Born out of the blue

In sewing class, Sister Ursula told us purple and yellow signified an unhappy childhood. We should steer clear of those colours side by side in any of our work. I chose blue, for safety. To put the nuns off the scent. 

Besides which, whose childhood isn’t unhappy? The hazards of being small and vulnerable in a world populated by insensitive adults who fail to understand your needs.

Not to say, childhood must inherently be so. This time of wonder and newness where every moment seems full of promise. And at the same time, a disappointment. 

My ancient computer, nearly ten years old, refuses to cooperate with me. It’s time for an update and much as I baulk at the cost and the hassle of acclimatising myself to a new set of images – the icons and processes change every time I upgrade – I must do so and soon.

The last of my children has left home and with them they have taken their technological expertise, which I draw on often. It panics me to think they may not be able to help me into the future. 

And the words of a song float through my mind…I’m not Lisa. My name is Julie. Lisa left you years ago. My eyes are not blue, but mine won’t leave you, till the sunlight falls on your face.

But my eyes are blue. Mine and all my family. Blue eyes of our Germanic/Irish origins if I extend beyond my family of origin to that of my children through their father.

I was born out of the blue, one early summer day before the agapanthus had risen in tall stalks ahead of the rest. 

On the train home one night late from school after umpire practice, a stranger began a conversation with me. 

‘You talk too fast, he said. He had been eavesdropping on a conversation between me and my sister. A nondescript man, in dark suit, white shirt and tie. 

‘Excuse me,’ I said, and my words held multiple meanings. 

An apology, a sarcastic response and a request for clarity. 

‘Just listen to you,’ the man said. ‘One hundred words to the minute.’ 

We reached our station and left the train, my ears smarting from the slap of his words. What did he mean? 

My sister was not troubled. Maybe she agreed with him. I did not ask. 

When we reached home, I slung my school bag across the floor to my bedroom door and walked past the loungeroom to get to the kitchen and a snack before dinner. My father sat in his usual place by the window and my mother opposite. He had not yet started to drink, or if he had, he had not yet drunk enough brandy to turn him from a quiet man into the raving raging lunatic he often  became.

‘A man on the train said I talk too fast,’ I said to my mother. I said it in the form of a question with a rising inflection: Do you agree? what do you think? I directed it towards my mother, but my father responded. 

‘Just like a schizophrenic,’ he said, and my mind did cartwheels. 

I knew this word from movies where people were sent off to tumbled down blue stone mansions in the middle of some bleak countryside and left there because no one else knew how to handle this condition called schizophrenia, which struck me as a fancy name for mad.

Was I mad? What was mad?

I didn’t feel mad, not crazy mad but I was angry at my dad for making things worse. For muddling me even more. 

I could not see myself through the eyes of others and this man on the train had set me thinking, as I am thinking now, about my beloved writing group. 

How could I have read it so wrong?