Tag Archives: slice of life

The Umbrella Flowers

Posted on January 21, 2011 | 19 comments

The rain made mad dashes down the windowpane.  Droplets raced one another to reach the bottom.  Kneeling against the back of the couch Charlotte settled into the cushions, peeking at the street through the rain.  She pretended the rain was writing messages in a special language only able to be read by a four-almost-five year old.

Charlotte pressed her hands to the window and watched the condensation form around her fingers tips. She touched her nose to the glass.  The moisture and coldness tickled the tip of her nose making her giggle.  As she giggled her breath clouded the glass and obscured her view.  Wiping the glass clear with the sleeve of her t-shirt she breathed again to see how far she could fog the glass.
“Daddy, the umbrellas are flowering again.”
Her father came and put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
“Umbrellas only flower when it rains,” she said with the authority of a four-almost-five year old.  “They are mostly black in colour, which are sad looking.  I like it when there are some coloured ones to look at.  They are my happy umbrella flowers.”
Father and daughter knelt side by side on the couch and counted the umbrella flowers blooming in the street on their fingers.  Daddy counted black umbrella flowers while Charlotte counted happy umbrella flowers.

“Can we go outside and be umbrella flowers too, Daddy?”

A loaded question with the weight of a young girl’s expectations balanced against a father’s responsibilities.

He looked at his daughter, stroking her hair with his hand.  “I’m sorry darling, but Daddy has a lot of work to do.  Maybe some other time.”

He kissed her on the forehead and pushed himself off the couch.  Charlotte sank into the lounge cushions and went back to watching the rain.  The four-almost-five year old body language matched the gloomy pattern of the weather.

Back at his desk the storm of papers, spreadsheets, bills and accounts swirled into random patterns.  He tried to focus but couldn’t.  Leaning back in his chair he could see into the lounge room where Charlotte still sat peering out the glass.

“Stuff it.  It can wait another half an hour.”  Throwing down his pen he called out.  “Come on sweetheart, let’s go and be umbrella flowers.”
There was a mad scurry to find Dorothy the Dinosaur gumboots, raincoat and hat.  A short delay was encountered as they scrounged for umbrellas.

Standing in the doorway to the backyard Charlotte and her father watched the rain hand in hand.

“Are you ready, darling?”  With a snap of plastic an umbrella bloomed, bright red with black lady bug spots.  “Here you are.”

Charlotte dashed into the rain and stopped in the middle of the backyard, a brightly coloured flower.  She looked with glee at the rain dripping off the tips of the umbrella as it played a nursery rhyme rhythm.

“I am a happy umbrella flower, Daddy.  Look at me.”  She sploshed and splashed through the puddles in the backyard, a bright red spot of fun.

Squatting down on the garden verge Charlotte peered into the wet foliage.

“What can you see, sweetie?”

“Come look, Daddy.”

Joining his daughter at the garden’s edge he looked to where she was pointing.  A common garden snail trawled the leaf.

“His eyes are up on long, long stalks and they are looking at me,” Charlotte said.  “We won’t squash this one, Daddy, will we?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“This snail is grey and his shell is all brown and swirly and he’s moving along the leaf.”

Under the pitter-patter of the rain on a black umbrella flower and red umbrella flower with black dots, father and daughter watched the progress of the snail until it reached the tip where it turned around and headed back again.

“Let’s go, Daddy,” said Charlotte.

The umbrella flowers went on an expedition around the backyard, looking under leaves, poking sticks into puddles and counting the rain drops as they fell from the corner of the clothesline.

“I want to go inside now, Daddy,” said Charlotte.

At the back door, umbrellas were shaken out, gumboots pulled off and raincoats discarded.  Charlotte rushed into her bedroom and brought out her dolls to the lounge room.  From his office desk, her father heard a replayed account of their time in the garden as umbrella flowers.  A broad smile emerged on his face.

While he sat at his desk poring over the storm of paperwork, a little person who was four-almost-five appeared at his side.  She threw her arms around his middle and said, “I love you, Daddy,” before running back to the lounge room and her dolls.

“I love you, too,” he called out loud enough for Charlotte to hear.

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The Corner Store

Posted on November 19, 2010 | 10 comments

Red and blue lights flashed a macabre disco strobe across the front of Mr Lee’s convenience store and the open doors and windows of the neighbouring houses.  Police and ambulance radio chatter provided the soundtrack to the evening’s events.

The local newspaper reporter stepped out of her car, pen and paper in hand.  Her camera man checked his pouches and went to get the story from the police and take some snaps.  She scanned the scene.  The police and ambulance officers moved about their duties with precision. The neighbours were kept at a respectable distance behind the police tape and their own fears.  Huddled in small family groups they whispered gossip and theories to one another.  Parents kept a firm hand on their children, drawing them in close.

The footpath in front of the door was strewn with shards of glass, a set of keys and a large padlock.  Inside the corner store, police cameras illuminated the carnage; a secondary tempest and lightning storm making the onlookers shield their eyes.

Neighbours peered into the narrow doors of the store into the storm’s epicentre.  Wads of bloodied cotton mixed with stock strewn on the floor.  Numbered cones outlined the scene; a forensic dot-to-dot puzzle.

The reporter moved from group to group, looking for a story angle.

People huddled in small groups, furtively eyeing the shadows, hoping that nothing was hiding.

One old man in a faded cardigan and tattered slippers shuffled up to the reporter.  “I’ve lived in this area for thirty years and never has this place been robbed or broken into.”  A cigarette passed to his lips.  “Mr Lee’s been a part of the scenery for almost twenty years.  He knows all the kids by name and their families.  He is a fair and decent man.  Is he still alive?”

“I don’t know,” said the reporter.

“I buy my paper every morning on the way to the station,” said one man.  “Mr. Lee is always smiling and good for a chat.”

“And I get bread and milk from time to time when I forget to stock up,” said the woman next to him.

The child huddled in between them butted in, “I buy chips and lollies from Mr. Lee.  I especially like the bags of mixed lollies where you get one of everything.  Teeth are my favourite lollies and I could eat a whole bag of them in one go.”

“Bought my first girlie mag from here,” said a young lad, baseball cap perched precariously on the back of his head.

“And your first smokes.  Both of which you bought with a fake ID,” countered his mate.

“Shut up, man.  Don’t tell her that,” replied the young lad, punching his friend in the shoulder.

The clatter of a trolley diverted people’s attention to the doorway of the corner store.  Ambulance officers surrounded a body strapped to the trolley, one holding an IV bag above his shoulder.  Mrs Lee stuck close to her husband, one hand holding his, the other clutching a fistful of tissues.

“There’s no story here for us,” the camera man said to the reporter.  “Police reckon it was just a robbery that turned violent; probably local thugs shaking down the owner or kids needing cash for whatever.”

The reporter snapped shut her notebook relegating the story in her mind to spare column inches tucked away in the middle of the paper.  The camera man packed his bags, ready to chase the next vision to be broadcast on the front page.

As if on cue, the police cars and ambulance faded from view, the police tape waving like a broken hand.

The neighbours bade silent farewells, sticking closer to one another, fearful of the shadows that were suddenly darker and more menacing.

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The Art of Blowing Bubbles

Posted on October 15, 2010 | 33 comments

Funerals in the movies tend to have rain in them as a metaphor of grief and sorrow.  At Nanna’s funeral, the day was just, well, a nice spring day.  My brother and sister stood beside me in the front row; our mother and her sister sharing tissues and sorrow.

I’ve come to think of memory as a photo album.  You know those little rectangular ones where you can flip through a hundred or so photos.  In my version I see my Nanna, the high coiffed hair held together by a film of hairspray.  I’m surprised her cigarettes didn’t set her hair alight with all that product.

You hold onto the little things about someone, whether it’s an event, a situation or a scent.  For me, it was something she said.

“You can never blow bubbles when you are angry,” my grandmother intoned. The word changed depending on the situation: sad or scared or upset, but the intent was always the same.

At the know-it-all age of five and full of boyish exuberance, I was trying to blow bubbles through a home made loop of wire dipped into bright pink dish washing-up detergent.

“This stuff is far better than any of that store-bought rubbish,” was her standard refrain.  And I must admit that even to this day I still swear by the bright pink sticky liquid.  It made awesome bubbles.

Try as I might, I could not get the bubbles to form a consistent stream like my grandmother made.  The more I tried, the less successful I was and the frustrations of a young child verged on tearful.  Nanna calmly took the loop of wire from my hand and dipped it.  She raised it to her lips and I watched the quiet exhalation of breath.  The bubbles streamed away, caught by the breeze.

“Slowly and carefully,” she instructed.

I dipped the loop and drew it towards my mouth.  The frustration was simmering but I paused while I took a deep breath.  With controlled focus I released the captured air and it raced towards the skin of detergent.  It bulged and suddenly burst.

“Try again,” was her reassurance.  It was hard to be calm when all you wanted to do was hurl the wretched thing across the yard.  The second attempt proved as futile.

“Slowly and consistently,” she repeated.

On the third try a small stream of bubbles stuttered then stopped.

“There you are.  That’s it.”

Reassured I tried again and watched the swirl of bubbles get pushed along by the wind.  We laughed trying to fill the air with as many bubbles as we could.  Little spheres popped noiselessly.

It became her sage advice for every occasion, should something go wrong.  She kept a bottle of solution and a wand on the kitchen windowsill.  Sometimes it was better than any headache tablet or cough medicine.

Nanna’s coffin slid through the curtain to the crematorium.   My father led my mother by the arm outside the chapel.  The mourners congregated in sombre two’s and three’s.  I stood aside in the shade of the alcove.  From my jacket pocket I removed a small plastic bottle of bright pink washing up liquid and a loop of wire.  A libation in honour of the dead.

Grief disrupted the rhythm of my breathing. A short, sharp inhalation held to stem the tears.  I drew the wand to my lips then methodically, deliberately exhaled. A steady stream of bubbles rushed forward settling in the hands of the breeze.  I watched them rise and dance, fade and disappear.

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The Railway Crossing

Posted on September 3, 2010 | 15 comments

Thomas and I usually sat astride our bikes at the railway crossing.  Because it was near enough to town, it had those red and white striped boom gates that lowered at the approach of a train and the metallic warning bells, tink-tink, tink-tink, an arrhythmic metronome.  The day’s silence would be broken by the repeated admonition of the bells and the gates would lower like a parental warning.

It was our boundary marker.  This was as far as we were allowed to go.  Our house was at the edge of town but close enough to taste the wheat and cow manure of the outlying farms.

We waited for the freight trains to pass by, feeling the cadence of the wheels through the earth after the asthmatic growl of the diesel engines.  When we were younger, we counted carriages: one, two, three, four… fifty-five, fifty-six.  The dull brown coal trucks smeared in the mineral intestines of earth’s darkened guts; the varied boxes of shipping containers arranged like children’s building blocks in random colours and shapes.  They came and went as a procession.  We would wave to the driver who replied with a blast of the air horn.

As we grew older we would lie with our ears to the track to hear the thrum of the approaching engines vibrate down the length of the track.

Thomas, four years older than me, dared to ride his bike across the track and wait on the other side for the train to pass through.  I still felt the sting of shame at defying my parents.

He would pick at the loose gravel and attempt to throw it between the passing carriages at me on the other side.  More often than not he would simply hit the side of the coal car, but he soon developed an eye that could chuck a stone through the gap, skittering away at my feet.  More than once he hit me in the head.

The railway was my boundary.  For Thomas it was a pathway.  With each train that passed, I watched my brother move further and further away.

The night of the argument, Thomas threw words like stones.  He had seen too many trains pass through in the day, heard their passage in the night, to be bound to a small country town.

Thomas drove away in anger.  I chased him on my bike.  He crossed the railway line and the bells began their warning.  I watched his tail lights strobe between the carriages.  The flashing red signals of the level crossing stopped and the tink-tink of the bells ceased, replaced by the fading red taillights of my brother’s car and the cloud of dust raised as a curtain between us.

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Big Balls

Posted on August 27, 2010 | 16 comments

#FridayFlash – 27 August

The late afternoon sun began to dip lower over the horizon.  The sizzle of sausages and steaks intermingled with the squeals and shrieks of toddlers and young children riding bikes and running around.  Insect repellent and the onions on the grill was the eau de toilette.  The men had convened around the barbeque, beers in hand, while the women held court in the kitchen.

Jeff turned at the sound of a greeting and raised the barbeque tongs in salute.  Dave and Jenny entered through the side gate before they peeled off to the respective gender domains.  Lochie opened a beer for Dave before returning to the conversation of last night’s cricket match.

“Ponting took an absolute screamer of catch at first slip.”

“But it didn’t equal Clarkie’s catch in the deep,” said Pete.

Jeff kept turning the snags, pressing on the steaks and watching the juice pool against the bone.  “Yeah, but the bowling attack lacked any real focus.  Too short, too long, wide; they were bowling something shocking.”

The four mates kept dissecting the game and keeping a watchful eye on the kids.  The bouncing mass of bodies on the trampoline threatened to spill into boo-boos and owies.

“Careful there kids.  Only one at a time,” said Jeff.  “Hey Dave, you didn’t reply to my text last night.”

“Sorry, mate.  Just had a lot on my mind yesterday.”

“What’s up?”

“You know how I haven’t been feeling good lately?  Well, I went to the doctor yesterday to get the results of some blood tests.  There’s something wrong with my plumbing and the doc needs to go in and have a rummage around.”

“How serious are we talking here?” said Pete.

“Tests indicate prostate cancer.”

Inhaled expletives whispered between lips of men and beer bottles.

“Did the doc, like you know, have to check?” said Lochie.

“Yep, the whole bend-over-relax-this-might-feel-a-little-uncomfortable routine.”

Each man clenched involuntarily.
“How’s Jen coping with the news?”

Dave looked towards the kitchen window and saw Jen embraced by her friends, their own circle of strength.

“Yeah good.  She cried a bit last night after we called our folks to tell them the news.”

“How are you doing, though?” said Jeff.

“Ok, I guess.  Hasn’t really sunk in.  I just sat there with Jen as the doctor started talking about surgery and radiation therapy and I just nodded.  I won’t know how bad it is until he gets in there and has a look around.  I’m booked in for surgery next Friday.”

The sausages rolled on the hot plate as the sizzle of fat sparked spot fires off the grill.

“Well that makes what we’re cooking a little ironic,” said Jeff.
“Please don’t use the word ‘little’ when referring to my frank and beans,” said Dave.

“Come on, we’ve played footy together and we’ve showered together, that’s all I’m saying.”

“There might not be any beans to go with the frank after the surgery,” said Pete.

Lochie chimed in, “Hey I saw on Bondi Vet one night that a dog had, like, these plastic balls ‘cause he lost his.  Like a boob job, only for balls.”

“Not sure I like where this is going, Lochie,” said Dave.

“I’m just saying that you could maybe get some metal ones and we could call you ‘Iron Balls’.”

“I’m not having my balls removed.  At least not that I know of,” said Dave.

Lochie dashed over to the table and selected AC/DC from the pile of loose discs and cranked the volume.  Jeff, Pete and Dave nodded in time to the riff and broke into grins as they recognised the tune.  At the chorus, the boys sang along lustily.

“Oh, we’ve got big balls

We’ve got big balls

We’ve got big balls

Dirty big balls

He’s got big balls

She’s got big balls

But we’ve got the BIGGEST balls of them all.”

Their laughter overtook their singing.  The song over, Jeff raised his beer.  “Good health, mate.”

The toast was repeated and Dave nodded in appreciation before having the final word.

“Up ya bum.”

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