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Tag: Outside

Do you think she ought to have apologised?

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This conversation whipped past my shop door and was gone before I could catch the interesting tiger tail. This single question sang out clearly and steadily and remained in the air after the talkers had gone; it hung there. I saw it.

What had she done? Fault is awkward because we all have a bit. So I wanted to know. A sustaining dose of someone else’s faults will quieten mine. For half an hour.

The walkers were walking shoulder to shoulder and leaning in, as you do when sharing things delicate. As we do.
Once I found keys in our shed door that ought not to have been there. They were jammed in awkwardly and left there for three days. I said, ‘Who left those there? We could have been robbed.’
But a grandson owned up immediately. ‘Me, Nanny. I wanted to get Pa’s wire scissors and make a hole in your fence.’ He looked at me, pleased with the vision of himself making a hole in our fence. I said delicately to Pa, ‘Do we need a hole in our fence?’
The walkers who passed my shop discussing the apology were women and young. I can tell that because of the pace and strength of the walk. They don’t lean forward. They were upright. They challenged the sky: get out of our way. They frowned slightly, aware of the footpath, the kerb, and approaching traffic. They gave the apology a chance. Their shoulders were soft. They give the criminal a chance. Their eyes were considering. I saw that.

I myself gave the keys in our shed door a chance. I like those keys and their crooked hopeful insertion into the aching lock.
I wished those young women hadn’t been walking so fast. Why didn’t they hang about the doorway like men do, with time available, nothing to do, and an argument to win; a country to conquer. But they didn’t hang. They moved on.
Once a friend told me, ‘Apologise. Just fucking do it. If they’re worth it, apologise.’ She said this when we were raising kids and getting it wrong. Now I ache with the wrongness and the need to have apologised more. The keys must still be there.
Sometimes we don’t get an apology back. The same friend said, ‘So what. Get over it.’
She won me a country.

I wonder who those young women were, and who had the key in their lock, crooked.

Illustration by Ferdy Remijin

Yellow wins

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Yellow wins because green has other work to do.

Tonight, this is what is around the place where I live. Two minutes’ walk brings me to the edge of town. The road is cold. The council have soothed it with something, so it’s smooth, like clay. That’s ok.

The paddocks have been sown; they are green and exact. This is what green is doing; next year’s work.

The hills are sharp and cold; the ridges iced with rock and trees poked in the top, sharp as glass. The windmill is doing absolutely nothing. The hill in front of me balances a bowl of light in its throat. This is the sun setting. The clouds are streaked and stained with tired gold.

Our grapevine holds its yellow, but it’ll subside soon.

Noah and Max plant daisies and tell me that these WILL grow…

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048 (2)

Autumn, and here we are in the garden, there is stuff to do. Dig.

The difference between a weed and a flower is nothing.

Noah wears only one boot. The other one is gone. They lose their spade. Somebody loses an entire pair of pants. We find a tiny bulldozer, folded into a crunching mud pastry underneath the blackberry. These little boys, my grandsons, roll and stride and fly from one end of the orchard to the other. They find worms. These are treasures. They find weeds. These are treasures. They find snails. These are beyond treasure, there are no words. They lean in over the tender stalk of eyeball that moves underneath their scorching breath and outraged curiosity.

‘What’s his eyes doing?’

What’s him looking for?’

They carry their luggage with them, a pot, a spade, a tiny bulldozer, a scooter with a bead necklace tied to the handlebars, a snail, a plastic dingo, and a piece of wooden train track. They drop everything.

They squabble over the tiny bulldozer. Their small muddy hands must hold that bulldozer.

They arrive at the foot of the old yellow daisy. It is huge, it lives without aid all year round. It finds water for itself. When everything else wilts, it rears in contempt.

They consider the whirring flowers and snip off a few and stand there, looking at the scatter. Then they remember. Planting. It’s easy. They run from here to there, tying the tender stalks to the earth, ungentle and urgent. They step backwards and trample their work. They fall. They sit on their own gardens. They lose each other.

‘Where’s my Noah?’

Finn (the youngest) has taken all the best toys, sits alone and supreme. They don’t realize.

The tiny yellow daises, rumpled and torn, cut with no stalks, limpy, bruised and shorn of petals take their place in the richness. They rear (with interest). The gumboots thunder past. A small shovel is hurled, no longer needed.

They shout, ‘Finn, not yours.’ Finn (the youngest) sits unperturbed. He grips the tiny bulldozer, prepared.

The tiny yellow daises, rumpled and torn, cut with no stalks, limpy, bruised and shorn of petals take their place in the rich. They roar (with pleasure).

I can’t find the door

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51775654_1494764423988205_520481570201534464_n.jpgThis morning a man came charging across the street and collided with my door hard enough for me to think that he had fallen into it. But he hadn’t.
He was angry though.
He said “I can’t find the door…”
I asked him “Which door…?”
He said, “The door to the bloody bakery, what do you think I meant?”
I looked at him and he looked at me as though waiting for me to find the door on my counter somewhere.
Then I made a mistake. I thought I would be funny, I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t sell doors here.”
He was outraged.  I had not helped him at all. He ducked his head down and stared at the doormat. I wondered what kind of diabolical timetable he was following to make his days so harrowing.
He decided to be patient and kind and to speak more slowly in case it was me who was the bloody stupid one. He said “To  get  into  a  bakery  there  needs  to  be  a  door….”
I said: “The door to the bakery is just around the corner, where the bakery is.”
He hung onto my door frame, and his head snapped to the left. He looked at the bakery tables on the corner in amazement,. He was genuinely shocked.
He said, “Thanks.”
I said, “See you.”

Fucking idiot.