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.

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.

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.

¡Andando!

About a month ago I had a car accident. Another driver called Anwar Kamal S. sped through the GIVE WAY sign at a roundabout and hit my Mazda 2 sideways. Luckily, I was not hurt. The car was written off, though. The accident temporarily revived some fleeting memories of feeling (seeing) my own body pushed, pulled and dragged by a force way beyond my control more than four years ago, in very different circumstances.

Over the next few days many different thoughts crossed my mind. I thought about Jason Carney and his best friend Alina, both of whom lost their lives after being broadsided by a drunk driver twelve years ago. I never knew Jason or Alina, but I feel sorry for them, for their senseless, absurd deaths, for the unbearable pain their parents were inflicted. I also thought the same could have happened to me – except it was at a roundabout (you have slow down even if just a little!) and in my case the driver (I firmly believe) was not drunk. Muslims (the vast majority of them at least) do not drink.

As days went by, I also thought about how the little car had been an integral part of our lives, Clea’s life included. Not that I feel any special attachment for the car itself, but rather for those indelible memories I cherish more and more as I get older.

The Mazda was the car in which Clea and I drove together to Sydney Airport one unforgettable night in September 2008. It was also the car where Clea and I shared those morning conversations every parent loves to have on the way to school. I reminisced about her first year of schooling, when her brothers went with their mother to a Childcare Centre in a different part of town, while Clea would jump in the car with her school bag, so full of vitality, so keen to learn.

It was the car whose engine I often had to turn on five minutes before leaving because the frost would make it impossible to drive off to school straightaway. I thought about Clea’s reply whenever I locked the home door and said ‘¡Andando!’ (literally, ‘walking’, but it’s one very idiomatic way of saying ‘Let’s get going!’). Although she already knew what it meant, Clea invariably said: ‘Andando no, ¡en coche!’

I have also been thinking that, regrettably, somewhere, there will be parents who will return home after the summer holidays without their child. Nothing can prepare us for the loss of our child. It is utterly unthinkable to consider that our child may predecease us. Nothing can bring them back. All we can do is to face up bravely to a new day every day. And that does feel too much sometimes.

¡Andando!

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.

Snow

Snow has again covered the Brindabellas. Overnight, a white blanket had fallen on the hills and created a marvellous sight for Sunday morning. It will not stay there long. When snow makes its rare appearance on the smallish hills that surround Canberra, it is never a lengthy stay. It hasn't been a cold winter at all, and before we know it, it will be over. The chill in the wind will soon be the only reminder of the presence of the snow to the south-west.

I vividly remember the few times my parents would drive us outside the city of Valencia to see the snow. It was a rare phenomenon, too. But as a child I was mesmerised by it: there was something magical about so much whiteness. By the road, however, snow would become slushy and dirty; you had to walk away from the car park to see big stretches of the cleanest white stuff. We never had proper snow gear, and invariably would get cold and feel miserable. These days I think I actually dislike the snow: I can’t ski, I don’t see myself trying to learn now, and I much prefer the company of a book by a warm radiator, with a hot cuppa nearby.

This photo is the first time Clea saw the snow. It was September 2008. After the solitary wintry blast of the year – for that’s what it has become, winter: one very cold weekend per year! – we drove to the Brindabellas and parked the car near the Corin Forest Mountain Retreat. There would be another trip to the Selwyn Snowfields for a one-day snow ‘treat’. Quite uneventful, really.

There wasn't much snow on the ground, but it was enough to make a few snowballs and throw them at each other. Clea enjoyed the battles with her brothers and took aim at her parents. Laughing. Giggling. Shrieking with joy. Shocked when a snowball hit her near too close to her face. Feeling the cold in her hands. She looked beautiful, pure, as beautiful and pure as snow. My beautiful babita. I miss you, mi amor.

Blueback

We like to talk about books at home. Even if we do not actively discourage watching TV, it is our firm belief that a book tells you a lot more than any movie or TV series can. It is all about how you read, actively engaging your imagination and allowing your imagination to be engaged, in ways that are far more rewarding than the passive intake TV usually means.

The other night, the boys were discussing the Lockie Leonard TV series. They were both quite surprised when they were told that Lockie Leonard is actually based on a series of books by an Australian author, Tim Winton (who happens to be one of my favourite Australian novelists, by the way). They both think the Lockie Leonard TV series is quite cool; I explained to them that while the TV episodes are very funny, the books are even more.

That brought to my mind another book by Tim Winton, Blueback. Blueback is a story about a young boy, who meets a giant blue groper while diving near his home on the western coast of Australia. The boy will grow up developing a sense of affection and protection for the fish, and in adulthood he becomes a marine biologist.

I mentioned Clea had once begun reading the book, which she stopped reading because it was way too hard for her level. I also said how sad it is that she was unable to finish it. So sad, so very unfair. Her brothers’ response was one that makes me very proud of them. They are not afraid to express their emotions. They are learning to be real, genuine, and that makes me feel good, despite being sad.

I will one day reread Blueback. And I will be thinking of my daughter, I will be wishing she could read it herself. At 10 years of age, it would certainly be at her reading level now.

Lily and Huff

Perhaps I have imagined this: during the (occasionally unendurably) long hours I spend home alone I have recently walked into Clea’s bedroom; I have sat there and have grabbed some of her books from the bookshelf.

Maybe I have started reading out this story, Lily Ladybird, once more, the way I used to read it out to her when she was a toddler, she sitting on my knees after her bath, smelling clean and fresh and so, so very full of life. Maybe I have read it again translating the story into Spanish, the way I used to read it to her, even though the book is written in English.

It is just possible that I have been unable to finish it, but I remember it well. It tells the story of a good little ladybird who lived in an enchanted garden. One day she lands on an old branch that happens to be the nose of very horrible witch, who gets very cranky with Lily and casts a spell on her. “No longer will you be good and kind and helpful!” says the witch with an ominously wicked, croaky, throaty voice, and then lets out the most horrible laughter a daddy pretending to be a witch can put on.

Lily’s nose gets all twisted and crooked, and she starts behaving really badly. Her poor mum cries. Her friends stay away from her… Where was her father, by the way? He never gets a mention in the story… But Lily makes new friends: a hideous spider, Dolly, and a very slimy toad, Tony. And then one night they steal a magic wand from a fairy, and start mucking around… and suddenly, the spider turns into a carrot, and the toad turns into a bunny! That'll teach them a lesson! So the fairy sees that Lily is actually good-natured but she’s under the malignant spell of the witch, and so she turns her back into her good old self.

Perhaps I have had to put Lily Ladybird down. It is just possible that I could not go beyond the wicked bout of laughter Clea loved to hear. That childhood excitement of being suddenly given a little fright…

Maybe I have then taken in my hands this other very old book, called Huff the Hedgehog. It actually belongs to Clea’s mum. Her name is still handwritten on the cover. A very very old Christmas present.  Huff is a very hungry hedgehog, who goes around looking for food. He repeats his little rhymed self-introduction to every animal he comes across. I remember that when Clea first asked me to read this book, I had of course to come up with a rhymed version in Spanish. I did, and I suspect it was probably nearly as good as the original:

“Soy Huff el puercoespín,

todavía no he cenado,

si no como pronto,

voy a quedarme muy delgado."

Every time Huff finds something edible, a farm animal comes up and tells him that it’s their food Huff is taking. He walks away every time, hungry and disconsolate, knowing that if he does not get his dinner, he'll “get thinner and thinner”. And eventually he meets a lovely blonde girl who gives him a bowl of bread and milk. Huff loves it.

Maybe someone was listening, maybe not. Perhaps tears welled up and then they were falling down my cheeks, and desperation again filled my mind. It is just possible that I had to close the books and put them away.

I think maybe Huff and Lily felt lonely, perhaps even a little sad, when I tried to read their stories.

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.

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.

The Magpie

Spring in Canberra can be a beautiful time of year: flowers are blooming everywhere, the grass is greener than ever, and daytime temperatures are usually mild and pleasant. Yet springtime is also the magpie swooping season. Australian magpies are very curious, inquisitive birds. They are known to approach people with some confidence and easily accept a feed, but they are also extraordinarily territorial animals; so much, that for as long as their little ones remain in the nest, they will harass anyone who approaches.

I was walking back from school the other morning, reading a book as is my custom, when I was suddenly attacked from behind. The magpie gave me a bit of a fright; my sunglasses fell to the ground. Much more hassled was a girl who was riding her bike to school; she eventually had to dismount because the magpie would not stop attacking her.

It feels as if it were only last year when Clea came running into her grandparents’ house, crying and holding her head. She had been playing outside, in the paddocks near the hay shed, when a magpie swooped down from one of the old gum trees on the farm and scratched her, drawing a little blood. She was very upset. I recorded the episode in a poem I wrote more than a year ago, ‘Whisper Her Name in the Wind’.

The magpie was simply protecting their little ones, I tried to explain, and did not mean to hurt. All animals have developed a sense of protection in one way or another. It is in every parent’s nature and instinct to protect our little one. Like the magpie, I would have done anything to be able to protect my little one.

When you lose your little one, the world becomes meaningless, and perhaps it can regain some semblance of consequence and logic after a long time.

In the garage: A sonnet

In the garage

Tedious tasks bring these days brushes with sighs.

On each item a leaden shadow lurks

heavy, the air hints a frown as pain works

its ruthless certitude before his eyes.

Her pink bicycle, her scooter, her kite:

they’re but musings, shades of days masked by time

and sorrow, echoes of giggles, the rhyme

of memory; the grief he could recite.

Outside the winter rain pummels the pane.

The cruel void crunches and batters his heart;

a dense spectre of sadness hounds his brain.

Thus he retreats into this shrouded art.

The disguise beneath numb words keeps him sane.
For months ago her death tore him apart.

I wrote this sonnet in the early spring of 2010, and sent it to a local poetry competition; to the judges, it must have been a fairly unremarkable poem. And that’s fair enough, I must add.

With poetry, what some believe wonderful is rather unexceptional to others. Poetry is a very personal experience, for both the composer and the reader. At the time, I thought it was very fine poem: it tells a story – a father doing his everyday chores in the family garage – and describes the sort of thoughts and feelings grief prompts in the bereaved.

I still think this is quite an expressive sonnet. Poetry – or literature in general – affords me a space where I can express myself in words, rather than in tears. Tears are more visible, but they vanish once they stop flowing. Words remain, and may reach out to others in ways we do not fully comprehend.

The poem was inspired by the sight of Clea’s bicycle, abandoned in the garage. Only a Samoan girl, who happens to be from a village (Lepa) which is not far from where Clea drowned, has since ridden the bike. She was a member of the taekwondo team that visited Canberra two years ago; we invited them for a barbeque the night before they returned back to Apia. They all had a good time, playing table football (I beat them all, of course!).

Clea’s bike was a find. The bicycle had been left under a tree near outside a church where I used to park the car on my way to work. It wasn’t new, but Clea did not mind. Side wheels were duly attached to it for safety, and she was soon pedalling up and down the flat driveway of our home in Yass. Eventually she mastered the cycling and the little wheels were discarded.

Her scooter was a present she got from my mother during her visit in 2008. It had to be pink, of course. Clea was so excited about having her own scooter! It was something she truly enjoyed.

We used to go for rides around the neighbourhood, on bikes and scooters. For a fairly long time after Clea’s death, we stopped doing that. Her bicycle remains in the garage. The tyres are flat. A thick film of dust is slowly gathering on the seat and the handlebar.

Someone said to my wife the other day that three years have gone fast. I was baffled. Well, I say, it’s all relative, isn’t it? For me, some days feel like an intolerable eternity. Talk about time passing fast...

The passage of time does not - it will not - bring our child back; time does not fill the void, nor does it attenuate the pain.

There is always the poetry, though.

The Force of Nature

This is one of the last photographs of Clea. Our own camera was of course lost in the 29 September 2009 tsunami; all the photographs we took while we were in Samoa – and there quite a few of them – were gone with the wall of water.

This photograph was taken at the top of the Telstra Tower in Black Mountain, on the 24^th of September 2009, less than a week before she died. Clea went on a school excursion that day; she was so excited! It was going to be her last day of school for the term – it ended up being her last day of school ever. The next day we drove to Sydney and boarded our flight to Apia.

On the plane, Clea was sitting next to me during landing. In those days, you had to cross the dateline to go to Samoa, so we arrived the day before at night time. The dim lights we were able to glimpse through the window were those of Apia: little shiny specks amid the immense blackness the ocean is at night. The plane appeared to be shaking a lot while we approached the runway, far more than I am used to, to be honest, so the landing felt kind of bumpy. Clea got a little scared until the plane touched down and ran the length of the tarmac.

For some reason, this image of Clea haunts my imagination in ways I cannot describe – nor would I like anyone to have to imagine. I see a vulnerable little girl, recoiling, holding on to her hat (which, actually, she lost that day!) and grimacing against the very strong, cold winds that swept Canberra that early spring day. I see the image of my daughter against the force of nature; I don’t think anyone could argue that, the impression you get on seeing the image is that she was not having fun as her teacher took the photograph – by the way, I have cropped it so that other students are not seen. Her jumper is zipped up tight; her hair is a real mess, hardly held in place by the pink hair band I now wear on my left wrist every day, wherever I go.

No, her facial expression definitely says that at this moment she was not enjoying being up there, at the top of the Telstra Tower.

For a few months after our return to Canberra, I had frequent nightmares, reliving the tsunami. Even now, nearly three years later, I occasionally may wake up with a start in the middle of the night, and it may take me a long time to settle again into a normal rhythm of sleep, if or when I do at all. Normally, I have no idea of what is it that woke me up. Yet something wakes me up. Believe me: it’s neither the carbon tax nor the prospect of another boatload of asylum seekers approaching the very remote islands to the north of the very remote northern coasts of Australia. Those are not things I would lose any sleep over.

It’s not as if I were consciously trying to keep memories of those horrifying moments. In fact, I wish I could forever forget the panic and the terror; if only I could erase those from my memory for good… But the truth is I cannot. Our imperfect brains: We forget what we want to remember, but what we would like to forget keeps coming back to haunt us.

This is not too dissimilar from the widespread notion that with time we, the grieving parents, have to somehow “get over” our child’s death. I’m sorry if I disappoint somebody: we just don’t. We never will. We just cannot “get over” it, because we will never be able to retrieve such a big chunk of our future. yes, it is their future that we have lost forever. How can one get over the fact that your child’s future (which is also yours) suddenly snaps and then is gone? Does anybody know?

I do know, however, that my daughter Clea died a terrible death. She perished under the unstoppable violence of nature, the victim of an incredibly powerful, relentless natural force. It is almost impossible to comprehend – and even for us, who were there and survived, it seems unreal now.

After the Japanese tsunami happened more than a year ago, for a while I kind of expected people would ask me about it. For the first time in human history, a tsunami was broadcast live on TV. It was possible for people to gain a better understanding of what it is like to be there, so vulnerable, so small under the colossal force of nature.

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.

Learning

For the last five months I have been a Team Manager, helping the Coach of the Auskick team my two sons belong to. I have witnessed and admired this man’s patience while training ten rather rowdy and often undisciplined boys. I wish I had just a mere 1% of the patience he has shown. I think all the players have learnt a lot from him.

A few months ago I began teaching Clea’s brothers to use a fork and a knife to cut their steak. Like most boys, they enjoy eating meat. It felt good to witness their first attempts to use a knife; you could sense in them some sort of achievement, their realisation that they could now divide a largish chunk of beef into smaller, more manageable pieces.

That sense of achievement is in other words the awareness of learning, and I’m sure every parent will agree that it’s a joyful, fantastic feeling, being there to witness it. It is something to relish; it becomes a memory to cherish, too.

There will be many other skills and aptitudes these young men will need to learn before they can fend for themselves. And it will be many years before their parents can feel confident enough that they can go and live their own lives. And even then… who knows what the future may bring.

This brings me to the realisation that we all need to learn all the time. If we don’t, we become stagnant, stationary, helplessly fixed on what we already know.

I am learning, too. For two years and eleven months now I have been learning to live without my daughter Clea. I’m still learning, day after day. I often feel I will never stop learning, because this is a never-ending process. As I wake up every morning, as I (sometimes reluctantly) immerse myself into a state of consciousness, a bitter realisation dawns on me: yet another day of this learning has begun.

What is it like, you may ask yourself. Well, some days you feel you have the energy and the will to learn; other days, you feel you don’t have any energy at all, let alone the will, so you could easily give everything up, because you feel trapped in a place and time where you don’t really want to be. You would want this loathsome reality to shatter, so you could start anew.

It is a fraught process. I guess it cannot be easy for most people to understand what I mean — unless they are in an analogous position. And I do not mean the loss of a parent: I lost my father to heart disease when I was 25; he was 58. It is not comparable. The loss of a loved one is always a terrible experience, but I believe losing your child takes you to a different dimension. It is a dimension most people would not even wish to contemplate in their own lives. That is, of course, quite understandable.

I am learning to live a life I did not choose to live. I see it is as a burden I have to carry; I have accepted the fact that I have to learn, one day at a time.

Yes: I am learning to live without my daughter. I do know I can be a difficult person to be with, to talk to, even to look in the eye. This is not what I thought I’d be doing in 2012; this was not the life I had planned to live when I would turn 48. Learning is what I’m most likely to be doing in 2013, 2014, 2015, etc.

I’m making the effort to learn something that probably I will never learn completely. It’s quite difficult; still, I’m trying to be patient with my own learning self. After all, what other choice do I have?

The Little Artist

Clea Salavert, Mother and Daughter Sitting on a Rock (scanned copy of lost original, circa 2006)

It is just a drawing by a three-year old. There is nothing special about it, except that when I first saw it and I asked Clea what it was, the explanation she gave made a lot of sense to me. Once we grow older, we cannot see the world through the eyes of child anymore, so when — or if — we come across a representation of the world as a child sees it, and we are somehow able to trace the interpretation they have made of the world around them, I feel it is a nice surprise.

Of course, at the time I never thought I would end up treasuring this picture the way I do now. It somehow became stuck to the fridge door and stayed there for many years. It is still there, reminding us daily of the little artist she could have been when we fetch the milk for breakfast. The original, of course, was destroyed: it ended up in the recycling bin, like all the many other drawings Clea would make in her early years. I guess I should be glad that one day I took it to work and scanned it. I used Photoshop to add the title Clea had given it, and her name.

It was really meant to be kind of a joke: I would hang her masterpiece on the wall and admire it with a feigned critical eye, making teasing comments such as ‘the evident masterful combination of light, shade and colour’, or ‘the expert control of the line where the absence of light would make it invisible’; nonsense of that kind she giggled to. Now, I cannot remember exactly when she made it, but you might wish to consider that this is one of the few ways of escape we, the grieving parents, have at our disposal: to fictionalise their past, since we have not been given the chance to create a record of their future.

Clea enjoyed all make-believe games. She loved impersonations, and in her rather original games she loved to pretend she was someone else. I wish I were someone else, too, so I could fictionalise a present and a future that did not include her absence as the overwhelming feature.

Mirages

Photo by Tom Ruen. Lake Superior, Minnesota

I may have said elsewhere that Clea and her two siblings should really be considered triplets. They are so, to the extent that they were all conceived in vitro on the very same day. Clea was born alone in 2003; about eighteen months later her twin brothers were born at the same hospital where she had been born: the public ward of the Calvary Hospital.

One of the things this means is that they obviously share a lot of characteristics, despite being eighteen months apart and her being the sole female. More than two years after she was gone forever from our lives, I have often been able (but always all too briefly) to see Clea, and I do not mean in my dreams (in which I still see her and feel her, only to wake up feeling destroyed – but that’s another story, if you’ll excuse the cliché). What I mean by this is that I have often seen her mannerisms in her brothers’ mannerisms; I have often seen her smile in her brother’s smiles; I have often seen some facial expressions that were her own, beyond any doubt, in her brothers’ facial expressions.

For the father of a dead child, this is both beautiful and terrible. Whenever this happens, I feel on the one hand that I am able to get an almost true glimpse of my daughter. It is as if she became suddenly alive right in front of my eyes. I feel a strange sense of elation mixed with the most profound sadness. It is a bittersweet feeling; it is of course disconcerting; it is also upsetting.

A few days after 29 September 2009 I received an email that upset me very deeply; it came from a relative I had not seen or heard from for over 20 years. In his message, the researcher and physiologist (by profession) sent his condolences (a sorry typo included! Pardon the pun) and more or less advised us not to worry, because we “would see her again”.

Coming from a scientist, the blatantly religious notion almost infuriated me. Because even if it were true (human resurrection is, to the best of our knowledge, impossible; and as I have said elsewhere, I don’t believe there is an afterlife), it would never make up for the suffering, for this never-ending pain, for the unbearable loss.

I look a lot like my late father, I have been told many times. Photographs are really the best evidence of this, I guess. For many years after my father suddenly died of a heart attack in his sleep on the morning of 20 August 1989, I would often find my mum staring at me, seeing (I suppose) the man she had shared her life with in me.

Yes, I do see Clea in all the photographs we have; I see Clea in her siblings (her twins!); I see Clea in my dreams. Yet I know Clea is buried in the Gungahlin Cemetery. My sightings (so to speak) are mere visions, just that, mirages; and like all mirages, they vanish into thin air and leave you empty, broken, crying.