I park outside the Malayan
Orchid at the top of View Street opposite the QEO about six thirty. I wonder up
and down the footpath waiting. After ten minutes my toes are so cold I open the
Jazz’s hatch, whip off my shorts, slide on the trackie daks and a thick pair of
socks.
She arrives and we’re ushered
to a table for two next to a wall furnace. The Orchid is up-market, for me
anyway. It boasts three consecutive years of an award-winning wine list on the front
window. The menu is varied and includes dishes with crocodile, emu and camel,
well-known Malayan fauna.
My daughter looks exceptionally
lovely, but a father would say that, wouldn’t he? I ask her what character she
sees emerging in her nearly two-year-old daughter. I tell her I admire her as a
mother, that although she cannot remember how her parents reared her at such an
early age, she must have absorbed the business by osmosis.
My good woman calls my daughter
my masterpiece, but she’s wrong. She’s a masterpiece of fortunate genes and her
own making. But not perfect. She says she is seeing a counsellor. That she lost
it with her partner, screamed at him, said terrible things, stormed off into
the bush, screamed some more and threw rocks. I’m sure she had good cause.
Nothing I hear surprises me; it
confirms the inklings I have had, the reason I wanted to talk alone. I pass on
whatever wisdom I have about relationships, not much, or maybe not wise, given my
limited success at them.
I tell her about this blog,
what it started as, what it has become, my misgivings about who reads it,
whether she or her brother should read it.
“I just want you to know it
exists and that I’d like you to read it should I get bumped off my bike into an
early grave.” She says she’ll read it.
The food is marvellous, the
service unassuming but attentive. The iced water keeps coming, the subliminal music
no effort to talk over.
We hug for a long time before
she goes home.
Rock on.
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