When Everything Changed

The thing we never saw coming, my brother and I, was our parents’ divorce. It was in 1955. I was 15. My little brother was 11. 

They called me into my brother’s bedroom where he was playing, and said they had something to tell us both. We sat down on my brother’s bed, mystified at the sudden air of solemnity. 

It’s hard now to remember that room. It was the new house they’d built, not the one we grew up in. (‘When a marriage is breaking apart,’ someone told me years later, ‘People try and glue it back together with a new baby or a new house. It never works.’) There must have been chairs; I see them sitting across from us while Dad explained that people don’t always stay married and it didn’t mean they didn’t love us any more. 

Mum would move out, and live with ‘Uncle Jack’, a family friend, after he too got divorced. We could spend as much time as we liked with both parents.

I don’t remember us crying, or even asking questions. We went numb, I think.

I do remember feeling a surge of protectiveness towards my brother – genuine, but also in a strange, ‘this is what Good Girls do’ kind of way: a role I could take on, because I didn’t know how else to react. I always wanted to do what I thought was expected of me, what was right and good behaviour in my parents’ and the world’s eyes. I worked to be seen as normal, not the oddity I secretly feared I was.

But I didn’t know what would be expected of a normal girl in this situation. Being the protective big sister (whether he actually wanted that or not) was something I could get right.

Also it was a way of quietly punishing my parents, who were doing this dreadful, disrupting thing to us. ‘You are failing your duty,’ my secret self told them silently. ‘What you’ve abandoned is my job now; I won’t fail.’

I did, though. 

Dad, rebounding, suddenly married a widow from interstate, where we went to live during school terms – our real-life Wicked Stepmother, against whom, at 15, I had little power. 

Written for Weekly Scribblings #80: Sudden Moments, at Poets and Storytellers United. 

Continued in this post.

Heading in Different Directions

Heading in Different Directions

The one I remember 

as the most romantic

gave me Leonard Cohen:

poems, novels, songs.

How soon it came 

to distances, things

we couldn’t untie;

to sorrow and goodbye.

Just a station on my way?

Oh yes, and I on his.

Until the night grew older. 

Sound of wheels moving.

Since then, what long

good journeys both,

diverging ... then briefly,

later, waving across tracks.

Neither would wish

to have missed

our fine, separate travels.

Nor can we go back.

Yet resting place 

was turning point –

our pause for warmth

at that waystation.

Should I credit Leonard Cohen for a few of these lines? Perhaps ... but I've changed them a bit.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #79 at Poets and Storytellers United, where the prompt was to be inspired by the word 'waystation'. 

Shorts: a variety

Shorts: a variety

I kiss my cat

no social distance

we rub faces

senryu 17/6/21

Orange

bursts out

from winter vines:

trumpet flowers bloom suddenly

hot.

elfchen 12/7/21

I still call on you

sometimes when I need help 

but do you have time

now you’re busy working

as one of the angels?

 

tanka 13/7/21

winter morning –

my cat runs up and down

small paws thumping

haiku 13/7/21

 In the latest Weekly Scribblings at Poets and Storytellers United, Magaly recently invited us to try one of several designated micro-poetry forms. Enthusiastically, I tried them all! Then I checked and found she wanted just ONE piece. I gave her the one I liked best, my American sentence.

Here, for Writers' Pantry #79, are all the others.  (Good not to share them immediately. I've had time to tweak a bit.)

In case you wondered: Yes, the first one was written last month; we were allowed 'recent' and I hoped that was recent enough to count. Sharing them now in the Pantry instead, no such restrictions apply.

Human Arrogance

 Human Arrogance

We thought ourselves the lords of all creation: smart, self-conscious, with our opposable thumbs, our verbal language, and standing upright, walking on two legs.

the only ones

like us – we perceive as

the only ones

It might have been all right if we’d stayed close enough to the natural world, continuing to be custodian of the other living things, understanding that we need them, and preserving the balance which we all need. Instead, more and more, we exploited or ignored. We got away with it (so it seemed). We became complacent. 

sleepy afternoon –

droning tractor breaks the peace

then merges with it

Now, if those who see clearly speak loud, in numbers, could it be enough? Or much too late? We can’t know – even if we think we know too well how it will go … how we’ll all go.

voices crying

in the (lack of)

wilderness

But speak out we must. Silence will accomplish nothing.

into the unknown

going out with a clamour –

or last-minute save?

For Weekly Scribblings #77 at Poets and Storytellers United, I invite people to be inspired by Rob Kistner's line, 'Human arrogance boils over' and his poem about the need to speak up for our environment. This poem.

Having written this, I came across this new article by Caitlin Johnstone which addresses similar issues. Well worth reading in full, but if you don't have time, here is one especially pertinent bit re the social media consequences of speaking out: 

We certainly don’t want to become heartless unfeeling creatures who dismiss the opinions of the crowd like they’re unimportant insects, but also we do need to find a way to continue speaking without having our light dimmed by those who are irresponsible with their inner misery. Near as I can tell, our best option is to become so deeply awake that we can continue to make art and speak out against the powerful even amid the vitriol and vituperation which comes the way of anyone who’s brave enough to shine bright. To become so conscious of our inner dynamics that abuse from strangers doesn’t silence us.

Filling in the Blank

 Filling in the Blank

‘In the blank space

between midnight and dawn,’

she began, and I thought,

What’s blank about that?

Does she sleep blankly,

never dreaming?

Do the large machines in her home

make no white noise in the night?

She obviously does not have

a cat or dog or even bird

with its own nocturnal agendas

involving sound and movement.

And outside in the street,

do no vehicles pass?

No animals or birds

scurry or call?

Is the dead of night

dead silent? 

What about breezes 

or rain, or sometimes thunder?

Even the tiny night insects

and spiders about their business,

unheard by our ears, move 

and un-blank the canvas.

But peace can be

surrounded by life

and does not require

blankness.

Written in response to Poets and Storytellers United's Weekly Scribblings #76: 'Writing a Blank'.

Better Late ...

Better Late ...

It would have been easy for her to fall yet again into the family story, widely and often repeated, in which my cousin Sue should have been her daughter and I Aunty Franki’s. Mum and Sue were polite, pretty, sweet; Franki and I were seen as intellectual, improper, eccentric.

Even Aunty Franki herself used to say it. I was secretly thankful I wasn’t born to her, with her screaming, volatile marriage to Uncle Bill, her wildly erratic care of her children. No wonder Sue loved visiting us. No wonder our lifelong rivalry for Mum’s attention. (Only 18 months apart, we were the eldest of our generation.)

It must have been that last time I stayed with her (living, by then, far distant) before she broke her hip and went to hospital, then nursing home. 

It was Sue, living so much nearer, who arranged all that, visited, took her on family outings … who phoned me and said, ‘Come now!’; who was already holding her hand, sitting up close, when I arrived. Who half-stood, then sat back down, deciding not to cede first place. 

We’d fought so often to be first with her! I wasn’t going to make a scene at her deathbed. I took the other chair, held her other hand, spoke to her of all the love people were sending. 

‘No!’ said Sue. ‘Far too late for that; she can’t hear you.’ I believed otherwise, but again subsided rather than argue.

After the funeral, a cousin’s new wife, oblivious of my identity, publicly expressed condolences to Sue. 

‘You were effectively her daughter, weren’t you?’ she said. (Aunty Franki was long dead.) Sue smiled and agreed.

Another cousin caught my eye, concerned. I gave a tiny shrug. 

 

After all, Sue was indeed the daughter to her, in her final years, that I was too far away to be.

And I had that memory!

That last time I stayed with her, I’d repeated the opinion that Sue might have been a better daughter for her. 

How easy for her to have agreed unthinkingly as usual. Seeming about to, she suddenly looked hard at me, straightened, and said deliberately:

‘I’m very fond of Sue. But you’re my Daughter, and I love you.’

Written in response to Poets and Storytellers United's Weekly Scribblings #75: Between What Is Right and What Seems Easy.