I never thought, until this year, that what people call a mid life crisis was relevant to me. I turned 54 last birthday, but that particular number is not important, my sister is two years younger and she says the same realization has come to her, and the symptoms she describes ring true to mine.
Sometimes your legs seem to be losing their strength. If in a hurry you start to jog to get there quicker your knees jar and feel like they are about to buckle. And joints from ankles to shoulders protest at daily routine work. Just driving the same road every day seems mindless and the traffic infuriates and noise offends the nerves.
Along with the physical aches and pains, loss of vigour, and the dragging tiredness, is difficulty finding enthusiasm and energy to plough through the problems, which seem to swell from molehills to mountains. It all starts to look a bit too hard. And worst of all, you start to feel shaky. Some days I'm devoid of self confidence and it eats away at me all day, as if I've lost empowerment.
Somewhat overshadowed by our weekend police drama, but well worth recording, I've had contact with three people lately who have all in their own way helped me rise above my negative malaise, temporarily at least.
The FIRST was Fay Day, an elderly lady on the other side of Gembrook, who lives alone and suffers arthritis. I do a bit of gardening for her, and pick a little foliage there sometimes. A few months ago I did some serious pruning and left two big heaps well away from her house at the back for burning at a later date after the fire restrictions were lifted. At the end of a hot dry March, the weather suddenly turned wet and cold and I didn't get a chance to go back and burn off till last Saturday.
Fay's husband Eddy, who loved the garden and kept it in good shape, died 3 years ago and there was three years growth with blackberries taking over. I sprayed most of the blackberries last summer so there was a lot of dead canes that needed dragging out and putting on the fire.
Eddie was a complete gentleman, a Yorkshireman who spent much of his working life in the British Navy. He met Fay, a WREN at the time, on Malta and they married in England in 1949. Eddie only had a few days leave and was then suddenly posted to a new ship and spent the next 12 months away. They never had a honeymoon and for the first twenty years or so of their marriage Eddie was only home on leave for about a month a year. They were a devoted couple whom I'd known for some years and the small cottage, where they hadn't been long, was the first home they had ever owned. It has the name 'FIRENZE' on a sign over the little gate in front of the front door, Firenze being the Italian word for Florence, where Eddie spent some years at the naval base.
Eddie went from excellent health to a situation where all his organs shut down and he died within two weeks. He was working getting rid of 'brambles' as Fay calls blackberries at the bushy rear section of their block when he got scratched on the lower leg. Fay reckons it was a white tail spider that bit him and started his deterioration but I think the medicos called it cellulitis (?) or something where contact with some vegetation triggers an allergic reaction that gets right out of control. I saw him shortly after he became crook and he showed me his leg which was swollen and gone purple but we certainly had no inkling that would be our last meeting. I learned of his death some months later when Fay rang me to ask me to cut something back in the garden.
She rang me, months later again, with a similar request, and this time had the bad knews that a grandson had committed suicide. It seemed a bit rough for the poor lady to endure two tragedies so close together.
But with British courage Fay continues. I enjoy a cup of tea with her now and again after gardening there and I love her stories. She's selling the cottage shortly because her only daughter's family is moving to Tasmania and she's following her over at her daughter's insistence. That's why I've been doing some work for her, to make the garden a little more presentable.
After burning off last Saturday I knocked on her door, not knowing if she was home or at her daughter's for the weekend as she sometimes is, and she answered so glad to see me and so happy to have the rubbish burnt. She said her neighbour had commented what a good job I'd done killing the 'brambles'. She asked what did she owe me and was grateful when I said "a few bits of root from that stephenandra when I come back with my mattock one day before you go."
It made me realize I shouldn't really be moping around about losing a bit strength and being 55 next birthday. I've been lucky to know Fay and Eddy and take inspiration from them.
The SECOND person was an old work colleague. Laurie Braybrook rang while I was in the bath on Saturday night. He's 80 now and was senior apiary inspector when I was in the Dep't of Agriculture. There were only three inspectors for the state. He told me he's doing it pretty tough because his wife has Alzeimers and he has to do all the organizing which she always did. It was good to hear from him and moreso because I left The Dep't. twenty six years ago and Laurie is from my father's generation. He served on Bouganville late in WW2 with the infantry and is going to send me a few things about his battalion. I ring him or he rings me every few years and it is good for me when he rings and still has regard for me.
When I arrived at the farm yesterday with a load of foliage I noticed a bucket of wallflowers and I knew immediately that Theresa (THIRD) from Silvan had been. She could always grow wallflowers so much better than us. Theresa is a little lady in her late seventies who has a big garden on twenty or thirty acres where she grazes beef cattle. She is of German origin, growing up on a farm. She told me once she learned about 'moolies' (cattle) and farming during the war when all the men were gone and she had to help her mother. She remembers going to school to find that some of her friends did not come, they were drowned in the famous dam buster raids that flooded their valley. She married Karl, who had been a navigator in the Luftwaffe, after the war and they migrated to Australia.
They had a son who died aged 3, I think from meningitis, and a daughter who married an Australian. Tragically, their daughter was shot in the head at close range by her husband with a 303 rifle. He was later charged with murder. He was found not guilty when successfully defended by Frank Galbally in a case that is included in a book about Galbally's famous successes. We learned of this one day when we were there and Karl was enraged by this book that had just been published and included a picture of his dead daughter's face with the bullet wound to the forehead. So Theresa and Karl had lost both children and raised their granchildren, a girl and a boy, as their own. They ran a mechanical service business in Melbourne's outer north specializing in Porsche's and VW's, and retired to Silvan.
We came to know them shortly after their move to Silvan. We picked crimson clover flowers in their paddocks. Theresa offered to pick them for us to save us time so we bought them from her and also violets and wallflowers in winter and herbs such as rosemary, mint and french lavender flowers. The magical volcanic soil at Silvan with the excellent drainage and sunny aspect suited these things better than our site at Emerald. Sister Meredith and I travelled to Silvan twice a week buying fro Theresa and picking numerous other things along the way and at other places.
Karl died in 1996 after a second heart bypass operation and as our business changed more into foliage and away from restaurant flowers and herbs it was no longer viable to drive to Silvan. So we did not see Theresa much for a few years except for the odd social call. But every autumn for some years now Theresa rings up, knowing things are scarce, and asks us if we need anything because she goes swimming in Monbulk on Tuesday's, and drops off a bootload of flowers and greens.
Meredith told me yesterday that when Theresa said to her"Hello Meredith" and looked at her with that little smile, she just felt like crying and hugging her, such is her admiration for her grit, persistence and courage. Knowing Theresa, we have often said to each other, you have no need to wonder why the Germans were so difficult to overcome in WW2.
