Me: Good evening, my beautiful gang!
Seli: Julie!
Woodroffe: Julie!
Zaruma: Julie!
Pearly: Julie!
Godfrey: ABOUT FACE, gang, that vroom herder is coming. Quick, get into the yards!
Indifference
I read once that the opposite of love is indifference, not hatred, and I think this makes a lot of sense. Indifference has a deceptive blandness to it, but is actually much more effective than hatred which, in my opinion, is a rather stupid emotion but does fuel a multiplicity of wars – within families, within countries, across history and geography. Hatred gobbles itself up in a futile way because it cannot forgive.
Indifference, on the other hand, is a wonderful emotional tool because you can use it to forgive and forget, and it is much gentler than hatred. The only problem with indifference is that, because it is so subtle, sometimes the indifferenced don’t get it. I have learned these wisdoms from the antics of peafowl – ha!
Poor King. He keeps trying to impress Queenie but she just wants him to go away!
Vroom-herding
The other afternoon, I was outside feeding the gang and trying to ‘herd’ them into their yards (I always have trouble with either Daffy or Pearl), Ming came home from milking the cows next door and did it in five seconds flat. He is a much more assertive ‘herder’ than I am.
The birds are wise; they obey his every ‘vroooooom’! If I were a bird, I would too.
Love story 95 – Mother and Son
You know that wonderful series, Mother and Son? If you don’t, it is well worth watching for its tragi-comic episodes.
Anthony and I used to watch it and laugh our heads of because in many ways it reminded us of the days of his lovely, but wiley, mother, Inna. In her 80s when I first met this family, Inna was definitely the boss and Anthony, in his 40s, was the only unmarried ‘kid’ so he looked after her and ran the dairy farm [you can see ‘Love story’ offerings in previous posts].
Then, when Ants and I got married, I was in my 30s and he was in his 50s and there were definitely some hilarious resemblances to Mother and Son in a weird, Freudian way.
And now? I am the mother in her 50s and Ming (our son) is approaching his 20s and some of our scenarios, conflicts and shared hilarity, remind me of Mother and Son, because there are some disconcerting similarities.
Speaking of motherhood – what the hell is Tapper (duck) doing inside the tiny space of the chook house? She has been sitting on a million eggs for two weeks now. Today, I said to her, have some daughters as well as sons please!
An (un)successful day
It was a day of contradictions with a good dose of anger thrown in. Ming was angry with me (characteristically) for not warning him that Anthony was being wheelchair-taxied home for lunch; I was angry with Ming for not going with the flow; and Anthony was angry with me (uncharacteristically) when the taxi came to pick him up to take him back to the nursing lodge after only 3 hours of being home.
However (and thank goodness for however) it was a sunny day, I cooked a lovely lunch, we sat outside and Ming played his guitar and a friend came over to see us later on and she was there when Ants was taxied away and she tolerated my mixed emotions about a whole lot of stuff – a good friend who also tolerated the fact that I have still not pruned the roses!
When I kissed Ants goodbye, he was quite nasty to me. No, that’s not quite accurate; he was quite unhappy with me – for sending him back. We had had several tail-chasing conversations during the day about him wanting to stay the night, about the impossibility of this because I cannot lift him etc. Ming became impatient and told us both to shut up and I have to admit I just wanted the whole ordeal over and done with.
So, when Ants had been taxied off and Ming had gone off to milk cows, and I was alone, I waited for the usual sobbing to happen, but it didn’t!
Instead, I decided to look at a few pictures I’d taken earlier in the day, to see if they worked out. Here they are – our one white peacock (we have two white peahens as well) finally grown up enough to display!
Love story 94 – Fireworks
Oh how I love remembering the early years of my marriage to Anthony and the joy of our little Ming:
Ming was just a toddler when Anthony and I took him into Bunbury, the nearest town, to see the Australia Day fireworks. It would be his first time. We went in early in order to get a parking space at a place called Boulter’s Heights, where we knew we would be able to view the fireworks from up high and from a slight distance, rather than being in the midst of the throng of revellers down in the main street.
Ming found even the waiting-for-the-fiyaworks exciting (although of course he wasn’t quite sure what fireworks were, except that it needed to be dark). He played with the rapidly increasing group of other little children, while what was a small gathering of adults gradually became huge.
As dusk fell and the crowd of big and little children grew, I kept my eyes trained carefully on Ming in that instinctive “mother bear” way, making sure he wasn’t being bullied or feeling lost. Finally, I retrieved him from a barely visible group of kids and he was safely perched half on my knee and half on Anthony’s when the first fireworks exploded.
The brightness of that very first fireworks “taster” was much more intense – and much closer – than I had expected. Ming flung himself violently backwards against my chest at the visual impact. Silently shocked, he clutched at Anthony’s leg just before the second explosion of enormous light and colour. and the noise!
Ming’s silence made me wonder if perhaps this event was too scary for him. As kaboom followed kaboom, and with the colour, light and people’s shouts of glee surrounding us, I held tight to Ming’s trembling body. Oh no! Maybe he was too little to appreciate fireworks, I thought, as I bent my head into the crook of his neck to see if he was okay.
But I needn’t have worried. Yes, he was briefly mesmerised and frightened. But as the fireworks became more intense, so did the crowd’s pauses become longer and a communal bated breath replaced the noises of impatient anticipation.
It was into one of those pauses that Ming suddenly began to shout, over and over and over again, “DOYALUVITMUMMYDADDY???!!!” And then, “ANDONY, ANDONY, ANDONY!!!DONTCHALUVITMUMMYDADDY???!!!”
Each time Ming yelled this, it was in one of those hushed moments of awe immediately after a fireworks explosion. Within the relatively small hilltop crowd we’d formed, Ming’s exclamations seemed to ring out as clearly as the noise of the fireworks and the people around us started to laugh and clap at his contagious glee.
Eventually, Ming became quieter, disconcerted by the adult attention. Then he got off my lap and toddled awkwardly around me until he was behind me with his chubby little arms around my neck. As the last firework shone out lingeringly, Ming bent his face to my ear.
“DoyaluvitMummy?” he asked again, this time solemnly.
“I love it all right, Ming,” I said, squeezing his hands and grinning at Anthony.
“Mummy,” Ming whispered very softly, as if it were a very important secret. “My tummy is cubbling [cuddling] me!!”
I knew exactly what he meant!
The beautiful thing is that Ants remembers this night too, despite the PDD.
Humpty dumpty
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again
This little ditty has been dissected and analyzed by hundreds of literary scholars and nursery rhyme enthusiasts, but I’m just using it here to describe how ghastly this week has been in so many ways – not just for me but for Ming and Anthony too. The good thing is that I have found a way of putting Humpty dumpty together again and he will be sitting back up on his wall again tomorrow with a big smile.
It’s such an honour!
On my third trip into town today (on my son’s behalf) this was our conversation:
Ming: You must feel really honoured to know me.
Me: WHAT did you say? [I was negotiating a difficult bit of road work, having forgotten my moonglasses]
Ming: Well you’ve known me since you had me, so you’ve seen me from the beginning.
Me: Your delusions of grandeur are really starting to irritate me, Ming.
Ming: No, Mum, all I mean is that you’ve known me from beginning to end.
Me: When is the end though?
Anyway, the conversation got a bit philosophical/hysterical after that. Nevertheless, I dropped the brat off for a concert and on my third trip home I thought of how Anthony waved to us today after our visit.
Me: Why are you giving me a wave like the Queen does?
Anthony: Because, my darling, I am royal.
Is arrogance genetic?
Greener pastures
Yesterday I made a snap decision and gave the emus away to neighbours who run a farmstay up in the hills north of here – not very far away. The Emerys will now be able to run around more freely instead of being penned in and taken for ‘walks’. I am going to miss them so much!
Just a moment
We had an appointment today in Perth (two hours north of here) for Ming to see the surgeon who operated on his scoliosis in February. After the usual X-rays and waiting room waiting, the surgeon said Ming’s spinal curve (Cobb’s angle – see below) had further reduced from 35% to 22%. Now I don’t understand the maths of this because I am not mathematically inclined, however, considering Ming’s curve was 75%/80% before surgery (depending on which radiologist was interpreting the X-ray) then I think 22% is beyond fantastic! I didn’t realize that his spine might straighten even more post-surgery.
http://www.e-radiography.net/radpath/c/cobbs-angle.htm
As we were leaving, I noticed a teenage girl who had tears in her eyes as she left the building with her parents so I told Ming to go and say something comforting to her while I went to the loo. When I came outside I found Ming talking in his loud, open, gesticulating way to the little family, and the girl’s eyes were no longer teary – they were shining. I said I was his mum and that we’d been a bit worried that she was upset. Then we all exchanged handshakes and wished each other well, all of us smiling.
We didn’t exchange names or contact details because it was all a bit ‘in the moment’ but that’s probably okay.
jmgoyder 