Things to Come

My earliest memory is of standing by the front window of our flat in Middle Park forlornly watching my father walking away. He wasn't going far, but I loved walking hand in hand with him along the Esplanade.  I suppose I had been naughty and had to stay at home as punishment. I don't remember what I had done, I just remember that I felt distraught and, if a three year old is capable of such a sentiment, I felt aggrieved.

That same year we moved to Williamstown on the other side of the bay. We put the old red Mercedes onto the cable ferry to cross the Yarra Yarra river. I remember the clunking of the cable as it rolled off the wheel into the muddy water below. Overhead the chasm of the collapsed Westgate bridge yawned and gaped and we passed underneath it. I terrified myself with gruesome images of the ghostly workers who had fallen to their death and lay beneath the mud and chains below.

Our new house on the strand offered a good view of the bridge and its missing chunk. On clear days I would look all the way across Hobsen's Bay, beyond the city buildings, to the violet Dandenong ranges. In winter I convinced myself they were dusted in snow. I was desperate to see snow and begged my mum and dad to take me to see it. They didn't. I took myself many years later.

I was asthmatic. My mum refused to put me on puffers and steroids and had me do deep breathing and relaxation instead. I don't know how she resisted the scorn of lofty doctors and omniscient parents, but I'm so glad she did. She took me swimming at the YWCA on Saturday mornings. Ahead of her time, quite headstrong and really brave.

I was a shy and withdrawn child. Some things haven't really changed all that much.