Gemma-Rose Turnbull

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Alice Springs in front of some crappy tween movie, running late for my bus to the airport. I don’t want to leave really, its cosy wrapped up in the doona with a pattern that looks like someone hurled and rubbed their hand in it, spreading the undigested corn in a radiating swirl. Seriously what is it with cheap hotel room decorating? Ugly. I digress. I don’t want to leave because I need, desperately, to see what will become of those charming Duff sisters in the 8:40am channel one movie. Will they fall for the poor nerds and reclaim their company? Will they learn the lesson their impoverished no-nonsense Colombian Nanny is trying to teach them?

The answers are, unsurprisingly, yes and yes, but as I’d already guessed correctly it isn’t really why I don’t want to leave. Its just so neutral here in this room, ugly but inoffensive; boring. And I’m alone, which is like breath to me. I need portions of aloneness to gather my thoughts and just be, and besides I quite like my own company. Hotel rooms are great for that, when I leave this room and its puke-like doona I’m going from red centre dementia back to the grit of St Kilda, and in between those two rocks I just need some space to filter the last week. So I’m clinging to the silence while I have it, using it to think.

Yesterday we barely made it out of the Aboriginal community where I spent the last week with my 86-year-old Grandmother, who is under the influence of some fairly mind altering dementia. The rain came, flooding the dry red clay quickly, and my Aunt and I had to leave with minutes notice. I flung my arms around Nan, robbed of our last night together in an effort to beat the swollen creek, and tried not to cry as we made hasty goodbyes. Cue a terrifying slide down the mud road; a 4WD enthusiasts idea of a good time I’m sure, but quite easily the longest 48 minutes of my life (comparable perhaps only to the frantic drive from the Gold Coast to Brisbane to a very small, very sick, nephew in an emergency room). No time for thought amidst the grim pleading salutations to the sky. Then after a three-hour drive to Alice we had to comb hotels for vacancy (note to the weary traveler, don’t just turn up, book, and book well ahead). Sleep, dreams, more goodbyes and then, blissfully, two whole hours to myself, by myself, to ponder and reflect (and, I’ll admit, jump on the bed, but that’s by-the-by).

But it wasn’t enough time so as I reluctantly swapped my ugly room to peer out the plane window at the perfect cotton-ball clouds drifting lazily over the jumble of geometric shapes, red dirt and green pasture, that littered the landscape from Alice to Adelaide, I kept at it. Turning things over in my mind as the red dirt ceded to red roofs, and the pasture became tree-lined streets. Another take-off over the sea into a bank of gray cloud, reflecting its misery into the ocean so the two met with no discernible line of separation, and then pop, the plane lifted through the clouds into sunlight and blue sky. And in that sunny moment, above the clouds, all that thinking, pondering and reflecting gave me some clarity about my tiny bird-like Grandmother. Nothing profound, just a few bits of understanding.

Norma has always been a bird, the kind of bird who needs to be free. She wastes away, miserable and defeated in a cage, but set her loose and she sings her happiest song; in the mist of the mornings, across the ocean, and deep in the forest she warbles a contented tune. Time and time again, restless and bloody-minded, she has paced the confines of circumstance and made good her escape, just for the pleasure of possession-less freedom. A perennial wander, she fled New Zealand for Australia, and a stint as a Matron on Palm Island, to leap on the backpacker trail 35 years ago, hitching through Iraq, Iran, India and the Himalayas with scarcely more than my barely teenage aunt to steer her to safety.

Eventually settling in Byron Bay she reveled in being naked in the elements, and becoming more colourful and eccentric with each passing year; her odd bright shoes and sunflower umbrella became a fixture on the list of attractions in that tourist laden town. One of the mixed up mess of stories she recounted in the last week was her pride at my young aunt declaring herself a “little non-conformist”. And non-conformist certainly sums it up; Norma is unique. And when we walked into the desert around the community, talking as we always have done, she still discussed escape, freedom. We laughed that if she tried to hitch away she wouldn’t get very far, but the desire to flee is still there.

As I gazed out the bus window into the dark cold of the Melbourne night I thought back to my favourite memories of her. When I was little, four or so, I would wrap my arms around her waist, holding on tight as we steered the shire’s streets on her scooter, singing. There are two songs that take me instantly to her, but the song we sang together on the scooter is my special song for her;

Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money,
Maybe we’re ragged and funny
But we’ll travel along
Singing a song
Side by side.

The highlight of my week with her was reliving that memory, at her instigation. It made my heart beam with happiness that she remembered as fondly as I did. I remembered many things as the city lights passed; copper in the fire throwing green sparks for us, her breasts floating, huge, floppy and fascinating in the bath, bushwalking endlessly (I even remember her teaching us to stomp on cane toadlets – and she did it barefoot, urgh). I remembered her putting us in the sink in her caravan kitchen to bath us when we were small enough for her to lift us there. And then later when I was older I remember lying on her couch talking about boys, sex, love, God and many other things – no topic was taboo.

Mostly I remember looking up at her adoringly, wrapping my arms around her. Norma wasn’t, isn’t, perfect. She was strict with Melody and I, she thought we were overindulged, spoiled by Mum (and we were, though it wasn’t Mum’s fault, she just loved us so much she could never quite formulate the word no). But when I reminisce about her I do it with the rose-coloured glasses that are specific only to the relationship between a Grandchild and their Grandparent, adoration and complete oblivion to flaws. And as adults, even though the flaws are more apparent, that adoration is no less, for either of us. Melody was on the phone as soon as I was back in range, her small voice desperate for my update about her beloved Nanny.

So when our plane flew through the clouds to the sunshine I realised two things. Firstly that the little bird lady must be allowed to see out her days in as much freedom as possible. Because as annoying as I found the chaos her flailing brain causes now, her stubbornness, and even though putting her in a home would be easier I feel like we owe her that. Because she gave me my wandering feet, my bloody minded independence, and my fascination for people watching. Because she is the woman who gave Melody her sense of social justice (dragging her cute three-year-old curliness around the Mullum pub, extorting money from the sentimental drunks, stirred by the sweet-cheeked kid to support the cause du jour). Because, essentially, she gave us our lives. She is trapped by the strange changes in her brain, scared and confused by them, so if we can, we need to let her wander as long as she can, if only because it makes her happy.

And the second thing? Well that was more about me. I’ve been a bit ambivalent about having children. Not sure that I want the drudge of the first years, gestating and feeding. An endless cycle of sleep deprivation, vomit, nappies and really weird hormones. I like kids a lot, I love my nephews and nieces endlessly, but I’ve been pretty sure they were enough for me. And to be honest that scary dash to my sick nephew in the emergency room of a Brisbane hospital scared the crap out of me, I didn’t think I could take that worry with my own child. But when I took those slow walks in the bush with Nanny this week, scraggle of camp dogs at our feet, I was no more or less than her trusted, loved grandchild. Even though she is losing her mind, and although we will eventually slip through the ever-widening cracks in her cognition, her constant has been her love for me and Melody. And I want that someday, I want to walk with my grandchild when my brain is fading and small freedoms are all I have left. I want to have someone who will fight to let me be independent as long as I am able.

Many hours after leaving that hotel room I’m in my own bed, wrapped in my floral doona, thinking about babies (yikes, babies!). And its because of those moments with Norma, but also because in the jumble of memories her brain throws up I noticed that its us she thinks about, her family. We are the ones she recounts tales of, 86 years of stories about her family. It makes all of the other stuff seem less important somehow, all the striving and career pales next to being a part of a family. Because at the end of it, when life is slipping away it seems to be the last thing to go – the connections to the people we love. And as we all know family comes in many shapes, sizes and formulations but I know this week has left me less certain about where I stand with making my own mini-me’s to be there when my brain is decrepit.

And the other song that is Norma’s? Well this one is my and Melody’s song for her. I know it will make me think of her until the day I’m 86 and telling my grandchildren about her, the free bird who taught me so much, even in her last forgetful days.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and I cried.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away…