by Helen Brown
While the subject of Da Vinci’s work is divine, he used everyday women for models. It was heart-warming to see the surge of nurture experienced by two beauties 600 years ago echoed by a young woman in a twenty-first century maternity hospital. Underneath all the so-called advances, humans haven’t changed.
Flushed with emotion, Lydia rocked and cooed over the bundle. She had such a strong maternal instinct, which was what had driven her to care for the weak and infirm, heal the world. Perhaps one day she’d feel ready to set those impossible ideals aside and settle for a man who understood her, and a child of her own.
Just as I was picturing her conventional future, monk and monastery free, Lydia turned to the exhausted parents.
‘Would you mind if I chant?’ she asked.
Gratitude
Do not judge cats or daughters – if it can be avoided
As Rob and Chantelle adjusted to the rigorous demands of night feeding and deciphering the needs of their tiny daughter, I marvelled at the enormity of parenthood. Impossible to describe to those who haven’t ‘been there’, becoming a mum or dad changes people profoundly. While Annie thrived and grew plump, her parents transformed into serious adults, always putting their daughter first.
Well into her second year of Psychology, Lydia continued scoring great marks. The grey bus made regular appearances outside the house, and she ran fundraisers for the University Buddhist Society. Her life seemed too earnest. The countless hours spent meditating in her room upstairs gave her a disconnected, unworldly manner. I sometimes felt we were sharing the house with a phantom rather than a twenty-five-year-old. My anxiety about her throwing herself into religion was dwarfed by my concern that she might lose her identity. I worried our daughter might float away like a balloon while we watched, helpless. Every now and then I’d hear her chatting animatedly in Sinhalese on the phone. She was still in touch with the monastery.
In the meantime, I was due for my two-year breast cancer check-up. The night before it, I lay awake unable to get back to sleep. It was hard to believe so much time had gone by since the mastectomy and Jonah bursting into our lives. Jonah wasn’t a kitten anymore. He panted when I flicked the fishing rod too fast these days.
From a health perspective, the past two years had consisted of, among other things, pains and pinches I probably wouldn’t have noticed pre-cancer. I’d also endured tiredness that was overwhelming at times. Then again, I’d been fool enough to write a book in the middle of it.
Confronting my own mortality had been more challenging than I’d imagined. Though the thought of my life ending was nowhere near as devastating as the loss of Sam, I was surprised to find a tiny part of me believed, despite all the evidence, I’d live forever. A remnant from youthful days when I never thought about dying, it wasn’t particularly helpful. Life was richer now I understood how swiftly it slips away. Cancer had taught me to live like a cat, savouring every moment.
I’d experienced the unbelievable highs of Rob’s wedding, finding out my book about Cleo had become an international bestseller, and the joy of welcoming a granddaughter into the world. My glass was overflowing.
Driving off to meet Philip at the clinic, I assured Katharine and Lydia that everything would be fine – though I didn’t entirely believe it. With a trusty book of crosswords concealed in my handbag, I parked outside the clinic and caught the lift to the fourth floor. Four’s an unlucky number, according to Chinese superstition. Eight, on the other hand, is incredibly lucky. Feeling queasy as the lift sailed skyward, I silently doubled the four and pretended I was going to eight.
The clinic waiting room featured the same Architectural Digests as two years earlier: ‘Marrakesh Meets Malibu’. One of the reason people live in glamorous homes is to lull themselves into the fantasy that they’re immune from life’s harshness.
Courage, I’ve discovered, isn’t my line of expertise. It was easier to be brave about breast cancer two years earlier when I didn’t know what I was pretending to be brave about.
I grabbed a paper cup and squeezed hot water out of a tap to make peppermint tea. I was more health conscious these days. A red-haired woman in full army kit stepped out of the elevator. An old Greek woman with purple legs eased herself cautiously into a chair next to me. A couple of seats along from me was a disgruntled-looking woman with dyed hair chopped so savagely short she resembled a hedgehog. A young Indian woman came in to have her dressings changed. Breast cancer isn’t choosy. Last Thursday had taken a hundred years off her life, she told the nurse.
Oblivious to the fact most of the women in the waiting room were staring death in the eye sockets, a bloke shouted into his mobile. ‘What’re you doin’ tonight?’ Hot with rage, I wanted to throttle him.
A tall blonde with stooped shoulders strode in and sat down next to the hedgehog haircut woman. Like a couple who’d been married too long, they didn’t talk or look at each other, though they were unquestionably together. Maybe they’d had a row.
I’d assumed it was the grumpy one in for a check-up but when the nurse appeared the blonde sprang to her feet and disappeared down the corridor. Her partner seemed self-absorbed for a while, then her mouth turned down and she rubbed a tear away with her knuckle.
A husband buried himself in the sports section of a newspaper. Philip offered to make another peppermint tea. I said yes. Good to keep men busy.
A nurse approached me after a while. ‘Come through please,’ she said.
I scurried down the corridor in her wake, grateful for the change of atmosphere.
Stepping into the examination area, I knew the drill. Remove everything from the waist up and put on the white towelling robe that transformed me into a patient. God I hate it here, I thought, as I took off my red coat and dangly earrings.
Running away was an option but it wasn’t this place or this particular Tuesday that was to blame. Today was merely a milestone, to record the progress of the past two years. Or not. Greg had said it’d be five years before I was ‘out of the woods’.
Like a dog at the vet’s, I was wary of the Chinese mammogram technician, reminding her my right breast was fake so only the left one needed squashing in her machine. Ouch.
Leaving me to ferry the images to the radiographer, the technician said she’d be back in a tick. Five, fifteen, twenty minutes passed. I wondered why she was taking so long. Fear ran a chill through me. Had they found something?
‘Oh, you’re still there,’ she said brightly from the doorway. ‘We found a shadow deep in your chest cavity but it’s nothing cynical.’
Thank goodness. As a journalist, I’d strived to avoid cynicism. It was a relief to know a residual cynic hadn’t set up house in my chest. I moved on to the ultrasound room and after that got dressed to meet up with Philip in the surgeon’s office. The surgeon said she liked my blouse and that the mammogram was clear.
Skipping out of the clinic, I kissed Philip goodbye and sent him back to work. Giant meringues of clouds hovered over the park. Voluptuous with moisture, they reminded me of the clouds I grew up with that went dark around the edges before unleashing themselves on dairy paddocks.
The back of my nose tingled. A cool breeze carried the damp, metallic smell of moisture. Finally it rained – and not just the miserable showers we’d made do with for months on end, but proper, wetting rain. It bounced on the street until the gutters chattered with life.
People laughed and lifted their faces to the deluge. The drought had finally broken.
Turning my key into the ignition the car radio sprang to life with Three Dog Night’s ‘Joy to the World’. I turned it up as loud as my ears could stand and drove home shouting: ‘Jeremiah was a bullfrog!’ The windscreen wipers couldn’t slap fast enough to keep up with the downpour. With rain hammering on the car’s roof and a clean bill of health, I’d fallen in love with life again.
I should have celebrated with champagne. Instead I went home, cleaned out the kitchen cupboards and thought about making a garden. A Gratitude Gard
en.
Ever since we’d bought Shirley, the front yard was so sparsely sprinkled with sand we could’ve raised camels. Weeds were things that’d thrived, along with ravenous fingers of sea grass scrabbling from under the fence.
With poor soil and a harsh climate, the new garden was never going to be a show-stopper. The land wasn’t much bigger than a kitten basket. That didn’t mean it couldn’t have a spiritual aspect, though. Lydia was enthusiastic when I shared the idea of a Gratitude Garden, particularly when I told her I wanted it to have a focal point for meditation.
We thumbed through a couple of gardening design books together. Most consisted of flashy barbecue areas and plunge pools. They aimed to impress rather than inspire connection to the soul.
At first I thought of creating a spiral hedge that could form a walking meditation path. But our garden was too small for an elaborate hedge system. We had to keep it simple – a circle, perhaps, with carefully chosen plants and a central focus. A ring shape would symbolise the circle of women. And we needed water to represent life, purity and forgiveness.
Lydia and I dragged the old semicircular seat from the backyard and placed it facing outwards under the apple tree. Resting on the seat, we gazed over power lines and the tiled roofs across the street. The view could easily be softened with some plants.
‘This is exciting!’ said Lydia. ‘Let’s go look at fountains.’
We drove miles out of town to a place that sold garden statues and water features, many of dubious taste. We strode past lascivious cherubs relieving themselves into ponds. Lydia paused at a selection of Buddhas and winged Asian deities. I steered her away from them.
We were about to give up and go home when a large bowl beside the checkout counter caught our attention. Filled with water, it was probably made of concrete, but had been ‘distressed’ to appear as if it had been dug out of the earth. In the middle of the bowl sat a rough-hewn stone orb, slightly bigger than a football. Water spouted through a hole in the orb, creating a restful trickle. If the bowl was lifted and set on a stand, we agreed it would be perfect.
‘Do you think there’s room for goldfish?’ Lydia asked.
‘You want goldfish?’
‘For peace,’ she said, nodding.
Two days later the water feature was delivered, plonked in pieces beside the front steps. Hoping we hadn’t been over ambitious, I called Warren, a talented landscape gardener. Tanned and muscular from years working under the sun, Warren isn’t the most talkative guy on earth. He looked at the water bowl and nodded. When I described my vision for the front garden, he cast a practised eye over the concrete paving stones on the sloping path. Finding a place for the feature would be simple compared to everything else that needed doing, he said. Earth needed shifting and flattening, and a retaining wall would have to go in close to the front fence. Three steps and a new front path would also need to go in.
Why did simplicity have to be so complicated?
The size and expense of the project began to balloon, but I trusted Warren. When he and his mates began burrowing like wombats through the front garden, I wasn’t so sure. Neighbours paused to stare over the fence. One of them complained that overnight rain had sent mud running from our place down the gutter to his property. Warren trudged down the street and patiently shovelled up the offending residue.
As with the painters, Jonah developed a crush on Warren. He waited in the front window for him every morning and pressed against the screen door, meowing seductively. When Warren and his team had their morning coffee on the back deck, Jonah bolted through the tunnel of his cat run and into his tower to admire them from one of his hammocks. Jonah had a thing for workmen’s boots. He adored weaving through a pair of muscular legs and tugging on well-worn shoelaces.
I panicked when I saw the enormous cavity Warren had dug out front, and the seriousness of the retaining wall. My simple Gratitude Garden was turning into something out of Grand Designs. Not wanting to be the client from hell, but becoming one anyway, I asked Warren if he knew what he was doing.
Lifting his head from the depths of his excavations, he looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
‘Couldn’t the changes be a little less . . . dramatic?’ I asked.
Warren rested a hand on his shovel, sighed deeply and assured me everything would be fine. Fools and children should never see things half done.
Once new earth was delivered and pressed into the cavity, the shape of the new garden started to emerge. The levels Warren had gone to such trouble to create turned out to be perfect. The unusable slope leading up to the apple tree had transformed into an inviting terrace to be covered in lawn. Warren also created a beautiful front path with recycled bricks inlaid with small river stones. He built a stand in the centre of the flattened soil and cemented the water bowl in place. I felt foolish for having doubted him.
Fortunately, Warren still liked me enough to invite me to climb into his ute to visit a garden centre. Even though the drought was officially over, I wasn’t willing to take risks with plants. Our garden had to be able to survive weeks, possibly even months, with no rain or watering. Hardiness was a prerequisite and perfume was desired. I also wanted the plants to have personal meaning.
For years I’d taken olive trees for granted. While I respected their resilience and the relationship they’d had with people through history, I’d always regarded them as straggly, grey plants. Then I saw a painting by Van Gogh in which he’d portrayed olive trees as wise, silvery beings. Like the painter himself, these olive trees were no strangers to suffering but Van Gogh depicted them as tough and shimmering with vitality. When I was finally able to visit the olive grove Van Gogh painted near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in France, I almost wept. What greater gift can a genius give than to teach others how to see the world?
Olive branches also symbolise peace. For millennia they’ve provided succour with their fruit. Peace and nurture: perfect for a Gratitude Garden. Warren ordered several well-developed olive trees to go along the front and side fences to (ultimately) provide privacy.
Rosemary is underrated. Not only is it hardy, it provides perfume for a garden, food for bees and flavouring for roast lamb. Also, according to Shakespeare, rosemary symbolises remembrance. Mum had always kept a vase of rosemary sprigs on her table in homage to those she’d lost. As years went by and more of her friends and relations passed away, the vessel became so crowded she needed a bigger vase. In honour of Mum and many other angels, we planted a rosemary hedge alongside Warren’s new path.
Deep red roses went in under the living room window from which Jonah liked to survey his realm. Their perfume would spread sensuously through summer evenings.
Katharine put in a request for lavender, which passed both the perfume and hardiness tests. When Warren planted a couple of large bushes in front of the roses, the bees could hardly wait.
In homage to New Zealand, I bought some bronze flaxes which went in a row along one of the side fences. Sadly, they craved the damp climate of our homeland and didn’t thrive as vigorously as the native grasses behind the front fence – or even the gardenia bushes Warren had planted under the semicircular seat. I’d taken Mum a gardenia flower when she was dying and she’d drunk in its perfume as though it was life itself.
The effect was enhanced with pots of spectacular succulents either side of the front door. Exploding in outrageous shapes of mauves, greens and coppers, they contrasted against Shirley’s red bricks.
Only one task remained. The focal point of the new garden had yet to spring to life. Lydia and I watched from my study window as Warren filled the bowl with a hose and connected the pump. We held our breath. Nothing happened. Unperturbed, Warren strode around the side of the house to tweak the electrics.
There was a hum, followed by a gurgle, then water splashed joyfully over the orb.
Our next task was to go to the pet shop and buy some goldfish. Anyone who says goldfish have a short memory hasn’t observed them. Every morning, three orange strea
ks waited in exactly the same spot to be fed. They grew long and plump in their new home – and adept at avoiding dive-bombing pigeons in need of a bath.
Our Gratitude Garden complete, I’d often look up from my computer screen to see Lydia sitting on the circular seat. Sometimes I’d join her and we’d gaze on the sprouting leaves with the satisfaction of those who’ve shared an act of creation.
Sitting together in the garden, our conversations weren’t as jagged as they used to be but my daughter still seemed to withhold her deepest thoughts.
Obsession
Beware the dejected cat. He will seek revenge
With his designer cat run, a retinue of human groupies and a house bursting with fishing rods, ribbons and scratching posts, Jonah was the feline who had everything. When a smart red portacot with stainless steel legs and mesh sides appeared in the living room one afternoon, he naturally assumed it was yet another item for his enjoyment. Raising his tail in a question mark, he put his head to one side, sniffed its new smell and purred.
‘It’s not for you, Jonah,’ I said, watching him circle the portacot at increasing speed.
Deaf to my words, he sprang into the bed’s squishy depths and pranced over the mattress.
‘Come out!’ I cried, trying to catch him. But he slithered from my grasp and bounced on to the floor. Just as I was about to praise him for an uncharacteristic display of obedience, he sailed past my nose back into the cot. Into the cot, out of the cot, into the cot . . . Another new game that, as far as Jonah was concerned, could go on for the rest of the year.
‘It’s the baby’s cot!’ I said, lifting him again and again from his mesh-walled pleasure palace.
The idea that something new and fun could arrive in the house and not be specifically meant for his enjoyment was new to Jonah. Taken aback, he changed his approach. Instead of being designed for jumping in and out of, he decided maybe it was just a bed. He seized every opportunity to jump in and curl up on the mattress. Hauling him out, I remembered how horrified Mum had been when Cleo climbed into Lydia’s cot before she was born. Cats, she’d said, could smother babies.
