Tag: life

Aching for Attention

Recently, my body has been telling me to pay attention through aches, pains and annoying niggles. The message is clear; take heed, you are more than the mind and your thoughts. The physical form is just as important, ignore it at your own peril.

I have suffered from migraines for most of my life and they have often come about when I have pushed myself to the limit. Things like forgetting to eat lunch, sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, not getting enough sleep are just a few ways I have abused my body and while it faithfully keeps going for a long time, eventually it tells me to stop. Usually, it does so in a not-so-subtle way. That’s because it knows that only a sledgehammer will stop me.

I often find wild bruises on my legs or dried blood on my arm, and I have no idea how I acquired these. I brush off minor cuts or bumps as inconveniences only to discover later that they weren’t so minor after all. I am not proud of this. It comes from an attitude of considering my body as an inconvenience that I carry around with me. I see it as a limiting factor in what I try to achieve. So, I ignore it as much as I can instead of working with it or giving it the care it needs. If I am honest, it has been a lifetime of neglect.

The last week has been particularly tough on my body. I stupidly wore high heels to work on a ten-hour day when I had to run from one building to the next and greet people in an official capacity. By the end of the day, I was hobbling back to the car, in pain and exhausted. That night, I slept 12 hours. My body said ‘enough’.

I woke with a headache this morning and instead of reaching for pain killers, I reached for water. You’re learning, I thought. My body felt stiff, aching all over even after my morning shower. I looked at my to do list and promptly closed my diary. It could wait. Instead of pushing myself to get the next thing done and crossed off, I walked my dog to the local café, enjoyed a coffee and decided to honour my body with a massage.

After forty-five minutes of pleasure and pain, I thanked the Chinese masseuse and floated out onto the street. Colours seemed brighter as did my mood. Back home I approached chores with more energy and decided others could wait. I took the dog for another long walk and met up with some of the regulars in the park. Looking up at cotton ball clouds, I watched their shapes change. I noticed a colony of ants build a nest on the side of the path and I realised I was pain free and happy. All I needed was a little self-care and acknowledgment of my body.

When a Stranger Calls Your Name

Photograph by John Harding originally posted on Friends of Watson Greenspace Facebook page

It takes about a year for me to feel that I have arrived in a new place. I have moved cities often enough to recognise this pattern. Sometimes waiting for that moment feels like an eternity, as it did when I first moved to Sydney while other times, it feels as if it has taken no time at all. Canberra falls in the latter category.

While I have felt at home in my new place very quickly, I didn’t know anyone besides my daughter and her friends when I moved. Then, a couple of months later I met my first friend at the dog park. She lives on the same street as I do, and we meet up for drinks or dinner every now and again.

I am known at the local shop but not by name. People are more likely to say hello to my dog Zoë who wears her name on her harness than they are to say hello to me. Of course this is very common. Even Markus Zusak says that when he is out without his dogs, he becomes invisible to people on the street.

Can you imagine my surprise when a man with a camera hanging from his neck called out to me, ‘Are you Viktoria?’ It turned out, he was the local wildlife photographer who posts the most stunning photos of birds, dogs and kangaroos that visit the nature reserve across the road from me. I have been liking his posts for months and occasionally writing a comment, especially when he posts shots of tawny frogmouths. He must have looked at my name and found a picture of me. Now, he kindly showed me the tree where they were roosting, and I saw the three babies with their parents with my own eyes. It was a truly awe-inspiring sight, and I was grateful that he shared his knowledge of birds freely.

I thanked him and continued on my way. Zoë was getting impatient for her walk. However, after about 200m we were stopped again. This time, an older woman called out, ‘excuse me but do you have a friend in Sydney who lives in Dulwich Hill?’ Once more, I was flummoxed. Turns out she had moved to Watson recently, was given my number, but hadn’t made the call as yet. She recognised me because of Zoë. I guess there aren’t many black standard poodles who walk in this park. We had a chat and decided to catch up for a cuppa later in the month.

Ten months have gone by since I first moved here. So many joyful things have happened, but it wasn’t until I was recognised by strangers that I felt I had truly set down roots. It feels like I am part of the suburb and part of this community. I feel calm in the familiarity of the trees, the pond and the paths that I take daily. But hearing my name said out loud carried a particular weight, as though the world had suddenly recognised me within it. It was a fleeting moment of quiet significance, a moment when I felt connected to the place and the person who has called me into being out of my own thoughts and into the time and space we both inhabited.

And so, I have finally arrived.

What’s left of a lifetime

Across the road stands an empty and neglected house. The curtains in the main bedroom are torn and I have never known otherwise. The gutters at the front lean towards the left and can no longer hold the downpour of rain. A large tin shed stands at the back of the property, its swinging doors wide open and bent, revealing a dark cavern with nothing inside. There is no light, no life, no love left in this house.

On the nature strip are the vestiges of a shared lifetime: a 1970s kitchen table with three fawn vinyl seats, a striped folding beach chair, an occasional chair, a plastic bin, an esky and a milkcrate filled with the detritus of a meagre life. They have been left for the annual council clean up and after this, there will be no sign left of the lives lived there.

When I moved to the village six years ago, I occasionally saw the old couple sitting on the veranda of the house. The husband mowed the lawn, took the bins out and did a little gardening here and there. He still drove his small car to town, although plenty of people were worried about his fast-declining driving skills. His wife, however, mainly spent her days indoors. From my study, I would see her get undressed for bed at 9pm sharp.

The couple were private. They had lived in the village all their lives and had a couple of trusted neighbours who would look in on them. Otherwise, they kept to themselves. It didn’t help that the old man was deaf and cut off from world. I would nod or wave from across the road but that was my only interaction with them.

Most weekends their grown-up children would visit with grandchildren in tow. They began to take over the mowing and one day I noticed that the old car was driven away. The son could see that old man was dangerous on the road. Everyone on the street breathed a sigh of relief. Then, I noticed other changes too – home help arrived a couple of times a week and after a while, nurses.

The first time an ambulance came, I feared the worst. I found out from neighbours that George (I finally learned his name) had a ‘turn’ during the night. I was wondering how his wife would cope but at 9pm I saw her getting ready for bed as usual. A day or so later, George was brought home and life resumed more or less as normal.

The ambulance began to arrive regularly to take George away. I saw less of him in the garden and he rarely sat out the front anymore. Neighbours who had known them for decades began to rally. Some took out and brought in the bins, other did some shopping or dropped off meals. The chemist brought their medicines and nurses visited routinely now. I was beginning to wonder how long this could last.

The last time that the ambulance arrived seemed no different to all the other times. But George never came home. The doctors decided it was time for geriatric care management, a euphemism for moving to a nursing home. The family arrived at the house and things began to move rather quickly. Neighbours informed me that a place had been found for them at a residential aged care facility on the NSW Central Coast, a long way from where they had lived all their lives.

One day I noticed that no lights came on at 9pm and the house stayed dark. Family began to arrive at odd times to clear out the house and garage, removing anything salvageable in their cars. Finally, all that was left was were the few items on the footpath.

I look at these forlorn leftovers and feel downcast. Is this what awaits us all? Cherished memories sitting at the kitchen table wiped away with a wet cloth and put out for council collection? It is almost too much to bear.

I wonder how the old couple is now and whether I will ever hear news about them again. I know they never wanted to leave this pretty little village that was home to them for over 90 years. Perhaps they are stronger than I think. I hope so. And I hope they can sit side by side for as long as they have left with one another as they once did on their front veranda.