The old house

This old building used to be my paternal grandmother’s house. Number 8, Calle Enrique Olmos, Valencia. Possibly nearing 80 years since the time it was built, it is a puzzle to me why it remains standing.

My recollections of the place are now remarkably indistinct: several flights of gloomy, stuffy stairs, an old wooden door and a small hall. Other than at Christmastime, I would rarely go there. One clear memory I do have, however, is to be standing on that balcony, calling out to my brother, or perhaps my cousins too, to come upstairs because the big Christmas lunch was going to get started.

I can hardly remember my paternal grandfather, my Iaio – he died when I was very young. But I do remember, and very well, my paternal grandmother. As a teenager I would see her often at the grocery shop she owned, the place where she worked very long hours. As she grew older and wearier, she would frequently choose to stay in the shop overnight instead of walking back to her Enrique Olmos house.

I actually think I held my first proper ‘job’ at her shop, helping restocking shelves and fridges, particularly on summer weekends, when we sold lots of bottles of beer, lemonade and Coke, as well packets of crisps, salted dried nuts and many other groceries. The pace could get frantic when we were nearing closing time, with everybody wanting to buy cold drinks and last-minute essentials. On more than one occasion we closed the shop past 2:30 pm.

Although I have no clear recollection of having done so, I must have pointed out the house to Clea during her only visit to my home town in July 2005, aged 2 and a half. Who knows if she actually understood what I was talking about when I explained it to her who Iaia Carmen had been.

To me, it is completely absurd for an old uninhabited house to endure like this for years. The home of Clea’s great-grandmother is still standing many years after her death, while my little one was buried when she was six and nine months old. For quite unexplainable reasons, I sort of resent this old house now. It should have fallen down years ago, should it not?

The vagaries of death, decay and destruction seem quite incomprehensible and whimsical. The absurdity of it all is baffling.

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.

Torrijas

It is her favourite breakfast. Days-old bread soaked in warm milk, lightly coated in beaten eggs, then fried in olive oil until golden and finally sprinkled with sugar (and too much sugar would never be enough, of course!). Also known as French toast, I have always called it torrijas, and I still recall my parents frying torrijas of a cold winter morning, sometimes accompanied by thick hot chocolate.

These days I simply use French sticks (which I allow to ‘age’) from the supermarket, but the best are always the ones made with Pane di Casa, thicker Italian-style loaves you can cut into any shape that takes your fancy.

We had perfected some sort of family comedy routine. When the plate was full, I would sit at the table and stare at them, at Clea and her two younger brothers, and very seriously declare my breakfast was ready, so what were they going to eat for brekkie? She would immediately reply in an indignant tone: ‘¡Son para todos!’ They’re for everyone, they’re to be shared!

I still make torrijas as often as possible. Her brothers have elsewhere declared it one of the best foods in the world. I still will sit at the table, place the big plate in front of me and announce that my breakfast is ready, and what is everyone else going to eat?

I still hear Clea in my head, crying out that the torrijas are for everyone, indignant at the sheer injustice of her father promising to eat all of them by himself.

How can such a sweetly perfected family comedy routine vanish? Why?

I’d pour tonnes of sugar over them if that could lure her back, and I’d feel no guilt or shame for giving my child all the sugar she wanted. Just this once.

Beachgoers

We’ve once again headed back to a beach for a long weekend, to the beautiful shores of the Pacific Ocean that killed our daughter, our sister. I have always loved the sea: I grew up by the Mediterranean Sea, which is a much gentler sea than the absurdly called Pacific. Peaceful, it isn't!

Those two days by the beach I was watching Clea’s brothers play in the water, how much they enjoy the beach. The first morning we were at the South Coast town where we stayed, they both were so impatient and excited they ran together across the dunes to check out the surf. They are not afraid of the ocean, even though they are well aware that it was this very ocean that took their sister away from their lives, even though they know that this was the ocean that nearly killed them, that could have killed the whole family that Samoan morning in late September 2009.

It took us a whole year to be near a beach again after the tsunami. I remember someone offered their beach house to us a couple of months later, during the summer, only to nod sympathetically when I declined and replied that going to the beach was not my idea of a relaxing holiday. And of course it wasn't just then.

It was Lalomanu Beach in Samoa that we chose to return to, a year later, as we soon realised that it was essential for these two Aussie kids, Clea’s brothers, not to be scared of the ocean for the rest of their lives. What better place than Lalomanu, then? It was of course a very painful thing to do, yet it was necessary. It was the right thing to do.

Clea’s brothers now enjoy the sea. They are not scared of the waves; they were riding the fairly small waves there were on the beach last weekend. They were riding the same boogie board their sister Clea had been trying to stand on in very calm waters, just a few months before the ocean came over the land and drowned her. Clea just loved going to the beach. Now Clea’s brothers scream in sheer delight every time they catch a wave and come rushing towards the shore. They look up and seek my acknowledgement, my approval, my encouraging eyes.

I give them the thumbs-up, and they go back in for more excitement, for more waves, for bigger ones. Some good we have done.

Last week the rope of the boogie board finally broke and could not be mended. But I wanted to keep the Velcro wrist band that was once around Clea’s tanned wrist. The rope can be replaced, and her boogie board can continue to be ridden by her brothers and even myself for a few more years.

Being in the ocean brings mixed feelings. I am not religious at all. I do not think we have a soul, the way Christian religion describes it. I do not think there is another life after we die. Yet I stare at the ocean and I like to think that in that vastness, in that indomitable expanse of blue water, there is perhaps a tiny drop, perhaps a very small dot of something that once was Clea, and whenever we enter the sea, we are somehow closer to our daughter, to our sister.

It may seem to make little sense, perhaps it is contradictory, but it is meaningful to me.

The Impossible

We have been receiving a few well-meaning warnings about the release of the movie The Impossible. In case you don’t know, it tells the story of a Spanish family who were holidaying in Thailand when the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami struck. They all survived, miraculously. The Spanish director, Bayona, enlisted two extremely famous actors to play the roles of the parents, María and Quique.

The other day I came across a lengthy newspaper article titled ‘Unidas por el tsunami’ (United by the tsunami), and signed by a Toni García. I was curious, so I read it. I can’t help but see it as part of the huge ongoing promotional campaign for the movie; I just cannot consider it any other way.

But for me, the only thing of value in the whole article is María’s words. She chose to sell her story, and that's fine. I suppose she did so because it's a story that ends ‘well’, so to speak. Had she lost any of her three children, I'm certain the movie would have never seen the light of day.

María says she now knows herself strong, “because I know I'm fragile”. I do know what she’s talking about.

She knows her/their survival was a miracle, but says that any religious connotations attached to the word need to be removed, dispelled. In other words, it was impossible for her/them to survive, but somehow, inexplicably, she/they did. I also know what she means, and I completely agree with her. I feel exactly the same way about what my two sons, my wife and myself went through on 29 September 2009.

She acknowledges that she did make an attempt to read a book about the survivors who lost loved ones that fateful day, but she was unable to. I read Pacific Tsunami: Galu Afi, but I doubt I'll ever read it again. María thinks that the proverb “Time heals everything” is just a big lie. And I agree with her. “Time does not heal anything, time is life […] . […] from afar everything becomes more bearable, everything has become more anaesthetised. The rest are clichés”, she tells the reporter.

The journalist, Toni García, writes the following: “[María] rescued one of her sons from the water, despite being badly injured.” Hey, welcome to the real world, Toni García! Any worthy parent, let me tell you, would try to save their child in such circumstances.

Asked whether it is good to talk [about the tsunami], María replied: “It depends on who you talk to. There are very few people who will sit with you and talk about the subject openly. Me, I ask a lot of questions, and if someone’s had an accident I will ask them, patiently. However, at least in my case, people think it is taboo to talk about it, about the wave, the tsunami. When I returned [to Spain], people would look at me with fear, as if saying, ‘Take it easy, I'm not going to ask you anything’.” I know all too well what María is talking about.

I read elsewhere a stupidly cruel review of The Impossible. It more or less said it was a very melodramatic film about a family of tourists who had lost their entire luggage in the Boxing Day tsunami. The point the reviewer wanted to make was that hundreds of thousands of people died, that so many thousands of families lost loved ones, children, siblings, parents, grandparents… so why make a movie about a Western family whose five members survived? Other reviewers have drawn attention to the fact that the movie basically ignores the Thai victims by focusing only on a Western family. I will offer no opinion on that, because I have not seen the movie.

But I have watched the trailer of The Impossible. Online. All I can say is, the tsunami scenes are incredibly realistic. It is very much like that. But I also want to emphasise the 'incredible' aspect of it. Don’t forget it's a movie. Reality is a f**king lot worse.

Luckily for the director, María had a lot of input in the script. I guess we should not be surprised if it were awarded an Oscar for the FX.

But what I really wanted to consider was this: I wonder what we would say to each other, if one day I met María. I have seen her photograph: I have noticed how her eyes look somehow lost, like they're glancing at something that is not there. That look is vaguely familiar.

She still has all her three children. I have only two left.

On the morning of Boxing Day 2004 we were on a beautiful beach in New South Wales, thousands of kilometres away from the death and destruction that was taking place in the Indian Ocean. Clea was almost two years old; she was running on the white sand, running away from the waves that came too close, and she was giggling, giggling, like she always used to do.

I will not watch the movie. But it's nothing to do with the tsunami images, it's nothing to do with fear. The truth is I don't need a movie to remind me.

I guess I just don’t enjoy happy endings that much these days.

Breakfast with Friends

We get together for breakfast a few weeks before Christmas. But we don’t get together because we want to celebrate Christmas. In fact, Christmas may be a difficult time of year for some of us.

We come from various suburbs and we are from very different backgrounds. We have very different jobs and interests. We are very different people.

Our political ideas might differ vastly or be very similar, but we don’t talk politics. Our hobbies are also entirely different. Some of us are elderly, some of us may be in poor health, and some of us are middle-aged and relatively healthy. Some of us are men, some of us are women. Some of us are survivors ourselves.

Some of us write poetry. Some of us would not dream of putting a few words to paper. Some of us read a lot, but others don’t. Some of us love listening to music all day, while some of us would prefer total, absolute silence all day, every day. Some of us grow flowers; some of us cannot be bothered.

Some of us drink heavily, but some of us are teetotallers. Someone might argue that all of us have almost nothing in common, and somehow they would be right, to some extent. Still, we like to get together and share a table a few weeks before 25 December.

We sit there, at these tables, and we talk, and we may even try to joke and laugh, although deep inside there may be no mood for laughter. Not really; but we all know when to laugh, and what to laugh about.

We are perfect strangers, yet we like to get together. We seem to have almost nothing in common, but we all agree that we like to get together of a Sunday, a few weeks before that time of year they call Christmas. We do this because there is something that unites us, despite our vast differences.

We get together, and we eat a late breakfast – a very late breakfast for those of us who have been awake since 5 am, way before the sun rose. For some of us, waking up before dawn is our daily bread.

We have all brought a little something we would like to give away as a present. We organise a raffle, draw numbers and take a gift home, a gift for the one who is not there.

What is it that brings us together, you might ask? That something that unites us is enormous; it is, quite possibly, well beyond words. We get together because all of us grieve for our dead child. We all have one child that has predeceased us. For some of us, there may have been two deaths; children who have died before their parents.

We get together because we want to reach out to each other; we get together because we share our pain; we get together because one does not just “get over” losing a child. We all know that. We share that knowledge. We go through our loss every day. We get together because for some of us, the ones we might have relied upon for understanding and support have simply vanished into thin air or have cowardly hidden behind an unwritten code of silence.

We feel there is a lot of comfort in getting together. For some of us, there may be hope to be shared. For some of us, hope is an abstraction, no more. But the most important thing – at least for me – is that there is no room for pretence. There is no need to fake. There is no pressure. There is no silliness, no vacuous laughter.

For the rest of people, perhaps even for you, it may be the ‘silly season’. How silly is that?

Petals: A poem

Petals

(for Trudie)

They collect rose petals. They place them

in plastic takeaway containers; then they drive.

The road’s never too busy – it’s Sunday morning.

Two boys chatter the drive away,

past the windows and past the empty seat

that so suddenly appeared between them,

instead of their sister.

It is thirty-eight months old, but the car

slows down to twenty – ducks crossing.

A narrow steep driveway.

Stop.

Four doors open, four feet will walk slowly,

the other four race away, past the plaques

and the vases, past the windsocks, past

so many plastic flowers last night’s stormy

wind must have spread around.

They bring young flowers, blooms for an old sorrow.

They’re like silky raindrops,

like tears falling down from the sky

dropping like a warm blanket for winter.

Rose petals on the lawn:

they cover the emptiness their life has become.

So many rose petals! So delightful! So smooth!

These are teary petals,

they are grief-stricken blooms.

(c) Jorge Salavert, 2012

Penyagolosa

Penyagolosa

For many years the idea of my own death and what would happen to my body thereafter did not worry me too much. I had never really contemplated my own death as an event that was near. ‘Dead’ was not a word that I used on a daily basis. All that changed on 29 September 2009, and ‘dead’ is part of the vocabulary that reality has assigned to my life, every day, when I wake up.

And it’s not that I had not witnessed death before. As it happens to most people, my grandfathers went first (I hardly recall my paternal grandfather, he died when I was a small child – I do remember my maternal grandfather fondly, he was a loving man who was always surrounded by children; he worked as a clown for a few years after the Spanish Civil War, during which he lost his only son, Rafael, just a few months old, to disease and malnutrition).

A few years later, and over an ever-worsening process that took several months, I saw my paternal grandmother die a slow, terrible death because of diabetes and poor blood circulation. My other grandmother died suddenly in late 1995.

My own father died when I was 25. He died of a heart attack on a hot August morning, and the ambulance that was sent did not have the equipment that might have saved his life. But I only found out ten days later. I was abroad and no one was able to locate me. Yes, I was young and stupid. Haven’t we all been young and stupid at some point in our lives?

As per his wishes, my father was cremated. My mother suggested that I might want to bury his ashes. I agreed, of course. I buried them under the Norfolk pine tree we had always mistaken for a fir-tree; the Norfolk pine tree now towers majestically above my mother’s house. After digging a hole and pouring the ashes in there, I put a rock on top.

I had always held on to a somehow idyllic plan for my own funeral. I had always thought I would die before anyone else in my family. I would be survived by my wife and three children. My wishes were (still are) that my body would be cremated.

My (somewhat romantic) dream was that, eventually, my daughter Clea would make the trip to Spain and fulfil my wishes by climbing Penyagolosa Mountain [the picture above was taken in summer 1992] and scatter my ashes, that what once was me out to the wind, not necessarily from the top, but at least from a good vantage point, somewhere with breathtaking vistas. Just somewhere beautiful in a place that once meant a lot to me.

I do not want my ashes to go to Valencia now. The bond that once joined me to those lands is very fragile, to the extent that apart from family and very few friends, I have no business there any more. But even if my sons offered to carry out the task when the time comes (and it will), I would say no. No, I would rather have my ashes scattered in the land of the Ngunnawal, on the petal-coated lawn beneath which my Clea is buried.

Still, I do hope that my boys will travel to Spain, and that they have a great time, or even move there for good if they wish to do that when they are older. They’ll be able to do that if they wish. They could even climb Penyagolosa, and admire the views. It’ll be their choice. But there will be no need for them to take my ashes over there, to a place with whose people I no longer feel a truly meaningful attachment. Another part of me died over the months and years after 29 September 2009, and it cannot be resuscitated.

Call that a radical shift? Yes. Is it justified? You betcha!

Strawberries

Our family moved to the house where we now live, in early December 2007. At the time there was a fairly big birdcage in the backyard, near the tool shed. Very close to it the previous owners had kept a small patch of strawberry plants.

We soon gave away the birdcage, and trying to emulate the one I used to look after in Yass, I decided to create a veggie patch where the birdcage had stood – the soil there was richer there, for obvious reasons. For the veggie patch to be of a decent size, I had to get rid of the strawberries. I spent a fair bit of time converting that area into a veggie patch that summer.

As a child I remember keeping a few strawberry plants for myself, and I would be incensed whenever my brother ate my strawberries. Before throwing away the strawberry plants, I asked the neighbours, who were not interested. Then I asked Clea if she would like to keep any. Yes, she said. Clea loved strawberries – she loved just about any kind of fruit, actually.

So I moved the plants to another area in the garden where nothing was growing then. It was (still is) a smallish corner, and at the time it was covered with some weathered mulch and nothing else. I dug up the soil as well as I could, and pretty soon we had a few strawberry plants growing; we even managed to eat a few strawberries – just a handful – later that summer.

In 2008 Canberra was in drought, like most of Australia, so 2008 was not a great year for strawberries, but the few small ones we collected Clea would take to school for her fruit morning break. Like with any other fruit, home grown strawberries do not grow to be huge like the supermarket ones; but they are definitely tastier.

In 2009 I decided to give the strawberries a good boost and applied a generous layer of Moo Poo to them (Moo Poo? – yes, that’s the brand name of the fertiliser!). Some good rains that year – I remember seeing full dams everywhere that October day when we were finally able to return home from Samoa – produced a bumper crop. But Clea was not here with us to eat them.

Clea’s strawberries have kind of gone wild all over the place. These days they grow by the veggie patch (which is rather neglected, I must admit); they also grow beneath some rose bushes on the western side, and they now have invaded part of the terraced garden at the northern side. Recent rains have helped the plants produce wonderful blooms, and the coffee and tea dregs we pour on them seem to give them some extra strength, without resorting to Moo Poo.

One of the sonnets I wrote in late 2010 began like this:

Shall I imagine an infinite field

of strawberries for you, …

Amid an endless field of strawberries – that’s where I would have wished Clea to be then. Yet I knew she was gone forever. Depending on the day, my wish (not a hope… What on earth is hope? What is it for?) may take one form or another, but in actual fact, it never materialises. But let Clea’s strawberries grow, let the plants take over the whole garden if they wish to do so.

Clea’s brothers will soon be eating all those strawberries she cannot eat. As for me, if I were able to share one last handful of these home grown strawberries with her, the last one, something in this new life I have to live would make sense, somehow.

I spy with my little eye...

Clea’s paternal grandmother, her iaia, has been to Australia three times. The first time was in late 1996, soon after I came to live in the ‘lucky country’. (I see a great deal of irony in that moniker for Australia. Do you see it, too?).

My mother made the drawing above, in return for a drawing Clea made of her family, and which I duly mailed to her. It’s a silly yet affectionate drawing; it was inspired by a photograph of the children at Christmas. Clea was wearing the typical reindeer antlers and her siblings had red caps on. The drawing has been on the fridge door for a long time, held in place by a fridge magnet.

My mother's second visit took place a year after Clea was born, in early 2004 —we actually travelled to Singapore to meet her halfway. That helped her split her long trip from Europe in two stages. For a few days I walked Clea around Singapore in a very comfortable baby backpack we had bought for her. From up there she was able to see a lot of the world, and she was of course admired and talked to by lots of people in Singapore. Asian people love children, as you know. She was a little princess, a starlet everybody smiled to.

The third and last time was in late 2008. My mum flew without any overnight stops to Sydney; I drove to pick her up on a Thursday night; Clea had the last day of the school term off because she wanted to come along on the three-hour drive; there would be at least a one-hour wait and then another three hours back to the ACT. We would probably go to sleep at around 3 am —which we did— but she did not mind.

I would like to share a memory of that first hour of driving, between Canberra and Goulburn. We set out after dinner, just as the sun was starting to set. Clea and I spent almost a whole hour playing the Spanish version of ‘I spy with my little eye…’ (veo, veo). Eventually it became a little difficult to play the game; it is not so much fun when you start repeating items! Apart from passing trucks and cars headlights, there was hardly anything else you could see.

At some point, when it was my turn, I began with my “veo, veo…”. Sitting at the back, excited about this night trip to the big city airport, Clea asked: “¿Qué ves, Papá?”. I paused for dramatic effect and then blurted out, feigning shock: “NOTHING! I CAN SEE NOTHING! It’s too dark!”

Clea cracked out laughing. She thought it was a hilarious response to the game, and I guess my contrived surprise added to her hilarity. Eventually we reached Sydney Airport, picked up Iaia Marisol and her luggage, and drove back to Canberra.

While my mum was here in Australia, we did lots of walks around the nearby lake. One afternoon we stopped at a park where the children could play. Suddenly big dark clouds were gathering to the west, and I realised a big storm was on its way.

We all got caught by the heavy rain; we were drenched to the bone by the time we got home. We rushed as much as we were able to when we got closer to home, but Clea stayed with her Iaia, who did not know her way home and who could not run or walk too fast. It goes to show how much she cared for her own family.

I don't expect my mother to visit again. In fact, I would rather she did not come over. I would rather not take her to see Clea's grave. I would rather she did not have to see what a sad person his son is: the grieving father.

I have often been told to hold on to hope, whatever that might mean. Yet like that night on the Federal Highway, I see nothing. Unlike then, though, I'm not trying to make anyone laugh.

Peladillas

In May 2009 I went to Spain for a brief visit, and among a few other things, I brought peladillas home. Peladillas [literally, little baldies] are sugar-coated almonds, and are still extremely popular in Spain, of course. Despite knowing that nuts are not allowed at school, Clea was so insistent that she should take a pair of them in her lunch box that I made her promise she would not share them with anyone. I can very well imagine her showing them off and explaining to her friends about the Spanish origin of the lollies she was eating, and carefully pronouncing peladillas for their benefit.

Lollies and children go together. Their faces light up when they see the sweet treats. In our house, the Easter chocolate egg-hunt used to be an incredibly exciting event, both in Yass and in Canberra.

Clea tasted chewing gum only once in her life. It happened on Lalomanu Beach (Samoa), in the late afternoon of September 28, 2009, the last day Clea lived to see the sun set. And what a sunset that was! Beautiful beyond description. Having spent almost all the afternoon on the beach, we took a walk towards the village; it was hot, so we were looking for an ice cream shop; no ice cream was to be found (it is a difficult product to sell in a country where blackouts are normal).

Not far from the beach and the resorts, we found a shop by the road, just around the bend, right on the seashore. We bought something: a few lollies and potato chips, probably (my memory might be failing me on these details). The lady who ran the shop chatted to us and then she insisted on giving the children some chewing gum. The children had never tasted chewing gum before, so we explained to them that it was not to be eaten, but chewed on and on until all flavour was gone, and then wrapped back and disposed of properly.

Now, I prepare Clea’s brothers’ lunch daily; sandwiches, rice crackers, cheese, fruit, dried fruit… and sometimes, more often than not, I will include one sweet treat, which I call the ‘surprise’. After all, I keep telling myself, why shouldn't they be allowed to enjoy all those lollies their sister will never be able to eat?

I fondly remember how special my grandparents would make me feel as a kid when I was given sweet treats. My maternal grandparents owned a groceries shop in the working-class barrio where I grew up, and invariably I would be given the choice of picking one thing to eat, every time I went there. They did not sell lollies, however, but those sugar-coated donuts or chocolate-filled croissants were amongst my faves.

On the morning of 29 September, that shop on the Main South Coast Road in Lalomanu was wiped out in seconds, just like everything else on the beach. Unlike the resorts on the beach, it was not rebuilt. These days, only the remains of the cement floor tell the visitor that there used to be a small building there. The rusty remnants of a crushed car nearby could prompt your imagination (if you tried) to create a mental picture of the terror of those minutes. I don’t know whether the lady who gave Clea her first and only chewing gum survived or died.

I wish we could all have a never-ending supply of peladillas, and so bring a smile to a few friendly faces.

Sounds

Since I quit my full-time job (for reasons I shall not discuss here) and decided to work from home, I have been spending a lot more time on my own, but have also been able to observe what the two children, two boys, I have left, do. What I find interesting is the extremely different sounds I now find myself listening to. These are very different sounds from those we were all able to hear in this same house about three to four years ago, when we first moved to this northern suburb of the ACT.

And I don’t mean their voices. The difference is that boys enjoy playing war games: my twin boys like playing war games, too. Mind you, I hate the idea of war. So I secretly despaired when they were given toy guns for their 8^th birthday. Yet the twins are also imaginative (that’s a positive, yes?), so they are capable of making up soldiers, devising state-of-the-art weaponry and even building spaceships with their Lego blocks.

The sounds I can these days hear resemble those of fights, or of action movies as they see them on TV: powerful laser beam discharges, machine gun bursts, brutal car or plane crashes, or who knows exactly what it is that ignites their imagination. It is fantastic that they’re so imaginative, but the sounds they make while playing are of violence, of wanton destruction.

Now, don’t get me wrong: as a child I was exactly like that. I will not lay any claims to any sort of purity or a higher moral ground in that regard. To give an example of what I mean: even when we did not have any toy guns at home, my brother and I would construct guns with wooden pegs. We could shoot peg pieces at each other and drove our poor mum insane whenever she needed to hang out the clothes. So I still see there is fun in playing war games.

The boys’ 8^th birthday party was held at a place called Zone 3, where we made up two teams of 7 and then entered a dimly-lit maze toting laser guns that we had to use to annihilate the other team and score as many points as possible. I came second last, I think. I had never played this sort of game before, and frankly, it felt almost like fun for a while. What I did enjoy was to see their big excitement whenever they shot me; that I liked quite a lot more than the game itself.

Yet I will sit in my study of an afternoon and recall the times when there were gentler sounds, and the games played were of a different kind. They were games about putting up and opening a shop, for instance – and then I would get called to urgently go and ‘do my shopping’ there; I would be given some ‘money’ to spend, and it was fun to engage in discussions about the quality of their products! Or also other times when their whole afternoon would be spent on organising a fashion parade, and those two little boys obediently followed the parade manager’s highly creative instructions, sometimes in a rather shrill tone when her instructions were not duly observed.

Those gentle sounds children make when playing at home make the home, too. They are part of the familiar setting we get used to living in. The gentle flow of sounds we used to have here was suddenly snapped; it will never return. It's a good thing, though, that these warlike boys are also learning to play the piano.

My Own Family Sticker

You see them every-bloody-where, but they’re most prominent on the rear windscreens of people-movers and 4WDs. They depict happy families: dad, mum, eldest child, second child, sometimes third and even fourth child, dog, cat, goldfish: the works. All smiling faces.

I did a bit of a search on the web, but was unable (not totally unexpected) to find the sticker that describes my family. They don’t seem to have drawings for a very sad father or a grieving mum, not to mention the drawing of a plaque in the cemetery where the eldest daughter is buried. That does not sell too well, I suppose. So I guess we’re not within their targeted market segment, and somehow that feels kind of a relief. Honestly, it is such a banal concept, but of course everybody seems to fall for it.

If I were to make an accurate drawing of our family, I’d go for something this: try and picture a taciturn, sad dad who is regularly woken up too early and sits down to write in an effort to stop himself from crying his heart out; a desolate mum who chooses to punish herself at the gym so she does not have to think too hard; two boys who love each other but fight each other all the time because the gentle judge who would sort out things between them two is no longer there; these twin boys look indeed quite happy and healthy. Anyone who has seen them in action will say so, but I bet inside their minds they would rather be forgetting what happened to them and their sister; I bet they both see the future (the rest of their lives) in a totally different way to that their two parents see the rest of their lifetimes. One can foresee some serious conflicts down the path of years to come.

I’m quite certain such a figurative drawing is almost impossible for anyone to imagine. Too dreadful. Not nice. But what is probably worse, for some the reality such an imaginary drawing would represent appears to be almost unbearable to look at or to come anywhere near to.