Written 9 April, 2020.
Today is K’s birthday. Every year I have a clear vision of the golden champagne moment I first saw her on my tummy, on all fours or perhaps she’d collapsed like a swimmer on a beach. In my vision, her tiny perfect back presents its sweet self to me and she’s looking short sightedly at me? me! can she be gazing at me? me! out of an exquisite little face with a baby pointed chin. The air seems to pop in excitement, all of its own. She belongs to another world, she’s trailing clouds of glory from god who was her home, and she’s suddenly landed in this one, quite unexpectedly. I try to talk to her but can’t find my voice. I’d read that real mums talk to babies in a high voice, intuitively knowing something. I have a go at it, wanting so much to be a real mum, and squeak away, but then I know that I must be authentic, righ t from the start, and give up squeaking and become myself as I say- what did I say? No matter. It was hardly a moment for a memorable speech. For us, it’s not only an intensely visceral moment but a spiritual one. I know in that moment I’ll be grateful to her for the rest of my life, and beyond. Thank you, my daughter for landing here – and still there’s a whoosh of astonishment when I say those words- my daughter.
Yesterday, someone came into the bay. A pretty little sailing boat, not on the far side of the creek where there’s a channel the fishermen use, but up close to our houses. I was in the veggie garden, checking the seedlings- is that one a spinach? It’s the only one, if it is – and suddenly, seeing the boat, a peculiar rage came upon me.
Go home, I wanted to shout. Don’t bring your germs here.
I waved to a man at the cockpit with one hand, spade in the other.
After a while, he saw me and waved back.
What came out of my mouth, thank goodness, was perfectly civil.
“You’re going the wrong way,” I shouted across the water. “You should be over there- pointing to the chanel- “over here, you’ll get stuck.”
His voice came across the water to me, the tone of a man who sees women as not quite part of humanity, but more as absurd animals. I could tell English was not his birth language.
‘We are not afraid of sharks.”
I raged inwardly again, but I’d started this and had to continue.
“It’s not the sharks,” I shouted. “But the low tides get very low, with mud, and oyster leases under water that’ll damage your hull it you run into them”.
He conferred with someone below decks. A pause followed.
In a more respectful tone, he shouted back:
“Thank you..
Why are we women always have these irritating encounters?
Later, the boat was tied up to the far side of the bay, where the horrific storm of two months ago wrecked a jetty. Four other boats arrived, and a generator was roaring, though here it was just a muted groaning. We saw heir lanterns swing as they worked long into the night, sawing off the ruined jetty. And this morning, there’s a new pontoon. Perhaps we’re to get neighbours.- sometime.
Last night, we heard on the news that F and S were right to flee – a lockdown is in place all over NSW. No one is allowed to leave their homes except with a good reason- medical, exercise and shopping. Otherwise, large fines – $1000, or $11,000. The roads are being policed. Not just over Easter, no, it’ll be reviewed in a month.
But M, a neighbour I’ve scarcely spoken to, five or so houses away, has arrived with his wife, who I’ve never spoken to. They’ve made it through the roadblocks. He’s struggling with emphysema, so it’s essential for him to be here, if he can stay warm enough. He has a man friend, but he doesn’t seem to be there. He’s rumoured to be cranky but perhaps that’s ill-founded. I first wondered about the truth of it when we bonded briefly over a burning off that went wrong, three years ago. The firemen, after struggling all day with fires that got out of hand, finally left at 8pm utterly exhausted, assuring us that it would burn itself out. M and I refused to go to bed, staying in our boats with our phones, and occasionally running down our jetties to each other on the shore and conferring when we should call the fire brigade for help. We mustn’t get the timing wrong, or we’d be seen as crying wolf. At about 11pm, when a lit tree, for all the world like a fire cracker, fell upright down the cliff and fire began racing towards the houses- F and S’s house, in fact – we knew the time had come, and called for help. Help came suddenly and effectively. We know, though no one else knows, that if we hadn’t stayed up that night, our community might’ve burned down.
So we three can’t go back to our little flats in the city. Perhaps we’re here forever. That word isn’t as thrilling as it was in March. Does it have a ring of doom?
“I want a cake with a candle,” K had said yesterday, when we’d asked sadly what she’d like. She knows how hard it is for a cook like me to make cake for her. “A biscuit will do”, she added, seeing me frown. “And you singing to me.”
So I attempt a cake, mixing the gluten-free flours I’ve collected over the years- we’re both celiacs, it’s in our genes, way back to our Spanish ancestors- I find the end of a jar of green banana flour, tapioca, lots of buckwheat, and, joy, mesquite flour for sweetness. I find baking powder with an expiry date 2012, and keep my fingers crossed. I break in two eggs to make it hang together, a cup of coconut oil, and enough fizzy mineral water to turn it sloppy and help it rise, if it has any inclination. Spices of cardamon, cloves and in the back of the cupboard and merrily without weevils, cocoa nibs.
GG pulls it out of the oven while I read a student’s work. He’s a master of cake timing, know ing that a knife blade must come out clean.
Although for a candle we have only a long match, the cake is a wild success. Our voices ring out raucously over the bay, starting the fish we never catch.
“Will you be able to make another one?” ask GG.
I say that no man ever steps into the same river twice. It’s amazing how a cake can change everything. We’re together, warm, dry, alive and safe, and it seems, co-vid free. And now on top of it all, a kitchen bench almost made.
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