Month: July 2014

Darkness

A dreadful thing happened today. Dreadful? Unimaginable? What word comes even close to encompassing what happened.

298 innocent people were killed by men fighting over borders. Oh sure they’ll argue it’s about so much more than that but I can’t shake my immediate reaction of “fucking men and their fucking weapons”.

They say it was a Russian separatist surface-to-air missile that brought down flight MH17 because Ukraine doesn’t have that military capability. I wonder how Russia talk its way out of this one.

They say there could be up to 100 people on that flight who were coming to Australia for the world’s largest AIDS conference. Scientists, doctors, activists working on life-changing, world-changing projects.

They say flights were banned over the region to 32,000 feet. MH17 was flying at 33,000. Who do you think makes that call when they’re aiming their missiles?

They say in the 28 Australians was a Grandpa bringing his three grand children home so they could go back to school while their mum and dad had a few extra days holiday.

I can’t stop thinking about that mother and that all she must want is to get to her babies.

Then I see pictures of people just walking over the crash site.

Sacred ground.

298 people dead but thousands of lives changed forever.

Little

Do you remember being little?

I remember a yellow terry-towelling shorts jumpsuit.

Joy, my next door neighbour who I’d go and visit almost daily.

My walking Wendy doll I tied a ruler to so she’d stand up straight.

Mum gardening.

Tang.

The trailer of sand permanently parked on our front lawn that me and my brother would play in with matchbox cars.

I remember my Berenstain Bears treehouse.

The wooden two story dolls house.

I remember family gatherings being loud and always with the same food (roast lamb, veggies, fruit cake).

Lime cordial.

Tennis lessons where I was one of the select few taken into a separate room to practice our right and left.

Salads only ever consisting of iceberg lettuce, cucumber and tomato. Cubed cheese made it fancy. Those weird dressings where fake herbs were suspended in the bottle.

A hidey-hole in the garden behind the camellias.

My very own play area under our house where I’d play schools with Wendy Walker (standing up straight).

The wallpaper in my room of teeny tiny purple flowers.

My womble night-light.

 

Isn’t it funny we have these memories with vast blackness between them. Why can’t I remember losing teeth and my permanent teeth coming in. I mean, that’s a pretty big deal. But nup. Not a memory to jog.

I remember a lot of stuff through the prism of adulthood, layering meaning where perhaps it doesn’t belong so I like these snippets, just remembering them for what they were.

What do you recall?

Onward.