family | jmgoyder

Common sense

by jmgoyder

Over the years I have developed a sense for when I may need a little psychiatric counselling. Here is an example-

When, on seeing a pink toenailed foot hanging out of someone’s boot/trunk, and the car with the foot is just in front of you at the fast food drive-through, you get out of your own car, go to the passenger side of the possible psycho’s car, open the door, ask him to turn his music down for a moment, get told to F#$##$%#%#$% off, shout to him, “I think you have a body in your boot,” go back your own car and quickly write down the licence plate of the psycho’s car, tell the fast food people (and order food), get home, ring the police who laugh and say it’s the latest craze – buying plastic body parts and sticking them out of car boots.

Okay this happened a few years ago when I was young and naive but I have never forgotten Anthony’s response when I got home all traumatized.

Anthony: So you thought there was a dead body in the guy’s boot so he must be a murderer but you still got out of your car and asked him to turn his music down so that you could tell him there was a foot hanging out of his boot?

Me: Yes.

Anthony: This reminds me a bit of when you went all the way into town to buy something to unblock the sink when it was just that you left the plug in.

Me: And?

Anthony: Well you don’t seem to have a lot of common sense.

He was right – am still struggling with common sense – argh!

Family LOVE STORY

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A turkey called ‘Bubble’

by jmgoyder

Yes, I am over-posting, sorry. I am wide awake with anxiety for a friend who has been in a car accident and for the people in Colorado. I don’t know what to say about any of this so I revert to talking turkey trivia….

In the forefront, you can see Bubble approaching me for a hug.

Now, Bubble is right next to me on the table, looking very huggable.

Bubble was rather cute when he was little.

It was Anthony who wanted turkeys and here is a picture of our first Bubble who didn’t survive. And, a few months later, Anthony began living in the nursing lodge.

Family LOVE STORY Wings

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Just outside the back veranda door

by jmgoyder

Just outside the back veranda door there are two peacocks wishing I would take better photographs of them

Just outside the back veranda door there is a golden pheasant wanting bread

Just outside the back veranda door, beyond the ancient fig trees, there is a car and a driveway and the possibility of a road that will lead me to the nursing lodge where my husband waits for me constantly

a road that suddenly became one-way

a road that can’t bring him home

a road that reverted from tar to gravel to dirt

a road that ripped our smiles apart and gave us a new jigsaw that is too difficult to figure out

a road that, today, I cannot travel.

LOVE STORY Wings

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Lethal lethargy

by jmgoyder

It has crept up on me a bit – not the lovely, luxurious lethargy that our birds can afford, but a more insidious, tap-dripping kind that, this week, became a pouring leak.

On Monday, Ming and I had planned to go into the local town together to do some jobs we had been putting off; I cancelled our arrangement.

On Tuesday, Ming and I had planned to go into the local town together to do some jobs we had been putting off; he cancelled our arrangement.

Today, Ming and I had planned to go into the local town together to do some jobs we had been putting off; we cancelled our arrangement.

It was the ‘together’ aspect of the above that we were both intent on doing; the job/errands didn’t matter as much. But we failed. Ming did his own thing and I did mine and we hardly spoke to each other except to express mutual disappointment – mostly his for me and I don’t blame him …

one

little

bit.

I was feeling a little desperate because I couldn’t seem to crawl out of this lethargy that is so disillusioning for Ming because he wants me back the way I was before, in much the same way I want Anthony back the way he was before. The latter is impossible, but the former isn’t and …

before

before.

Ming doesn’t come with me much to visit Anthony any more (visiting Anthony is about the only thing my recent lethargy hasn’t strangled), so I do that by myself but I often come home with the sadness and Ming cannot stand it and this is …

perfectly

devastatingly

understandable.

It is hard to remember when we last laughed in ways that weren’t forced or cynical or a tiny bit hysterical.

I finally got myself to do something social today and went to my neighbour’s place for a coffee. Ming was so concerned that I wouldn’t venture out that he stood on the front veranda and waved me off as if I were going to climb Mount Everest!

When I got to my neighbour’s house, we didn’t talk about my lethal lethargy because it didn’t need to be said. Instead, with her delightful daughter-in-law, we chatted about a whole array of topics and neither of these fantastic women asked me the dangerous question: How are you? I was, I admit, terrified that this question would come up and that I would cry and make a fool of myself.

My neighbour took the lethal out of my lethargy and, without even knowing she did it, injected me with her …

warm

undemanding

energy.

Thanks, Kaye!

Family Friendship LOVE STORY

54 Comments »

The scariest word in the world

by jmgoyder

This word keeps launching itself at me like an army of arrows because it knows how to multiply itself.

Sometimes it comes from other people but mostly it comes from myself. It is an absolutely horrible word, one I never inflict on others.

I loathe this word and wish it could be eradicated from the English dictionary so that I didn’t have to feel its continual prongs, taunts and its arrogance.

There are lots of other words that compete with this one but they are often shouted out of the picture because this word wants to be the boss.

This word knows its finger-freezing power; this word delights in disseminating misery and guilt; this word bides its time and then leaps from unexpected places and doesn’t unclench its jaws until it has extracted blood.

If you respond to this word, sometimes it will lick your blood up, swallow it and give you a kiss of approval; sometimes it will leave you alone for awhile so that you can torture yourself the way it wants you to.

The only way of escaping this word is by ignoring it. Eventually it will give up.

And what is this word?

SHOULD

blogging Family Friendship LOVE STORY

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A mother’s brilliant love

by jmgoyder

My ma wrote this for me this morning!

Destiny.

You could have been born

in the slums of Djakarta

or Windsor Castle

or the child of a Cult

or blind

become a rock star

or an astronaut

or Mother Teresa

You could have been

A suburban housewife

Or an inventor

Or an athlete.

You could have discovered gold

Or been a surrogate mother

Or a member of ABBA

Or scavenged for food

On the rubbish heaps in India

You could have been a boy. Or a twin,

Or disabled or a concert pianist

You might have

Become a drug addict

Or climbed Mt Everest

Or saved the gorillas

Or joined the Hitler Youth

You may have been born in Israel or Bethlehem

Before Jesus’ time

Before the dinosaurs

You might have been Eve.

But you are Julie.

And

“All the days ordained for me

Were written in your book

Before one of them came to be.”

M.L.

My mother with my son after his scoliosis surgery.

Family

39 Comments »

Yearning

by jmgoyder

I am laughing and chatting and listening to music and watching the birds and giving Ming a hug and cooking dinner and turning the television on and washing the dishes and changing the sheets and blogging and reading a good book and checking facebook and deciding whether to give the emus half a cabbage or a whole one and half-noticing the sunset and hoping the phone won’t ring and hoping the phone will ring and making a shopping list and trying to find my diary and paying bills and answering emails and making a to-do list and feeling glad about some things and sad about other things and thinking about pruning the roses and baking bread with the flour I bought a few months ago that probably has weevils in it and wondering whether to have a coffee or a tea or a diet coke or a beer and feeling hungry and feeling sick and wanting to go to bed and wanting to wake up and cleaning out my office and organizing my paperwork and resigning from my job and loving my friends and loving my family and loving the dogs and wishing I had continued to write columns for magazines and wishing I had written more than one book by now and and hating getting older and loving getting older and wondering what it would be like if we had more than one kid and remembering how I nearly got frostbite in Canada and wishing I had rung Tulia in PNG before he forgot about me and wishing I remembered everybody’s birthdays and wishing we had more money and laughing and chatting and helping Ming with lyrics and loving grammar and being amazed that he has the fireplace lit and feeling glad that it isn’t going to be as cold tonight as it was last night and wishing the day were night and the night were day and dreaming about eating fairy floss and Disneyland and sunburned shoulders and feeding the squirrels and wanting to find the keys to wind all of Anthony’s clocks and opening my mouth to say something to Ming but he is busy and wondering how my niece’s preparations for her wedding are going in Scotland and thinking it might not work to take Jack the Irish terrier into the nursing lodge and wishing the kitchen staff would bend the rules and give me scraps for the chooks and delighting in the anticipation of fresh eggs and thinking how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place and wondering why good people suffer and reminding Ming to set the alarm so he will get up to help milk the cows for the neighbours and finding the library book I lost several months ago and laughing because I forgot to remember to do whatever it was and then ….

…. it hits me like a car crash – the grinding metal of grief and I stop breathing, terrified that there might be another slamming of brakes, swerving of lights, skidding of tyres but, instead, there is silence, so I creep into the bathroom and lock the door and put the noisy fan on so that I can muffle into my collar the horrible sounds coming from throat so that Ming won’t hear me or worry about me or get impatient with me or wonder where his dinner is and, eventually ….

….I come out of the bathroom and into the light-filled, Aga-warmed kitchen and continue to stir the stew I have made with fresh vegetables and meat and Ming comes into the kitchen excited about his new lyrics and a new tune and wants me to listen and, once again, I am laughing and talking and listening to music, knowing that by now Anthony will be asleep.

Family Friendship LOVE STORY

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Sometimes I get a bit freaked out

by jmgoyder

Tonight on the phone Anthony asked me when I would be coming to join him at the Captain Stirling for a beer.

The last time we were at this pub I was pregnant with Ming – 19 years ago.

Tomorrow, when I bring Ants home for the afternoon, I will ask him about this because who else can I ask? He is my confidante and likes me to talk to him about him – weird but good too, I think!

Family Friendship LOVE STORY

21 Comments »

Birthday boy – Baz!

by jmgoyder

Today was Anthony’s best friend’s 50th so I went into the nursing lodge and picked Anthony up to bring him to the party early, before the throng arrived, so that we could have a quiet drink with Barry (Baz).

A lot of things went wrong:

Anthony couldn’t walk from the car to the chair to sit down and Barry and I took awhile to get him seated;
Anthony started shaking and shivering immediately, so Baz gave him a red wine to help and that seemed to work;
Anthony had to be back at the nursing lodge by 6pm at the latest, for his pills and for dinner;
It took a couple of people to get Anthony back into the car to go back, by which time I was openly crying which was embarrassing;
Anthony squeezed my knee as I pulled out of Baz’s driveway, but I was so distressed and disconcerted that I banged into the fence on the left, and then on the right;
I got Anthony back to the nursing lodge in time and went back to the party to make sure I hadn’t damaged Barry’s fences (I hadn’t – phew!)

A lot of things went right:

Baz liked his birthday present;
Ants and Baz were happy to see each other;
Baz’s wife, Julie, and I had a huge, wondrous, hug, as Anthony and I were leaving;
I have now realized that Barry’s birthday party will be the last one Anthony ever goes to.

Happy birthday Barry, and I wish so much that Anthony could have been there properly – not like this sick, old man, but like the life of the party he used to be – oh well!

Animal Family Friendship LOVE STORY

42 Comments »

Inviolable

by jmgoyder

I love this word so much.

It signifies strength, fortitude, courage and it means you can step off the metaphorical mountain and freefall into the water and easily – very easily – swim to the shore.

Inviolable.