It was the first time I'd been back to the house in which I was raised since The Before Times. Being back there always gives me the willies to some degree, however I wasn't overly worried about it. However my mother had led me to believe that my three siblings and their families were all keen to see me, which was a bit daunting (not to mention implausible).
I'd vague intentions of visiting Sydney for some time, with a view to spending a couple of days with family, and then a couple more staying in the city and catching up with one or two old friends as a feeble gesture toward making amends for years of neglect. But chronic spoon depletion led me to scale it back to a couple of nights at my Mum's house.
Mum insisted on paying for a shuttle service from the airport, as getting from Mascot to anywhere in Sydney that isn't Mascot is a nightmare. I bristled at the charity, but in the end I was glad of it, as driver Mat was a very bright and accomplished young man, and chatty in a charming way. By the end of the commute, I'd heard a good portion of his life story and — as the first fifty years of my life are fairly thin on narrative — he'd heard virtually the whole of mine.
I'd forgotten how loud some branches of my family can be, and how they find it possible to conduct four or five simultaneous conversations at this volume, with participants switching seamlessly between them. I had to duck out to the other end of the house a couple of times until my ears stopped ringing and I'd caught my breath.
Also, I got to meet my two great-nieces.
I know what you're thinking, and I quite agree. If anybody is going to be a great-aunt, it ought to be one who looks the part and indeed appears to have been preparing for the role her entire life. Still, the reality of it is a bit confronting. I shall have to learn how to moisten the corner of a handkerchief for the purposes of impromptu unsolicited face-cleaning. And carry around a supply of unusually warm twenty cent coins to press into little hands with the instruction to take it to the corner shop in exchange for a bag of mixed lollies.
Do corner shops still sell bags of mixed lollies? Or, to keep our children safe, are sweets now required to be uniform and homogenous, as God intended, with non-conforming sweets sent to confectionery re-education camps?
The younger of my two great-nieces is perfectly delightful, but still mastering the skill of rolling about on the floor, grasping at things with an intention to ruthlessly mangle them and see if the remains will fit in her mouth, so opportunities for meaningful interaction are rather limited.
My elder great-niece rummaged through a toy box my mother had produced for her. She trotted over to me and started constructing a little tableau of blocks and licenced plastic figurines of disparate provenance on the dining table. I made appropriately appreciative noises.
Eventually, she ran off to Mum's study (my old bedroom), and returned with a Disney princess stationery set and a sheet of A4 paper. I held the paper steady for her, as she was attacking it with a HB pencil with so much gusto that it was sliding every which way. Eventually, satisfied with the piece, she displayed it in turn to everybody in the room. Then my mum produced an enormous pack of colour pencils, and things got serious.
It was clear that my active participation was now required. My young tutor in the visual arts scribbled furiously on the first page of the little Disney princess notebook to show me how it was done. Then she issued me a red pencil, pointing to my red necklace as justification. We were to work on alternate pages of the notebook, in red and pink respectively, until it was full. This didn't take long, as it was a very thin notebook from a very cheap and half-arsed stationery set.
Then she went off to Mum's office and came back with a couple of grapefruit-sized foam rubber balls, gave one to me, and sat a few feet away on a footstool. I didn't know what she was intending, so as she threw hers to me, I threw mine to her, and we failed to catch either. Considering my toddler-level physical coordination, and the absence of rules or a system of scoring, it turned into a fairly evenly-matched game. It was also quite exhausting, so I was relieved when she realised she had yet to show our collaborative artwork around the room. I took the opportunity to go to the loo.
When I returned my seat at the table had been taken by a grown-up, so I took the footstool and feigned interest in a gardening magazine to avoid being drawn into adult conversation. When my collaborator wound up her exhibition, she positioned a matching footstool the requisite distance away to continue our contest. We were both improving with practice, and started experimenting with delivery technique (rolling, kicking, etc.), with some of my innovations eliciting squeals of joy and prompt adoption.
A wild ball flew over my shoulder, landing in the vicinity of my eldest nephew who was tending to my less ambulatory great-niece.
"Daddy!" came the stern order, with a dainty finger pointing first at the ball and then at me, "Give it to her!"
My heart broke into a thousand pieces.
I expect to be misgendered by practically everybody, most of the time. If I'd been asked to hazard a probability, I'd have said there was no chance that a three-year-old could successfully interpret my mess of mixed signals.
As I approached exhaustion and my playmate achieved a state of giddy, giggling, hyperactivity that required the attention of everybody in the room, the match concluded with a draw.
Deciding round to be played probably never. In all likelihood, the next time I see her, she will be a teenager.
I can't, except in moments of weakness, permit myself grief over how long it took me to grow up, or how little time I have left to make of it what I will. The long path I took to get here might for all I know have been a blessing (for me).
However I can say with certainty that I regret being absent when I might have done some good for others. Those opportunities missed, responsibilities unfulfilled, because I was dormant and decades away from emerging, weigh upon me constantly. If I think beyond my immediate family, I can't begin to count the people I feel I've let down.
Mat got into a scrape with another vehicle while on his way over to take me back to the airport. It was pouring rain, and the roads were also backed up with the consequences of many similar incidents. He was terribly guilty over being half an hour late. The journey was a bit of a lead-footed nail-biter and the conversation consequently a bit less free-flowing than on the outbound one — certainly from my end — but he made up the lost time by taking all the tollways (at his own expense, rather than his employer's, I assume).
In the end, I made it though security with forty minutes to spare, so I treated myself to a $22 glass of bottom-shelf wine, looking out onto a rain-lashed tarmac. I wonder what the poor people are doing today? Blowing their weekly booze budget on a single glass of wine, evidently.
Next time I go to Sydney I'll try the train. But when? Three years? Five? Ten?
Who will she be by then? Will she even know she has a dotty old great-aunt who lives far away?