Dating back to the days of the Greek mathematician and inventor, Archimedes, is that cry of astonishment, of jubilation, or excitement, ‘I’ve found it!!!!’.

It was often associated with the discovery of gold in the nineteenth century. In the USA there are at least 18 states with town or geographic locations called Eureka. It appears on the State Seal of California. In Australia, we associate it with the Victorian gold rush days. It includes the Eureka Stockade, the flag of independence, and the rebellion against the unfair State taxes of the day. It is an exclamation that is part of our cultural fabric.

Who amongst us has experienced a Eureka moment, a discover, a realisation, a solution that may have been hiding in plain sight? Today, I write of a Eureka moment that I was privileged to witness. It was a moving experience that opened a door, and brought great joy to the person involved.

It was December, 1965, in the Occupational Therapy section of The Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick. I was there as part of the process of being fitted with a prosthetic arm, having been involved in a farm accident earlier that year. There were about eleven of us, amputees and stroke victims that were under the care and guidance of a young Occupational Therapist, Margaret. Each morning she would gather us together in the corner of what looked like an old army gymnasium or barracks for morning tea, and to give us an outline of the day ahead. Looking back, we certainly were a group of varying individual challenges for her.

But there was one of our group that she found particularly challenging and frustrating. Her name was Hilda. She was a stroke victim. Apart from suffering one sided mobility loss, she had also lost the power of speech. Margaret was getting good outcomes for Hilda’s mobility, but had struck a brick wall with her speech loss. She was searching desperately for the trigger, the key that would start the recovery process and her research indicated there were possibilities around music.

Then on the morning of December 16^th, Margaret rushed up to our group and excitedly herded us into a corner of the gymnasium around an old piano. Then Hilda was wheeled in; she seemed very agitated, even emotional. It was getting close to Christmas, so Margaret settled down at the piano, and softly started to play Silent Night. What followed was spellbinding. Hilda was in tears as she sang two verses of the carol in perfect pitch and a clear voice. By the end of the second verse, everything else in the gym has ceased, and all had gathered in absolute awe, applauding and cheering wildly. There was not a dry eye in the room. The tune had transported Hilda back to her childhood, to the early days of her speaking ability. She sang Silent Night in perfect German, her native tongue. The family had migrated to Australia when she was only six years old.

For Margaret, this was ‘Eureka’, the key to the door. For everyone else, it was an experience beyond belief.

What I had forgotten, is how good the coffee was at The Little Red Fox Cafe. So many crappy coffees over the past month had me drinking too much Coke, just for the caffeine hit. But here I was, sipping the soft brown nectar of the gods. I was totally absorbed in my brew, but then, something caught my eye – a small orange ribbon, the end of it just hanging out from the crack in the sofa cushions I was sitting on. Now I was fixated on this ribbon. Should I pull it out? No, maybe I’ll just leave it hanging there. Another sip of coffee – now it tasted ordinary – shit! OK, I thought, I’ll pull the ribbon out. I took hold of the end, looked around the café – no one was paying me any attention. The Japanese have saying about this I thought, something like “don’t look like an idiot”. So I tried to pull the ribbon out as casually and coolly as possible. It slid out about 5cm and then got stuck. Shit – again – I sipped my coffee, now it didn’t taste at all good – I gave the ribbon a gentle tug. Nothing. Sip – tug – sip – tug – sip – TUUUGGGG. I was now pulling very hard, those Japanese wouldn’t have been happy – I looked like I was having some sort of fit. I sat back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. Please help me – I said to the weird pattern that I saw up there. Then I had a thought – maybe my own body weight was trapping the ribbon. Aha! I casually stood up and sat on a chair which I had moved unnaturally close to the sofa, so that I could continue to tug away at the strange orange ribbon. I gave a gentle tug, nothing – damn. I tugged at it as hard as I could, whilst still seated, still it didn’t budge. Originally I had thought this ribbon was a lost hair tie or maybe a discarded piece of gift wrapping, but clearly it was neither of these. It was connected to something, but what? I sat back and stared at the ceiling again. Just then the waitress came past and took my cup away. I’ll have another one please – I asked – even though I knew the taste was gone. I needed more time to unravel the mystery ribbon. Next minute, everything changed. My coffee arrived, but the waitress tripped and coffee went everywhere – all over the sofa and floor – thankfully not on me! Shit! As she cleaned up the mess, she tucked the ribbon under the cushions of the sofa, so it was no longer visible – as if she knew it was there all the time. Mysterious, but now what? I got a new coffee – it was brilliant!! The best coffee I’d ever tasted. I just sat there sipping away – should I just forget the ribbon and drink my coffee? “Yes” said my brain. But I couldn’t. I started to formulate a plan to get that ribbon out once and for all. I’d drop something onto the floor, then after I moved the table to pick it up – I loved the idea – I’d kick it under the sofa. This would give me an excuse to manhandle that bloody thing! OK here goes – I dropped the teaspoon under the table – it was a low coffee table – so I had to move it to pick up the spoon. I stepped forward, whoopsy daisy, I accidentally kicked the spoon under the sofa. Now I bend down, slip my hand under the cushion, grab the ribbon and pull HARD. There’s a loud ripping sound – oooooh shit – then the ribbon starts to come out. I pull and pull and pull, so much ribbon, it is now covering the floor. I can’t stop, it just keeps coming. The other customers are pointing and laughing, but I can’t hear them, the ribbon just keep coming out, now it’s changing colours and still it comes – WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING????

My stomach aches, my feet are heavy. I hold onto the railings and squeeze hard, using my grip to balance me. I look at the sea of people on the floor below me rushing to get home. Rushing to meet friends and lovers. Dragging toddler’s home from day care. I’m caught in a panic. I can’t go forward and I can’t turn around. The people behind me tut and grunt as they are forced to go around me but I can’t bring myself to move my feet. I get a hit from a shoulder pushing past me. It hurts and sends me off balance for a moment. I apologise after the man who is quickly lost to me and doesn’t hear my words. I’m stuck…

Someone pushes past me again and I feel the disgust on their breath. I know I am in the way. I know I need to move but I struggle to release my grip.

After too long, I don’t know how many minutes, I  take my toe and push it out over the step. I slowly, painfully push it down over the edge reaching out like a person in the dark. Reaching to see if there is ground beneath me. I transfer my weight down onto the step below and with it my body follows. I am not in control, I am in the hands of gravity. It is pulling me down. Disgust has spurred me on. Disgust from the stranger, disgust from people passing me by and now lost in the crowd, disgust of my own inability to move. But disgust has shifted me forward and I do start to move. Moving down the stairs. Down into the crowd beneath me.

The girls were not girls in the way that had come to be thought, feeling in their bodies like boys which is to say more things were permitted, and the boys wore pink tutus not as a phase to go through but just because they felt like it.

To school, on the tram, the bus, walking down the street late at night they were these things and wore these things and felt safe. And any looks that came their way were not because they were outrageous or strange but because around them spun an orb of delight and fancy and infinite possibility. Those who could not themselves imagine being boys because they were not, or wearing such things, nonetheless smiled in recognition of the desire, the freedom, the tulle. Oh, the tulle.

Those days we felt ourselves lucky and even though I had no god, at night in the very quiet I said a word of thanks for what I had. I thought thank you and being grateful were like particles that would travel out into the ether, atmosphere, stratosphere and join with other similar vowels, consonants, syntax and form a collective orb that would keep us all safe. Keep those girls who wanted to be boys and the boys in pink tutus walking the streets safe. Keep them. All. Safe.

 Perfect is the enemy of good.

My dad died in 2001 aged eighty-five.   I was forty-eight then.  He had been in a nursing home for about six months.  I was asleep in bed and was woken by the phone ringing next to my bed.  I picked it up to have my brother tell me that dad had died, apparently in his sleep, and my brother was contacting our mother and his sisters and arranging that we would all make our way to the nursing home and meet up in his dad’s room.  My brother or oldest sister would bring mum to dad’s room.  Mum lived in the same nursing home.

My parents had had six children, a son first, then five daughters.  My brother, as the oldest and a male, followed by five girls, had always taken a role as a second father and so it was as would be expected that the nursing home had contacted him and here he was taking the organizing role in the immediate aftermath of our father’s death.  My husband, in the bed beside me at home, and also woken by the call was privy to my conversation with my brother.  I would have preferred my husband drove to the nursing home with me, but he didn’t want to so I drove there alone and, as I had feared a little on the drive, I was the first family member to arrive.  A kind lovely staff member of the nursing home, with whom I had become a little acquainted in the previous six months, ushered me into dad’s room and left me there with him and I sat with him for about fifteen minutes until other family members arrived.

It was the first time I had ever seen a dead person.  I felt anxious and strange.  Dad was in his bed, the covers on him, just as he had been sleeping.  I looked at his face fairly closely and then sat there with him, or is it with his body, on a chair a few feet away.

All my life, I had known very little about my father, compared to what I knew about my mother.  They were both migrants to Australia from Europe after World War Two.  They were from different parts of Europe and had met and married shortly after the war when my dad was a displaced person.  Throughout my childhood and later life, my mum had spoken often about the family she had left behind.  Her mother had died of natural causes during the war and her father died about 12 years after she migrated. She had a sister and they corresponded weekly; one of those light blue aerogramme letters of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s arrived in and got sent from our home every week.  My mum had a large extended family and often talked of her life in Europe.

My dad rarely spoke about his life before he came to Australia.  When he did speak about it, it was in response to questions, not volunteered, and he was often vague and troubled and it became part of family culture that you just didn’t talk with dad about these things.  Through occasional snippets we gleaned that he had left parents and a sister behind.  He had no contact with them and he would not try to make contact with them or find them.  He had left a country now under the Soviet Union and he believed his family would’ve been deported to Siberia.  He said he’d been born in the United States because his parents had migrated there but they had returned to Europe when he was a baby so he had no memory of the United States.   He said he had changed his name, just a few letters he said, after the war.

So, dad, it’s been really hard coming to terms with having had a father who I felt like I never knew.  I associate a sense of yearning and longing with my relationship with you – yearning to get to know you.  I always felt like you were a distance from me.  Feel very loving of you while also knowing you did some hateful things especially as my mother’s husband.   Sometimes I think my experience of loving a man – as a partner – includes an experience of yearning for closeness to that man.  And feeling sorry or sad for them – throughout my childhood I sensed a very deep sadness in you.

Our family life changed on my youngest daughter’s 13^th birthday. The lead up to the birthday was a usual week. School, work, netball, dancing, a chat with the son living interstate, driving lessons for the learner driver and a teenage party.

But on a day that became bittersweet, an ambulance had to be called. Ray was rushed to hospital. A diagnosis of terminal liver cancer soon followed. Death came four weeks later.

Day after relentless day, week after week, year after year, grief and sadness was mixed with the need to live a life without a beloved dad and partner. Sometimes it’s a shock to realise Ray wasn’t here to celebrate 18^th, 21^st and 50^th birthdays. He didn’t get to know about our ups and downs, strength, education choices, work opportunities, friendships and travelling adventures.  He was spared the news of a family suicide.

Ray was really good, an original. Kind. Strong. A dry sense of humour. Good fun. I liked him right away. The children always loved him.

Among his interests was a passion for music. His tastes were eclectic. His collection of records and CDs was extensive. He often made compilation or themed cassettes (back in the day) or CDs, for family, friends and colleagues. Long car trips were quite fine with soundtracks that included songs from all of us.

To this day, it is still a real thrill to randomly hear a ‘car song’.

One of the last things Ray did before coming sick was to make the playlist for the 13^th birthday party.

It is quite remarkable that just four weeks later his children made the photo presentation for the funeral and the accompanying soundtrack.

There were so many songs, genres, favourites and possibilities to choose from. Deciding on Spanish Harlem by Aretha Franklin was easy, Lou Rawls Unforgettable was a great choice.

My favourite though, was Day after Day by Badfinger.

“I remember finding out about you
Every day, my mind is all around you
Looking out from my lonely room, day after day

Bring it home, baby, make it soon
I give my love to you”

15 December 2108

I set off from my home in the leafy Eastern suburbs to the bushy outskirts not too far away.  A knot of anxiety tightened in my gut, partly from having to navigate a new destination and partly from that niggling doubt about starting a new relationship with a new therapist.  The day was hot and dry.  It was midway through an unremarkable Melbourne summer, but the Black Saturday fires of 2009 remained a not-so-distant memory.  I located the house down a rough dirt road.  Dust swirled from under my tyres as I pulled into the driveway and parked under a huge gum tree.  There was a sign at the bottom of some steps directing me upwards along the edge of a garden and around to the side of the house.  Another sign attached to a door instructed me to “please don’t knock, I’ll be with you shortly”.  I looked about, noticed a couple of water tanks, some vegetables and herbs growing in elevated containers and a table and chairs where I guessed I was supposed to sit and wait my turn.  It was perfectly still, and quiet, except for the birds and the muted tones of a woman’s voice coming from somewhere inside – a one way conversation, a skype consultation I later discovered.  I wondered about living there, the peace, the solitude, the bush, the risk of fire.

The next time I visited she led me out to the front of the house.  The view was expansive, stunning, drawing my eyes across the treetops, down into the valley and then upwards to the range beyond.  I followed her to the edge of a steep drop and together we peered at the slow flowing river below.  Ripples fluttered across the surface.  “Could be a platypus” she said. “We see them here, often”.  She turned and pointed to a weather-worn wooden seat, telling me that some of her clients liked to arrive early and sit there for a few minutes prior to their appointments.  From then on I did just that.  I would rush from work, anxious to arrive with enough time to spare that I might make my way up the path and around the house, out to that seat, to sit and let my body and mind relax, to breathe out the stresses of the day and breathe in the serenity that surrounded me .  Sometimes the scene took my breath away.  Sometimes I felt tears pricking my eyes.  Sometimes I felt apprehensive about what the next hour might hold.  Sometimes I just sat and thought about nothing much at all.

It became my place of refuge.

I wrote the skeleton of this piece six years ago and wondered what I might do with it.  Today’s Gunnas Masters Class gave me the inspiration to revisit. 

I couldn’t believe that I had cried so many tears. They were endless. Talk about cry me a river. It was like having to plug a raging torrent of festering flood waters, with a small laundry tub plug.

The tears were uncontrollable, popping out of my head at right angles. When would it end? How long would it go on? There was no break between night and day. It all mushed into one. No sunrise, no sunset. No joy. Just an endless blur of nothingness, but everything at once. The pain just would not end. All darkness without some final closure.

After much darkness came some light. Albeit fleeting.

Looking at the trees along the road, they plugged holes amongst the skyward puffs of clouds. It is on those glorious days when the sun is shining, the trees ever so glorious and the whispers of the winds are filled with the spring time scent of flowers and foliage.

A corner had been turned.

She woke, head thick with the dreams of seven gin and tonics and four hours sleep, which could have been five hours if she hadn’t decided to binge watch Suits at one in the morning, rather than setting herself off to sleep before two a.m. when Netflix asked her if she was still there.
Sleep never came easily. She only ever slept well when there was another person in the house. This rarely happened. And when she did sleep, she couldn’t believe that she had slept, insomnia being such a conditioned way of life that when she did get more than the perfunctory four hours, she felt as if her insides were melting and her head was about to explode.
She told herself this was what life was all about. Wake. Be scared. Walk. Be scared. Go to work. Be scared. Relax. Be scared. Got to bed. Be scared.
There were the rituals. The rituals she needed to make herself partially comfortable in her uncomfortableness. Triple checking the locks. Turning off the lights. Ensuring the gas was turned off at the wall. Flicking every electrical switch to off, with the one exception of her beside lamp.
To solve the problem of being alone, an ageless, timeless problem from which she could not escape, she would imagine that another person was in the flat. Her guardian angel, her prince charming, her timeless defender, would be there to make sure of her safety and security. Once a month, on a Thursday, she would even allow herself to imagine this person sidling up to her on her flaccid single bed mattress, relishing in his warmth, pondering what it would feel like to go to bed with somebody, just for a change, knowing that this nightdream would only lead to disappointment. If she was in a particularly good mood, she would even let herself nightdream about George Michael, circa 1985, in his Choose Life t-shirt, Converse high tops and jeans shorts, dancing around the bedroom.
But no, she found herself waking in an empty bedroom, in an empty bed, her cotton nightly riding up around her waist, her cottontails stuck high into her arse crack and yesterday’s mascara running down her face, giving her the look of Alice Cooper, in drag, at 55 years of age.
Today was the day she was going to start her new life. Today was the day. ‘Just watch’, she told herself.
After her morning ablutions, washing the dripping mascara from her visage, stowing her Laura Ingalls nighty under her pillow and making sure last night’s underwear ended up in the washing machine, she regrouped and redressed.
Today was the day she was going to start her new life. ‘Today was the day. Just watch,’ she told herself.
She dressed with care. The girl at Kmart said that this active wear stuff was all the rage. She was not so sure. Pulling the patterned leggings on, she was reminded of what cottage cheese might look like if was placed in thick stockings. She struggled to entrap her ample chest in a sports bra, fighting with the eyes and hooks before she finally relented and did the daft thing up and stepped into the fucking contraption, pulling the constrictive band over her hips. A black cotton t-shirt went over the top. Done.
Grabbing her keys, she walked out the door.
The trees had started to show their leaves, as if they wanted to herald the start of summer as soon as possible but were having trouble getting out of the starting blocks.
She had waited for this moment. It had taken four months, but now the day had come. While she was waiting for this moment, she had found her body had morphed and changed. Her leg, injured in a fall, had frozen up. She now walked with a significant limp, which the doctor had said if she exercised, may relax and work normally again.
She stowed her keys down her bra and walked into the morning.
As she turned the first corner, she was approached by a man with a dog. The man, bearing all of the markings of an ex-con, all prison tatts and a missing tooth, was walking a small white dog. The dog’s green and red collar read, ‘I’m racist.’ She wanted to know what sort of beef the dog had against which race. Was it that the dog didn’t like middle aged, overweight, limping white women, or was it some other ethnicity that the dog could not tolerate?
Go out. Be scared. Retreat. Be scared.
She turned on her heel and returned to her flat.
Tomorrow would be the day. Just watch.