Medals are made of Honour

 

When I think of Melbourne, I suffer recall.

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My dear sister Wendy was trying to open the doors of Melbourne to me and my 11 month old boy.  But she did not know that so tightly stitched were my scars to the very word ‘Melbourne’, and ever grey, bitterly cold – seized was my mind of the streets; she did not know that knotted and tied were my memories, like a blanket I had knitted around myself through the years and cast off when I came of age and ran  – traumatised was my association with Melbourne, and I just could not live there.   

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That blanket, like a skin shed, it spoiled the ground where it fell when I cast myself in flight.  It was a dark shadow.  It was ominous.  It may come to life if I step back in Melbourne, and strangle me with vicious recount of my father’s words, his certainty that I would “end up in an alley with a needle up yer arm”. If I returned to Melbourne I may become what dad always knew I would:  an addict who amounted to nothing.  No no, I could not live in Melbourne again.

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How Wendy had found freedom for her heart to breathe in the city where my father had almost killed mine, I did not know.  How she could exist in the same airspace as him, I did not know.  Had Wendy actually “got over” our childhood?  But how do you get over a scar, for scars are branding by Love torched, are they not.  My body’s layers protective of my psyche were weakly developed, so my father’s words were able to burn right through me and brand my mind: talentless “precocious little snot.” What, “You think your shit don’t stink?”  ‘My poo?  Everyone’s poo smells (dad). I don’t understand you.’ I was so confused, the day dad asked me that, his squinting, beady eyes set deep within a furrowed forehead.  I can’t remember why he said it.  I must have been happy about something, or feeling confident.   I felt good when I did Irish Dancing and won many, many medals and trophies from competitions that my friend’s mother so kindly drove me around to compete in.   I also felt good once, having done so well in a German poem recital contest. I was proud, though it was a sin to be proud, having learned the lines, their meanings, and delivered them with my great stage voice, my posture straight.  ”Die Stadt” (The City) was the name of the poem.  I can never forget that wonderful feeling – most especially the sparkle in my German teacher’s eyes as I paused and punctuated with great effect.  It was days like that, when dad would bring me back to the ground.  

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Over time I realised that my medals were all trash, just junk metal.  I hadn’t put them up anywhere, but kept them in a jar alongside my jar of the pills I collected from the floor of dad’s room, for my suicide one day.  When I realised how silly I was, keeping a jar of stupid medals – they weren’t even all Firsts – I threw them in the bin.

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But now that I know medals are made of honour, not metal, which honour is polished by the care you take with them – placing them high, dusting them – I decided that when Daniel won medals, ribbons and trophies, which he surely would, I would display them in his bedroom proudly.  I would make a point of looking at them all one day and commenting how many he had.  And every day Daniel woke, the glimmer of his medals would reinforce in himself how much he had accomplished; thereby  proving he could accomplish furthermore.

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Daniel burbled out a seemingly eloquent string of “words” that of tone and lilt were clearly communicating to me something about the tambourine he was holding up. 

“Really?” I asked.  I loved that toy library. 

Another musical waterfall flowed from his mouth, pebbles of punctuation perfectly placed, and eyes wide open that I might see in their depths that he really meant it, what he was saying.  I put down Wendy’s letter, which ended with love to us both, and went to Daniel.   He received me into his space gladly, I could tell, and continued his expressions about the tambourine as he banged it on the floor, paused to see if I understood his example, and then banged it again.

“Right!” I said to Daniel.  “And you can do this” – I tapped the tambourine with my fingers.  Daniel watched with interest.  “Or this” I said, slapping it gently with my open palm.  Daniel, still holding the tambourine up between us, looked at me upon the slap and then informed me of something which I could not recall that night when I wrote in my journal of love to him, and which really, I could not have interpreted anyhow.

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“Dad always treated you the worst,” my sister Deana says to this day.  Yet I think of the effect he had on her, living on medication now and what I see as ‘maintaining’ her life, and I thank God I had whatever it was I had, that gave me endurance.  I could not say my father was the cause of Deana’s mental afflictions, but he did not help her state of mind at all.  He was detrimental to her mental health, as he was to mine… and Mum’s I am dead certain.

“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged:  and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”  The Bible

I don’t know.

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Touching Daniel’s soft hair and cheeks as he looked down at the tambourine he’d placed on the floor to collect plastic blocks in, I figured it was best to just keep on going.  I was in Perth, they were in Melbourne, and so be it.  I didn’t have family support in Perth, but nor did I know what I could mentally endure in Melbourne, in hope of such support.  I didn’t have friends with babies in Perth, but nor did such await in Melbourne.  I wasn’t in mothers’ clubs in Perth, so how would I become suddenly capable in Melbourne?  Perth was Melbourne in effect, but without the dark shadow – rather, instead, stunning sunshine.  No, I would not re-root us.

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Roots.  One thing I did realise, was that I was connected with my family whether I liked it or not.  I was born of that tree, and  that cannot be undone.  Grow my face toward the western sun I may, and stretch my arms across the vast expanse of our land to dip them in the western Ocean, but no matter how far from my roots I determined myself to grow, I could not disclaim them.  Family be the soil which nourishes you or may be barren, their blood the flow spiritually between us, but Destiny is the trellis I erect as I build my days with choices.  Fractured a trellis has crept my vines over time, but I would strengthen the framework – somehow I would, somehow, so that my son might grow alongside me proudly and branch off soundly.

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And I would blossom one day, I would – one day before winter withers me, and I die.  

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