Vanishing Acts
We performed a vanishing act a few weeks ago, leaving the house and the cat, packing the car and driving all day under a Simpsons-esque sky until we arrived, finally, at my Dad’s house.
His place sits on a peninsula of land stretching out into the Bass Strait. It feels a million miles from our life in Sydney. In this house there are no check shirts hanging in the wardrobe with sleeves still rolled, no half-read books waiting on the other side of the bed, no clippers lying redundant in the bathroom drawer, no scrawls on the calendar in my husband’s distinctive handwriting. Instead there is a big sky overhead and grass to lie on. There are cows in the field at the end of the garden and swallows nesting in the eaves of the house. There is an ocean to paddle in and a clock that ticks beside the bed – the same clock that stood beside my grandmother’s bed in a different house – in a different country. In this home we are with loved ones and connected to our family story, stretching wider and further than just the three of us. There is comfort in that.
On Christmas Eve, I check on the kids before going to bed with a sleeping pill. My grandmother’s clock ticks beside me – too fast, like my heartbeat. Time is passing. Life is passing. I turn the light back on, frightened by the darkness and the questions that occupy my mind. How does someone just vanish? How do you wake beside them in the morning, drink coffee with them in the sunshine, talk to them on the telephone at lunchtime, then … nothing. How does someone just disappear? One moment alive. The next, gone. How do we bear this life if the people we love the most can be ripped from us at any moment? One wave … one car accident … one heart attack … one bullet. How do we bear the fragile impermanence of it all?
Sometimes it feels as though Matt wasn’t the only one to vanish. Sometimes I wonder if I vanished with him that day. Sometimes I feel invisible even to myself. Who am I? It’s a question that haunts me now, along with another often-repeated refrain: Where are you?
Boxing Day arrives with a strange, fiery glow. It’s the sort of light that promises something special for those fitful enough to greet it. I slip out of the house and run down to meet the tide, the sky torn in two by storm clouds and shards of dazzling light. Half-way up the beach I am stopped in my tracks by a beam so bright it holds me captive. Back at the house I move down to the fence and let the air dry my skin. The wind moves the long grass in the fields beyond like a mother combing her fingers through a child’s hair. The swallows dart and swoop from swaying trees. When I turn back, three fat galahs breakfasting on the lawn take to the sky with indignant squawks. All around is movement. All around is chaos.
In these quiet days of contemplation, hiding from the violence rotating on the news, it’s hard not to feel adrift. Chaos is confronting. I’m learning to seek out the smallest anchors. Simple moments in the day to cling to, to counter the fragile impermanence: watching a boy in his pyjamas throw paper planes across a lawn still damp with early morning dew; sitting on a bench looking out over a perfect break; hurling a tennis ball over and over for an enthusiastic dog; lying in bed next to my children listening to them breathe; turning my face to the sun; watching clouds drift across an endless sky; listening to the high electric whine of a cicada; laughing with my sister in the way only she can make me laugh – with my belly aching and tears squeezing from my eyes. I find each anchor and cast it out, allowing it to tether me to this moment – to this life. Allowing the weight of it to hold me here when the alternative sometimes feels preferable.
This morning I read these words by Anne Lamott in her book, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair:
There is meaning in focus, concentration, attention. I now notice almost every single bird that flies by, as well as every single butterfly. I pay attention to most plain old butterflies, not just the ones in tiaras or argyle socks. Butterflies and birds are like one perfect teaspoon of creation.
I find my meaning now in small moments of concentration and awareness, in trying to ensure I am really present. Those early days of numb shock have faded and somehow I find my senses heightened. Close proximity to death has made me feel more alive. Odd, I know.
And yes, I also know how lucky we are. To be here in this house. To have family to nurture us. To have the option to vanish like this over the summer holidays. And it’s been good to be somewhere else – necessary even – but soon we will pack the car and drive back to Sydney. Soon I will put the key in the front door and step inside our house with all its familiar scents and furniture and books and clothes and sadness. Soon I will step back onto the streets of my old life. And soon, I hope, I might just remember the answer to that question: who am I?
Soon, I hope I might start to reappear.