toast for tea

When my father takes a cutting into his magic gardener hands, roots and buds burst out of each end before he’s had a chance to scratch his ear. When he plants it in his garden and pushes the dirt down around it with his green thumb, he has to step back quickly, in case he’s knocked sideways by a flourishing branch. Sometimes he gives me one of his cultivated cuttings. I plant it, tend it lovingly, protect it from marauding chook beaks and pilfering possums. But I’ve seen it happen, it starts to wilt before I’ve even turned my back to make the call to tell him it’s in the ground. It’s usually dead within the week. Which of course is an exaggeration. Make that a couple of days. Unlike my father, my thumb is not green. I have his nose, his hair, his eyes, his liking for cockles in brown vinegar and pepper, but not his green thumb. My favourite spring fragrance is that of the humble freesia. On my walk with the dog this morning my olfactory receptors were wooed by the scent of freesia. I w...

It is impossible to concentrate. When you know your child is on the operating table, anaesthetised, tube down her throat, and soon to have seven teeth hacked and yanked from her mouth, how can you? You look at your watch again. Wonder which tooth he’s up to, the oral surgeon who casually told you in his rooms about the nerve that runs close to the extraction site, the one that controls taste and sensation in the lips. You feel guilty that you didn’t take her to the hospital yourself. Even though her father was happy to take time off and she was happy either way. You time-travel to two hours ago and watch them drive off, waving. Feel the gut-wrench of staying behind. Everything is ready for when they return. You’ve filled the fridge with mush. You’ve googled mushroom soup recipes and watched a how-to video. You’ve diced the ingredients and cooked dinner for yourself and the hollow legged man-child. You’ve got the ice pack cooling in the freezer. This could be a time when you could catch...

I stayed in bed until ten o’clock today. On a Wednesday! The house quiet, dog curled up at my feet, good book, sun shining in through the window (which via the trees makes an interesting PowerPoint presentation of abstract art on my wall), permission granted to not turn up for work. Bliss. Almost...Isn’t there always a catch? In this case it’s a throat that’s been filed with an emery board, cough to rival my chain-smoking Aunt Agatha’s and nose that drips with more ferocity than the tap in the bath – which of course we keep a bucket under. Der! Now I sit in the sun, in my pjs on the back deck. Drugged and nasal sprayed, it’s almost enjoyable. I close my eyes and feel the warmth on my lids, listen. The wind in the gum trees sounds like a million children shaking bits of tinsel. A yappy dog in some far away neighbour’s yard barks spasmodically at some phantom intruder. (Or maybe a real one!) The Belgrave train trundles along through Heatherdale and Mitcham stations and I can hear the bel...

My life is so obscenely busy I can only think in lists. This list inspired by the aroma of pancakes wafting down the stairs as I emerged from the bathroom this morning. Teenager in the kitchen can be a good thing. A remembering of childhood: · Watching television in the lounge room while consuming a plateful of steaming hot lemon and sugar pikelets Mum cooked for supper. Keeping a tally of how many we’d all consumed. Results staggering. · Kevin Dennis New Faces. Judging panel – Mum, Dad, me. · Midday Sunday. World Championship Wrestling. Killer Kowalski, Mario Milano, Brute Bernard. (Why did I watch this? Why can I remember a bunch of fat guys’ names when I can’t remember my grade six teacher?) · Glued to the screen. Do not disturb. The Monkees. Peter Tork. (I went to their concert and screamed myself silly. Then endured off-the-scale embarrassment when Dad came to pick me up and I couldn’t talk. Before the show I gave a parcel to one of the tech crew. A week later I saw a photo taken ...

I can’t get used to looking out at the rabbit’s hutch and seeing it empty. And as for peeling the carrots and topping and tailing the beans – I never thought such a mundane task could bring on such a wash of sadness. Several days ago, Teddy, our rabbit, remained huddled up in his straw when I went out to feed him and give him a pat. This was unusual. Usually he'd hop into the outer section of his hutch eager for food. I picked him up and put him on the grass, but he couldn’t support himself and kept falling over. (He keeps falling over in my mind. I see his skinny little legs kicking out to the side, flailing as he tries to right himself and hop away. It’s a harrowing image.) After a while, however, he seemed to recover, and I was relieved when he wolfed down his carrots and beans in true-to-form Teddy style. But I had a feeling when I took him to the vet later that day he wouldn’t be coming home. The vet suggested there was neurological damage and that the loss of function was pr...

I love the swirl of thoughts that float in and out of my head when I’m on the verge of sleep, when plans for tomorrow meld into abstract images of rollercoaster carriages that hurtle along tracks in a honey sea of green and purple and orange, then emerge as a line of four-winged pelicans, souring over white-capped mountains that gyrate and continually change shape; I love the sensation of sliding down a wall of words, none of them true or false or right or wrong, slipping through snippets of conversation overheard on the train to work, on a bus to Mongolia, in the mouth of a giant ant as it speaks into a microphone to a crowd of nude business men in bowler hats; I love the way my shopping list of unfinished tasks unfurls into a list of street names, then to a roadmap that becomes three-dimensional and I am sailing a boat through narrow canals, through foreign lands and over vast oceans of broiling waters that are home to saucepan-wielding pirates and old men; I love the sounds in my he...

I want: to plant the freesia bulbs that have been in a packet by the back door for over a year read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and all the other books underneath it on the pile by my bed write to my sponsor child and send her a photo of our family make moussaka invite my neighbours to dinner write a song with a blues feel drive to the beach on a week day and have a midweek day off spend all day at the State Library and come home with a short story and poem sew some braid onto the bottom of my khaki cords that are too short have a massive blog read catch-up do pilates go swimming pop in on my Dad for a surprise visit and take him out for morning tea go for a bike ride in Warburton brush the cat and the dog and the rabbit work up a song with my teenagers that we can perform somewhere phone about five friends who are in danger of forgetting who I am and arrange to meet for coffee read right through my Nortons Poetry Anthology meditate do some stream-of-consciousness writing everyday ...