Gemma-Rose Turnbull

This is my very first memory. Sitting with my Mum on the bridge at our Uki home. I guess I’m almost four. We’d just been leaning over the edge, looking at ourselves reflected in the water below, and I asked her what a reflection was. When I look at this photo my dad took, I think, or at least I like to, that she is still looking at herself, her image floating on the surface of the creek, wondering how to answer that tricky question.

She’s a pretty special lady, my mum. She’s never asked me and my sister to be anything more than just ourselves, and been wildly delighted at whatever we have chosen (and you just know that you could turn up on her doorstep with a fluoro mohawk, on the run from a failed polygamous relationship and she’d just tuck you up with a cup of tea and a snack plate). She just loves us, completely, and it’s so comforting.

This moment feels like it’s important somehow, though I can’t quite explain why, the three of us, and dad behind the camera (and my ridiculous smile!) talking about reflections. It reminds me that no matter where life takes me, my Mum will be there, to answer all my questions, and love me. Awkward smile and all.

I drank too many wines, and took too few photos. But it was fun.

Little Nanny. She was waiting for me to get there today, ready to make good our escape. She was flat, despondent about being there. She asked me to take her to another retirement village she wants to flee to (they won’t have her because they’re low security and her dementia makes her want to run away, and her muddley mind means that she is lost as soon as shes gone five metres) but I let it slide, hoping she would forget she’d asked me (she did, and I felt traitorous – it’s always been me and her against the world). We drove to the Byron headland instead, for a fish and chip lunch, me keen to distract her from her escape fantasies. Cockatoos screeched overhead as we sat and she marveled at their noise and colours, their wild wheeling.

Spending time with her is like spending time with my one-year-old niece. Phoenix says the same thing over and over again. ‘Bird’, she says from her spot on your hip, pointing at something, not specifically a bird either, ‘Bird. Bird. Bird’. With Norma it’s a case of answering the same questions over and over again. About me, Melody, Ronin. And she asks me questions too, about her own life. She asked if I had any news about my grandfather, Roy, and I had to tell her he was dead and had been for a long time. It seemed to shock her a bit that she didn’t know (though I’ve told her before), and we were silent for a bit.

Earlier our conversation had meandered onto her brothers. She was trying to recall their names, ‘Val?’, she said, the name materialising in her mouth quite randomly, ‘And Keith’, I added. ‘Are they still alive?’, she asked. ‘I’m pretty sure they can’t be’, I said, ‘but I’ve got a terrible memory’. We started laughing then, at our terrible memories. ‘Not that it matters’, she hooted when she could get it out, ‘I mean who really gives a stuff?’ We screeched tears at our secret terribleness (because of course, in five minutes she will have forgotten who they are again). ‘Do we need to break it to anyone that they’ve passed’, giggling at the thought that these men, who may or may not be dead (they are, and have been for a long time) might have loved ones who didn’t yet know, and we mimed calling them. ‘Hello’, I mimicked, ‘We’ve called to tell you that we think some guy whose name we can barely remember has died’. More laughter. Uproarious laughter, with thigh slapping and heaving breaths.

I’ve always been able to make Norma laugh. And my Mum too. Mels was the soft cuddly one (who is remarkably hilarious to a select audience), but I didn’t really like being touched or dealing with soppy stuff, so I resorted to being funny and deflecting sorrow, or those awkward post revelatory silences, with humour. I still do it. Skype with Mum and make jokes to make up for the distance and the time difference, laugh with Norma to cover that I hate where her fading mind makes her have to live. Hate it (though the staff are lovely enough, and it’s clean, and she’s well fed and and well cared for). I just want to kidnap her and never take her back. Instead I make her giggle.

When I left she followed me out like Rufus (the dog) does when he knows I’m leaving without him. She thanked me for coming to see her, and I told her that it was okay, that she was fairly tolerable company. She squealed in delight again, thinking that I’d said she was intolerable company (I reassured her wryly that she was okay, not great, but definitely okay, to more of her hooting laughter). ‘Imagine’, she said, ‘if I’m this mad at 87, what I’ll be like when I’m 90′, and hung on to the gate grinning wildly, false teeth bright. She waved me into the distance as I drove away with promises to come back soon, standing tiny at the gate, flapping her little old hands at me until I’d disappeared.

This. A shower in a shithole caravan park in Port Augusta. I fucking hated that town. But I liked the hate, it made me want to make art. So I stalked myself. Like Sophie Calle would. Because who doesn’t want to be stalked by Sophie Calle?

“I don’t care if I’m becoming one of those old fogies who says, “Back in my day we didn’t have to hear about sex all the time.” Can you imagine? My fantasies were all made up on my own. They’re ruining us with all the explanations and the graphicness. Nobody remembers what it’s like to be left to form your own ideas about what’s erotic and sexual. We’re not allowed any individuality. I thought that was the fun of the whole thing. It’s my fantasy. I didn’t pick it off the Internet somewhere. It’s my fantasy.” – Raquel Welch

He hates being photographed. I have to instruct him to stay still. STAY RUFUS, STAY, I command. He loathes it with every fibre of his body, quivering to have me so close, on his level, but untouchable. Creepy little brown dog.

Talking to Mum. Her night, my morning. It’s strange this time gap but we’re used to it now. For years it’s been this, speaking through the screen, connecting. We’re getting more alike as we get older. I can see that in our faces now.

We went to an Ice Festival. Tried to catch some fish by jiggling our baitless rods through the holes in the ice. Failed. Got colder than I thought was even possible. Ate tasty rice sugar pancakes (as modeled by Adorable Child #3 in pink and silver) in attempt to get warm. Two of them. Burnt my lip at the hot, oozing, sugar syrup, but only achieved brief belly warmth. Ate a silk worm at Michael’s insistence – okay taste, terrible texture – did nothing to get me warm. Stood by the fire. Temporary illusion of warmth. Drank some Makkoli, which was pleasantly boozy. Chattered teeth and stomped feet. Ate fish that someone else caught. Drank more – started to feel warm-ish, or more immune to cold. Clapped hands and jitter-bugged from foot to foot to try and get some heat into my bones. Kept drinking. Laughed at slowly spreading woozy warmness. Went home feeling victorious even though no fish were caught.

We had more fun than it looks. These photos distill the chaos, the heat, the noise and the sizzlingly delicious smells into stillness. It wasn’t quiet like this. The food was delicious, the Soju was flowing, and my best friend Blythe took that photograph of me. She, rightfully, insisted on it.

The snowfall started quickly, sneaking out of the dark winter sky, stealthy and quiet. Just casually swirling its way to the ground, nothing to note. But I grew up on the beach, and I’ve never got over it being exotically exciting. I threw myself outside, and stuck my tongue out, suddenly a red-cheeked kid excited to catch flakes which melted as they hit the warmth of my breath. Some guy wandered past and smiled at me. He turned and followed me, asking where I was from. When I said Australia he couldn’t conceal his look of disappointment and double checked ‘Not American?’, before fading into the white flaked dark. I laughed at his hang-dog face, and kept delighting in the powdery fluff that crunched sandily underfoot. It was winter magic, like a huge hand had sifted icing sugar over Seoul, making everything sweeter and prettier. Which is such a damn cliche that I walked for several blocks trying to come up with another analogy. But I just couldn’t.

Love is not consolation. It is light. Friedrich Nietzsche

The light poured in through the windows, thin fingers picking out the edges of the faces of these people who I love. The orange of my favourite wool scarf umber under its hot gaze, glowing the edges of Blythe’s red top, and drawing a line down Ash’s nose. Making everything more beautiful. Making me love them more somehow (is that even possible?) for being so patient with my exuberant click-click-clicking. For understanding my terror at losing the last moments of warmth, and letting me enjoy the shiny moment where I fall in love with photographing all over again.

I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this? Haruki Murakami