Home – Page 2 – five stray minutes

Old things

Published on September 4, 2019 by Allison Wright1 Comment

Everyone else thought the candle museum in Sydney was amazing in 1986. So many shapes and colours. To me, it all looked like those useless porcelain figurines people attach value to. On the top floor, there were some other arts and crafts. I was taken by the handwoven cushion covers. Piles of them Any 4 for $10.

I must have spent 30 minutes choosing which ones I wanted. I spent another 30 minutes deciding if I wanted to spent a whole $10. I got good use out of those cushion covers. Decades later they looked a bit shabby, except for the blue one, which was merely frayed around the edges.

I took a piece of denim, and appliquéd two sides to the cushion I made for João’s first wheelchair.

Years later, she got a real cushion, designed especially for her new wheelchair. I stuffed the cushion cover with a new piece of foam rubber and sat on it for years at my desk.

I used it this summer on top of another chair to put my swollen feet up while working

Today I gave an old chair I was refurbishing to a friend. I cannot take it with me when I move. She preferred this old cushion cover to the piece of foam rubber I had not yet covered.

She has a special shack where she sits and thinks at the bottom of her garden.

I remembered about choosing the original cushion cover in Sydney. I had forgotten about the rest until now.

My friend looked nice sitting on the old cushion in the old chair, trying it out for size. She’ll put some life into those old things. I know she will.

Clarity

Published on September 4, 2019September 4, 2019 by Anett EnzmannLeave a comment

“She’s just like you!”

We met Tom and Sally at a small restaurant in Encinitas, California. Tom had picked us up at the airport, but I had yet to meet his wife, son, and sister, who joined us shortly after we had been seated at a large round table. Sally, who had been previously described to me as introverted and awkward, engaged me quite vividly, asking me all kinds of questions about where I was from, what I was doing and the like — the kind of polite scrutiny you would expect upon meeting people for the first time, especially when you’re about to marry their closest friend of thirty years.

After a while I excused myself to go to the restroom — in no small part, to give everyone the opportunity to gossip. My fiancé had been doing this every time we met his friends on this trip: as soon as I left, he would say “So? What do you think? Isn’t she awesome?” I liked that little ritual even though I was slightly embarrassed by the flood of compliments and awe I would receive by proxy when we got home. And this time was no different.

Back in the car, my fiancé told me how Sally — as soon as I was out of earshot — in a moment of clairvoyance had blurted out the one sentence that we keep quoting to each other to this day:

“She’s just like you!”

To this day we are not sure whether she meant it as a compliment or an insult. But whichever it was, she couldn’t have been more right.

[267 words]

Brief exchange

Published on September 3, 2019 by Allison WrightLeave a comment

I saw my neighbour with his small tractor and trailer taking old furniture to the communal rubbish bin this afternoon. When he returned, I hailed him.

He stopped on the other side of the road. I stood inside my gate and told him the latest news. He could not hear me above the noise of the engine so he just turned of the ignition in the middle of the road.

A car behind him slowed down and overtook him.

It was a brief exchange. He started up his engine again and went on his way. My nostrils flared at the smell of diesel. They always do.

Sawdust

Published on September 2, 2019 by Allison WrightLeave a comment

Pine chest upon pine chest were stacked taller than I in our “end room”, the one with a door to the back, with its lean-to shelter and concrete flooring. That is where Kunaka and João worked outside on the weekends.

They planed by hand and sanded by hand, and did everything by hand. The timber was sanded so finely. I loved the smell of the sawdust, its fine softness.

I was inside, sewing velvet interiors for the jewellery boxes they made.

Kunaka had a club foot, but he had a bicycle. João’s eyesight was failing, but she would not let me screw the screws in, and so often struggled to fix the screwdriver in the screw slot – using both hands.

I had to let her do it. I was not allowed to say anything about her shaking MS hands.

Each chest took between eight and twelve layers of varnish and the colour was especially blended by João, from several different tins. That was twenty years ago, so it was.

I am keeping one, as I step into my new life. She and I called it “Mega” to tell it apart from all the others.

Being here

Published on September 2, 2019September 2, 2019 by Allison Wright1 Comment

The house I saw today — where I hope to be able to move to — is at almost the same degree of latitude as my current abode.

Almost is relative. I love maps. So I can tell you now that the two town centres (as opposed to actual locations of the relative dwellings) are separated by 0°2’38” latitude (that’s 0 degrees, 2 minutes and 38 seconds).

The distance that miniscule difference in latitude represents equates to 3.026894 miles, or 4.871314 kilometres.

But when someone calls me and says, “Where are you?”, I simply answer, “I am here”.

The best

Published on August 31, 2019August 31, 2019 by Allison WrightLeave a comment

“I’m the best lesbian,” Cath announced suddenly, as she sipped her mug of coffee, sitting with her feet up on the three-seater Queen Ann couch they had had recovered in dark blue denim.

“Says who?!”

Andrea sat down in the remaining space at the end of the couch.

“My mother. That’s what she told her friend Vanda. Her daughter, Tália, was also lesbian. They were so competitive, those two. I heard them, one day in my twenties, discussing who was the best lesbian. My mother won the argument, as usual.”

“Well, that’s that then,” said Andrea, slurping her coffee, grinning.

Shades

Published on August 30, 2019 by Allison WrightLeave a comment

It was so bright today, I went back inside to get my Jacaru Aussie leather hat and sunglasses. The one and only pair of shades I have ever had. When I bought them four years ago, people said I looked like Agent Smith from The Matrix movie.

The image was a selfie of me deadpan, not smiling, deadly serious.

Today, the hat and shades took the heat off when I went walking. And I was smiling. No selfie. I’m used to the shades now.

Speakeasy

Published on August 29, 2019August 31, 2019 by Allison Wright3 Comments

Downtown Johannesburg back in the day. Oh yes, late on Thursday nights through the arcade, down two flights of stairs, through the padded black swing doors, with the bodyguard’s muscles testing the limit of his too-small shirt.

It was not the booze that was illicit, but the company we kept. Apartheid, you know. There was Thandi riffing and bending on her alto sax in her high heels and fishnets, and dark frilly party dress. Her full lips needed no lipstick but she wore it anyway out of defiance.

We all listened, sitting squashed up cheek by jowl at small round tables, our legs crossed and wrapped round each other to save space. Early in the evening, a slow intro to Baker Street, with a slightly altered syncopated African beat. The drummer in his dark Ray Ban shades.

Andrea always liked a neat scotch on the rocks. The saxophone brought that risqué strand out in her.

Tonight there was a new woman there. She had ordered a beer but could not reach the bottle or the glass that the overworked waiter had put on the table.

Thandi was in full swing now flirting with the guy on the keyboard.

Andrea took that beer glass and held it at an angle, and slowly, as the sax did more bends with a vibrato flourish, poured the perfect slim beer for the woman eyeing her.

She handed her the beer silently, and lifted her own glass in a toast. That woman had lesbian eyes. It was too loud to say anything. Thandi was having a good night on the stage tonight. And how.

Dream remembered

Published on August 28, 2019August 31, 2019 by Allison Wright4 Comments

In was in these very hills soon after I came to this place that I had a vivid dream.

After climbing steep hill, I was led through a large courtyard painted white, up some stairs and through tall, heavy wooden doors into what seemed like another world.

Inside, tall thin arches covered with long drapes in rich fabric wafted slightly in the breeze. The hall – for that’s what is was – had drapes hanging everywhere, so that the precise size of the room could not be discerned. One could not see the walls themselves.

There was a large rectangular table at one end with people seated around: Arabs, Africans, men, women, all in grand attire. In the centre, a heavy round table, covered with a cloth. In the corners of the room were large brocade cushions piled high. People were dressed in long robes, and cloth headdresses studded with jewels and reclining, comfortably talking, and drinking out of jewel encrusted goblets.

As I entered, wearing a plain purple robe and leather sandals, but no other adornment, an imposing woman stood up.

She had the most magnificent robe of all. Deep purple, with swirls of bright blue, and gold brocade on a matching outer cloak. It complemented her dark brown complexion perfectly, and set off her bright eyes with a power I had seldom seen in a woman.

As she rose, so too did everyone else. She approach me slowly , with the dignity befitting her office.

She said, “So, you have come”.

I stood tall, bolt upright and held her gaze, “Yes, I have”.

She took her time and circled around me, at about two metres distant, inspecting me, it seems. The hall was quiet, but not unsympathetic.

I stood motionless and looked straight ahead. When she had come full circle she faced me once again. Raising her chin ever so slightly, as those of authority do, she said in a deep, resonant voice, “Welcome!”

With that she handed me the gold goblet in her hand. I raised it in a toast to her, with my head bowed for a moment, and then drank my first sip. I felt as if I had come home.

(This was the first dream I had, very soon after emigrating to Portugal.)

A visitor

Published on August 27, 2019August 31, 2019 by Allison Wright2 Comments

We discovered that the young guy at the meeting was called Thabo. We also discovered that his uncle’s big house was just around the corner from where we lived. Well, just around the corner, if you can walk with ease, that is. He already had elbow crutches, and walked with difficulty. I could see it in the tensing of his arm muscles and clenched grip. And he knew very little about what MS was going to take from him. New diagnoses are the hardest.

But hey, this guy was so determined to “keep on going”. We said, “Come around on Saturday, we’re home all day”. So he did.

It was the time of the food shortages. He was very respectful to arrive at 2.30 pm. The fact was that we had not eaten yet. I was about to serve our lunch, when the bell at the gate rang.

He followed me up the drive, and took a seat. I said, “Now, listen, I can see that you walked all the way here. We were about to have lunch. It is chicken wings and gravy with rice. And some spinach from the garden. We would love you to join us in our meal”.

The tall, skinny young man beamed bashfully. “Only if there is enough…” Yeah, I thought. He had not eaten yet today either.

“Today, there is”.

So there we sat, the three of us in our lounge, with trays on our laps. And plates piled with real food. I silently thanked God that on this day, we had enough food for everyone.

We had a lovely conversation after that, with our bellies full. He could tell a good story, that Thabo.