Picture this. It’s 4pm on a Thursday afternoon. Crazy after school traffic fills the streets, and the kids and I are off to swimming lessons.

 My car, packed to the ceiling with swimming gear and schools bags, dodges in and out of traffic.  A feat in itself considering it’s a two and half ton 4wd and does zero to sixty in  three quarters of an hour.

 Silence has descended on the car after a heated discussion between myself and my three boys regarding the lyrics of Britney’s latest song “If you seek Amy” and why it’s inappropriate for them to be singing it.

 ”Just because!”  seems to  be sufficient enough answer…for now. 

I sigh, relieved and enjoy a moments silence as we wait for the lights to change.

  From the back seat I hear,  “Muuuuuum?” 

I reply “Yes matey?”

  “Is there such a thing as a quandong?” 

“Yes mate” I answer. 

 ”A quandong is a fruit native to Australia.  The Aborigines refer to it as Bush tucker and tastes a bit like a mango.” 

 I feel a bit like super mum with all the answers, and a bit proud of oldest boy for asking such an interesting and diverse question (of course he gets his natural curiosity from his mother) 

 Another moment of silence ensues, then Master Nine turns to his little brothers and says “Boys…..always wear a quandong.” 

Frikkin’ heck,  I think I just heard my sanity slam the car door and walk off!

 

 

They all think that I’m gone.

 

The police think that I’ve been taken.

 

 Snatched from the side of the road.

 

Rough hands grabbing my arm, covering my mouth. 

 

My feet scrambling for purchase in the dry dust.

 

Dragged backwards into a sinister looking car.

 

Taken from a loving Mother and Father,

 

Missed by distraught siblings.

 

Mother believes I am lost or late or something.

 

  Soon she will see me coming up the track as she looks through the kitchen window doing dishes.

 

 So she continues to look.

 

Father knows that I have run.

 

 His guilt tells him so.

 

 I hear them shuffling, chairs scraping. 

 

Through the looking glass  crack of the pantry door, I see father’s eyes.

 

 Preoccupied, he’s searching  for ghosts. 

 

I see his seething, a tide of crimson rising up from his collar line. 

 

With clenched fists he paces.

 

Frenzied by the presence of outsiders, he is curt in his responses.

 

With eyes down cast, my sisters huddle.

 

It is not our father that they see

 

But fury stitched into a suit.

 

 There was no sympathy for the potentially dead.  Even less for the disobedient.

 

They all wish me dead.

 

A detective lays a comforting hand on my Mothers shoulder.

 

 She writhes as if touched by death. 

 

But she is good at this, and the man is unaware that her insides are shriveling.

 

Silence ticks like a metronome.

 

We await the stranger’s departure, then the family’s real search will begin.

 

Father will strip the house bare till he finds me.

 

He knows my disdain, has seen contempt in my gaze.

 

I am not sure of my plan.

 

I am only 12 after all.

 

But I know strangers will be no help.

 

Crouched in my space, I listen for the screen doors shriek.

 

The mumbling reassurances of men tell me Father has ushered them all into the front yard.

 

I imagine his hand raised in farewell, as the car’s dust plumes blow a insolent raspberry.

 

The steps of the back porch bow and complain.

 

But my time there is brief.

 

Through the yard, and towards the fence

 

Dried old tufts of grass whip my legs.

 

They won’t stop me, I’m nearly there.

 

Freedom pumps through me like a rushing of blood as I pause at the fence line.

 

 A drum beat pounds from within. 

 

The bottom stringer sags under the weight of my foot, as I prepare to swing on over, to fly.

 

 As mean, cruel fingers bite into my arm, and I am yanked to the ground. 

 

The breath of relief knocks out of me.  So to the life imagined in a millisecond.

 

He stands over me, sneering.

 

Beady crow’s eyes are on me,

 

With vulpine lips parted, he breaths close to me.

 

With cunning, he takes his time.

 

There was no stepping back from the edge.

 

This time, Father was walking right off

 

And he was taking me with him.

 

 

 

 

I’d rather write nothing, than something uninspired and forced.

 I strive to be true to myself and transparent to others,

 I long for understanding and to be understood. 

I dream of days where time just stops

So I can catch up.

To shine and be humble.

To soar

To connect

To disappear.

Infinite and fixed

Forever and not!

I am shy and outrageous.

Glorious and dull

I am pacifist and warrior.

Clenched fist and warm embrace.

I am passionate and apathetic

Glaring and scowling

Soft and gooey

I am Mother

Wife

Friend

and Enemy

I am an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a dressing gown.

So, what’s with all the death stuff?  My last post, and the one before clearly delved into some very sad and dark places.  Every creative juice that flowed was in the form of tears.  And while I felt a sense of achievement by tapping into some real, raw emotion, it was becoming clear to me that I’d have to re title this blog…”Grown up girl’s lost her Prozac”

  In my real life, I never wear my heart on my sleeve.  Even in the most stressful, and unpleasant of circumstances, my expression is as flat as a  non stick frypan.  However, in my writing world, it seems my heart holds an enormous grey lead pencil, happy to blab all my angst out into  virtual space.  Not that I’m complaining.  A blog is a fantastic means of expression.  I did start to worry though that the writing that people were expecting to find here was becoming a bit bleak.  Maybe you’d stop coming back.  That a blog mutiny was afoot.   Perhaps I was about the walk the cyber plank, plunged into a virtual sea of oblivion. To drown amongst an ocean of unread blogs.   OK, stopping with the pirate metaphors (unless Captain Jack comes swashbuckling up the street, and then you guys are on your own!), but you get my (a)drift (sorry, that seriously was the last one!). 

So, what’s really been going on?  Well for a change, nothing drastic.  No hideous health diagnoses or marital upheaval.  There has however been a shift in my own sense of worth.  All my kids are off at school, and the MOTH, well he got a kick ass job, and moved away.  So now I’m left to wonder what my role in the world is gonna be?  Mum’s mother, and wifes are wifely and for the most part of my day I’m not required for either.  I’ve always craved my own time, and now it seems that my own company is not as stimulating as I thought it would be.

 A life of lunches and chatting with friends would be OK, but what have I got to offer?  Conversations about how I sat and didn’t move for three hours?  Enthralling stuff!   True a writers dream is to be left to write, but somehow it all seems more substantial and more of an achievement when you’re trying to squeeze creative moments into a lifetime of  playdates and committee meetings. 

So, it seems my nest is empty, which doesn’t bode well for the future, considering I’m only 36!  I don’t feel a part of anything anymore.  A tiny little atoll slowing being submerged as the polar ice caps melt.   Taking this  amateur phsychoanalysis  to its most obvious conclusion my writing is more about the death of self and less about the loss of a loved one.  To be more precise, I have lost a loved one…..me!,

Sounds a bit melodramatic I know, but hopefully now that it’s here, spilled across the page, I’ll be shamed into getting over myself and getting on with it!

Oh God, I wish I wasn’t writing all this now……………