so.
During these wild nights of lightning strikes, furnace and confusion, I didn’t want to live at home. I wished I could be adopted, believed it would all make sense if these two people weren’t really my parents. But somehow the arguments, the fights, the shaking and screaming and eventual whimpering would just peter out. And then the next thing we saw was Mum and Dad hugging and being all lovey-dovey to one another.
Frightened still, we didn’t know what it was at first, but later on we would realise some of the funny noises we heard coming from the sleep-out after their arguments were in fact the soft grunts of them making love.
Making love! It was difficult to work out. It was utterly confounding. The swings from one end of the mood spectrum to the other. We were the car out of control on the famous B Grade horror roller coaster ride. I can only think there must have been a passion there, between Mum and Dad. It was just that it could go either way.
In reality we kids were tired. Tired all the time. So, so tired from doing all our chores, from looking after ourselves, and then at nights hearing their arguments into the early hours of the morning. We never knew if it was ever going to come to an end or if Dad would stick around.
We walked around exhausted at school, always ready to sleep. I suppose the truth was, I was “my father’s daughter” and at the end of those arguments he never left the house. That would be left to Mum. Years later, she would be constantly in and out. But that is a story yet to come.
10.
It was here in our new home, too, that one day my dog Widget went missing.
I remember the day so clearly; everyone was looking for her and couldn’t find her. It ended up that for two whole weeks we looked. We even asked neighbours and the locals to keep an eye out for our little watchdog. But it seemed no one had seen or heard her. Finally it was Jim who found her – on the roadside.
Puffing, his face white just like I imagined Jack Frost, he came up to me and like a real, mature man, said: ‘Deb, you don’t want to see this. I’ve found Widget. But it don’t look good.’
His staring eyes and manly stance told the story. Widget was found with a big gaping hole in her side and there were maggots crawling out of her. Dad said it looked like she had bled to death.
I was devastated. Life was full of cruel blows. It upset me how easily life could be turned upside down. The cause of her death appeared to be connected to a large petrol tank we had on the property. It was known that some misfits in the area would come around at times and try to steal the fuel. On this particular occasion, it seems, Widget had caught them red-handed, made a noise to ward them off, and got a bullet in her side for her troubles.
Mum was around then, but I don’t remember feeling a great deal from her... there was no hugging or words of comfort. But that’s not to say she wasn’t upset, because she was, so was Dad. We all were.
Perhaps they were all affected in their own way by their own grief? They just didn’t show it like we kids did. Then again, that was life on a farm. Mum saw another emptiness, a gap around the place, and Dad thought if only he could catch those bloody mongrels... Yes, if only he could. If he had, they would have felt one of his bullets in their butts for sure. But the incident reminded me of a story much worse than mine. It was the story Dad told us around the same time, about his pet kangaroo.
When Dad was a boy growing up he had this pet kangaroo that he loved and which followed him everywhere around the paddock. It was at the time when he was still very young and staying with his real mum, Grandma Glad and his step-father, Uncle Harvey.
It was a time of massive rainfall and flash flooding and Dad was frantic about where Joey, his pet kangaroo had got to. The kangaroo was nowhere to be seen. Sometime during one of those days, it was Uncle Harvey, a man Dad mostly looked up to, who
During these wild nights of lightning strikes, furnace and confusion, I didn’t want to live at home. I wished I could be adopted, believed it would all make sense if these two people weren’t really my parents. But somehow the arguments, the fights, the shaking and screaming and eventual whimpering would just peter out. And then the next thing we saw was Mum and Dad hugging and being all lovey-dovey to one another.
Frightened still, we didn’t know what it was at first, but later on we would realise some of the funny noises we heard coming from the sleep-out after their arguments were in fact the soft grunts of them making love.
Making love! It was difficult to work out. It was utterly confounding. The swings from one end of the mood spectrum to the other. We were the car out of control on the famous B Grade horror roller coaster ride. I can only think there must have been a passion there, between Mum and Dad. It was just that it could go either way.
In reality we kids were tired. Tired all the time. So, so tired from doing all our chores, from looking after ourselves, and then at nights hearing their arguments into the early hours of the morning. We never knew if it was ever going to come to an end or if Dad would stick around.
We walked around exhausted at school, always ready to sleep. I suppose the truth was, I was “my father’s daughter” and at the end of those arguments he never left the house. That would be left to Mum. Years later, she would be constantly in and out. But that is a story yet to come.
10.
It was here in our new home, too, that one day my dog Widget went missing.
I remember the day so clearly; everyone was looking for her and couldn’t find her. It ended up that for two whole weeks we looked. We even asked neighbours and the locals to keep an eye out for our little watchdog. But it seemed no one had seen or heard her. Finally it was Jim who found her – on the roadside.
Puffing, his face white just like I imagined Jack Frost, he came up to me and like a real, mature man, said: ‘Deb, you don’t want to see this. I’ve found Widget. But it don’t look good.’
His staring eyes and manly stance told the story. Widget was found with a big gaping hole in her side and there were maggots crawling out of her. Dad said it looked like she had bled to death.
I was devastated. Life was full of cruel blows. It upset me how easily life could be turned upside down. The cause of her death appeared to be connected to a large petrol tank we had on the property. It was known that some misfits in the area would come around at times and try to steal the fuel. On this particular occasion, it seems, Widget had caught them red-handed, made a noise to ward them off, and got a bullet in her side for her troubles.
Mum was around then, but I don’t remember feeling a great deal from her... there was no hugging or words of comfort. But that’s not to say she wasn’t upset, because she was, so was Dad. We all were.
Perhaps they were all affected in their own way by their own grief? They just didn’t show it like we kids did. Then again, that was life on a farm. Mum saw another emptiness, a gap around the place, and Dad thought if only he could catch those bloody mongrels... Yes, if only he could. If he had, they would have felt one of his bullets in their butts for sure. But the incident reminded me of a story much worse than mine. It was the story Dad told us around the same time, about his pet kangaroo.
When Dad was a boy growing up he had this pet kangaroo that he loved and which followed him everywhere around the paddock. It was at the time when he was still very young and staying with his real mum, Grandma Glad and his step-father, Uncle Harvey.
It was a time of massive rainfall and flash flooding and Dad was frantic about where Joey, his pet kangaroo had got to. The kangaroo was nowhere to be seen. Sometime during one of those days, it was Uncle Harvey, a man Dad mostly looked up to, who
Similar Books
