jmgoyder

For Julie. 2012.

Where to begin.

You are a symbol of all that is beautiful in my life.

I can’t remember my own infancy, but I remember yours, every detail, every freckle, every asthma attack, every giggle. I remember getting the news that I was pregnant with you, and telling absolutely everyone including the man in the ticket office when I bought a train ticket to Sydney that day.

I remember the newsagent’s surprise when I was on the way to give birth to you, and Dad stopped so I could buy a Readers Digest to read during the confinement, absolutely sure it would be a breeze. The elevator man on the way up to the labour ward commented with a smile, that he had never seen such a cheerful expectant mum. And the moment when you were placed in my arms. Unforgettable. Grandma and Grandpa were in Melbourne which nearly killed Grandma…. and me.

I remember decorating your room in Canada, for one of your birthdays. I remember the tiny little flared skirts and rope petticoats I made you when you could just toddle. I remember Percy, the wooden penguin, and your delight pushing him on the stick in front of you. I remember the excitement of driving over to Dee Why to show you off to Grandma and Grandpa so often. I remember the pushcart and you all dolled up in a knitted outfit I’d made, and getting you on to the train from Birrong, to once more show you off to the staff at MLC, who must have groaned when they saw me coming once again, to show how you’d grown, at least a week from the last visit.

I remember you with Daniel and Kalainu in PNG the baby on your hip, like a third arm. And the love shining in the eyes of those beloved New Guineans, Tulia and the rest…such love and adoration.

I remember your tears and the agony of leaving PNG in that tiny plane. You never got over that, nor did we, watching your pain.

I remember the look of love and concern when I opened my eyes to find you bending over me after my mastectomy.

I remember you playing your guitar and singing at Brin and Julie’s wedding, with your heart breaking because Anthony had let you down and didn’t come.

I remember you flying way over the rope marker for the high jump at Ukarumpa. I remember the basket ball against the PNGers on the top court at twilight….Dad and me watching.

I remember Dad, standing at the pulpit at St Matthews, with you, a tiny dot up to his knees, walking up to take his hand in front of the congregation. I remember Dad proudly saying you were a chip off the old block, after a conversation with you by phone from that awful Bible College.

I will never forget your face when you arrived in Perth airport after he died.

I remember Nanna’s face when you used to run into her house to visit. I remember you playing with all the dogs and cats we’ve owned throughout your life. I remember the tearful phone call to my school the day you found your precious pregnant cat, dead outside the house and asking could the kittens be saved, and the agony of the distance away that I was and how powerless I was to comfort you.

I remember your radiant beauty, set off by the sheen in the gorgeous blue of your outfit at your wedding. I see the look of total undying love that Anthony gave to you as he placed the ring on your finger. I remember the label still hanging off the sleeve of my wedding outfit at the church and I remember buying it in a shop, near where I was having some sort of nuclear cancer test soon after you were engaged.

I remember tiny Rohan and Jared all spruced up and full of importance on your wedding day, and your brothers so proud.

I remember the way you mothered baby Brin, and held this great fat child on your own little knees, and later even more motherly when a second little brother arrived. You never seemed to mind the attention they got.

I have a drawer full of your cards and letters telling me how much you love me. I have a drawer full of your amazing writings and a heart full of pride and wonder at your giftedness.

I remember sitting in the car with you when we pulled over to talk deeply about God, after a church meeting and how insistent you were that you understood it all.

I remember how literally you took some of the things your Sunday School teacher taught you and giving out tracts at service stations and how negative that whole part of your life was. But I remember your faith and Len and Betty Evans and the way they loved you.

I remember knocking on the door of the doctor in Ukarumpa when you were having a terrible asthma attack, and being afraid to wake him up.

I remember the patience of a small girl, sitting on a rock by a lake in Canada, as you coached a tiny chipmunk onto your hand. Later, I remember your skidoo taking off at high speed, with us watching helpless with laughter from inside the cabin, as Fred Brown tried to catch you and tell you to stop squeezing the accelerator. And was it you laughing when I did the same thing with your scooter, in Boyanup?

I remember when Mark gave you that little motor scooter. I see the way Mark’s face still softens every time he asks after you.

I see the way the whole room lights up when you arrive to family dinners and last time, I relished the sounds of laughter and love coming from the dining room as I played with the younger kids in my bedroom.

I love the way you love Ashtyn.

I remember Dad and me watching the three of you skating in Toronto, and the time a man skated up behind you and scooped you up to skate a few metres with you high in the air.

I remember how freezing the walk back to the apartment was afterwards, and how you cried with the pain of your defrosting fingers.

I remember how bewildered you were when you three burst into the apartment, identical to ours, but on the sixth floor of the wrong apartment block, in Toronto.

I remember the apple pies in Boyanup and how my stove was permanently welded with the overflowing apple sauce.

I remember the 10k ride at early light, day after day, to look after Gar.

I remember the phone call from UWA saying please could you come home, and Dad saying unequivocally, “Yes.”

I remember the poem you wrote to be read at Dad’s funeral, and the pain. Oh the pain.

I remember how homesick you were when you went to stay at Melodie Brown’s. I remember the shock of the news just after we left PNG, that Ruth had been killed on that motor bike. I remember you and Dad going away for Christmas at Yapeta’s village that year and how strange it was for all of us.

I remember Yapeta never wanting to turn the shower off when Harland brought the three PNGers to stay with us in Toronto. I remember Mandalia stopping in his tracks the first time you yelled a greeting in Wiru, from the front window of our house in Ukarumpa, and how amazed the missionaries were when you spoke more fluently in Pigin, than they did after all their years and years there.

I loved every moment of your young motherhood years. The zillions of photos you took of Ming, and the full blown motherhooding that swept over you, after never touching another person’s baby in your adult life…..or since. The almost unearthly knowledge of this child who had been promised to you even before you and Anthony were married.

The way you “wifed” Anthony and changed nothing in his home or lifestyle. A person so content, who needed nothing more than to be with her man and make his life seamless in transition, except for the wild surge of joy and the total texture of the life changing love you brought to him.

I love the transformation of the farm into an exotic bird paradise.

I love the way you give Ming absolute freedom to be himself. I love the no strings way you’ve brought him up.

I love your blog. Your honesty, your willingness to let us in. And most of all your sense of humour that colours absolutely everything you do and say, and yes, the guffaw, that has become your trademark.

I remember Dr  Dan Hugo saying you were a “real” doctor, when you got you PhD and how I wanted to trumpet the news to the world, while you left plain “Julie Goyder” on your office door for years, not bothering with the Dr.I love that you are free of materialism, when I’m so opposite. You have bucketloads of empathy in its place, but that’s a huge burden for you. I love the way everyone loves you and wants to be your friend, but you’re so happy with your own company.

I love you boot fetish.

When you write the dialogue between the birds, I love the way they talk about you, the human.

You are so refreshing.

I hated the months when you would only eat apples or have a glass of water in a coffee shop.

Do you remember standing on Dad’s feet and walking with him step by step on his big shoes when you were 2?

Do you remember the ominous silence when Dad would threaten to pull the car over when the three of you wouldn’t stop fighting in the back seat on our long Canadian trips?

Do you remember yelling “Turn off the wipers, Dad”, when he always forgot?

Do you remember Grandma shrieking with delight as you all tobogganed down the ravine in Bexhill Road?

Do you remember Grandpa laughing till the tears came, recounting the smell of the skunk as it drifted over them, upstairs at Bexhill?

And Grandpa giving us the red car when they left to come back to Australia.

What about Macdonald’s every Saturday after cleaning Islington Evangel Centre. The wonderful freedom to order whatever you liked as payment for helping Dad every week.

The horror of the “air hostess” uniform you were forced to wear at the Grammar School and that awful day when you fell over a laddered your stocking and bled all over the place.

What about the shock hearing Ming’s name suddenly read out at that same school about 35 years later, when he got the Principal’s Award. Uncanny.

I loved all those Sundays at the farm when you reluctantly played table games with Ming and me, with Anthony watching benignly on. And what about the hilarity of “Black Books”, Sunday after Sunday.

Do you remember telling Auntie Myra off for her grammar, or things like throwing the clothes onto the basket…”Don’t throw them, Auntie Myra….PUT them,” and the number of times you quoted the Bible at me, as a 4 year old.

I know you thought my singing in the car all the way to and from the North Shore every day, that year you went to Abbotsleigh, was hard to take. I remember you saying frantically, “Don’t kiss. Don’t kiss!” as I leant over to open the car door when I picked you up after school when you were seven.

I don’t like remembering the way you had to drag poor, little tearful Mark to pre school in Canada, after I’d left for work each day. Or those bullies who knocked you off your bike. I hate how hard some of your childhood was.

What a reader you were. You could read C.S.Lewis when you were so very young. The world of imagination was your friend and enemy.

Do you remember going into the woods with Dad to get a Christmas tree some years?

I remember how you saved up to buy me presents when you were so young.

You wrote the most beautiful letter to “Unkool Mik”, when he lost his legs from diabetes. I have never read anything so heart wrenching.

I love it that you call Brin Yelsnirb.

And that my daughters-in-law are mad about you.

And all my grandchildren.

And their partners.

In fact all my friends.

Surely you must feel the love. M xx