Winds of Time
Some say, running to something is often easier than running away from a thing but I’m having a hard time fathoming it actually. My head is full of questions and my heart has some misgivings about whether or not I still believe the things I did at the start of the year. I don’t know why it should matter to me now but strangely enough, it does.
I used to go four wheel driving in the sand dunes at Stockton Beach, NSW with my friends Frazer and Burmo. One day I got out of the 4WD and sat in the dunes, watching the wind scuttle across the surface of the sand. Its breath formed subtle sandy indentations along the dune surface, like ripples in water. That kind of quiet beauty can make your eyes thirsty and cause your heart to brim over with utter gratitude for Mother Nature’s willingness to share it so freely.
Sitting there, the feeling is at once solitary and it reminded me of how subtley our lives can change even when we’re looking. I got a great photographic shot away that day capturing the vast ripple that is the dunes. Capturing its essence.
Do you ever wonder where people go that you haven’t maintained ties with because they, like you, have moved from each other’s circles or simply moved away? I do, especially today. I was thinking particularly of my friends Mama Susanna and Mutashi, my Nigerian friends who returned to their homeland after completing their studies in Sydney.
The memory of them has sent a great wave of missing over me for their wide smiles and infectious laughter still in my memory banks after all these years and I remember our great feasts of food and learnings together, soul food. I miss them terribly today. I miss their company, their goodness and simple appreciation for ALL of life.
Mama Susanna
Susanna is a tall woman, strong-backed, teeth as white as the Ruahine Range snow caps, her smile as bright as the Hawke’s Bay sun, her heart as wide as all you can see of the ocean expanse at Blackhead Beach. My eldest son Josh adored her.
At exactly 3.15pm everyday Josh disappeared through our back gate, across the playground between Campbell Street where we lived, through their back gate to their home with its frontage opening directly on to King Street in Newtown. He’d pass under the giant Jacaranda tree that when it shed its purple flowers made a soft carpet beneath our feet. There he joined her five children for afternoon tea every day. It was what they did.
I was blissfully unaware of this little tradition between them because Josh was home at 3.05pm woofed down his afternoon tea at home and was out the door again before you say, howzitgaun! Josh was sick one day and Susanna called me panicked by his non-appearance for afternoon tea. “Where is my other son” she wanted to know. She told me she’d made his favourite goat curry and the other children were waiting! He was six years old.
I’ve always thought that of all of my children Josh was my everywhere child, at home and at ease among other cultures where food was the hearth around which they gathered to enjoy each other’s company. When we lived in Kirribilli our Sri Lankan friends and neighbours the Chelliah family were always feeding him hot curries. He ate every last morsel then him and old man Chelliah ate large bowls of ice cream afterwards.
Will you come?
The last thing Mama Susanna said to Josh before they returned to Nigeria was “will you come and see me Josh, in my home, in Nigeria?” He nodded his head, though at six I don’t imagine knowing Nigeria was a world away figured too much in the equation. But it was her parting words to him I remember more, she said to him, “right then, when I am in the fields I will look for you.” I wonder how often over the years she has looked for him, her other son with his fair skin.
Susanna often carried my other son Dan in a traditional African sling she’d made from a length of rectangular material, on her back or across her front. She insisted on walking with him to the Fiji supermarket further down the south end of King Street, a good 35 minutes from her home. She carried Dan and her supplies. It was pointless arguing with her, “he’s light,” she would say.
Hannah and Philip
I smiled to myself when I first saw my friend Hannah Horsley Cooper wrap and carry her son Philip in that manner remembering too that she had lived some of her life in Africa. Seeing Hannah carry Philip like this warmed my memories of seeing Susanna stride out down King Street, my babe on her back.
I do believe that Africa is one of those places that plants a tree in your heart and there it grows, silently across the years until one day when you need the shade you realise it is that same tree several years on.
Hannah sometimes squats as African woman do, balanced easily on their back haunches. It’s a comfortable position. Nuance. An indentation like the wind’s breath across the sands on Stockton dunes.
Home the Hearth
Our home was the hearth for many international students during those years, Nigerian, Sri Lankan, Tanzanian, Ghanaian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Malaysian and so many others. Today I want to run to their memory not run away from them. It’s hard because these soft memories pack a punch!
