Homecoming

I’ve been home twice since I’ve been here. Which, at the time this sentence was written (that’s not to speak for the rest of this blog), was two days short of a month ago. It doesn’t seem that long. It’s very hard for me to remember it for some reason. It all blurs, tiny and smudged in the background, all out of order. I have to squint my mind’s eye to see it, and it hurts my head.

My notes tell me that first I booked tickets. This seems like a logical thing to do. And indeed I did. I was impressed that the trip, return, only costs $14, and even with the two lots of $5.80 for travelling into and out of the city, it only comes to $25.60. Which isn’t half bad considering the trip covers about 400km; imagine what the petrol would cost!

I took my big case. Both times. I have trouble distinguishing the events of each trip.

On my first trip up they were ripping up the sleepers on my part of the train line. So we (my grandmother and I) had to drive further down the line to get a train. On the second trip up, the engine that was supposed to pull the carriages was broken and a new one had to be fetched from the rail yard. It then departed half an hour late. On the second trip back they replaced all the trains with busses, due to more sleeper replacement works on the inbound line. My travel has been far from event free.

It only crossed my mind once that this was my first major journey alone. I thought of all the awful things that had been instilled in my mind by my mother about the horror of life and cities. And thinking on that; me, a little girl, with a huge case on a strange train, it seemed like it had all come too soon. But I had called upon these sermons before my own experiences. This is one of the greatest psychological re-adjustments I am undergoing. What a sheltered life I have allowed myself to live, or been made to endure, in some respects. The only places I ever went on my own, up until last year, was the toilet and school. So that’s exaggerating a little bit, there was the odd friend’s toilet.

So this trip felt pretty right actually. The only way that it didn’t feel right was in the way that it didn’t feel right. There are kids who have made transatlantic journeys at a younger age than I first was allowed out of my mother’s sight in a supermarket. And no, that is not an expression. A boy in my English Language class took the plane, on his own, back from England to Australia at age 7. I was at least 10 before I was left to my own devices in a store. And I really ballsed that up too.

So here I was, sitting upright and alert on this train, taking in the new sights and smells. I love travelling by train. It’s so much better than anything else. Smooth ride, relatively fast, no traffic, you don’t have to drive, more leg-room than you can poke a stick at, food, toilets, air-conditioning and heating. You can’t get much better than that. I love the scene of the city, the restored Victorian terrace houses, the huge flats, the old cracked and dusty factories. I got to see that unforgettable skyline that I never thought I would see again, on the bus that one time. I felt some more of the old magic coming back to me.

But that grand feeling of bravery, adventure and self-important independence at making this trip, was completely crushed by the fact that I knew it was actually pathetic for this to be a big deal to someone of my age and stature. Underscored by the fact that there was this kid across from me, who would have been 11 at best, with a similarly big case, sitting, slumped, lounging around over his case and the chair; asleep. Like he had been on a very long and understandably tiring journey, but it was the most normal thing in the world. It was so striking to me at that moment, the juxtaposition of it all; that I surreptitiously took this photo.

I think the scene is especially emphasised by the great white expanse of the carriage window.

I spent a lot of time taking in the aesthetics. Especially on the bus trip.

‘So this is their coach service is it?’ I remember thinking with inflated sense of occasion in my head. ‘The seats in the trains push your head down with overbearing rests and the ones in the buses lean back at a precarious angle becoming a lazy youth. The window frame in front of me has these strange curved and sloping grooves in it. One starts looking for something that rests in those grooves. Except they’re upside down. Two spaced at even thirds along the vertical frame; identical all the way along the bus; finished in fake white leather offset by charcoal grey in the wrinkles. Is this their idea of modern art? To brighten up the bus space? What are they? They seen reminiscent of an Oceanic totem pole. The top protuberance tempts you to graffiti in eyes on the side turning it into a large shapely nose. Which leaves the bottom one. Another nose? Or perhaps a gross and overhanging gut? Under which one would, in the spirit of graffiti, draw some large disproportionate genitals. Then, after further examination, you look over to the other passengers, and you discover that the source of your amusement for more than half an hour (including the typing) is merely a blind holder. Designed to hold the spring-loaded side blinds in place…

The emo in front of me peered at me with unveiled and mean curiosity just before; the girl in a likely pair of boy and girl, from a town with only 4 Goths, the other two of which one is female and the other gay, so it’s not a surprising pair either. She’s not sure why she’s looking at me. It might be that stand-offish competitive teenage sizing up, because she thinks we’re the same age, and hence rivals since I’m sitting 8 inches behind her boyfriend, but I’m at least 4 years older – and so much above that. It might be something much more benevolent, and I don’t doubt her capacity to think kind thoughts. Perhaps she likes something about the way I’m presented. My clothes or hair. But in a style unlike hers and without make up on – I doubt it. Maybe she recognises me from somewhere. I certainly know her. I know her underneath her new black and straightened hair, foundation and eyeliner. I know her from days when her hair was frizzy and brassy, her face fuller and spots had just begun to cover it. From days when she used to prance around the school yard pretending to be a horse and having power struggles with another girl I was similarly dimly aware of.

But her name has escaped me. Tamara? Alison? Another unexpected, vivid and intriguing reminder of primary school nonetheless…’ I concluded.

Being home was generally uneventful. The first time it felt like I was just back from an extended visit to grandmas’ and all was normal. The second was more like I was alternately visiting both. This third visit, coming up at Easter, will seem like I live here and am just visiting there.

Being home was profoundly comforting that first time, although there had been many days to take the raw pain of abandon away. I longed to sleep in my own bed. Although I had slept perfectly well down in Melbourne, this bed, at my mother’s, was my bed. But in all that I forgot small details like how I took the mattress with me when I moved. So I had to sleep the night on the uncomfortable scary air bed. There are so many things you forget about home after just a few days away. Like what the animals feel like, and the smell of the dawn air, the familiar patterns of it all. You also forget the ever present infestation of Labrador hair, the fact that none of the cats like me, and that my mother and I always fight. I had been so nervous, that from the things I had heard, I was liable to rip grandma’s throat out. I am pleased to report that this has not happened yet. In fact the only time we had a bit of a snipe was when my mother was there.

A few days before I moved, I got my nose pierced; and there’s as story in that too. Let’s hear it shall we?

I had it done in one of those Goth corner shops, with all the lighters, band t-shirts, spiky belts and bongs. This was not my preference; it was just the only place in town to do anything else but ears. So I get my mother, who was there for moral support, to ask this one eyed guy (and I hate to define him by that, but he did have only one eye) all the necessary questions, seeing as I have taken this opportunity to become uncharacteristically shy. I’m a little uneasy about the whole arrangement here and we take a minute outside before I decide ‘Fuck it, now or never’. We go inside and he explains how it all goes as I sit in the mini surgery, on the little bench. He shows me the stud, and the fine needle and the thing he puts in your nose to meet it. He draws the dot (with just an ordinary pen, tssk tssk), and I change it slightly. He wipes my nose with an alcohol swab, fretting that I don’t open my eyes or they will water. And while this is going on I realise that he thinks I’m some frail little girl (in addition to thinking I’m 14 mind you) who has brought their mother along in fear. I also can’t see what is happening there with my nose. He fiddles about with speculum looking instruments and then puts the thing in my nose, does something else, then the needle begins to descend through the flesh. I remember it not for the sharp pain (because of course there was a little of that) but for how long it took to get through, how thick the cartilage is, and how beyond and completely separate to the slight pain, I could feel the needle piercing through every fibre on its way. Then he popped the l-shaped stud into my nose before I could blink. Then he gave me a very serious look. My eye on the side of the piercing was understandably watering, but he looked worried. Then he told me about how to clean it and take care of it. I felt completely fine, and was intrigued by it rather than queasy. But then, the icing on the cake, after thinking I was 14, he never asks me how I feel, but instead turns to my mother and asks if I am the kind to faint. Brilliant.

Anyway, tangent over. So I was visiting my mother, with my pierced nose, about four to five days later. I took a shower, and just like the guy warned, it came out. I hooked it on the flannel washing my face, suddenly and forcefully, taking it completely out. There it was, only matter of days after being done, sitting on the flannel all tiny and strange, while my nose began to bleed down my face. The whole episode was exaggerated by the water, the fact couldn’t see what damage I’d done and the knowledge that I couldn’t just get out and fix it. I had to wash my body and shampoo and condition my hair before I could get out. As soon as I’ve done that, I come out into the lounge, with my towel on, quite worried on account of the blood, holding this impossibly small thing and trying to get some reassurance from my mother. She is asleep, conked out in her arm chair. I rouse her and relate the story and my worry in as few words as I can. She mumbles and gestures, telling me ‘Put tea tree on i’, w’ll be fine.’ Then nods back off. All the animals are asleep, all but one light is out, it’s my first week in a new home, my first visit back to my old one, I have just ripped out my piercing, there was blood, it hurts and is swollen, I am naked and soaked, and now in the effort of trying to put it back in the swollen and aggravated hole, I have caused 10 times the pain of having it done, and – all I wanted was for my mother to tell me that it was all going to be OK. And she couldn’t even do that for me. Not a kind word, not a look, not an ounce of care.

And I remember thinking, as the words slipped into my head, with intense hurt and heart breaking realisation ‘It’s like she’s not even my mother anymore.’

And so I began to cry. What a sentence! What a sentiment! That’s so awful it can’t be true. How cruel…

Later she woke up and I told her what had happened and how it had upset me. Turns out she didn’t even remember it, and she’d been sleep talking; but that didn’t stop her getting angry with me for waking her up, when she realised that’s what I had tried to do. Fancy interrupting her stupor for something as trivial as a bleeding hole in my nose. She cared even less when waking than when asleep.

I guess she did stop being my mother; in that sense, the moment she left me standing on the curb at grandma’s. She always says on the phone how I shouldn’t worry about her, and how she knows this is how it had to be – with my moving out and all. But in this message, because she says it as she does, I always get the feeling the she thinks I ‘moved out’ spitefully and I’m that glad to be rid of it. And truthfully, as a result of some of it, I am.

But she’ll never stop being my mother.