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I’ve got a friend Kylie who is very generous. She loves family and she trickles through the world with a decidedly cheeky grin. I say a cheeky grin and that’s sometimes easy to say about people, they have a cheeky grin, everyone has a cheeky grin from time to time. With Kylie though, she’s managed to arrange her life, and her face into a pattern of consistent gleeful cheekiness. I say she loves family because of her clear joy in the young people in her family. She’s surrounded by nephews to teach her tricks to. She was very quick to visit both of our children on their arrival. Whenever I’ve witnessed Kylie in the company of family she seems to revel in all members, great and small. I say generous as with our first child she immediately offered to take him for a night so that we could go out and relax. I’m pretty sure she even wrote it down like a store voucher. A generous offer and grateful received. It’s been 5 years since that generous gift, and I’m sure, on day, there’ll be a night when she isn’t too busy for us to take her up on it. Cheeky. Happy birthday Kylie you generous, loving and cheeky character. 
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 Once I had a long trip from Brisbane to Camp Echo in upstate New York, I had just turned 19.
The plan was to fly Brisbane, Sydney, LA (meet Aunt Maggie), New York. Then via bus from JFK airport to Port Authority Bus terminal in Manhattan. Then a state bus to Burlingham where I would be collected by car and driven to camp. The trip was going well until just before take off on the first flight. They brought out little plastic jars of orange juice to enjoy and as I peeled back the thin foil lid I splashed 30% of the juice onto my stiff khaki pants. Khaki! I took a deep breath and flew off on my first big adventure with excitement in my heart and orange on my pants. Cool Aunt Maggie drove for 3 hours to meet me at LAX, buy me a coffee, pat me on the head and see me onto my flight to New York. I landed in New York and it was so late that I missed the last bus and I needed to sleep in the Airport. This was way less cool than I had visualised as there was only one small side terminal that stayed open overnight. I lay down along some seats with my little bag under my head and an arm clipped into my big bag. It was not cool and I did not sleep. The next day I caught the bus into Manhattan, it was a rainy and bleak day, the summer had vanished and the grimy streets of New York looked foreboding to me through the blurry bus window. Port Authority terminal was large and built of grey concrete and greyer steel, I found a corner to huddle in for a few hours. At one point I became hungry and scurried out into the bustle of commuters to purchase a hotdog. The line was long and people impatient. I had my large backpack on my back, my small one on my front and a secret money belt looped around my body beneath it all. I took a deep breath. After ordering and paying, the hotdog guy put a hotdog, a napkin, two $1 bills and two quarters change onto his little stainless steel hotdog shelf. I fumbled slowly to collect the hotdog and bills over my front pack while also holding the secret money belt and bills. The two quarters glinted on the metal shelf as I struggled to juggle the various elements in my hands. A large woman behind me made a ‘humpf’ sound and stepped up next to me. She reached out her hand and took the 2 coins while saying “he ain’t gonna pick 'em up, i’ll pick them up.” I looked at her, she looked at me briefly then began ordering her hotdog. I moved meekly back to a hard seat beneath a large concrete wall. My bus came. I watched through the window as the sun emerged and the trees began to take over from the town. I was headed into upstate New York. It was almost 40 hours into the trip and I was feeling a little desperate for a welcome landing. The bus stopped in Burlingham on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The post office was closed, the single traffic light flashed red over the only major intersection in town. I watched it blink slowly as the bus departed the vacant street. There was no car to pick me up. I was a long way from Brisbane. One shop was open, a pizza restaurant, I took a deep breath. “Hello, I’m trying to get to Camp Echo.” “I’m sorry hun, what did you say?” “I’m supposed to be picked up for Camp. Camp Echo.” “Oh the camp? I just love that accent. Are you English?” “Australian. Could you call the camp for me please?” “Say again, sweetie.” “Could you call the camp please?” I tried to sound a little American on the ‘call the camp’, it seemed to make things easier. “Oh sure. They’ll come and get you. What should I say your name is?” “Thanks very much. Mike.” “Mark?” “No Mike, like Michael.” “Markle??” I took a deep breath.  We all sat around a table last week, and my father turned to my mother and said something like:
Well we were driving somewhere together, in the early days, I have this memory quite clearly. We were driving around in Sydney and we were laughing about something, I’m not sure what it was now, something that wasn’t particularly memorable, but we were laughing about it and this went on for quite a while. I remember thinking, yeah, this is the lady I’d like to marry. That memory of my parents happened over fifty years ago. It’s their 50th wedding anniversary in January and we gathered last week to tell stories and celebrate the occasion. My siblings and I all wrote them letters, there was a theme of laughter that came through in those letters, particularly laughter around the dinner table. The kind of laughter that starts because something is funny or joyful, and then evolves into laughter about the laughter and finally matures into laughter about this whole thing happening again. The meal last week included a lot of laughter too. After 40 years living in my family it is clear to me that one of the central bonding elements is laugher. The 5 of us all seem to prize that piece of our family composition. Do you get to decide which pieces make up the fabric of your family or social group, team or work crew? Are you able to select and program elements of your connections or are the real central components of our groups somehow essential, inherent and can’t be fabricated into existence? Regardless of the answers, I’m grateful for my parents and the laughter. Happy anniversary Mum and Dad. |
AuthorHigh school teacher 
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