weather

The Magic

Spring, 2024

If I had looked at the forecast, I would have known there was a storm coming, but I could never have predicted its magic. At the end of the weekend, the sky crashing, flashing alight blue, pink, orange over and over. The closest thing to fireworks the four-year-old had ever seen. ‘Nature’s fireworks,’ I almost said, but decided to leave the noise-making to the world outside the darkened room for once, an inversion of the usual chaos of dinner and bedtime. We stood close, still, looking out to the west in astonishment at the intensity, the electricity of plain air.

The days leading up to the storm had been windy, sure, but not unbearable. Good laundry days, I called them. The onesies and tulle dresses billowed out then defied their own pegs. Tiny socks spread themselves about the garden, but at least it all dried. And a good laundry day is a good kite flying day.

We stuffed the nine-dollar Kmart kite into a pannier, rainbow tail flapping eagerly, and rode down to the reserve to set it free, let it tug us gently, let it let us tug it gently back.

The kids got bored long before I did —  ran to the playground with their dad — so I took the reins, allowing the kite to swoop and loop, watching it try to arc gracefully through the ground and falling short. Each crash my cue to wind the string up, haul it back in, but before I could pack it down completely the wind would grab it again and off it went, off I went letting out its lead with a click click click of the wrist. Our dance of pull and release. Every time: a crash, a gather, a gust, a yield.

At one point the wind blew hair across my face and when I cleared my view I thought the kite was a heart. Not the squashy bulging forms my daughter has learnt to draw on birthday cards, but a proper anatomically correct blood pumping organ. My own old blood pumper flying as free as one can when they’re tethered to the ground by the comforting weight of family, the constant calling of Mummy Mummy Mummy.

Or was it my own child pulling the cord to come, come but asking me to stay? Let out more string, it seemed to say, long enough to let me dance in the high air you’ll never reach but don’t let me go. Either way the kite remained at the mercy of my flicking wrist and the wind itself, until it was us — my kite-heart-child and I — co-conspirators putting the wind to task, daring it, forcing it to keep us aloft. The thunderstorm not yet visible on the horizon. The magic still to come.

In place

I’m digging beneath trellised nasturtium in the garden of someone new. Planting star jasmine in the sun as a rain cloud approaches, but it’s the other kind I long to breathe in. The kind of jasmine that gushes over fences, escapes rambling front gardens, permeates shared paths. I pick sprigs of it always, carry it until it wilts. It takes me places.

So much has happened and I wanted to tell you. I’m astounded at my capacity to forgive. I’ve opened my heart to the gently damaged people of this world over and over, let them project their hurt onto me. I get it, but I won’t do that anymore. They seek help or not, move back home as I work through, work through, work through. Soil under my fingernails and the smell of almost-rain.

But I wanted to say something about the visits home. The places where family live lives I couldn’t have predicted and I’ve decided to tell the truth now. Stop listening to that voice in my head that nags at me to speak aloud the words and just speak aloud the damn words. I’ve lived long hours in transit, just to reconnect.

It seems everything I’ve ever written has been a metaphor for clouds: looking down on them from planes, watching them roll in darkly from the east, trusting they’ll rain themselves empty or just move on. It’s always been about clouds. The way they look reflected on the water’s surface, distracting me from the reedy depths.

Seasons change and I let anniversaries pass through me like a southerly at first, but even the wind feels warmer when you look back. The red flag of that first betrayal wilts like picked jasmine, fades in the briefly sunlit garden of someone new.

Tuesday’s Poem

Those waterproof pants
haven’t seen much use
bought on another whirlwind trip
ferrying towards family surprises
old friends and the waves
rolled through us.

I roll myself through Royal Park
cross the tram tracks
follow the train
cycle past pale trees
reflecting back morning light, faint
eucalyptus smell of Here Now.

Warmth spreads
to gloved extremities
my angled reflection
in the Red Rooster window
turns to habit and blossom
blows gently over the schoolyard fence.