Unicorn Days
These days seem to spring forth from some secret box nature has been keeping for the right day, and here it is. The pin oaks are becoming amber rivers dipping against the impossible blue sky. The bougainvillea is the deep colour of purple wildness held in a pot. The dog is mooching around, sighing with oldness and sitting at the feet of the herbs in case there might be a bite to eat. There is not a thing to eat but the days are the gift for her anyway. Arches of red stretch across roads and there’s a shimmering gold cloud of a tree as a young couple pass, talking of the things that the young talk of. The corellas pass towing their sound as if it were whiteness.
Melbourne holds secrets to its chest like a card player, its restaurants and cafes, its people and then these big trees, planted so long ago in the eastern suburbs, beautiful at all times of the year. Anyone would want them. Cool in summer and bare in winter. More trees are surely some kind of answer to the problem of heat.
We’ve just planted three white Crepe Myrtles and named them Linda, Hilda and Chrystobel Myrtle. They’re white and fluffy with young flowers and their trunks when they grow will be silver and smooth. There’s something so absorbing about young trees, they hold all they will ever be in the same way humans do.
We had our three-year-old granddaughter for the night on Saturday. She’s a beautiful little girl, exactly like her mother was, dark blue eyes and dark curls. I read to her and then sat on the other bed for an hour while she went to sleep. She had warned that I was not to leave her. So I didn’t, the bed is surprisingly uncomfortable though and I was reading on my computer about a big spider that’s moved in down the beach. A Golden Orb spider with all her catches gruesomely displayed wrapped and tied and floating in the wind. I didn’t show these to Rosie, but I do wonder about moving the spider, she’s right in front of the door and not everyone is enthusiastic, though some are. One member of the family walked straight into the web, and didn’t recover for two days. The spider, maybe she could be called May, is as big as your hand, but apparently doesn’t have much of a taste for humans.
Anyway, as I was perusing spiders, Rosie dropped off to sleep and I went to bed soon after, I was so tired. Children are definitely for the young. I had been in hospital for the day before and I think I was still under the spell of the anaesthetic. Soon after I had dropped into the pit of sleep, (it seemed) the door opened, and Rosie was there saying she was scared, which doesn’t mean scared, it means I need company. All this was explained this in the morning. In the middle of the night Alan was also there, hair standing on end, saying ‘Is everything all right?’ Rosie got into bed at 3.45am and that was pretty much it for sleep. She’s a wriggly fish. Finally, I said, ‘come over here and have a hug’ and we dozed. Then she remembered, then she didn’t have ‘Bear-Bear; (who is a rabbit), so I stumped downstairs and found ‘Bear-Bear’ sitting on top of her bed waiting and took her back. At six am, she said, ‘I’m okay now Nan’ and went back to bed to play with small bunnies toys and cars. Alan gave her three bowls of choc pops for breakfast, and she was ready in her gum boots when her parents came.
Talking to grandchildren honestly about anything that occurs is like a window into the adult. I know what kind of craft room Hazie dreams of (highly organised with a place for pom-poms), Johnny wants a special kind of car but will slip his hand into yours at any time and is very affectionate and Rosie is transparently honest when something bothers her. She never wants to go home and when we go for a milkshake, she declares it the best drink ever. Alfie is now in grade one and taking refuge in books, but I see glimpses of him as a baby in his wide-open stare. I remember looking for bugs with him at the old house, lifting pots and finding millipedes and butcher boys and throwing breadcrumbs to the fish in the pond. I miss the little kid he was but soon he’ll be seven. School has a way of ironing kids out so that they are all much the same. Probably for the convenience of teachers. What a fallacy that is. We are all as similar and as different as flowers.
Hazie and I have been op-shopping and we found a little handbag with unicorn eyes. We got home and it started making noises, (it has a battery inside we discovered). Quite alarming while we were eating our sushi, the strange mooing of the head of a unicorn.