After an hour Maddy leaves Robin and me alone for thirty minutes as it was agreed she would. The plan is that when she returns she and I will leave Robin and go somewhere else to quietly reflect on what has happened. Maddy had thought two hours was the perfect amount of time for the first meeting.
But the plan goes to pot. Maddy returns and we tell her we’ve decided to stay longer. Maddy looks at me, rather penetratingly I feel, possibly trying to sign with her eyes that this is not my most brilliant idea. I look back at her with, I hope, equally meaningful eyes: It’s all good, I’ve got this.
Robin
Maddy leaves and Susannah and I decide it’s time to perhaps seek a more congenial environment. However, this is not to be so easily afforded us. As we step outside, the weather, which has wavered all day between good and bad, suddenly opts for horrific and unleashes an icy wind and torrential, driving rain.
It really is ghastly: I am freezing, tottering precariously over the slippery cement paving of Federation Square, my head bowed against the elements, my precious hair now fully embracing drowned-rat mode.
Susannah jokes, ‘This is not good – I’m going to kill my birth mother on our first meeting!’ Believing it to be not altogether outside the bounds of possibility, I half-laugh, half-sob, as I stumble on.
Susannah
I leave Robin on the windswept but vaguely dry stage of Federation Square and head off to Flinders Street station to buy an umbrella. Is nothing going to go to plan?
Robin
I watch her go, much as one might have watched the doomed Oates set out into the Antarctic blizzard. But she does return and, armed with the umbrella, we embark on the last leg of what I have come to regard as our ‘ordeal’.
But lo – the beckoning light of a Southbank restaurant! We enter, dripping, and find a table looking out on to the river. The place is peaceful, warm and, of course, dry. I feel I am in paradise.
We order a glass of wine, a platter of antipasto, and settle in. We talk happily for the next two-and-a-half hours. Finally, we have reached our perfect meeting place – but what we went through to get here! Could it be a metaphor?
Susannah
We’re dry and it’s beautiful looking out over the damp twilight. Finally the vision for our meeting is realised.
It’s weird, though. We keep looking at each other, trying to take it, and each other, in. There are gaps in the conversation but they are not uncomfortable. We exchange phone numbers and, when Robin struggles slightly with the technology, I take her phone with a surprising confidence and key in my number. She doesn’t seem to mind.
Eight hours after we first met, we part.
Where next? I wonder.
Robin
Out the window, the sky, the river and the city skyline opposite us are suffused in a soft, ethereal light, which over the course of the evening changes from gold, to rose, to blue. It is strangely beautiful – as is this whole thing. That I should be sitting here with my daughter, Susannah, is a wonder and a blessing for which I am profoundly grateful.
V
RIDING THE ROLLER COASTER
ABBA to the rescue
Susannah
For our second meeting, two days later, we have decided to have lunch at the Botanical Gardens. The original vision of somewhere beautiful, somewhere open, is finally going to be realised. There are still some butterflies fluttering in my tummy but this time they are more excited than nervous: I am really looking forward to seeing Robin again.
That morning, doing my exercises (as part of my spasmodic must-not-be-fat-at-fifty campaign) I listen to an ABBA song, ‘The Name of the Game’. I am fairly convinced that there is an ABBA song for every key moment in one’s life – and this one is the one for this moment. The song is about two people who have only just met, yet seem to get each other. Agnetha (the blonde; I always wanted to be Anni-Frid, the brunette) sings of how this person just seems to understand her, see her and make her open up in a way she hasn’t expected. The person’s voice and smile make her feel completely at home yet she worries that if she tells the person she cares, that person might laugh or reject her. And so she wants to understand why, what the name of the game is.
Now, really, what is ABBA doing in my mind?! The song perfectly sums up both the speed with which I seem to have been hooked, and my fear that it’s all going to go wrong. I download the song on to my phone, thinking I will play it to Robin when we meet for lunch. It seems a brilliant idea at the time, it will take her right to how I am feeling. And so, belting the song out as I drive, I set off for the Botanical Gardens.
This time everything works: it’s a beautiful early Spring day, the gardens are open, daffodils are popping out all over the place, we both arrive when we say we will, and we head off for a coffee by the lake. We walk and we talk. We ask and answer questions in an easy, often amusing exchange with few pauses, none of them awkward. Robin seems almost unreasonably interested in pretty much everything I say, which is gratifying and makes me talk more, babbling on about childhood, work, family and, inevitably, ABBA … which leads me to my brilliant idea.
‘Robin, can I play you a song?’
‘A song?’ she asks, looking a little confused.
‘An ABBA song,’ I reply as if that explains everything.
‘Here?’ she asks, confusion not clearing. ‘A song?’
The obvious unspoken words are a seventy-year-old version of ‘What the …?’
Yet I persist, oblivious to the warning signs.
‘I’m not very musical,’ she says.
‘That doesn’t matter. It’s more the words …’ I say, getting out my phone.
‘Oh, okay.’
I suggest she sits down. She dutifully obeys and I walk away so she can listen in peace, I believe, to the obvious cut-through wisdom of the super-Swedes. I am thinking this is good. I am deluded.
I look back to see her, poor thing, hunched over, my phone to her ear, straining to hear. And then she is looking quizzically at the phone, her fingers tapping a little desperately on the screen. She has, in what I will come to learn is a signature trait, flicked the screen off and has no idea how to get the music back. But, poor, lovely woman, she keeps trying. I can’t bear it, it’s too painful to watch and I have to intervene. I walk back to the bench.
‘Did you listen to it?’
Robin looks a little crestfallen. ‘I listened for a little, it was a bit hard to hear the words and then something happened,’ she said apologetically.
My brilliant idea is dead in the water.
‘It’s okay,’ I say, conceding defeat and taking my phone. ‘Let’s go have some lunch.’
Robin
It’s a beautiful day and Susannah and I are having lunch at a restaurant on the edge of the Botanical Gardens. We sit outside in the courtyard under a spreading fig tree, surrounded by herb and vegetable gardens with an espaliered fruit tree adorning the wall opposite us. All is delightful.
Susannah is such a good girl, looking after me and attentive to my needs. She is so open and eager to share herself with me. It was disarming of her to bring the ABBA song especially for me to listen to – a pity I really couldn’t hear the words at all. I know she feels that she’s the needy one in our relationship, the vulnerable one, in danger of putting herself out there and maybe being rejected again, but it’s not all one-sided, I have my vulnerabilities too. What if her exuberant and voracious puppy love is just that, something that can subside as suddenly as it came? Lines from Romeo and Juliet come to mind: ‘It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.’ In other words, a flash in the pan.
Emotions are unpredictable. Who is more reliable: the one who feels she will always stay and love, or the one who has decided she will always stay and love?
Over coffee, I try to voice these thoughts.
‘Do you think that your feelings for me are in part a bit mixed up with your grieving for your mum? I sometimes think that it may be an emotional flurry that will burn itself out and then you
’ll say, “I’ve got that out of my system, I can move on now. Goodbye!”’
Susannah assures me that her mum and I are quite separate – that she has sorted that out and that she doesn’t think our relationship is short-term.
That’s a good answer and while it doesn’t take away all my apprehensions, I’m happy for it and, anyway, right now, under this fig tree, we are enjoying one another, appreciating one another. Both of us, I’m sure, are looking ahead with more faith than fear.
Susannah
Lunch was lovely, more easy talk and laughter but also some deeper moments including Robin voicing some of her fears about our relationship. It’s kind of nice not to be the only needy one.
But now the restaurant is closing. We leave and sit outside on a bench in the fading sunlight of the day. Even I, eight hours later, know it’s time to go. We walk towards Robin’s car and, as we do, I take her arm. She looks taken aback but I don’t take my hand away.
‘Is that okay?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s fine.’
I’ve never been a fan of ‘fine’ but I hold my ground and her arm until we get to her car. As she drives away, I realise I am missing her already.
Robin
Alone in my car, I mentally review the day. Our reunion is still a wonder to me; I am so happy. I realise, however, that I am quite emotionally retarded in some areas, particularly in showing physical affection. When Susannah took my arm, I was startled, and felt awkward, out of my comfort zone. Growing up, our family was big on uninhibited verbal communication, but inhibited when it came to physical demonstrativeness. My mum and dad loved me but they were not huggers, and to this day I cannot hug my sister, Susan, with whom I am very close, without feeling awkward. Hugs of convention to relative strangers are not a problem – it’s the intimacy that makes it difficult. I am better with little people, my children when they were small and my grandchildren, but it’s a slow process of liberation. A young friend from church, Xali, perceiving my constriction in this area, appointed herself my ‘hugging coach’ and, espousing the pedagogical method of habituation, virtually forced me to hug and be hugged to an alarming extent. Judging by my reaction today, her work is not yet complete.
Over-thinking feeling
Susannah
Normally, ABBA is my happy place but now at least ‘The Name of the Game’, added to my high-rotation playlist, seems to fuel my over-thinking. Or is that my over-feeling?
There’s a lot happening in my life outside this crazy reunion ride: my son is finishing school and then leaving for London, my daughter is leaving for a school exchange in Sweden, Oskar has started his own business and I am launching a new book series. Big milestones are being reached for both parents and children and it’s exciting and sad and happy-making all at the same time. Emotions are running high everywhere and no amount of meditation is calming my monkeys.
Because there’s so much going on in both our lives, Robin and I won’t be able to meet up much in the next fortnight and that, strangely, causes me to fret. We speak a lot on the phone and, again strangely, simply hearing her voice seems to calm the sense of panic that is rising up in me these days. There’s this constant tension between excitement and fear and I really struggle to manage it.
I write both professionally and personally, but I have never written poetry before. Yet now, the control and precision it demands seems exactly what I need to try to make sense of what is going on.
So, I sit down and try to write and wrangle this moment. Finally, I get this, and I send it to Robin.
Hurtling, hurt, towards something light
Open, opening, something dark
Scaring, soothing, healing, hurting
Soaring, sinking, blocking, blurting
Towards an unknown, fiercely felt home
She replies in an email:
That is so moving, so impressive.
I love you very much. I want to be worthy of you.
See you tomorrow.
Xxx
I am overjoyed with this response. I reckon this poetry thing has a lot going for it.
Heed the carousel
Robin
I see an article in The Age newspaper about a new art installation at the National Gallery. It is a golden carousel, set up in the main foyer, that you can actually ride on. This captures my imagination at once. The carousel is beautiful to look at, all in gold (or brass, really), with mirrors and delicate little swinging chairs. What a poetic, whimsical concept: a merry-go-round in an art gallery.
And it is just the sort of thing for Susannah and me to experience on one of our outings. I can see us whirling round and round, gathering speed, the chairs swinging out to the side as we go. Exhilarating – as is the whole adventure we are on: getting to know each other, delighting in our shared sense of humour, the click of connection.
Susannah agrees it’s a good idea, so one fine morning, we head off to the gallery.
And there is the carousel, in all its glory, in the large foyer. A small crowd stands around it, while some people are already seated on it, waiting for the ride to start. We think we might watch from the sidelines before taking our turn, but as nothing seems to be happening, we approach the attendant and ask when the next ride is due to start. Then comes the deflating disclosure: it has already begun. In fact, it has never stopped, it is just that the rate of motion is so slow, it is barely perceptible to the eye. Looking more carefully, we discern that the passengers are not entirely static, and one can join their number at any point, as there is clearly little risk of injury either boarding or alighting from the all but stationary vehicle.
Reluctantly letting go of our giddy vision of whirling golden chairs (which, on reflection, given the limited space, may have endangered bystanders), we decide we will go on it anyway, adjusting our mindset from madcap to meditative. We take our seats and sway our way restfully around the circuit at a snail’s pace. We have been brought to heel, forced to settle down and attempt Buddhist mindfulness. We stay for three revolutions before deciding we need a little more action. Having alighted, we are henceforth numbered among the enlightened ones, guides and mentors to others. Overhearing a father encouraging his little daughters, telling them that soon the merry-go-round ride will start, not long to wait now, I am able to disabuse him of his misconception, gently informing him that what he is looking at now is as good as it gets.
Over coffee, we jokingly concede that we may have been given a sign, yea, even a warning? You need to slow down, says the hidden voice. Too much speed will end in tears.
Round and round the garden
Susannah
We retreat to the gallery cafe to recover from the non-existent whirl of the carousel.
I get our coffee, we sit, and the conversation moves a bit lurchingly but the amusement of the non-moving carousel keeps the mood light. As I talk and gesticulate with my hands, my hand brushes Robin’s and it makes me feel something. I feel like I want to hold her hand.
Is that weird? I do it with my friends, and my family obviously. It’s a connecting, warming thing, but perhaps it’s weird here, now? Perhaps it will just come over creepy? Then I remember when I hugged Maddy goodbye last week, Robin commented that I seemed to like to hug a lot: did that imply that she did not? Probably. I think, Maybe don’t take her hand, it will definitely play creepy.
‘Let’s go,’ I say and we head out to another exhibition in the gallery gardens, where a ‘perfume sensory experience’ is being held. It’s not brilliantly signed but little booths dot the garden, so we head off to the first one. We put our heads into the booth. We are not overwhelmed by smell: actually we can’t smell anything.
But there is a light spray to our left – perhaps that is the sensory experience? It’s quite beautiful really, the spray twinkling in the sunlight, the smell floating over the garden bed. We put our heads into the spray and there it is – a refreshing, quite floral aroma. It’s a bit wet, but beautiful. This is brilliant and we look, eagerly, for t
he next one. We approach the next flowerbed and again put our heads – and now awakened noses – into the spray. It seems rather similar to the last smell but perhaps that is our uneducated noses letting us down? We go in again trying to pick up a difference – ah yes, this one is more grassy, isn’t it? Less floral? We are getting the hang of this thing; we are probably brilliant, we are definitely impressed with ourselves.
And then a well-dressed woman approaches us. We have probably lingered too long in our new olfactory experience, we think; time to let other people enjoy it. She moves quite close to us. ‘You know,’ she says. ‘You need to get one of these.’ She offers a strip of paper to us.
‘Ah,’ we say, ‘thank you!’ thinking this way we won’t get so wet. But there was more. ‘And then,’ she continued, ‘you dip it into the small wells in the booths.’ ‘But it’s here,’ we politely begin to correct, indicating the garden beds with our wet hands. ‘No, it’s not,’ she even more politely advises. And she was right. We have been smelling the gallery garden’s watering system.
We can’t stop laughing: surely the grassy-versus-floral aroma was real? (Although we did wonder about the wetness.) And how could we have missed the testing wells in the booths?
We now progress around the booths – where, now we know where to look and smell, there are quite amazing perfumes, far from the common garden variety of our first attempt. We see other people struggling with the exhibition and a few, we are gratified to see, are also strangely drawn to the water sprinklers. With the missionary zeal of the newly converted we move among the unenlightened offering testing strips and showing the way.
Our senses finally sated, we sit outside in the gardens and talk. The gallery will soon close but I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. It’s easy, it’s fun and I feel like staging a sit-in and just not leaving. There’s that irrational, ridiculous feeling again, like I’m threatening a tantrum – get a grip, Susannah.
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