I have become accustomed to your face

Dear Hearts,

I have a secret. To be honest, it’s not really a secret. I think you know me well enough to probably have figured it out by now.

It’s a part of who I am and a part of where I have come from. I could blame those who made me, but why? I have learnt to live with it and in many ways, am comforted by it…the consistency of it. The constancy of it.

Once I recognised it, it became not my burden, my albatross, but my friend.

One word Dear hearts,

Binge
Lots of
Multiples
Plenty
Too much
Never too much

Ok that may be more than one word, but you see my point nest pas?

I’m sitting here hoovering my way through an entire small bucket of semi dried tomatoes, at their peak may I say. A generous block of Australian full cream fetta cheese and a somewhat cheeky Sav Blanc courtesy of a certain training institution who thanked me for my attention.

This has been a constant dining companion to me for the better part of I can’t remember how many years. And I don’t care to. Because it is the perfect light dinner partner. Tasty, salty and fruity. With a trio like that who needs a fourth?

Which brings me to my attention. If you have it, you seriously have it. 110%. Maybe 200010% (is that like a gazillion %??) If I’m into you, then I’m in to you. Speak and you have me. Completely. Nothing else exists.

If I like it, I like it. I can never leave Cairns now, unless the Mungalli Biodynamic Dairy comes with me. I would have to pack up those sweet Jersey cows, pack their not so little udders in my suitcase and hit the road. But then I would have to make room for those super sweet Mareeba tomato vines. Drape their heavy, fruit laden branches around said Jersey necks to make sure I had the best, freshest tomatoes this side of anywhere.

And would there be room for that secret beach in my suitcase? It must be 3kms long. Where would I fit the shells and the sticks and that brown and white dog that likes noone but us?

Hmmm, I haven’t mentioned the moon and the far far north sky yet have I? That’s going to take some packing. I would need to squeeze moon trails from full moons over Ellis Beach and the Southern Cross could not be folded I imagine. Not without a crease…

I haven’t mentioned a certain banana bread and coffee from a certain near Esplanade café? Well, Kelly may be little but that suitcase is getting full. Could I fit David’s mother in as well so that the banana bread was never ending?

I may need to abandon the little brown cardboard suitcase I had as a five year old. It was full of treasures as special as these mentioned here. My favourite matchbox cars, wax ballerina candles from my 5th birthday. The one where my mother sang to me in a tent in Lightening Ridge. Those very same and very beautiful candles stuck in a store bought loaf cake, sadly so beneath them. My mother singing through her tears because my father didn’t come home to celebrate my blowing out of those most beautiful candles. I jiggled on my bottom, just wanting my mother to stop singing, not stop crying, because I wanted to save those lovely ballerina heads from melting away. I wanted to keep them perfect, intact. So I could have them forever. And ever. I carried those stumps around in my little brown suitcase for years, the wax tutu's chipping away, some of the heads lopped off.(do you see where it comes from?)

I sat on the verandah of my grandparents enormous Victorian house on the hill overlooking Balmoral Beach and the harbour, ignoring the pretty little boats, too absorbed in sorting methodically, precisely, over and over again, the buttons my seamstress grandmother collected as a result of her impeccable needlework. It was all I ever wanted to do. Perhaps the shells I am compelled to collect now are the bright little buttons of then.

And I haven’t even mentioned you know who. Perhaps I shouldn’t. I had become accustomed to his face on my pillow. And elsewhere. My suitcase is only so big. And my will only so great.

But to be honest, Dear hearts, as much as we would like to squeeze and squash these things into our suitcase, the suitcase of the mind is more than capacious. More than accommodating.

I still have those ballerina candles. I swear I do. Sadly I also still have my mothers tears, but I make sure they stay locked in the little brown suitcase at the top of the emotional cupboard, you know the one, where my sentimentality lies.

For everything else, I am here now. Enjoying all these things now. With a light touch, just like Miss Christine says…hold them lightly and they will always be yours.

Enjoy your treasures.

With love
Miss Mich