Wings | jmgoyder

Lost, found, gone

by jmgoyder

I almost can’t write this because the Emerys (emus) have gone. Long story short, Son put the hose into their water trough last night and didn’t clip the gate shut properly. I was devastated until I found them (the relief!) in the paddock next to ours. But herding them back didn’t work and I spent a few hours trying, in the car and on foot. It’s not that they didn’t want to go back home; they just couldn’t figure out how to get through the barbed wire fences and electric fences surrounding the farm block. They were cheeping with relief when I walked up to them and I patted them all and tried to coerce them into going through the fence space. Eventually, I picked one of my Emerys up and tossed him into our paddock, thinking the others would follow but, when he didn’t get up, the other three ran away again. The congregation of crows didn’t help; they were everywhere. I clambered through the fence to get Emery up but, no matter how many times I got him to his feet again, he just kept falling back down….

The story doesn’t have a happy ending and, once again, I have lost out. Husband (staying home for an extra night) just gave me a hug and said he’d get me some more emus but that just made me sob more. I am stupid, stupid, stupid and the emus are gone, gone, gone.

And I had just gotten the emu walking routine down to a fine art.

And they’d stopped wandering so far.

And everything was great with Husband home and Son getting better.

And I’d cooked a great dinner.

I can’t quite get my head around the fact that I found the Emerys but lost them again – that just seems too cruel. Maybe they will come back?

Family Wings

16 Comments »

The pecking order

by jmgoyder

Tina Turner’s arrogance is breathtaking. Not only does he dominate the picnic table where I chop up the cabbages for all of the birds, he constantly attacks me. He waits until I have my back turned and then whammo, I have a rooster attached to my leg. What I find mystifying about these attacks is that when I shake him off, he then takes bread or cabbage from my hand.

So I have decided to teach Tina a lesson in humility:

Hahahaha!

Wings

10 Comments »

One blink!

by jmgoyder

This is not a spectacular photo but who cares because I have FINALLY taken a picture of the wild birds here – one blink and I would have missed this.

In Year 2, a new kid arrived in the town and was plonked next to Son in the classroom – a bright, white-haired little boy. Blinks were exchanged. A rather thunderous friendship began….

Sunset reckons a better photo could be taken of Thunder. Son thinks I’m a galah.

One blink, two blinks, three blinks….

Family Wings

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A diamond in the rough

by jmgoyder

This metaphor perfectly describes Diamond’s position in the hierarchy of geese here.

To recap, Diamond and Woodroffe are our two Sebastopol geese. Here they are together. Diamond is on the left and Woody is on the right and has that distinguishing ‘freckle’ on his forehead.

This is what they looked like when we first got them. Woody was just a few days old, but Diamond was a couple of weeks old. Diamond is the one in the middle. (The goslings at the back and fore-front are Ola and Seli our Pilgrims.)

Well, due to the fact that Woodroffe was just a newborn, he and I imprinted on each other bigtime but Diamond was much more nervous so s/he and I didn’t establish the same sort of bond. So. lately, when Woody rushes up to me and Diamond stands back, I make more of an effort to give Diamond more attention. After all, I love them all equally!

Here is Diamond – elusive, enigmatic, enchanting. This post is for her, or him – I still don’t know!

A diamond in the rough.

Wings

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Last day of February, 2012

by jmgoyder

Wings

3 Comments »

Picture this

by jmgoyder

I have some pictures I would like to show you:

The two crows I saw tonight, flying silently across the skyline, briefly silhouetted against the cloudset
Son, without his brace, on his motorbike
The huge white cockatoo who perched on top of our sky-high television aerial this morning
Husband laughing
Baby chickens hatching
My mother’s wedding day portrait
My father’s great big comfortable shoes
Wantok’s tribe flying overhead haphazardly
Five dead mice
The duck eggs before the emus ate them
All of the birds that were killed by the fox
My good intentions
Son playing golf
Husband having a beer with me on the veranda
The toy harp I played when I was 5
My brothers hugging me
Joy
Husband laughing
The huge white cockatoo who perched on top of our sky-high television aerial this morning
Son, without his brace, on his motorbike
The two crows I saw tonight, flying silently across the skyline, briefly silhouetted against the cloudset

I have some pictures I would like to show you….

[Note: I am going to take a brief blogging break for next few days – back next Monday – I really need to find out what that thing in the ceiling is and do a bit of conflict resolution!]

Animal Wings

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There is a bird on my balcony

by jmgoyder

I have just remembered a rather strange coincidence. The first sentence I ever wrote of my PhD thesis was “There is a bird on my balcony.” At the time I was living in a tiny bedsit in Perth but I was lucky enough to have a balcony underneath a massive tree, so one particular bird would occasionally transit back and forth from the branches of this tree to my balcony. This bird seemed (to me) to have stories within itself – vast stories.

This sentence was soon deemed by my lovely, but rather formidable, supervisor as not being a good way of beginning an academic work. My thesis was about Alzheimer’s Disease and stories because, in working as a nurse in various nursing homes, I had discovered the joy of listening to stories told by people with dementia, no matter how fragmented. Long story short, my thesis passed and I rewrote it for publication as a book in 2001. That makes it nearly 12 years old now!

The bird-on-the-balcony sentence fell by the wayside but it still resonates with me and I remember it now with a nostalgic fondness for my own naivetee at the time and a big nod to the irony of now – in so many ways.

As I no longer have a balcony, I can’t post a photo of this wonderful bird; I don’t even know what kind of bird it was or what kind of tree it lived in. But I will never forget it.

The past is the past.

Wings

10 Comments »

‘This is your life’

by jmgoyder

A few final moonflowers popped up this morning, but I think they are now finished for the year. How would I know? I got it wrong before!

After a lengthy appointment this morning, to get Son’s post-surgery dressing changed by a nurse and his wound examined by our doctor, we went to visit Husband in the nursing lodge. Son was in his back brace and the pain had kicked in again so he took one of his pills before seeing Husband. I filled Husband in on the latest details about Son’s next few months of convalescence – the physiotherapy he would need, the fact that he isn’t allowed to lift even two kilos, his moody frustration and so on. Husband wanted to come home to help and I had to explain that this wouldn’t help, that it would make things harder as I would have two invalids to look after (yeah, sometimes my words don’t come out the way I intend them to).

Apparently Son will never be able to do this again:

Husband insisted on walking us out to the car even though he was quite wobbly. As we drove off, I saw him in the rear vision mirror, standing in parking lot, leaning on his walking stick looking so forlorn I wanted to reverse the car and rescue him, bring him home, but I couldn’t because by then Son’s pain was so bad he needed to lie down, so I had to rush home. I was crying (which Son says I do too much of) because I had forgotten to harden my heart.

Okay, so one of the things that has been said to me by my beautiful friends and family is this: “Soon you will get your life back. It will get better.” Now, whilst I agree with the latter, I don’t understand the former because this IS my life and Husband and Son ARE my life. Yes, I have my writing, the birds, my connection to the local university and many other joys, including this blog, and Husband and Son have never made me feel guilty for the time I spend writing. Bravo to them.

You know what I miss most? Sitting out on the front veranda with Husband and Son and chatting together every evening as the sun went down. We didn’t do this often enough in the recent months as Husband’s Parkinson’s disease got the better of him, but those conversations were the best! I don’t want a future without Husband here, but I know that he and I both have to adjust to that reality. And I don’t want a future without Son’s company but, once his spine is completely healed, he will inevitably leave to pursue his many dreams. Yeah, I know I’ve already posted this photo but this is the three of us back in 2009 when things were okay-ish.

Soon it will just be the birds and me.

This is my life and, despite the difficult, sad bits, every single micro-second with Husband and Son has been joy.

I don’t want any other life!

Animal Wings

20 Comments »

Absence makes the heart grow furious

by jmgoyder

When our two male golden pheasants, Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2, went to war over a female, and Phoenix 2 flew away, I was at first alarmed, then bereft, then relieved to find out that Phoenix 2 was happily living with neighbours.

Strangely, even though Phoenix 1 – picture below – banished his brother, he, too, has been bereft and rather reclusive and obviously very lonely.

For months now he has been coming to the back veranda window to stare forlornly at his reflection. He has also been really silent and moody and seems quite angry to be the only pheasant here now. He misses the females he and his brother fought over but like I said to him yesterday, ‘It’s your fault – you scared them all away!” Funnily enough, my harsh words drew him closer to me and he took the bit of cabbage in my hand. He doesn’t usually come so close, so that was lovely.

It was almost as if he knew that I knew that he knew we were both in similar predicaments of loss. I’m not sure.

Wings

8 Comments »

Pull your socks up!

by jmgoyder

Yesterday was supposed to be fantastic, with Husband home for the day. I had sushi, smoked salmon and blue cheese (some of Husband’s favourites) ready for lunch. But Husband doesn’t have much of an appetite these days so it ended up being a bit of an anti-feast.

Yesterday was supposed to be fantastic and I had envisioned one of those sentimental scenes in which people who love each other run across fields of daffodils in slow motion and embrace; after all, Husband and Son hadn’t seen each other for over two weeks. But when I picked Husband up from the nursing lodge he was uncharacteristically grumpy because I was late, and, when we got home, Son was asleep. The daffodil-ish scenario evaporated and a whoosh of disappointment blew through the house.

Yesterday was supposed to be fantastic, but by the time Son woke up, Husband was outside trying to water the garden, I was walking the emus whilst keeping an eye on Husband, we somehow lost Husband’s new walking stick, then I lost sight of the emus, then I lost sight of Husband, then the tension reached a nasty twang when Son came outside to yell at Husband to come inside so they could watch a movie together and have a talk and a hug! I told Son later that if he needed a hug he would have to ask less angrily…. Mmmm.

Yesterday was fantastic when, finally, both my men ended up watching Red Dog after which Son had a ‘deep-and-meaningful’ with Husband about how he now identifies with being disabled. The difference is, of course, that Son is getting better and Husband is getting worse. I intentionally withdrew from their company so they could watch the movie together in manny mode. When I heard them chatting, I was relieved because over the last year or so, Son has found Husband increasingly difficult to relate to and vice versa.

Yesterday was fantastic when both of them called me to put their socks on. Unfunnily enough, one of the things they now have in common is that neither of them can manage this. Earlier, Son said, “Sorry, Mum, this like what you do for Dad”, but I said, “No, your feet are much bigger,” and we had one of those half-hearted laughs where you can only manage a one-syllable ‘ha’ rather than a ‘hahahaha’.

Yesterday was supposed to be fantastic and it wasn’t. And then it was. And then it wasn’t again.

So, once I’d taken Husband back to the nursing lodge and settled Son into bed for a late afternoon nap (he is still on very strong painkillers), I went out to spend time with the birds.