We drove to my Nana's this morning - she lives about half an hour away on the coast. The drive there is lovely, through canefields, along the river and just green and lush with little houses on stilts and rusted tin roofs.
We picked Nana up and wandered down the street to poke about in an estate sale. How to describe my deep pleasure at walking along the footpath chatting with my Mum and Nana under the warm sun, a sea breeze picking up the red banksia flowers and tossing them gently. These of course are the two women I have known longest, since before I knew to know, and I have a rare moment of feeling myself stretch back completely.
After the sale we drove to Tweed Heads, eating the quintessental Australian lunch, meat pies, at an outdoor cafe where we had views of the surf, the skyline at Surfers Paradise and the high blue sky.
Across the street I left Mum and Nana under a shady pergola on a bench that was clearly too high for them but gave them the opportunity to swing their legs like schoolgirls, and strolled toward the ocean.
It was only my intention to stand at the fence and look, and breathe deeply of the salt air and listen for a moment to the waves crashing onto the shore, but before I knew it I had my shoes off and I was walking down the hot sand path (oh that feeling) toward the water. The waves, seeing me coming, rushed up and engulfed me to the knees. What a welcome!
Mum took this picture so that you can see I really was there, and then we drove to a cliffside lookout named Point Danger by Captain Cook, called Fingal by the Aboriginals.
You can see in the groin the mouth of the Tweed River, the one we cross in Murwillumbah on our way into town, the same one, even further upstream, that we soaked our toes in at the base of Wollumbin.
Captain Cook called this Point Danger because his experience offshore was of treacherous reefs, and he named Wollumbin Mount Warning at the same time because he could see it from his vantage point at sea and used it as a reference point for the same reefs. This I learnt jostling for space with Japanese tourists at the lookout.
Back at Nana's for tea and cake. Mum and Nana read People magazine together, commenting on babies, Brad and Angelina's infertility and who's gotten fat. Nana told wonderful self -deprecating stories about the many ways she has embarrassed herself over the years with her trusting nature and her seven sons fond teasing and joke playing.
I poked around on her sideboards, looking at pictures the go back almost a hundred years, of her as a girl, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and me. She is the memory keeper for our huge and rambling family, and the proof is everywhere.
Back at Mum's, slightly sunburned and more than a little satisfied, I fell asleep on the sofa watching Ghostbusters.
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