An Easter Murmuration
An Easter murmuration of starlings, darkly swerving ribbons of birds in a stuttering sky considering rain. By now we can eat no more chocolate, we have watched no television, played trivia tests and just talked and eaten and after we’re sure the kids are asleep, we place the eggs. Alan, who sits at the table tells everyone they’re doing it all wrong. I tell him to get stuffed. The golden eggs are distributed. In the morning it’s Alfie’s seventh birthday and his parents decorate the house with dragons. We have a chocolate birthday cake for Alf.
The two babies are Tess and Ned. Tess, at three months, is wondrously beautiful but hates the car passionately and shows this with her tiny fairylike tears falling with real feeling. And then there’s Ned. At fourteen months, dear Ned has two small teeth on his bottom gum. He’s now coming into his own like a small owl roaming around collecting things, tennis balls, small plastic dragons and a cricket bat he drags after him. He’s covered in bumps and bruises from his escapades, usually because he follows the others aged between seven and three and fully expects to do what they do. When he’s denied from climbing under the bunks with them, he lies on the floor, rigid with anger. I pick him up and he’s like a plank and he only sees sense when he gets to his mum. I had a number three baby boy, and he was similarly robust. And still is. I see much of his uncle in Ned.
The others are individuals, also beautiful but in possession of that magic ingredient: self-will, which makes humans rise as baking powder makes cakes rise. We gave Alfie a children’s encyclopedia, a throwback to one my father bought for us on a time payment scheme. They came once a month, and we kids loved them more than life itself. They were Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, dark red and leather-like, and you could find everything out IN THE WORLD. Talk about magic. Alfie perhaps was daunted by a book with so many answers, I guess they can be a bit much.
The Easter egg hunt this year was thrilling, there were bunny footprints everywhere. But as with all things, the quest is the thing. You can get sick of chocolate. Then, if you look up, you might discover a more wonderful thing. We came across a blue-tongued lizard, fat and smooth and tattooed basking in the sun, like she was at some fancy resort. And then we spoiled it by getting too close and she opened her eye and then she was gone. We put a home-made wind chime near her spot to remember her. She was named Elsa, we decided. In other critter news, the front door spider (Victor Hugo because of his huge collection of mummified treats – Les Misérables) now lives in the wood heap, so that’s something to think about on a cold dark night when you’re after a bit of wood.
Maisy (my dog) and I go walking while I listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan in the ear pods. I’m a late convert to SRV and the Blues and he keeps me sane. We go by many people all of whom say ‘good morning’. So nice. We walk up a couple of hills, parts of the path strewn with white gum blossom straight out of May Gibbs. Cockatoos shriek past and we see ducks landing with V-shapes following them and then fish jumping in the moist air. This country is beautiful beyond thought.
Most nights I don’t sleep, so I listen a lot, but there’s not much noise. Last night I ate an apple on the deck and watched the half-moon and the stars like crushed diamonds. Mozzies kept me company.
In the morning, we drive back and I think of all the things we did in three days. All the music we played and the books we read to the children of the clan. And how people have done this for years. Holidays would have been few, but Easter could be counted upon even if you weren’t religious, our ancestors would have seen the swerving birds and thought about them and the way the birds stay with each other. It makes me think of maths, and not much else does. The palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould said he believed there would have been many people of equal talent to Einstein living and dying in cotton fields and sweat shops. So many never had a chance.
We drive back with music, with Pink Floyd and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Van Morrison and Dylan and Joni and think of how the music has lasted way better than us.
