When my brother bought his first home, it had a wonderful lawn and garden.

My brother needed a lawnmower, so he bought Abraham.

Abraham was a goat.

Abraham was very handsome, very strong, and very stubborn. Like all goats, Abraham liked to eat.  Abraham liked to eat anything.  Abraham liked to eat everything.  Abraham was a typical, young male goat. And he was BIG.

After Abraham had eaten all the roses, the entire lemon tree, most of the washing as well as the washing line, Abraham became fenced.

After Abraham had eaten the fence, Abraham became fenced and tethered.

After Abraham had eaten through the tether as well as the repaired fence, Abraham became fenced, tethered and chained – with a very long chain.

It kept him busy.

On a visit back to Perth, my parents decided to take me and the baby first mate to visit my brother and check out his new home.

I had the usual tour, supped on the usual tea and timtam,  and after an hour or so, it was time to go home. Goodbyes said, we wandered out the front door to my parents car.

As we turned the corner towards the driveway, we saw, clearly visible, a set of indented hoof prints trailing from the bumper, up the centre of the bonnet and onto the roof.

And perched right on top of dad’s prized ‘not the Kingswood’  (it was actually a Datsun Bluebird, but it could have been the crown jewels) – standing proud and silhouetted against the azure Perth skies, was Abraham.

Eating the radio aerial.

When my brother sold his first home, it had no garden or lawn out the back.  Which was odd, given the lush green garden out the front.

The proceeds of the sale were put to very good use. My mother loved her new Hyundai.

I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face. Apoplectic is the only term that comes to mind.

Actually, it was chips and fishes. And wine. And the sunset.

I was too lazy to cook.

I could have taken the better camera.

I was too lazy to grab that, too.

Sat until way past dark on enjoying the very balmy evening.

The walk home was lovely too.

It’s April.
How can it be April when it was only just Christmas? Now Easter? Incomprehensible.

My weeks are too busy, filled with work, domestication, renovation and management of the mundane. Friday nights come and sunset finds me in my jammies with a blank stare on my face, enjoying the mental moment of knowing there is nothing on my agenda for 48 hours. Blink – and its Sunday night. Zoom me away on coconut airways.

I remember years ago, secure in the knowledge that once I grew up, once I had done the hard yards, once the years passed I would ‘get it all together’. I knew that one day, I’d awake to the knowledge that I had achieved ‘it’, I would be able to work for the pleasure of the job. I’d be able to cook for the pleasure of eating. I’d have a home that was tidy enough to pass for clean and deal with the stream of people who dropped by because they, too, had it together and could spend time in social intercourse with chosen friends. We’d share coffee and cake and watch the kids romp, the teenagers would do teenager things without the worry of social pressure and the youngies would be off climbing trees and scraping knees and digging in mud but return tired and happy.

I turn to my elders. I am shocked. People I have known all of my life suddenly turn into old people. How does that happen? People who partied and laughed and danced and sang now creak and shake, the façade crumbles, their watery eyes crinkle under furrowed brow as they try to remember that elusive little detail – that name, that place.

I was looking at a photo today, that I took only a few months ago. Only it can’t have been, because my grandmother has been gone – oh 7 or 8 years now, and my son – the one who started high school this year – is just a toddler. He wears the cutest haircut and has that lower lip pout that toddlers have. His arms reach around his great grandmother’s chest as he hugs the matriarch he met only twice. She holds him with one arm and she looks into the camera with a steady gaze, but there, there in that gaze I see the watering eyes and I recall her stretching for that elusive name, the name of her great-grandson. She smiles at the camera because she knows that, she knows a camera. She knows the camera but she barely knew me, the girl she helped raise for 20 years.

I sifted through more music today. I, like most people, am drawn to the music of my heyday. As I sang and sorted and prepared to add to my iPod bank, Someone said “What’s Shirley doing” and someone else said “Oh, she off sorting through those oldies”. Oldies? I looked again. Nope, nothing from the 40’s or 30’s here. Just good solid 80’s wonderment. I snorted and retorted in that sentiment. Then I heard a voice say “that was 30 years ago. And you were 16 then”.

Who knows where the time goes? Is there some type of time bank somewhere? I imagine a big old piggy guarded by father time, The sands slip into that big old piggy. He gets fatter and fatter as he absorbs days, hours, minutes. He smiles at the images of happy people, celebrations of life in each grain of sand. He looks beyond watery eyes and behind memory fog and sees ‘it’. He sees births and death, marriage and baggage. He sees dream and hope and ambition and pain and disappointment.

And as people find themselves at the end of their cycle, they slip through that piggy on their way to wherever. As they slip through that fat old piggy they gather the sand they left behind. They gather the smiles and the laughter. They gather the names and faces and the joy and wonderment from all the people they have touched as they lived their journey. All that’s left in the piggy are sands of tears, sadness and hurt. The grains of anger, the grit of pain. The piggy, he takes all that discarded sand and he recycles it into new sand, gathered up by father time ready for a new beginning – cleansed, fresh and pure white, handed to the Sandman ready to pepper new dreams of new souls in new lives.

At the ending of my life, I want to sift through the sands of that fat old piggy. I want my last moments to be filled with images of faces I once knew. People smiling. People before tragedy changed the lines on their faces. People while they were still able to walk and talk and speak to me or hold my hand. People who know me, really know me, People who I wanted to know better but instead I mourned as they were whisked away. Most of all, I want to see the faces of my family all together, reunited, those that walk now and those that walked before. I want to gather up all those memories and make sure that they are the last things I know in this life.

I really, really hope I have it together by then.