Written 17 August, 2020.
It’s difficult to leave your autistic daughter in a city with a virus, except that it isn’t raging, there were only 10 cases in the last 24 hours in NSW- nevertheless, so difficult that we kept delaying our departure, and doing just one more thing to make her comfortable and happy. But she’s at last agreed to have a weekly visit from a physio, Jane, who she’s already met when she was very sick with chronic fatigue, and we must leave her to start the visits, or they won’t happen. Our longing is that K will start to exercise, and so develop a stronger body to fight off the virus. She’s never going to do that with us. We just can’t talk her into it.
So our boat came into the bay late afternoon, but for once when it was still light. My heart always hammers with excitement as we head towards our house. I was longing to see if there was more light in it because of the three trees that came down, longing to see my garden and how it fared, longing to know the joyful comfort of having neighbours. Before this, i had no idea that neighbours were important. A community. On the boat, looking forward to getting there, we excitedly messaged everyone who’s there to drinks at our brazier down on the track, and they said yes.
The house was so peacefully welcoming. I’m an untidy person, I’ve never been tidy in my life except for here, and I’m always so comforted by the way I eave it, tidy, swept and mopped, so unlike me. But the brazier for our drinks was no where to be seen. Just as it was getting dark, GG spotted it -it had been tossed away by the tree loppers behind a wall of newly cut logs. I messaged Dy and he as usual solved the problems, inviting us to drinks around his new fire pit, a half water tank given to him by another neighbour, and he and S had rolled it along the track and into place. It took up all the space in the front of his house. A warm red fire smouldered with the lantana he’d cut. He’s gradually cleaning up all the lantana that’s shadowed his sister’s house for thirty years.
We talked bay talk. Solar power, who’d had to resort to a generator, what clearing we have to get done for summer. I have a lot to do, and suggested to I that we both need to clear to the fire trail, and should we do it together? Dy found he’s got almost a roadway behind his house, made by someone in the previous generation, probably the same person who must’ve spent years building stone terraces and stone staircases all over his block, a maze almost of staircases. Years ago, I told him, a group of picnickers boated to his house and had a picnic, explaining that their father had built the house. I wish we could find them again. We depend, all of us, on the past. But his “roadway” is useless unless it links to the trail behind all our houses, so we can run along it as an escape from the fire, and lug equipment along it. I said that tomorrow, we’ll go together and see the state of the fire trail. I know it’s dire. She’s going to be horrified.
It was only when i got into bed that I realised that at the happy party around the fire pit, I hadn’t socially distanced. Or worn a mask. Or even taken it. Neither had GG. I had sat next to I, and I’d often leaned close and shared a joke with her.
How is this possible? I’m so conscious of safety in the city. I never go out without a mask. If someone gets in my lift, I promptly get out and walk up the steps. But here, in the first home I’ve had were I’ve ever felt at home in, my neighbours are like family.I can’t feel threatened by them. I must feel threatened by them, by everyone, at leat in the first three or four days. I swear to myself as I fall asleep, that if I get away with it, I will never make this mistake until there’s a vaccine. I will stay apart, and yet somehow manage to feel at home, and be good friends. Such an emotional juggling. But this is life now, for all of us.
