Monday Memories

A couple of weeks ago I was helping my (amazingly talented awesome) sister with her WOW garment, and she introduced me to an app, Mortified, which is all about seemingly normal people subjecting themselves to the torture of reading aloud from their adolescent journals. That has sown the seed for this tradition (being formed as we speak/write/read): Monday Memories. I'm going to delve into the archives for something that I wrote in my past to post. 

I thought I'd lead with something that's not going to get me cringing too much - we'll ease into that, huh? This is something I wrote while at university. Please note, I was at university until 2001. That is exactly three years BEFORE the movie The Notebook was released. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you make it to the end. 

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A Lifetime Forgotten

My husband Sam cannot share my memories. The therapeutic discussion starting with the question “remember when?” cannot be held. I feel I may go insane with the images of our memories imprisoned my head, and need to write them down to halt the madness.

I remember we used to sit in the sun on the porch, my leg draped over his, and talk. We could talk for hours about nothing.  The ins and outs of nothing, the pros and cons of nothing. We could argue as well – boy could we argue. I think we both enjoyed those arguments a little: they were a test of the quickness of our minds. But on the porch at my parents' house, that was a place for easy conversation, a place to relax. He had only to caress my thigh as we sat there, and I would be excited.

The night we first explored that side of our relationship, we were on holiday with my family in Gisborne. Mum, Dad and Rebecca were down at the beach for one last swim and Sam and I were lying on the bed in the motel room. The dying sun was trying to penetrate the curtains and we were lying there in the half light discovering each other. How guilty we must have looked when my family got back.

That excitement has stayed with us, dimming a little over time. Later, when we sat on the steps of our own house, he would rest his hand on my knee and I would hardly notice. Not out of indifference, but because that had for so long been its natural resting place.

When we first arrived at our house – “Our  House” had such a wonderful sound to it – that day was a dry, hot summer’s day. The road was metal back then and hardly a car drove upon it. I remember lying in bed that first night, and for many nights following, watching the shadows play with the lights from a cattle truck going past. And the dust – it rested everywhere from its perpetual journey.  I could taste it in everything, feel it in my teeth.

We have brought five children into this house, and lost one who we will never know.

Our first child only lasted eight weeks in my womb.  My sense of failure was so strong.  But Sam's patience and his persistence: his resolve where mine had failed, coaxed me towards our second child, our first-born.

The words “I'm pregnant” brought mixed reactions every time I said them. Always happiness but tinged with more practical thoughts like money and bedroom space. Sam progressed through the ranks at his job and I washed thousands of loads of washing, hung a million nappies out to dry, gave our children skills for life.

Every time I sent a child off to school I would wait with them for the bus. Each child had different thoughts on school. Josh, the eldest, was terrible at leaving me: school was the great unknown he had to face alone. Alastair, however, had Josh to hold his hand and stories of friends and teachers to guide him through it. John was just too eager to emulate his older brothers to be the least bit concerned.

Natalie was a delicate wee thing on her fifth birthday and not really ready for school, but she went, and survived. We often laughed and said that Rachael should have been a boy for she took on the boys' ways much more than Natalie ever did. Her “First Day at School” photograph shows her wearing track pants and gumboots and pulling at her pigtails.

The day that Rachael left, I walked back to the house upon the now tarsealed road and didn't want to go in. That big, quiet house; no children's noises to break the silence. The vacuum cleaner so loud. It was this void that pushed me back into my career as a teacher.  I started a job at a local school and began making my mark on a new generation.

Josh and Alastair are married now, each with three children who call me Gran, and Sam Poppa. John, Natalie and Rachael have moved overseas and come home at odd intervals to see us.  Their visits are more frequent now as the threat of losing their father forever is recognised. Sam cannot remember them when they arrive. He is unaware of his six grandchildren and gets them confused with others who have entered and exited his life.

It sometimes feels as though I've had a seventh child as I take care of Sam. I wash him and change him in the same manner. But this is not the hardest thing to bear. I want desperately to talk with him about the times we've spent together, the moments in our children's lives which made us laugh or cry or worry, the love that we have shared. 

Sam's hair is white now, whiter than mine, and contrasts with his permanently tanned skin.  He smiles that same old smile, the one that charmed me in the beginning. He can still charm me now.

He likes to listen as I read to the grandchildren. I have begun reading them the stories of their grandparents. I read them as though they are fiction, I give the images a way out, a way to stop flying around my head, bruising against themselves.

I remember thinking, “What will we be like when we're old?”

I remember thinking, “We'll be in love.”