A thirty-seven-year-old superego, wrapped
around a twenty something ego, cradling a childlike id of seven: he is vigorous,
enthusiastic but vulnerable. The
child yearns for his absent father; the young man searches for excitement but
denies his own emotional needs and weaknesses; the mature man accepts past
errors, tempers his youthful excesses and provides his own fathering.
He straightens his shoulders as he steps
from the curb, dodging traffic, intent on his mission:
a modern-day salesman-minstrel, weaving tales of daring and heroic
episodes of the possible, with Mobile Phone as lute, Corporate Capability
Statement as sacred manuscript, and a sheaf of Requests For Tender as
invitations to visit far-off kingdoms.
His crisp white shirt and dark sombre suit
disguise the scuba diver, in-line skater, down-hill skier, boxer and sometimes
weekend “scruffian” lurking within. His
lustful, observant eye, skates across a city-sea of bust, leg and buttock, more
genetic habit than serious intent. Twice
husband and father, he has learnt the value of love and trust, of commitment and
companionship by veering off their paths, before returning grubby but calmed,
wounded but wiser.
His list of likes is longer than dislikes:
fond of a joke ribald and shocking;
Italian, Thai, American, Mexican, gourmet pizza, different food but not
fish; classical, jazz, rock, modern, different music but not rap; white, brown,
plump, fine, dark, blond, different women but not skinny.
He Walter Mitty’s his way through science fiction, spy thrillers,
murder mysteries and sometimes, life. Loyal
to his few very good friends, he now enjoys the differences more than the
similarities. The women get closer to him than the men.
More and more, he sees meaning in his life, as his children grow,
expanding his own inner childhood and manhood.
Pausing, he catches his reflection in a
window, smiles knowingly at the others within, and squares his shoulders as he
strides towards the challenges ahead.
Copyright © 1996 Warren Bain
My parents divorced when I was very young and my father's
absence left my younger brother and me in need of a male role model, and my
mother in need of a rest. Looking back through the thirty year perspective of my
own fathering and a failed marriage, I sense some of the possible reasons behind
his absence, but it saddens and hurts me, nonetheless. As a man, I can feel the
hurt within my inner child, but as a boy, I insulated that hurt within a world
of things and facts and I bolstered my sense of self with the love of my mother,
my Nana and my Pa. Pa was our father and Nana was our mother, our rock, our Pole
Star.
As I have aged, my grandparents have declined in a kind of
symbiosis. Not that I think this is cause-and-effect, but as I have matured into
adulthood, I have come to appreciate, more and more, their stability, integrity
and unconditional love. Yet, as I have grown, they have waned; my Pa has been
dead for three years and my Nana has shrunk into a smaller, quieter, more
reclusive person, who less and less resembles the memory I hold in my heart. But
when I was ten, their house was a warm and exciting place to visit and they were
vibrant, loving and gentle.
The house is set on a large, grassed, hilly block with a muddy
creek running through the middle. My brother and I were threatened with dire
consequences should we get dirty and we usually did. We would construct a
makeshift fishing line from a supple piece of a willow tree branch, stripped of
its leaves, and knot an earthworm to its end for bait. The creek was full of
eels and small fish, enough to support a family of mopoke owls, some
kingfishers, kookaburras and a shy bandicoot. Today it is a polluted trickle
full of algae and refuse. It's trees have been cut down, its animals have
disappeared. It saddens me to see it now, and it seems to be a parallel of our
treatment of much of the world.
My Nana kept a goat to keep the grass on the hill at a
reasonable length. I say it was my Nana's because she was from the country, and
although she never displayed any apparent animal husbandry, the goat seemed to
be her responsibility by a kind of unspoken agreement with my Pa. There were
several generations of goat, and many of them were prickly, feisty individuals;
worthy opponents for my brother and me in our protracted battle for possession
of the hill. One particularly large, nasty, white billy goat would ignore us
until, preoccupied, we would fail to see him racing down the hill until his
thirty metre chain rasped its way across the backs of our legs.
I remember the deafening roar of cicadas in summer, chirping
in their thousands, until the ringing in my ears felt like a song in its own
right, a kind of sympathetic harmony that could alternately soothe and irritate.
I would collect the cicada larvae and wait for them to emerge from their
metamorphosis -- would this one be a Yellow Monday, a Green Grocer, or the
prized Black Prince? But like people, the outside appearance gave no clue to
what lay within, and only patience would reveal its true nature.
My family played cards. We sometimes watched TV, or read or
did crosswords, but the real business of the day was playing cards. During the
afternoon, between cups of tea and plates of biscuits, my Nana would play
sociable games of cribbage with me. Crib was an easy game to learn with rhymes
like "fifteen-two, fifteen-four and the rest won't score" and
"twenty-seven, four's in heaven" to help remember the scoring. Later
on, Euchre would take over but this was just a pre-cursor to the main event.
After dinner, it was Five Hundred and here my Pa reigned supreme. He didn't
always win but he fought for the "kitty", sometimes shrewdly, other
times with a reckless disregard for the actual value of his hand.
"Misere" hands were not allowed and woe betide anyone indulging in
"table talk". Fierce post-mortem discussions took place after every
hand.
As I look back, I appreciate the love and affection of my
grandparents, and the times I spent in their company, exploring their wonderful
backyard. I realise the importance of being there for my children; for their
sakes, and for my own.
Copyright © 1996 Warren Bain
“Did you get the cereal?” Sue said,
accusing me of neglecting my duties.
“No, I was busy selecting the best
vegetables” I defended myself, lamely.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to get it.
You go and line up. And Jim,
please pick the quickest queue” she pleaded, rolling her eyes and scurrying
away.
The quickest queue, hmmm, now there is a
vexatious question. As I surveyed the checkouts I pondered my strategy.
The shortest queue should be the fastest, so I counted shoppers.
“Aisle One isn’t manned, Aisle Two has three customers, Aisle Three
has two customers, and ... Aisle Four is empty!”.
I jabbed my trolley forward to cut off two gangly bachelors and their
armloads of beer, bread and baked beans.
But wait.
In my haste I hadn’t noticed that Aisle Four sported an “8 items or
less” sign and the disapproving glare of the attendant brought me to a
shuddering halt. I looked at my
trolley brimming with cans, packets, tubes, boxes, sprays and jars and mentally
agreed that to proceed would be a serious breach of international supermarket
convention.
As I reluctantly turned and headed back
towards Aisle Three, I was dismayed to see that another shopper had joined the
shortest queue and they were now three customers, even.
I decided to pause, take stock (excuse the pun) and consider my next
move. I examined the trolleys in
each queue and noted that while Aisle Three appeared to have a smaller total
quantity of groceries, over in Aisle Two an elderly woman with a scarf wrapped
“Coronation Street” style around her head had loaded her cart almost
exclusively with large tins of “Whiskers”.
I hoped she had a cat; in any case, they should be quick to scan.
That thought prompted another.
Volume was one thing, but not, I could now see, necessarily the main
thing. Shoppers tended to balance
the load based on queue length, but clearly, the speed of scanning and cash
register operation is key to the overall throughput.
I shifted my attention to the operators.
Aisle Two was fresh and efficient, arms pumping, snapping open a fresh
plastic bag to be filled in a practised graceful rhythm of scan-and-pack,
scan-and-pack; the retail rendition of “Swan Lake.”
Aisle Three was slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, disconsolately sweeping back
a loose lock of hair without conviction. Then
I heard the words that sealed it for me, “Price check, Aisle Three!”
Confidently now, I turned and headed towards Aisle Two.
Then, the Universe hiccupped!
The Aisle One light stuttered into life and a bony finger beckoned me to
join the newly opened lane. I threw
caution to the ceiling fan, and straining against $200 of consumer inertia, I
urged my steed towards the shopper’s Mecca -- an empty checkout.
Materialising from behind a stack of toilet paper (on special this week,
only $2.99), first a family of five, all thongs and T-shirts, next a business
man in a crumpled suit, then a harassed father and his twin baby boys, all
slipstreamed ahead of me and gazumped Aisle One!
As I scratched my head and surveyed the
growing lines of peak hour shoppers, I heard the insistent clack, clack, clack
of Sue’s shoes approaching. I
quickly reverted to my usual strategy and joined the nearest queue, thumbed
through a gossip magazine and switched off, blissfully ignorant of Sue’s
inevitable whining.
Copyright © 1996 Warren Bain
“So, that was some run, Josh” puffed
Dave. At thirty-eight, he had that
type of plain, single-man look that many people find attractive and call craggy.
Josh’s mother thinks he is the most sincere and honest man she has ever
met. Josh trusts him, which is the
highest compliment a sixteen-year old can pay an adult.
“Yeah, not bad for an old fart” smiled
Josh, barely sweating. For some,
running is a way to keep fit. Many
find pounding the pavement unbearable torture.
But for the tall, gangly youth continuing to jog in a circle around the
older man, running was an expression of his inner spirit, a glimpse of what he
could be -- running was natural.
Dave senses some changes in the boy.
A girl he is interested in is trying to elicit reasons for trouble she
has divined in the boy. Josh doesn’t
want to talk about it. But he
mentions his new friend at school - Stevie. Raves about him in a
worshipping fashion but tinged with some doubts.
Afterwards, he rides his bike home to fetch
the photos.
Under his bed, pushed back in amongst the
dust, lolly papers and the sock his mum can never find, lies the chest.
It is an old WWII ammunition chest that Josh sometimes fancies belonged
to his father, although it could have belonged to his Pa, or Uncle Joe - no
matter, it’s not a question that Josh cares to have settled with any accuracy,
anyway. There are tell-tale
scratches on the floor where its sharp metal corners have bitten into the lino.
Hauling on a worn leather strap, Josh pulls it shrieking and grinding,
into the light.
Hunching down, Josh creaks the lid open and
pauses a moment to savour the contents. Staring
back at him are his collection of marbles including five real agates given to
him by his grandfather, an album of stamps religiously collected and filed for
the six months following his tenth birthday. His eyes pass over the jam jar full
of stones of varying size, colour and texture which started out as gemstones
several years ago but which have deteriorated with adolescence into a motley
sample of ... rocks. An oyster
bottle with the label removed holds a blue-ringed octopus preserved in
methylated spirits - when Josh returned from an afternoon at the rock pools with
it his mother freaked out. But Dave
was impressed.
What else?
Some baseball cards with the corners bent and burred.
And under some MAD magazines and running certificates and old school
reports, wrapped in some wax-proof paper, the photos of his father with a young
Josh on his knee, Josh’s mother radiant and smiling - a seemingly perfect
family with few cares and little inkling of the changes that would occur within
months. Josh carefully extracts the
photos and replaces the chest.
The screen door slams.
“Josh, where are you
going? If its the beach, take a
windcheater for goodness sakes, and don’t be late for dinner!”.
His mother waits for an acknowledgement, then sighs “Josh” and
continues her typing in the study.
Josh has a secret place. It’s not really a secret place,
but when he feels the need to be alone, Josh retreats to a small corner of the
headland where the wind has scalloped a hollow in the sandstone. Only
people on boats can see him, if they look hard and know he is there - its a
private place. Josh stows his pushbike under some silver wattle and
snuggles into a well practiced position. The gulls creel overhead, the
crash and thud of the surf then the lull as the sea sucks its cheeks in before
spitting another wave of foam and clear green salty spray over the rocks below,
lull him. He slips into his world and pulls out the photos. He
slowly shuffles the pictures, peering at the faces, searching for an
answer. “Why did you leave, Dad?” he whispers.
Copyright © 1996 Warren Bain
