In mid-winter, when the sun clings to the northern horizon during its passage across the sky, twilight falls over pockets of inner Melbourne a little earlier than the work of ancient mathematicians and philosophers could predict.
The Sun’s path through the sky remains dependable. The ancient astrological calculations are still brilliant and true. The premature descent into darkness is not due to some colossal galactic disaster, but is merely an unforeseeable side effect of mankind’s desire to leave his mark on the face of the Earth. Desires that spawn within the imagination and burst forth from the ground in the shape of towers of concrete and steel.
Dad’s place, nestled in what was not so long ago considered a suburban street, is located across the river from Melbourne’s city centre. The south side of the river, had long been overlooked for development, but the arrival of urban living changed all that, and the sprawl, choked by a lack of land, filled the demand by reaching skywards.
The shadows cast by these towers become exaggerated super-shadows during winter, they sweep over streets, causing an artificial shift in the climate, impacting upon the lives that find themselves in their path.
The largest of the towers, Eureka and Freshwater, dominate my field of vision as i drive down dad’s street looking for a place to park. I locate a suitable, albeit not legal spot in the loading bay of a small warehouse as close to dad’s as I’m likely to find. As I collect the groceries from the back seat, I can see the shadow line creep across me, leaving me in a penumbra, with dad’s street to my left in shade and the red brick wall on my right brilliantly lit by the almost pure white light of winter sunshine. I follow the edge of the shadow back towards Eureka, the sun slowly disappears behind her left edge, up around the 70th floor.
Dad’s house is one of the few remaining cottages in the area. It’s a museum piece of sorts tucked between redeveloped warehouses and sleek-lined “city fringe” apartments. Dad is also a local curiosity, first year architecture students idle past his front gate, snapping off a photograph or two. He makes the local paper during slow news weeks, smiling out at us from page 5, holding home-grown veggies or leaning on his battered letterbox. Real estate agents send him Christmas hampers, his mantelpiece is clogged with the best wishes of the city’’s property developers by way of pre-printed Christmas cards. But despite the constant affection of the property industry, Dad won’t budge. We talked about it a few years ago, but what’s the point now? Dad’s never known what to do with money, the pressure that comes with merely placing it into his passbook account would keep him awake at night. Change is not always as good as a holiday.
I stride up the porch steps and let myself into the house. The hallway is sparse and narrow, the only features being a paisley hall runner, a few cheap framed prints, and a small home alter in a corner above the kitchen door. Years ago this altar feaatured a small oil lamp that flickered and spat whenever my grandmother would climb onto a chair to light it. The altar lamp has now been replaced with a small electric globe triggered by a light sensor. The lamp was not fully lit, a weak flickering glow illuminates the faces of the icons that looked down on me as I pass beneath them.
I didn’t turn on the kitchen light, the kitchen window overlooks the back yard and there was still enough light coming through it. Men who live alone rarely change where they store everyday bits and pieces. so I could most probably do this part of my visit in darkness if need or boredom required it. I put away the groceries and hide some cash in the spot under the empty fruit bowl. I take the small coffee briki from the stove and rinse it. My grandnmother Athena told me I would never make a good Greek coffee unless I think in Greek whilst preparing it. I employed that theory again now. I place a teaspoonful of ground coffee into the briki, add a level teaspoon of sugar and enough water for one cup, stir it thoroughly and place it over the gas hob. Judging by the stains on the stove top, coffee is the most complicated item prepared in this kitchen nowadays.
I looked around the room whilst waiting for the coffee to boil. The living room couch was unoccupied, I could therefore assume that Dad was in the back yard. The TV was on but the volume muted, on its screen a Greek TV newsreader was nodding in a concerned way. The sound of dad whistling and muttering to his budgies made it’s way to me through the kitchen window.
Athena taught me how to make coffee, in this kitchen, 25 years earlier. Dad and a few uncles were painting the house and needed a constant flow of the stuff to keep their spirits up and to avoid coming to the conclusion that it was late enough in the day to switch from coffee to my uncle Tom’s freshly stilled moonshine. Athena taught me how to measure out the water using a demitasse cup, how much sugar to add for the desired sweetness, to stir it thoroughly dissolving the sugar into the coffee and to never stir it once it goes onto the flame. One of her tricks was to let the coffee come to the boil twice, Greek coffee swells and overflows the briki, so you need to keep focused when you’re at the stove. Yiayia Athena was an excellent cook and teacher, I’m not a bad cook myself, but my Greek coffee is awful, the number of unfinished cups I’ve returned to the kitchen sink are the only critique I need. But here I was again giving it another go, not sure where I’m going wrong. My attenion switched back to the here and now just as the coffee started to foam, I lifted it off the stove, let it settle and returned it to the heat, as instructed a quarter of a century ago.
As I walked out the back door I was wrong footed by spare parts from some sort of machine dad must have been repairing. Dad heard the racket and came out from his shed, simultaneously giving me an earful for not watching where I was going and an apology for leaving stuff laying about carelessly. Today’s everyday miracle was somehow managing to avoid spilling the coffee.
I sat down on an old bench, handmade by dad along with an accompanying table in the 70s. The outdoor setting had grown thick with the numerous coats of leftover paint applied to it over the years. The hole in the centre of the table, appropriately positioned to accommodate a beach umbrella, had been used to feed a power cord to a water feature that Dad had affixed to the table. A perfect example of how Dad can do anything he sets his mind to, but really shouldn’t.
I scratched at the peeling paint on one of the bolts securing a slat to the bench, each flake revealed a different layer of paint, mainly greens and yellows and I still hadn’t dug deep enough to find the steel of the bolt itself. Each revealed hue triggering a slide-show of memories; birthday parties, name days, Easter, times when the backyard was crowded with friends and family and an animal carcass, usually lamb, fascinated us kids as we watched it rotate over the open fire.
I thought of mum shuffling through her box of photographs, searching for that photo of me, taken when I was about four, wearing a sailor suit and sitting on a table at a christening.
Dad was in the process of resurrecting his Victa. The body of the old beast helped me identify the bits and pieces i had tripped over near the back door. Dad held a spark plug up towards the light to check that the electrode was clean, blowing through it three times, this technique was used to fix anything from faulty spark plugs to flies lodged in ears..
He paused for a moment. I noticed him squinting towards Eureka. I can’t recall him ever mentioning it before. Throughout its lengthy construction I watched the tower’s elevator shaft reach upwards and saw each floor gradually filled in with glass and made strong with reinforced concrete. While this was happening my father’s face, once stern and confident, became incapable of instilling fear. The spectacles that once made him look dignified, seemed exaggerated on his face now. His skin sagged, and was gathered around his neck, he used to wear hats as a fashion choice, now he wears scruffy beanies to keep his balding pate warn. He had become a living caricature of the man he once was.
Even though it was Dad who was always running off to the doctor complaining about aches and pains, and how he can’t possibly “go on like this”. It was Mum. who, as always quietly, and without drawing any attention to her personal suffering, fell ill. In her last few weeks I tried to spend as much time with her as I could, she kept telling me to buy an apartment in Eureka, so she could wave at me whenever she missed me, which for a Greek mother is something close to every waking moment. Mum and I would re-tell little bits of dialogue all the time, scripted snippets, humorous or ironic, these little exchanges are the most comforting memory I have of her. Although at times I feel like the surviving half of a comedy duo, restricted to talking about the classic sketches, unable to rejig them to work as a solo act.
Dad, standing over his fractured lawn mower and still staring at Eureka pointed a spark plug towards the tower. “You can go up eh? and look out, there are people there now”. His eyes scanned the spine of the tower from its base, the gold plated peak reflecting a sepia tinted version of the clouds over our heads.
“They looking at me, .. looking at them” he says, in his broken English now, for added impact, towards the observation deck topping Eureka. He reaches down and picks up his coffee, slurps it, managing to suppress any signs of displeasure, the two sugars in that tiny cup probably helped mask any imperfections.
A cat, not dad’s but a regular feature in the back yard, lies on a nearby plastic chair dozing, as yet unaware that the sun she was enjoying minutes ago has been stolen from her back. Dad stretches his hand out towards the cat, tapping his fingers against the back of the chair it lies on. The cat raises its head yawning, expertly rolls over, oozing onto the concrete pavers beneath the outdoor setting. The concrete is a little damp from the most recent Stage 3 water restriction-defying hose down dad gave it. Dad has rainwater storage tanks, but hasn’t quite grasped why filling those tanks from the garden tap isn’t in keeping with the spirit of the water conservation movement.
The cat, its good eye still only half open and having located a dry paver, stretches its front legs out in unison and then gave each back leg a solo shake before sitting up and wrapping its tail forward around all four street smart paws. A ritual played out many times during the day, no doubt for the benefit of the zoom lens-toting tourists on the observation deck.
The small concrete square courtyard is surrounded by a mix and match garden of fruit trees and vegetables. Mum’s row of potted orchids is the only purely decorative thing in the garden. Two years of having to fend for themselves doesn’t seem to have harmed them. A few months ago, when I still found myself forgetting that mum had passed away, my gaze falling across her orchids is typical of a moment where I would expect her to emerge from the house, flip-flop across the pavers with a damp cloth in hand to wipe down the orchid leaves. She would remind me of how much orchids cost if I was to buy them for my “girlfriend” and I would ham it up, reeling in shock at her suggested orchid value, making a circular motion with my hand and yelling “hooohoooooo!!!” at the exorbitant price of exotic flora in this town.
We sit here for some time, in silence. Experience has made it clear to us that conversation leads to discussion, and discussion invariably leads to the sorts of pointless arguments that can only emerge in the space between two stubborn men.
The sky around us has now changed colour to catch up with the artificial sunset we experienced earlier. Dad clears his throat for no apparent reason just as I have started doing. He gingerly raises himself from his seat and looks into his vegetable patch. The padding on the old vinyl kitchen chair he had been sitting on, a chair that has survived years of unauthorised outdoor life, hisses as the weather beaten cushion eases itself back into shape. In a Pavlovian moment the hissing summons the cat, she leaps from her Bast-like pose up onto the space Dad vacated, making the most of the warmth he has left behind.
Knowing Dad’s attention would be taken up with the needs of vegie patch lettuce and beans, I gathered a few day’s worth of dirty coffee cups from the table and headed back indoors.
I lit the fire, washed some dishes and did things I don’t do frequently enough in my own home. From the kitchen window I could see dad working in his small but productive garden. The garden was reasonably bare, but he was preparing poles and wires for various sorts of vines. I tapped on the window, he turned and looked back at me, pausing for a moment in case I had intended to transmit to him a more complicated message. Mum and dad had a set of hand gestures they used to aide communication through the kitchen window. Dad would rub his tummy and make on “oo” shape with his lips when he needed an antacid or he’d raise an imaginary glass to his mouth and wave his hands around his face smiling when he wanted a whisky. But on this occasion we exchanged blank “so what now, it’s dark” stares.
At the back door Dad exchanges his outdoor slippers for his indoor slippers, and heads for the couch.
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This is an excerpt from a short story in the final stages (if there is such a thing) of editing.
If you would like to see the full version, please contact me, comments & criticism are welcome.
Like many men of my age, generation and background I could quite easily count on my available appendages the number of times I have shared poignant or deep moments with my father. In fact even if i was to suffer some form of horrific appendage decrementing industrial accident I could still safely keep a running tally even if forced to rely on the stumps of my hands and feet. The cunning linguists amongst you will have noted that I failed to use the more predictable word “intimate” to describe the sorts of moments I am referring to, but as the intimacy meter betwixt the old man and I has never suffered even the most minor tremble I can safely use the more less eye-opening word “poignant”.
It isn’t impossible to share a poignant moment with any object irrespective of its degree of animation; accountants, travelling sales-persons, tram passengers, puppies or doorknobs are all quite common co-participants in intimate moments. In fact if my Father was an accountant it would help clarify the depth of our understanding. After all comes a time every July when you have to tell your accountant some pretty private stuff; hopes, dreams and off shore tax schemes. Read the rest of this entry »
November days in northern Italy are normally punctuated by rain, not a dark depressing or torrential kind of rain, but a steady drizzle broken up by moments of clear skies and crisp air. As November moved into December the days grew noticeably shorter and the temperature of the night air often dropped suddenly. I hadn’t yet experienced a real winter and the little glimpses i got of one during my travels in Europe during 2003 made me realise how hopeless an Australian male with a backpack full of summer clothes was when faced with the brutality of nature’s not so motherly ways.
On this late November night, returning home from yet another evening in one of the local small town watering holes the rain fell more heavily than what I had now been led to believe was normal for this time of year. Tonight like most nights over the last 10 days or so I was walking Mieke back to her apartment, we were drinking beer, smoking unreasonable numbers of cigarettes and no doubt amusing ourselves with the habits of the locals. Read the rest of this entry »
Very few people reading this will remember Ildiko, life has taken many turns since we were together and even the friends of friends have fallen off the radar.
She’s been reappearing in my thoughts a lot lately, not unusual for a retrospective kind of bloke like me. But even though it’s been 5 years since I saw her and 6 since we had anything that could have been described as a relationship, I think I am understanding what went wrong and why it was mostly my fault. Read the rest of this entry »
Conversations at the kitchen table, mothers day 2006.
I sit at the kitchen table after the mothers day lunch clutter has been cleared, mum is as per usual busying herself in the kitchen, Dad is also comfortable in his particular role of being sprawled out on the couch in some state of sleep. Mum produces a platter, a large cake considering there are only four of us and several small meringues.
“What did you get your mother for mothers day?” My father asks,
“Chocolates..” i reply after a slightly too long pause.
“Chocolates..” he says with a well prepared tone of disappointment “chocolates, she gave birth to you, grew you into a man and you get her chocolates? you should be ashamed of yourself”.
My dad is right I should be, but not because of the mothers day gift, more likely due to the fact that I spent as much on a bag of chocolate coated raspberries to eat on the tram ride over to mum’s as i did on the gift i gave her. And please dont think i was buying provisions for a long train ride, i caught the tram from camberwell junction to warrigal road… it’s about 12 stops. I thought it best to conceal my shame by making something up. Read the rest of this entry »