nerrina

Love, depicted by John Lennon and Christians alike, is such an easy thing. “All y’need is love” and “Jesus is love”. It’s nonsense, of course. Love is neither easy to describe or explain or do.

My good woman and I drive to Bendigo. It’s a cold Sunday morning and I winkle her out of my winter-doona’d bed with difficulty. Somewhere round Gisborne the car finally warms up. My good woman rolls down the window. Another hot flush. Regulating her world is impossible.

We park at Bendigo’s Lake Weeroona, a shallow artificial ditch filled with muddy water and ducks, encompassed by a path of 1.4 kilometres. Electric barbeques squat under open canopies amid rows of picnic benches. A toilet block, rubberised children’s playground, and trailers dispensing coffee, donuts and hot dogs complete the idyll.

An older model 4WD rolls in, my daughter Gemma at the wheel. Her partner Richie unbuckles my grand-daughter while Gemma brings a picnic basket of sourdough bread she’s baked, home-made pickles and chutney. Nerri looks at me as though she’s never seen me before.

Four years ago I jokingly tell my daughter to look out for a job for me in Bendigo. She does. I catch the train to interviews, take up a contract. I’m delighted to be near my daughter. We have long conversations at my kitchen table, look after each other’s dogs. I am there when the Black Saturday fire takes their house.

She gets pregnant but moves to remote Western Australia where Richie gets a job. I miss Nerri’s birth. They come back to Bendigo, but now my job is done and I’ve returned to Melbourne. I desperately want the bond and relationship with my grand-child that my grand-parents never made with me.

We eat lunch. Gradually Nerri  livens. She repeats the final word of every sentence. She points at things, mostly dogs, and we look. I put her on my shoulders and carry over to the ducks. She’s wary of ducks, not sure about the chocolate-coloured bear my good woman gives her.

We are all in thrall to this 20-month old human. It won’t always be like that. We will disappoint her and she us. Our love for her will change over time as my love for my daughter has changed, from the wondrous love I had when she was Nerri’s age, through the anguished love of a single father for his pained adolescent daughter, to the proud admiring love of her as a mother.

Richie is doing Skype interviews for jobs in the Kimberley. I will lose the presence and company of my daughter again, be a stranger to my grand-daughter, that a few hours like today’s cannot undo.

I am but the bow from which my children have gone forth as living arrows. I cannot catch an arrow, can only guess where it will land. Love, however described or explained, is a ruthless bastard. It breathes life into us and kills us.

  

Rock on.