Tag: story

Posted in Life, Writing

What she doesn’t photograph

Posted on by Sharon

She photographs because she wants to hold still what is fleeting – an angle, a pose, an age, a smile, a moment in time – before it dissolves, fades, evaporates into reality.

But what she doesn’t photograph matters too.

She didn’t photograph the sky turning red from a hundred bushfires, or the water lapping at the laundry door. She didn’t photograph the washing line, snaking down the backyard, heavy under the weight of the weekly wash, or the heat from the wood stove in the kitchen. She didn’t photograph the hospital bracelet crumpled in the bottom of the bag, or the small fist clutching a handful of her mother’s hair.

She didn’t photograph the look exchanged before the first word of bad news, or the sigh that followed.

She didn’t photograph the relief in the hospital corridor after the surgeon said it went well, the ordinary dinners that kept them alive through ‘that’ time, the thousand mornings where nothing “happened” except that she woke up, or her fumbling attempts at dancing that looked more like jelly caught on a string.

Sometimes she wants proof that it really happened the way she thinks it did. That the sky really was pea soup green, that the drummer really did smile at her.

Maybe it’s better this way. No evidence, no proof. A series of memories, more absurd and exaggerated each time she recalls them – never sure which details are real and which are imagined.

Or which she simply longs for.

Posted in Life, Writing

Stories

Posted on by Sharon

There’s a car parked across my driveway, blocking me in.

It’s not actually a car, it’s a van. The pool man, come to check the chlorine levels, and clean the filter. At least I hope he’s come to clean the filter.

It’s grey out and raining. Miserable. A day for staying inside, curled up in a comfy chair reading a book Alison just told you about: Smart ovens for lonely people by Elizabeth Tan. She scanned one of the short stories and I read it and loved it as she knew I would.

When the van is gone, there will be no excuse not to leave for work. I like my work, which isn’t something I’ve been able to say about all the jobs I’ve had. The one before this one was the worst of all, but it led me to this one and it’s one of my favourites. I get to write and interview people and co-design workshops and listen to people and be warm with the heater Kerry, my boss, brought in for me yesterday.

It’s a warm workplace and I am the oldest there. By a long shot. It feels strange to be the oldest, to feel the store of stories welling up inside me every time we sit down for lunch together. I mostly refrain from sharing. Because … you know. Old people and their stories.

I listen to old people and their stories. Stories of removal and disconnection and abuse and am thankful for the warmth of the workplace. It provides a blanket to shield me from the hurt and pain of others’ stories. I write about them, these other stories, in a report for the client, wondering if anything I say might make a difference. Wondering how to say something that will help make a difference.

The van is gone. My path is clear. I’m off to make a difference.

Posted in Life

Threads and connections

Posted on by Sharon

This won’t be of any interest to others, but I’m going to blog about it anyway so that I remember this feeling of having my mind just slightly blown.

There are two threads to this story, and I’ll start with the more recent one. The two threads lead to a connection.

In July 2021, while I was working at Deakin University, a new staff member joined our team. I was instantly drawn to her – she was warm and down to earth and just the right person for the role we had.

Airdre, for that is her name, joined our team remotely – we were still in the throes of COVID lockdowns – from Lismore in northern NSW. We finally met in person in Melbourne in December 2021, a month after I’d been made redundant and days after Airdre finished her 6-month contract.

We got on like the proverbial house on fire.

In early January 2023, my mother and I visited Airdre in her beautiful home in Lismore, on our way north to Queensland.

Since then, Airdre has moved to Melbourne and we’ve co-authored a book together, titled Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness to be published later this year (I thought a little plug wouldn’t go astray).

That was thread one. Thread two is a tiny bit more convoluted. Bear with me.

Some members of the family have been engaged in a photography challenge that’s been going for a few years now. We have a weekly theme, take photos that align (tangentially in some cases) with the theme, post them to our Facebook group and then we catch up over Zoom for a chat each Sunday night. The active members of the group are spread across three states of Australia, with others joining sporadically from other states and the UK.

Our theme last week was ‘flat’. I had taken a photo a few years ago of Pittaway St, in Kangaroo Flat (near Bendigo) and so posted that image. It’s not often I see a street sign with my name on it and I remember being quite chuffed at its existence.

I had done a search some time ago for the Pittaway of Kangaroo Flat the street was named after and had discovered a William Pittaway, convict, sentenced to 14 years in Van Diemen’s Land for sacrilege (he stole some church silverware and was caught pawning it). He obviously moved to Victoria after he’d served his sentence, as many Van Diemonians (as they were called) did, and his wife and children joined him here to live out their lives peacefully.

Turns out he’s not related to us.

Well, not that we know of.

Anyway …

On Sunday night, after our weekly family catch-up, I thought I’d find him again so that I could be sure about the story.

I didn’t find the same information, but went down a rabbit hole and came across cemetery lists of Pittaways around the country. One of them was Alice Pittaway (nee Duroux) who is buried in Lismore. I knew that Alice was my great-grandmother and that she had died aged 47 in 1933. She’d gone out one morning to water the garden, had felt unwell, gone inside and had died before medical attention could be summoned.

I dug out Alice’s obituary and noticed the address of the house she’d lived in. I did a search on Google Maps, but there was no such street in Lismore, so I rang Mum and asked to her confirm the details. Mum is into family history and I knew she’d know.

She did. She also told me that my aunt, Lyn (Dad’s youngest sister) had visited the house in Lismore in 2013. This morning, Mum sent me one of the photos Lyn had sent her.

Standing on the stairs was Colin, Lyn’s husband … and on the verandah … was Airdre!

Airdre, my friend and colleague, the one I’d visited in Lismore, had lived for 20 years in the same house my great-grandmother (and my great-grandfather and my grandfather and his brothers and sisters) had lived in all those years before.

Two different threads … leading to a one slightly mind-blowing connection.

I sent the photo to Airdre this morning, and she was suitably (and appropriately) confused. How did I have a photo of her from 2013 when I only met her in 2021? Who was the man on the stairs? What?

What??

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one whose mind was blown.

Posted in Life, Nature

The consolation of trees

Posted on by Sharon

Flicking through Instagram on Sunday morning, I came across a quote attributed to Winnie the Pooh.

There was something about the simplicity of that little sentence that touched me deeply and at that point my morning dissolved into tears.

When I remembered it was Tim’s father’s birthday, the tears threatened to overwhelm me.

You see, it’s my father’s birthday in a few weeks and it’ll be the first birthday he won’t be with us. Oh, there were birthdays when he was away – but he was always within reach of a card and after the Navy years he was always reachable by phone.

But not this year.

It’s one of those firsts I’ve been warned about but haven’t fully understood, in the way you just don’t until you actually experience it.

After big and comforting hugs, we headed into the forest to the north-east of Melbourne, into the consolation of trees.

As an added bonus, there was water.

Never underestimate the consoling power of trees … and a waterfall at the end of the path.

Posted in Learning, Life

Because you are my Dad

Posted on by Sharon

Monday 22 January 2018

Dad lies completely still apart from the rise and fall of his chest, his breathing regular though shallow: a quick breath in, a just-as-quick breath out, count to four, another breath in. On the odd occasion his body misses a breath my heart races and I watch closely for the rise and fall of his chest.

Music wafts gently around the room Dad’s called home for the past 18 months and despite the scurry of nurses outside in the corridor there’s a sense of peace and calm here in this room.

I never imagined keeping watch over my dying father, but here I am, sitting on the hospital bed the nurses brought in and placed next to his, thinking about what I know and who I am because Noel Pittaway has been my Dad.

I know the importance of spit-clean shoes – polished and buffed till they shine. People notice shoes, Sharon, he’d say as I’d present them to him for inspection. Make sure they’re clean.

I know how to spell by breaking words into pieces and sounding them out.

I know that it annoys Mum when we do that (you’re just like your father, she says in that tone she has that indicates she thinks we’re clever but a bit show-offy.)

I know to eat my vegetables first before even touching anything else on my plate.

I know it’s best to eat cauliflower and cheese sauce while it’s hot.

I know how to swim because Dad insisted I stand in the shallow end of the Nowra pool and while all the other kids got to muck around I stood there and practiced my strokes and my breathing. I was never a fast swimmer but I had a nice style (just like your father, Mum used to say in that tone she has that speaks of admiration).

I have an eclectic musical taste because Dad had an ever-expanding record collection that ranged from Rachmaninov to Ray Charles via Ravi Shankar.

I know how to be comfortable with silence; that I don’t have to fill it with words and that in the silence there’s still warmth and togetherness.

I know that reading fiction opens up worlds I would never have been able to imagine on my own. Some of those worlds were beyond the comprehension of my 11,12,13-year-old self, but I discovered that being stretched imaginatively is important and immensely beneficial to a teenager’s developing mind and spirit.

I know the thrill of the rollercoaster, big slippery dips and rides that spin and whirl and fling you upside down and inside out and the added thrill of experiencing that with your granddaughter. Again and again and again.

I know it’s wrong for a girl to swear.

I know how to snorkel. And not to be afraid of the ocean. And the delight of walking on the squeaky white sand of Jervis Bay.

I know that travel is an adventure to be indulged in whenever possible and part of that adventure is the spontaneity of a detour or an unplanned destination or heading down a one-way street the wrong way.

I know that creative expression is an important part of life, whether that expression is theatrical, literary, artistic, musical or photographic – and the importance of taking the lens cap off.

I know what love for your wife(husband) looks like because of the depth of love Dad has for Mum … and I know that romance is not dead.

I know that people are deeply complex and that an external quiet doesn’t necessarily mean an internal quiet.

I know that laugh-yourself-silly fun is contagious and being surrounded by your grandchildren and great grandchildren is joyous and delightful in ways that can’t be described in words …

and that when you’re in your 60s and you think you can still somersault off the 1 metre board at the Murbah pool and get up there only to find you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, that a poolside cheer squad led by your grandchildren will push the fear down and turn you into a hero as you run along the board and somersault effortlessly into the diving pool.

I know that the rougher the sea the more you enjoy the ride. Just hang on tight and ride the swell.

And I know that while the taste of beetroot is a flavour they serve in hell, Dagwood Dogs are a tiny taste of heaven.

I know that what your dad teaches you can be hard to learn and that you can fight against it (and him) and that what you learn might not have been the intended lesson, but I also know that Dad has influenced my life enormously and I am who I am in big measure because my Dad is Noel Pittaway.

The movement of Dad’s body … the rise and fall of his chest … stops in the afternoon of Thursday 25 January … but the movement of his life and his legacy have transcended his body and spread through his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren … it’s a legacy that moves invisibly yet steadily across and through the generations.

On February 14, 2016 Dad and I flew over Antarctica. It had been a life-long ambition of his. Here we are ready for our 14-hour adventure.

*Many thanks and huge appreciation to Alison Cosker for providing feedback on this post. It has been strengthened because of her input.

Posted in Life, Writing

Life’s like that: On being a guest blogger

Posted on by Sharon

A message pops onto my screen as I’m scrolling through my phone one day last week. It’s an invitation from my sister, Debbie – an invitation to write a guest post on her blog in a new series she’s starting called ‘person of interest’.

If you’ve been a long-term follower of my blog, you’ll know that I blog for days and days on end, and then go quiet as other areas of my life take precedence, or as I search for something to blog about. Those silences have been known to last for months. I blogged yesterday, for instance, but it was my first post in a month.

Life’s like that. Fits and starts, slow patches where nothing much happens and you wear a dent in the couch, then suddenly it starts to warm up and still moments are hard to find.

At least, that’s what life’s like for me. A burst of energy, blog posts pour forth, images are taken and posted, creative thoughts engulf you and you make plans for projects and then teaching takes over, there are provocations to record, discussion posts to write, ideas to be shared and explored and challenged and questions to be asked, responses to student posts to be crafted to ensure warmth and encouragement and generation of thought, assignments come pouring in and feedback needs to be given that’s warm and encouraging and generates thought, and your daughter falls ill and you fly interstate to support her in her recovery and prepare nutritious and delicious meals like vegemite on toast to tempt her to eat again, and your dog is run over and you spend a week crying in the shower, while you’re walking to the station, in bed late at night, eating breakfast, and your dad gets sick and is taken to hospital and spends days not being able to talk walk eat stay awake and you hold your breath and prepare yourself for news you don’t want but know will come one day and days later he wakes up and is able to feed himself breakfast.

And then stillness, quiet, time for contemplation and an invitation pops onto your screen from your sister, inviting you to be a guest on her blog and you write responses to her questions and think about what those responses say about you but you send them in anyway, in the end knowing that you’re you and you own your responses and the person they represent.

Life’s like that.

And writing responses for my guest post sparks something in me that’s been dormant for some time and I figure if I can do it for my sister, I can do it for me too. So here I am …

… except more assignments have just poured in which means more warm, encouraging, thought-generating feedback needs to be written … and my blog will have to wait just a little longer.

I love the light in Tasmania. This image has nothing outwardly to do with my post, but I felt the calmness and serenity captured by the light suited my mood.

Posted in Flowers, Photography

238

Posted on by Sharon

From the archive.

I’m thinking of doing more flower photography – just for fun and to continue learning about telling stories through images – and so I returned to some of my early work to see where I was ‘at’. I think I still have a lot to learn!

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Posted in Learning, Life

145

Posted on by Sharon

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I pack the car, pick Tim up from the train station and we head up to my sister’s for the weekend. Along the way a bird, pecking at something on the road, continues to peck as if oblivious to its almost certain death. I remain poised as we drive ever closer, knowing with calm assurance that it will fly out of the way.

We arrive in time for morning tea. This is a regular ritual: every Saturday morning Debbie and her husband get together with a group of friends for a cuppa and a chat at a local cafe.

Tim and I are well known to this group of my sister’s friends. We have spent a number of Saturday mornings drinking tea and chatting, as if we too were their friends.

I have done this my whole life: latched on to my sister’s friends rather than making my own. I find it easier that way – Deb does all the work of making and keeping friends and every now and then I pop along and have conversations with them as if they are my friends as well.

Many years ago, when we were in primary school Stacey, one of Debbie’s friends, invited her on an outing to the beach. Somehow I wrangled an invitation too. Even then, I didn’t have friends of my own, preferring to hang out with my sister and her friends. [I don’t think Deb was as in favour of this arrangement as I was.]

As Stacey’s Dad drove us all to the beach, we sat in the back chatting, and laughing at nothing in particular as eight and nine year olds do. I nearly jumped out of my skin though when Stacey suddenly screamed, Dad, slow down. Please, Dad, don’t hit it!

Was there a person on the road, I wondered? A baby perhaps? Maybe a kid had fallen off his bike and was stumbling bleeding down the centre of the road. It must have been something momentous for Stacey to react like that, I thought.

It was a bird.

But Stacey’s Dad slowed down, the bird flew away unscathed, and we continued calmly to the beach.

To say that I was impressed with this interaction between father and daughter would be a mammoth understatement. Stacey had been able to influence her father’s behaviour in, if not exactly an hysterical way, a decidedly dramatic fashion! Stacey’s father, the man who had built the house we lived in, a big burly man who bossed others around for a living, took notice of what his nine-year-old daughter had said.

I sat with this racing and rolling around in my mind for the rest of the drive to the beach. Once we arrived it flew straight out of my mind of course because there were sandcastles to build and shells to collect to make a number eight with (eight was my favourite number that year).

But the episode lingered in my mind, swirling beneath the delight of being at the beach with people who weren’t my family.

The following weekend, I was again on my way to the beach, this time with my own family. A bird was on the road up ahead. I hesitated, then decided to go for it.

Dad, I screamed, slow down. Please don’t hit it!

Dad didn’t slow down.

It’ll move, he said, in that quiet, dry way he has. And it did.

I learnt a lesson that day. I still ponder about what that lesson was even after all these years of working it over in my mind. I think I learnt a number of lessons actually: lessons about emotional responses, pragmatic thinking, the capacity to influence behaviour (or not), and other things I still can’t articulate.

But it meant that when I saw the bird on the road yesterday morning I just knew that there was no need for histrionics.

We drew ever closer, and I heard my Dad again: it’ll move, and at the very last moment the bird flew lazily away.

Thanks Dad … I think.

Posted in Life, Writing

2016 Writing challenge: Day #10

Posted on by Sharon

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Today’s topic is a free association one: Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say … home … soil … rain. Use those words in the title of your post.

Title: Farm-earth drinking

I used to live on a farm. We moved to the farm after living in Brisbane for a few years when an opportunity arose that my then husband couldn’t turn down.

The farm was in Tasmania, just outside a little town, population: 400.

The farm had a few cows, fewer fences, a lot of thistles and even more sheep.

The farm was on a hill and on the eastern boundary, halfway down the hill, above the river, was ‘the race’. I didn’t know what ‘the race’ was when I first arrived (I didn’t even know what a race was, let alone the race). I discovered that it’s kind of like an aqueduct, but far less grand.

It used to carry water from up in the hills behind the town to the tin mine at Derby. Even though I lived there in the mid-1980s, I have only just learnt that it was a 48km-engineering feat, built in 1901, and the first release of water took three weeks to reach the mine. Thanks Internet – we didn’t have the internet back then, so there’s no way I could have known that :).

One farmer I heard about used to tie her son to the clothesline on a long line so that he wouldn’t fall into the race when she was milking the cows. Can you imagine the furore that would cause these days? Still, she was keeping her son safe, so props for that, as the hip people say.

Anyway, the race was dry by the time we moved there; it had fallen into disrepair many years before, but was still an interesting feature.

One of the other interesting features of the farm was the sound the earth made after rain. It rained a lot and so I had many opportunities to listen in to the conversation the earth was having with itself when it rained.

It honestly sounded as though the earth was drinking and taking a great deal of pleasure in doing so.

The farmhouse we lived in burnt down a number of years ago and as I happened to be in the neighbourhood (months after the fire, I hasten to add) I thought I’d stop in to see what remained. Only the bath and a chimney remained. But what hit me as soon as I got out of the car was the silence. It was nothing I’d ever heard before. Sure there were the sounds of birds in the distance, and the tinkle of a cow’s bell from the farm across the valley, but the air was unbelievably quiet. It wasn’t something I’d remembered from living there, although with four children at the time, it probably wasn’t silent too often.

And in that silence I heard it again: the sound of the earth drinking.

If you haven’t heard it, head out after the rain, plant yourself on a patch of earth and tune in.

What do you hear?

Posted in Life, Writing

2016 Writing challenge: Day #9

Posted on by Sharon

This post should have been yesterday’s post, but I was rushing to get out of the house to have dinner with my son Chase, and so postponed posting this until now.

The theme I have chosen for today is: Take two – Run outside. Take a picture of the first thing you see. Run inside. Take a picture of the second thing you see. Write about the connection between these two random objects, people, or scenes.

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The bird is blue and the leaf is green.

Blue and green must never be seen without a colour in between. That’s what my Sydney Nan used to tell me.

Sydney Nan would know because she was a very stylish woman. Her handbag and shoes always matched. When she was younger she wore gloves and a hat. Every Sunday night she would paint her nails, and they always looked beautiful, just like she did.

I argued of course. But Nan, the sky is blue and the grass is green, and they look good together.

Yes, Sharon, they do. But it’s not the same in fashion, always put a colour in between.

Okey dokey. I knew when to stop arguing with Nan.

Pink and green, on the other hand, are fit for a queen.

Really?

Pink and green? Together? Hmmm …

Nan didn’t tell me that. I read it somewhere.

We have a proclivity for making connections between things. We see an animal act in a certain way and we connect it with human emotions or actions. We see a puddle and connect it with a painting we once craned our necks to see over the heads of hundreds of cameras in a museum on the other side of the world.

We connect a loathing of maths to our high school maths teacher.

We connect our aversion to wooden spoons to the fearful voice of our mother and finding socks under the bed.

We connect the scent of vanilla to our fridge and then make the leap to food and then realise that you’re writing a blog post and it’s after past nine and you haven’t had breakfast and you’re hungry and your mind is fuzzy and you wonder why you don’t stop to eat.

And you connect the leaf that’s been rained on in Melbourne to the rain coming from Tasmania where the bird was given as a gift.

Connections.

Between people and things. Some more tenuous than others, but we can make them if we try.