Yesterday I went to my youngest grandson’s firtst birthday party. My middle son Eddy married Jun and they already have one son, Caiden, who is four. He was born early and looked like a fairy child, tiny, delicate and dark eyed. He was disconsolate, however, from the word go and cried and fed then cried some more. He’s happy now and laughs and runs with other children but doesn’t smile when I come to the door. He just goes away and gets me a little something – a ribbon, a biscuit.
The birthday boy, Callan was born bigger and looked fierce to start with. He resembled a little Eastern potentate who would rule (as in fact most babies do) without pity or mercy. Paradoxically though, he was an easy newborn, happy to be handed round like a kitten. We all took our cuddle tax and he took it on board.
Anyway it’s his first birthday and Jun has made him an exquisite watermelon cake, adorned with kiwifruit and blueberries and little stars made out of dragonfruit. She and Eddy and the kids have recently moved out of a modern concrete flat into this house which is beautiful in its old fashioned ordinariness. It has a Hills Hoist and a huge grassy yard with a big tree at the bottom. It feels like the fifties when things were simpler and I cannot help but slow down and relax. From the end of the garden where the barbecue is I can look back on the single storey house with its flyscreen that clacks as children chase in and out and we guests carry plates of cheese and salami and dips to the table, and the barbecue is touched with a match.
There has been an addition to the garden since I was here last – a fine trampoline, netted for safety with little wooden steps leading up to a zip which can be opened and shut. For a second there crosses my mind the irrelevant image of a tiger slinking back and forth inside, along with the thought that we would be safe even so because of the zip.
Cousins Jacob and Ethan arrive and whoop at the sight of the trampoline and quickly all three cousins are bouncing and tumbling and making my fleeting image of the tiger seem tame. More kids come and a bag of coloured plastic balls is added and every so often like tiddlywinks they are shot out over the net to land amongst the quiet babies who have now arrived with their parents. We all insist on the zip being kept shut lest a child is catapulted out and injured. But injury looks very possible nonetheless as, like little cage fighters, the kids let loose their demons as they leap and call. A magician friend of Eddy’s has come now and blows up long balloons which he twists into swords for them all and it all looks a bit safer as they biff and battle together while the adults down drinks and pat babies and lament the election and the psyche of the majority of Australians who brought about the awful result.
Then it’s cake time and we warble the melancholy cadence of Happy Birthday ending with loud hurrays.
I almost didn’t come to the party. I’ve had sporadic endogenous depression all my life and it’s been bad lately. The last time I remember entering what I somewhat melodramatically call “the valley of the knives” was in 2000 when Sydney was full of beautiful Olympic strangers and we were all advised to take leave time so as not to stuff up public transport.. I still remember a dogged slow African swimmer who kept on despite being embarrassingly far behind everyone else. A good example, I thought, for us sluggish depressives. Lots of people have described depression so I won’t do much of that. Suffice it to say that it comes in sheep’s clothing. It seems like ordinary forgetfulness, indecision and irritation until the wolf tosses off its disguise. And that’s when the fun begins – suspicion, rage and suicidal ideation – spiky promptings to self harm. But if asked if I’d ever thought about such a thing I would say no. It’s ideation, not thoughts and seems to come from outside. But it’s exhausting fending it off . There are some strategies. Julie Andrews sings in The Sound of music “Whenever you feel afraid, just whistle a happy tune..” And it works for depression too but the trouble is you’d need to whistle for ever. I sometimes wonder if those people one meets from time to time who can’t stop talking are in fact just whistling a happy tune. Another strategem for me is audiobooks where amazing narrators create a curtain between me and my minor madness. And then there’s death’s little sister sleep. The delight of bed and pillows. And her big sister alcohol, jolly, mind numbing giving ease and tolerance at least until the next day.
What most surprises me is how it is possible to be a proper social person at an event like this, despite all the lunacy inside. I chat and laugh at the party with the best of them and shut out for the time a dilemma that I have. For the last thirty years I have been taking the antidepressant known as Prozac, and like me she is growing old and I’m wondering whether I would be better guarded by a younger drug. I’ve been offered Effexor which allows more noradrenaline as well as seratonin to wash about the brain. And who knows how sensible and down to earth that would make me. But I am just a little afraid. I’ve been serving Princess Prozac for so long. So what – she’s a bit unreliable – but to dump her for the youthful Effexor? The issue is my commonsense self may not be there to fight back if he takes advantage of my trust.
Anyway I go back to being a grandma at the party and put aside decisions. And I’m so glad to be here – green grass and fluorescent kids stuff, balloons in the trees and dips and carrot sticks and kebabs on the barbecue. There is a lull in the jumping in the trampoline and so I sneak up, pull open the zip and clamber in on to the gently yielding floor and lie down, looking up into the tree and the dusky sky. A little girl follows me in. She is the daughter of a trumpeter friend of Eddy’s. She lies down beside me and we talk of this and that and gently duel with a couple of balloon swords. She says she likes her new house more than her flat… and then she asks me “Where did you come from?” I wonder how to answer this deep question when the zip is breached and a small cascade of children enter and begin to bounce ecstatically. I am tossed and yell “let me out. I am an old lady” They subside and I crawl to the zip and feel for the step. It is quite funny, even to me.
My dream that night has me on a cruise ship and is so convincing that I wake up reaching out for some sense of place. In the dream I am threading up my loom on the deck, by the light of some tiki torches. I am using glowing scarlet cotton, capillary thin . Each warp thread has to go through its little metal space on the heddle, like putting a greyhound into the slips. An omission or a doubling up will stuff up the whole bolt of cloth. An authoritative and helpful person comes along with a beautiful pair of scissors with golden handles and dull pointed steel blades that fuse tight with a snap. “There’s one double there and three slots missing. Just cut it off and start again and then it’ll be perfect.” I look at the scissors and the helpful advisor and know I won’t be cutting anything. I’ll stay the way I am and put up with the gross bits. The cloth will be good for something, I decide there and then.
