Every few weeks my two sisters and I group call on WhatsApp or Skype and together explore our family and childhood memories of something that’s on someone’s mind. Ro’s the history buff, so she quite often sends us newspaper or tv items related to where we all grew up in Launceston, Tasmania. However, I haven’t lived there since I went off to Uni in Hobart at the age of 18, after which I married and went to live in Kalgoorlie-Boulder during the 1960s Nickel Exploration Boom – about which I’ve written elsewhere in this blog.
In her art statement, artist Naomi Middlemann wrote “I am interested in how we assemble and disassemble our memories depending on who we are talking to and the context in which we remember things. Remembering is not a process that gets us from point a to point z, but rather a process in which we imagine, we tell stories, we construct and deconstruct in order to make sense of who we are.”
Since I am the eldest sister, and left the state while the other two were still in Tasmania, at school, Uni or working, there are family memories they both have that I don’t. But as Ro was last to leave the state, she had some insights on some things that neither Sal nor I knew at the time. These memory sharing sessions are fun, fast paced and wide ranging.
Last night, we spent a little time wondering if our most colourful neighbour was really terrified of electricity?… she was on the phone for hours every day, so perhaps that was just an attention seeking thing.
At last I learned what caused one of my most vivid memories of our terrified sister Ro, aged barely 3, racing across the field towards our holiday bungalow, angrily pursued by a bunch of noisy turkeys flapping their wings, with wattles flopping back and forth! I’ve heard her say before that she doesn’t like turkeys much- but what I didn’t know until last night was that she had only wanted to pat one of their little fluffy babies…
And I’d never heard that she’d been kicked by an elephant on one of the occasions the Bullens’ Circus visited town. As that circus was owned by and run by one of Mum’s cousins, we had privileged ring side seats and visited the animals behind the scenes – that kick obviously wasn’t too bad, but clearly I wasn’t there that time. And, I’d totally forgotten our neighbours Kath and Jack had a black and while cocker spaniel named Johnny, and I’m sure I never heard he bit Sal on the arm…
I had known, but Sal didn’t that our mother had had to sack her cleaning lady of many years on the day she found some of the family silver wrapped in paper and tucked into that lady’s carry bag…. Ro had apparently always suspected the woman of taking her Mickey Mouse watch from a cupboard where she’d put it, although she never said anything, and of course nothing could have been proved. (That cupboard was a bit of a dumping ground 🙂 ) Around the same time I lost a very special little silver bracelet with blue enameled angels on it. I took off the fancy dress costume after a saturday afternoon party, folded it neatly on the table near my bedroom window, ready to return it whoever lent it. I put my beloved bracelet on top of that, meaning to put it away in a drawer. When the cleaning lady came the following monday it was warm and sunny and the windows were open – I thought I’d dropped it, and then just assumed that a magpie had been attacted to the shiny glittery thing near the window, hopped in and took it away…. I hope my bird theory’s the correct one, but we’ll never know.