SubscribeCircles. Round and round in circles.
My hair falls out, great handfuls tangling themselves around my fingers as I run a brush through it. Stress I assume and hormones. Something, I’m not sure anymore. It’s no great loss.
My son hands me a handful of half chewed pasta. Wrapped around his fingers are more strands of my hair. All the vaccuming in the world never picks it all up.
I have a lot of hair.
Or should that read I had a lot of hair.
***
The hospital rings me while I am in the car. I strain to hear her voice over the top of the traffic sounds and my children, whining, contained in the backseat.
‘We’ve got the children’s genetic tests back.’
‘Okay, have you got the results?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t tell you over the phone, you’ll need to come in and see us.’
‘Oh. Why is that? It was only meant to be looking for the gene that causes coeliacs, surely it’s just a yes or no answer.’
‘The test results are quite involved and complicated. You need to discuss them with Head of Paeds.’
‘Oh.’
I feel sick and cold all at once. It was only meant to be a genetic screen for Coeliacs. It’s not involved or complicated. Yes. Or. No.
‘You have an appointment in June don’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well, ideally we’d like to see you sooner.’
‘Yes, that would be good.’
Sooner is never good news.
‘But, as you can imagine, we’re heavily booked. I’ll see what I can do for you.’
June is a life time away. I’d like to see them tomorrow, but that’s not possible. What else have they turned up, that she can’t give me the results over the phone, when I was told that I could ring to find out whether the children have a coeliacs gene or not.
‘Are you sure you can’t tell me if they screened positive for the Coeliacs gene? That’s all they were testing for.’
‘I’m very sorry. Like I said, the test results are rather involved and you need to see Dr. B about them.’
Dr B. The higher up of higher ups. The Paed we never see, whom our regular paed leaves the room to consult with occasionally. The one in charge of all the major decisions. Him.
‘Okay then.’
‘Okay, we’ll try and get you an appointment sooner.’
Inside I panic.
Outside, I rely all this information to my partner, who has listened to one side of the conversation while he drives.
We’re worried now, they were only meant to be checking for Coeliacs, nothing else. Nothing that would warrant an appointment with the higher ups.
***
I sit on this information for over a week without thinking about it, pushed down to the bottom of my mind, until it bursts free this morning, leaving me stressed and strung out.
My mind spins in circles.
They were only meant to be testing for coeliacs. Nothing else. EDS wouldn’t show on a genetic screen, not enough information has been compiled for doctors to know which gene is broken in EDS.
***
I turn the music up loud and sing, badly.
Anything to make my mind switch off.
Because I’m worried. Really worried.
And to be honest, we’re already dealing with enough fucked up genes, I’m not sure I can take much more.
Two Years Later
The house is held together with baling twine and hope. We bought it with our fingers crossed, just looking for somewhere that we could call home.
It was a mess then.
**
When we moved in, it took 6 of us to remove the filth left behind.
I took on the bathroom with bleach and elbow length rubber gloves and I scraped and scrubbed until I could see the floor under the dirt. I wished for a hazmat suit the whole time.
Eventually it was liveable.
Eventually.
**
Nathan moves an old tank filled with bits of concrete to weigh it down.
Underneath he finds a stash, wrapped in decaying garbage bags, a hollow underneath the tank containing syringes and water. No drugs – although we’ve got no doubt they were here before.
We clean it up.
Like every other mess we’ve found, we don protective gear and get it over and done with.
You don’t want to know what we found in the old stables.
**
Nathan starts pulling out an old broken window.
I bounce next to him and make him pull out the frame as well.
It’s not enough; it’s never enough and I make him pull out the wall as well, talking grand ideas of laserlight and indoor greenhouses. Before he knows it I’ve convinced him to tear down the slats that enclose the BBQ area and we’re letting in the light, brushing away dirt and cobwebs and wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.
**
Later we sit, admiring our handiwork, looking up at the stars. Watching the night sky in front of us, the moonlight on the garden. The cool breeze floats through to the kitchen, a welcome addition on a summer night.
There is an awful lot of work left to do, but things cost money, something we are frequently short on. We tell ourselves that it won’t be forever and we plan our escape, how we’ll put this house on the market and buy something else.
But not yet.
For now, this place is home.
Broken
I walk into my bedroom, picking up child detritus as I go; things pulled out of the cupboards and toys scattered about. Bending down next to my closet I breathe in and it’s her.
Eight months after she died, I can smell her perfume, like walking into her bedroom, like standing behind her while we prepared dinner, like holding her hand through the endless hospital visits.
The children playing have disturbed the last remnants of her, a few articles of clothing hung in the back of my closet. Her overcoat sits now, hiding in the dark.
I lean into the closet and bury my head in the sleeve. I breathe in, just for a moment, before steeling my shoulders and walking back out into the daylight and the chaos of my small children.
I sweep them up and twirl them around, all the while seeing her inside my head and remembering that last day. Remembering how it felt to pack up a hospital room and remove jewellery from her cold hands.
We are more for knowing her and less for losing her.
I am not better.
But I am coping.
Gardening
I lay flat on my stomach, a weed mat protecting me from the muddy earth. In front of me a snail makes it’s way back towards my greenery; a terrible model, it won’t stay still.
Carefully I snap photos, even as I wish that we had chickens that I could feed them to. They’re decimating my cabbages, tens of them slithering over the purple heads together, a tiny snail army. Their task – to eat and procreate, an eternal circle of life. Unfortunate that my garden is at the centre of it.
It’s a war I’m not winning, as slowly the holes in the cabbage leaves get bigger and the capsicums and cauliflowers are more hole than leaf.
***
My tomatoes are growing. Faster and faster, like a snowball picking up speed down a great hill. I can’t keep up and instead I’m left, trying to contain the chaos and prevent immediate injury.
Carefully I tie branches higher and support the green fruit with more baling twine. I hammer stakes into the ground and twirl the stems around them. I kneel in the middle of the tomato jungle, getting wet and muddy as I baby the plants along, preventing catastrophe.
I emerge from the plants, hair tousled and smelling like tomatoes. I look like I’ve been in a fight, with leaves in my hair and dirt on my face.
But the tomatoes are up off the ground, away from the pillaging slugs and I can breathe easy about the safety of my plants.
At least until tomorrow when the my daughter and the puppy go crashing through the garden.
Again.
This photo displays about 1/8th of the amount of tomatoes I've got growing.
Twelve Months
Twelve months ago, we were glued to our television screens. Breathing shallowly we watched the flames race across Victoria, swallowing everything in their grasp.
The firestorm raged on
and on
and on.
We sat here, hundreds of kilometres away and cried as we listened to the body count rise; as they found more people dead. Dead in the streets, in their cars, in their houses. People who never had a chance, even as they ran from the flames.
The devastation unfolded before us and I’m not sure we comprehended it. Not entirely.
173 people dead. The worst bushfires ever.
Black Saturday they christened it, in the aftermath.
And I sit here and type while I listen to people on TV cry, twelve months later, and I remember. The faces of the broken and the grieving. The people at the community centres, waiting for word from family members who stayed behind.
I held my newborn son, and I stood in front of the TV, rocking backwards and forwards with his head tucked under my chin and I cried.
Twelve months on and we remember.
Oh how we remember.
We will never forget.
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