Things I Will Miss Part 1.

My Tiwi adolescents.

Absorbed in the unusual:

Pulling at the hairs on my arms – dark on light: Look!

Pulling at the hair on my head: Annaleee – wear it down! No – don’t cut it! It’s too long! Wear it up! Your hair is too messy! Your hair is beautiful!

Pulling at my earrings, my rings, my bracelets, my locket, my belt – to touch, to hear, to feel.

The constant snuggling up, leaning in, leaning on.

Cuddling with head on my shoulder as they scratch at the nits in their hair.

Rubbing at my tattoo while I’m trying to help them with their work: what I this? What does it say? Annaleee! You have tattoo! This your family? (No, but a great idea…)

Rubbing at the scars on my knuckles with gentleness despite scabbies-stiff hands.

Pinching my arms – for the muscle, for the fat, for the tattoo.

Teaching me how to “plaster” their huge, painful boils – giving me their legs, feet, armpits..

The way they feel everything so strongly – one minute so loving and happy, the next the whole world can fuck off – a little familiar..

Their awesome awesome dance moves – equally enthusiastic about pumping out some M.J or Crocodile moves as they move around class.

Paying no attention when I tell them off, instead telling me: Your eyes-why they like that? Annaleee! Your eyes are strange! Take those contacts out! (Threatening to poke me in the eye). Annaleee! You have spots in your eyes!

Sharing their pride – Annaleee! I caught a wallaby/turtle/fish..got Mangrove worms/my P’s!

Yelling yelling yelling: Too boring! Why? No! Yes! Annaleee! I feel weak!

Watching them grow from excruciating shyness, unable to answer a question- Nah, you’re right – to bursting out with ideas and confidence all over the classroom.

All demanding help at once.

What seems like a hundred footballs in the air all at once every time you’re outside.

Sneaking up and holding my hand as we walk to the canteen.

Giving me the high 5 grasp or the Tiwi shake as we cross paths.

Being able to tell them how clever/smart/wonderful they are.

Kimberley telling me: Annaleee! I have a story for you!

Pio who lightly punches my arm ‘cause he knows I’ll mock yell Ahhhhh! And he yells with me – a beautiful unison.

Mara telling me as she walks out the door: Love you!

All yelling with huge, booming, song voices and beautiful inflection: Annaleee! Nah, nothing…– just to be heard, just to be seen.

Which is what we all want, what we all need and what I will miss, the absolute thereness I have when I am with them, how much they make me exist.

And how much they let me love them.

My Meeting Place

This is here my meeting place-
It is different to my home.
The light is brighter
There it was soft
always on the verge- dawn and dusk.
At home we were lit by fire and voices,
by heart.
We spun stories and our lives,
we breathed cold air with rosie cheeks
and laughed and loved.
This is here my meeting place
of bright light and hot heat,
half truths
and you almost nearly know me.
Of heart and want,
of missing.
This here meeting place
tries to fill our gaps,
we push and pull to be-
to erase and re-fill,
it is friends and comfort,
meals and drinks and chat and arguments.
It is the place I can breathe and be

 but it is not home.

Ouch.

I woke up at 3 am this Sunday morning with my hand throbbing.

On investigation I found an impressive cut that has gone a little festy and had become a raised, red lump on the inside bottom of my right palm. I have no idea how I got it. There was no incident yesterday at the café or lying around like a lizard outside or at the swimming hole or during dinner last night to create a slight but fairly painful injury. I’m sure it wasn’t there when I went to bed.

One thoughtful and perhaps perceptive friend has suggested this may be the result of some serious wanking activity. If I have managed to wank to this degree in my sleep I am both impressed and horrified at myself. My sex life might be a little ordinary at the moment but that really is extreme! Before you jump to the predictable yet potentially apt conclusion that I was drunk and managed to do it without noticing I’d like to point out that that while I did have a very enjoyable evening with friends and fell in love with a few glasses of wine I was certainly not pissed – a little pissy maybe but I am certain I would remember slicing my hand open. It’s sore enough that I should remember when and how it happened.

 Unlike Thursday night when during the first of my Australian farewells to a beautiful friend we decided it would be a fabulous idea to drink a bottle of wine each so that on Friday we felt hateful and an inclination never to socialize with each other again. That morning I woke up with a sore spot on my stomach, which is now turning into a fairly unsexy bruise. However unlike this morning, Friday morning I was not surprised. I had indeed been wonderfully pissed and suspect there was some kind of naked running into furniture during the middle of the night in a desperate effort to get water or pee. I don’t remember but this may have (has) happened before. It is an ongoing issue of ridiculous injuries.

My ex thought I should write a book on the considerable amount of ridiculous injuries I have sustained. Although he has caused me some significant injuries himself they are on the whole emotional and not that ridiculous or funny at all so they won’t be included in the book. And perhaps a whole book on ridiculous injuries could get a little tedious (and considering quite a few happen when pissed I can’t remember enough for a book anyway) so a Sunday blog session will have to do.

 The book idea was inspired fairly early in our ex-relationship. On our honeymoon I had to go to a Physio to help me walk again after I had crippled myself with a foot injury. There was a decent degree of embarrassment when he asked how I had done it and I told him it was from sitting in the car. He agreed this was an unusual way to cripple yourself to the point of not being able to walk unassisted. I’d like to blame the ex for the long hours of sitting as a passenger as he got so carsick I wasn’t allowed to drive. So I spent the long hours sitting retardedly with one foot under me and had managed to get some tendons or something tangled up so he was able to sort it our fairly quickly. I wish he was here now because I seem to have done it again. Not a learner from mistakes but no one who knows me will be at all surprised about that..

 Not long after I had to embarrass myself again in front of a physio by admitting that I’d hurt my back from Daggy Dancing. My wonderful friend Dee and I had perfected an excellent routine that consisted of getting rip roaring drunk and then busting out moves based on Elaine from Seinfield and Kath and Kel from Kath and Kim fame. Our deliberate, jerky, contorted, hideously bad dance moves combined with dead pan faces proved entertaining for most of the crowd lucky enough to witness two girls looking like they were being poked with cattle prods while having ants in their vaginas. It was fairly rigorous – and entirely spastic – but before our careers could take off with an audition on X Factor a particularly enthusiastic Elaine inspired side-up-out kick tweaked something it shouldn’t have. Clearly I either hadn’t had enough to drink or hadn’t warmed up sufficiently but my Daggy Dancing days were over. Dee, as we all know, is still busting out DD moves all over the world to much acclaim.

 There have been other embarrassing confessions to masseurs, chiropractors, doctors, even a dentist in Guatemala but they are for another day – or perhaps a book. Suffice it to say it is lucky I have a deep love of the ridiculous because it’s up and slapping me in the face regularly. My life as an Ionesco absurdist play ☺