And *where* have you been?!
I spoke to my Mum earlier tonight. She lives half a country away and our relationship seems at it's best when I have the availability of hanging up on her at any given chance should the need ever arise. Not that I've done that in the two years I've lived out of home. I tried once, but that was after a period of time when I'd been back to the 'Dale and actually in her presence for a while. We dont do well face to face.
Still, I do enjoy talking to her on the phone. We have long chats. Stupidly long chats. Ones that go for like at least an hour, every time we talk. It's nice. Tonight we were talking about memories. After I was complaining about my uni class. In one of them we have to write a short paragraph or so about our first memory. I have no idea when mine is. My box of memories in the BrainBOX is like a shoebox full of random stuff. Like my Nanny. She was my favourite person in the world for a long, long time. She always made me feel loved, she was my co-conspirator. In our family, we like to think that the reason she had a heart attack (and a quadrouple bi-pass to keep kicking for another 4 years) was because she was reading too many racy novels. She had quite the collection, my Nanny. Boy did she love Fabio in all his forms. When I remember her, the first thing I remember is the sound of her walking up the hallway of her house. This shuffle as he heel dragged a bit and her hitching laugh from something naughty she'd been thinking. I spent a lot of time at her house. She lived like half a block away from my primary school, so I was there all the time. When I think of that house I think of three blankets on the beds, the smell of woodsmoke and the worn, worn carpet in the loungeroom. She had this horrible salmon pink couch that was so damn comfy. She was an amazing cook, and her freezer was always a wonderland of treats and her garden was forever abloom. A warzone of roses and posies and Nanny, shuffling around the garden in her well-worn cadigans with a jar of salt killing slugs and snails and pulling out weeds. My mum likes to tell me the same stories and when I try and think back on my memories mostly I think of her stories. It's like they've superimposed themselves into my head over the top of the jumbled set of sensory memories I've got shoved in the same little shoebox at the back. When I won the most beautiful baby competition when I was 2, Mum was at the back of the crowd while Nanny stood with me on stage. When mum went back to work, I would stay with Nanny or at Nan and Pop's, but every week, Nanny would take me down town and we'd go to Ellie's cafe and I'd have a chicken sandwich and an apple juice and then go and visit mum at work.
These are my mother's stories of my grandmother and me.
I'm not actually sure why I'm really talking about her. Well, Mum and I did. We talked about the night she died, so I guess she's on the brain. I have her middle name. Or what's meant to be her middle name. Apparantly there's an 'e' in there that she didn't know about for sixty years either, so it's forgiven I dont share it completely. Dad was going to have my name changed for me for my 18th, Mum told me. Behind my back, the cheeky bastard. He didn't though, Mum convinced him not to, which I'm sort of grateful. I have 24 characters in my name, and 24's always been my number. I'll keep that and the sentiment, thanks.
Still, I dont have a particularly good memory. Not in step by step, chronological things. I remember in brief snippets that can unfold everything in a millisecond or simply leave me to fill things in with lies. I have this memory, and i'm convinced now it's the earliest memory of mine - genuine, bonafide memory - that I have lurking in my head that's mine. It's a story that Mum's never told, but it just seemed like so much of a story that I thought I'd made it up. Mum confirmed it for me tonight. It actually happened and it's better than I thought.
In my head I have this vivid story that Mum and I and some other people I could never identify - to the point I thought for a while it had been a dream or I'd made them up - were at the beach for some reason. This was problemo #1, the beach is not somewhere my mother takes us. Not without Dad. The beach is Dad's thing. We're at the beach and we've been there a while. It's just me and mum and inconspicuous people 2&3 and what I thought was my sister Jessica. According to my mother, it wasn't jessica, which puts me at less than age four. We're at the beach in Brisbane, with my Auntie's Sue and Lisa, while my Dad had gone off to see my Uncle Noel somewhere else, leaving Mum with the car. We had an excellent time, but that's not a part of my memory. All I remember is that it was hot and I think I lost my shoes. I didn't confirm this with Mum. This was before mobiles, back when there were house phones and dodgy answering machines if you were into that sort of thing. If not you could bloody well ring back.
We were at the beach. Mum had the car. Dad had gone to see Noel, it was hot. We wanted to leave and go home.
Dad had the keys.
This is the part of the memory that always stuck, me and my mother and unknown persons spending a damn long time trying to find a payphone and not being able to find my dad to come and pick us up. It took ages. See Dad and Noel were going to do one thing, they were having a meeting. They had one place to go and then they were supposed to be going back to Noel's where we were staying.
No.
No, my father and my uncle decided after their meeting that seeing as though the girl's were at the beach they were going to go to a topless bar.
This is where things just get excellent. XD The first memory I have lurking in my head is getting stuck at the beach in Brisbane for hours with my Mother, two aunts and a young cousin while my dad and my uncle were at a topless bar getting sloshed and being perves.
I love my family. By Christ they drive me insane, but I love them. XD
I dont know whether I accomplished what I wanted with this entry, but I'm gonna leave it here anyway.
Stay delightful
xxx
Still, I do enjoy talking to her on the phone. We have long chats. Stupidly long chats. Ones that go for like at least an hour, every time we talk. It's nice. Tonight we were talking about memories. After I was complaining about my uni class. In one of them we have to write a short paragraph or so about our first memory. I have no idea when mine is. My box of memories in the BrainBOX is like a shoebox full of random stuff. Like my Nanny. She was my favourite person in the world for a long, long time. She always made me feel loved, she was my co-conspirator. In our family, we like to think that the reason she had a heart attack (and a quadrouple bi-pass to keep kicking for another 4 years) was because she was reading too many racy novels. She had quite the collection, my Nanny. Boy did she love Fabio in all his forms. When I remember her, the first thing I remember is the sound of her walking up the hallway of her house. This shuffle as he heel dragged a bit and her hitching laugh from something naughty she'd been thinking. I spent a lot of time at her house. She lived like half a block away from my primary school, so I was there all the time. When I think of that house I think of three blankets on the beds, the smell of woodsmoke and the worn, worn carpet in the loungeroom. She had this horrible salmon pink couch that was so damn comfy. She was an amazing cook, and her freezer was always a wonderland of treats and her garden was forever abloom. A warzone of roses and posies and Nanny, shuffling around the garden in her well-worn cadigans with a jar of salt killing slugs and snails and pulling out weeds. My mum likes to tell me the same stories and when I try and think back on my memories mostly I think of her stories. It's like they've superimposed themselves into my head over the top of the jumbled set of sensory memories I've got shoved in the same little shoebox at the back. When I won the most beautiful baby competition when I was 2, Mum was at the back of the crowd while Nanny stood with me on stage. When mum went back to work, I would stay with Nanny or at Nan and Pop's, but every week, Nanny would take me down town and we'd go to Ellie's cafe and I'd have a chicken sandwich and an apple juice and then go and visit mum at work.
These are my mother's stories of my grandmother and me.
I'm not actually sure why I'm really talking about her. Well, Mum and I did. We talked about the night she died, so I guess she's on the brain. I have her middle name. Or what's meant to be her middle name. Apparantly there's an 'e' in there that she didn't know about for sixty years either, so it's forgiven I dont share it completely. Dad was going to have my name changed for me for my 18th, Mum told me. Behind my back, the cheeky bastard. He didn't though, Mum convinced him not to, which I'm sort of grateful. I have 24 characters in my name, and 24's always been my number. I'll keep that and the sentiment, thanks.
Still, I dont have a particularly good memory. Not in step by step, chronological things. I remember in brief snippets that can unfold everything in a millisecond or simply leave me to fill things in with lies. I have this memory, and i'm convinced now it's the earliest memory of mine - genuine, bonafide memory - that I have lurking in my head that's mine. It's a story that Mum's never told, but it just seemed like so much of a story that I thought I'd made it up. Mum confirmed it for me tonight. It actually happened and it's better than I thought.
In my head I have this vivid story that Mum and I and some other people I could never identify - to the point I thought for a while it had been a dream or I'd made them up - were at the beach for some reason. This was problemo #1, the beach is not somewhere my mother takes us. Not without Dad. The beach is Dad's thing. We're at the beach and we've been there a while. It's just me and mum and inconspicuous people 2&3 and what I thought was my sister Jessica. According to my mother, it wasn't jessica, which puts me at less than age four. We're at the beach in Brisbane, with my Auntie's Sue and Lisa, while my Dad had gone off to see my Uncle Noel somewhere else, leaving Mum with the car. We had an excellent time, but that's not a part of my memory. All I remember is that it was hot and I think I lost my shoes. I didn't confirm this with Mum. This was before mobiles, back when there were house phones and dodgy answering machines if you were into that sort of thing. If not you could bloody well ring back.
We were at the beach. Mum had the car. Dad had gone to see Noel, it was hot. We wanted to leave and go home.
Dad had the keys.
This is the part of the memory that always stuck, me and my mother and unknown persons spending a damn long time trying to find a payphone and not being able to find my dad to come and pick us up. It took ages. See Dad and Noel were going to do one thing, they were having a meeting. They had one place to go and then they were supposed to be going back to Noel's where we were staying.
No.
No, my father and my uncle decided after their meeting that seeing as though the girl's were at the beach they were going to go to a topless bar.
This is where things just get excellent. XD The first memory I have lurking in my head is getting stuck at the beach in Brisbane for hours with my Mother, two aunts and a young cousin while my dad and my uncle were at a topless bar getting sloshed and being perves.
I love my family. By Christ they drive me insane, but I love them. XD
I dont know whether I accomplished what I wanted with this entry, but I'm gonna leave it here anyway.
Stay delightful
xxx