The Library

Against the window in the green chair with sunlight spilling over hair and glinting with every movement. Red toenails peeping out from feet tucked up under and chin propped up on a wrist with furrows over the brow. Anatomy text on the ground physics text in lap and a highlighter gripped in the free hand.

Thick glasses perched on the end of sagging nose and Oxford shirt ironed impeccably. A Tom Clancy novel held up as though a piece of music being read and conducted. A mole on the fourth finger of the hand and a battered wedding ring.

Upright in an orange chair, sensible shoes flat on the floor. Shimmering nude stockings in the light stealing through the plate windows. Carefully coiffed hair in neat waves with slides holding it all away from a faded face.  Lurid romance pages being turned languidly without expression changing at all. Just thin crepe hand lifting occasionally while eyes travel slowly.

Laptop. Large glasses. Pile of books. Even bigger headphones. Head dipping regularly in time with unheard beat. Fingers occasionally tapping rhythm soundlessly while the keyboard keys click softly. Concentration. Black hair in need of a trim. Unmatched socks.

Harrassed and hair unbrushed. Pulled back into an askew clip. Absent mindedly rocking the giant pram back and forth; back and forth. Magazine open on the bench beside and flicking through the pages without reading just looking at the pictures. Toddler on the floor at feet with a board book flicking through the pages looking at the pictures.

Heavy metal trolleys groaning with books wending across the carpet and squeaking. Books lifted and returned, one after another until all gone and then the trolleys abandoned at the end of rows. Some trolleys left full and no books unpacked, a cornucopia of other people's choices. Little flashes at someone else's psyche.

Tables littered with haphazard piles of books abandoned by their collectors. History books. Travel books. Western comics. Chick lit with pastel covers and wry, simpering by lines.

Sirens outside the plate glass. Everyone turns to look then as one moving beast turns back and starts reading again. Inhaling the sweet musty smell and losing themselves in new worlds. The cacophony of the many silent readers noisy and comforting.

Huit

For weeks after I had given birth I could tell you with total accuracy the exact events of those 6 hours; every tiny detail played over in a constant loop even when I was sleeping. It was so vivid, so striking, so completely outside of anything I had ever experienced before that I felt absolutely certain that it had imprinted on me indelibly, never to be washed off or dulled. It was one of those certainties that such a momentous day, such a monumental feat, the day that my Elfling entered the world and I became a mother should surely stay on in memory so clearly.

But I realised on Friday afternoon as I hurried to my car on the way home from work that I couldn't remember what sort of morning we had woken up to or even if I had slept. I don't remember if it was raining or sunny. I don't remember if it was hot or cold. I remember getting in the car in labour and the first burst of fear as Bingley closed the garage door and the wonder in knowing that there would always be three of us after that night. I remember the stars and I remember the lights on the bridge as we drove and my blue pyjama pants. I could draw you the exact pattern on them.

But I don't remember hearing her cry when she was pulled from me and I don't remember vast swathes of the labour. It's like it's on an old fashioned VCR and the tape is sped up so you get fuzzy glimpses, intangible and refusing to stay still long enough for me to appreciate them. I remember the exact colour of her cheek and the single golden hair on her forehead in amongst the newborn down. I remember the slight revulsion for the vernix and the smell. I remember letting my sweaty hair down and the way the super long tendrils uncurled on my damp, naked shoulders. I remember not wanting to let her go even when I was being stitched up and in tears from the pain and Bingley fumbling her tininess.

I remember her fuzzy ears and her long skinny legs and toes. I remember the eyelids without eyelashes and the horrible lump from the ventouse. I remember gently unwrapping her from her blankets to change her but I don't remember bathing her for the first time. I remember the smell of the room and of the baby wipes. I remember using the big soft paper napkins they have in hospitals to change her too. And feeling overconfident but petrified at the same time, not knowing how anyone could possibly entrust the care of something so precious to someone so woefully unqualified.

I don't remember coming home. I don't remember putting her in the car or the walk upstairs, though writing that I had a glimpse of it before it flashed away again. I don't know if we slept or what we did next. There is so much that I don't remember.

I tell myself that days like today, where she ran around in a pink and white confection of tulle and lace with her long honey hair bouncing and her friends all around her, thrilled to be eight years old and the centre of attention with her very own owl cake and helium balloons and streamers, showing off and dancing; I tell myself I'll remember. But I possibly won't. I won't remember that I stayed up til after midnight so that all of the layers of the jelly cups would be perfect for her and her friends. Or that I zhuzzed tissue paper until the house was decked with big bowery papery blossoms. I won't remember the hilarious but disturbing scrum as the children dived into the carcass of the pinata and emptied it of its spoils.

I feel like I should remember how we woke at dawn to the soft grey rain and dismayed at how that would work for a birthday party where the whole class had been invited. And then 15 minutes before the party the sun came out and all was green and gold. But I won't.

I may remember the shock as she leant over her birthday cake to blow out the candles and eagerly grabbed the knife and started cutting of how tall she is looking. How long her arms and legs. How her face is so in-between that of little girl and who she will someday be. Of her delight in winning a prize in the pass the parcel or her pride in showing off her new Nintendo DS.

But I hope I will remember that sometimes I did not feel like we were fighting a war between us of protracted battles about homework and brushing teeth and hair. That I did not spend her whole life picking at the edges and trying not to be frustrated because she is the first and I still don't know exactly what I'm doing with her. Not so much has changed there in eight years.

It all feels so vivid now, as if life will always be this stark, this bright, this painful, this beautiful; but I know better. Time will cover this with new layers and shades and obscure the fine detail. Things that seem so important now, so vital, will be masked in years to come even if I document it the contrast will be lost and only the mellow shades left.

I often wonder if perhaps my Elfling would have done better with another parent besides me. Someone less ambitious, more patient, less tired, more loving, more affectionate. More. On bad days I feel numb inside for her and the horrid luck she drew in the parent lottery, see the wistfulness in her eyes at friends whose mothers help in the classroom and stand at the school gate in the afternoons and chat to the other Mums. Someone who wasn't just fumbling her way through her life but already had read the text book and the accompanying study guide and knew exactly what they were doing. And I hope that like me she remembers just the highlights, and the excitement and the joy of being a little girl. And that one day she understands and forgives me for not being all that she deserved, because she does deserve it all. My ethereal baby girl who made me into a mother.

King of Limbs

I am a music person.

Most people are in some sense or another but I'm a true devoted groupie - or was once upon a time. It's the language of my soul. It hits me in the solar plexus and slams through the rest of me in waves impossible to ignore.

My music tastes, as with most people evolved as a I grew from child to adolescent to adult. As a child my choices were mostly shaped by my parents for whom I can credit my love of the Beatles back catalogue, knowing all the words to John Denver's songs and a good grounding in Debussy and Ravel. Singing in choirs, singing along to the radio on long car trips (little ditty about Jack and Diannnnne) all helped me understand the fun and enjoyment of music, but the soul stuff came a bit later.

In highschool I discovered Triple J and the concept of new, raw, unmanufactured music and I fell head over heels as teenagers are wont to do. I made mixed tapes recorded off the radio and bought my first walkman with birthday money in bright blue. I was given a small portable stereo for my 16th birthday and I thought it was  one of the best gifts I'd ever been given. It was the time of post-grunge, Kurt Cobain was dead and a rebellious flannel clad audience weren't entirely sure how to fill the hole. Eddie Vedder mumbled into mikes and made all my teenaged angst visceral and real. Regurgitator sang about their plastic girlfriend in a weird electronic punk pop smash and Harvey Danger sat on a flagpole. There was something for every wildly swinging emotion of teenagerhood and I left home with that little portable stereo, my mixed tapes and a swirling gut of anticipation at the next stage of life.

And I distinctly remember one day, in my little college room with the wizard posters on the walls and the shoebox and milk crate bedside table as I surfed the college network looking for mp3s on the shared LAN. And I downloaded 4 songs by this band called Radiohead who I knew vaguely from the song Creep which had received a lot of airplay on Triple J. The songs were Fake Plastic Trees, Creep, Karma Police and No Surprises. Even typing that now gives me tingles.

The first time I listened to Fake Plastic Trees I burst into tears. I can't even tell you why aside from to say that it felt like the music was in me, part of me and it made me so desperately melancholy with its beauty. It made complete sense to me years later when I read the Wikipedia article that Thom Yorke recorded it in 3 takes and then broke down and cried. I felt that. It was a train of thought that suddenly became so sad that I choke up even now when I listen.

And because of that magical way that music tattoos itself on your soul, every time I hear it it evokes a special time for me. One that reminds me of the beauty in all things and the freedom to be who I am. I followed every subsequent album - everything from OK Computer to Hail to the Thief (though that wasn't my favourite) or my eagerly awaited King of Limbs which I loved. Codex for example is brilliant. But it still doesn't quite measure up to the entire soul gratifying release that The Bends represents for me.

So you can imagine, the morning after a Death Cab For Cutie concert where Bingley and I curled up on a couch and laughed about me getting carded to get in and sang along to the songs we knew, a bit seedy and a bit miserable at work, the electrifying sensation that went over me when Bingley called to tell me that Radiohead were touring. Or my gut wrenching disappointment when I heard that we'd missed presale tickets. Every advertising feature, every beat up to try and whip up a frenzy of buyers made me anxious. I have not wanted anything so much in a very very long time.

At 8am this morning Bingley and I tried in vain to get tickets to one of the Melbourne shows. The absolute heart sink when I finally had tickets in my basket in the Upper Section of Rod Laver arena seats D24 and D25 and it timed out after every step except the confirmation of accepting terms and conditions. And then there were no seats left and I sat in my morning meeting with a heart beating at 140 beats per minute and a suspicious film over my eyes knowing there was only one last chance to get tickets. And that many who had missed out on the Sydney and Melbourne tickets would be vying for the last Brisbane ones. As we waited for 9am it felt like we were lined up at the beginning of a race with thousands of others, and in truth we were, heart hammering as we all tried to be the first ones to click and have those magic tickets.

At 9:00:01 I clicked on the Ticketek website as did Bingley and probably a thousand or more others. But my heart absolutely leapt into my throat when I saw that I had progressed to the next stage. At 9:01 I was just finishing putting in my credit card details when the phone beeped. Bingley had got tickets. I looked at the confirmation in my hand that I had 7 minutes left to finalise my tickets and felt so very very grateful. I held onto those tickets for another 5 minutes. Kept them in my basket until the very last minute and then set them free again in the hope that some other fan, some other boy or girl that had laid on their bed and felt like something had been carved out of their soul and turned into lyrics had got them.

I later heard that a friend who had managed to get on at 9:02 had been told that the ticket allocation had been exhausted. I read in the newspaper about a fan that camped out overnight at the ticket office and was only able to get single seats. And I felt for them, because I was so convinced that that was going to be me. Until I saw that Bingley had forwarded me the confirmation e-mail, and just like the first time I had properly sat down to listen to Radiohead I burst into tears, because it doesn't and it still won't feel real until I'm standing in that moshpit, overcoming my anxiety and claustrophobia to sing with others the tunes that made us who we are.

Sketchy

It was a hot and tense start to the weekend, with no rain and no relief in sight. I felt tired and hot and resentful and not inclined to be a loving wife or mother. The exorbitant electricity bill courtesy of an ailing refrigerator and the necessity of replacement just fouled my mood further.

It was lucky then, that in a burst of forethought and perseverance I had booked a babysitter for Sunday so that after a workout at the gym, Bingley could run off and not think about children for a while.

We went to yum cha and then to my beloved GoMA to see Matisse. I adored the exhibition. I loved standing with my nose almost against the glass as the worried stewards looked on so that I could see every last stroke of the pen or where the stump had been smudged into the vellum to create shadows and softness.

My very favourite bit of all though, was at the very end of the exhibition where a hall had been set up like Matisse's studio, and there were free drawing pencils, art boards and an encouragement to sit back and create. I have been drawing a lot lately, studying with pictures and sketching the finer details of the foramina of the sphenoid but sitting there with a large piece of thick card and a lovely soft pencil while I looked at art work in between all the others doing the same thing filled me with the sort of contented bliss that comes with doing what you love best.

I loved sneaking a peak at the works being created, from little tiny girls, balancing on a stool, to stooped and serious gentlemen studiously recreating still life. I loved the sound of pens rasping softly against paper and bodies bent over their works. The absorption of trying to recreate something on paper. And I loved being amongst that. Being completely absorbed and not noticing an older woman at my elbow watching my every pencil movement and encouraging me to continue. I loved the dark smudge of graphite over my palm where it brushed the page. And I loved best of all that from the rough sketches little bits of reality imprinted on the paper.

While Bingley sipped his coffee and ate shortbread overlooking the river I sparkled and sipped tea and smudged my face with my graphite-y hand and wished that I could sit curled with my neck aching balanced on the chair and practice and practice and practice until I was good at this. But even more than being good, I just wanted to keep doing it. My fingers literally tingled.

Not Matisse, but I can't resist marble

My fellow sketchers

20 minutes later

Studying the orbit - handwriting bonus for the graphologists

Almost finished the cerebellum

Finally coming to grips with the palatine bones

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pour whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's

in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

Charles Bukowski

Sunshine under rain

The second week has been easier. I no longer feel as in the way. Or so stupid. I no longer feel like this was a big mistake. I still feel like a fraud and it still seems unbelievable that this hasn't been figured out and that I've been sent home in disgrace, but I've got some spice back, and I would fight back if they did. I may not be that clever, learned, industrious person right now. But I will be some day.

As I drove home this afternoon it was bucketing with rain. Big splashy swathes of Summer rain that ran down the windows and smelled delicious. The sun was setting behind the mountains and just as I neared home it burst from underneath the clouds and made each sparkling drop golden. I was smiling uncontrollably, happy and wondering if anything in life could be more beautiful when the sky above me forked with lightning while a rainbow shimmered in a full double arc across the sky.

Summer

Sitting on my back verandah, facing out over the mountains in the darkness. Overhead the sky is grumbling, the wind racing around, exciting the trees as they dance in anticipation. Every few seconds the sky lights up, a massive sheet of lightning in front of me. It has been hot all day - scorching my bare feet as I walked on the bitumen and making my face glow in the humidity. The Monkey's hair a mass of corkscrew spirals around her face. It's coming. Rolling closer and closer and the taste on the breeze is tantalising. My skin prickling with the intensity of what's coming.

I sat in the sun today, improperly leaving my bare skin naked to its rays and didn't care about sun safe messages. Instead I let that warm golden heat penetrate my skin and make me feel awake and alive for the first time in a week. Only for a few moments. I didn't get burned, nor even mildly pink. But I felt the dose of it sparkle through my skin. Needed and wanted.

Tonight, standing under the clothes line as we pulled in washing and watched the sky overhead light up I thought about the hot clear day and the joy of Summer storms. It hasn't been a stormy summer, it's been grey and wet and often cool. And I've missed this build up. The scorching weather. The underwater humidity. The limp hair and the glowing skin. The frisson in the air as the storm builds and builds.

It hasn't broken yet but the wind is so excited. She's calling me out from under my cover here, to come and play outside when it arrives. The trees are shivering as she sings and all around waits in breathless anticipation. The sweet smell of fresh rain, purer than any perfume bathing the air as the seconds between thunder and lightning diminish.

I'm waiting for the proper thunder. The cracks that make you jump out of your skin and tremble just a little. At the top of a very tall ride and waiting to free fall into the exhilaration that follows. I'm waiting for that crack right above my very head that feels as if the sky has ripped and there's a glimpse of some other dimension just for a second. A portal to the land of what if.

My skin is dancing. My eyes have turned gold for the first time in months. Little droplets of gold are running through my veins and I can breathe. Properly. Deep gasping lungfuls of breath. The rain is nearly here and I want to go out and play. Be soaked. Sodden. Cleansed.

I want to be part of the storm.

Gauze

I hadn't washed our curtains since we moved into this house. I am sure that experienced Hausfraus are currently shocked out of speech, but it was well down on my priority list. They were the heavy, block out type of curtains, and so even though the faded minty green colour matched with the yellow of the walls to look precisely like bile stained vomit, I left them. Blockout blinds provide both insulation and the dark cave like sensation that promotes sleep. And that's all I wanted to do. 

But after my dawn experience the other day I felt compelled to take them down, clean away all the dust and to hang gauzy white curtains that billow in the breeze and make me wake to the soft glow of light in the mornings instead of the miserable peal from my mobile phone at whatever ridiculous hour it is that I need to get up. 

I have started my new job and I'm tired. Miserably tired. I am trying to fit too much in and it's so hard because part of me just does not want to. I want it to be easy. I don't want to race and panic and stress, but I have to and that's part of the deal. I come home so tired I want to crawl into bed, but I don't even get the luxury of that because I have to make dinner and read books and sign homework folders. 

I want to be gleaming and excited and happy. And I am quite often. But right now, even though I intended to write about the beauty of waking with the birds, my brain has collapsed into tears and I just can't. The girls are doing beautifully at school and the Possum is thriving at kindy and I want so much to write about those things, but right now I can barely move my fingers to type. So I'm going to crawl under the covers, now that I've kissed the last forehead and finished the last exciting Tashi adventure and feel guilty that I'm not studying. Because useless emotions creep up one you when you're tired, and never give you the giant reassuring hug that you need. 

Dawn

I woke to the Possum's cries and tucked him back into bed and held his hand until the soft, rhythmic breathing filled the darkness. As I walked back into my room, through the open curtains the first blush of dawn was gilding the sky and the first bird of the morning was practicing scales. It was barely 4am and for the first morning in some time, I sat and watched the sun rise. Beautiful, brilliant and golden, unhidden by stormy clouds.

For weeks now I have thrilled on waking to the sound of rain on the roof, the lullaby that gently sings and caresses and snuggled down into my blankets and pillows. The grey softness of morning and the cool breath of a day without sun. I have gloried in splashing in puddles and the smell of rain on the grass. Watched it sluice off the window panes and heard the swish of tyres.

There is a consciousness now, when the rain is heavy and constant, of the destruction it can bring. Where the lake over the playing field where the ibises play is no longer as benign as it was before a year ago, when such a sight would only have brought smiles at the ephemeral water hole and the reflections of the sky. A curling snake of anxiety in my belly when I see mud and a catch in my breath when the rain is so heavy that I cannot see.

I would not describe myself as a morning person. I love sleep so indecently that it is often hard to jump out of bed at first light. Morning has not the inky magic of twilight nor the star spangled beauty of night. In Summer, mornings are quickly hot and steamy, overnight dew misting in the light and the glow and temper of heat. For years, the only sunrises I saw were when I had fought the break of dawn, not wanting a night to end, as it danced irreverantly on the bounds of reality.

When I was feeding the Possum, often I would be awake at fist light, curled up on the couch and feeling the first light hit my face. The world was always so new then. The terrible night would have disappeared and ti was a whole new day that caressed my cheek and warmed it as the birds carrolled. I learned to appreciate dawn. To marvel in its newness and its vulgarity and its naivete. Morning will never be as sophisticated as night, but it is so sweet. So charming. So artless. It is impossible not to be affected.

As I watched the dawn this morning, felt the light permeate the room and all the way through my skin, and wished I was more of a morning person, that jumped out of bed before dawn and welcomed the new day. When I was on holidays my favourite part of the morning was the first half hour by myself, a delicate witching hour where a whole day was to be filled with wonderful things and the absolute desparation to go out and start experiencing them.

Because no matter the day before, tomorrow is always perfect in the morning.

Australia Day

It's hot today, the first time in a week where the rain hasn't pelted down and I'm loving the heat. Usually I would take soft, cool greyness any day, but Australia Day needs to be hot. Sweaty and glowing, listening to the Hottest 100 and BBQs sizzling in the background.

When I was a teenager my friends and I used to drive out to a waterfall in a national park with a deep pool and blast the Hottest 100 from my portable stereo, hoping we had enough batteries to keep it going for the whole broadcast. I remember being curled up on a rock, wet hair sticking to my shoulders and wrapped in a towel as These Days won the coveted number one spot and grinning from ear to ear. Youthful and on the cusp of the next phase of my life which was so full of potentialities.

Today the kids are running around outside on the grass playing with the hose and an inflatable Australian flag beach ball. The Hottest 100 is blaring from at least 3 different sources, and is heard echoing from the neighbour's annual pool party. I have a selection of rubbish to eat for the day including chips and cheese and icy poles in between the burgers and sausages on the barbeque and long glasses of cordial. The first one I've been home for in a while - last year I was on night shift in an emergency department and dreading the glut of drunken arrivals, but this year I can just lie back and grin.

It's been a good week, the girls have started their new school and the Monkey is enjoying Prep. She is making friends and the layout of her day is not so very different to Kindy such that she is very casual about the whole thing though she adores her uniform. She looks so tiny with her massive bag on her back, tripping off into her classroom blithely without a backward glance. The Elfling has also remained positive, though her sensitive soul is obviously anxious about being lonely. I agonised about moving her from her old school and the friends she had there, but I am hoping that this fit will be better for her. And she is a resilient little girl, and growing up too fast.

The Possum started Kindy this week too, gambolling into his room each day with his tiny smackable bum swathed only in undies and shorts that hang off his bottom. The tiniest in his class, all big eyes and floppy golden hair. His language so far behind the others that it scores me to the quick to hear the little girls in his class chattering away. But he is gaining so much confidence and so much cheekiness, and he has so many more words than before. It may be slow but they are coming and we encourage him daily to chatter away to us and we are understanding more each day.

It's about 30 degrees outside and it's time to break out the beef patties and the tupperware container of beetroot and salad. 3 of my favourite songs of the year have already been played in the countdown and I am in dire need of a cold drink. I can feel the sweat beading on my forehead, and even though I could turn on the airconditioning and be blissfully cool in minutes, I wouldn't have it any other way.