? Much better off financially no doubt, but would she have felt the love… would she have the memory of that first meeting? With hardened thickening fingers she stroked the embroidered Waratah flower she had made. But another real version was placed into her smooth young hands, and the young man smiled up at her. Whether the feelings were lust, or the faery dust of youthful longing, or love at the time, these two were to draw in to each other, till he was to die, too young for her to become contented with her life.
Her father climbed up onto the sulky and muttered under his breath and snatched the flower from her lap flinging it out onto the road. “You’ll not be setting your heart on a cripple, girlie – lifes going to be very hard for the woman who marries that one.” But all she could see was his face when he alone turned towards hearing her singing, feeling her willing.
“That’s what you think dad,” she thought to herself.
The middle-aged woman slipped her already aching hands into the wooden handles of the buckets. She stood up slowly and prepared herself for the long walk up the hill to collect the run off water from the Meatworks. This was a daily job during this long drought and during this prolonged Depression. For the people living in this small town on the Hunter River, water was severely rationed. No longer could they draw up from the river, which had ceased to run and had become a string of shrinking stagnant pools. Those, whose water tanks still held water, used this only for drinking, cooking and washing. All other needs were being met with the run off from the Works, which ran steadily down the gutter in the main street of the town. The water was tinged pink, and used on vegetable plots, essential for family survival in the harsh times. She used this water for many things, after repeatedly boiling it, and quietly substituting it, as did most.
She was a tall, square-shaped woman. Her hair was straight and sensible pinned to one side. Her mouth had a definite set to it, which reflected how she felt inside about how unfairly life had turned out for her. Her large flat feet were hardened, and used now, to the holes, which had almost replaced the soles of the shoes. Outside the house she wore the shoes, uncomfortable as they had become, to hide the dire poverty of the family.
She had many sources of meagre income, all requiring a superhuman effort on her part, and all necessary for the survival of the family. She kept bees, grew vegetables, and took in ironing and washing. Along with this there were children to care for, to school, to feed, clothe and to love – if there was the time.
She walked deeply into the ruts worn by her many trips up the hill, and her feet scuffed along from an aching, never-ending bone weariness. And bitterness came.
Later in the quietness of the evening her hardened hands would flicker in an out of cascades of exquisite cream lace, or followed a needle in and out of the white linen, she embroidered, for pleasure, for gifts and to keep her hands busy. The tablecloths, a few which would last for generations would remain, bright and beautiful a stark contrast to the embittered old woman she was to become.
She was then still pretty enough, but already the eyes although appearing bright and large, see little hope for her own life, for her own dreams.
Therese Mackay
Thursday, October 27, 2005
The Fire Lighter
The Fire Lighter.
It was so hot. Washing up after tea made me even hotter. Sweat prickled down between my shoulderblades. I was looking forward to a cool shower and putting on comfortable clothes. Anticipating ripping my bra off and letting my breasts collapse to where they wanted to collapse. No difference to me. I don’t think rationally in the heat and just run on ‘what has to be done’...’what has to be endured’, till I can pour out a long cool icy and slightly alcoholic drink at the end of the long February day. I hate February, except for my birthday.
I got as far as the comfortable clothes.
“Therese, are you busy?” my husband asked. Why did I get a sinking feeling? I went very quiet, thinking, “If I don’t answer he’ll forget about whatever it is...” although I had a strong suspicion what it was he wanted, and knowing Don, I knew it would take a biblical flood to deter him from any course of action he has chosen.
“Bring the matches with you...and the mosquito spray.” Not a request, more of an order which knows its going to be satisfied.
“Shit! Shit! I don’t want to do this.” was going round in my head, which resorts to childish habits when hoping an escape will present, but knowing it never does. Dragging my feet I took as long as I possibly could to find the matches and mosquito spray and shuffle unwillingly out into out bushy front yard.
There he was, sitting in his electric wheelchair next to a Gargantuan pile of whole tree boughs, off cuts, leaves, sticks and myriad other combustibles that sat in the centre of the yard under the tall and very combustible gum trees. He looked at me as I came down the front ramp. Smiling the charming smile of the youngest child, the golden child, beloved of his elder sisters, the much wanted “save the marriage baby”, he knew I would do almost anything he asked, as long as he persevered.
Life is dull with all of us at times but when it is not dull around my husband it is very much not dull. I never quite know what to expect from him except that when he has decided on a course it is much easier to go along with him or to appear to, for the time being till I can see a way out. This is the man who swam the Hastings River drunk for a dare, who tried to steal a circus elephant for another man’s kids, and got thumped down for his troubles by the elephant named Judy- elephants never forget. This is the man who bails up politicians with a megaphone and doesn’t care if anyone comes with him or not for support, but I always do. This is the man who tried to ram his wheelchair into John Fahey, the NSW Premier’s shins, because he, John Fahey, was being the usual bastard. I am proud of and love this man beyond reason at times and the opposite at others, so what was I to do when he turned his flashy smile on me? What I usually do, give in.
“What do you reckon?” he said. Knowing that the question was not meant to be answered. Wishing I were anywhere else, inwardly I groaned. Try groaning inwardly - it starts in the roof of your mouth and goes back down your throat only to be swallowed like a blob, rather than the opposite, which is an outward groan.
“There’s a bit of wind up high Don.” I said searching the tops of the trees vainly for any movement at all. They were as still as if they were painted. “ If we get caught Don, they’ll write it up in the Court Reports in the local paper and everyone will read it...I always do...its the best part of the paper. But it’ll be me who gets the blame, plus a big fine. They won’t touch you.” I knew that this wouldn’t convince him, but the game had to be played out for propriety.
He chuckled at the thought of my getting the blame.
“We’re not all that popular with a few people in town, we’re bound to be dobbed in.” I think I may have been almost pleading by this. But I knew my mentioning those bastards that didn’t like us, (I wonder why) dobbing us in would make him even more determined.
He sat there implacably and smiled back at me in the gathering gloom,
“Can you spray the back of my neck there are mozzies everywhere.”
I agreed to light the fire as long as he sat there till it died down, figuring it would be about an hour and a half. He had rung the Council earlier and been told that they wanted $75 just for the bit of paper required to light the fire. We also knew that it would cost us about $150 plus by the time we hired a tip truck to take it to the tip and also paid the Tip fees.
The Scot in him had a lot to do with why we were lighting this fire. There was a lot of money involved and no one would ever dream of helping out with a pile this big...not for free anyway. There was only one course of action, for a Mackay, whose ancestors had survived the cold of the wilds of Scotland covered only in blue tattoos.
So giving up as we both knew I would, I lit the fire in as many places as I could to hurry it up. I crepe bandaged the hose to Don’s hand so he could sit there, enjoy his pyromania and also be his own little responsible citizen...”yes officer, I am keeping an eye on it”. I imagined him declaring, when we were finally caught which I felt sure would happen.
The wind picked up and sparks swirled up into the canopy. My head swam with thoughts of our house burning down whilst we slept because of one of these sparks lodging under the eaves. I also have a vivid imagination when our kids are driving out on the highway, seeing legions of semi trailers crashing into them or their spinning out over the edge of a mountain, after hitting a pothole. The phone calls I’ve made to them when they come down off the city trains at night, “Carry your capsicum spray in your hand, its no good in your bag. Give them a good blast and run like hell.” words delivered more to allay my fears than theirs. So my mind was really firing.
We started watering down the roaring fire, and wads, not clouds, but wads of thick solid smoke tunnelled upwards in whatever direction the wind decided to turn. Then the wind would stop completely and the fire became almost pleasurable. MY face got redder and hotter and my long hair spiked out like a Medusa. I had had time to don the comfortable dress, minus bra, and being no sylph, I would have done a fishwife proud. Don always cool and calm, maintained control, absolute control...
“Push that bit of wood there...light that bit there...wet down that tree there” - we have two hoses. Don says to say here that this is an exaggeration but it is commonly known that the memory of men is always biased and unreliable.
Finally as the hour and half dragged into two and a half-hours and the fire still billowing, Don said,
“Go inside the house and see if we have some Kero and some more matches, we’ve got to hurry this up or we’ll be here all night.” He was tiring, the novelty almost all gone.
After ferreting about I was about to bowl down the front ramp waving the pyrotechnic devices, when through the bushes I saw a paddy wagon with POLICE and flashing blue lights.
“Shit! Now what do I do?” Here’s Don the noble Quadriplegic outside sitting in the dark strapped to a hose all alone what a pathetic sight for anyone to come upon. No way was I coming out of the house unless they came and got me.
Don told me later that the policewoman got out of the wagon with a big smile on her face. I guess it is better than dealing with the common muck they get to deal with. Don’s comments to the two police about having a barbecue must have rocked them with laughter back in the station. I could hear the policewoman laughing even now as I hid like the irresponsible citizen I was. No sausages at all graced our inferno. He lamely and no doubt with that same smile, told her, “We did ring Council” but of course didn’t add that we didn’t have permission. I would imagine that he pretended innocence, depending on the fact that most people assume that all disabled people are unworldly. He’s good at this and you have to use what you’ve got. As they were leaving, I slunk out like a whipped dog, with empty hands - of course.
“No charges, no jail for me tonight.”
As the paddy wagon was about to turn out onto the road, we heard a siren far off. I looked at Don and said that it sounded like a fire engine. He said, “No its going somewhere else”. It got closer and closer, and dramatically closer, and soon the paddy wagon was giving way to a large red engine with about six men in it, as it idled down our driveway. The neighbours would be very entertained no doubt by all of this.
I was very sheepish, knowing they had to know I was the ‘lightee’ even if Don was actually the real crime boss. My face blazing pink with heat and embarrassment, whites of my eyes almost cooking from the heat, hair now plastered to my face with sweat, and breasts both - I only have two thank goodness - both pointing down at different angles, ruled totally by gravity. I look like a lawbreaker, and I was a lawbreaker. Whilst Don sat there as the firemen all milled around him smiling and amused asking,
“Where’s the marshmallows? We thought there was a house on fire!” Unless there was to be a sting in the tail of their amusement, it looked as if no one was going to be in the Court Report, and I relaxed a bit, till...
From the other direction, Wauchope, I heard a siren. It got closer and closer, and finally as with the first one it turned into our driveway. I looked at Don as if to say...
What could I say? “ Bloody Hell” I thought.
They all got together and pulled out their flat pushing shovels and heaped the fire into a smaller area so it would burn quicker. I hung back recognising those peculiar male signals of blokiness, humour and camaraderie which are very fragile and if upset could see me paying a huge council fine. Most of them almost young enough to be the same age as our kids.
“Play dumb Therese.” I thought imagining what we pair must look like, wondering what in hell they thought this poor disabled man, was doing strapped to a hose whilst his trashy and common looking wife was obviously so in control of the fire, illegally lit.
Then they were all gone. The darkness was a balm and I needed it. Don was just amused. I wonder sometimes if he is as calm as he appears to be in front of others.
I did get my shower, and my long cool drink and I deserved and savoured it. The fire smouldered for days. No summons arrived, no fine in the mail. A good nights work, and a lot of money saved.
A new Gargantuan pile of whole tree boughs, off cuts, leaves, sticks and myriad other combustibles is sitting in the centre of the yard under the tall and very combustible gum trees. It is almost winter now, but the ominous feeling I get when I consider another fire is an unmistakable feeling that grows, as the pile grows.
I’ve seen Don sitting out there in the winter sun contemplating looking dreamily at the pile.... No doubt imagining past glories. I’ve made sure there is no kerosene, and no matches, and I pray for lots of rain.
Therese. May 2001
A HYPOTHETICAL
A HYPOTHETICAL!
Here’s an idea which would make Australia a more compassionate and sensible place. I’d like to see the introduction of ‘on the job’ experience for all training doctors, nurses, social workers and advocates, politicians and bureaucrats.
I’d like to see all of them have to spend one full year, working and living in the house of a profoundly mentally disabled person, someone with severe chronic illness, or high level Quadriplegia who is bed bound by pressure areas, or person bed bound in last stage cancer or other terminal disease on their own.
This assignment would mean that they had to be in the home seven days a week, on call twenty four hours a day with only three hours allowed for respite so they could do banking, posting, and buy groceries for the household. They would be called on to contribute personally, to the cost of hiring someone to come to the house for that three hours. During this year they would be only allowed a Government allowance to live on and they would have to contribute to the upkeep of the household they were assigned to out of that...electricity, phone etc.
In this time I think they would begin to get a small idea of what ‘burnout’ really means; what isolation really means. The training doctors and nurses would learn what it means if their person is sent home from hospital with pressure sores, after they have tried so hard to keep the skin clear, in their ‘hospital of one’.
The training social workers, advocates, politicians and bureaucrats would probably give up after a week and think about a different career, as the prospect of being an unpaid carer for just one year would be too onerous, too unglamorous, too damn hard. There would be no conferencing at resorts, no meeting important dignitaries to get a better deal and more money for the disabled and carers, over bottles of bubbly and nibbly sandwiches at functions paid for by the taxpayers. Money which never trickles down through all the tiers of the “Advocacy” industry.
The car they used to enable them to use their three hours off for essential shopping would be old and always breaking down. It would not be air-conditioned as are so many government cars. Most would have to use shanks pony as the upkeep of a car would become impossible for them. This would cut into their three hours respite depending on their proximity to the CBD.
Those who survived this year and returned to their homes and careers would then do well to contemplate that most carers do what they did for one year, for a decade, decades or for some, it can be all they will know. They should consider that these carers have children, ailing parents, illness and injuries, and other serious life events, as well as being the full time carer of their loved one.
Its just an idea. It might seem radical to some; might upset the comfort zone of most and might just be too hard for training doctors, nurses, social workers, advocates, politicians and bureaucrats.
But it would begin to give some justice to the million of so full time carers who save this country well over $25billion plus a year. Were they to all withdraw all their labour this is what it would cost Australia. These are not my figures. But they would never do that because they actually love and care for the people they look after, which is something that the doctors, nurses, social workers and advocates, politicians and bureaucrats will never do.
Therese Mackay
Family Carers
Family Carers
It is clear to most Australians that we are becoming a nation weighed down by bureaucracy, government information services, call centers and paper shufflers. The result of the billions of dollars spent in these areas, is that little of the money we are told is provided for Carer Respite, Home Care, Community Nursing, actually gets through to the people who need it the most.
If you succeed to wake up a politician about a real issue of social justice or human rights, the first thing that they want to do is have an inquiry. Expensive adds are placed and submissions are called for. Then a committee has to be appointed. The committee needs an airconditioned place to meet in. They need stenographers, computers, and phones. The have to have access to catering of some sort. Months down the track, a report is released with much fanfare.
Those of us needing to access basic human rights, such as home based respite, home care; whatever, naively get copies of the reports which invariably say that we have a case, that things must be changed and that more money must be allocated. Hearts sink from past experience when as time passes, nothing changes for those at the coalface. There is no decent or adequate home based respite for the elderly looking after brain damaged adult children, nor any human right to sleep at night for those looking after those with chronic illnesses, but there is always money spent.
The Government, Federal and State are big on providing multi-levelled layers of Information servers, who after ringing a swag of 13 numbers direct you, often back to where you started. Then they let you know that there actually are no services available, because there is not enough money and there are so many needy people, but that they are very sorry and fully understand your position.
It seems to many of us that what qualifies as “needy people” are the Conference organisers, the Facilitators, the Social Workers, the useless Call centers, the editors of Government backed ‘Carer’ magazines; a seemingly endless list. This is what leaches the system dry before it comes anywhere near the actual people we are told it is put in place for.
So what to do about this shameful state of affairs. You can’t work from the inside to change things, because you are then powerless, and this happens to many who honestly seek to change things. Submissions, surveys, meeting or writing to your MP is worse than useless because it steals your precious time and usually results in an “acknowledgment” possibly but not always followed up with letters form Minister’s secretaires which do not address the actual issues raised. Like many I know this from experience, so this is not anecdotal
It is a fact that the bureaucrats have set up an infallible system that protects all levels of bureaucracy from any real changes, questions and accountability. It is also a fact that the bureaucracy is self-replicating, so that any irritation or questioning of its existence, sends it into a flurry of internal activity, which only calms down when yet another level of bureaucracy has been created, to absorb the irritation or question.
It appears that Australian Government is unable to control the monster it has created, and the monster is growing more ravenous, more out of control, and more stupid and self-serving.
And that word “self serving” is the key. As the cogs in the wheel each clock off from their various Centerlink, CarerLink, whatever other bloody link, they sincerely believe they did a good days work. They have created more surveys to fill out; more reports to be read; more useless letters of acknowledgment and placation; all ‘gently but firmly’ worded in the language that only they can understand. I don’t feel that we are meant to neither understand nor make sense, because when you do finally nut the terminology used by the bureaucrats in place, it is actually nonsense.
And just in case we are feeling low, there is a special sort of bureaucrat, called the Editor, of whatever Government funded publication we have subscribed to in a vain effort to keep up with the bag loads of Legalisation, and rules we are governed with, and for which they have lobbied so hard. A construct that they spare no amount of glossy paper and coloured print to remind us of, just in case we should start wondering what they are actually there for and how much they are costing. Along with these reminders of their dedication, are the endless editorials telling us all what wonderful people we are to endure; how much we are worth to society; how stressful and sad our lives must be and how much they really care about each and every one of us.
And do you know the really tragic thing? We believe all of their lies some of us never wake up, and that is the betrayal. Those of us who wake up become increasingly disgusted, and in our little spare time begin to contact others who are of like mind. We start to write letters first of query, then of disbelief and then of anger. We realise that nothing we say will ever penetrate the teflon coating of any of the Members of Parliament, nor of the various people between us and treasury.
I believe that this is how it is meant to be, was set up to be, and it is only when you start to test the system set in place which syphons off millions of Australian Taxpayers dollars, but which pretends, even to itself, that it is all there for our benefit, it is only then that you realise the sinking reality of how things really are.
I don’t know what the solution is. Even suggesting a solution bears the very real danger of someone setting up a committee, another arm of officialdom, complete with money wasting accoutrements.
Somehow, the money allocated specifically for those who care for loved ones (as opposed to those who are paid carers and who go home) at home for long periods, must be made available to them directly, and cut out the incredible waste and useless levels of so called ‘information’ providers. This must be in the form of regular payments for in home respite, at least six monthly breaks, and for other things only Carers know about, such as retirement homes where parents are able to be with disabled children, and not have to face separation as their own health worsens.
We are the ones who know and we are asked too often what is needed. But what is needed is never delivered. Those of us, full time Carers save the Government at least $400 a day, and depending on the level of care, this would escalate. Yet here we are out here in the community, hidden. We are the gold and glue which holds our society at a certain level of civilisation but the level of human rights we experience in this ‘generous’ country is anything but the treatment we deserve. We are given scraps, no hope and no say. We have no ‘career advancement’ to look forward to, no reason to dream. And we work hard and long hours constantly being responsible, being on call, and being able.
There are no basic human rights for us. No sixty hour week, much less a forty hour one. For most of us we are on call, or on active duty, one hundred and sixty eight hours a week, all year round, for years on end. There is no union. No workers compensation for injuries received on the ‘job’. There is no Superannuation, no holiday pay, and most of us go for years, decades like this. If our time of ‘Caring’ comes to an end generally through the death of someone we love more dearly than life itself, we emerge only qualified to clean toilets or wash floors, as nothing of out vast knowledge is valued by the ‘system’. How we survive is our own business. Most of us pace ourselves. After time it appears to others, heading off to gyms, to the movies wherever, that we appear not to want to take part in these activities – hard for them to understand. But our spare time is too precious to us to waste with others, and the experience of just being one, on call to nobody is sweet to us and we know what this is about. It is an internal thing seldom spoken about, because what is the point? But we all know what this state of affairs is.
But as a seeming contradiction it is not just the workload, but it is mental isolation, which continues even in company. We know what this means. When we have time out, we do not really want company. Most of us just like to wander, not speaking just looking about, with no one needing us to look at this or to participate in any way shape of form. We know about this.
The NSW and National Carers Associations do not ‘know’ about this. Their knowledge is second hand, and I would query how many full time and current long-term carers they have on their boards. I think that one of the big problems is their total lack of accountability, and their political correctness. It is very hard for you to question people who are supposed to be working so hard for the good of carers.
The NSW Carers Association and the National Carers Association need to be held accountable. Like many, for all the time I have been a paid up member, apart from the “Kit” and a mug one Christmas, (I know who the real mugs are) they have not produced one single thing I can say has eased my lot which has personally improved temporarily due to my husband being more stable. It was almost unbearable at times and I feel I came very close to a breakdown. What would happen then? I doubt the lot of other carers has been practically improved by them although they talk a lot about what they achieve. Where are the results?
Its not just in the area of GST and petrol prices and other very important areas that the people are throwing up their hands in frustration. If the Coalition and Labour do not hurriedly address areas such as the issue of the millions allocated for respite etc not getting through to the carers, because the triple levels of bureaucracy eat up all the funding first, then they will find a very angry electorate at the next Federal Election.
Carers need to be spoken with, especially those non-metropolitan based. They are the only ones who can voice their concerns. It is an insult to us to appoint others to speak on our behalf. Unfortunately many of us are unable to travel, due to our roles and the fact we cannot get away from home without financial disadvantage, and worry as to the care of our loved one when we are away. This is very important to consider.
Therese Mackay
It is clear to most Australians that we are becoming a nation weighed down by bureaucracy, government information services, call centers and paper shufflers. The result of the billions of dollars spent in these areas, is that little of the money we are told is provided for Carer Respite, Home Care, Community Nursing, actually gets through to the people who need it the most.
If you succeed to wake up a politician about a real issue of social justice or human rights, the first thing that they want to do is have an inquiry. Expensive adds are placed and submissions are called for. Then a committee has to be appointed. The committee needs an airconditioned place to meet in. They need stenographers, computers, and phones. The have to have access to catering of some sort. Months down the track, a report is released with much fanfare.
Those of us needing to access basic human rights, such as home based respite, home care; whatever, naively get copies of the reports which invariably say that we have a case, that things must be changed and that more money must be allocated. Hearts sink from past experience when as time passes, nothing changes for those at the coalface. There is no decent or adequate home based respite for the elderly looking after brain damaged adult children, nor any human right to sleep at night for those looking after those with chronic illnesses, but there is always money spent.
The Government, Federal and State are big on providing multi-levelled layers of Information servers, who after ringing a swag of 13 numbers direct you, often back to where you started. Then they let you know that there actually are no services available, because there is not enough money and there are so many needy people, but that they are very sorry and fully understand your position.
It seems to many of us that what qualifies as “needy people” are the Conference organisers, the Facilitators, the Social Workers, the useless Call centers, the editors of Government backed ‘Carer’ magazines; a seemingly endless list. This is what leaches the system dry before it comes anywhere near the actual people we are told it is put in place for.
So what to do about this shameful state of affairs. You can’t work from the inside to change things, because you are then powerless, and this happens to many who honestly seek to change things. Submissions, surveys, meeting or writing to your MP is worse than useless because it steals your precious time and usually results in an “acknowledgment” possibly but not always followed up with letters form Minister’s secretaires which do not address the actual issues raised. Like many I know this from experience, so this is not anecdotal
It is a fact that the bureaucrats have set up an infallible system that protects all levels of bureaucracy from any real changes, questions and accountability. It is also a fact that the bureaucracy is self-replicating, so that any irritation or questioning of its existence, sends it into a flurry of internal activity, which only calms down when yet another level of bureaucracy has been created, to absorb the irritation or question.
It appears that Australian Government is unable to control the monster it has created, and the monster is growing more ravenous, more out of control, and more stupid and self-serving.
And that word “self serving” is the key. As the cogs in the wheel each clock off from their various Centerlink, CarerLink, whatever other bloody link, they sincerely believe they did a good days work. They have created more surveys to fill out; more reports to be read; more useless letters of acknowledgment and placation; all ‘gently but firmly’ worded in the language that only they can understand. I don’t feel that we are meant to neither understand nor make sense, because when you do finally nut the terminology used by the bureaucrats in place, it is actually nonsense.
And just in case we are feeling low, there is a special sort of bureaucrat, called the Editor, of whatever Government funded publication we have subscribed to in a vain effort to keep up with the bag loads of Legalisation, and rules we are governed with, and for which they have lobbied so hard. A construct that they spare no amount of glossy paper and coloured print to remind us of, just in case we should start wondering what they are actually there for and how much they are costing. Along with these reminders of their dedication, are the endless editorials telling us all what wonderful people we are to endure; how much we are worth to society; how stressful and sad our lives must be and how much they really care about each and every one of us.
And do you know the really tragic thing? We believe all of their lies some of us never wake up, and that is the betrayal. Those of us who wake up become increasingly disgusted, and in our little spare time begin to contact others who are of like mind. We start to write letters first of query, then of disbelief and then of anger. We realise that nothing we say will ever penetrate the teflon coating of any of the Members of Parliament, nor of the various people between us and treasury.
I believe that this is how it is meant to be, was set up to be, and it is only when you start to test the system set in place which syphons off millions of Australian Taxpayers dollars, but which pretends, even to itself, that it is all there for our benefit, it is only then that you realise the sinking reality of how things really are.
I don’t know what the solution is. Even suggesting a solution bears the very real danger of someone setting up a committee, another arm of officialdom, complete with money wasting accoutrements.
Somehow, the money allocated specifically for those who care for loved ones (as opposed to those who are paid carers and who go home) at home for long periods, must be made available to them directly, and cut out the incredible waste and useless levels of so called ‘information’ providers. This must be in the form of regular payments for in home respite, at least six monthly breaks, and for other things only Carers know about, such as retirement homes where parents are able to be with disabled children, and not have to face separation as their own health worsens.
We are the ones who know and we are asked too often what is needed. But what is needed is never delivered. Those of us, full time Carers save the Government at least $400 a day, and depending on the level of care, this would escalate. Yet here we are out here in the community, hidden. We are the gold and glue which holds our society at a certain level of civilisation but the level of human rights we experience in this ‘generous’ country is anything but the treatment we deserve. We are given scraps, no hope and no say. We have no ‘career advancement’ to look forward to, no reason to dream. And we work hard and long hours constantly being responsible, being on call, and being able.
There are no basic human rights for us. No sixty hour week, much less a forty hour one. For most of us we are on call, or on active duty, one hundred and sixty eight hours a week, all year round, for years on end. There is no union. No workers compensation for injuries received on the ‘job’. There is no Superannuation, no holiday pay, and most of us go for years, decades like this. If our time of ‘Caring’ comes to an end generally through the death of someone we love more dearly than life itself, we emerge only qualified to clean toilets or wash floors, as nothing of out vast knowledge is valued by the ‘system’. How we survive is our own business. Most of us pace ourselves. After time it appears to others, heading off to gyms, to the movies wherever, that we appear not to want to take part in these activities – hard for them to understand. But our spare time is too precious to us to waste with others, and the experience of just being one, on call to nobody is sweet to us and we know what this is about. It is an internal thing seldom spoken about, because what is the point? But we all know what this state of affairs is.
But as a seeming contradiction it is not just the workload, but it is mental isolation, which continues even in company. We know what this means. When we have time out, we do not really want company. Most of us just like to wander, not speaking just looking about, with no one needing us to look at this or to participate in any way shape of form. We know about this.
The NSW and National Carers Associations do not ‘know’ about this. Their knowledge is second hand, and I would query how many full time and current long-term carers they have on their boards. I think that one of the big problems is their total lack of accountability, and their political correctness. It is very hard for you to question people who are supposed to be working so hard for the good of carers.
The NSW Carers Association and the National Carers Association need to be held accountable. Like many, for all the time I have been a paid up member, apart from the “Kit” and a mug one Christmas, (I know who the real mugs are) they have not produced one single thing I can say has eased my lot which has personally improved temporarily due to my husband being more stable. It was almost unbearable at times and I feel I came very close to a breakdown. What would happen then? I doubt the lot of other carers has been practically improved by them although they talk a lot about what they achieve. Where are the results?
Its not just in the area of GST and petrol prices and other very important areas that the people are throwing up their hands in frustration. If the Coalition and Labour do not hurriedly address areas such as the issue of the millions allocated for respite etc not getting through to the carers, because the triple levels of bureaucracy eat up all the funding first, then they will find a very angry electorate at the next Federal Election.
Carers need to be spoken with, especially those non-metropolitan based. They are the only ones who can voice their concerns. It is an insult to us to appoint others to speak on our behalf. Unfortunately many of us are unable to travel, due to our roles and the fact we cannot get away from home without financial disadvantage, and worry as to the care of our loved one when we are away. This is very important to consider.
Therese Mackay
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Letter to my children
“
5.11.04
My Dear Daughters
I’d better get to it and write some more things down. Who knows the future? Cat Stevens sang …”but I might die tonight”…many years before the United States of America deported him because of his affiliations. No one with any common sense dwells too long on that, but every now and then a little spark comes into my brain and says to me to write some more stuff and not to rely on any time that isn’t here with me now.
There is a poem or story from either Banjo Patterson or Henry Lawson, which has the words in it to “never let the sun go down on your anger” and if I have lived by any creed this is the one which I honour constantly. You two would no doubt recall when I forced you into a room to at least talk to each other, after a small fight, because I knew that a short while on you were both venturing out onto the highway going to different places. It worked. The thought of my bodily getting you each singly and pushing you into our bedroom and shutting the door on you, made you laugh. Laugh at me maybe, but laugh. And once you laughed together your anger lessened and you came out friends.
Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree on things but realise that love, be it family love or just the love we might feel for another human being we will never meet again, love is its own spirit, and it is above all the shit we go through in our days on earth.
I think sometimes if I am in town and coming through the checkout, and maybe angered by the slowness of the queue, I think about that being angry, and often the cause is not the queue itself, which is after all for people a damn good chance to be a bit sociable with each other, but I think about the cause of my anger. I know that mostly its because I have set myself, or have had set a too tight schedule to get the things done, so that any delay eats into that schedule. Its that what makes me angry, and I might curse the fact that the bank had ten windows for tellers but only two tellers working, but I try to be compassionate and friendly to those poor bloody tellers when it is my turn, because they are like me, and just caught up in it all. They are not the cause of the long queue. Just as, just because I set myself a tight schedule, why should I make the teller or the shop assistant miserable because of that?
I know sometimes if I have been a bit vulnerable, a bit down or miserable, or even when I have suffered a tragedy if someone is offhand or cruel to me it hurts even more, and it can make the day become quite dreadful. Conversely I realise that the people I deal with in my day also suffer at times, have tragedies to deal with, suffer grief, and who knows they could be just on the razor’s edge of dark depression, and just holding it together and then I give them that last little tip they didn’t need, by being nasty, or cranky. I know I wouldn’t like anyone doing that to my kids, to my husband or to an old person or a child or just anyone. I try to remember not to do this to people.
I like my privacy big time, but as my eldest sister commented on recently, I could talk underwater and about anything and have no trouble at all that way. Its easy and just flows…a bit too much at times, but I have always talked to strangers, and find often you can talk to strangers much more openly than you can to your own people. As you grow older you use a little more caution or common sense in this, so as to not overly embarrass people, (or yourself…most likely), and must respect others need for solitude on trains and busses. I almost make it a rule not to get too conversational at the beginning of a long train ride or whatever…a lesson learned a few times in the past when I found myself next to someone who talked solid for a three hour or so trip. That exhausts me, and I find I need my own solitude on trips and have the most amazing thoughts when I find myself with nothing to do.
But then again even if I almost make it a rule to do some things, I sort of live my life by the maxim “there are no rules” (unless they make sense.) The main things to really live by are “First do no harm” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “Like attracts like” but yet “opposites attract” maybe because they complement each other. Who knows?
I really think that we are born “knowing” the way to live and be. Maybe some are born with more of this insight, because of?? What?? But its there. But somehow very early on its clear some “know” and others don’t. Of those who really know they either know more and more and go that way or do the other way and let go of knowing. Or just stay stagnant and only know what they were born with. Of those who seem not to know, many continue this way and become more ignorant. Some realise they long for truth and set out to learn and grow and in time with the right learning and understanding, knowing comes to them. Others don’t care and stay stagnant.
But just because we think that maybe we have the knowing of the way, it shows our ignorance if we begin to compare ourselves with those we judge lesser in the knowing stakes. When you really know, you also know you cannot judge others because you cannot know their history, their future and their deep intention.
Oscar Wilde said, “All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.” Those of us, who look up at those stars and can see them, should be compassionate but not allow ourselves to be brought low by those who cannot see those stars. Some of them may be looking up but clouds may be covering their portion of the sky. Some may be looking up but they may be actually blind and need healing. Some are looking but do not know which direction to look in. Some are looking at their pretty feet and shoes and possessions and it will only be when they see those temporary possessions fade and decay that they realise that the “truth is indeed out there” Others love the gutter, they thrive in its muck and slime and they love it so much they try to drag us all back into it. Some only do this a little but there are those on this earth who will not be satisfied till they have us all in the gutter trapped in its gunk and unable to even remember where the stars are.
Keep away from these. Often they appear to be some of the most well educated and urbane of people and they have one thing in common, which makes them the most dangerous people on earth… as Sir Arthur Aimes said, “The passion to regulate the lives of others is deep seated in many individuals. When this is based on political expediency, it is bad, and when it is inspired by an idealism which wishes to inflict benefits on others, it can be dangerous.” These sorts of people are particularly dangerous because they often believe fanatically that the social engineering they may be involved in such as Water Fluoridation or forced Vaccination, or other seemingly benign “experiments” on humanity are actually good and even when given conclusive evidence as to the illnesses they are causing and to the effects on the thinking that illnesses bring, they become even more vehement.
Beyond these “jolly hockey sticks people” are the true dangers, those who know what they are doing is evil and continue to do it and seek to bring us all into their way of thinking.
But once you have seen those stars, even one will do, or once you have begun to look for them, knowing they are out there, the slime and gunk begins to slough away from you and you truly do become beautiful.
The light you create can be seen by those beings…be they angels or holy spirits, (all part of God) and they draw to you to hold you in their wings. It may feel like we are alone often but as long as we lean towards those little pinpoints of light in the darkness we are surrounded by others like us also waking up, and we are given help. I think that that’s what praying really is. I think it’s the longing we have inside us for the right sort of happiness, for the right sort of living, and as I have said if you hold your dream in your heart, and if your dream is light filled and honest, then somewhere, somehow the dream does become reality. Sometimes the path to the dream is hidden and turns back on itself a lot so that we feel like we are not getting anywhere, and often that we are slipping back…I am sure you know how heartbreaking this is. But it is the thing that I live by…I believe or rather I know, that there is a divine intelligence in the universe. I believe that it is benign. I also believe that we live in a universe of duality, and that bad things do happen and that we have to constantly hold that light in our hearts.
I don’t know where or what causes the sadness’s and sorrows and illnesses and tragedies, but I do know that we humans are not perfect and maybe never will be. I do know that it is because we have “free will” and can decide to do good, do evil or just not care at all, and I feel that there is a power that can tap into apathy and badness’s.
Maybe that power is its own being, maybe it is created by our thoughts, maybe being here on earth with our free will is for the learning and the striving and is part of the process of life in our universe.
I just know this. When I was a child, I had parents who truly loved me and were compassionate and understanding. I was able to play and create my own world and dream in my own way. I know also that both my parents grew up with love, given to them in the way they loved us. So therefore I feel I was such a lucky kid. How they treated me nurtured me inside my heart and allowed me to feel free enough to laugh and be real, if a bit mucky. They gave me the greatest gift, the ability to dream by leaving me be and not ordering my childhood. They did love me unconditionally.
I cannot begin to imagine who I would be had I had a different reality as a child. So therefore although I may really dislike what some people do and how they hurt others and how they think in rigid squares, it’s not my place to put myself on any higher platform and say I am better. If I do that, my light dims a little and it doesn’t matter what I dream or what I learn, it will always be dimmer until I learn a little humility.
I have learnt so much from being your mother… how to love unconditionally and to really know what that means. It doesn’t sound much but it is a major thing to understand. But if I had never had children I would have maybe had that ability to love unconditionally cut off for me and have had to concentrate in other areas. Maybe I would have found a way to love unconditionally though work or friendships, but how much easier has it been for me this way. Again I know how lucky I am.
But maybe I had a dream, as a child, or before this life. Maybe I was unable to have this dream then but I held it in my heart and some part of me remembered it. Maybe the parents I chose, who also chose their parents and the children we had who also chose us as parents, maybe there is a plan and a pattern and all that happens is part of the great plan. But I feel it is a plan that allows for us to be individuals. I feel it actually encourages us to be individuals and I believe that it is only as individuals that we retain the imagination needed to fully dream the dreams we do.
A lot of what is wrong and is pulling us back into the gutter and forcing our faces into the muck is the “hive” mentality which seems to be so entrenched these days. All a hive can construct is honey, new bees and another hive. It can grow, can become a metropolis of hives, can dance in circles and point, it can work because life is cheap, and all is sacrificed for the hive, but it will be a hive in a billion years if the world is still here.
The hive mentality lacks the spark of the divine inspiration to create changes, which are beneficial to the human soul. It doesn’t create, it appears to invent and change but the changes are still part of the rigid structure of conformity, which is essential to all hives, be they bees, wasps or humans.
Indications of a hive mentality are that life is not valued for its own sake. Women and children are debased, devalued and exploited. Men are encouraged to abuse power because they can and women learn to manipulate them so as to gain security. Humour is bland and cruel. People begin to become like drones, keeping their heads down and living vicariously through tall poppies, who are like the “corn kings” of old, adored like gods till the day they are sacrificed for the common good. The road they live on is slippery on the way up, and even slipperier on the way down.
The benign loving power of the universe needs us to be ourselves, to be individuals, to laugh ourselves to tears regularly, to sing, to be silly, to write, to move, to lie dreaming, to love, to grieve truly, to be allowed to be who we can be and so enrich our own lives and the lives of those around us, and in doing so allowing for those amazing spark and sunbursts of imagination which surge out of us at the most amazingly silly times, and which make the world more beautiful for us all to live in.
Outside my window at present, a light misty rain is falling. Droplets of water hang like small worlds from the tree close by. The small ferns and leaves bob gently, responding to a breeze I can not even feel. The birds are going crazy with joy and the world looks and is refreshed and clean.
My dream is this… I dream that you have health and happiness and love in your life. I dream that you always have enough to eat, a home to live in and clothes to keep you warm. I dream that if you like to read, you always have something to read. If you like to sing you always have a song in your heart. If you find true love you always have that true love. I dream that if you have children you will dream for them good dreams in their interest, and not because of what society would require of them. I dream that you have time to dream, time to be creative, time to be silly and beauty around you which is real beauty. I dream that we will always know and recognise each other, and that it is the love of the knowing, the knowing of the way (The “Maat”) and the light sparkles we seek that will draw us together till the end of time. I dream…and because I dream, I am. For what am I but a dream, dreamt by God to enrich the universe of his imagination and to learn and grow in the light I draw from my own quest for truth.
I have so much more to learn and understand. I dream for myself that I will always be open to new learning and that I will always recognise that distinctive resonance of truth when I seek new knowledge. I dream that the rest of this life of mine, be it days, weeks or years, will not be too sad, will have much happiness and that I will often see near me the faces of those I love. I am human enough to want and need this.
I know this. God who or whatever the divine intelligence is, has a brilliant sense of humour, a marvellous spark for the ridiculous. When I think of the words “I am not laughing at you, I am laughing with you” I like to think that that’s how it is. Not a humour that is crude and cruel and insensitive. I think of Dr Phillip Sutton, (see below) near the end of his life, after all he had done and had done to him, being as delightfully amused as a child when he became transfixed by what he thought was someone’s leg swinging from side to side in an adjacent caravan. First his puzzlement when he commented that they seemed to be keeping time to his own leg, then his high amusement when he realised he’d been watching the reflection of his own leg.
I think that God has that sort of humour and takes delight in the ridiculous things we do and the outcomes of his dreams. I also realise that you can’t really have a true sense of humour unless you have a great compassion and love of human foibles. And therein lies the truth. It’s all about compassion. Its all about kindness and pity, and understanding. Its all about humility, and gentleness and silliness and softness. Its about enabling your own free will and enabling by not being too judgemental the free will of all others within the bounds of the universal laws governing the sacredness of live.
And yes, as the song says…”but I might die tonight” but its unlikely, but in case on this earth and in this life this is the last chance I am sure of to be true to myself, then it is important to remember to dream always the good dreams for what you want.
Who knows the angels might be earwigging, and blow lightly in your eyes so you don’t always see cruelty. They might gently cover your ears so the words of others don’t hurt, just for the moment. Who knows they might, dance a silly dance across your inner eye and pull silly faces so that you just start laughing for no reason, and you feel good afterwards.
Who knows? Who really knows? They say, “Pigs might fly, well maybe. But Angels certainly do fly and they carry our dreams, and hold them safe for us and nurture them till we are able to step into the dream and live in its reality.
Life is sacred, and we may choose to live life sacredly, and with grace, or we can become mechanised hive dwellers and work just for the hive, never raising our heads nor daring to dream for fear of attack from the rest of the hive.
Hold always the dream in your heart and know it will happen… but not in our time frame…it will happen when it is best for us that it does. A forced birth of a dream always causes chaos.
Just some things which came to me today that I thought I’d like to share with you two, if you got this far!!
Love Mum
5.11.04
My Dear Daughters
I’d better get to it and write some more things down. Who knows the future? Cat Stevens sang …”but I might die tonight”…many years before the United States of America deported him because of his affiliations. No one with any common sense dwells too long on that, but every now and then a little spark comes into my brain and says to me to write some more stuff and not to rely on any time that isn’t here with me now.
There is a poem or story from either Banjo Patterson or Henry Lawson, which has the words in it to “never let the sun go down on your anger” and if I have lived by any creed this is the one which I honour constantly. You two would no doubt recall when I forced you into a room to at least talk to each other, after a small fight, because I knew that a short while on you were both venturing out onto the highway going to different places. It worked. The thought of my bodily getting you each singly and pushing you into our bedroom and shutting the door on you, made you laugh. Laugh at me maybe, but laugh. And once you laughed together your anger lessened and you came out friends.
Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree on things but realise that love, be it family love or just the love we might feel for another human being we will never meet again, love is its own spirit, and it is above all the shit we go through in our days on earth.
I think sometimes if I am in town and coming through the checkout, and maybe angered by the slowness of the queue, I think about that being angry, and often the cause is not the queue itself, which is after all for people a damn good chance to be a bit sociable with each other, but I think about the cause of my anger. I know that mostly its because I have set myself, or have had set a too tight schedule to get the things done, so that any delay eats into that schedule. Its that what makes me angry, and I might curse the fact that the bank had ten windows for tellers but only two tellers working, but I try to be compassionate and friendly to those poor bloody tellers when it is my turn, because they are like me, and just caught up in it all. They are not the cause of the long queue. Just as, just because I set myself a tight schedule, why should I make the teller or the shop assistant miserable because of that?
I know sometimes if I have been a bit vulnerable, a bit down or miserable, or even when I have suffered a tragedy if someone is offhand or cruel to me it hurts even more, and it can make the day become quite dreadful. Conversely I realise that the people I deal with in my day also suffer at times, have tragedies to deal with, suffer grief, and who knows they could be just on the razor’s edge of dark depression, and just holding it together and then I give them that last little tip they didn’t need, by being nasty, or cranky. I know I wouldn’t like anyone doing that to my kids, to my husband or to an old person or a child or just anyone. I try to remember not to do this to people.
I like my privacy big time, but as my eldest sister commented on recently, I could talk underwater and about anything and have no trouble at all that way. Its easy and just flows…a bit too much at times, but I have always talked to strangers, and find often you can talk to strangers much more openly than you can to your own people. As you grow older you use a little more caution or common sense in this, so as to not overly embarrass people, (or yourself…most likely), and must respect others need for solitude on trains and busses. I almost make it a rule not to get too conversational at the beginning of a long train ride or whatever…a lesson learned a few times in the past when I found myself next to someone who talked solid for a three hour or so trip. That exhausts me, and I find I need my own solitude on trips and have the most amazing thoughts when I find myself with nothing to do.
But then again even if I almost make it a rule to do some things, I sort of live my life by the maxim “there are no rules” (unless they make sense.) The main things to really live by are “First do no harm” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “Like attracts like” but yet “opposites attract” maybe because they complement each other. Who knows?
I really think that we are born “knowing” the way to live and be. Maybe some are born with more of this insight, because of?? What?? But its there. But somehow very early on its clear some “know” and others don’t. Of those who really know they either know more and more and go that way or do the other way and let go of knowing. Or just stay stagnant and only know what they were born with. Of those who seem not to know, many continue this way and become more ignorant. Some realise they long for truth and set out to learn and grow and in time with the right learning and understanding, knowing comes to them. Others don’t care and stay stagnant.
But just because we think that maybe we have the knowing of the way, it shows our ignorance if we begin to compare ourselves with those we judge lesser in the knowing stakes. When you really know, you also know you cannot judge others because you cannot know their history, their future and their deep intention.
Oscar Wilde said, “All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.” Those of us, who look up at those stars and can see them, should be compassionate but not allow ourselves to be brought low by those who cannot see those stars. Some of them may be looking up but clouds may be covering their portion of the sky. Some may be looking up but they may be actually blind and need healing. Some are looking but do not know which direction to look in. Some are looking at their pretty feet and shoes and possessions and it will only be when they see those temporary possessions fade and decay that they realise that the “truth is indeed out there” Others love the gutter, they thrive in its muck and slime and they love it so much they try to drag us all back into it. Some only do this a little but there are those on this earth who will not be satisfied till they have us all in the gutter trapped in its gunk and unable to even remember where the stars are.
Keep away from these. Often they appear to be some of the most well educated and urbane of people and they have one thing in common, which makes them the most dangerous people on earth… as Sir Arthur Aimes said, “The passion to regulate the lives of others is deep seated in many individuals. When this is based on political expediency, it is bad, and when it is inspired by an idealism which wishes to inflict benefits on others, it can be dangerous.” These sorts of people are particularly dangerous because they often believe fanatically that the social engineering they may be involved in such as Water Fluoridation or forced Vaccination, or other seemingly benign “experiments” on humanity are actually good and even when given conclusive evidence as to the illnesses they are causing and to the effects on the thinking that illnesses bring, they become even more vehement.
Beyond these “jolly hockey sticks people” are the true dangers, those who know what they are doing is evil and continue to do it and seek to bring us all into their way of thinking.
But once you have seen those stars, even one will do, or once you have begun to look for them, knowing they are out there, the slime and gunk begins to slough away from you and you truly do become beautiful.
The light you create can be seen by those beings…be they angels or holy spirits, (all part of God) and they draw to you to hold you in their wings. It may feel like we are alone often but as long as we lean towards those little pinpoints of light in the darkness we are surrounded by others like us also waking up, and we are given help. I think that that’s what praying really is. I think it’s the longing we have inside us for the right sort of happiness, for the right sort of living, and as I have said if you hold your dream in your heart, and if your dream is light filled and honest, then somewhere, somehow the dream does become reality. Sometimes the path to the dream is hidden and turns back on itself a lot so that we feel like we are not getting anywhere, and often that we are slipping back…I am sure you know how heartbreaking this is. But it is the thing that I live by…I believe or rather I know, that there is a divine intelligence in the universe. I believe that it is benign. I also believe that we live in a universe of duality, and that bad things do happen and that we have to constantly hold that light in our hearts.
I don’t know where or what causes the sadness’s and sorrows and illnesses and tragedies, but I do know that we humans are not perfect and maybe never will be. I do know that it is because we have “free will” and can decide to do good, do evil or just not care at all, and I feel that there is a power that can tap into apathy and badness’s.
Maybe that power is its own being, maybe it is created by our thoughts, maybe being here on earth with our free will is for the learning and the striving and is part of the process of life in our universe.
I just know this. When I was a child, I had parents who truly loved me and were compassionate and understanding. I was able to play and create my own world and dream in my own way. I know also that both my parents grew up with love, given to them in the way they loved us. So therefore I feel I was such a lucky kid. How they treated me nurtured me inside my heart and allowed me to feel free enough to laugh and be real, if a bit mucky. They gave me the greatest gift, the ability to dream by leaving me be and not ordering my childhood. They did love me unconditionally.
I cannot begin to imagine who I would be had I had a different reality as a child. So therefore although I may really dislike what some people do and how they hurt others and how they think in rigid squares, it’s not my place to put myself on any higher platform and say I am better. If I do that, my light dims a little and it doesn’t matter what I dream or what I learn, it will always be dimmer until I learn a little humility.
I have learnt so much from being your mother… how to love unconditionally and to really know what that means. It doesn’t sound much but it is a major thing to understand. But if I had never had children I would have maybe had that ability to love unconditionally cut off for me and have had to concentrate in other areas. Maybe I would have found a way to love unconditionally though work or friendships, but how much easier has it been for me this way. Again I know how lucky I am.
But maybe I had a dream, as a child, or before this life. Maybe I was unable to have this dream then but I held it in my heart and some part of me remembered it. Maybe the parents I chose, who also chose their parents and the children we had who also chose us as parents, maybe there is a plan and a pattern and all that happens is part of the great plan. But I feel it is a plan that allows for us to be individuals. I feel it actually encourages us to be individuals and I believe that it is only as individuals that we retain the imagination needed to fully dream the dreams we do.
A lot of what is wrong and is pulling us back into the gutter and forcing our faces into the muck is the “hive” mentality which seems to be so entrenched these days. All a hive can construct is honey, new bees and another hive. It can grow, can become a metropolis of hives, can dance in circles and point, it can work because life is cheap, and all is sacrificed for the hive, but it will be a hive in a billion years if the world is still here.
The hive mentality lacks the spark of the divine inspiration to create changes, which are beneficial to the human soul. It doesn’t create, it appears to invent and change but the changes are still part of the rigid structure of conformity, which is essential to all hives, be they bees, wasps or humans.
Indications of a hive mentality are that life is not valued for its own sake. Women and children are debased, devalued and exploited. Men are encouraged to abuse power because they can and women learn to manipulate them so as to gain security. Humour is bland and cruel. People begin to become like drones, keeping their heads down and living vicariously through tall poppies, who are like the “corn kings” of old, adored like gods till the day they are sacrificed for the common good. The road they live on is slippery on the way up, and even slipperier on the way down.
The benign loving power of the universe needs us to be ourselves, to be individuals, to laugh ourselves to tears regularly, to sing, to be silly, to write, to move, to lie dreaming, to love, to grieve truly, to be allowed to be who we can be and so enrich our own lives and the lives of those around us, and in doing so allowing for those amazing spark and sunbursts of imagination which surge out of us at the most amazingly silly times, and which make the world more beautiful for us all to live in.
Outside my window at present, a light misty rain is falling. Droplets of water hang like small worlds from the tree close by. The small ferns and leaves bob gently, responding to a breeze I can not even feel. The birds are going crazy with joy and the world looks and is refreshed and clean.
My dream is this… I dream that you have health and happiness and love in your life. I dream that you always have enough to eat, a home to live in and clothes to keep you warm. I dream that if you like to read, you always have something to read. If you like to sing you always have a song in your heart. If you find true love you always have that true love. I dream that if you have children you will dream for them good dreams in their interest, and not because of what society would require of them. I dream that you have time to dream, time to be creative, time to be silly and beauty around you which is real beauty. I dream that we will always know and recognise each other, and that it is the love of the knowing, the knowing of the way (The “Maat”) and the light sparkles we seek that will draw us together till the end of time. I dream…and because I dream, I am. For what am I but a dream, dreamt by God to enrich the universe of his imagination and to learn and grow in the light I draw from my own quest for truth.
I have so much more to learn and understand. I dream for myself that I will always be open to new learning and that I will always recognise that distinctive resonance of truth when I seek new knowledge. I dream that the rest of this life of mine, be it days, weeks or years, will not be too sad, will have much happiness and that I will often see near me the faces of those I love. I am human enough to want and need this.
I know this. God who or whatever the divine intelligence is, has a brilliant sense of humour, a marvellous spark for the ridiculous. When I think of the words “I am not laughing at you, I am laughing with you” I like to think that that’s how it is. Not a humour that is crude and cruel and insensitive. I think of Dr Phillip Sutton, (see below) near the end of his life, after all he had done and had done to him, being as delightfully amused as a child when he became transfixed by what he thought was someone’s leg swinging from side to side in an adjacent caravan. First his puzzlement when he commented that they seemed to be keeping time to his own leg, then his high amusement when he realised he’d been watching the reflection of his own leg.
I think that God has that sort of humour and takes delight in the ridiculous things we do and the outcomes of his dreams. I also realise that you can’t really have a true sense of humour unless you have a great compassion and love of human foibles. And therein lies the truth. It’s all about compassion. Its all about kindness and pity, and understanding. Its all about humility, and gentleness and silliness and softness. Its about enabling your own free will and enabling by not being too judgemental the free will of all others within the bounds of the universal laws governing the sacredness of live.
And yes, as the song says…”but I might die tonight” but its unlikely, but in case on this earth and in this life this is the last chance I am sure of to be true to myself, then it is important to remember to dream always the good dreams for what you want.
Who knows the angels might be earwigging, and blow lightly in your eyes so you don’t always see cruelty. They might gently cover your ears so the words of others don’t hurt, just for the moment. Who knows they might, dance a silly dance across your inner eye and pull silly faces so that you just start laughing for no reason, and you feel good afterwards.
Who knows? Who really knows? They say, “Pigs might fly, well maybe. But Angels certainly do fly and they carry our dreams, and hold them safe for us and nurture them till we are able to step into the dream and live in its reality.
Life is sacred, and we may choose to live life sacredly, and with grace, or we can become mechanised hive dwellers and work just for the hive, never raising our heads nor daring to dream for fear of attack from the rest of the hive.
Hold always the dream in your heart and know it will happen… but not in our time frame…it will happen when it is best for us that it does. A forced birth of a dream always causes chaos.
Just some things which came to me today that I thought I’d like to share with you two, if you got this far!!
Love Mum
Vera
Vera.
Does the music played by my Grandmother still circle old Earth; dissipating with time to become part of the hum I still hear when I lie in peace on the verandah? Do the gentle inland autumn days in the mountains still breathe in her music, drifting through windows long since submerged under water? Do the soft, frost-rimmed stars still resonate with the joy of her youth, her dreams and her love, as she sits softly stroking the notes into life eternal?
To have known her; to have seen into her eyes; to have this memory of her to give to my daughters; would it make my life richer and theirs? I think so.
My own Mother when alive remembered so little of the young mother who, generations ago, bent over the toddler and said, to "Put your shoes on Margaret, my dear!" That’s all her words recorded. But there's the music, handwritten in books, whose delicate language sings to my ear, of a soul for whom beauty was much more important than waxing the floor, and sifting the flour.
Now I have no doubt she did these things, in the high heat of summer, I have no doubt she cleaned chamber pots, broke horses, killed and then stuffed dead chooks with her hands. But there is no doubt in me that when her heart was stirring, those same hands stroked the music that still hums in my head.
How different as she than I and my sisters and daughters? A few years and time are all that separate us all? Would we, could we have been friends in a time that is nowhere on earth? Is there so much between us that would make us seem strangers? My Mother, her daughter. My daughters, her shoot into the future, where her music will still circle the globe of our living Her sense of beauty still pulls us in complete understanding.
The fey-faced bride with her large eyes still looks out of her youth at me from browning photos, and fading dreams of my Mother. The stories I gleaned from my Mother and Aunty see my Grandmother still young and moving like perfume through my own aging life. And yet she is older than this century and those still living around me. How much of her lives in me, in mine and on into the future? Where does she live now?
In the dear eyes of my Mother, my daughters and my sisters, she lives in the beauty, the fun and the laughter. She lives in the twinkle, the eyeshine and the surprise. She lives in the wind, and the sky and the starlight. Those who have loved, and been loved are never lost to old earth. Somewhere she lurks, still childlike, behind doors. Poking her tongue out at the years that are weighing the rest of us down. But I’d have rather I had known her, and she having the life with us.
There is music in the hum I hear in the autumn air. It sounds like bells on water, on sunlight in cool places - up high in the mountains. Its there in the night stars, its there by the fire. Its there inside my heart, the music played by my Grandmother, Vera.
Therese
Does the music played by my Grandmother still circle old Earth; dissipating with time to become part of the hum I still hear when I lie in peace on the verandah? Do the gentle inland autumn days in the mountains still breathe in her music, drifting through windows long since submerged under water? Do the soft, frost-rimmed stars still resonate with the joy of her youth, her dreams and her love, as she sits softly stroking the notes into life eternal?
To have known her; to have seen into her eyes; to have this memory of her to give to my daughters; would it make my life richer and theirs? I think so.
My own Mother when alive remembered so little of the young mother who, generations ago, bent over the toddler and said, to "Put your shoes on Margaret, my dear!" That’s all her words recorded. But there's the music, handwritten in books, whose delicate language sings to my ear, of a soul for whom beauty was much more important than waxing the floor, and sifting the flour.
Now I have no doubt she did these things, in the high heat of summer, I have no doubt she cleaned chamber pots, broke horses, killed and then stuffed dead chooks with her hands. But there is no doubt in me that when her heart was stirring, those same hands stroked the music that still hums in my head.
How different as she than I and my sisters and daughters? A few years and time are all that separate us all? Would we, could we have been friends in a time that is nowhere on earth? Is there so much between us that would make us seem strangers? My Mother, her daughter. My daughters, her shoot into the future, where her music will still circle the globe of our living Her sense of beauty still pulls us in complete understanding.
The fey-faced bride with her large eyes still looks out of her youth at me from browning photos, and fading dreams of my Mother. The stories I gleaned from my Mother and Aunty see my Grandmother still young and moving like perfume through my own aging life. And yet she is older than this century and those still living around me. How much of her lives in me, in mine and on into the future? Where does she live now?
In the dear eyes of my Mother, my daughters and my sisters, she lives in the beauty, the fun and the laughter. She lives in the twinkle, the eyeshine and the surprise. She lives in the wind, and the sky and the starlight. Those who have loved, and been loved are never lost to old earth. Somewhere she lurks, still childlike, behind doors. Poking her tongue out at the years that are weighing the rest of us down. But I’d have rather I had known her, and she having the life with us.
There is music in the hum I hear in the autumn air. It sounds like bells on water, on sunlight in cool places - up high in the mountains. Its there in the night stars, its there by the fire. Its there inside my heart, the music played by my Grandmother, Vera.
Therese
Monday, October 24, 2005
Voices in the Dark
Voices in the Dark.
There are voices in the dark. Voices murmuring low in the privacy of the front seat. I am held in my childish rapture by the soothing, rocking sway of the old pale green Chevrolet truck. Sometimes in my memory I am riding inside the large cab, across the back behind my parents’ heads. In other memories, I am older and am sitting in the open back of the utility, with my two elder sisters.
My face is always facing the cold air; exhilarated by its sharpness and smells. Often I am drawn inside the stars, which are strewn across the black, velvet sky. My father whistles sweetly, Danny Boy and others and my ear still hears that harmony from so long ago. I believe I would recognise his whistle before the sound of his voice, which I seem to have forgotten, although I’m not sure. How could I know?
All feels so safe and known. So right. In the Chevrolet, I always drift into sleep with these gentle sounds, smells and sights lapping about me. I will be carried in to bed in ‘sibling-tandem’ by my father and I’ll wake in the bed I share with my sister who endures stoically being made sopping wet by me for quite some years. I will pad quickly over a bedroom floor covered in wriggling snakes to the safety of my mother up the hall.
I never even consider her tiredness and she is never angry with me, nor even impatient. She and dad can always be relied on for sympathy and I am never sent back to my bed once I am dry. I am pulled into the hollow places of her shoulder or elbow and arms are wrapped around me; probably a mixture of her love and so I don’t fall out.
This routine is only upset if some other sister, sleeping more lightly than me, beats me to this privileged position. Then, if I’m lucky I can snuggle into the massive muscled arms of my very tolerant father, and if I’m unlucky I may have to resign myself to the bottom of the family bed and curl my small self around the many feet I encounter there.
No one is ever ejected from mum and dad’s bed unless they fall out for lack of space. Mum and dad’s bed is such a lovely place. It’s the place I will go to when I am sick with Pneumonia and I will lay in its comfort for days and listen to my own breathing sounding as if it is coming from a high corner of the room.
My beloved cat Mandy will give birth to her four babies on the train of mum’s wedding dress, in the wardrobe, and I will let her because it seems such a right place for such an amazing event to take place. Mum does get a bit upset at this but as I am very sick and pretend to be even sicker when she comes in, not much happens at this but that she will move… very gently… mother and babies to another spot.
The birth stains never did wash out.
My cat was named after Mandy Rice Davis, who my barely teenage sister Veronica thinks is pretty avant-garde, due to her adventures with a certain British politician in the early 1960’s. One of those kittens is named after Christine Kelleher, Mandy’s accomplice in scandal, much to mum’s ‘semi-shock’ – a state she would go into if she thought other adults would expect it of her. She is less like them and more like we will become than anyone would ever have dreamt, in that long ago time.
What a barren landscape of narrowness it is that my parents must appear to conform to outside the old Chevrolet. No wonder they murmur like lovers as we children drift and doze. No doubt they have even sweeter memories of the slow drive home from the magic place we have just come from, outside of time.
Where are the mother and father now? Where are those solid arms that held and did and loved? Where are the voices in the dark, the soft laughter and pure, sweet whistled tunes, I still hear from time to time?
And me now, my hair is showing grey streaks; my daughters almost as old as my own mother I was in the earliest memories. I have been blessed to be married to a man who’s only complaint about kids in the bed has been that his arm was numb from bracing it against the wall so he didn’t fall out of bed for lack of space.
We who filled up the back and front of the old truck, have we let our own children into the hollows of our arms; held them in the night against their fears; let them nestle wherever they could find a warm and safe spot near us; protected against the snakes on the bedroom floor?
Oh! But I was lucky in the draw of life. To have had parents who were compassionate to a small child’s fears and failings. To choose a husband so like my father who did not really mind the small beings and damp nappies in the bed; who did not complain about the noises of the babies feeding in the darkness.
How many mothers have given way to ‘child-men’ who are jealous of children sleeping where they would sleep; who resent their own children and are territorial about the parental bed? How many bicker nastily in the darkness of the front seat of the car, making the children sit rigid with fear and glad when the trip is over? Children, who will never invade the feared territory of their parents’ bed, no matter the terrors of the night.
As for me, sometimes I wish the trips were still happening. I wish that I was still snuggled with my sisters in the back of the old truck looking out at the stars. There are times when I wish was able to pad up the hall into the family bed and be received as a loved child. And because I do wish and recall these times, I can write this for my own daughters who may one day be mothers themselves. I can pass the magic of my parents on to them to hold them; to protect them against the “fashions” to come; against the political correctness that is sure to interfere with the way they raise their children…and not for the better.
My mum and dad read no child raising books. They played it as it came and they got it right. They got it right because they were good people filled with wonder and love for each other. They loved us unconditionally and each goal that we achieved, small or large was remarked upon around the tea table.
But I feel that we were never discussed in the front seat of the old truck, in the dark. Their murmuring was too low; too frivolous; too full of sparkles and musical cadences.
Maybe they drove an extra mile or two to make sure we really were all asleep. Maybe that’s what all the murmuring and laughter and whistling was all about.
Somehow I like to think it was.
So long ago now, those voices in the dark.
Therese Mackay.
There are voices in the dark. Voices murmuring low in the privacy of the front seat. I am held in my childish rapture by the soothing, rocking sway of the old pale green Chevrolet truck. Sometimes in my memory I am riding inside the large cab, across the back behind my parents’ heads. In other memories, I am older and am sitting in the open back of the utility, with my two elder sisters.
My face is always facing the cold air; exhilarated by its sharpness and smells. Often I am drawn inside the stars, which are strewn across the black, velvet sky. My father whistles sweetly, Danny Boy and others and my ear still hears that harmony from so long ago. I believe I would recognise his whistle before the sound of his voice, which I seem to have forgotten, although I’m not sure. How could I know?
All feels so safe and known. So right. In the Chevrolet, I always drift into sleep with these gentle sounds, smells and sights lapping about me. I will be carried in to bed in ‘sibling-tandem’ by my father and I’ll wake in the bed I share with my sister who endures stoically being made sopping wet by me for quite some years. I will pad quickly over a bedroom floor covered in wriggling snakes to the safety of my mother up the hall.
I never even consider her tiredness and she is never angry with me, nor even impatient. She and dad can always be relied on for sympathy and I am never sent back to my bed once I am dry. I am pulled into the hollow places of her shoulder or elbow and arms are wrapped around me; probably a mixture of her love and so I don’t fall out.
This routine is only upset if some other sister, sleeping more lightly than me, beats me to this privileged position. Then, if I’m lucky I can snuggle into the massive muscled arms of my very tolerant father, and if I’m unlucky I may have to resign myself to the bottom of the family bed and curl my small self around the many feet I encounter there.
No one is ever ejected from mum and dad’s bed unless they fall out for lack of space. Mum and dad’s bed is such a lovely place. It’s the place I will go to when I am sick with Pneumonia and I will lay in its comfort for days and listen to my own breathing sounding as if it is coming from a high corner of the room.
My beloved cat Mandy will give birth to her four babies on the train of mum’s wedding dress, in the wardrobe, and I will let her because it seems such a right place for such an amazing event to take place. Mum does get a bit upset at this but as I am very sick and pretend to be even sicker when she comes in, not much happens at this but that she will move… very gently… mother and babies to another spot.
The birth stains never did wash out.
My cat was named after Mandy Rice Davis, who my barely teenage sister Veronica thinks is pretty avant-garde, due to her adventures with a certain British politician in the early 1960’s. One of those kittens is named after Christine Kelleher, Mandy’s accomplice in scandal, much to mum’s ‘semi-shock’ – a state she would go into if she thought other adults would expect it of her. She is less like them and more like we will become than anyone would ever have dreamt, in that long ago time.
What a barren landscape of narrowness it is that my parents must appear to conform to outside the old Chevrolet. No wonder they murmur like lovers as we children drift and doze. No doubt they have even sweeter memories of the slow drive home from the magic place we have just come from, outside of time.
Where are the mother and father now? Where are those solid arms that held and did and loved? Where are the voices in the dark, the soft laughter and pure, sweet whistled tunes, I still hear from time to time?
And me now, my hair is showing grey streaks; my daughters almost as old as my own mother I was in the earliest memories. I have been blessed to be married to a man who’s only complaint about kids in the bed has been that his arm was numb from bracing it against the wall so he didn’t fall out of bed for lack of space.
We who filled up the back and front of the old truck, have we let our own children into the hollows of our arms; held them in the night against their fears; let them nestle wherever they could find a warm and safe spot near us; protected against the snakes on the bedroom floor?
Oh! But I was lucky in the draw of life. To have had parents who were compassionate to a small child’s fears and failings. To choose a husband so like my father who did not really mind the small beings and damp nappies in the bed; who did not complain about the noises of the babies feeding in the darkness.
How many mothers have given way to ‘child-men’ who are jealous of children sleeping where they would sleep; who resent their own children and are territorial about the parental bed? How many bicker nastily in the darkness of the front seat of the car, making the children sit rigid with fear and glad when the trip is over? Children, who will never invade the feared territory of their parents’ bed, no matter the terrors of the night.
As for me, sometimes I wish the trips were still happening. I wish that I was still snuggled with my sisters in the back of the old truck looking out at the stars. There are times when I wish was able to pad up the hall into the family bed and be received as a loved child. And because I do wish and recall these times, I can write this for my own daughters who may one day be mothers themselves. I can pass the magic of my parents on to them to hold them; to protect them against the “fashions” to come; against the political correctness that is sure to interfere with the way they raise their children…and not for the better.
My mum and dad read no child raising books. They played it as it came and they got it right. They got it right because they were good people filled with wonder and love for each other. They loved us unconditionally and each goal that we achieved, small or large was remarked upon around the tea table.
But I feel that we were never discussed in the front seat of the old truck, in the dark. Their murmuring was too low; too frivolous; too full of sparkles and musical cadences.
Maybe they drove an extra mile or two to make sure we really were all asleep. Maybe that’s what all the murmuring and laughter and whistling was all about.
Somehow I like to think it was.
So long ago now, those voices in the dark.
Therese Mackay.
Its Not Right
Its Not Right.
Late summer breezes sift gently on this dozy afternoon. I am not me, but feel just above myself, a bit apart. The chest is tight. A small child says.
“It’s not right.”
The chest is always painful. It feels like a brown stone has lodged down low, deep left. So many bouts of Pneumonia; my Achilles heel when I was young.
The child in early morning sunlight looks frankly at her world,
“It’s not right.”
The breath indrawn hurts, the out breath gives relief. Precious oxygen from the Sun’s processes gives life to the world around me. The child is there with her crazy hair and sleep encrusted eyes,
“It’s not right.”
The games the child learned to play, to survive; to be acceptable; all necessary… enable her to understand the simple but complex nature of her own inner child who never really learned to play that tactful game.
“It’s not right.” Uncompromising but honest to the core and pure. Paying the price of not bending with the wind as we must between birth and dust in order that we all can bear to live together.
The child looks at me straight – from a past that still spins the earth. She is a dear child, so hard the road she trod, in baby boomer days till she learned to compromise, change what she could and hopefully throw the rest to the wind, accepting her limitations.
I see myself so clearly; the eye shine; the small white face and scruffy white hair, standing wet footed in the early morning, rising as the Sun and just as light…no regrets at all.
“It’s not right.” Mr. Andrew Peacock said and then went right back to the game himself.
Therese Mackay Feb 2004
Bread Swimming and Cats
Bread, Swimming and Cats.
There are three things I particularly liked when I was a kid, and somehow I’ve managed to pick them all.
I loved white bread; warm and fresh from the Baker’s. Square loaves. Not Tank Top. If I could resist the terrible temptation to dig my grubby small fingers into a corner of the crust and pull bits out, to roll them hard in my palms so they looked a bit like Holy Communion, if a bit grey, I would use our bread cutter to cut off thick slices – never thin frail transparent ones “Water cress any one?” Bolshoi! Hunks lavishly covered with real butter and peanut butter. Now that was heaven, if a cheapie heaven at that.
Mum was never terribly pleased if I ripped out little hidden holes in the bread. It played havoc when she needed to cut slices for lunches and for Tea. But you know what they say about forbidden fruit, and sometimes the flesh is very weak.
After swimming all day in summer - no coming home for lunch in those days, I would arrive home, starving, exhausted and sunburnt, there was nothing I liked more than a thick slice of fresh white bread (no brown in those days) butter and peanut butter…crunchy peanut butter, with the oil floating on top. No emulsufyers in the peanut butter then. No preservatives nor sugar in the bread either. That lovely fresh bread would be very stale the next day and was only good for one day, and then it was toast. How much things have changed.
I loved swimming. I loved swimming. I loved swimming. It only took me a few days to learn. Eyes open, I mastered the Dead Man’s Float, then Dog Paddle, then Breast Stroke, Freestyle, Side Stroke and Breast Stroke in that first season. Not all that keen on Butterfly…I mean what would you need to learn that for?
I was like a bloody fish that first summer. Water was my element and I was never afraid of it. But then I am an Aquarian.
My sisters Veronica and June, could both run swiftly something I was never great at doing, but I could swim. I was totally confused that they not only couldn’t swim straight, but had their eyes shut and would come up for air whilst swimming rather than swimming and breathing at the same time. It seemed incomprehensible that they could not do it.
The nuns had a swimming pool, which was donated by the parents of the Boarders. I think it was about a third the size of the Olympic pools that every country town had in the 1960’s and was proud to have.
During the long summer holidays it was intensely hot and the Hunter River sometimes hardly ran at all and then so shallow that you couldn’t really swim in it. The nuns allowed us day pupils to swim all day in the pool as long as we did about fifteen minutes of sweeping or cleaning for them. This was a great practice and a good deal because no one of our parents had the money to pay out threepence or sixpence daily for all their kids to go swimming, and the nuns got the dormitories and verandahs cleaned, by all of us eager beavers who worked faster so we could go for a swim.
By February, I was dark brown, my scruffy hair bleached blonde by the sun and the copious amounts of Chlorine needed to combat the dirty little bastards who wee’d in the pool. Mostly boys of course. We girls never did that. Noooo!
At about nine am I would get in that pool and swim lap after lap after lap. I would feel like I could go forever, and felt invincible, and sometimes had to be stopped. Then we would play games we organised ourselves. No one really supervised. No one ever drowned or was injured and we had great fun.
But every single season by about February I would develop dreadful ear infections from the water and bugs I guess. I would wake up wailing with the pain which was incredible and spend the time till Mum could organise a doctor’s visit with my head under a pillow which I would wrap around my head and hold firm in a vain attempt to ease the agony.
No more swimming for me that season always seemed to be the verdict. The swimming carnivals would be held and so often I would just have to watch from the sidelines. A good friend at school Margo Hudson always beat me. It was a friendly thing and good to have someone a bit better than me as it kept me striving to improve. I never did beat her. Margo has since died and I am happy for her for all her victories, as she well deserved them. She had such a good nature it was always a pleasure to be second.
Her dad was one of the most generous men we knew. He was the publican in the bottom hotel and every morning in the summer holidays for some years he would drive a whole car load of us up to the big Olympic pool in Scone so we could all practice in the pool in set lanes. Her dad didn’t have to do this, he did it because he was an open hearted person who knew how limited we all were financially.
I had one bout with sunstroke from spending so long outside in the summer sun and I have never forgotten the blinding headache it bought. I lay there shivering for hours cold as death with the top of my head feeling ready to blow off. I drifted into a kind of sleep which was more like unconsciousness and delirium, and that’s about all I recall apart from violent bouts of vomiting.
Not even that had any effect on my love of the water and sun.
One day I came home from the river shivering. It had been an exceptionally hot day and we all headed for the river at the bottom end of town. Then an abrupt change blew in with cold winds and rain. I arrived home feeling delirious and hot, and spent the afternoon on the lounge room floor covered in blankets and on some other planet. I developed Pneumonia, although I believed it was caused at the time by the change, Mum also developed Pneumonia at the same time and we were both ill together in Hospital, so I think it might have been a virus.
That summer was spent in Hospital.
With all of that it was a golden time for me. I realise now that it was a time before I became, was made, allowed myself to be made aware of my female body, and all the flaws that seemed to bring which were so often and freely pointed out by older women mainly.
Forgive me if I gag the next time I hear some vicious, vacuous painted and perfumed old diddy skite about her tiny waist when she was eighteen. Please excuse my need to be violent towards such faded old bits of flotsam when they prattle on about their dainty femininity, preening; stupidly unaware that their rude comments like “Oh! But aren’t you becoming a nice big plump girl then” or from rude to crude, these delicate wilting flowers declare, “You’re putting on the beef my girl” and going on to make some useless comparison to how little the women were in their family and how come you have such big feet.
Or “No one had such big breasts in our family...I know you’re only twelve but don’t you think you should be wearing a bra?”
As the years ten to fifteen pass, what little self esteem and confidence and naturalness you have managed to hang on to is fragile and only needs some ugly, dirty, stupid teenage boy’s dubious observations to have you donning big cardigans and jumpers well into summer to hide what must be ugly, so ugly that its grotesque.
Yes, there was a golden time when you were praised for your swimming only and not criticised because you overfilled your cossies and they grew too small. That was the time before you grew breasts and hips. That was the time when you looked like a pretty boy and not a woman. Once you began to look like a woman, people seemed to take it upon themselves to make comments about your shape, size, and clothing. You seemed to become public property for fools.
“Oh! Mrs Spencer” mum was told loudly by Sister Borgia “her swimmers are way too small. Are you sure you can’t buy her a new pair?” I would have swum in a Hessian sack if they let me, not to see mum so embarrassed. I knew we couldn’t afford any extras, there were too many of us for that…swimmers were what you were given as a gift at Christmas…not just dished out because they were a bit snug in places. “
Did it all really matter you old bitch of a nun?”
I think I’ve hit that golden time again as I drift into my fifties.
I just am. Take it or leave it. I recognise the damage done, but overcome for me but sadly not for others and still being done by silly old twits who’ve left what little brain they still possess on their pillows.
Sometimes, now, I feel invisible, but not in a pathetic self pitying way. When you walk down the street with two pretty adult daughters you are invisible and aware of it but you also see so much more because you begin to learn to cease to see yourself physically…and that’s a good thing. You become like the ten year old girl before the world hits her up with all its destructive sexist crap.
And that is for sure a good thing. One of the best of things.
I think it is good to get to this place.
And I forgot the third thing I like which I wanted to explain and that was the Cat.
I love and have always loved cats.
In many of the old photos of mum’s people the Flanagans and McGoldricks from the 1920’s- 1930’s there are cats. There are cats on chairs; cats on boxes; cats behind feet; cats nuzzling in for a stroke.
They just are.
Sometimes haughty and often alien and always beautiful in a slightly reptilian way.
For me the nature of the cat is slightly feminine. Forgetting for this moment the devastation on wildlife…a cat is a cat is a cat.
They do not know, they just are and yet I feel that they do know…they know some things. Sometimes our cat Archimedes, now fifteen will regard me, eyes to eyes in a most knowing and understanding manner and right when I think something is going on she will abruptly turn around and put her behind, tail up in the air, right in my face.
I like that. It makes me laugh.
There are a few politicians and councillors I’d like to do that to.
The cat is elegant, beautiful, delicate but strong. Fat or thin; kittenish or snaggle toothed with old age; pregnant or scrubby old randy male alley cat the cat is always self-assured.
We could all take pointers from this. I rather doubt that a cat would ever wallow in self pity; would have morbid thoughts droop into melancholia or stand sideways in a mirror saying “Fat, fat, fat”.
The cat is always beautiful just like all of us…even if we like the cat may be a little funny looking at times.
Somewhere in all of this is something which might forestall damage to healthy young girls. I feel for me that my own understanding of those times, those golden times has its worth, and if it only causes a bit of a laugh of recognition of some shared thought or feeling, I will be happy.
Therese
May 2005
There are three things I particularly liked when I was a kid, and somehow I’ve managed to pick them all.
I loved white bread; warm and fresh from the Baker’s. Square loaves. Not Tank Top. If I could resist the terrible temptation to dig my grubby small fingers into a corner of the crust and pull bits out, to roll them hard in my palms so they looked a bit like Holy Communion, if a bit grey, I would use our bread cutter to cut off thick slices – never thin frail transparent ones “Water cress any one?” Bolshoi! Hunks lavishly covered with real butter and peanut butter. Now that was heaven, if a cheapie heaven at that.
Mum was never terribly pleased if I ripped out little hidden holes in the bread. It played havoc when she needed to cut slices for lunches and for Tea. But you know what they say about forbidden fruit, and sometimes the flesh is very weak.
After swimming all day in summer - no coming home for lunch in those days, I would arrive home, starving, exhausted and sunburnt, there was nothing I liked more than a thick slice of fresh white bread (no brown in those days) butter and peanut butter…crunchy peanut butter, with the oil floating on top. No emulsufyers in the peanut butter then. No preservatives nor sugar in the bread either. That lovely fresh bread would be very stale the next day and was only good for one day, and then it was toast. How much things have changed.
I loved swimming. I loved swimming. I loved swimming. It only took me a few days to learn. Eyes open, I mastered the Dead Man’s Float, then Dog Paddle, then Breast Stroke, Freestyle, Side Stroke and Breast Stroke in that first season. Not all that keen on Butterfly…I mean what would you need to learn that for?
I was like a bloody fish that first summer. Water was my element and I was never afraid of it. But then I am an Aquarian.
My sisters Veronica and June, could both run swiftly something I was never great at doing, but I could swim. I was totally confused that they not only couldn’t swim straight, but had their eyes shut and would come up for air whilst swimming rather than swimming and breathing at the same time. It seemed incomprehensible that they could not do it.
The nuns had a swimming pool, which was donated by the parents of the Boarders. I think it was about a third the size of the Olympic pools that every country town had in the 1960’s and was proud to have.
During the long summer holidays it was intensely hot and the Hunter River sometimes hardly ran at all and then so shallow that you couldn’t really swim in it. The nuns allowed us day pupils to swim all day in the pool as long as we did about fifteen minutes of sweeping or cleaning for them. This was a great practice and a good deal because no one of our parents had the money to pay out threepence or sixpence daily for all their kids to go swimming, and the nuns got the dormitories and verandahs cleaned, by all of us eager beavers who worked faster so we could go for a swim.
By February, I was dark brown, my scruffy hair bleached blonde by the sun and the copious amounts of Chlorine needed to combat the dirty little bastards who wee’d in the pool. Mostly boys of course. We girls never did that. Noooo!
At about nine am I would get in that pool and swim lap after lap after lap. I would feel like I could go forever, and felt invincible, and sometimes had to be stopped. Then we would play games we organised ourselves. No one really supervised. No one ever drowned or was injured and we had great fun.
But every single season by about February I would develop dreadful ear infections from the water and bugs I guess. I would wake up wailing with the pain which was incredible and spend the time till Mum could organise a doctor’s visit with my head under a pillow which I would wrap around my head and hold firm in a vain attempt to ease the agony.
No more swimming for me that season always seemed to be the verdict. The swimming carnivals would be held and so often I would just have to watch from the sidelines. A good friend at school Margo Hudson always beat me. It was a friendly thing and good to have someone a bit better than me as it kept me striving to improve. I never did beat her. Margo has since died and I am happy for her for all her victories, as she well deserved them. She had such a good nature it was always a pleasure to be second.
Her dad was one of the most generous men we knew. He was the publican in the bottom hotel and every morning in the summer holidays for some years he would drive a whole car load of us up to the big Olympic pool in Scone so we could all practice in the pool in set lanes. Her dad didn’t have to do this, he did it because he was an open hearted person who knew how limited we all were financially.
I had one bout with sunstroke from spending so long outside in the summer sun and I have never forgotten the blinding headache it bought. I lay there shivering for hours cold as death with the top of my head feeling ready to blow off. I drifted into a kind of sleep which was more like unconsciousness and delirium, and that’s about all I recall apart from violent bouts of vomiting.
Not even that had any effect on my love of the water and sun.
One day I came home from the river shivering. It had been an exceptionally hot day and we all headed for the river at the bottom end of town. Then an abrupt change blew in with cold winds and rain. I arrived home feeling delirious and hot, and spent the afternoon on the lounge room floor covered in blankets and on some other planet. I developed Pneumonia, although I believed it was caused at the time by the change, Mum also developed Pneumonia at the same time and we were both ill together in Hospital, so I think it might have been a virus.
That summer was spent in Hospital.
With all of that it was a golden time for me. I realise now that it was a time before I became, was made, allowed myself to be made aware of my female body, and all the flaws that seemed to bring which were so often and freely pointed out by older women mainly.
Forgive me if I gag the next time I hear some vicious, vacuous painted and perfumed old diddy skite about her tiny waist when she was eighteen. Please excuse my need to be violent towards such faded old bits of flotsam when they prattle on about their dainty femininity, preening; stupidly unaware that their rude comments like “Oh! But aren’t you becoming a nice big plump girl then” or from rude to crude, these delicate wilting flowers declare, “You’re putting on the beef my girl” and going on to make some useless comparison to how little the women were in their family and how come you have such big feet.
Or “No one had such big breasts in our family...I know you’re only twelve but don’t you think you should be wearing a bra?”
As the years ten to fifteen pass, what little self esteem and confidence and naturalness you have managed to hang on to is fragile and only needs some ugly, dirty, stupid teenage boy’s dubious observations to have you donning big cardigans and jumpers well into summer to hide what must be ugly, so ugly that its grotesque.
Yes, there was a golden time when you were praised for your swimming only and not criticised because you overfilled your cossies and they grew too small. That was the time before you grew breasts and hips. That was the time when you looked like a pretty boy and not a woman. Once you began to look like a woman, people seemed to take it upon themselves to make comments about your shape, size, and clothing. You seemed to become public property for fools.
“Oh! Mrs Spencer” mum was told loudly by Sister Borgia “her swimmers are way too small. Are you sure you can’t buy her a new pair?” I would have swum in a Hessian sack if they let me, not to see mum so embarrassed. I knew we couldn’t afford any extras, there were too many of us for that…swimmers were what you were given as a gift at Christmas…not just dished out because they were a bit snug in places. “
Did it all really matter you old bitch of a nun?”
I think I’ve hit that golden time again as I drift into my fifties.
I just am. Take it or leave it. I recognise the damage done, but overcome for me but sadly not for others and still being done by silly old twits who’ve left what little brain they still possess on their pillows.
Sometimes, now, I feel invisible, but not in a pathetic self pitying way. When you walk down the street with two pretty adult daughters you are invisible and aware of it but you also see so much more because you begin to learn to cease to see yourself physically…and that’s a good thing. You become like the ten year old girl before the world hits her up with all its destructive sexist crap.
And that is for sure a good thing. One of the best of things.
I think it is good to get to this place.
And I forgot the third thing I like which I wanted to explain and that was the Cat.
I love and have always loved cats.
In many of the old photos of mum’s people the Flanagans and McGoldricks from the 1920’s- 1930’s there are cats. There are cats on chairs; cats on boxes; cats behind feet; cats nuzzling in for a stroke.
They just are.
Sometimes haughty and often alien and always beautiful in a slightly reptilian way.
For me the nature of the cat is slightly feminine. Forgetting for this moment the devastation on wildlife…a cat is a cat is a cat.
They do not know, they just are and yet I feel that they do know…they know some things. Sometimes our cat Archimedes, now fifteen will regard me, eyes to eyes in a most knowing and understanding manner and right when I think something is going on she will abruptly turn around and put her behind, tail up in the air, right in my face.
I like that. It makes me laugh.
There are a few politicians and councillors I’d like to do that to.
The cat is elegant, beautiful, delicate but strong. Fat or thin; kittenish or snaggle toothed with old age; pregnant or scrubby old randy male alley cat the cat is always self-assured.
We could all take pointers from this. I rather doubt that a cat would ever wallow in self pity; would have morbid thoughts droop into melancholia or stand sideways in a mirror saying “Fat, fat, fat”.
The cat is always beautiful just like all of us…even if we like the cat may be a little funny looking at times.
Somewhere in all of this is something which might forestall damage to healthy young girls. I feel for me that my own understanding of those times, those golden times has its worth, and if it only causes a bit of a laugh of recognition of some shared thought or feeling, I will be happy.
Therese
May 2005
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