Written 19 August, 2020
We went up to the fire trail together in the afternoon. It’s hard to social distance when you’re scrambling up a steep block, but we did, most of the time, and when we didn’t, we were close for only a few seconds. It’s impossible to wear a mask when you’re puffing and panting, so we didn’t. Dy came with us, and tried to lead us to his “roadway” but we couldn’t get there because I’s fire trail is invisible, as is mine. Dy’s “roadway” lies between us. We have lots of work to do. She said she’d be back up in a few weeks, and we’d work together on the trail then, clearing and burning.
My heart sank as I watched their boat go, heading back to Berowra, back to the city. I suddenly remembered that around the fire pit last night, she’d asked how my class was going,”teaching creativity to”- she paused- “some unexpected group – architects” ? to the composers of ANU. I laughed and said i was managing. I’d been surprised she remembered, surprised she thought I was ok for doing it. Not a contemptuous nerd, but ok. I was not only surprised, but thrilled. That she accepts me for having a mind like mine.
Half my love of being here is nature. The water, the bush, the light. But the other half is the community. I’ve never ever had a community before. In fact, I used to think all I needed was to live out my entire life in a little cabin in the bush and never see another soul except GG and K. Because I couldn’t be one of them, I felt tormented by other people.
Why tormented? I grew up in a time in Australia when girls were unfeminine if they were nerds, so no one was, or hid it. I couldn’t hide it, so I hid myself away. My beloved father, who I totally believed in, strongly disapproved of women being nerds, even being heard. He said that a woman should stand behind her man, silently serving him. (In fact, when I dared to write my first novel, I believed I shouldn’t, and the voice in that novel is timid, scared, whispering close to a microphone, waiting to be thrashed. That’s why. Creativity, if it’s an urgent, persistent impulse, uses everything, including your terror of doing it). Since that childhood, I felt such an outsider, so weird, such a nerd, so unfit – this sounds like a whinge but it’s the reality I’ve learned to live with – I felt unfit to be counted in the human race. I used to have a picture in my head of myself as a rat, a bush rat, with a long pointed nose.
What’s happened to me? How did this picture in my head change? My guesses: the many blessings in my life – the times changed to be kinder to women, GG’s love and acceptance of me, giving birth to a gorgeous daughter, creativity itself, the fun of writing books, 20 years with my therapist and most recently, the warm acceptance in this bay- they all have taught me.
By their acceptance, they’ve taught me that I’m ok, I’m more or less acceptable. I now feel I can pass in a crowd.
Oh, I’ve got all sorts of faults – i’m untidy, my fire trail is a mess, I don’t clean my house nearly often enough, I don’t get enough done in a day…..But it’s all ok.All those blessings have taught me that i can have a home with other people, they’ve taught me what home means. To me, it’s come to mean acceptance. They’ve surprised me by accepting me. The people of this bay, and especially, in the time of the virus, they’ve taught me that I’ll do. Who’d have guessed that escaping the virus to live in a ramshackle house off the grid in a muddy but beautiful bay should have taught me this? And how lucky am I, to have survived long enough to learn it. I’ve learned that people, not all, but enough, the ones at least in this bay, are beautiful to me, and for me.
So I go out that evening, and thank the stars and the bay.
