[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 3 October 2023].
amongst the mangroves
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 7 July 2021].
It was a busy day today once I surfaced.
Plenty of photo editing. Some client work. Exchanges with a potential new flatmate.
I had hoped to post this around midnight then binge the last three episodes of season one of 'Vikings'. But I was slightly sidelined at the last minute, and now I'm too tired for TV.
I took this at Redland Bay in 2009. My parents lived a short walk from here, and I had moved to stay with them not too long before.
I took it during a photo walk with another local photographer I met through RedBubble (whose name I don't actually recall now!). Earlier on the same day that I'd met Mel Brackstone to visit the abandoned house in Eight Mile Plains, where I took 'van life', which I shared with you last week.
Mangroves and their pneumatophores (or "breathing tubes") really are bizarre but quite clever.
landlocked
He was back in front of this window; the window that had ended his school days, every day.
When he was young, he used to stop and gaze up at the model boat and the marine rescue vehicle as he arrived home each day. He would stand there, distracted for long moments.
So long, that his mother - waiting, anxiously, for him to return home from school - would open the curtains and find him stood there. Motionless, head tilted back, mouth slightly gaping and staring up at the boat.
She would come to the front door and watch him for a minute or two, a soft smile playing at the edges of her lips before she bundled him up and took him inside to the kitchen. She would ask him about his day while she prepared supper and listened to the tales he would bring home from the schoolyard.
His fascination with the boat had not waned over the years, but he had stopped gawping at it as he grew older. There were girls to gaze at instead, and as he grew up, they were what caught his eye or kept his attention as he arrived home each day from high school.
As he reached the end of high school, he was usually too busy sneaking in one last kiss with his girlfriend, Sarah, as he unlocked the front door of the house and said his goodbyes for the day.
The model boats, the marine rescue vehicle and the lighthouse baffled him a little bit when he was growing up.
Their home was twenty minutes from the nearest body of water, and that was a river, not an ocean or the sea. Hardly somewhere that a lighthouse or a marine rescue vehicle would be needed, let alone various large boats or ships.
The models were his dad's, but he didn't talk much about them and didn't like being asked about them.
His dad didn't really like being asked about anything. Or talking about anything.
The models just sat on the windowsill gathering dust, hidden from the inside of the house by the curtains. A display for others, not for us.
Except him, of course; he was fascinated by them.
On occasion, when his dad was in a more social mood or simply wanted to distract him while he talked with the grown-ups, his father would let him take down the marine rescue vehicle. Roll it across the rug, pretending he was saving his Lego men from some maritime disaster.
But his dad was always firm about the boat. The boat was not a toy. It wasn't to be removed from the window. He had received more than one firm slap across his legs and buttocks for even inching his fingers up toward the boat.
It was only in the past few years that his mother talked more about his dad's upbringing. It was only in the past few years, as he became more ill and his mind started to slip that his father spoke about the sea. It was one of the few things he could still connect with. That he still remembered.
He didn't remember faces, except his wife's. He never remembered birthdays; that was no change. But he could talk vividly about the sea. The sound of it. The smell. The feel of it on his hands.
His dad would sometimes stop mid-sentence and tilt his head as if listening closely to a conversation through the walls. After a few moments like this, he would invariably ask if they could hear the waves. They nodded and smiled awkwardly, hearing nothing, but knowing that they had to agree. That his dad would look crestfallen and confused if they said "no".
Growing up, he never met his dad's parents. His dad never spoke of his father, so he grew up believing he only had one set of grandparents. He didn't question this for a long time, and then it seemed too late to ask. Too awkward of a conversation to have.
Coming home now, facing the front windows of his childhood home, he gazed once more at the boats, the lighthouse, the marine rescue vehicle. He knew that now he could lift them out of the window and take a closer look. He knew that no one would reprimand him for that.
Since his dad had died, a lot of pieces had fallen into place in the puzzle. His mum had opened up dusty photo albums hidden away in the loft for decades. Too painful for his dad to look at, to speak about, to share.
In the yellowed black and white photographs taken in his dad's childhood, a warm, smiling, middle-aged man gazed into the camera from the railing of a boat.
He waved at the photographer with a look of love.
abandoned ship
Day fifty of The 100 Day Project.
I’m halfway through the project!
I would love to know which is your favourite so far.
Illustrations:
Spider by Leonard Leslie Brooke from A nursery rhyme picture book (number one)
the boatman's call
summer lovin'
Day twenty-two of The 100 Day Project.
Illustrations:
Lions kissing while a monkey entwines their tails by Wilhelm von Kaulbach from Reineke Fuchs