Miracle on 5th Avenue

This time I can say it!

Last week it was my birthday.  Marius asked what would I like as a present.  I replied, I'd just like Ratty to come home again, I miss him.

We all knew that we would not see him again.  He'd been missing for three weeks, he'd had two life-threatening 'neurological meltdowns', and there had been the poison on the golf course. 

I had almost begun to say goodbye to the hope of seeing him again.

Last night I went out to feed LG, Seams and Tiny Tim, before we went out to a party (yet another leaving do).  I went around the corner to the small generator building, and scattered the cat-crunchies on the steps, as I often do.  This technique spreads the food around so that no one cat can dominate the others and stop them getting a fair share.

I was in a bit of a hurry, so I didn't hang around while they ate;  I simply left my alms and headed home.  I had my back to the golf course and had entered our street.  I heard maows.  I presumed they were the maows of the cats I had been feeding.  But the voice was different and insistent.

I turned back to see Ratty leaping over the golf course wall and running towards me.

Ratty?

I wasn't sure for a moment that I had the right cat.  Ratty?

He came charging home with me, maowing and rubbing my legs and circling me and purring. 

I called to Marius:  Look who's here!  I can't believe it!

Ratty knew exactly where he was.  He came bounding in the front door and made straight for the food bowls, where he INHALED two full bowls of crunchies.  I expected him to be sick he was eating so fast, but no.

We went to the party full of excitement and disbelief. He'd been missing for 25 days and we had no expectation we would see him again, or even that he was still alive.

We came home early to check up on him.  He ate two more bowls of food and then settled down on the couch, on his back beside me.  Purring.  He has a few small scratches near his nose but no other signs of wounds or illness.  He is definitely thinner but his coat is in good condition and he is clean.  He paws are not worn, nor the fur around the pads matted or dirty.  His claws are long and sharp.

We have no idea where he has been.  Perhaps he was trapped somewhere, perhaps he got picked up and taken away, but he doesn't look like he's walked a long way.  The only sign that something is amiss is that he is thinner.  Strong but thin.

Not everybody is pleased to see him.  The jealous queen is put out:

We are delighted he is back and safe.  He is fast asleep at my feet now.

x

The Rose

Last Thursday, we came back to Melbourne.  Marius dropped Prima and me at the airport at Newcastle and we flew home in an hour and a half, while he and Primus drove the buggy back down the Hume Highway, arriving some 12 hours after we did.

We do not consider ourselves royalty who -- perhaps it is a modern legend? -- are reputed not to travel all on the same plane, rather, Prima had an appointment in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon and wanted me to accompany her on the flight.

Before we left, I whispered to Marius 'If you have time, please drive past our house again and pick me a rose.'  When we passed by on the way up, it didn't occur to me to get out of the car and approach the gate, touch the fabric of our house; rather my heart was pounding suficiently with the emotion of seeing the place for the first time in over ten years.  It was only when we were all talking about it later that it occurred to me that I could have a souvenir, as it were.

I love roses and when we lived in Sydney, we planted over 70 of them.  My criteria were simple:  they had to be fragrant, disease-resistant and repeat flowerers.  Many of them are from the rose breeder David Austin, and carry wonderful Shakespearian and Chaucerian names.  The front rose garden that is just inside the fence once bloomed continuously, with only a brief pause of dormancy in July (our winter).  I always wanted to have enough flowers in bloom so that if a passer-by plucked one, it would make no difference to the display.  I often offered a rose to someone walking home from the station after work if I was out 'dead-heading' the bushes.

When Marius finally arrived back in Melbourne, after dropping Primus at his place in the city, it was quite late, and my single pink rose had been out of water for many hours.  I've been pressing her under a pile of books and plan to take her back to Exile with me. 

Here she is:

After the sorry post earlier about home and dislocation, I confess I feel happier now.  Not sure if the rose has anything to do with that, or whether it is merely the space and time between me and our beautiful house. 

Tomorrow night we fly back.

x

Driving Home

The idea of 'home' is so fraught for an exile.  Where or what is home?  There is that trite expression: home is where your heart is, and like all such expressions it touches on truth but doesn't really mean anything.  Well not to this lost soul.  My heart is where Marius is, always.  But then, there are the children, like any mother, they hold pieces of my heart fast in their grip.  There are my parents, the dog and the relatives ...  and there is place. 

As you may remember, I was born (oh and pprobably will die) an exile.  I have come to the conclusion that it is a state of mind as much as anything.  I've lived in five different countries for long enough to let each one claim a part of my sentiment for place as home.  I have been separated from the city where I grew up for more than 30 years - and I have no proper access to return there.  The only landscape I have known all my life is in Lincolnshire, where my grandparents and Aunt lived.  They are all dead  and my access to that landscape is now only as a visitor.  Some how the landscape and feeling welcome in it is important to me.

As I write this, I am in Forster, staying with my mother-in-law.  Marius and I helped with the design and construction of this house, twenty five years ago.  We used to come up for weekends with our babies:  returning here is always emotional and full of physical memories.

We drove up from Melbourne in a marathon 15 hour run.  We took lots of breaks along the 1,200 kilometre journey.  We haven't driven up for about ten years, always flying to Newcastle and hiring a car to complete the journey.  Now we have a little car which I bought in July last year (so our children could finally get their driving licenses) and Marius was itching to give it a run. 

The road has changed dramatically even in the last ten years.  All the little towns on the Hume Highway have been bypassed except Holbrook, that bypass is still under construction.  The last time we came, we had to drive through Albury, now that is bypassed.  (This one is close to my heart as I did the original computer model for the bypass in 1985, in a previous existence.  Great to see something built at long last!)  I will write about Holbrook separately and the famous lammingtons. 

When we came to Sydney, we discovered that our e-tag (well Dad's e-tag actually) works on the motorways of Sydney, enabling us to cross this huge conurbation in under 40 minutes - a previously torturous trip which could take two hours.  There is only one section of non-motorway road linking the south and north of Sydney, and it happens to be less than a kilometre from our house.

We deviated slightly off the sign-posted route, driving past the golf course, around the corner and stopping here:

Our house.  We bought it in 1990 as a wreck, a delightful Federation cottage which the estate agent expected us to pull down and replace with a huge slice of 'wedding cake'.  We didn't.  At the time my father said 'you must have vision' and shook his head.  We restored the old lady and eventually built an extension to her, turning her into a lovely comfortable family 'home'.   That word again.

We lived at that address for ten years of hard labour.  The day we flew out to Malayasia, we painted the fireplace grate and finished the mortaring around the back step.  We never lived in it 'finished'. 

One day, we might have the chance to live there again.

I realise I haven't told you how it felt to drive up and take a few snaps from the car window and drive away again, without getting out.  I have to trust you to imagine how it felt - the house which friends and family poured bits of their hearts into, friends and family who are not living.  A place crammed with memories and dreams. 

Our tenant moved in the week after we moved out.  She has lived there longer than we have.  She pays her rent and keeps it tidy.  It is a sound investment, a heartbreak, a place only.  Bricks and mortar and terracotta tiles:  home.

x