Category: Uncategorized

You deserve a letter of your own

The year she turned eighty-five my mother wrote a letter to all nine of her living children. She wrote it by way of apology.

I imagine she wrote this letter seated at her round table in the dining room of her tiny unit at Park Glen, the retirement village to which she had moved five years earlier.

She wrote it on a sheet of lined foolscap paper but by the time my older sister had photocopied the nine copies necessary – at my mother’s request – the lines had disappeared.

My mother must have written in her best handwriting, as the words are legible, unlike in earlier letters she wrote to me alone.

There were three things that struck me after I read my copy of my mother’s letter:

How I would respond?

How might others respond?

And who received the original?

It was clear mine was a copy and somehow it became a measure of my position in the family, one of the many. It also became a measure of the position of the many in my family, all except my older sister who in the end took the original back to my mother, after she had made copies for the nine of us, including one for herself.

More recently, this same sister was clearing out her garage and she came across, not only her copy of my mother’s letter to us all, but also another letter my mother wrote to her alone.

‘Of all my children,’ my mother wrote, or words to that effect, ‘Of all my children, you deserve a letter of your own.’

My sister read out my mother’s letter over the phone and we wept together hearing again our mother’s thoughts about my sister’s hard life and her pain.

To this, I added a pain of my own, the pain of not being the one of all those children, not the only one but one of the eight children who, by default did not deserve a letter of our own.

I decided then, should I ever write such letters to my children, I will not write a group letter, instead, individual letters to all my children, each letter expressly designed to address the child in question.

I recognise it’s not so hard for me. I have only four children and nine is a long line of letters to write.

It’s not surprising my mother should choose to address us all equally.

Most of my siblings, as far as I know, did not respond in any way to our mother’s letter.

I presume they read it.

I presume they felt something in the sting of it, but as far as my mother had told me at the time, only three of her daughters talked to her about her letter.

Not one of us wrote back. And I include myself here.

I acknowledged my mother’s letter but it did not occur to me at the time to wonder what it must have been like for her to write such a letter and also to be met with silence from most of her children.

I’m twenty years of age away from reaching my mother’s age at the time she wrote this letter, but it occurs to me now that she wrote from the wisdom of her years and although one of my brothers disparaged her efforts as manipulative, I wonder whether a degree of empathy is called for after my mother’s long life, lived to the best of her ability, however much littered with mistakes.

My mother’s letter is one long apology and one long explanation of her position in making the mistakes she made.

She wrote it when she was eighty-five years old. It deserves recognition.

 

 

 

 

In praise of a sedentary life

In the winter of 2017, my husband and I compared notes about whether this was indeed the coldest winter we had known with temperatures plunging in some places to near zero.

Even rugged up under four layers, it still felt cold.

At times like this your impulse is to stay home or if you can afford, make your way to warm places like Queensland or the top of Australia.

But we were not feeling flush at this time with a down turn in my husband’s work and my usual reluctance to travel too far from home, so we decided on some place nearby.

I do it every time we travel. In my head, I compare the internals of the hotel in which we stay with its typical set up of one small on suite bathroom, hidden jug in cupboard with two cups, two glasses, two spoons and several sachets of tea and dried coffee, to home.

The usual pods of long life milk unnecessarily stuck where the eggs should sit in the fridge are never enough for me who likes her tea milky, but at least this time the Vue Grand in Queenscliff went upmarket with Twining’s tea, instead of the unfamiliar brands from bulk supermarkets like Aldi.

We breakfasted here in the downstairs dining room on the latest shift possible at 9.15 am or so before a day of roaming the area to Portarlington and nearby Swan Bay in the hope of some beach walks; wind in our hair, salt on our cheeks and a sprinkle of sun, however inadequate, to make the whole thing seem more beautiful. Though the sea on a grey day has its own beauties, when the rain and sleet bash onto your face, it’s hard to enjoy them.

These days my husband, if offered the chance, can sleep for twelve hours, which amazes me given I wake after eight. To me this is a generous sleep and more than enough to keep me alert the next day. But he wants more.

We talk about it sometimes, my concern that sleep is his escape into oblivion, that same oblivion his father sought all those years ago when he took to his bed after retirement and spent day after day secretly slugging from a sherry bottle and listening to the horse races.

Maybe his father thought gambling a legitimate way to augment his pension once he stopped the nine to five drudge of a job with the local council, doing whatever people who work in overalls do.

I never thought to ask. It didn’t seem relevant but these days as I watch my husband slide into a life of less activity, I wonder what it was his father did to while away the hours and what it might be that could keep another man going, especially when I figure my husband of the high intellect must have got his brains from someone.

Perhaps it’s true, as I’ve read elsewhere, we get our IQs from our mothers.

This idea would offend my father who was convinced my mother was one of the stupidest and most unintelligent people who ever lived.

Why then did my father marry her?

Did he not reckon on this when he first decided he would convert to Catholicism in order to claim her as his bride?

Was that not a foolhardy act?

Or was he drawn to the respectability of my mother and her family? Their clean living ways? Their religious convictions and the gentle aspect of a family of seven children, two of whom became Franciscan priests, and parents who managed to keep all their children dedicated to the church even into adulthood and for some even after they migrated to Australia and far from home.

My father was the first from his newly adopted family to drop his faith, until years later when he was on the edge of death and had stopped drinking and decided maybe he needed something to help get him through all those doubts we all have about what it is like to be no more.

In winter, the main street of Queenscliff, lined on either side with the usual array of food stops and junk shops disguised as antiques, was all but closed at 4.30 in the afternoon given trade was so slow.

We walked up and down then in search of the best place for our evening meal, the only thought: how to get a half decent feed at a reasonable cost. They tend to charge more in the country and much as they try to emulate the restaurants and cafes in the city, they never quite succeed. You pay more for less.

This place throbs with bodies at the height of summer, but like most places by the beach it all but closes up for the short cold months after Easter through to Cup Day in November when the cash registers start to clang again and the locals grit their teeth against the onslaught.

Much as they might try not to complain – most of them rely on the tourists – the arrival of the locusts, year after year interrupts their quiet lifestyle and cause an irritation many of them cannot bear.

In winter they can forgive us for traipsing the streets. They’re grateful even that a few city folk might venture so far into the cold to enjoy a winter holiday by the beach.

This then is another trip I have made to appease those who consider my life at home too sedentary. They want me to stay on the move before my body seizes up altogether, but I prefer to travel only in my mind.