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Sixth In Line: Long, striated and with sharp edges
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Saturday, August 08, 2015. Long, striated and with sharp edges. We have a pot bound tub of mother-in-law’s tongue in our back yard, which has toppled over in the wind. Strange, given the plant is so heavy that the wind has dislodged it or maybe its upended state has more to do with the number of fronds. The pot has lost its centre of gravity. There it sits on its side like a beached whale or a creature otherwise out of its natural habitat. Why do mother in laws get such bad press? His uncle owned a farm ...
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Sixth In Line: January 2015
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Saturday, January 24, 2015. My mother is a psychotherapist. One of my daughters wrote this piece and I post it here with her permission, along with some name changes to preserve privacy. I first learned about Freud’s life and work in Grade Six. I'd seen his name in my mother’s consulting room, on the spines of books that were all the same, but had different numbers at the bottom. I’d heard her say his name. The room was beige, red and brown. On one side were two large chocolate brown armchairs. T...On th...
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Sixth In Line: 'I love junk'
http://sixthinline.blogspot.com/2015/07/i-love-junk.html
Saturday, July 25, 2015. The other day, my four-year-old grandson asked for ice cream for breakfast, and I said ‘no’. He could have something like toast, toast with yummy honey. 8216;What about toast with sprinkles? 8217; he asked. I thought about this and weighed up the pros and cons in my mind long enough for him to ask further,. 8216;Are sprinkles junk? 8216;They are indeed.’. 8216;I love junk,’ my grandson said and so it seems. Anything laced with sugar or flavoured with treacle. I never went so far ...
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Sixth In Line: December 2014
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Tuesday, December 30, 2014. Weevils, pudding dolls and the vinegar mother. Yesterday, I cleaned out the panty and half- filled a wheelie bin with foods past their used by date, including the occasional packet of flour, sesame seeds or polenta infected by weevils, and two pots of honey that had gone to sugar. It snuck up on me as jobs like this do. My husband had not been able to find the pot of salted capers he bought several months ago and wanted them last night to liven up his salad. It was a mistake.
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Sixth In Line: April 2015
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Saturday, April 25, 2015. 8216;You’re on track,’ the gym instructor said to me last week, little knowing that I had dragged myself in and that from time to time I kept telling myself, I’d like to give up on this regime of twice weekly weight lifting. But I don’t. I must do this till the end of my life or at least until my body says, no more. I can hardly bear the thought. Endless hours at the gym trying to stop my body from its inevitable decline. I suppose it offers borrowed time. It’s hard enough...
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Sixth In Line: The reader knows best
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Saturday, August 01, 2015. The reader knows best. I contributed a piece to the Varuna Writers Centre newsletter on ageing and the emerging writer. And find myself aghast at some of the comments. It’s as if some people take me literally. And why shouldn’t they? My words are all they have. And I wrote this piece on the down side of ageing, more than I focused on its strengths. So maybe, as Annah Faulkner writes in the comments, I should 'put on [my] big girl panties and get on with it now'. A change of face.
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Sixth In Line: May 2015
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Sunday, May 31, 2015. You’re a fool, you know that. A fool to think your body would not start to decay. A fool to imagine your heart would kick on unimpeded forever. The blind optimism of your mother. Even she could not hold out against death. It’s less than a year since my mother died and already my mortality hits me in the face. I’m next in line of the generations to die and although in this world of never ending youth, or at least the pursuit of it, I’m not that old yet, I sometimes feel it. The place...
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Sixth In Line: November 2014
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Sunday, November 30, 2014. At the dogleg turn on Trenerry crescent near Dights Falls in Abbotsford, a group of artists have created a makeshift gallery. As you drive into the turn you face a stretch of wall that extends the length of the road and the freeway, presumably to block out sound. Months ago I noticed the first small offering, a portrait in the centre of the first section of the wall, soon followed by another couple of works, a treescape, a landscape, and a splodge of colour. I reckon this galle...
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Sixth In Line: July 2014
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Saturday, July 26, 2014. A heart simpatico with mine. A couple, found dead in their car this morning, were in their mid twenties, the newsreader said. They had parked in bushland outside of Ballarat, a town renowned for its winter cold. It seems the couple had been asleep in their car where they tried to stay warm with heat from the running. Whose fumes had overcome them along with their now dead dog. 8216;No,’ my mother said. 8216;It’s too cold.’. And why did they want her to sit anyway? The gallstones ...
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Sixth In Line: September 2014
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Saturday, September 27, 2014. My mother has been dead for six weeks now. I think of her often. How is she and has she found out for sure what she once believed and I long doubted, that there is a place out there somewhere where she can finally be at rest? It’s a curious confusion because although I operate on the belief that my mother is now no more, she lives on in my imagination and memory and in some strange way she grows bigger on re-remembering. Not my view, never my view. I check my hands from time...
