mussoorie

in january last year i spent a few months living in india. halfway through my stay i did a little trip by myself to a hill station called mussoorie. on the balcony just outside of my hotel room was one of those take-your-breath-away-and-don’t-even-bother-trying-because-photos-will-never-do-this-justice type of views. snow capped himalayas became my mealtime backdrop – or frontdrop depending on which way i faced – for the ten day writing trip i was embarking on.

 

himalayas at dusk from mussoorie... stolen photo

i had travelled from stiflingly hot somewhere-or-other, but quickly discovered that mussoorie was actually antarctica. it was below zero for most of my stay and there was no hot water or heater in my room. with no other option in sight i was left to become friends with a heavy, scratchy grey blanket called ‘best blanket ever’. it didn’t keep me particularly warm, but i discovered that if i distracted myself with its overwhelming itchiness and general uncomfortability i was able to forget about the cold for short periods of time. smart.

i almost didn’t get to meet ‘best blanket ever’. on a freezing night at close to midnight i was in a taxi (read: car that i was told was a taxi but with no distinguishable features to suggest this was true) completely lost in mussoorie. my helpful driver had been doing laps for about half an hour. we had phoned my hotel several times so my driver could get directions and each time he got off the phone he would smile at me excitedly and tell me he was sure he knew where to go now... it would just cost a few extra dollars. this must have happened half a dozen times before i realised that he had no idea where he was and we were just doing laps of a dark, unknown little town in the middle of nowhere.

i started to panic and insisted that he take me to the hotel immediately. he got flustered and realised the gig was up. before i knew what was happening he had pulled to the side of the road and was saying “you hop out here and find it yourself”.

pitch black. midnight. below zero degrees. single white female. strange small town that i wasn’t even sure was mussoorie at that stage.

from the back of the taxi i prayed/begged for my hotel to magically appear. i was terrified and my flustered driver was fed up. he wanted to be rid of me so he could go home. i started to protest in the midst of my praying and begging, but he insisted that there was nothing more he could do to help me.

then this happened.

i looked out my window and saw a neon arrow pointing to a neon sign. my hotel was less than twenty metres from my door.

unexplainable.

i hightailed it from the taxi as quickly as i could, realising that my driver was looking less and less like a taxi driver with each passing second. i got led to my room/freezer and curled up on my bed/concrete slab. i wrapped myself up in ‘best blanket ever’ and even though ‘best blanket ever’ should have been called ‘worst blanket ever’ i loved him. i let him embrace me with his scratchy grey ridiculousness and found that i was pretty peaceful. i'm always amazed at how quickly you can find yourself 'found' after being lost.

i’ve been living out of a car for two weeks now touring up the qld coast with my friend joy in support of my book and our folk cd. most days i find myself in unfamiliar places with little knowledge of what will unfold in my day. it has been uncomfortable more than once, and ridiculous more than twice... but i’m finding that i always end up where i need to be, doing what i need to be doing... and that being found brings a peace and contentment that continues to surpass my understanding.

may your days be filled with unexpected signs pointing you to scratchy, uncomfortable situations that, despite their ridiculousness, somehow bring you comfort and peace... i feel like that’s mostly what life is all about.

words

it has taken me 679 days to remember the last word she said to me.

679 days for the pain of loss to subside just enough for my heart to remember. it was a simple word, that elusive last word, and i don’t know how i could possibly have forgotten it, but i did. it was a word i had heard her utter thousands of times throughout the days of my life. maybe that’s why i forgot it... because to remember would be a constant reminder that i’d never hear her say the word again.

in the course of my life sometimes the word was directed at me, sometimes at others. sometimes i heard her say the word from another room and i would lean into the wall so i could hear the other words surrounding this word. it was a carefully chosen word. a defining word. a word given in love.

i still hear the word spoken aloud almost every day. but not by her. i like how it sounds when others say it, but the word is a bit like a hug to me i guess... it feels the best when it comes from the one who loves you the most.

the last time she said the word she was a little bit panicked. she wanted me close to her. she needed to know i was near. there was an urgency in her voice that just about ripped my heart right out of my chest. the simple word beckoned me right into the centre of her pain... but because the word was spoken i could share the pain too. there was something lovely about lying near to her, staring and dreaming and loving in the aftermath of the word.

when i was younger (and sometimes when i was not younger) she occasionally said the word to me with frustration written all over her face, but these days i don’t remember too many of those times. sometimes she said it with so much love that my heart would bow down low at her feet, willing to follow any instruction that followed the simple word from her lips. sometimes the word was buried happily in a sentence, as though it was swimming in a pond of kindness and laughter... on those occasions i would jump into the conversation and let the kindness and laughter wash away whatever silliness i had been holding onto for the day. sometimes the word fell on deaf ears, where because of my preoccupation with some inane activity i deemed more important, i pretended to not hear it. these days i’d do just about anything to hear the word spoken by her just one more time.

the last word my mum said to me before she died was my name.

it was a small word, that last word she said to me, but a word that i loved to hear her say. it was the word that she gave to me the day i was born. a word dreamed up before i even took a breath. this small word is who i am. it is the word that introduces me to the world. it is the one i have always known, and the one i will carry with me for all the days of my life. i guess it's a bit like my mum in that regard.

honey

when i was little – maybe seven years old – i tipped an entire jar of honey over my head. i was being silly... showing off in front of my favourite audience... mum, dad and my sisters. i knew the lid of the jar wasn’t on properly, so i thought it would be funny to pretend to tip the jar over my head. yes, even at seven, my sense of humour was that sharp. sadly, although i was clearly hilarious, my fine motor skills were not developed well enough to execute this killer physical comedy without a minor flaw. initially, the joke was going pretty well... “look at me everyone, i’m going to pretend to tip this honey over my head and it’s going to be hilarious!” but before i knew what was happening, my under-developed forearm muscles lost control and i tipped the jar too far. the loose lid came off and my curly hair was bathed in 500g of woolworths’ finest capilano.

it’s likely that this would make a lot of parents mad, but not mine. everyone just laughed at me and grabbed a piece of toast to rub on my head... even classic comedy like this wasn’t enough to fully interrupt a wallis meal. i finished my breakfast with honey periodically dripping onto my shoulders, then mum helped me wash it all out. again, it didn't occur to anyone that washing the honey out should take precedence over finishing breakfast. this was when we discovered that 500g of honey doesn’t technically ever wash out. it’s like glitter... you think you’ve got it all out until you stand in the sun for a while and realise that you will never, ever have it all out.

for weeks after the incident random members of the family would walk up to me and stick pieces of paper to my head to see how sticky my hair still was. maybe it wasn’t weeks. maybe it was days... or hours... at any rate, it became the joke that kept on giving for far longer than i had ever intended. just last week i found the beginnings of a beehive on the crown of my head while i was searching for some bobby pins i’d been storing there since my 1997 formal. again, that’s probably not entirely true... but because i once tipped an entire jar of honey on my head, there’s a slight chance it might be.

at the risk of boring you all with more of my grief, i’ll finish with this.

i’m discovering every day that my mum is like a 500g jar of capilano honey. (there's a sentence i never thought i'd type.) through no particular skill of my own, she ended up being poured all over my life. at times that life was a sticky mess... but more often than not it was full of laughter. i’m glad that she is proving difficult to wash away, for i’d like to hang on to the sticky, funny memories for a few more days yet... or weeks... or maybe even for the rest of my life.

me and mum: hair related shenanigans since 1987

grandfather

i’ve spent the past three months living at my grandfather’s house.

the house he imagined up and built with his own hands in the late 40s and early 50s.

the house where my mum learned to walk and talk and sew and cook and love and be generally the awesomest.

the house where my grandmother majored in hospitality.

the house that sits on a quiet street less than a kilometre from the house where my dad grew up.

the house where my grandfather taught me how to build cubby houses and my grandmother taught me how to eat too much butter and cream.

the house where i stuck some orange seeds up my nose as a toddler... a life highlight.

the house where i learned to love cousins and strangers in equal measure.

the house where i felt like i just might be able to accomplish anything because i learned how to walk on stilts.

the house where i sung old war songs in the lounge around the piano with my sister and grandmother, even though none of us knew the melodies or lyrics.

the house where i played twister with my grandparents when my grandmother was 79 and dying of cancer.

the house that inexplicably has carpet in the bathroom. it didn’t occur to me that carpet in the bathroom was weird when i was growing up.

ps. it is.

the house that has real hot water. i’ve spent most of my twenties living in rented townhouses with warm water masquerading as hot. the thrill of real hot water (ie the possibility of third degree burns around every corner) is wonderful.

the house where my neighbours know me because they have been witnesses to my lifetime of cubby house building and stilt-walking genius.

the house that grew as my grandparent’s family grew. it wasn’t in a hurry to be big and empty. it was patient and grew slowly, only adding rooms when it knew they would be full of life.

the house won’t be around for too much longer so i’m trying to learn as much from it as i can in these coming weeks. i hope that when i eventually grow up... and build my permanent cubby house to live in... that it looks a little like this house that i love. i hope there will be music and love and a never-ending supply of butter and cream. i hope there will be something weird about it (like a carpeted bathroom) to remind me that it’s good to confidently do stuff that nobody else is doing. i hope that less than a kilometre from where it sits, i will find people who love me and will cheer me on like my dad did for my mum. i hope that my life is balanced enough to allow for stilt walking. i hope i remember to be patient... to not chase after big things that make me empty, but instead to wait patiently and add only those things which are full of life. i hope i can always find the child within me who believes that they can accomplish anything. i hope i know my neighbours. i hope my house is not lukewarm... i want it to be thrilling in its pursuit of ‘real’.

i’ve spent the past three months living at my grandfather’s house and i’ve loved every second of it. it will come as no surprise to those who know me to hear that i have cried a few tears in those months... mostly because i’m a giant sook... but also because there’s just a lot of wallpaper everywhere.

grief

i’m sure i met grief some time before 2012, but he didn’t make a big impression on me. he probably came into my house and forgot to bring donuts... so he was dead to me. it takes a lot to get my attention.

the first time i remember acknowledging grief’s presence was when my mum began to lose things. her ability to play guitar. her ability to walk, to breathe, to sing. i saw grief sitting in a corner in those times of loss, but i was savvy to his ways and very skilfully didn’t let him too far into my head or my heart. i’m not good at relationships, and quite frankly didn’t have the time or emotional energy to deal with what grief was asking of me.

then my mum lost her life.

grief has been my constant companion since about midday on thursday the 28^th of june, 2012. he was a persistent little critter and there was only so long i could hold him at bay. grief came rolling into my life like a steam train, showering me with gifts of sadness and emptiness, confusion and loneliness. he was lavish in his gift giving, and not being a big believer in confrontation, i didn’t have the heart to tell him that i didn’t want the gifts he was giving me. not once did grief offer me comfort or peace. rather, he wined and dined me relentlessly until i was so full of food and drink that i momentarily hated myself more than i hated my loss. in those moments, i let grief wrap me up in his uncomfortable embrace and wipe away my tears with his cold, grubby fingers.

i hopped on a plane... several in fact... to try and escape from grief. but the cheeky little guy must have had some secret savings squirrelled away, so he came along for the ride too. i thought for sure that if i did something really stupid and physically demanding he wouldn’t want to come. so i rode my bike a really long way over lots of mountains and slept on cold, wet, gravelly beds. it turned out grief was a fitness fanatic. he loved that trip.

grief & i taking a selfie on a gondola in canada*
(*grief not pictured)

people say you have to meet grief. that you have to let him into your life. but i don’t care for his ways. i don’t care for his tear-inducing, or rather, gut-wrenching-sob manufacturing abilities. he’s a little bit like all those men/boys in the world who walk around without pulling their pants up over their bottoms... he’s something i didn’t ask to see, but seem to be forced to look at every day regardless. he must know we all look at him and wish he wasn’t there, but he persists with his terrible behaviour in spite of us.

i’m told that eventually grief and i might learn to get along. he may just quietly exist in the back of my life one day and not cause me so much pain. what a blessed relief that will be. i’m also told that one day all of mankind will learn to pull their pants all the way up to their waists. the relief on that day will be equal in measure i’m sure.

to my dear friends who have met grief this week... and to those who have been travelling with him for far too long... i wrap you in the warm embrace of my heart today. here’s to better days ahead...

  

wrinkles

(*names have been changed)

we were sitting together in her loungeroom watching mamma mia for what seemed like the thousandth time. daphne* loves mamma mia and we watch it together often. and by often i mean often. like the number of times you’ve eaten toast this week, that’s probably the number of times i’ve watched mamma mia this week.

i loved mamma mia the musical when i saw it in london a few years back, and i enjoyed mamma mia the film the first time i saw it, but by its thousandth watch it loses some if its magic. you begin to realise (probably around the first viewing) that pierce brosnan, although lovely to look at, isn’t a particularly gifted singer. so i sat with daphne ­– bunkered down ­– ready to enjoy the sensation of my ears spontaneously bleeding to the tune of brosnan massacring SOS.

daphne is a client i work with regularly when i am at home in australia topping up my adventure-fund (you may have heard this referred to as a savings account by real adults). you’re not supposed to have favourite clients, but she is, without question, mine. she has physical and intellectual disabilities so life is a bit tougher for her than it is for me. when i go to work i help her to have a shower, get dressed and eat her breakfast. she loves movies and music... so a movie with music in it sends her into a joy spiral the likes of which i don’t see too often. we love to sing together. daphne is difficult to understand when she’s speaking and i often have to ask her to repeat herself three or four times before i figure out what she’s saying. but when we’re banging out some abba, beatles or simon & garfunkle classics together, her croaky, not-so-much-in-tune, hard-to-understand voice becomes one of the most beautiful sounds in my world. pierce could learn a thing or seven.

as i watched/endured brosnan ‘singing’ more of daphne and my favourite tunes, she looked down at her right arm with a puzzled expression on her face. “what’s that kt... who did that?” she was pointing to her right forearm with her clenched up left hand but i couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. “what is it kt... who did those patterns?” i thought she may have had a scratch or bruise on her and i became a little concerned, so looked a bit closer. but i couldn’t see what she was talking about. “those beautiful patterns kt... who did them on me?” i was baffled for the longest time... but after about ten minutes of questions and pondering i solved the beautiful riddle. she was pointing to her wrinkles.

daphne is in her 60s and i was sitting next to her when she realised for the first time that she had wrinkles on her skin... and she thought they were the most beautiful patterns she had ever seen... and she wanted to thank the person who had put them there. i only wish i was capable of creating something as beautiful as those wrinkles.

life is good people. be grateful for the skin you are in... wrinkles and all!