Mince pies

 

We used to think it was so hot: December in Hamilton. Funny to think of now, here in Sydney: it was probably only ever 28 or 29 degrees. One thing which remains is the stillness, there air never moved, so that the heat sat down on the town and stayed all day. Cloud seemed to sit just over the roofs of the houses across the park and never move, and when we caught the bus into town for Christmas shopping even the river seemed to have gone to sleep in the shadows under Whitiora bridge.

I recreated the cricket test matches of the summer on the long rectangle of the back lawn. We had a big solid timber bench seat and I would stand it on its side at one end, butting up against the stand of tall shrubs and conifers which marked the divide between our place and the neighbours. The middle timber of the bench was middle stump and I would aim for a spot a couple of inches to the left, just like Hadlee, drawing the imaginary batsmen forward so that when the ball flicked off the top edge of the bench one of the tall shrubs took a perfect catch at about second slip, and I could imagine the batsmen taking off his gloves and heading for the grandstand.

Dad's big vege garden marked the other end of the pitch, the bowling crease was an imaginary line from the fence to the clothesline half way across the lawn.

I bowled from all different angles, being Hadlee or Lance Cairns, sometimes off a few paces if I was John Bracewell the spinner. If I was Michael Holding the amazing West Indian quick I had to go down the side of the vege garden and scream in, dodging a couple of shrubs at the last minute to send another bouncer down.

Every year our Christmas followed the same quiet routine. About a week after school finished there would be the trip into town, to buy presents for each other. Then there was tree day, bringing it home in Dad's ute, hunting out the decorations, uncoiling the old lights.

You knew the big day wasn't that far off when mum came home with the ingredients for Christmas mince pies. 

I would have been outside on the pitch, the windows from the kitchen opened to a spot in line the bowling crease, sometimes mum would even call out to get an update on how the test was going, if Hadlee had managed to get Greenidge out at last. She would call out that it was time, time I washed my hands in the laundry and came in to help with the mince pies.

My brother would be there already, he was much better than me at learning the things mum did every day, I set the table, dried the dishes and got the hell out of the way most days.

The radio would be on with a quiet mix of carols and the occasional Leo Sayer or Doctor Hook. I always got lots of jobs it was impossible to stuff up and eventually there would be trays of beautiful small pies everywhere, ready for the oven, in the oven, cooling along the bench.

The phone rang. I never answered the phone. Dad worked with farmers and they rang up all the time and in gruff indecipherable voices ordered huge arrays of unknown things, cattle drenches and chainsaw parts, and it was all a bit much for me.

Mum would have had a tea towel over her shoulder and wiped her hands as she moved to the phone, nestled in the little alcove in amongst the cupboards leading to the dining room.

Mum's sister lived in another part of Hamilton, not too far. Her husband had bashed her, badly, the police were there.

Mum could deal with anything, she dealt with everything with the same equal helping of care and practicality.

The wards she worked in at the hospital meant that she got to see the real highs and the real lows, the deaths and the days that patients got to go home after so much pain.

Every year there would be seemingly hundreds of little presents under the tree, we would look at the tags and ask her who the people were, names we had never heard. There would be nurses who had done an extra shift on her ward on a bad night, orderlies who had helped her find the family at the worst time, sisters and aunties and boyfriends she had come to know over the time she nursed men and women to their leaving day. She never forgot anyone, no one was ever alone.

 She never left the house without a quick gargle of mouthwash, grabbed a coat, just in case.

She held both my hands and looked straight at me, said 'It'll be alright, it will'. 

The keys were where they always were, on top of the fridge, and she was gone, reversing down the long drive.

Hot Cross buns

 

I always fell asleep in moments at home. Mum had her secret mum ways of convincing you of the magic of the cold night outside, with you so warm and snug under the blankets and counterpane. I would strain to hear the trains announce themselves at the dark level crossings down past Claudlands showgrounds, and almost never succeed, gone already.

At the bach it was different. In part, in those first few years, I think it was because I still couldn't believe the little fibro house right there up against the sand dunes was actually ours. 

I would turn to the wall in the small bedroom we shared, close my eyes and the constant rumble of the unseen waves would bring images of us catching huge fish, scaling dark swells  in wooden fishing boats, finding treasure washed up by storms, on and on.

Weather then, there, seemed unspoken, clockwork. The torrential rains of the winter field days, the still heat of December waiting for Christmas and the escape to the beach. 

And Easter was storms. 

I would wake to the chill, turn over and realise your bed against the far wall was empty, unmade, so it must be early.

Wind would be roaring, so loud I had to concentrate to know the rumble which had finally lulled me to sleep was still there. Rain would clatter the roof and flash in under the eaves to be thrown sideways across the windows, always heading for the dark hills nestling the long swathe of the beach.

The louvred windows of the kitchen would catch little pieces of the wind and shriek, fall silent, shriek again, on and on.

A beautiful warmth and that scent would meet me as I came through the narrow doorway, into the kitchen with the wind shrieking for attention again.

You would be in front of the old upright oven, tea towel in hand. The yellowed light through the oven door giving a glimpse of the small buns so nearly ready.

Some time in the afternoon we would convince ourselves there was a break in the weather, the cloud not quite so pressing, the wind dropping to a growl.

We would put on old jumpers and jackets and head over the dunes. There would be broken pieces of kina shells and huge horse mussels, the deep crimson of half scallop shells loosed by the anger of the night and flung across the dark sand wrapped in tendrils of weed from the harbour. 

The sea would be so rough, the water opaque with waves running at crazy angles, assaulting each other and throwing up curtains of spray which would hiss away in the constant squall.

We would make it back to warm clothes and the radio, and another round of hot cross buns with the butter melting. 

Heaven.

Play the game

 

Winter in the Waikato meant rain. I loved growing up there, but in the winter we spent a lot of time running home from school in squelching shoes with a chill down the back of our necks where the rain got in under sodden coats.

I would go to bed on a Friday night praying that the thrum of rain on the tiles overhead didn't get any louder, and wake up doing the same. Sometimes I knew straight away football would be cancelled, the rain would push against the windows and I didn't have to wipe the frosted glass to know the clouds would be sitting dark and low over the apple trees leading to the park out the back. They could stay all day sometimes.

Our toilet was out the back door and across a small porch, through the laundry. I would move quietly down the hallway and out the door, the lawn and all dad's shrubs would be glistening, heavy. But if the rain was over and water didn't pool around the clothesline there was a fair chance football was on, we played on some decent mud piles. Sometimes if the trees looked heavier than ever I would duck down the concrete steps leading from the porch and stick my finger into the lawn, convincing myself that it hadn't gone in far at all.

When I came out of my room with my gear on and tracksuit jacket over the top Dad would be up, probably throwing some old bread out to the birds. The radio would be on and I would sit down at the breakfast table. After the news at the top of the hour there was always a moment of dread, the morning DJ would come back on, say something like 'now, sports cancellations today' and pause, shuffling unseen papers. 'Nothing today' or perhaps the really little guys, the under-6's and 7's might be given the day off. I could breathe again, I could see myself out on the pitch already.

I loved football more than anything, was absolutely mad for it.

I knew Dad didn't. But Saturday breakfast there would be crumpets, instead of the usual toast. Or he would have opened a can of sardines. Special, just enough to make it so much more than the week just gone.

We would drive to the game in his work ute, the one he drove every day for miles and miles and back again. The radio would be on and the talk would be of all the sport to come, Waikato rugby first division, maybe a Ranfurly Shield defence or even an All Black test.

He wasn't one of those dads who had lots of ideas about how you could play, should play. He just expected you would do what the coaches told you, do your best. Some of the other dads had a lot of ideas, every week. We would just drive along in a nice silence, listening to the ex footballers talk. It was never far in a small town.

By the time I was about 13 or 14 I was pretty good at football, and I got into teams that were pretty darn good. That year we had won maybe 8 or 9 games in a row, against good teams. Every week the game would be close and then in the second half we would just find a way, be that little bit better.

That Saturday the game started as always and we did the things we always did. Except we didn't, passes would come up a bit short, go too far, and the more we tried the more it just wouldn't seem to come right. Some of the parents starting shouting things, just encouragement I guess but encouragement sounds just like admonishment at times like that. Not dad though, never.

A pass went a bit far, and one of our players said something to another. Not criticising, just encouraging I guess, but they came seem one and the same.

A pass came up short and we went a goal behind. One of our players said something to another, and he replied. 

I said something.

'Play the game Tramway'. The words came across the field as if there was nothing in the world except them, not loud, not angry, somehow all encompassing.

I played so hard that day, never saying a word. I scored the winner late in the second half, probably the best goal I ever scored, running onto a perfect pass just over halfway and sprinting for goal with a defender right there at my hip all the way trying just as hard as I was, until the keeper had to come out to narrow the angle and kept coming and kept coming and then I rolled the ball just beyond his left hand into the corner of the net.

We drove home in the same lovely silence, the radio on with the hubbub of the crowd in the background at a rugby ground somewhere close by.

Tracking not included

 

A friend of ours lost her parents recently, tragically.

Covid times meant the funeral was a very closed affair attended by just about no one. Tough when they came from a small rural town, the type of place where everyone's lives interconnect all over the place.

We walked up to the corner where our street arcs around to meet theirs, where the hearses would stop for a couple of moments before heading on to the cemetery. There were already cars parked along both sides of the quiet road, stretching away up the hill the cars would climb soon enough.

People stood in small groups, most between the parked cars, a few clustered at the bottom of the driveway.

A few cars came and went at the intersection, and then the ubiquitous white van. 

Our streets are no different to all the others of Sydney, quiet mostly, quieter than usual with so many people working from home, not working. More often than not the only vehicles we see are delivery vans, jam packed with parcels threatening to burst out from behind every window. 

The Australia Post van trundled to a slow stop in the driveway next up the hill, the driver hopped out and there was that familiar beep as he scanned the barcode of a small box and headed up the drive. A young woman jogged after him, the neighbour, she had been standing on the front lawn socially distanced from her grieving friend.

The driver got back in his van, did a slow u-turn, mindful of so many people about, and turned up our road. He stopped about three houses down, hopped out, beep, parcel at the door and back to the van.

I used to think often at the car accidents we attended that the scene filled the world when you arrived, mess everywhere, people everywhere. Bit by bit we would put everything back as it should be until the last of the glass and metal were swept away. And then the traffic would start to flow again, tyres rolling over the same piece of tarmac. Often it would rain, and even the smells would disappear, so that you could almost believe such a thing had never happened.

Life just goes on, regardless of everything else. Tragedy, unspeakable pain and loss. And a parcel at the neighbours, and another tomorrow. Life goes on.