Deborah Forster

Outside this morning, magpies speak in curling tongues and the Little Ravens caw. Various dogs are positioned at gates to stop intruders with their incendiary yapping. Is the country quieter? It must be. Though maybe there are similarities, the ravens still sound sad when you’re deep in the damp of a winter’s day wherever. And some of these days feel so muffled with cloud that when I hear the cars move down a freeway, it  feels like a river of barges.

The winter solstice has arrived. It comes in fast because the days are short. Saturday morning was around a chilly four degrees here. Top temperature was forecast to be about 14 degrees. The solstice came in at 9 hours and 32 minutes.  It’s not the coldest day, we still have that to look forward to. Still, last night there was a touch of pink in the sky and the big trees were docile.

Our new garden is a bog, the dullness of puddles has taken it and sunken it into wet grass, but there are three foxgloves shooting up and two pink dogwoods and a crab-apple all doing well. So come on spring!

I’ve unpacked all my books and re-ordered them as they used to be, and the room looks better. The books feel at home. They like to be upright; it’s just a feeling I have about them, the people they hold and those who wrote them.

I’ve heard the new owners have started digging up the garden at the old house. I tell myself to be the lion about this, brave and even savage. It helps. Longing is a waste. I got into the habit as a child after my grandparents died. But I found that it longing soon became heavy air, hard to breathe. Missing people is permanent.  Finally, I discovered reading, mostly under my bed and I took myself into it whenever I could. I still go to the reading cave though it’s a metaphor now, I’m a bit creaky for getting under beds. I tried knitting, to distract and relax. I can knit squares, but nothing else, it never worked for me, though it would have been nice. I’d have liked to make things for kids to be warm.

One of my grandsons, Johnny is four and refuses to be warm during the day. He wears his pyjamas at bedtime, but he won’t put warm clothes on during the day, just a long sleeve top and shorts. What do you do?  Just keep a jumper in the car, seems the simplest thing.

I think his aversion to long pants might have something to do with AFL football. I’m sure the little guys talk in the sandpit. He mentioned that he’d like to be Nick Daicos the other day and I asked, what about his brother, Josh, who is also very good.  ‘No, just Nick.’ he said. This led to a talk about how he heard about these young athletes (he doesn’t watch TV). He couldn’t remember. As Oscar Wilde once said, you’d better be yourself because everyone else is taken. Johhny sat under the table for a think about that.

Some sporty four-year-olds are always looking out for special athletes to worship. It’s what some do when they’re little.  His father loved Adam Gilchrist, the Australian wicketkeeper. Chris and both grandfathers and two of Johnny’s uncles go for Essendon, but with footy teams, the heart is in control, no one ever told my brothers and I who to go for, none of us took it  very seriously, probably because the poor teams usually lose and the Zen of that is calming. Dad barracked for North Melbourne because he spent some time growing up there, but he never suggested we go for them. He was oddly free range there. Hero worship must be part of Johnny’s feelings about Nick Daicos. Remember Jesaulenko? He exceeded teams. He was exulted and was a god.

And merch was only ever home knitted. When his dad was the same age, a neighbour lent us a Hawthorn jumper for Chris. He wore it in a photo and ripped it off immediately. He curses the picture and the itchy jumper. It was never the club for him.  Being a grandparent is different to being a parent.  I look at Johnny boy with goose pimples on his legs and wish I could warm him, but he doesn’t want that. I think my kids all turned out well, but they also had their eccentricities, (one was devoted to puffy sleeves for a long time). So, if you want to wear shorts in winter like a Queenslander, then you can. Don’t forget your thongs though.

The dog has just pooped on the floor again, third time this week. I think we are seeing some kind of decline here. As usual when these things happen, Alan is out. The dog is now in her bed, having learned the hard way to complete her toilette outside by sitting and barking in the cold for ten minutes. I’m wearing shoes anyway; you never know what can happen around here.