Happenstance

I was wandering through a neighbourhood not my own, yesterday.

It was a bit affluent (I have always feared getting that word mixed up with effluent)
 and in my jeans and black top, I didn’t feel I could walk into any of the dress shops that so tempted me.  

They were all empty, the dress shops, and appeared cool and dark inside.  In each, at the end of the rows of gorgeous dresses stood a woman well coiffed, well dressed and manicured, waiting for “real” customers;  customers with money to burn:  not me.  I just did not feel rights to step in and browse.  

So I was outside, on the streets, in the balmy lovely sunshine.

The reason I was in that suburb is because Daniel had an appointment.  The thing is, that place is notorious for keeping you waiting, waiting, waiting (and that professional is worth waiting for).  As Daniel was fine to sit texting his friends back and forth, I went for a wander.

I ambled down one street without entering any shops, crossed the road, went up the other side.  I was aimless, idling time.  There was an intersection up ahead, so I crossed the lights and went down another street.  I heard jazz music flowing through the open windows of a cafe/bar.  I looked in:  again, I didn’t belong.

Then I smelt incense.  I followed it.  I came upon a new age shop.  Comfortable at last, I went in.  Jade, crystals, books, essences… and a sign:  the palm and tarot reader is available.  I thought, hmmm, it’s been a while since I did something spontaneous…  

When I first met Daniel’s father, it was all chance – well, fate. I had decided to try the hairdresser on the ground level of the building where I worked as a court reporter.  That random day the hairdresser chatted, saying she’d met a feng shui practitioner who did a reading, and her life had improved.  I said I’d never thought about feng shui. She said give it a go. Why not, I thought, as I took the number she gave me.  Later arrived Chris at my bed sitter, pony-tailed, vibrant, Eastern wisdom to offer (I thought).

So I asked the attendant how much a palm reading was, and tarot reading, and then – though I had gone out that day for Daniel’s appointment, I decided to give it a go.  I rang Daniel, asked if he had been seen yet, and did he mind me taking half an hour for a reading?  He said, ‘Go for it’.

Wow.

So so much was said, brought into perspective, resonated.  How can this be?  She even became curious at Daniel and drew some cards relating to him.  Again, what she said was entirely credible/related/happening.

Rather than bore you with a self-indulgent post on what the reader said of me, I’m letting you know I have decided to video my recall of the reading.  In a year’s time, I will look at that video and report on what she said that actually happened.  Things are meant to be changing this very year upcoming, so I will “look again” in a year’s time…

~

Subbers:  thank you again, for being there.  Thank you for what healing is occurring to me in the writing of Daniel and my story, which you receive – and sometimes comment upon:  I thank you, we connect.   

For a bit of ‘entertainment’, the below video is a poem I wrote and had nowhere to place – about a year after Daniel and me arrived in Melbourne, 4000 kilometres from Perth in Western Australia (where his father is).  The year that followed this became very dark indeed, and the one after that…

but today the sun shines, and this is prosperity.

Sincere best All.

Copyright, Noeleen

A Collection of Knives

Having collected Daniel from Chris and Tracy, I felt both nervous and hopeful for the future. 

I had to accept that if Chris would not support me working then I had to make the decision to either put Daniel into child care, or simply not work.  It wasn’t a great pay-off to have Daniel in care all those hours at such cost – much better to be with family – so while driving I decided that if I were to not work in the acting job (that I was stunned to be thought good enough for, having passed auditions), then I would look for other work. 

We would get by, we would be fine, I determined, slowing down for the lights.

“How are you, gorgeous?” I turned to say to Daniel, and he gave me a big rosy-cheeked grin.  He then burbled something in the trill of a song bird, sounding excited and eager. I laughed.  The joy which emanated from this young being was so charged, I was begifted every minute by his very life.

I turned to continue driving.

.

It’s important to not hope on Chris’ support, I thought to myself.  I did not like the sense of power I felt Chris possessed in being able to say yes or no, he will care for his child.  I had no power of sway (also did not care for power games) for I had said ‘yes’ to Daniel with all of my heart upon his birth.  Thereby, I would always be there for him – but Chris had the power to be available for his son and assist us, or not be available to his son and be absent, a father.
I had to remember Chris had it in his character to disappear from Daniel’s life at will, like when I started talking maintenance and he spat, “I’ll piss off, you’ll see!” – and then was uncontactable for a month.  That had been such a torture to me, isolated in Western Australia without family, no friends with children, night clubbing buddies lost to the night and lost my number, no adult to talk to but Tom when I ran into him.  And it had happened just before Robert ambushed me sexually. 

I could have rung Des from theatre days but he could not relate an iota, single man living a single man’s whims; I could have rung Tom my yoga teacher but preferred him not know me depressed for he was always so positive; I could have rung the theatre director Andrea who’d said, “Keep in touch, now” – but who ever means that?; I could have rung my grandmother but I had not exposed her to Daniel yet, and wasn’t sure how she’d receive me as a parent single; I could have rung my sisters over east but I didn’t want them to know Chris was toying with me (that’s my pride, my downfall)… really, I could ring everyone and no-one; besides all of which, utterance of the word ‘help’ had not crossed my lips ever, not ever, in my life.

“Neighbours are more curious than concerned (don’t ever seek help/tell what’s happening)”, dad had hissed at us.  Still, Wendy during an argument with him, had flung open the window one day and screamed into the world, “I DON’T CARE IF THE NEIGHBOURS HEAR!”  I can never forget my father’s freezing at that moment, and I did too:  she was so, so brave.

I had got through everything alone and I would again (if Chris doesn’t help), I decided resolutely as I turned down Eric Street, Cottesloe Western Australia.  

Who am I?  Had I determined at an early age self-imposed exile?  Was I abandoning myself from the human race, so that I cannot be abandoned; not asking for help so I cannot be rejected?

I remember that school essay, “Write on the theme ‘No man is an island’.”  But I am, I had thought to myself.

.

But torture, it had been – his disappearance for a month after I tried to discuss maintenance.  And psychological endurance.  I would not ring Chris, I’d decided at that time, when he told me “The other mother doesn’t ask for money; why should you?”  (What other mother?… You have a daughter you don’t support too?).  For, if Chris loved his son he would come to see him, have time with him.  Oh – but was that me playing games, too?

And when Chris did ring after that month, I needed to pretend I was fine, we’d been fine (to not allow him the power of seeing me broken).  No, no, OF COURSE I didn’t leave our son playing on the floor when I was immobilized by depression, lay in my bed so Daniel would not witness the real me, a tear welled from the little girl still inside me, welled in my eye.  And unfallen, it glazed my vision.  So I stared, something like an hour, at the vacancy of space spread across my bedroom wall.

Mum used to lay just so – get up, get up.  You can’t do this to Daniel:  get up, get up.

But I can’t move my legs, I can’t feel my legs – or my body, my hands.  I’m numb.  I’m stuck.  I’m stuck in tragedy in time.  Get me out.  Move me.  Someone move me.

Snap out of it:  “Depressed (sneer) yer don’t know the meaning of the word” – Dad: circa, Yesterdays.

Stumble,

to the bathroom, wash my face,

to Daniel, big smile.

Him looking at me quizzically.

Me sitting with him, lifting a toy but it’s so heavy, just so heavy.  Trying to act, “Hee hee – ha ha – smile – beautiful! darling! gorgeous! we’ll go to the beach later!”

But I couldn’t do it.

‘Kung fu is practiced every where every way’ – Sifu of Yesterdays.

I can do it!

Stare, freeze, stun, numb.

“Mum?”

.

I had gone to the kitchen drawer one of those bad days, those terrible terrible days when I had carried Daniel with me every waking moment for more than a week unending, given him the whole of my attention unending, when my back felt broken, when my body shut down on me, collapsed on me. 

I had gone to the kitchen drawer in desperation, as Daniel wouldn’t settle and was bored of his toys and I needed to rest.  I needed to find something to occupy him before I lapsed into unconsciousness, so unslept was I, unwashed, ravaged by depression, aloneness, Chris’ departure from Daniel and all it implied about who he was by way of Daniel’s other parent.

I had yanked it out of the cabinet, the drawer, and plonked it on the kitchen floor. Daniel, fascinated, took to it immediately.  I watched a few seconds, then stumbled away to my room and collapsed.  I blacked out with fatigue, extreme fatigue.  Not sleeping at night.  Not sleeping at day.  How do they do it in the Army?  How do they march on?  Only those who could march on, survived Mao’s long march.  Would I have died, therefore, weakly now resting on my plush bed?  We all think we’re strong, think we’re survivors, but we all collapse – at some point we collapse.

Mum?  Are you there?

Daniel’s clanking and rattling the kitchen utensils.  There’s a great commotion out there.  Are you a Guardian Angel, or are you just pleased to see me?  Ha ha – hee.  That’s not funny.  Not funny.

Black.

~

When I had woken that time that Chris disappeared for a month – I remember so clearly, I came to consciousness with that good feeling in the body, where your whole being thanks you for stopping, just stopping in your strides of life.  Refreshed, I’d sat up and looked across at Daniel’s cot, but he wasn’t there.  He wasn’t in my bed either, where he crawls to, and we become two pearls in one oyster clammed off from the world, secure and warm ‘neath blankets.

I had got up and said his name, but there was no answer. 

“Daniel?” I’d said again, panicked.

I had rushed quickly out of my bedroom to the kitchenette and there, slumped alongside the kitchen drawer on the hard ground, was Daniel.  My boy in my care:  not one year on earth yet: was slumped on the cold wooden floor.

I tiptoed close, seized with fear.  What had I done to my boy?  I had slept, had neglected my boy.

Once close, I saw peace a gentle veil lain over Daniel’s face in rest.  I would not disturb him. 

But the cutlery?  There was no cutlery in the drawer.  I wondered if I was half dreaming, if I had removed the cutlery from the drawer when I gave it to him – but all that clanking???…

I looked under my writing desk, alongside the refrigerator, behind the bin, but there was no cutlery.  I then opened a cupboard door, and there discovered a collection of knives and teaspoons.  I opened another door and saw on the shelf where I kept the dish cloth and detergent, more knives, more spoons, and forks.

My God! I thought to myself in horror: how stupid, stupid, stupid am I, to leave my son playing with knives.  My God, what is wrong with me, I thought to myself as I stared, a little awed at the completely stashed collection.  I looked back at Daniel but he was not cut, was simply sleeping like none but an Angelic cherub can.

How curious it was that Daniel had so meticulously shoved all my cutlery from the drawer into the cupboards.  He must have decided to divide the stash as it must have been spilling from one, requiring another.  Not yet walking, he would have crawl-walked little bundles of cutlery across to the cupboards.  How curious, how odd, how funny and cute.  But I just could not believe I had been so stupid.

Thank you, dear God, I said in my head.  I so, so meant it.  God knows what Daniel and me were spared in my stupidity, fraught with exhaustion and despair yes, but – it could have been horrific – an eye out, anything.

.

That day, then, I returned to my bed and, refreshed, mentally lay, new plans to survive Chris’ withdrawal upon my talk of maintenance.  We would be fine, we would get by, I’d thought; just as I was thinking now.  I released Daniel from his car seat in the car park of Cottesloe Beach, Western Australia, and brought him across to the front seat with me.  We’ll be fine if Chris doesn’t support me working.  I will find another way.

I remember reading once that there are infinite paths to the same end – you just need to be flexible, adaptable and persevere.  So, simply, I would take another path.  I had sold every material possession of mine that was sellable:  sold the kitchen table, my music tapes, books, work clothes, but, “We’ll be fine”, I said to Daniel, our cheeks like two marshmallows squashed against each other as I hugged him.  I could have almost squeezed him to death.

I unbuckled myself and, not caring, at the ocean’s shoreline I removed my jeans.  Then in t-shirt and knickers I played with Daniel.  We splashed, made holes, I buried his feet so he couldn’t move, and giggled when I pretended I couldn’t move after he buried my feet.  

Time brought us through the day on its tide until eventually we were warm, clean and in nightwear.  Then the day closed like the heavy eyelids of a child who has had so much life in one day, they’ve grown a mile.

Thing is, I thought to myself, lying alongside Daniel in my bed, him sleeping – that time Chris “pissed off; you’ll see” - that time, just when I had buckled up and adjusted to the all new brand of non-support (absence, instead of unpredictable presence) – just as I had adjusted, Chris returned.  And it all started again.

~

I would not let Chris have such an effect on me again, I decided, amongst my last thoughts before sleeping.  I will pretend to the agent that I can make the acting assignment at the Police Academy.  If Chris pulls out and I have to cancel, lose my good standing, then so be it.  Some thrilled actor will step into my place, and I will never be called up by her again.  So what.  That’s life.  It’s only acting.  It’s only something I want – not a need.

The most important thing is – Daniel snuffled, his long brown eyelashes fluttered.  I smelled him.  I loved him.

The most important thing is, because I had to learn from that month’s absence and how it destroyed me alone in a flat, facading wellness to passers-by in my life – I’m okay, we’re okay:  what I would learn this time was, I will not rely on Chris.  I will even start looking for other work, while waiting for Chris to say yes he’ll take some responsibility for his son in support of me working and bettering Daniel and my lives.

If there’s a road block, we’ll take another route.

~

~

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

 

Inspector

Daniel’s joy was palpable when I entered Tracy’s home to collect him. 

Like a swan dives from above, glides elegantly upon a lake to a still; so Daniel ran into my arms and stilled as I smelled his washed baby hair, silken.  

 

 

 

In that moment, was re-engraved into both of our hearts our bond by love.

 

.

“How was he, Chris?  What did you do?”

It wasn’t as if Daniel had never stayed overnight with Chris before – he had in fact slept over only days before the court date when Chris told the Magistrate Daniel is not his son, in avoidance of financial duty. 

It was just that I wanted to feel sure before I asked Daniel’s father would he accept more charge of his son over two weeks, to enable me to work.  And if Chris accepted more responsibility temporarily – perhaps he may even further, if I got more jobs as an actor – for the contracts at the Police Academy were ongoing, my agent had said.

It was an exciting thought:  a father, as well as a mother, seeing to the needs  of their child; both parents – not just one – surrendering furtherance of their careers for furtherance of their own blood; man, as well as woman, caring hands-on.

.

I was possibly guilty of cynicsm, but my father had not raised me to expect much from men.  Consequently I presented in life with not only low boundaries, but also low expectation of the capacity of men to live with honour – of family at the very least – with sincerity, loyalty, support of woman the bearer of child.

“Single mothers…” hiss, sneer and disdain at some news item on the TV.

Dad never spoke of Mum with gentleness, only ever said somehow bitingly that she was a stunner, every man in the room turned to look at her when she walked in.

.

He didn’t quite say that single mothers were the reason for high taxes, waste of government resources, crying babies on trains, the cost of booze, vandalism, the ill manners of sullen youth idling about street corners, all the teen girls with their taut tits, his boner at the hint of womanly flesh when mothers breastfed in public, exposing nothing but love, his lack of “success” with western women – “Australian women are too difficult”,  he explained is why he obtained a Filipina from a magazine after his emotionally scarred Polish refugee wife suicided. 

But you knew that’s what dad meant when he spoke of all of those issues with his mates, and with his brothers our uncles.

“And she drank – yer mother drank”, dad had said not less than a billion times, slugging back the dark spirit, in case – just in case any of us should end up an alcoholic.

I did not know it then but would realize in later years by wisdom, the gift of experience, that as I presented in life, as I expected:  so I received.

~

“We call him Inspector!” Chris smiled, coming toward us.

“What?”

Him and Tracy laughed.

“Yeah.  The Godfather, everyone at Good-One Restaurant, they laugh at him and call him inspector!”

My quizzical look brought explanation from Chris.  “He walk so tall and proud, he march around like he own the place!”

I could not help but laugh with them. 

Yes, that was our Daniel:  tall and proud:  possessor of all the potential in the world.

 

.

.

Copyright,

Noeleen&Daniel

                    50/50

Birth of Love

 

The energy which swelled in my chest when I opened Tracy’s front gate and walked up her path was enormous.  I had never felt anything like it before it in my life.

I had never wanted my father to come home so much, that I felt this; nor my sisters, nor had I wanted to see aunties or cousins, or school friends – and Mum?   She left too soon before I could assess what energies I felt in her presence and absence.  There was a vague admission within when I thought of Mum, that maybe I did love her:  I know I do.

.

The discovery of love through a tiny human being was miraculous, to me – to who I was.  I had thought as a teen that I might discover love via a man, with none of the boys who groped for satiation through my body being capable of it.  Then when I married at 19, although I told my fiancé-to-be “But I don’t love you”, and he hushed, “You do, you just won’t admit it to yourself because of your numbing childhood”; well in marriage, I thought I might discover love through time.

But love did not come in time.  And it did not come to my door when I left the marriage, neither in the form of Stuart the private investigator, my lover two years, nor in the form of any of the men I held between working at the casino, voiceover studios, acting jobs, court reporting.  It did not even arrive in the form of Chris, the confident, Asian man with a bent for western ways and western women, pony-tailed, masseuse, quoter of Confucius.

Love did not come to me, to my life, to my heart – and that was fine, because I did not need it.  I was fine without it, writing to my sisters the lighter news of my days, being forced to hug them when we met across the country at holidays, feeling nil; viewing my father ageing, with no memory – or perhaps denial – of what he did to me.

Love was never present on any dates, in the music of glasses clinking, eyes shining brightly going blurry, stumbling down alleyways, being thrust against a wooden fence, giggling as a branch of life from some beautiful tree poked me in the ribs.  Love was nowhere to be seen as I pushed the branch aside, and fell open my mouth as lust whet his wiles, my ways.  Love was absent in the thrust of his passion and mine together, my lips against the wood, hands at each side of my face.  Love had not dripped in my knickers we abandoned in a spray of grass at the foot of the fence, when a back light turned on and we heard footsteps, escaped gasping down the lane, holding hands, me bending down to take my shoes off for faster getaway.

Love wasn’t there when I lay alone in bed the next morning, stroking the cat, wondering why I existed.

Not ever.

And then it brought me to my knees.

One 24^th of January at 9.39 p.m. I held a life in my hands, borne of my own womb.  In the quiet hospital bedroom – Glen who filmed it gone; Trevor who held my hand and the midwife gone; a tiny life breathed amidst blankets on the large double bed.  It sort of snuffled when I leaned close to feel the life’s newness, and more preciously than a 1000 kilogram nugget of gold I beheld this life, and surged from me – and surged from me now as I stood at Tracy’s door: love:  pure, utter love.

Of all …  I had in this tiny being, discovered love.

It was AWEsome.

~

~

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

A Decision, Two Lives and a Consequence

With no son to fill every nook and cranny of my time, I was confronted by my life when I closed the door behind me in the flat.

It loomed in the structure of the large wooden desk I’d told my husband would be the desk I “write my first novel on”.  Breathing a solid, grounded aura, the tree felled in man’s pursuit to contain its beauty in our homes, stood facing me when I walked into the lounge.   My words littered its surface in scraps and “novels” started, thoughts inspired and captured but never carried through.  Snatches of The Novel of life through my eyes, that dad had laughed at me for conceiving at 16, lay splayed across the desktop, barren.

I touched dust on the desk’s surface, opened my orange folder, ‘CONVULSIONS of THOUGHT’:

First

you loved me

because I hated you.

Then

you hated me

because I loved you.

- and I turned away.

~

Daniel’s toys were a mess so I put my bag and keys down, and attended to his play corner.  As always, the impulse to set his toys up in animated poses took me to lay them out in ways which I intended to lead into inspired play.  I sat each of his stuffed toys in a large circle, and in the centre of the circle I placed the little xylophone.  I then got my Barbie and sat her at the xylophone, propping a drum stick under her shoulder so she sort of held it along her arm.  I stood fluffy white Teddy on the peripheral, leaning him against weird soft toy I didn’t know the genus of, and turned Barbie’s smiling face to look toward him.  Teddy didn’t have much expression on his face, and to me his beady eyes were just a bit cool, so I cheered him up by placing one of Daniel’s little cotton caps on his head.  It lent Teddy at least a nuance of cute.

.

I leaned two books against each other so they created a shelter, and placed a tea-towel over it so it looked like a tent.  All this while my thoughts were on Daniel, and my plans to leave our flat for another, hopefully in the same area.   When we moved from 445 Stirling Highway to 452 Stirling Highway, me pushing my bed on wheels down the main street and Des from theatre days and a few others helping with the boxes, I had no wish to go through the labour and expense of moving again so soon.  However, since the hauntings – even though they had ceased, what if they started again; drained me again, weakened me, sucking my energy out in the middle of the night, leaving me a shell too afraid to sleep, to rest, to allow my spirit to fly home amongst the stars?  Just the fact whatever it was had been, was enough to unsettle me.  I was glad it was gone, but I didn’t want to hang around where it had been, in case it revisited.  I always was a one to leave ‘good gone bad’ first.

It seems, though doesn’t it,
only a matter of time

before good fruit,

goes bad?

After tidying Daniel’s play corner, I had nothing left in me.  I took off my boots and jeans, unsnipped my bra and slipped it out the arm holes of my t-shirt, lit a candle under some essential oils, and turned off the light.  I dropped my body back onto the bed, catching a rift on the stream of dreams, and was carried along on a gentle current to unconsciousness.

~

The shrill tone of the phone ringing shook me awake.  I opened my eyes to realize a new day had broken, again.  We never know upon how many more days, will our eyes open.

I stumbled to the phone on my writing desk, and offered a groggy hello to the receiver.

“Is that Noeleen?”

“Yes, it is.”

We respond so instantly to such a question.  I used to answer the phone, “Hello, this is Noeleen”, but during the two years post marriage that Stuart the P.I. was my lover, he encouraged me to change that habit.  “You don’t know how easy it is to identify people – you just did the text book easy”, he once said to me.  I was mystified at this other level of life – just the concept someone could be telephoning my number simply to confirm that it was indeed myself who lived at that address.  Stuart had me rethink my apparently guileless ways, but the only advices I retained as habits was to hold my car key sticking out from my second and third fingers in a fist, ready to poke an attacker’s eye out, and answering the phone without identifying myself.

“It’s Barbara”, the woman said.

“Oh Barbara!  Hi!”

I rubbed my eyes and alerted my mind.  It was the woman who had auditioned and accepted me late last year, to be an actor for recruits at the Police Academy.  I knew work was due to commence around about now, but it was a bit past the expected date and I thought, defeatedly, they’d gone with someone else.  It was a dream to act for money – act and write!

.

“Are you still available for the assignment with the first load of recruits?”

“Oh yes! Yes!  I mean… um, how many days, when?”

“The first week is three days work, where the recruits get used to dealing with – being assertive with strangers, members of the public.  They usually go with this skit where you’re waiting at a bus stop and another actor comes along, they ask if you’ve got a cigarette, you say no, they get aggressive, you’re frightened bla bla.  A patrol car sees the action, stops, gets out.  The other actor is told not to run, but to say they weren’t doing anything wrong.  The recruits have to decide if there is enough in what you both say to lay charges, or just warn the other guy and have him move off.”

“Wow, that’s – that’s just – I love it!”

“Good yeah, okay.  So the week after that is four days work.  Can you do it?”

I was petrified.  Could I do it?  Of course I could do it, but Daniel – what would I do with Daniel?  So far, he had only had ‘a day’ in child care here and there.  Could he do three days – four?   Is it too soon for me to go back to work casually?  What do other mothers do?  I know no other mothers… NO, what do mothers without backup support do?  Do the majority stay home on a pension and go just a little bit crazy as all of your energy drains away, or step out independently, and come home with a pay packet?

My nonresponse brought Barbara to nudge, “We need to know, love.  We’ve gotta get going.”

“When do you need me to start?  I mean, not tomorrow or anything, heh?”

“No, Wednesday in two weeks.  It’s a contract.  You need to commit.”

“I can”, I said, with a gulp.  It was best not to cut the opportunity off, but to string it along while I worked things out.  I would lose my reputation for reliability if I couldn’t work things out and had to cancel suddenly, but I was willing to take that risk.  They’d never call me again… but that’s fine, I would take the risk.  I would just take this opportunity – if I can – and see what happens.

“Great”, Barbara said, and then told me what was expected of me – including learning people’s profiles, so I could be that person and answer questions police recruits asked.

.

Oh, to be creative – and paid for it.  To be an earning mother, supporting my little family.  I had no ambitions but creative, and as I lived my life, my creative desires were relegated to mere hobbies.  With no ambition to race back to working full time as a court reporter or anything else that involved closed walls and air conditioning, it seemed perfect to take bit jobs as they came up.  But for cleaning Tom’s yoga room, Daniel and me remained one step above the gutter, swallowing pride in receipt of the government’s fantasy of how many dollars a week supports a mother and child.

I was astonished this great opportunity to act for money regularly – assignments would be spaced throughout the year; that it should come now.  Why does life do that?  When I was single and on an agent’s books for TV commercials and being background to main actors in feature films, I only got the small jobs they obviously deemed me capable of.  I guess they believed in me only as much as I believed in myself, for I had never been one of those loud actors devouring space as I waded through a room, talking loudly so that other creatives turned their heads (hoping directors happened to be present) and desk girls looked up.  I was more one to ring or drop in, ask how opportunities were and hear “Busy, busy, busy!”

“Well, voice-over’s my main love!” I’d smile as if I loved them absolutely.  They’d call me. 

Ah, of course.   They never placed me for voiceover.   

The voiceover work I did get, I sourced myself – just like this little beauty – I had sourced this one by myself, from the grapevine.

I was DELIGHTED but not, all in one.

~

The problem with being a woman standing alone in a flat

in a life throughout which you have deflected closeness with people –  before and after marriage -

and so having no-one close, a confidant,

and having spent the last three years convincing your sisters and father over east that you’re happy on the opposite side of the country -

not just because of the stunning beaches but, you know, “I’m only a suburb away from Mum’s grave”,

besides which you have

NEVER

talked in sisterly intimacy with a

single

one of them –

one’s psychiatric problems do not lend themselves to spillage of your own problems;

another is opposite to you in every facet from the literal extremes of arriving at a night club and screaming into the crowd, “LET’S MAKE SOME NOISE!”, giggling hysterically with your buddies – to sipping tea while listening to classical music;

and the other starves of information about the family she has seceded from, pummeling you (when she’s talking to you) in demand to know juiciness of details of kin, so that it becomes natural to completely hide the reality of your life from her;

is that

when you need to make decisions about the welfare of your first child, your only child,

it distresses in the clarity

that you stand alone.

Utterly.

It’s then you talk to the walls, the cat, and pace about inside your flat.

.

I paced up and down after the phone call.  I felt fresh, wonderfully slept, felt like I wanted to run into the sunshine and let it drench me.  Life was good!  Life could be good!  Imagine Daniel’s mum being a regular actor for the Police Academy – that being my job:  casual assignments as required.  I liked it!

But should I do it?  Would Daniel be best at day care – or, what if, would maybe Chris take him?  Could that be the start of something good – a strengthening of bond and relationship between them?

I made a cup of coffee.  I opened my front door to let in the warmth of the day, through the flywire.  I washed the dishes, walked about thinking madly – how, how – and cleaning up absentmindedly.

.

Daniel likes the child care centre – he has instant play mates, whereas we don’t know anyone with babies.  It’s good for him, and he knows it’s a day of fun and variety when I drop him off.  And Mum comes back happier!  But the cost – it would take an enormous bite from my earnings.  At the same time as earning a day’s pay, I’d pay a day to child care.

Or then, just imagine if Chris took Daniel three days one week and four the next.  He’s so proud taking him around here and there, isn’t he?  What if Daniel began to learn Chinese by association?  That would be fantastic!

It’s just a two week assignment.  I don’t have to say yes to more assignments – even one would be a great experience.  I wonder if I could swear at the police – ha, imagine screaming like a wild child, “Leave me the fuck alone!” (and getting away with it).  Is that an offence, would the recruit decide?  I’ve heard that spitting at police is assault.  Is spitting at a person assault?  What if I spat on an actor – would the police recruits arrest me?

It was all so weird and wonderful, exciting, new, and such a challenge having no script to follow but just a theme to follow.  It was – my gosh, I had to work it out, just had to work it out.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

Trust?

The first time I left Daniel with Chris and Tracy overnight, I felt I was betraying Daniel by leaving him with them.

.

I sat and spoke with Tracy and Chris for a few polite minutes, but when I picked up my bag to leave, Daniel hastened to come with me.  I squatted down to be eye level with him, and say face to face that I would be back the next day, but that evening he would be hanging out with Chris and Tracy.

“Mama”, Daniel said, gesturing to come with me.

“Let him be”, Chris said brusquely.  “You walk away, he get used to.”

“Come on Daniel”, Tracy said kindly, “Let’s go see what Phong’s doing.”

.

Tracy’s son Phong had made no effort to be polite during my visit, only presenting when Chris demanded him to, to say hello.  He then returned to his room to do I did not know what.  Daniel looked up at me – should he go with Tracy to Phong?  His whole being was at the mercy of me, an adult:  my adult decisions, soul’s leaning, capability of parenting.

Yet I did not feel like an adult.  Adult women say “NO” to men (and men abide their will); grown women say, “No, I paid for a fresh pie, not a stale one you’ve been keeping aside to score a few dollars off a sucker like me”; women progressed are not afraid to embrace their whole, beautiful, intelligent selves – wouldn’t dream of dousing their spirits in alcohol to slur their rhyme and wit, render it untimed and ill-placed; or dream of eating litres of ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, chips so as to hide behind soft rolls of fat and not even attract an opportunity to say “NO” to men.  I felt not adult at all.  

In fact, having never been to counseling – through Mum’s suicide, the orphanage, my torturous years with dad, when Deana splintered schizophrenic and I spent days in the mental hospital in company with her, when I left my marriage or when I discovered pregnancy…really, I felt a ruin of my childhood.

.

I looked at my sweet boy who was fine going to child care and the pool crèche, and always received me back, smiling, and wondered why I felt so much anxiety about leaving him with Chris.  First years of life, so preciously important, shape the life, I had heard.

I suddenly recalled the first lines of prose I’d once coughed up some rainy day:

Somebody kicked the jigsaw when I was 6 years old.  Mum died then and the pieces went flying around my psyche.

I stared, stunned as my father the raving adult expressed through wretched red eyes, contorted wet skinny face, white froth foaming from his mouth, and spittle raining on my parade, my joy.

I didn’t pick up the scattered pieces of my psyche, just sat odd-legged and staring at the wall, my father’s voice a punctured wolve’s howl in the background.

Suddenly, near dusk, relative adults flooded into the room, praying, picking up errant bits of the scattered jigsaw-was-me, and stuffing them back into my head.  The caring adults shoved the pieces where they thought they should go – back in my gut, through my ears to equilibrium, down my throat for we “don’t want to talk about that”.  And they shoved those pieces sorrow through my eyes so hard that they forced the tears back into my heart.

.

“Yeah, yeah go with Tracy”, Chris said.  Daniel looked at his father.

“Phong might play with you”, I spoke to Daniel’s uncertainty.  “Do you think?”  I looked up at Tracy.

“Phong!” she called. 

He begrudgingly appeared.

.

I really wondered the story of Phong, and wondered if Chris had taken him on like a son or like an irritation.  I wondered how many times Phong had seen his mother beaten by his father before their escape, and wondered how he felt inside.  I didn’t want to impose Daniel upon him.  In one way I thought Daniel could be delightful distraction to Phong, and in another way I feared Phong might view Daniel with jealousy – for now not only did Chris take his mother’s time and love – but would Daniel too?

“It’s okay”, I said to Chris, and then looked at Tracy.  “Hi Phong!” I smiled.  “You don’t have to play with Daniel!”  My words deflected off his solemn mien, spun into tiny Chinese daggers and flew right back in my face.  I blinked, stood up.  “It’s fine, Chris, Tracy – really it is.”

“You go!” Chris barked at me.  “You make it too hard.  I told you, you bring him up a mother’s boy!”

I’m sure Daniel didn’t comprehend Chris’ words, but Chris’ manner caused him to flinch and edge closer to the safety of me.  “Chris”, I said, “It’s just that I don’t want you to make Phong play with Daniel if he doesn’t want to.”  Chris strode past me and opened Tracy’s front door.

“It all right”, he said.  “He do what I say.  Go.  You go now.”

I didn’t want to end things so uncomfortably and bent down to Daniel again.

“It’s fine, sweet heart.  I will see you tomorrow, when I pick you up.  You’ll be doing things with Chris and Tracy tonight!”  I gave Daniel an enormous kiss and hug, which clearly irritated Chris for the time it took, and left Tracy non-plussed with a look on her face as if I was over-indulging my son.  Phong turned and returned to his room.

“He fine, he fine”, Chris said.  “You soft, soft.”  As I passed Tracey’s threshold and Chris closed the door behind me, I gulped back an emotion, with a stammering reply chaser.

.

As I got into my Holden Torana, I wondered why I felt so much uncertainty, emotion and anxiety.  Surely it was normal, wasn’t it, that two parents have time with their child?  Chris wanted time with Daniel – that was a good sign from a father, wasn’t it?  I turned over the engine.  I looked up at Tracy’s house.  No faces were peering out any windows.   I was forgotten.  I put my car into gear, and drove off.

.

It was somewhere between the entrance to the freeway and my approach of the University of Western Australia that it became clearly obvious to me why I was uncomfortable leaving Chris with Daniel:  because I did not know Chris.  And I did not know Tracy.  And I did not know Phong.  Yet, as Chris is a father interested in overnight stays with his son, I am meant to trust that, in like tune, he is interested in his son’s wellbeing (?).

I had to trust.  Though I had been so betrayed in childhood, I had to learn trust. 

Yet, I did not know Chris other than “both my parents are dead” and, as to why he had each a Buddha, Jesus Christ and Princess Diana on his altar? – that crazy conversation we’d had where I came out still not knowing him deeply.  In our three months of togetherness, he seemed to deflect my reaches to touch him.  Yet he fucked me bluntly –  “Imagine how we’ll fuck when I’m rich and famous”.  

.

Chris clearly preferred neither to hold nor to grasp a woman, but to let them many slip through his fingers like a string of pearls shimmer after shimmy, after droplet of beauty.  Would he ever stop at one with love, I wondered, or let them flow through his fingers like prayer beads counting to his dying day?
~
~
Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

The One Called Out

By April the 6^th, the year following Daniel’s birth, his feet had become big enough for shoes.    Our excursion to the supermarket to buy his first pair, was momentous.

.

Had truly my own feet once been so little that not a shoe in the world fit them?  Had truly I once been so keen and proud as Daniel, holding the shopping bag containing his first pair of sandals, walking alongside the pram up Stirling Highway, Cottesloe with the all the posture of a dog carrying a thick, roasted thigh bone?

.

I decided on impulse to stop in at the park just before our apartment block, with the hope that Daniel would expend sufficient energy to drop to sleep when we got home.   Necessary as it was for the young to have boundless energy by which to force through their sprouting inquiring minds, burgeoning personalities, budding grasp of life, it seemed a rotten misalignment of energies that just as I was fatiguing of my existence, a sprite should appear on my calendar, to announce itself into my life, to challenge my attempted surrender to the commonality of non-accomplishment.

.

Daniel’s eyes sparkled as we turned the corner toward the playground and he ran ahead to not miss a millisecond of opportunity to play.  I had to call him back and temper him, as he began to ascend the rungs of the ladder to the enormous slide, still holding the bag with his new sandals in it.  How it could not cross his mind that there was danger in climbing some 12 rungs alone, I did not understand.  The only instinct of danger I had ever witnessed in his little being was the first time we were atop the slide and he clung to my thigh as I positioned myself to seated.  For just one moment while I was not sturdily behind him, fear betrayed his spirit; but which innate wisdom lapsed to abandonment as we whizzed down the slippery incline.

.

Daniel obediently, but impatiently, doubled back to watch me settle our belongings under a tree.  He allowed me to steal the bag with sandals from his possession, on the understanding I would nestle that proof he was growing up safely beneath his blanket with the other valuables – my purse and keys.

.

I joined Daniel as he ran to the foot of the slide and stood watch as he scaled the structure with all the confidence of a lemming off a cliff.  When he had made his way to the top, I stood ready to catch him should he fall, until he sat and allowed gravity to pull him pink feet first down to the ground.  With giggles erupting abundantly like champagne on new year’s eve, he ran to the back of the slide to climb it again.

.

There were other kids at the slide, and I had to teach Daniel to wait his turn, during which it did not escape my notice that the two other babes about Daniel’s age were each under heavy guard of doting parents.  I felt overwhelmingly that the other parents were viewing me in their peripheral with horror at my carelessness.  I did not think I was careless, but conceded I was perhaps daring with Daniel.  However, we had been down the slide together often before and he was ready to go it alone.  I felt, perhaps dumbly, that if he believed he could go it alone, I should at least allow him to try.

.

Despite my logic, albeit of timorous conviction, I felt inferior to the other parents who were playing with their children so much more carefully.  As Daniel made climb after slide after run back to the ladder, an anxiety began to creep over me.  While on the surface I exclaimed approval and encouragement to Daniel, I began to need urgently to go home – to no longer be under the covert stares of perfect parents.

.

Over time, as Daniel tirelessly repeated his excursion, I began to wonder how I could end it.  I as his mother should be of such authority that he ceases fun at my command, and come.   I did not usually have difficulty with him, but as I grilled hotter and hotter in the company of mothers who had girl friends in support, or their own mothers – and one seemed to be there with her father – I began to panic that Daniel would cause a scene, thus cementing the evidence of my flawed parenting.  It was all of the reason I had not joined a mothers’ club – so that my inability to be a sound parent could not be witnessed, judged, whispered of behind my back, looked down upon, reproached in thoughts, agreed upon by the other mothers… also to not be rejected from the group, excluded as of not good standing in our positions of mother and child.

The anxiety went from nibbling at my toes to running all over my body like fire ants biting me at every doubt, fear, perception of inferiority.

“Daniel!” I suddenly said as he stood behind a little boy making his way up the ladder.  Daniel, together with the other kids in line, turned to look at me with surprise.

“Daniel, it’s time to go.”  I said it as if acting, as if I was acting as a mother.  “You can have this slide, and then two more, and then we have to go.”

.

The other children looked from my face to Daniel’s, to see how The One Called Out would react.  Such a call from a parent can often preface a tantrum, or resistance of some kind which can be interesting to watch – mouths agape, some dribbling, eyes wide at the entertainment.  Daniel’s eyes flickered with comprehension at what I’d said, and then turned back to the slide.  He made his way up the ladder surely as a fireman, slid down, and rushed back to where I stood, two other children now in line.

“That was really fast!” I said, cheerfully.  “Two more, and we go!’

Daniel didn’t respond, just waited in line, and I flitted a quick look at a mother gently pushing her child on the swing.  She wasn’t looking at me, but I was sure she could hear me.  I was sure she was ready to watch me dragging a screaming Daniel from the playground, kicking, red-faced.  I had never had to drag Daniel screaming from any place – he was an extraordinarily wonderfully behaved boy – but that mattered nothing against my fear of being a spectacle of an incompetent parent.

.

When finally Daniel had his last slide, as he ran to the back of the line, I turned and said, “Three!  OK!  Time to go now!”  He ceased his stride and looked at me.  For one second I saw indecision on Daniel’s face, into the very centre of which I fired my only ammunition:  “We’ve got to get home so you can wear your new sandals!”

.

As one boy clambered up the ladder, his turn to slide disintegrating the interest value of Daniel and me, or potential thereof, a little girl stepped forward, her head turned to accommodate a fixated stare at us both.  I looked at her and said, “He got his first pair of shoes today – sandals!” with a big smile on my face.  Daniel took a couple of steps towards me.  “I see your feet are big enough for sandals,” I said to the little girl, and she looked down at her feet that were, indeed, big enough for sandals.  Daniel looked at them too.

“Well, now Daniel is all grown up, he’s able to wear sandals too.”

At these words, Daniel had closed the gap between us.  I turned toward our pram, waving to the little girl.  “Bye!” I said.  The girl said nothing.  They seldom do, which is one of the reasons I don’t really get on with children.  The only way I know how to be with children is animated and smiley.  I think that is how you have to relate to children (or you fail to relate).

.

But for the times I have wept in Daniel’s company, unable to hold on any longer, waiting for him to fall asleep before I allow my secret of deep sadness its necessary expression – but for those times, I am usually overly jolly, sort of hyper-happy.  I just don’t know any other way to be, but facade.

.

We successfully departed the park without any scene, and although I would never see any of those other mothers again, I was relieved that blessed Daniel was of such manageable temperament.  I had felt grateful again and again and again since his birth, all the while fearing what I had heard called ‘the terrible twos’.  I didn’t know what I would do then, but bear it.  Of so, so much in life we have no choice but to grit our teeth and bear it – and of that, I was well practiced.

.

When finally Daniel’s energy conceded it needed rejuvenation – but only on its terms; i.e. by way of a 40 minute nap, as it turned out, I wrote in my journal:

Today your feet became big enough to wear sandals and you walked around and around and around.

I tried to instil pride in you by patting your cheeks, your shoulders, smiling and comparing the sandals on our feet. 

“Now you have sandals, just like Mama.”

Yes, you were proud.

I love you.  xxxN

                          MAMA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

 

Win-win

Chris seemed to have matured as a father – acknowledge his responsibility, if not accept it yet – during Daniel and my time in Melbourne.  I wanted to think he missed us over the three weeks, but as he sometimes chose to not see Daniel for three weeks or more, I wasn’t really sure.  Something had happened, though, and he seemed more attentive to Daniel – or more willing to have time with him.

.

Perhaps in realizing I wasn’t just a woman with no family in Perth (but Babasia) – but, rather, I the mother of his child have family and they all want us to move 4,000 kilometres away, to east Australia – well, just maybe it frightened Chris a bit and he decided to man-up.  I would keep it a secret that moving to Melbourne to live amongst those known as family, was furthest from my mind.

.

“Take care of the mother, take care of the son” Chris said, when he asked could he have Daniel overnight once a week.

“But what about breast milk?” I asked him.  He said Daniel could have formula for a day.  “Nothing wrong with that.”

I thought about it, and felt that maybe Chris was ready inside himself to become Daniel’s father.  He usually only took Daniel places to show him to people; to special occasions within his family.  I agreed it would be good for me to have 24 hours to myself, and it might teach Daniel to accept variation from me.  He would have to go into child care one day, I was sure, for as he became more expensive by his needs, I would no doubt have to work.  It was already clear we could not rely on Chris being financially responsible to any life but his own.

.

“But you’ve never had him for long”, I said to Chris.  “What will you do if he cries?”

At that, Chris burst out laughing, right in my face.  I looked up inside his nostrils as he threw his head back.  I felt confused.  I wanted to know.  Chris had smacked Daniel for not remaining standing in the shower that time, regardless that Daniel was incapable of standing.  I was concerned, felt angst.  I watched Chris roll around in his curious sense of humour, alone.

When Chris realized my eyes were genuinely enquiring, he pulled himself together and said, “I take care of the baby.  I the father.”  He then told me he wouldn’t have Daniel alone – he would have him at Tracey’s house.

“I only care for him at Tracey’s house.  Tracey a mother too.  So you don’t need worry.”

.

I didn’t want to judge Tracey or expect the worst from her, but a woman who is battered and bashed almost daily by her partner in front of their child – she couldn’t be normal.  Unless she’d had therapy.  I wondered whether she’d had counseling.  Chris told me so little about Tracey, assuming that my queries indicated jealousy, a desire to know the ins and outs of his present relationship.  But I did not care that he had a relationship.  To me, spending the majority of your time with one person while sleeping about via opportunities from your ad. in the Personals is not a relationship, anyhow.

It still struck me as a mark of low self-esteem that Tracey (told me she) accepted this from Chris, which I guess is not surprising given the marriage she had run from.

“Will Tracey be there all the time?”

“Yeah, yeah, she there all the time.”

.

I considered the proposition.  It came alive in my mind, as a good idea.  Daniel could have a mother and a father figure in the house – Tracey had a house, Chris had so pointedly told me when he said he’d take custody of Daniel as I, in contrast, had “nothing”.  And Phong, Tracey’s son, he might grow to like Daniel (who couldn’t?  he’s so charming).  Maybe even having a baby around will help Phong to heal, for he must have seen some awful domestic scenes up to his age six, when Tracey made her bid for freedom, “Because once he started bashing Phong, that was it”, she’d told me.

The abused, how we take it.  We just take it.  Why do we take it? 

And then, when our child is threatened – yes, I think I understood Tracey.  Perhaps she was more victor than victim after all.  I was wrong to judge her.

“Okay,” I said to Chris.

“Yeah, win-win,” he said back.  And we agreed it would be a Saturday night.

(c) Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

And so the day began

With Daniel’s first birthday destined to evapourate in Time, as our lives all do – near to extinguished by present moments which will take precedence in his days to come; a vaporous memory drifting ghost-like through the pathways of his recall, it will be – I was glad I had captured on video, what I did.

.

Making myself a coffee in the precious peace of my bub sleeping soundly, and contentedly, I prepared toast and thought, staring through my kitchen window, how good life could sometimes be – could always be?

All it took, it seemed, was to choose good people to share the realm of your existence, and your memories would be light like white – not murky slime of molten scars.

I was a bit amazed that I had pulled together so many people for Daniel’s birthday. None of them were close friends. None were people I could collapse in the direction of and know they would catch me. None I saw with any kind of regularity. But they were in our lives to some degree, and while I often left the phone off the hook and took a long time to respond to notes on my door, I reflected as I snapped off the kettle before it could whistle Daniel awake: at least they were good people, not harmful.

With all the people who dropped in and paused within our realm of existence, I felt no uncertainty about Daniel and my wellbeing alongside, but one. Having had a brief relationship with Chris and discovered our souls roamed different levels of consciousness – this was fine, because I could walk away. But four months after turning my back on someone I felt lacked a depth I could dive into, I was made aware his child lay within my womb. After considering adopting out, for fear; when I decided to keep the young being, they had grown two months more substantial. I could not, in accord with the nature of my heart, deny a father at least the opportunity of knowing their child.

And I could not, in my daft naivety, have known Chris was a man who would father several children by several mothers in the years to come, and be father to none.

~

With my coffee and toast at my writing desk, I sat facing the large window which presented the tiny back garden as an animated picture within which a bird chirruped, balanced on a branch, and Pathos the cat snuck in to threaten silently, hunched under cover of bushes and grasses so variously green there was not enough English words to describe them. I picked up my pen, and wrote in my journal to Daniel.

The bird warbled in the background, my memory of Daniel’s giggles the night before trilled in the foreground.

I flowed with capture of our lives, my pen speaking my mind for me as my soul daydreamed in the garden, smelling the purple spray of flowers – this side of summer, straining to remain alive with such vivid violet vigour – floating past the bird, in energy. Free, in life, my soul wafted about the back garden, taking leave of my body hunched over the journal at my writing desk and I looked in on me, from outside the garden; saw myself, was with myself. And I was one.

Time, as is wont to do, escaped me, and just as I wrote,

“And now, Chinese New Year, your father gives us a red envelope with $20 in it. So generous this, it seems. He gave us money for a babysitter this week because he couldn’t look after you. It’s thoughtful and generous and I appreciated it so, and yet he does those other odd things. I can’t figure him at times, and so it is no wonder I don’t balance into a relationship with him”

- as I lay those words down in history, I heard Daniel escape the railing which once kept him safe from his own abundant energy, heard his little feet hit the ground and his 1 year and 1 day old being grunt-sigh before he made his way – oh so independently – to the writing desk in our lounge.

.

I quickly finished my capture of our lives – “Love you, my son x N” – and turned just in time to find Daniel at my feet, looking up at me both expectantly and curiously. What had Mother been doing without him? What does she do, alone?

.

I looked at the clock. It was 8:12 am. For the next 15 hours I would feed, bathe, clothe, entertain, teach and show Daniel, even by nuance of my interaction with the world, a way to be.

I did not exist ideally, my self esteem petrified white ash with fear to express the needs of me, boundaries and will of me, but it was “a” way. And for that time, it was the only way I could be. To ‘be’ other than you ‘are’ is never possible for long.

Being as I was, brought me much pain. I wanted to know another way, to pave a new way inside myself if I could find the right tools, but I just didn’t have them – did I? – and I didn’t know how to.

.

Our eyes locked momentarily as his gaze sought who I was without him, when I was alone. He suddenly spurted forth a verbal stream of gush and lilt. Again, I didn’t know what he was saying, but just loved the sound of him. I was sure he was learning my intonations for he seemed so very expressive. The newness of his voice on this Earth was a joy to hear.

I picked Daniel up and placed him on my lap for a hug. His sticky hand, reaching out as I raised him, almost tore a page from my journal. I closed it and pushed it toward the window, catching sight of my reflection. I looked for a moment, then down at the wooden desk.

My soul returned from outside in the garden, to me. When I brought my eyes to meet the sparkle in the eyes of my son before me, I could no longer see my reflection in the window. I looked beyond Daniel, puzzled. There was no reflection at all. How odd. I was sure I’d seen my reflection in that window – had seen my eyes meet me, for a flash.

And so the day began.

.

.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50.

hi.a.tus : hiatus. HI at US. hiatus

Greetings, Subbers

Ah yes, hiatus.  By definition:

.

hi·a·tus/hīˈātəs/

Noun:

A pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process.

.

I think you know from my telling, references to my childhood neglect and mental/emotional abuse by my father, that things are not always okay within me.  And, well, I just wasn’t able to “get up” so to speak for a while there.  I apologise.  Thus the pause, the gap in the sequence, the series, the process of telling what I have to tell, reaching deep inside my heart I do, in the telling.

I was always destined to return though, as when I came out of hospital 2011 having literally near-died and began this first draft, daring to put my words out for the world (previously thinking myself possessing no talent/nothing to offer the world),

as they fell from my eyes,

I said I would get this told and peace would then settle in my heart in its place, “if it’s the last thing I do“.

So here we are, and with me having closed VodkaWasMyMuse blog to give more time to my novel, you’re in for more regular chapters as I pick up the pace and GET THIS OUTTA ME!!  It is sad, deep within me, this I will unfold, but I hope earnestly, earnestly to inspire other women in a like place to not let the man bully them to the point of damage, damages.  Damage.

Where we’re at : Daniel & me returned from our three weeks in Melbourne, and on the 24th of January was his FIRST birthday on planet Earth    May you enjoy the party, too…

Welcome back – you and me both… HI at US!

(c) Noeleen & Daniel 50/50

THE CLOWN WITH THE BIG RED LIPS

 

I woke up on January 24th, and Daniel was one year old.

Mystified at how a year of my life had slipped so easily through the days, I looked at my boy in his high chair with breakfast.  And he looked at me.

A ‘rat’ in Chinese astrology, the Western connotations of which I didn’t appreciate, my beloved son was now a full year old.

“We’ve got visitors tonight, Daniel!” I told him.  His eyes sparkled.  He offered a rhythmically gurgling response, a stream of ‘words’ trickling over pebbles of punctuation.  Seemingly eloquent in its intonation, though making no sense at all, I smiled at Daniel’s flow.

“Indeed!” I said. 

Did he think I had understood him, I wondered; were his ‘words’ of meaning to himself?

It was fascinating, the awakening of a new human being within my own life.  And I had not even had a baby doll when I was a little girl, had never held a baby in my life before Daniel, had never conceived of being a mother.  But being a mother, Life gave, conceived of me.   I was honoured and petrified all in one.

“God never gives you more than you can handle”, I remember was said in Religion classes at school.  And I wondered again, and again, why God had done to me, what was done to me.

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It was Friday, a good day for the working among those I had invited to Daniel’s first birthday.  Afraid no-one would bother to come, I invited everyone I could think of that I knew, reaching right to the peripheral of our lives.  Afraid they wouldn’t come because of perceived obligation to bring a gift, I told them in the invite to not bring a gift.  Afraid they would feel obliged to stay long, I had said in the invitation it was small, informal and stay as long as you like.  Fear was behind my every move in life, and I hated existing in this way.  Yet I knew no other way.  It seemed to be my nature:  afraid:  afraid I was not good enough to be walking on this Earth, having a life, afraid somehow of being happy (I don’t deserve to be?), afraid that people would think I was bad.

‘Bad‘ was what the Nuns of the orphanage said it was, and Priests on Sundays at Church.  It was the feeling you are cursed with when teachers looked down at you for your behavior – not “Why do you wag school so often (to visit my sister in the mental hospital/to process what happened to me last night/to write in my diary because only my diary listens)?“ but rather, “You are bad for wagging school.  Your punishment will be…”

Naturally, as a human being, I have my own instincts and heart of truth, but still am so daily led by what I was told is ‘bad’; for years and years.  I was like two identities within, each fighting to live through me.  I was not in possession of my own self and knew this, and it disturbed me.  I wanted to be me, live me, but always was society and disapproving adult faces of my past, harassing me.  In time, years later, I would decide my own definition of BAD:  a Priest in care of children.

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‘Da ba mum de va is ta dum’, Daniel interjected through my wandering thoughts.

“We will have cake, Daniel, because today is your BIRTHDAY!!”  I smiled widely at him and opened my arms with a flourish.  I then swooped in and kissed him, and stood back.  He looked quizzically at me.  I swooped in and kissed him again and stood back.  “Your birthday!  You were born today last year!!” 

He half smiled, still curious at my enthusiasm for whatever I was on about. 

I swooped in and kissed him again and hugged him, and when he resisted at my excessive affection, a tear stung my eye like vinegar.  It hurt.  It hurt so much to love Daniel.  I was so, so afraid. Where would this love lead me?

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“He has a double crown.  Very lucky.  This is very good:  you born a lucky child, right time and day.  Not perfect time and day – but very luck still.” 

Such were Chris’ words the first time he visited to see baby Daniel – a week after he was born.  From uncommited interest upon his birth, when I rang to tell Chris he had a son, and he said good luck to me, it was written in my stars that I would have a baby, it was my journey –  from that non-commitment to his sudden visit a week later near 11 p.m., ringing to say he was passing and could he see his son. I would do anything to have the father interested in his son, and so I said yes, for if it happened to be 11 p.m. that Daniel’s father had an epiphany and realized the value of his young life, then I would accept that.  And he arrived with the Godfather, whoever that was, who read my palm but told Chris the results, in Chinese, and they put those Chinese posters up and he gave me that green page all about Daniel’s lucky positions in life…

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I looked at Daniel. 

Love fell from my eyes in the form of tears.  His half smile faltered.  I meant to say sorry, sorry for being so emotionally weird.   I gulped and smiled harder – bigger.  I did not want Daniel to ever witness the disturbances within me.  I smiled the smile of a clown whose red happy lips are painted from ear to ear.  “But first we’ll go to the beach!”  I said to Daniel.  “We’ll clean the yoga room, go to the beach – and tonight you will have a party!  Your first party!”

Another odd moment in time was deposited in the bank of our memories. 

The vault snapped shut as I flung open a new door, wiped away the odd emotions from my eyes, and propelled us ‘cheerfully’ forward into the day.

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Thank you,

Google images

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

A Postcard from the Runaway Train

Time trickled through the afternoon.  The day transmuted into night.

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I had absolutely nothing left in me and was unable to read Daniel a story or engage his enthusiasm for life, beyond 7 p.m.  He had had his bath and was clean and ready for bed – his cot.  And I was exhausted.

I had taken us grocery shopping, which meant loading Daniel in, loading Daniel out, carrying him in the backpack, walking through aisles, loading myself with groceries, waiting, paying, and loading all into the car, and out of the car at the other end.  And then there was the packing away.

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Daniel had become interested in being my helper lately and, as such, today was insistent that the fish be kept under the sink near the toilet plunger, detergent and spare plug.  These gestures by Daniel of assistance – or perhaps running the house – as endearing as they were on good days, became a problem for me today, and made more dense my fatigue, weighing on me like a 10 tonne yoke.  I was simply at the end of my tether.  He had rested in the plane from Melbourne; I had not.  He had been tendered to from dawn to dusk; I had not.

All I wanted to do was crawl into a foetal position and sleep until Nature nudged me, it was timely to wake.

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I still had not learned to put Daniel in the cot and walk away.  I usually read to him until he felt so rich with my extended attention that he was able to rest with confidence we would do it all again tomorrow, or I lay on my bed reading or writing so that he could watch me, indulged by a sentry on guard.  Those nights he would look at me from behind the wooden bars until his eyes lulled, and he drifted away.  I wondered, sometimes, what he thought of me; just like you wonder what contemplations occur behind the eyes of a cat sitting, staring at you.

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There had been some horrible nights when Daniel was in enormous distress, having drunk sadness through my milk, fed his mood from my depressed gazes into photos, the phone or at walls, and he’d cried at the difficulty of breathing in the air I had created.  Those nights, I crawled into the cot with him because he wouldn’t let me exist outside of it, and I collapsed beside him completely exhausted and unable to cope otherwise.

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This night, Daniel had been in hyper mood, hyper tired.  It had taken me ages to settle him, but by 9.30 p.m. I was finally alone.  Alone, oh alone, alone.

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Driven to capture Daniel’s life as it slipped inevitably through my fingers, for one day he would stand alone, I sat at my large wooden writing desk and with my final ounces of energy, wrote in my journal.

(from the original journal)

January 10

Dearest Daniel.  It’s 8.30 pm and you’re sleeping.  We returned from Melbourne, and you have new clothes, new toys.  But now we are surrounded by peace again!

The family all “loved” you, offering to babysit absolutely whenever I wished.  I had no inclinations to visit shops, though, and so the sittings were only brief, while I swam or walked to be alone.  There was one time, early in the holiday, when, utterly fatigued, I simply flaked out on the grass in the city gardens and slept.  Rejuvenated, I continued the holiday by taking you places.

My dear school friend Kathy gave me so many words in pointing out that your father should not see you until he pays maintenance.  Why does he take you out and show you off?  He is so proud of your good nature.  He doesn’t pay for your clothes, your food, and now that I haven’t worked for a month I realize how difficult finances are.  Difficult when I’m dead tired cleaning work, and difficult when I don’t get any work.  I realize I have struggled so much, so very much, and so quietly.  Kathy had me see how much I have, alone, been holding up…

I don’t want to seem to be poisoning your view of him but I wish you could see how tired and unsupported I am, and then understand when I’m cranky.  It took my friend Kathy to point it out that I am wearing down while your father is bouncing blissfully through his life.  It’s terrible, terrible.  It’s just terrible…

I am of low spirit tonight, my darling.  I am sad.  Forgive me.

Today after chores I took you to the beach, laughed with you, played with you.  I loved you. 

I love you.  xxxNoeleen, your Mama.

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I looked up from the pages, and it was 11.03 p.m.  The clock was poised to lay its hands on tomorrow.

I closed my journal, turned off the lights, and went to bed in my clothes.

~

14 January

Since returning from Melbourne, I have written and rewritten, written and rewritten a letter to your father.  My gut feeling is against him, Daniel.  I must follow my guts.  I am your mother.  Xxx N.

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17 January

I have rewritten the letter so many times without resolution.  There must be something, somewhere deep within me that knows my argument not complete.  I don’t  think I can deliver the letter.  It still does not feel right.  I need things to feel right in my heart, or it suffers…

I went to a physiotherapist for my back pain recently.  It’ll take a few visits, but it has everything to do with (my shoulder, too) all the heavy labour I do…

Anyway, your dad and me talked together while you played between us.  It felt so nice, being a unit like that – something I have never known.

I told him of how he does things that I don’t agree with, like when he rudely and roughly told his girlfriend’s son Phong to “Get out of the car, get out of the way”.  He told me I must tell him these things or he wouldn’t know.  He agrees he was rude and I said I didn’t want him to be that way with you.

We spoke together and I seemed to understand a little more of him, but I still can’t accept or believe how he has totally abandoned his daughter.  He just has no regard for her – financial or emotional – and I anger that you should be saved just because you are male – male and handsome.  Forgive me, Daniel, but to me it is immoral, wrong.  You have a half-sister, my darling.

I have opened to Chris again, giving you over to him as I did last night.  I can’t help but still feel wary, though.  I’m wary of what he said, that when he is married he will take you away and I can only visit (not having a relationship).  Sweet Daniel, I could not live in fulfillment, as I do now, if Chris did this.  Such words, it is no wonder I am afraid to trust him entirely.

Daniel, I beg with my heart to do right by you.  I search my soul. I give you all.  I hope you grow up truly human – thinking, feeling, loving, giving – with soul and mind and a wonderful self-discovery.  I pray to God no-one or thing takes your innocence – rapes it. 

Dear Daniel,

I give you my all.  You came from my womb. Xxxx N. Mama

.~.

 

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In the week before Daniel’s 1st birthday, January 24, I suddenly decided to bring together all the people I knew, and give him a party. 

I was afraid no one would come, so I made the invitation casual and almost ‘if you don’t mind’. I said not to bring presents because Daniel had received gifts in Melbourne, but it would be nice if they brought a plate.

Daniel and me together delivered the invitations, typed by me and photocopied at the newsagent’s, to the director of the play Lady from the Sea, in which I had played leading lady (Andrea); to Sally-anne who lived upstairs with her cat Beau; to my sister Wendy who thought she may visit again; to Glen the film student who had filmed Daniel’s landing on Earth; to Des a theatre friend, and to his friends Mark & Kerani (with baby) and Ann.

The next instalment of my novel will be a reading by me, and video. 

Thank you for being passengers on our runaway train,

run away in time passed, now -

a ghost upon the tracks of my memory which I cannot redirect,

for its journey is written, imprinted in my journal,

and crossing anything out would be ineffective

for it has played out in time passed, now.

~
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(c) Noeleen&Daniel, 50/50