Prince (our only white peacock): I just love the smell of my feathers – glorious!
King: I know what you mean, Prince – I love the angles of my shadow on the lawn.
Okay, years ago – well before Ants and I got married and had Ming and well before Ants got so sick – I asked him to explain his arrogant, strutting self-posturing.
He said (and I will never forget it), “Jules, men have to love themselves just in case nobody else does.”
Oh!
After the kidney infection episode and I was out of hospital, Anthony rang to say he would come and get me and bring me down to the farm to convalesce. I was surprised at this gesture as (a) in those days Ants would not leave the farm; (b) he wasn’t that great with generous gestures; and (c) he never bothered to see me when I was actually in hospital.
“Do you have to come to Perth anyway?” I asked on the phone.
“Well, yes, to pick up Pip.”
“What do you mean?” (Pip was my own little mini-dachshund who Ants was looking after while I worked and undertook my postgraduate studies in Perth.)
“I’ve just had her mated, Jules – it’s no big deal.”
“Okay, but she is my dog, Ants – you could have asked me!”
The next day he came up to my flat to pick me up and, expecting to see Pip in his arms, I became a bit alarmed. Ants sat down at my little table and sipped the coffee I gave him and then told me she was dead – that she had tried to get out of the pen she was in and strangled herself. He wiped at his eyes as I sobbed, then took my hand in his and said, repeatedly, ‘I’m so sorry, Jules.”
Lately, I’ve been telling Ming stories about how Anthony used to be. The trouble is, even though to some extent I remember and am so glad I have written the various love story posts into this blog, I can’t remember Anthony in a way that reconjures him. It’s hard to explain but it’s like a shadow crosses my memories so that I see fleeting images of him: running around the paddocks rounding up cattle; milking the cows; having drinks with his mother on the veranda; wolfing his breakfast; winking at me …. I have hundreds of these image-memories but they are all very still – like the photographs never taken.
Every single time I see Ants, either in the nursing lodge, or when I get him home, I get a shock – every time. So not only is my memory faulty, my perception of now is too; I can’t seem to adjust to the reality of how incapacitated Anthony is.
Ming said the other day that he wished he had known Anthony when he was young. Me too.
Anthony has had miniature dachshunds as pets for as long as I can remember. When Ming was born, we’d just lost Doc, a male, to old age, but we still had Inky, a female puppy.
Inky was, at first, alarmed by baby Ming – this strange,new creature in the family. But her alarm soon became intrigue, especially once Ming started crawling, then toddling, then babbling and I’ll never forget the shock on Inky’s face when Ming uttered his first word – “INKY!”
They were inseparable, making their infant-to-child transitions simultaneously. When I took Ming to ‘occasional care’, we would take Inky with us in the car, then Ming would carry her into the centre, much to all the other little toddlers’ delight. It was around this time that Ming – if asked if he had any brother and sisters – would state, proudly, “I jus have Inky – she’s my liddle sista.”
Inky was four and Ming still three, when she began to lose her rather manic liveliness. She started to get really drowsy, and her tail didn’t wag frantically anymore. Ming became upset when she wouldn’t race him, or fetch the tennis ball, or make the shrill, ecstatic noise she’d always made when he cuddled her.
Then, one evening, Inky wouldn’t even get up for her food, and we knew something was badly wrong. We rushed her to the vet and as Ming, Anthony and I watched, he said, “She has a heart condition and is dehydrated. There is nothing I can do; I’ll have to put her to sleep.”
With tears in my eyes, I crouched down and explained to Ming that Inky was in pain and that the best thing to do would be to put her to sleep. He nodded, solemnly as the vet injected Inky.
As we took her little corpse – in a box the vet had given us – out to the car, Ming patted my hand. He’d noticed my emotion and said, “Doan worry, Mummy. Inky’s jus sleeping. Gimmee her to hold.”
That was when I realized that he didn’t understand that Inky was dead. So I got into the back seat with Ming and, as we pulled away, I tried to explain, in my clumsy adult way, that the little dog Ming was holding was not going to wake up.
The car seemed to get very cold. Then Ming’s silence broke and he started to sob and so did I, holding tightly to his little hand. Anthony said gentle words to us while he drove us home.
As we reached the farm gate, Ming had stopped crying and said, in a quiet, solemn little voice, “Hands up all the people what are sad.”
We all raised our hands.
Then, when we all got out of the car, Anthony wrapped us all in one of his gigantic hugs.
Me: Hi, Ants, are you okay?
Anthony: Yes – when are you bringing me home?
Me: I couldn’t do the lunch arrangement and home as well today.
Anthony: I see.
Me: What’s wrong?
Anthony: I’m down in the dumps.
Me: Why? I thought you enjoyed the lunch.
Anthony: I did but then you made me go back. When am I coming home?
Me: Okay, Ants – I can’t manage you at home. You’re too heavy and I can’t do the nights.
Anthony: Why can’t we try?
Me: We have tried, Ants -please stop torturing me! And, by the way, why didn’t you speak coherently at lunch? Can you only do it when you’re telling me off?
Anthony: Okay, okay, Jules – please don’t cry.
Me: I’m doing my best, Ants! I thought lunch today would be great.
Anthony: I love you more than life, Jules – I’m sorry.
Me: Well you have a funny way of showing it – okay, I’m sorry too. Why did you have to get this stupid, rotten, bloody disease?
Anthony: I don’t know. Am I coming home tomorrow?
Me: Yes. Maybe.
Anthony: Are you picking me up?
Me: No – I can’t lift you so it’ll be the wheelchair taxi again. Ants, you know my blog?
Anthony: What?
Me: You know the blog I write?
Anthony: That clock story you wrote – remember that?
Me: No, not that. Well, anyway, I wrote about you today and admitted that I avoid you sometimes.
Anthony: Why?
Me: Because you are a pain in the neck, but I still love you.
Anthony: Jules, I have to go – it’s teatime.
Me: Okay, seeya, babycheeks.
Anthony: Jules?
Me: Yeah?
Anthony: You are wonderful.
Me: You’re not too bad yourself – I’ll ring you later to say good night – love you.
Ming: Will you idiots get off the phone so I can ring Davie? Oh, hi Dad – yeah seeya.
I have been avoiding talking about, thinking about and even visiting Anthony for the last couple of days because I am so sick of the sadness of his Parkinson’s Disease, sick of my own guilt at placing him in the nursing lodge and, yes, sick of the increasingly blank expression in his eyes.
Today, I organized the wheelchair taxi to get Anthony from the nursing lodge to a nearby restaurant because my mother and her old friend wanted to have lunch with us. My mother’s friend has recently moved into a nursing lodge in Perth (200 kms from here) so it was wonderful to see him and he kindly paid for our lunch. It all worked out fine with the only drawback being Anthony’s blankness, because he is now beginning to find it difficult to form thoughts into words, so the conversation tends to happen around him rather than with him. Contriving topics of conversation that will trigger memories and get Anthony talking is not my idea of fun.
Ah, you think, how selfish of me. Yes, I agree but while I am being so honest here I may as well also admit that I was absolutely dreading today’s lunch. What if the taxi didn’t arrive on time? What if Anthony didn’t feel well enough for the lunch? What if he’d somehow missed his medications? What if I couldn’t find the wheelchair entrance after the taxi arrived? What if he had to go to the loo and couldn’t walk? What if the taxi didn’t come to get him on time? What if he couldn’t manage his food? What if he got unhappy with me? What if he got nasty about going back to the nursing lodge?
Okay, luckily most of those things didn’t happen, but some did and, towards the end of our lunch, I caught myself looking at my watch, just wanting it to be over so I could come home and be free again. Yes, I wanted to be free of Anthony – there I’ve said it.
The weird thing is that after following the taxi back to the nursing lodge and wheeling Ants into his room, he suddenly became unblanked and, using his walker thing (you know those ones with wheels), he almost ran me back to the entrance with a nurse accompanying us. At the doorway, as I said goodbye to my beautiful husband who barely resembles who he used to be, he suddenly said to the nurse, “She’s avoiding me, you know.”
The nurse said, “C’mon, Tony, what do you think it’s like for her? Stop making it so hard for her to leave.” (I wanted to hug that nurse!) But Anthony just kissed me reluctantly and turned his back on me as I exited, then said to this huggable nurse, “She wants her freedom.”
Yes.
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!
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.
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?
Last year, before Anthony turned 75, I decided to throw him a huge party and invite every single one of his friends and relatives. I knew at the time that it would be our last opportunity to do this because of how rapidly Anthony’s health was deteriorating. The party was a resounding success with everyone here at the farm – over 100 people! One of the highlights was this poem, written by his friend, Eden, and read out by his nephew, Andrew. Eden had handwritten it and I now have it framed and on the wall in Anthony’s room at the nursing lodge. Every time I read it, it makes me laugh and cry and laugh again.
Goyder’s Show
So long ago by just a chance
to town he came for drink and dance.
That’s how we met so long ago, and
set the future’s wonderful show.
From Balingup hills to Dardanup flats,
drinking, hard working and fast cars to bat.
Like the “G.T.” roaring from “Bythorne’s” gate,
only shortly after to meet its fate.
The “A9X” would do no such thing,
It was far too precious with all its bling.
The shake of his hand is a law to abide,
welcoming many to “come inside.”
The kitchen table like a rock to the land,
a tea or a beer always at hand.
The AGA sits with pride of place,
the warmth of its glow etched in his face.
Cows in the shed, calves on the chain,
Shorts, teeshirt ’n boots he’d tend to them for gain.
The hours long and days of repeat,
milk quota cheques made it ever so sweet.
The “Inkys and Docs” were to provide for a stash,
when times were hard and the beef market crash.
That’s breeding the dachshunds should you not know,
just another chapter in this wonderful show.
Loyal to his siblings, workers and friends,
Arthur and Ken, the incredible men.
Side by side, intuitively so, Anthony Goyder
would give them a go.
So many shared his trust and kind ways,
so many fortunate come what may.
Somewhere in the midst came a wife and a son,
a job in the waiting, which had to be done.
They’re the pride of his fleet and ultimate test
To his boyness manner and youthful zest.
A husband sincere and ‘King of the Dads’
Menzies his son, such a fortunate lad.
‘His Royal Highness’ of Paradise Road,
is always there to share the load
of a mind stressed or persons ill,
he’s always kind and full of will.
Not father, brother or simply friend
but something of each his curious blend.
This man would show the way of right
and steady the wrong of which I might.
These qualities not destined at birth,
but earnestly found as he treads the earth.
This bloke of endless humour and wit
has a soulful nature blended from grit.
Should a scrap of fight I had to go
I’d have Goyder on side and not as foe.
The hard hits he’d take for all his mob,
then wryly smile and say good job.
His humour and wit come to the fore
exclaiming “they missed the Goyder once more!”
A yell to his mates would be “grab us a beer,
let’s get out now with something to cheer!”
In 25 years it’s cheers we will,
the time going by like the ring of a till.
With Queen’s telegram he’ll calling us back,
for a drink and a yarn at the “Bythorne Shack.”
“A Queen’s telegram! I’m one hundred you know.”
I can’t wait for that in his wonderful show ….
Me on the left and Ants on the right as the poem was being read out.
jmgoyder 