Learning how to Breathe

by Neil, Linda;

  We used to call Warren Street the rabbit warren for no particular reason, though later, when we got to know some of the stories about large Catholic families, we made the connection in our own minds between our street and the fact that people of our particular religion were supposed to breed like rabbits. We did not have a particularly large family, not by local standards anyway – three girls and two boys: three with saints’ names, Cathie, Paul and Stephen, and two without. I was named after a movie star called Linda Darnell and my sister was named Janice because Mum liked the sound of it. Five was a modest number of children compared to other families we knew of, like the O’Hares, who had ten, the Kellys, who had eleven, and the O’Gradys from Durham Street, who had twelve. Even the humbly named Meekmans from Indooroopilly had seven kids and an even smaller house than ours.

  Though there was not enough room in our small old wooden worker’s cottage with the besser bricks at the front and fruit trees at the back for everyone to have their own bedroom, it was at least in the realm of possibility that we might one day. And so we did: with judicious building underneath the upper storey of our house and some sacrifices – which included the banana, mango and lemon trees that were cut down in an effort to create more space – we all eventually had our own rooms.

  The best feature of our house, though, with its haphazard extensions and tiny rooms, was the long veranda that ran right along the back. Winter Sundays were often spent in the sunlight that flooded the corner of the veranda and on summer nights a cool breeze always seemed to find its way across the gully at the back. This gully ran through a piece of land that was always unoccupied – ‘Thank God,’ Mum used to sigh – due to an obscure council regulation, and so from all angles and in all seasons the University of Queensland was clearly visible from the rear of our home.

  The university had always loomed large, literally and metaphorically, in my vision from the time I was a little girl. When he was alive, Dad would mow a path through the long grass at the back of our house, even though it did not belong to us any more than it did to the snakes and creepy crawly things which inhabited its undergrowth. ‘I’m mowing the path to your future,’ he would call back to us as he bent over his Victa motor mower and pulled the zip starter, his slim but broad back curving over, his favourite floppy gardener’s hat pulled right down over his forehead like Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island. Dad had been involved in education since he was given a scholarship to study with the Christian Brothers and had been a teacher for all of his adult life. The university was a metaphor for everything he believed in and loved: learning, reading, contemplating, imagining, examining things, being examined, bettering yourself, and sometimes being bettered. It was his goal for all of us that we would ascend from our desks to these towers of education, whose turrets and flags were symbols throughout our childhood of where we were headed.

  I walk up the front stairs and knock loudly on the security screen door but there’s no sign of Mum. I rattle the handle of the screen door and find it is locked, so I call out through the thick mesh. Inside, the house is in darkness. The television is on with the volume turned down very low, as I remember it always was, tuned to the ABC seven o’clock news.

  Mum appears at the end of the hallway. I can hardly make her out in the shadows.

  Mum, I call out. It’s me.

  She seems uncertain. I adjust my eyes to the gloom and press my face against the dusty screen so that I can see her more clearly. I try the door handle a few times. Mum was always too devoted to her teaching and singing to ever be an avid housecleaner. But though her home was always regularly maintained, now even the door itself, with its grime, seems exhausted.

  I can’t get in, Mum, I call to the darkness inside. Can you unlock the door, please?

  Oh, it’s you, Linda. She comes forward, a tiny figure in a white nightie and printed dressing gown. The bulb’s gone in the light.

  Then I’ve come just in time, I joke feebly as she fumbles with the lock on the other side of the reinforced screen that was installed, along with one at the back, soon after my father died.

  It’s the wrong key, I think, she says, walking back into the darkened room before returning with the right key.

  You look well, she greets me finally, holding up her cheek for me to kiss. When we hug she feels smaller, more fragile than I remember. Put the kettle on will you, Linda. I need to lie down.

  I make us some tea then get my violin out of the car. I know that perhaps she’d prefer to hear me play than talk. We’ve never really discussed anything personal. Maybe it is my own self-consciousness that makes this difficult, but Mum rarely asks ‘How are you?’ She prefers to begin our conversations with ‘What have you been doing?’ rather than ‘How are you feeling?’ I don’t think any of us really minds. In fact, often it feels good to have a mother who is interested in our professional or creative activities, rather than probing us about our personal lives.

  Mum seems distracted as she drinks her tea and does not look directly at me. Though she is thinner, her face is round and rosy and her skin, genetically blessed like her mother’s, remains unlined and smooth.

  I still don’t dare ask how she is as she hovers uncertainly near me, restlessly rearranging her body in and out of the lounge chairs. Her blue eyes seem unusually large and her white floral nightie and flimsy dressing gown keep falling from her narrow shoulders. I suddenly want to hold her, to envelop her in my flesh, just to stop her restlessness.

  But I don’t hug her. Instead, I do what I normally do these days in times of crisis or uncertainty. I take my violin out and play; this time, I play an old French tune my grandmother loved, called ‘Meditation’, from an opera by the French composer Massenet.

  Mum closes her eyes and listens. A smile breaks lightly across her pale face as I begin to play and I remember again how she is – how all our family is – transported and energised by music.

  It always seemed as if it was Grandma Chris who was most delighted by music, but perhaps this was because for her it was only ever a dream. It wasn’t hard work and practice like it was for Mum, or, later, for us. It wasn’t listening to words and poetry, as it seemed to be for Dad. Gran had been too poor and perhaps too practical to ever have had a chance at seriously pursuing music. But she was the first one who shared its secrets with me, who told me breathless stories about violinists like Yehudi Menuhin and Jascha Heifetz the way other matriarchs might have whispered about movie stars or ballad singers. It was Gran who played me old records of gypsy music when I was young. According to family folklore it was Grandma who first suggested to Mum that I learn the violin, who first put the instrument into my hands. The truth might be more prosaic. Mum just might have wanted all her daughters to learn music – though, curiously, the boys were never given lessons – because that is what girls did while their brothers played sport. The main thing was to keep us occupied with something, because, as Gran used to say, ‘Idle hands – and minds – do the devil’s work.’ But learning music may also have been one way for Mum’s daughters to – literally – play with her. And for her to play with us.

  When I finish playing, Mum says: It always brings tears to my eyes. And you play like an angel, she continues. Your father and your grandmother would be so proud that you’ve kept it up.

  I thought they were horrified about what I’ve done with my music. This role of the prodigal daughter is an old refrain. Even as I say the words I wish I would just shut up and listen. I thought they thought I’d gone off the rails.

  She looks directly at me as she says: You’ve always expected the worst from us, Linda. Perhaps we understood more than you realised.

  I know she’s right, but I am surprised to hear her say it. After the circuitous route I have travelled to arrive back here in my mother’s lounge room, I am not prepared to delve more deeply into such misconceptions, mine or hers, so soon after coming back home. I change the subject.

  Sitting d
own on the arm of her chair, I ask: So what do you think is up with you, Mum?

  She looks at me for a moment, as if I am an old, strange woman returned from a long long journey.

  Remember when you were a little girl? she asks me. You told the McDonalds down the road that you wanted to be the best violinist in the whole wide world.

  It is one of those things parents remember more than children. I don’t remember it, but Mum does. It still has meaning for her now.

  She settles back into her chair and looks away again. I remember you were wearing those ridiculous red shoes of your grandmother’s. The ones with the wedge heels.

  She smiles as she remembers this childish image of me, a little girl in shoes that are too big for her.

  You liked how they made you taller, she continues. You were in their garden playing the violin for them in those silly red platform shoes.

  I nod my head, even though I have no recollection of the McDonalds or the red shoes.

  And Flo McDonald asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up … She trails off, her head leaning to one side in an expression of reverie.

  I try to jog Mum’s memory gently. And I said … ? I ask her.

  You told them that … She cannot finish her sentence.

  I wanted to be the best violinist … I prompt her.

  Yes … in the whole wide world, she finishes.

  I hop off her chair and sit on the floor at her feet.

  Well, you know, Mum. Kids say things. Anyway, I was never good enough to make it in the classical music world.

  Too impatient, she scolds me. Remember? Little steps add up to a big journey.

  Maybe I just needed to go out and do my own thing, I tell her.

  But perhaps it’s come true, she smiles at me. Perhaps you are a great violinist.

  Now I know something is definitely wrong with you, I giggle, avoiding her compliment. I was ok on the violin; I wasn’t a virtuoso but I felt natural making up music on the instrument. I’d played on quite a few albums while I was in Sydney with musicians who were well known in the business and people seemed to like it. But it wasn’t music that people knew, music that I’d grown up with. It was new music, spontaneous music. Improvised music. Sometimes wild, unpredictable music.

  She straightens herself up a little. I’m not saying you’re perfect, Linda. God knows, nobody is. All I’m saying is that you do let the music sing.

  Mum trained me not to ‘have tickets’ on myself and I still can’t accept compliments graciously.

  Oh, come on. Mum. It’s me, Linda.

  She looks directly at me. Yes, I know who it is.

  I think about the business of dreaming, the dreams I had as a child. Here I am, returned from the dreaming of these dreams, to the place where they began.

  She leans towards me. I haven’t been able to sleep, she tells me tentatively.

  Pianist’s hands, I think as I reach over and touch her knuckles. You can always tell a pianist’s hands by their suppleness and flexible fingers. I’d never thought much about Mum being a musician, not the way you start to think around musicians when you’ve been out on the streets listening to people playing music in order not just to survive, but to stay alive, mentally, emotionally, as well as physically. But here she is, my mother, with her pianist’s hands.

  You must be so tired, I sympathise, holding her hands lightly in mine. Up close her eyes are bloodshot and weary.

  I haven’t slept a wink in nearly a month, she tells me.

  You don’t doze off in front of the TV? I smile as I remember her habit – and Dad’s as well – of nodding off in front of the television in the evenings. Like you used to with Dad?

  Oh, she sighs, if only things were that simple now.

  She sighs again. Our conversation falters. I make her another cup of tea and go back out to the car to get my guitar from the heap of clothes and instruments which are piled in the back of my station wagon. It suddenly feels unseemly to be here with my dusty car full of junk outside the lawns of my parents’ house, which, like the rest of the lawns in the street, are neatly mowed and maintained.

  Even the idea of casually getting out my guitar to sing in Mum’s lounge room feels inappropriate. The suburbs seem no place for a minstrel used to playing and singing out on the road and I cringe with embarrassment, as I sometimes still do, that I have travelled such a long way from the place where I first heard my mother singing. People sing scales in this house, they practise vocal exercises and learn ‘proper music’; they study for exams, compete in eisteddfods, and perform in recitals. I was familiar with all those music rituals as a violinist and was, for a while, a ‘professional’. But even Sister Mary Immaculate Conception, my first violin teacher, once said to Mum: ‘I don’t think the violin will ever be enough for her.’ Perhaps she was right. The violin became a tool for other kinds of discoveries, not just musical ones. I travelled with it like a friend, an explorer, sometimes, when things got tough, like a soldier. There was something deliberate and symbolic, though, in how I had put my violin bow back in its case and started to strum the guitar or the violin to accompany myself as I sang my songs. Musically speaking, it made me naked. It gave me nowhere to hide. Abandoning the violin, and what the violin brought me in terms of work, had sometimes seemed like a kind of madness. But I knew I had to find the song inside me, the song I hadn’t heard yet, even though my voice was weak and untrained. I was ok with my choices and used to people asking me to stop singing and play the violin instead. But I still feel nervous playing and singing in front of people who knew me before, as if they all might secretly think as they listen: ‘Oh my God! What the hell happened to her? She had such a bright future ahead of her.’

  I take a deep breath to calm my nerves and carry my guitar back up the stairs so Mum can hear my song. I say nothing as I begin to strum and watch as her eyes close and her breath starts to ease.

  In my solitude / I know you’d be here if you could

  I sing the song I performed last night in Bellingen.

  In my solitude / Oh please don’t think me rude

  I understand about the solitude, Mum says after I finish. So soothing.

  Are you lonely, Mum? I suddenly ask, wondering if this is what she really means.

  Lonely? Good god no. I like to be on my own. She says it as if she means it. After your father died I got used to the quiet. I looked forward to it. Lying on the couch at night watching the television. Not thinking about anything. Not having to do anything for anybody.

  She starts to cry then, not quietly or discreetly, but loudly and abruptly. Her tears are both a shock and not entirely unexpected; when I hear them they are at once alien and as familiar as the lounge room of my old home, which has hardly changed at all since I was a little girl – the dull plush carpet, the old scratched furniture, the heavy linen curtains hanging in front of dusty alcoves, the cheap, laminate entertainment unit that holds French, Italian and German books and old videos. In among the mismatched utilitarian furnishings, though, there are two beautiful things: a silky oak china cabinet that Mum bought before she was married, filled with old china cups, saucers and plates, all purchased before she became a wife and mother and then hidden away behind locked doors as soon as her first baby was born. And in the corner the one thing in the room that really gleams: Mum’s mahogany baby grand piano.

  Oh, Linda. She holds out her hand to me; I take it in return. You are going to stay for a while, aren’t you?

  Of course, Mum, I say, hugging her.

  I don’t know why I say ‘of course’ the way I do, as if this request and my casual answer are the two most natural things in the world. For the first time in years she seems lost for words. Or else she has just temporarily misplaced her voice. She says nothing as she leans close into my shoulder, so close that only the sound of our breathing is the music between us.

  Three week
s after I arrive back in Brisbane, Mum’s first grandchild is born at Westminster Hospital in Toowong. The days between my arrival and this birth are filled with meetings and gatherings, with excursions to shopping centres I have not visited since I was a teenager, and sudden, unexpected encounters with old neighbours in the streets where I grew up. Mum’s friends drop by to visit and exclaim their surprise at seeing me again. They are warm, welcoming, connected to me because they are connected to my mother. I answer their questions cheerily enough, but my ease is artificial. I feel abstracted, hardly tangible in this world of once familiar things. Mum is proud to have me back, though, and often refers to me as my daughter, Linda.

  Her daughter, Linda.

  I study myself in mirrors and discover a woman who doesn’t appear to fit the place where she is. Even my long red curly hair feels too spontaneous among the short cuts and perms of my mother and her friends. I don’t do anything as drastic as cutting it all off, but I mousse it for the first time in my life and twist it into the same kind of ringlets Grandma used to fashion from my hair when I was a child. The resulting curls give me such an old-world look that I feel as I did when I was first sent to violin lessons with Sister Mary Immaculate Conception, who taught in an old room of the oldest building in my mother’s old school – a young girl with an old-fashioned hairdo, playing old music on an old woman’s old violin.

  During the days that lead up to the birth I couldn’t ignore Mum’s growing unresponsiveness to what was going on around her. Because she was reticent about using the phone, I took over the task of making daily phone calls to my sister-in-law, monitoring the pregnancy’s progress. When the due date passed, Mum commented that it must be a boy as boys are always late.