BIRTHDAYS AND CHILDHOOD MEMORIES....

Today is my sister's birthday. We won't talk of age, besides to K age doesn't matter. She rings me most years to find out how old I am (she's one year younger).

This is the two of us. My sister is the cute one on the right - looking pixie-ish (her oldest son has the same look). I'm the rather dumpy one on the left, giving the camera a "I don't trust you" kind of look. Not much has changed over the years...I'm still good with 'that' look for cameras.

We grew up here (with two younger brothers) - Apollo Bay- well not really just here, a lot more to the left. We didn't live in the town itself but in the Cable Station, where Dad worked. It was a great childhood. Beaches to roam, rockpools to investigate. We played outside the majority of the time, television being a rarity.

We were indians with homemade bows and arrows, cowboy astride wooden horses, cap guns on the ready. We were spacemen riding the rocket to the stars. We made mud pies in the cubby house Dad built,  dressed up as Princesses in Mum's dress up box. We mushroomed in the paddocks, went blackberrying in the summer,  trout fishing in the Barwon river.  

But if asked about a certain event, we have differing memories. I can understand this to a certain degree with my brothers, being younger by a good few years. But because there is only 14 months between my sister and I, I always assumed our memories would be the same. 

But we are different. Always have been (how we didn't kill each other sharing a room as teenagers is anyones guess). And I think it's our differences that make us see certain events in different ways. What is important to one, isn't as important to the other.

Childhood memories are wonderful as a starting piece for writing. I've used them for poems and short stories, incorporated snippets into novels (reposing under the bed), and as non-fiction pieces. 

Here is a short story, (in my short story collection 'Last Days of Summer').  The memories are all real, bit from here, bit from there- but used as the 'truth' that binds the story together.

CICADA SONG

The year I turned seven we spent the summer at the beach. We rented a cabin with sandy floors and a permanently damp smell. It nestled under dark pines and was shadowed for most of the day. My parents said it would do.

It was a summer of shelling peas then eating the raw greenness fresh and sharp. Of strawberries sun-warmed and so sweet that they sent shivers down your spine. Of ice blocks made from weak cordial and hot nights when I slept on top of the sheet and listened to the gasping breaths of my brother. Waiting for the curtain to move with the promise of a cool breeze and for Tony to stop groaning in his haunted sleep.

It was a summer where the high expectation of Christmas never eventuated. I was positive that Father Christmas would be confused, that he wouldn’t know that we’d gone away, that being by the beach was not a good thing. It was a Christmas without distant cousins and whiskery uncles and red lipped aunts. Of Christmas shows on the small black and white television where snowmen sang and ice ruled the world. Instead it was the four of us opening presents by Tony’s bed, watching for a flare of interest but waiting for his twinge of pain.

It was a summer of coconut scented sun lotion, of sunburn and bee stings. Of antiseptic and pain. There were no Sunday roasts, instead we ate cold barbecued chickens with white bread and butter and dollops of coleslaw. It was listening for Greensleeves then running for the ice cream van. Wandering back to the cabin licking the dripping mess of vanilla and the rainbow sludge of hundreds and thousands.

That summer was spent writing messages in the damp sand, building elaborate sandcastles and destroying them minutes later. Days where I rushed at the waves then jumped back knowing that they were beyond my understanding. Rolling down sand dunes, hunting for crabs in the low tide, collecting feathers for my hair. Excitedly showing Tony my hoard and seeing his trembling hands try to hold a delicate shell.

It was a crowded holiday park filled with ignorance of strangers. Running under the park’s sprinkler and ice cube fights with the other children. It was weeks of wearing shorts and tanned skin, and seemingly endless days of no school.

It was plastic chairs too hot to sit on and vinyl chairs that clung to your skin. Of lumbering heat, damp ponytails and eyes squinted against the sun. It was drinking iced water too quick and getting a headache, all the time wishing it were lemonade.

It was bare feet and becoming reacquainted with texture. It was bare legs, shade trees and balmy nights. It was nectarines and peaches, and grapes and watermelon. It was aspirin and medicine and pain. It was cold meats and salads made of lettuce, beetroot, tomato and chunks of Cheddar cheese. It was women with their top lips coated in perspiration talking in hushed voices and fanning their faces. It was men in blue singlets and footy shorts. The sound of mowers in the cool of the night and the smell of barbecuing meat.

It was my mother praying to a god she found in the bourbon bottle. My father building on his anger. It was the song of cicadas, the harping of gulls, the slap of salt spray. Wet bathers dripping blue tears on the concrete path below.

It was a summer of silence and words never said. It was the summer of my first funeral.