We played outdoors heaps. Most of the times Mum would let us roam within the playground and the nearby grass and trees which surrounded the school. Sometimes she would follow us. Like when we made the paper boats.

This was memory I locked away for a long time. I recalled it in P.E. in Melbourne. I was surprised to find it, because some of them are so deeply buried because it hurt too much to pull them out. Maybe I find more of them someday, lost in the channels of my mind and dripping down my spine. Some of these memories trigger me, which is why I used to hide them. Otherwise my life became too painful to be bearable. They’re slowly coming out. Slowly. It’s been almost three years, but I don’t think they’re done revealing themselves yet, crawling out from underneath their shells. I was lucky I didn’t cry listening to the Friendship song. It was risky. I could have unravelled and wrote this week later. But the lady in the video was so happy so I couldn’t cry.
I can see a near future here now. I’d want to say I’ve settled. I’ve gone used to the idea of living here. I don’t feel like giving some people the satisfaction of re-australia-nising me. Maybe I’m proud. Or maybe I’m Russian. I think it’s a bit of both. Ok, the three.

As I was saying, paper boats.

It would take a while before we went outside these times, because we’d have to fold numerous newspaper sheets into paper boats. Then we’d tuck them into the stroller, as well as my siter, and Mum would follow us as we blew the paper boats over the puddles, heading deeper into the woods. The puddles along the edges of the road worked particularly well because the dip created a nice current. We’d have races and we’d be playing for hours, replacing the soggy worn out boats with new crispy ones. Robyn would watch distantly. Mum would follow us peacefully. I think that the feeling a mother has when she sees her children happy, brave and content must be one of the best feelings in the world.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
 I know this isn’t part of my story in Russia, but its part of my story, and I would argue its part of yours too. It is about God though, so your choice whether to read it. You know the feeling you get when you walk into a completely quiet room? You don’t even dare to whisper, barely breathing, carefully treading on the floor. Or when you wake up in the middle of the night and need the toilet, but your scared of waking everyone up by flushing it. When its quiet, we’re scared of making noise. Now imagine a room, but without walls, without and floor, without a roof, without light. And uneasy breeze, rocking motion. It’s an unproductive chaos, not destroying anything, not making anything. In other words, it useless. But wait, there One in this room. It’s God. And the room is completely silent. He alone, and he has always been there. What will our God do? Will he stay shy and not do something with this darkness? No. He had the courage to change what seemed unc...
Read more
My Dad would often tell me that he was sad about how he never got his Father’s Day. Father’s wasn’t an event in Russia, unlike here. No culture is perfect. And you can’t compare apples and oranges, so it’s not like we can say on culture is better than another. Nevertheless, my dad was lacking a Father’s Day celebration, although we did celebrate him within our family, he was just sad that he didn’t get the same standards in treatment as Mum was on Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is really big in Russia. It’s celebrated on March 8 th as international Mother’s Day, technically women’s day, which was technically not international. The real Mother’s Day was at the end of November, like 22 nd 0r 28 th or something. I’m fairly certain we did the concerts in November. They blend closer onto one, its’ hard to remember what order they came in, but they are precious memories. The first one for some reason I don’t remember the actual performance, but we made a concert and we brainstormed as a...
Read more
There were lots of sandpits in the area where we were allowed to play. One in particular was on the way to the ice cream store. The sand constantly needed replacing as kids emptied it out over the sides. I suppose it also needed rebuilding as the sand swallowed the edges. Over the years, a hill developed in the place where the sandpit stands. You can’t dig to the bottom of it, the sand gets wetter, then stiffer, then mixed with dirt and pebbles. But the bottom is out of reach. I wonder what it will be like there once I return, whether they’ll have a community-famous Mt Sand, or whether someone will set their minds to it and get rid of the sand and probably the buried sandboxes underneath, leaving a flat space, and make a fresh sandpit filled with fresh sand. It’s the sort of the thing Australian culture sees the purpose in, but Russian culture doesn’t. Near the sandpit were those little styrofoam balls hidden in the grass that I used to think insects played with – who knows, maybe th...
Read more