Presents

At Christmas time, instead of giving presents to each other, Clea’s brothers have made a valuable gift to unknown children in other parts of the world where life is nowhere near as easy as in Australia through World Vision. It is the second year in a row they have done this. At a time when the Australian Government has shamefully cut its foreign aid to the poorest countries, we continue to encourage our kids to give to others less privileged.

For quite a few years now I have made an annual donation (a modest sum) to The Smith Family to help disadvantaged Australian kids. That’s where my Christmas present goes. Yet one of the very people responsible for cutting down Australian foreign aid had the gall to ask all of us in Australia to “spend up big at Christmas”, as if by spending up big one could somehow improve the world. Definitively, stupidity knows no bounds, and seems to get voted in every few years.

There are other kinds of priceless gifts, too. Someone I have only met via the internet, someone whose literary work I enjoy and feel deep respect for, will spend the holidays in some sort of psychotherapy hostel, away from his family. He is in a bad way - has been for more than a year now (and he seems to be improving, hopefully). If I could, I’d give him the present he deserves: the chance to be with his children.

Parents who have lost a child (having to bury your child is the most unnatural event that can occur to a parent) do not look forward to this time of year. As a child, I used to like Christmas Eve, or La Nochebuena – (The Good Night) as it is known in Spanish, which is really the most important date of the Christmas period in Spain – because our family all got together, because on the table there was a fabulous feast of food and in the living room there was a lot of good cheer. After losing my daughter more than five years ago, I do not look forward to this night any longer because our family cannot be together. Clea, who so loved this time of year, will be absent. She will not awake early on Christmas Day to open her presents.

The truth is, however, that we still get presents or souvenirs for Clea whenever we travel. Small things we can leave by her grave, like the ceramic puppy and the wristlet from Turkey in the picture above. Or the silken scarf I bought for her two years ago in Penang.

The night I bought this (I think) beautiful pink scarf, I bought a very similar one for a Chinese PhD student who had presented a paper at the Translation Conference I was attending. It was difficult to explain (or for her understand, I guess) why I was asking her to accept such a small gift from me, a perfect stranger. She had been able to fulfil a dream/project my own daughter has not even been given the chance to start upon.

There is only one present I’d wish for, but no one can give it to me. No one. Ever.

Soy un aballena...

I wrote this short story more than a year after 29 September 2009. Everything in it is probably true. I wish it weren't. I have not viewed the burnt DVD for a very long time. It hurts so much...

A little house at the bottom of the sea

A few years ago, my father came home one Friday evening with a video camera packed in a bag. I always called him Papá, as he came to Australia from Spain. He had borrowed the camera from work because he needed to practise; or so he said. The next day he filmed me and my twin brothers in the backyard. I saw the movie a few times after that day. It was fun and cool to see and hear myself and my brothers singing. Then he said he would burn a CD, but I didn't see the fire. He sent it overseas, to the place where he was born, for my Spanish relatives to see.

He does not want to see it too often these days; it makes him cry.

The movie is not too long, just about seven minutes. We run around the backyard while he‘s doing his best to focus and frame us. There is a moment I just lie on the dry browned summer grass and do something silly. “What on earth are you doing?”, he asks in Spanish. "Soy un aballena", I say. (Papá laughs at my mistake in Spanish.) “I‘m a little whale, I live in my little house at the bottom of the sea”, I chant in my shrill girl Spanish voice. “Get off the ground, you’re getting your clothes dirty”, he says in the stern voice he reserves for when he does mean something.

I did get up, eventually. I was only three years old.

****

We’re finally here after spending a couple of days in Apia. The sea dazzles; at noon the heat is quite intense yet bearable, there are a few clouds around but it does not look like it will rain. We flew across the ocean for about seven hours. I said to them: “We will arrive yesterday”. They looked puzzled, of course. They thought it was a joke. I guess the mix of tenses doesn’t go down well when you’ve just managed to learn to speak, and that the language mix at home may make things particularly complicated sometimes. Yet in a manner of speaking, it is true that we have travelled into the past: We left Australia on Friday afternoon and arrived in Apia on Thursday night.

Just five nights ago we were at home, practising the numbers in Samoan: tasi, lua, tolu, fa, lima… We think it’s worth showing you make the effort when you visit another country.

We’ll be staying here for a couple of nights. In one of these fales, metres away from the water. Behind the resort is the steep hill, dense with vegetation, mysterious yet inviting. The water is so clean. There is another smaller island about half a mile away, green, majestic. For thousands and thousands of miles around us, there is nothing else but water. On the horizon, the permanently white line of the reef. Hardly any waves make it to the shore. Perfect for children who are still learning to swim. They will gain in confidence.

After lunch we take a walk along the beach. Later we all put on our swimmers, make sandcastles and splash about. Everybody is having a great time, but she seems to be enjoying Samoa more than anyone else. She looks radiant, beautiful, so full of life. Her skin has quickly tanned under the Samoan sun. It’s taken just a couple of days for her to go very brown. She has my Spanish complexion.

****

My twin brothers woke up early – they still do. No rest for the wicked. Mummy said we wouldn’t get breakfast until nine, so she gave us fruit to eat. I ate my pear on the sand, looking at the beautiful blue water. I finished it and then Papá gave us some biscuits. He said they were from Chile, from across the water, and he pointed to the west. Then suddenly the ground started shaking. It was quite strange. The fales were rattling for almost a minute. Mum and Papá looked at each other and talked briefly. They looked at the other tourists. They looked at the local people, the ones who ran the resort.

We then went for a walk along the beach, like the day before. I saw the local kids on the road, wearing their school uniforms. I asked Mummy why they were going to school. She said they weren’t on holidays. We were on holidays. We had come from Australia for a holiday. On the beach I followed Papá, I was skipping on the sand, carefully putting my footprints on his. It was fun but difficult. He has such big feet I could not stretch myself long enough.

Suddenly Papá shouted: “Corred, corred”. He sounded very serious. We ran. We crossed the road. We were barefoot but kept on running. Papá was again yelling, but this time in English: “Run! Everybody run!” His voice sounded really scared. We just ran. We ran past a house. A woman was on the ground, crying. There were a few piglets, trotting around. They seemed scared, too. I turned around. I did not understand. Why was there no sky now? What was that water coming towards us? And that roar?

I was still holding Mummy’s hand. So was my brother Om. My other brother, Jay, he was with Papá. We turned and kept running for the hill. Then the water came. The water. So much water. It was so strong I immediately lost Mummy’s hand. The water dragged me up and down, it swirled me around. I hit a tree or something else. Lots of different things hit me: bits of coral, pieces of wood, rocks, tree branches… they hit my legs and my arms, they hit my back and my head. I could not come up for air.

I stayed at the bottom, like the little whale of my silly singsong a couple of years before. I think I became a whale-loving mermaid.

But Mummy and Papá cried a lot afterwards.

Father's Day

This is me. My portrait, made by my daughter at school, for one Father’s Day many years ago. It is, more or less, true to life – no hair at the top, very dark eyes. My Father’s Day today was rather uneventful. I actually had to go to work in the morning. Like so many other so-called ‘special days’, we really had nothing to celebrate. Which is just as well.

Today I just feel like saying that I have the best daughter in the world. She is indeed the best, the nicest, the cleverest and the most beautiful daughter in this whole world, and her name is Clea Soledad. She is 6 and 9 months old.

But she is gone. Like so many other children on 29 September 2009, she was taken away from us by the ocean, while all of us were walking on a paradisiacal beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She was, she is, she will always be, the best daughter in the world.

I miss you, Babita.

Two Hearts Beating

“and once my mind is free and empty I hear the rhythmic hoot of owls. The two birds call each other and when suddenly one of them fails to respond my heart stops for a moment, waiting for the call. It soon follows and a strange pleasure begins to pulsate through my body.” (Subhash Jaireth, To Silence, p. 17)

The above caught my attention while I was reading my friend Subhash’s book. I’m not sure why exactly, but the passage brought back to me memories of the first night I was left to look after Clea on my own. She was just over seven months of age, and Mum went away for a much-deserved girls’ night on her birthday, her first night out in many years. Not that I was overwhelmed by responsibility. Far from that. I actually felt elated to be alone with my daughter.

It was, of course, a cold July night in Yass. After giving her dinner and her daily hot bath, I proceeded to hurriedly eat something. Then I sat down next to Clea. We read books and sang songs, played silly little games and had some giggles. At some point I went back to the kitchen and got myself a glass of red wine.

As the night progressed Clea became a little restless and began crying. I turned on the TV, put it on mute and picked the channel that was about to show the Bledisloe Cup match between the All Blacks and the Wallabies. I downed the rest of the wine and placed Clea on my abdomen, and a blanket on top of us both.

Heartbeats synchronised. Breathings became relaxed, restful. My mind was free and slowly drifted into sleep while the two hearts, father and daughter, beat in unison, a strange and rare joy of living synchronicity. A heart pulsating, calling on another heart, the heart of a pulsating being that is your own flesh and blood, to reply. Can anything else feel closer to the sense of a perfect union?

As weeks, months and years pass I find myself clutching at things, sounds, smells even that can prod my memory, willing myself to bring as many memories of Clea back as it is possible for me to do. G.W. McLennan’s One plus One was one of the songs Clea would sleep to during her first year’s afternoon naps. Two hearts beating, Papá y Clea, One plus One.

Swallows, show me the way: A sonnet

Swallows, show me the way

Where will you be found, since I am so lost

without you? What winds will my sails follow

across these desperate seas? Will swallows

show me the way to you? Will my soul, tossed

this and that way, find some peace and relief?

This is hellish living, of you deprived.

On a vain hope my loving feelings thrived

for so long, holding on to this belief:

Oh, yes, we will be together once more,

and we’ll hold hands, and dance; I’ll smell your hair,

and gaze at those hazel eyes I adore,

hear your voice… We’ll enjoy the love we share,

smiling, giggling, the way it was before,

where nothing matters, as we’re past all care.

(First published in Azuria#3, Summer 2013-14). Azuria is published by Geelong Writers, ISSN 2200-2367).

Writing and Bridges

Last year I took part in a small symposium in Wollongong, south of Sydney. The title of the gathering was In All Languages: Translingual Cultural Production. I had been invited by Michael J., an academic who has a strong interest in transnational writings, and who was the first person to show an academic interest in my book, Lalomanu. I still remember the moment his email appeared out of nowhere (as only certain emails do and actually change your life, don’t they?) inquiring about how he could purchase a copy of this very intimate book of poetry I wrote and published myself. Lalomanu was not for sale, I explained in my reply. I sent Michael a copy, naturally.

Michael presented his paper a couple of years ago; it has recently been submitted to a journal and might see the light of day soon. Michael has also very gently and convincingly suggested that I write a paper about my own writing, particularly on the topic of translingual literary production. Michael is of course aware of the emotional toll it does involve for me, yet on the other hand his appreciation is that I have a lot to say. And I obviously thank him for that.

Talking of writing: a couple of weeks ago I found a totally unexpected comment in my literary blog. It was left anonymously, but the person who wrote it has obviously known me for many decades (at least since high school, which he mentioned in the message) and more than likely used to be a friend of mine. He is not any more. Contact was interrupted for good (pun intended) more than a decade ago. It was not my decision. Anyway, the comment addressed me personally and pointed out how I had changed my mind with respect to tobacco being a drug since the days of high school, in the late 70s and early 80s.

It was a mildly abusive comment, one whose tone was mean and embittered. I deleted it, of course. What I find the most puzzling about this is the fact that whoever this person is (of course I do have a very good idea of who he is), he was incapable of acknowledging my daughter’s death by means of a message of condolence or some sort of attempt to get in touch. The question is: what is the point of re-barging into someone’s life (albeit in cyberspace) after almost twenty years, if all you’re going to do is taking such a bitter pot-shot? How low can people get? And why do they? There may be no answer.

A friend of ours recently remarked that we (my wife and I) had stopped writing in our blogs. She wondered whether we felt we have nothing left to say. That’s certainly not the case. I feel I still have lots to share, to write both about Clea and about myself. A small yet significant aspect in the rationale for having a blog is to receive responses to what you write (especially if you allow responses – not everybody does). I guess one of the reasons I write less frequently here is because I do not get as much of a response as I might have expected.

“Giving shape to a painful experience is powerful because it helps us to see first, how we got through it; second, how we can share it. The experience doesn’t stay trapped within us, unspoken, curdling — instead, the art of arranging and transforming it reduces the burden. It no longer belongs to only you. […] Each sentence contains the chaos — our experience becomes what we perceive. And the honesty in these perceptions, whether true or invented, creates a bridge to another person.” Karen E Bender, ‘The accidental writer’, The NY Times, 25 January 2013.

He, the embittered one, has certainly burnt that bridge. But I think I will write something for Michael, though.

Your Birthday Present: A sonnet

What present would I have got you today?

A new bicycle? A gadget? How cool…

Something I’m certain you’d have loved to play

with? Perhaps something to show off at school?

We would have got you a chocolate cake,

or would have gone out to dinner – Thai, Chinese…

or a very special dish Mum could make.

You were not too tough a diner to please.

Would have loved the mangoes so juicy and ripe,

Or a cooling mid-afternoon iceblock:

raspberry, orange, or lemon and lime.

Another birthday, one more year to clock.

Yet all I can give you today: my tears.

This grief beyond words, not having you here.