Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Anna is an only child. She lives with her Dad in an apartment in Carlton. Her life is filled with activities. She plays the cello on a Wednesday afternoon. She does swimming lessons on a Thursday and athletics on Saturday morning. Her Dad comes to athletics and watches. He doesn’t watch in a distracted manner like some of the other parents. Anna’s Dad really watches. He can compare her performance this week to that of weeks past. He would be able to tell her if she did a better job or a worse job than this or that week. He doesn’t. He always tells Anna that she did an amazing job, that she is improving every week.
After athletics he takes her to the store to buy a treat. She is always allowed a treat at the store on a Saturday after athletics. After her treat, Anna and her Dad return to their apartment and change into their work gear. Anna’s Dad has a community garden plot in Flemington, and on a Saturday afternoon Anna and her Dad spend time tending to the plot. Today, she helps with watering the tomatoes and sowing the carrot seeds. She knows that, to grow good carrots, you never buy seedlings. Anna’s Dad can’t understand why so many people buy carrot seedlings. All seedlings will do it run to seed, and their most important root, the one that grows into a carrot, is often bent when people are transferring the seedlings into the vegetable patch. Anna loves the root vegetables, like carrots, the best. Turnips, parsnips, beetroots, potatoes. She loves the anticipation of what lies beneath the soil. The idea that the whole time you are tending, caring, watering the plant, the part that you see is only an indication of what you can expect. Her favourite Saturday afternoons are those when time is spent pulling different vegetables from the ground and inspecting their shape. She loves to feel the wet cold weight of newly upturned roots in her hand. It is her job to arrange all of their collected vegetables into a large cloth bag so that she and her Dad have their veggies at home. She looks forward to the dinner that her Dad will make, with her help, when they get home.
Her Dad always spends too long on a Saturday afternoon in the garden. He is always fiddling with the hoses even as it gets dark. Anna loves the garden, but she doesn’t like spending so many hours there. All the other people leave, and still Anna’s Dad is trellising the beans or thinning the lettuces. She prefers when the other men and women are there, tending their gardens too. There are no other children at the gardens on a Saturday afternoon. Anna knows that lots of adults don’t like children, don’t find their antics cute or amusing, and are much happier pulling out weeds and tending to their prize chillies than listening to stories about school. Because of this, she stays quietly with her Dad, in their plot, unless someone seeks her out. She loves when Mira asks her to help plait her garlic. She spends the afternoon threading the tails of the dry purple bulbs into plaits that Mira can sell. Anna is always allowed to keep a plait, and her father hangs the plait next to the kitchen window. Mira tells her that the plait will keep the vampires away. Anna asks her father about vampires, but his reply is non-committal.
Finally, when the ground under her feet is cold and Anna has started to shiver, it is time to go home. The drive home is quiet, and Anna’s Dad seems almost sad to be driving home. Anna tells him a joke.
“Hey Dad, what’s orange and sounds like a parrot?”
“What? Oh, orange and sounds like a parrot hey?”
“Yeah…Dad, hurry up, what is it?”
“What?….orange you say”
“Dad!”
“Tell me”
“A carrot!”
Anna’s Dad’s eyes crinkle to a half crescent. He laughs. They laugh together and he starts to talk about the meal they will cook. Anna inspects the bag and makes suggestions. Together they decide on a meal and when they get home, it is Anna’s job to find the vegetables from the bag, and collect a clove of garlic from the plait hanging by the window. Together they cook and share stories from their week, and Anna feels warm and safe. She knows that Saturdays are the best day of the week, and that her Dad does his best. She likes that he laughs at her jokes, and tries to think of where she might learn another one- one that will make him laugh and laugh.