I will never be minimalist, a giver away of objects that don’t bring me joy. Nor will I join the latest Swedish craze of death cleaning. As far as I’m concerned, I spent what seems like a lifetime cleaning up after my daughter, and she may as well return that favour when I die.
I like my house filled with books and nicknacks. I look up and see a row of seven miniature blue and white houses that I brought back from Amsterdam in my twenties and think fondly of the four days I spent there. Admittedly, three of these were wasted in various bathrooms as I valiantly fought off food poisoning. I couldn’t look at mayonnaise nor chips for eight long years thereafter. Ironically, the delft houses are now on a shelf in my kitchen, a sober reminder to check use by dates and abide by the three-day rule for leftovers.
In the lounge room, two carved wooden cows take me back to the year we spent in Switzerland. Real cows greeted us daily as we waited at the bus stop in front of a row three storey apartment blocks. They seemed as incongruous there as the many cows here in my living room. Somehow, these two carved cows attracted bovine themed curtains, black and white ‘cowhide’ gumboots and a large painting of a heifer by a well-known artist.
Then there are the two pairs of babies’ boots – my own and my daughter’s, 35 years apart. While I have no memory of wearing my own, I do have memories of my daughter wearing hers. This includes collecting her from childcare and hearing her cry all the way home. When I finally removed her shoes, I found that one of her toes had accidentally been bent back in the boot. I felt faint looking at the deformed toe, but it snapped back into position and her smile returned as if nothing had happened.
On another shelf are some of the penguins I acquired after watching a movie at 3am when I was 19. It was called Mr Forbush and the Penguins. I don’t know whether it was the twilight zone that flicked a switch in my brain or whether the movie was really that compelling, but I began noticing penguins everywhere. Before I knew it, my house turned into a rookery. Of course, once friends noticed my obsession, they feed it for years. I was the easiest person for whom to buy a present. Truth be told, I have grown out of them, but they have become somewhat of a talisman, and I still keep ten or perhaps twenty on show.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling a little morbid, I try to imagine my nicknacks at an op-shop. It is a depressing thought. Instead of thrilled punters on the Antiques Roadshow, I imagine strangers picking up each of my possessions and wondering, ‘what was she thinking?’ This is exactly what I think when I see someone’s treasures randomly placed with mementos from another person’s life. The objects look lacklustre and dull as stripping them of their story has rendered them lifeless.
Yet, when I look at my nicknacks, I connect with them individually. Each one beckons me to remember a moment in my life: the time my grandmother gave me her wedding ring, the time a lover chanced upon a perfect gift or the time my daughter brought back a hand-painted tray from Myanmar. These objects become a container for a story.
Minimalism, on the other hand, is like a brand-new, expensive notebook. It may be beautiful to look at yet never used for fear of despoiling. It’s not for me. I like my dog-eared, ink-splotched notebooks, the ones that have stories inscribed in their very fabric. I consider every one of my objects to be imbued with a narrative gift, and I’m glad of it. It means I will never run out of stories to write.
I found my first four leaf clover in a meadow as a nine-year-old child. It felt like a miracle. I picked the clover and put it in my pocket only to find it had shrivelled by the time I arrived home. The disappointment loomed larger than the original miracle. Still, if I could do it once, I knew I could do it again. I became obsessed with finding another one.
I learned that fragile leaves had to be pressed between paper, the quicker, the better. A book would work as would a bus ticket or even a lolly wrapper. At that time, I hadn’t yet acquired my habit of carrying a book everywhere I go, so relied on folded scraps of paper in my pockets.
I began to make a pact with fate – if I were to find a four-leaf clover, it would mean I wouldn’t get into trouble at home; I’d be allowed to go to the cinema on the weekend or the boy I liked would finally speak to me. However, finding the second four-leaf clover, eluded me for a quite a while but I wasn’t deterred. I spent many summer hours in fields looking at clover patches and at first all I saw was a sea of green. Slowly, patterns emerged and then, aberrations in the pattern. Not all of these resulted in finding four-leaf clovers, but I began to find them with increasing regularity.
My obsession hasn’t abated. In fact, my eyes have become so accustomed to spotting slight differences in clover patches that I often notice one as I walk past. It is my special superpower. Not very useful I must admit but I am often met with amazement when I bend down to pick one. Mostly I have an old receipt in my pocket so I can immediately press it, or at worst, I push it down onto my phone screen with my thumb, which works well enough until I get home.
My friends often receive a four-leaf clover in a card wishing them a happy New Year. I note this hasn’t stopped any of the calamities that have befallen us in the past few years. Still, it makes people happy, if only for a few short moments. It is a tangible symbol of my best wishes for their coming year.
As age creeps up and I keep pursuing my childish endeavours, my mind turns to pithy epitaphs I may consider. This one has held its attraction for a while now:
Finder of four-leaf clovers, maker of her own luck.
I’m on a sheep farm at Mt Fairy. The homestead and the garden are a nod to English Romanticism, planted to look overgrown with wildflowers and roses, but carefully planned and sown by a gardener with an eye for beauty, balance, and a prophetic ability to see the future of a mature garden.
It is spring and nature erupts with abundance that is almost too much to bear. There is an almost wasteful opulence of beauty and sensual pleasure. With each breeze, petals are shed from the May Bush and form a cream carpet on the grass below. Life bursts with vigour all around us but decay is already evident within the bloom.
I sit under an oak that must be at least 70 years old with a majestic spread across the lawn. It may look English but instead of squirrels, woodpeckers or Hummingbirds, this tree provides shelter to Magpies, rosellas, and king parrots. Then, at night I hear a Southern Boobook above the din of the frogs; it makes a hauntingly beautiful tone, then a second, as if an echo to its own call. It may be tranquil, but it isn’t silent here. Magpies warble from early morning through to the late afternoon and thousands of bees provide a steady hum that forms the percussive backdrop for all other sounds. Flies, like kamikaze pilots, criss-cross my path and thud into the glass panes of the cottage where I am staying. The breeze chimes high-pitched through tree leaves and birds squawk, twitter or chirp at indiscriminate intervals composing their own celebration to the profusion of life.
Beyond the garden, a long dirt driveway beckons to walk a kilometre or two to explore paddocks left and right. At the cattle grid, the illusion of the English countryside ends suddenly. It has been raining and the road is rutted. There are deep, water-logged potholes to avoid, and I am on the lookout for snakes in the tall grass along the verge. I have my curious dog with me and know I must protect her from the instinct to play with anything that moves. Instead of a snake, I see a blue tongue lizard sunning on the pale compacted earth. It doesn’t move as we approach, not even as I stop to run my fingers down its smooth, scaly back. Instead, it looks at me and darts its blue tongue in and out. I hold the dog, step around the lizard, and let it bask in this early spring warmth.
Between rows of young oaks, the grasses along the paddock fences are up to a metre tall. The rough spear grass sways hypnotically and shimmers like angels’ hair in the distance. It is the only endemic grass I recognise. Other grasses are introduced, like sheep sorrel, which stands out with its rusty small florets. There’s orchard grass and false oatgrass, the tallest of the erect grasses. I watch the breeze bend long and slender stems and look at their weeping heads bob up down, playing with the sunlight. Even weeds are endowed with their own beauty today.
As I walk back unencumbered, I see the owner of the property in the distance. He who has poured his heart and soul into this land, a land that has been in his family for the last sixty years. I see him work each day, moving sheep, mowing lawns, fixing fences, chopping wood. He has transformed the cottage I inhabit from a wool shed to a charming spot for lovers, dreamers, and writers to escape. A place adorned by climbing roses with onion dome buds pressing against the window, a place where I can choose beauty and the pulse of life. I am grateful for this enchantment and the freedom to observe, think and write.
Blackbirds sing their songs of love to my crushed heart. I look to the garden you planted only a few years ago and am astonished at the height of the trees. The wind rustles slender silver birches and the leaves of ornamental pears shiver in rapport. Bees head for an overgrown patch of woody lavender, then to the purple snake bush and the rosemary. These are the only flowers in bloom this early in spring, but I can see budding carnations which are only days in the offing. Apart from these blue hues, the garden captures the full range of verdant tones from olive to sage, emerald to St Patrick’s Shamrock green.
The riot of roses that will transform the garden to a perfumed oasis are yet to emerge. I won’t cut their first blush for your bedside this year. The table shall remain bare, a reminder, should I need one, that you are no longer there. The roses will bloom, and I will reminisce, yearning for the gardener who brought life to barren land. Yes, I will see the beauty of the roses and I shall feel the full sting of their thorns.
A summer without you, in the garden you have sown, is hard to envision. It will live on, your creation, even if you are no longer here to tend it. My heavy hands will attempt your work and every flower will remind me of you.
I asked for an untamed garden, a garden of reckless colour, a garden that reflected my heart and you delivered. And now, now that you have left to return to the eternal, I grieve in the wild garden of my soul.
My mother-in-law is a fiercely independent woman who at 90 still lived in her own home. That is, until the day when she got out of her armchair, took an awkward step and fell.
For a long time, everyone in the family had the same unspoken fear. ‘What will happen if she has a fall?’ It was like living with a time bomb. The subject was difficult to broach. Jean wanted to stay in her own home and any other suggestion felt like betrayal. Like all of us, she hoped she would go to bed one night and not wake up the next day.
The night Jean fell, she crawled back across the tiled floor to her armchair. She had shattered her hip. Luckily, she had her mobile. Her first call was to her daughter, not 000. By the time the ambulance arrived to take her to hospital, she was out of her mind with pain. The doctors decided to operate, even though they were concerned about the effects of the general anaesthetic. We didn’t think Jean would pull through. She survived the operation but when she awoke, the pain returned with a ferocity that sapped her will to live. She pleaded with us to end her suffering. She didn’t want to go on. It was difficult to watch. We all felt helpless and unprepared.
When Jean was admitted, her full name and date of birth were recorded. Her legal name is Janet but she has never answered to this name. Everyone calls her either Jean or Jannie. While for years, Jean had doggedly guarded her independence, she nevertheless readily submits to authority. From the moment she was admitted and her full name entered into the medical database, she became Janet, a name she never liked and part of her identity was stripped away.
After a couple of weeks in hospital, Jean was moved to the acute ward of a much smaller hospital in a country town. She received excellent care and, with some physiotherapy, managed to take a few steps with assistance. There was a short period where she seemed to understand that her only way out of this predicament was to learn to walk again. Unfortunately, this only lasted a week or two before she fell into a depressive state. Once more, she began to talk about wishing to die. Considering the current spotlight on mental health, it surprised me that no psychological help was on offer for her increasingly depressed state of mind.
Jean still talked about returning home. Some days she confided that she no longer had a clear picture of where everything was in the house. This distressed her. I didn’t feel it was my place to burst that bubble. However, with each day spent immobile, the possibility of going home became increasingly remote. During this time, Jean lamented that she could no longer remember certain parts of the house with clarity and this began to really bother her. Her thoughts looped like a coil: how much she ‘owed’ me for some hand-creme, whether the gardener had cut back the roses in time and when the next instalment of the rates was due. She worried about forgetting the things that still connected her to the outside world so she repeated each of these thoughts over and over in her mind.
After three months in hospital, the hip had healed but Jean hadn’t. Her daughter found a modern, well-resourced aged care facility not too far from where she lives and Jean moved in.
When I go to see her there, I can’t fault the nursing staff. A genuine culture of care is evident in the way they interact with the residents. The food is quite reasonable and her room is bright and clean. The furniture is stylish and each room has a large television set for entertainment. Jean sits at a large window that faces onto a courtyard where birds can be seen flitting from one tree to another. The view is serene. But it isn’t home.
Jean tells me that one night a man in wheelchair had made his way into her room before staff could come to wheel him away. This frightened her. And sure enough, the same man wheels himself part way through the door while I sit on her bed. He is convinced it is his room. A member of staff arrives and wheels him away, telling him that he won’t find what he is looking for in Janet’s room.
Jean looks dismayed. ’I mustn’t complain,’ she says as though she is trying to convince herself that everything is as it should be.
When I walk through the lounge area, a number of the residents are playing a quiz game without much enthusiasm. A carer reads trivia questions and beckons the oldies to answer.
‘What is the largest city in Africa?’…’No, it’s not Johannesburg.’
’That’s right, Nancy, it is Cairo.’ I cringe, recognising a patronising tone that I wish wasn’t there. ’Don’t worry, I have chocolates for all of you,’ the carer croons as she proceeds to the next question on her list.
Back in Jean’s room, lunch arrives. She doesn’t like the soup. ‘I’ve gone off pumpkin,’ she says. ‘But there’s no point in telling them what I don’t like, it comes anyway.’ And later, ‘I like the muesli here but I wish the milk was warm. I always heated my milk in the morning.’ It seems like such a small thing but when your life is reduced to meals, bathroom visits and the telly, the smallest things become magnified.
I take some cups to the dining area as Jean is running out of space on her tray. A woman in her 80s, slumped in a wheelchair looks up. She becomes animated as she sees me advance towards her.
‘Scuse ee, scuse ee,’ she pleads. I see an open notebook resting on her lap. Two phone numbers in spidery writing dance across the page. ‘Phone? You have phone?’, she asks in a thick accent. I don’t. Not on me. She reaches out, holds my hand and I cannot look away. There’s desperation in her eyes. I promise to return with my phone. ’Thank you, thank you,’ she says over and over. ‘ Maria, my name is Maria.’
I dial the first number and get a message from Optus. The number is incorrect. I try the second. This time the phone rings. I hand it to Maria with trepidation. Part of me feels I shouldn’t be complicit in this.
‘Christina? Is Christina? Please come. Take me home. I no like it here. Please Christina.’ Maria is fighting back tears now. ‘Why no, Christina?’ ‘No, he no come.’ Then, ‘Ok, bye.’ She hands back the phone. Now it is my turn to fight back tears.
‘My name’s, Maria. I come from Italy. Three children, I have three children and what you get? Nothing. All the way from Italy. What for? You get old and they treat you like dirt.’ She almost spits this last phrase to get the taste of dirt out of her mouth. I squeeze her shoulder and slowly walk back to Jean’s room.
Over the next few hours I become acutely aware of the constant noise and movement around me. Jean likes to keep her door slightly ajar. The corridor outside is a busy place where residents come and go, squeaky trolleys are wheeled along and everyone speaks too loudly. Not even the television can mask the commotion. I imagine myself living here. Me, who craves stillness and silence.
‘The nights are the worst,’ says Jean. ‘I can’t sleep and I can’t have sleeping pills. I just look at the clock and watch the minutes go by.’
I take my leave when her evening meal arrives. I plant a kiss on her head and say goodbye. Walking out to the carpark, the sun, lower now, still warms my back.
Roger makes the best marmalade. People buy his distinctive squat jars of marmalade with their hand-drawn labels to give as presents, but I expect not all jars make it to the intended recipient. His marmalade is legendary. His Seville range is my all-time favourite, but others swear by the whiskey marmalade, mandarin, or cumquat.
‘It is all in the way the fruit is cut,’ he says enigmatically and when I watch him make a batch, I see what he means. He takes his time, halving the orange and halving it again before he begins cutting along one side on an angle. He uses his fingertips as a guide and employs a large sharp knife to cut exceptionally fine slices.
‘That’s the trick,’ he says, ‘most people cut the oranges too thick, and you don’t get the same flavour.’
Roger is right of course. Home-made marmalade is usually chunky with pieces of hard rind which is bitter while shop bought marmalade is over processed mush and much too sweet. Spending the time to cut it finely makes a big difference to the final product.
He rapidly boils the fruit in water before reducing it to a gentle simmer. Floating in the liquid is a small muslin bag he has fashioned with the seeds and pith of the oranges. This releases pectin and helps the marmalade set.
Before adding the sugar, he tastes the rind to ensure it has softened. This is where the magic begins. The marmalade is stirred often, and a small plate awaits in the freezer for the all-important setting point test. Roger has made marmalade for so long now, he needs only to look at the simmering pot to determine whether the timing is right. A small spoonful of the sticky liquid is dropped onto the plate, and he gently pushes his finger from its edge towards the middle. If the surface crinkles, the marmalade is ready to pour into the sterilised jars he retrieves from the oven.
Roger works quickly now, pouring the marmalade into the jars and tightening the lids on with a double twist action. The jars are then taken out into the cold night air and left overnight. This works like a charm. In the morning, the marmalade has set, and the sun plays with the rich, translucent amber colouring.
After the jars are brought back in and cleaned, it is time for the labels. These are handwritten using a quill dipped in India ink. Roger draws a small tree with orange dots on the left-hand side of the label before adding a ‘date of birth’ for each batch. Dozens of exquisite jars line shelves in the kitchen, ready for the taking.
There’s always a smidge of marmalade left which is poured into a small bowl. This is the breakfast marmalade, awaiting a slice of toast or two. There is no point resisting temptation. I shun the margarine, reach for the butter and marmalade and brew myself a strong pot of tea.
I have always been a letter writer. As a child I wrote letters to my grandmother on wide-lined stationery with a scene of snow white printed on the top of each page. The seven dwarfs with coloured hats stood in a garden next to a cottage where Snow White leaned out of a window. The scene took up about a third of the page for which I was grateful, as I never really knew what to say to the old woman who lived far away and whose face I could not recall.
Later, I wrote letters to friends and found I had lots to say. Some were posted while others were passed furtively across a school desk, telling my best friend about some drama unfolding in my head. I wrote letters to boys I liked that were never posted. I spent hours agonising over the right words to use but in the end, they were scrunched into tight balls and thrown into the wastepaper basket. I was doubly frustrated when I not only missed revealing my feelings to the boy du jour but missed the bin as well.
In my twenties I began to travel and collected friends around the world. The friendships were intense, and we talked for hours about the state of the world, books we were reading and courses we took at university. Phone calls were expensive, so we wrote – sometimes daily, on light blue aerograms which were as thin as tissue paper and cheap to send. I bought aerograms by the dozen, franked and ready to send. I modified my messy script so I could fit more onto the page and once I folded and licked the three sides to seal the letter, I sometimes added a P.S. under my address on the outside.
My letters began to be more sporadic in my thirties as I worked, commuted, and eventually had a child. Phone calls became cheaper and for a while, I alternated writing letters with a call every now and again. The letters arriving in my letter box became less frequent too, as my friends took on responsibilities and our yearly trips stretched to two, five or more years. With the arrival of email, we promised we would write more often but this never eventuated. Email doesn’t have the same impact as retrieving a handwritten envelope from the letter box and tearing it open to reveal a letter to hold in both hands. A letter is to be savoured, to be read and reread, shown to a friend or two and kept safe.
After years of neglect, I have started writing letters again. Letters to my 91 year-old mother-in-law who cannot hear me on the phone, letters to friends in lock-down and the occasional letter to old friends overseas. I haven’t tried to buy an aerogram for years and don’t know whether they still exist. I have, however, tracked down an alternative on thicker paper with a prettier cover that folds and gums just like aerograms did. Maybe letter writing is making a comeback the way vinyl records have done. I feel a pang of nostalgia as I write on this paper and love that I have to keep my message brief. The recipient of my letter must carefully cut open the sides to reveal that which I have shared within.
Rereading old letters, I come to understand their real purpose. Much more than simply an exchange of information, they are a testament to the bond of friendship nurtured over the years.
Spring has come suddenly. A week ago, temperatures were still in single digits and icy Antarctic winds blew across paddocks. This week, an azure sky greets us each morning and buds are shaking off their winter mantle, emerging from their deep sleep.
In a single day, leaves appear and apple blossoms beckon bees to their nectar. The first flies emerge and even they are a welcome sight. A young green backed crimson rosella who has come looking for seeds is quickly set right when she intrudes on an adult pair feeding. Stocky, crested pigeons arrive and there’s a stand-off between the birds. A dog barks and the pigeons take off with a characteristic whistling sound. This is created as air flutters between narrow feathers on its wing. A pied currawong lands and has a furtive look but is driven away by a pair of magpies. They feed, crane their necks towards the sky and warble in gratitude before leaving.
In the backyard, the lawn is overgrown. A languid blue tongue lizard emerges from the shadows seeking the sun. It could be mistaken for a garden ornament until something catches its eye. Suddenly it moves with diagonally opposite feet at unexpected speed. It is a reminder that snakes are also coming out of brumation and are looking for food, warmth and a mate.
After a wet winter, water lies in flooded ditches and the Eastern froglet can be heard from a distance. The deafening sound is easily confused with that of a cricket except that the chirp is at a slightly lower pitch. There must be dozens of these critters creating such a racket. Not even walking past with dogs disturbs the male frog’s amorous call.
Ornamental prunus blush pink along the nature strip, like bridesmaids at a wedding. They sway in the September wind, decidedly underdressed in blossoms without foliage. Other trees experiment with sending their first leaves to their stem tips. Is it time to let the next ones unfurl or is it better to wait? The silver birches err on the side of caution and hold tightly onto their buds. They aren’t ready yet to trust the change of season.
It seems the birches are right. As the afternoon progresses, the wind pulls across a blanket of grey clouds to cover the sky and temperatures drop back to single digits. Trees shiver and blossoms begin to lose their precious first petals. Tree branches knock against the windowpane as if asking to be let in from the cold. Spring may dither in these first few weeks of September but there’s no holding back its promise of abundant splendour.
My grandmother lived in an old war-scarred building in central Budapest. There were gunshot wounds on the outside façade and even the courtyard wall showed bullet holes from the hand-to-hand combat that took place in 1944 and again in 1956.
She lived in a tiny flat on the second floor with windows facing the cobbled courtyard that was in shadow for most of the day. For no more than a couple of hours, the sun’s rays found their way to her window and graced the otherwise dull living room with light. This was the world she inhabited for over 40 years.
She didn’t have many possessions and most of what she owned was utilitarian. The exceptions were some crocheted doilies on a coffee table, a few precious crystal glasses in a vitrine and two pots of cyclamens, pink and white which she kept on the windowsill in between old-fashioned double opening windows.
Her cyclamens bloomed even in the depths of winter when snow lay ankle deep on pavements. The space between the two windows became a greenhouse where her precious flowers flourished and brought delight. Cyclamens were her favourite flowers and she had a gift for encouraging them to bloom.
I have never been quite so lucky with cyclamens. I overwater them, have them too close to a western window where the leaves fry or I place them too far from the sun so that the flowers have to crane their necks to get to the light. My flowers never look better than on the day I receive them, wrapped in tissue paper from a well-meaning friend.
‘They look so beautiful!’ I say and I mean it with all my heart. But my hear sinks a little too. I know that no matter what, in a month, the flowers will be well past their glory days. They will never look like the burst of blooms on my grandmother’s windowsill.
‘Thank you so much, Cyclamens always remind me of my grandmother,’ I say wistfully. Then, my friend, satisfied with her choice, knows that she has given me the perfect gift…
Books were a rare treat in our house. My father only read Penny Dreadfuls he bought at railway kiosks, printed on cheap, sepia coloured paper. They were either short crime stories or westerns. Resembling newsprint, they appeared in two columns in a font that was hard to read. For my short-sighted father, they would have presented quite a challenge, especially as he was reading in a language that wasn’t his own.
I learnt to read Enid Blyton’s Noddy books which were readily available at our school library, translated into German. I read and reread his adventures under my doona using a torch to illuminate the page. Lights had gone out long ago.
I loved losing myself in stories, pretending I was right there with the characters who had become my friends. I was closer to Pippi Longstocking than any of my classmates. I could anticipate her every move and even finish her sentences. She was a braver version of me, an unconventional girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
When a book fair was announced at our school, I begged my mother to be allowed to go. There were two long trestle tables with books displayed face out. My mother, seeing the wide-eyed look of desire, whispered caution in my ear. ‘You can only choose one,’ she said.
Many wonderful stories beckoned but I knew that choosing one could never satisfy. But the thickest book there was different to all the others. It promised to reveal the whole world A-Z and that was the one I chose.
When we arrived home, my mother took out our sharpest knife and ran it between each adjacent page. It was only then that the contents of the encyclopedia were revealed. I inhaled the smell of the paper and ran my fingers along the cloth spine. I knew I would treasure this book.
On page twenty-five, I found a map of Australia. Back then, it seemed like an exotic place far, far away. I remember looking at the depiction of a spear throwing Aborigine, wheat, gold, and kangaroos. I never imagined I would go there.
I learnt so much about the world around me from this book. Everything from descriptions of wild animals to how motion pictures work and even the symbols used in Morse code could be found between its covers. I read and reread many of its pages for years.
Today, I have several thousand books in my collection. I still delight in their smell and occasionally, I still have to cut open their pages. Books present both a sensual and cerebral pleasure and while there are many books I treasure, the pride of my collection is this quaint old-fashioned children’s encyclopedia. After all, it started my love affair with collecting books.
From Quill to Quote 