Dear God...

Today I met one of your beloved: someone more precious to you than a bird of the air or the grass of the field. You will be pleased to hear she seemed quite content with her lot, although I dare say you know better than I. This is how it went:

We meet in the biscuit isle, where she smiled at my daughter and then confesses to me, "My dogs like those Hundreds and Thousands biscuits, for a treat. I just give them one when I go our, or before bed. Just for a treat."

I am hesitating over sesame seed or cracked pepper water-crackers. Warmed by her unexpected friendliness in a place where I usually pretend I am alone, I scan the shelves with her. We spot the pink lovelies hidden by a notice- they are on special.

Biscuit choices made on both sides I move on to tinned fruits and vegetables. "We keep running into each other!" she says with a brittle laugh as we steer our trolleys around each other, moving in opposite directions. She is in her mid sixties I guess. Her grey hair short and layered flatly over her head, her aqua cotton knit top neatly pressed, her stretch trousers likewise pressed with a sharp crease down each leg. Very respectively presented God.

I stop before a splendid variety of tinned tomatoes wondering at supermarkets as a place to meet people. When I was still single they were recommended. But I failed to see then, and I still do, how increasingly awkward encounters, laced over an acreage of increasingly intimate household products could be a good way to begin a meaningful relationship. Remembering the eating habits of my husband when I first met him I consider the frozen-food section the most promising.... a handsome man with lonely eyes in a crumpled cotton shirt and I, both reaching for the same bag of Potato Gems.... mmm.

At the dairy cabinet we meet again. She is clutching her trolley and staring into the tubs of margarine. "Ah, we need butter," I say, pulling my trolley in beside hers and pleased to have my memory jogged. I prefer to shop spontaneously God. I don't bother with a list, liking the 'memory jogging' mode of shopping, although I often do arrive home without some vital staple. The owner of the little dogs appears at a loss, and I lean past her with a smile, reaching decisively for the Dairy Soft Blend butter, low salt, able to be spread straight from the fridge.

She heaves an enormous round container, decorated with orange and yellow daffodils from the shelf. Surely it contains enough margarine for a family of 6 for a month? "We always used to get this one... when my husband was alive," she told me. "Aah, right," I reply, my tub of butter poised over the trolley. "Of-course, he preferred butter but we used to have this."

Beneath this simple statement I hear what I am sure you have heard so many times before, God. I hear her tell me it wasn't her fault he died so young, how she did her best to keep him off the dairy, but he did so love his cream, his sausages, his bacon. She coughed, a loose wet cough. A 'productive cough' I would have described it to a doctor. She should give up the cigarettes, I thought. All that trouble to get him onto mono-unsaturated daffodil decorated margarine, and there she was killing herself with cigarettes. "So now I usually get this one," she went on, holding up another smaller version of the same cheerful daffodil decorated margarine.

"Aah, that looks good," I say. I am ready to move on, but do not like to leave her to choose her margarine without support. "I'm sure it doesn't matter which you get if you only use a little," I offer as a way of encouragement. But she does not appear to hear me. She rummages in the shelving again, and pulls out another tub; dark blue, with a tape-measure print running around its perimeter. She scans the ingredients carefully, muttering them aloud and nodding. I offer the same argument again, "Yep, that looks a good one. Although if you don't use a lot it doesn't really matter." I regularly purchase butter myself, despite my husband's steadily increasing girth. Butter is at least naturally yellow.

She appears near a decision so I slowly wheel my trolley onwards; slowly, saunteringly so as not to appear uncaring. We meet two more times. Both times my daughter says gleefully, "Oh why do we keep meeting like this?!" Both times we smile at each other briefly before resuming serious, focused shoppper's faces. We are in the home cleaning and personal hygiene sections now, both matters obviously requiring individual consideration. We do not stop to discuss toilet-ducks or panty-liners. It is understood that these choices are a woman's to make alone. And God, I must say I felt more comfortable for her, knowing she should be on familiar ground now.

At the check-out I hear her cough, but I do not look around. Our brief acquaintanceship is over. We part our ways: I to my newly renovated, centrally heated house and my very alive husband; her to those two breathless little dogs, waiting with ears cocked on a worn linoleum kitchen floor for the arrival of the one who teases and loves them and can deny them nothing now they are all she has.

What tree is this?

Name that tree... a tree it is easy to imagine dinosaurs chomping on, its branches perfectly arranged for climbing in this era. This picture taken at Tarra Warra Monastry, Victoria. A prize for the person who correctly names this tree!

Sisters@Sister's

It is generally agreed that it's a relief to be heading away from careers and deadlines, and the shopping trips with perfect hair and make-up of the two previous 'Sister's Weekend', although the alternative isn't easily realized. Instead of 5am flights we make a slow seven hour trip, squabbling over the choice of music and stopping frequently. We pick up Niki from the airport in Launceston, fire-wood, shack-key, wine and beer, and $245 of gourmet groceries in Devonport. These we somehow fit into the crevices between suitcases and baskets over-flowing with a coffee maker, champagne glasses and a scrabble game. The only music we all seem to like, and enjoy singing along to, is The Best of the Eagles. We turn it up loud.

(At the Gateway, a place we recall as the largest bottle shop in the southern hemisphere, a blond woman in a red sports car smiled at us. I returned her smile, acknowledging it as a blessing on our girl's weekend. In the supermarket two spritely older women with neatly curled hair exclaimed, “You seem to be having so much fun we might just come with you!” We invited them along.)

After all that the trip is over quite soon, especially for Niki and Lise who crack open the slab between Burnie and Wynyard. I park the car on the soft grass growing in the space between the shack and the boobiala fringed beach. Opening the car door the heart-felt entreaties to Desperado to 'come to your senses' are replaced by the sudden near-silence of softly falling waves. The smell of the ocean fills my head, pushing the remaining residue of deadlines and meetings away over the Sister's Hills. I breath out slowly. Above us the sky is studded with a miraculous spread of stars. The Milkyway, that is our own galaxy on its side, is awash with all its billions of suns on display. While Alix unlocks the sliding glass door, and Lise and Niki follow her up the stairs to take a look, I take a moment more by the car and tell the stars a soft 'hello'.
Meanwhile Niki is inside, and is making excited sounds: “Wow! Oh wow!” and “This is fantastic!” she says, despite it still being pitch dark. Alix is groping her way around the walls and down the stairs looking for the fuse box – no mean feat in the labyrinth of rooms. Finally the switch is located and the power comes on. Niki is even more excited and resorts to jumping up and down on the spot for a while. Lise and Alix look at each other and wonder how long she can keep that sort of behavior up. I peer in at the objects pressed to the car windows like a sort of 'traveller's terrine' and wonder how on earth I'm going to find the energy to get everything out and into the shack.

*
“It's my turn to hold the 'fork 'n' candle'” says Niki. Our faces are glowing in the candlelight and the informal toasts have begun. Unloading the car is a distant memory. Lise's lemon and salmon pasta is delicious and had been generously preceded by beer and champagne and accompanied by a bottle of red. Niki grasps an ordinary, shack-quality stainless steel fork in one hand and an empty stubby with a lit candle embedded in its mouth in the other. This means she has the right to hold the floor with a minimum of interjection from the rest of us – although that doesn't mean much as the scale from minimum to maximum is very slight with we four. “To all of us,” she says, following the theme started by Lise; “who have within us so much that is amazing and beautiful, and who are able to find our own spirituality where-ever we want it to be!” We are all fairly pissed, and she may have said something else, but that's what I hear. This is a theme Niki and I have been tossing around for years so I pick it up gladly. “You're right!” I say. “Spirituality exists because there's something in us that, ...just yearns for it.” And I think again of the stars.

“My turn now! My turn to hold the fock 'n' cundle!” I try it with an Irish accent, pleased with how rude it sounds. They are passed across the table: “To us,” I start, waiting for inspiration to hit. “Because once a year we get together and remind each other of all our good points.” We drink to that, and for a while we talk about Lise's lovely skin that doesn't need make-up to look fresh and natural now she doesn't smoke. They tell me that I am the bar-raiser amongst us. I glow inside and encourage them to go on. “What do you mean?” I ask. “It's like you decide you want to do something, so you just go and do it. And you make it work!” They offer examples related to the various incarnations of my career, of interior decorating projects. I can think of others, but modesty refrain from mentioning them. I pass the fock 'n' cundle to Alix, but I don't take in what she says as I am contemplating just how my bar is really set. It's way up there! Why can't I make more choices that nudge it back down a little? If I could do that maybe life would be a bit easier, just a bit calmer and relaxed.

*
Walking along Sister's Beach, holding Lise's hand, my heels and the pebbles making the going tough, I see the moon rising out over the ocean. Bits of it escape the imperfect orb, spread by refraction so close to the horizon. It's engorged and swollen with light and is moving quickly. A piece of ragged cloud hangs over its face like a Magnum P.I. Mustache. I liken this mustachioed moon to Lise's new 'interest', Mike. Lise seems to like most things about her Mike but for his big black mustache. We christen him 'Mustachio Mike' for the night. I keep my eye on the moon and concentrate on not spilling the rest of my chardonnay. The moon continues to rise, soon leaving its mustache behind. Its shape is still not moon-like, it is testicle like and hence I christen it 'The Testicle of the Moon'. I enjoy this metaphor for the rest of our stumbling walk.

We return by the light of the rising testicle to our warm shack. Then Lise feels sick and is sick. We call her Cheesle, fetch her a basin, wipe her mouth, cover her with blankets and check on her regularly – hate for her to choke on her own vomit. She sleeps peacefully. Later my own bed is soft and envelopes me with such comfort I fall asleep with smiling thoughts of holding hands in an Irish Pub.

*
I am walking by myself down the beach. A soft rain is misting on my polar-fleece jacket and causing my carefully straightened hair to get in touch with it's inner nature-woman. Blue sky is on its way through a break in the clouds. The stumble-causing pebbles of the night before have become a beautiful sea of moist pinks, from palest to deep wine in the light of day. The sky and the ocean are perfectly compatible and work together accordingly. Toothy rocks rising like an old larva flow are actually as smooth as soap and, surprisingly for me green. Green with folds and swirls of caramel and cream, like jade or a poorly stirred paint-pot. “What rocks are these?” I ask, wishing my friend the rock expert was with me. “And why are the pebbles on the beach pink, and these green?” The green rocks are worn and smoothed. Where have the smoothed bits gone? Have they turned pink? Perhaps, once they're not attached to the mother rocks they lose their green sap. There's no-one to help me with these questions. I vow to ask my friend for a rundown on the rocks of this part of Tasmania.

At the end of the beach is a Brandy Creek. I suppose its real name is Sisters Creek. I love the way the brown water is mixing with the aqua-clear ocean water. I follow it's path slowly up the beach. The tide is out and the brandy creek has been working hard to cut itself a new creek-bed through the sand. As I watch chunks of sand crack and crumble into the rushing brown water. I love the chunky layered edges, like shortbread cut with a knife. “How fast does it make its creek-bed?” I wonder. With the toe of my shoe I make a long wavering line along the crumbling edge, about 50-60cm from it. “Ill go back later and see how far the edge has move to the line,” I think.

The creek culminates, for me, at a thick stand of black-soil rooted tea-trees (melaleuca blah-blahs). “They've been growing like that for millennia,” I think, noting the meter or so of black, peaty soil they're nestled in. I touch the thick, padded bark and the scent of the ocean is replaced by clean, earthy peat.

The sun is on my face and on the crown of my red hat now. I wander the paths through the melaleucas and then walk back to the shack via the road, forgetting all about checking on my line in the sand.

*
Later I return to the creek, leaving two sisters sleeping off the night before and Lise clipping, buffing and polishing her nails, getting as she explained 'closer to her corporate roots'. But I've left it too late to return to the creek, the line has been swept away in rushing eddies and the brandy creek and the Bass Straight are vying for rights to the beach. An uneasy truce sees the brandy creek exiting on the left and the ocean entering on the right. Further up-creek the sounds of the sea are softened by the absorbent bark and leaves of the melaleuca. The brandy creek is wide and uniformly brown. A small angled bird skims the surface of the shiny chocolate water, circling around me over and over again. I begin to turn with it and note the dark blue wings, mid-night back, soft grey belly and blushes of red on it's neck and chest. “What is it?” I wonder. “A Tasmanian swallow -obviously unladen- ?” I wish I had my mother, the bird fancier, with me.

I stand on one of the wooden bridges built to cross the brandy creek in one of its routes to the beach. The brandy creek is flowing backwards, pushed up river by the incoming tide. A very large man, jogging with his dog, thuds across the wooden slats of the bridge. “Hello,” we say, and I see something I interpret as agony in his face. The bridge vibrates strongly with each foot-fall but holds. Two girls, about nine or ten, are next. Drawn perhaps to my 43 year old stillness and welcoming smile they stop and join me looking at the brown creek flowing back towards its source. “Hello,” we all say to each other. I ask, “how are you?” They are both well. “Do you live here?” I ask then. “I'm here staying with my friend,” says the round faced girl with her hair in a slept on pony-tail. “I'm here with my three sisters. We're staying in a shack for the weekend.” They smile, perhaps relating to going away with sisters only, no grown-ups. The girls leave and I watch them go, smiling at their wandering freedom.

I walk back along the beach, where the wind has picked up. It roars in my ears and pulls tears from my eyes. If I close them I can imagine apart from my moving legs that I'm free-falling from a plane. I free-fall all the way back along the beach.

Just at the moment I've missed the walk way up to the shack Niki appears at the top of the bank, her hair covered in hair-smoothing curlers – obviously getting back to her corporate roots as well. “Hey, Kristi! Are you lost?” “Where's the path up?” I ask, and she shows me. “No, I wasn't lost, but I was about to be,” I thank her.

When I go inside I decide it's high time I did my teeth. In my suitcase the apparatus designed to groom a woman for the corporate world is lying abandoned: hair straightener, make-up, expensive face-cream, floss, toothpaste all untouched thus far... Fifteen minutes later I emerge: cleansed, smoothed and corporate. “Da-da! Notice any difference? Corporate Kristi is back!” I announce. We set to preparing for tonight's dinner. I make sushi, which turns out okay.

*
To be continued...

Daisy Doesn't Want To

Daisy and her Mum chose their spot on the sand.
They spread out their towels, and rubbed sunscreen on each other’s backs.

“Come on Daisy, walk along the beach with me.”
“I don’t want to,” said Daisy. “I want to lie on the sand, and watch the clouds go by.”
Daisy lay back on her striped towel, and looked up at the clouds, slowly puffing past.

“I’m going to look for sea anemones in the rock pools. Will you come with me?”
“I don’t want to,” said Daisy, turning over. “I want to look at grains of sand on the beach.”
She sorted the grains of sand into different colours. Some of the sand looked like tiny, broken shells.

Daisy’s Mum plomped herself down on her towel. She fanned her face with her hat.
“Phew, I'm hot. How about a swim?”
“I don’t want to,” said Daisy. She lay on her back, with her own hat over her eyes.
“I want to listen to the sounds of the beach.”

Daisy listened.

She heard the rolling and sighing of waves, the thin cries of sea-birds, and the soft whispers of the breeze in her ears.
She heard the shrieks of her Mum as she splashed about in the cold water.

Daisy walked down to the edge of the ocean.
She made jelly patches in the wet sand.

When Mum called, “Daisy, come and eat your lunch!” Daisy said,
“I don’t want to. I want to build a city of sand castles.”

“Oh dear. You’ve got to eat,” said Daisy’s Mum.

Daisy built tall, sandy towers.
She dug moats and canals for the tide to fill later.

“Time for off!” called Daisy’s Mum, shaking out her towel.
Daisy folded her stripy towel to just the right size for her beach-bag.

But then … “Daisy! Listen!”

Daisy listened. She heard tinkling music drifting across the sand dunes.

“I'm going to get an ice-cream. I don’t suppose you want to …?” asked Mum.
“Yes, I do want to!” laughed Daisy.
“Well, I don’t believe it!” said Mum.
“Come on, let’s get two really big ice-creams.”

So they did.