Remember those olden days when we used to read books like The Famous Five or The Secret Seven, Magic Faraway Tree, Nancy Drew, Roald Dahl? Remember reading them, but not really connecting as they spoke about another world. About pheasants scurrying fussily out of the way (putting the saltanas in Bundy to try and make the galahs fall over never really worked for us). About forests where deers roamed. About white christmases. The cuckoos in the forests. Woodpeckers. Birds flying south for the winter. The world over there.
But this is the world I live in now. It never fails to amaze me when I see a pheasant. Or hear the cuckoos. Or like I did today, seeing the birds flying in a V shape on their way to Africa. Or the storks sitting in the garden (and no, I am not pregnant). These are all the things I used to imagine about here as my reality.
But now I crave to look out of my window and see the colouful birds eating at the feeder instead of the little brown ones. I go a bit silly when I´m at the zoo;
'Look over there, that comes from Australia. In Australia we don´t have to see them in cages. And that one comes from Australia too. And that one....'
My girls are growing up in the antithesis of me. We read the books about Australia and they ask me if we really have kangaroos in our back garden. Or trying to explain an echidna, 'yes Honey, it is like a hedghog, but different shape and a bit bigger. No it isn´t a hedgehog, it is an echidna.' Or about the colours that you can see all around, all year round in the birds and the bush. And the bush is not the forest, it is different. And most trees don´t lose their leaves in winter, not just the pine trees, and we have a Barbie for lunch at christmas and sit outside in our bikinis (well we would if we fit into one). But I hope that my girls will have two cultures and understand about living on both sides of the world.
2 comments:
That read like a book and I dont think anyone can convince me that you are not an excellent writer. It’s funny how memories leap out at you. From my office window, I can look west and see almost out to the seas and I remember almost immediately my kitchen window through which I can see beautiful layers of clouds and circling seagulls.
Beautiful post.
Take care.
I remember, when visiting Europe and the US in my early teens, it all feeling very familiar precisely because of reading all those sorts of books. It's an illusion of familiarity of course because what you get from a book is only distantly related to the experience of actually living somewhere.
But still. If you share books from Australia with your girls and tell them stories of your own memories and show them photos and videos, as you are clearly doing, then I have no doubt they will feel a certain sense of familiarity and belonging for Australia as well as for the place of their birth.
Also, storks in the garden sounds just so cool to me and that's because another of my childhood books was The Wheel on the School.
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