Musing Practice

We’re recovering in Chiloe at the moment. An archipelago off the coast of Chilé. The past three days have shon glorious sunshine as we wander the little fishing village of Castro (20,000 people – it calls itself a city… it is the capital after all). Sometimes it’s okay to do “not much really” while you’re traveling. It has taken me a really long time to accept this.

Today it is pouring with rain and we’ve done not much really. Although I just finished reading ‘Paddy Clarke ha ha ha‘ by Irish author Roddy Doyle. It’s a rolling narrative perfectly poised from the perspective of a young boy. It won the Booker Prize in 2003. Mike got a bit inspired after finishing the book and now today I think I have too. It must be the rain. It has a nostalgic feel to it.

Jessi Gardner ha ha ha

Sometimes it’s really annoying when it rains. It means that sport gets called off and the steps to the classroom get slippery. The area where all the bags sit gets wet and your shoes make squeaking noises on it and it looks real muddy. You have to eat your lunch in the classroom and sometimes if your teacher doesn’t want to get wet walking to the staffroom you could probably stay in the classroom all lunchtime as well. That’s okay I suppose.

But other days it’s nice for it to rain. Especially on Sundays it feels right for it to rain. Especially in winter. You can sit in front of the heater with warm trackies and a jumper until your back gets too hot. Then you have to turn around, but your face gets hotter quicker. Or then you have to move away from the heater if Paul tells you to stop hogging the heater.

One time it rained so much in Moruya that there was a flood. We didn’t have to go to school for two days. I remember being able to watch videos next to the heater all day. Paul still had to go to work.

The other kids said the river was all the way up to the big rock in the park and you couldn’t cross the bridge because it was flooded as well. I didn’t see it, but it must have been really flooded because our bridge is high. There is a sign that says “Jumping from the bridge is Prohibited”. One day I read it out loud for the first time when we were driving in the car.

- That sign says Jumping from the bridge is Prohibited.

- Good girl, said my Dad.

I’d waited until I’d known for sure how to say prohibited, before I said the sign out loud. Way back in Kindergarten Mrs F made us come up to her desk one at a time and count for as much as we could to her. I stopped at forty-nine because I didn’t want to get fifty wrong. I thought I might’ve confused it with thirty and it was better to stop than to get it wrong.

- Is that all Jess?

-Yes, I lied.

Anyway, that was ages ago. I knew loads more now. I knew about rain. It was made of vapour in the clouds and when there was too much the clouds dropped the rain. If there was acid in the air then you had acid rain and that was bad and it was made from bad factories. We learnt that at Earthkeepers.

Mr L tried to get us really excited about saying that he was going to make it rain inside the classroom. I knew that it wouldn’t really be able to rain inside the classroom, so it was going to be a trick, but other kids got interested. That’s what teachers needed to do though. Make tricks so kids would be interested. I liked school though. But it wasn’t very hard. Most of the stuff we learned I kind of knew anyway somehow. Most things I understood.

Mr L boiled the jug and held a baking tray over the jug. One like Mum used to make roasts. Little bits of condensation came out of the tray. I’d seen it before anyway on our cupboards above the jug at home when I was making cups of coffee. Mum showed me the best way to make coffee. You had to put the milk in with the coffee and sugar before the water. And you needed to stir it a lot until it was a bit bubbly. Then add the water. It made it more like one from a cafe then. I didn’t drink coffee. Only adults did.

I was the oldest and all of the other kids were small so sometimes it was okay for me to sit with the adults. One day I was sitting with the Mums on the front verandah. They were having coffees but I didn’t have anything. They were talking about other ladies from the town.

- I don’t know what her problem is

- Aah, she’s just a bitch, said my Mum

One of the other Mums looked over to me and to my Mum and raised her eyebrows which meant she was saying to my Mum ‘can you say that in front of Jess’.

- Oh it’s fine, said my Mum. She’s heard worse than that. She understands.

I smiled. That made me feel good. I could understand lots of adult things anyway. Like my parents smoked joints and it was fine even though it was against the law. And I couldn’t do every sport I wanted because it cost too much money. And to fill Josie’s baby bath you needed three milk bottles of hot water and two milk bottles of cold and that made it just right. And if you were cooking mashed potatoes and steamed vegies you should put the potatoes on for half an hour and start the vegies when there was fifteen minutes to go.

Somethings I didn’t understand. Sometimes there were other people at my Dad’s house when I went to stay for the weekend. And every time I came back home I had to tell Paul who else was there. I didn’t like telling Paul because it made me feel like I was telling on my Dad even though I didn’t know if he’d done something wrong or not.

But most things I understood.