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Monday, September 2, 2013

Pinky the Nostalgic Tragic


Yesterday, as Scotto and I were driving across town to the beach, I asked him to call in to my ex-husband’s house...the house I’d lived in for seven years and had brought my last two babies home to from hospital. 


A photograph was required to add to an older post I wrote some time ago; about a disastrous project I’d once orchestrated involving the construction of a monstrous and unsightly wall in the garden. There was a thirty foot drop from the veranda and I didn't want any of the rugrats falling over it.
Read about it here!



As I trampled down the path through the overgrown garden an unexpected and melancholy sensation prickled through my body settling around my heart like tight blue tentacles. 

Not having walked through this garden for many years I was suddenly enveloped by a powerful feeling of nostalgia, grief and loss.

I could almost see my eight year old Hagar's shiny bowl cut head, hanging from the rainforest tree and calling out to me, "Don't tell da bruddas where I'm hiding, Mum!"


 A be-goggled Thaddeus and Jonah stealthily slinking around the undergrowth with our eight year old neighbour Newman, staging surprise attacks on each other with their makeshift pipe guns. 

I could hear the honeyed trill of a five year old Lulu, playfully singing to the cat in the cubby house.

Sweet, sweet memories encircled me as I made my way through to the 'wall'. 

I stood, stock still in confusion. The wall was gone.

But no, I thought. It wasn’t gone… just completely overgrown with palms and vines; it’s ugly façade camouflaged behind the greenery. 

There was no trace of it.


Has it really been that long? I pondered yearningly.

It’s eleven years since I left the house. The kids of course were always over there visiting their father, and still are of course... but not me.

The cubby, brittle and eroded by the harsh North Queensland sun looks forlorn and wretched, abandoned by the five children who spent so much time dangling upside down suspended on its sturdy railings.


Just like those halcyon days of five small innocent children giggling and tumbling all over it, the once lush grass is gone. 


I wish I had taken the time to enjoy those gorgeous times more appreciatively. I wish I'd been more chilled out.
I wish I could go back in time and kiss their chubby little faces all over and over and over.