keiro

“It was very hard to swim across a river not to get my clothes wet. and

got smell and dirt on it.” - my dad

A window has opened.  Some line has been cast out into the past and into the future.  I don’t know where it’ll lead if I tug and follow it.

My dad used to tell me long stories when I was a kid.  It was just me and him.  We had a market stall in Wollongong.  And we would wake up early and take a long drive in an old white van, down the winding roads, along the sea… The sun would come up over our shoulder and by the time we got there, I had traveled further through his words than the old van could ever take me.

The ride home was always the best part.  We would get fresh oysters, laid out on butcher’s paper between us.  We’d squeeze lemon on them, smiling, savouring each tasty morsel. It would be cold sitting by the sea, but it didn’t seem to matter.

But the stories have faded and I can no longer recall them.  Distance grows.  Some fog is there that makes it difficult to access those memories. Rivers flow wildly, and we travel further along in time.  Important things become obscured, or complicated… things change or fall apart.

The words my father wrote to me conjures an image of him.  Climbing out of the river.  Standing on the banks, dishevelled, in wet, dirty clothes.  It makes me realise how fragile we all are.  We are not so different it seems.

Things don’t seem so complicated anymore.