Transitions

I.

The visiting consultant, Nancy, is flying back to China again this week. She greeted me with hugs in her last week, since I’d spent the weekend helping with her research statistics. She was constantly feeding me too. We’d just gone to dinner with one of her previous residents, and a cardiology resident and I am driving her back. 

“You must be excited to see your son again,” I’d said, when I’d parked outside her house. Her street was dark, lined with trees and to turn around I’d three-pointed in the driveway of one of the larger, gated houses. Not that it was one of those kinds of streets. It was just a beautiful house, all silent and glowing from the windows.

Her little boy is all she talks about. He’s adorable. Handsome, too. I’d seen photos on his first day of school, when she’d been jittery on ward round and we’d asked why.

“Yes,” she said, hesitantly. Then she made to say something else, stuttered, and changed her mind. “I’m just…anyway. Yes. I just tried not to think about it.”

“Why not,” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.” She gave a sigh and waved her arms impatiently, brushing off the subject.

I shrugged. My little brother was 4 when I left him. It’s amazing he didn’t get stranger danger all these years, because I only go back to see him once a year. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it might be. “Is it because you’re scared he’ll be different around you because he hasn’t seen you in ages?”

She suddenly jerked up. “Yes! That’s exactly it. —” Then she began to pour everything out — everything, not just this thing. Her fears about her son, about parenting him. How much she loved him. I unbuttoned my seatbelt and turned to listen. It was hard to tell if she was crying — the tree covered the passenger side in shadow but she sounded like her nose was blocked at some points. I tried to locate a tissue box but remembered it was in the back of my car. 

Her little boy intrigued me. It sounded like the kid’s a genius - one of those old souls who seems a little too good for the world. At the same time, his own reactions at age 3 and 4 and even at 7 remind me of things my mother used to say that I did. My attention to detail. Even my earliest memories are of small details: dipping my hand down in a crack in a trampoline, and the texture of tyre grease. The words on a sign (a book shop) that my mother and I were walking past. Dragonflies (at eye level). Oily fingers from those deep fried crouton sticks.

My mother had worried that the world would eat me up. She’d always say to me, “Toughen up, you’re too sensitive,” or “Snatch your toys back” when I’d cry in her lap at night about how someone took my things that way.

It seemed funny suddenly, watching Nancy wring her hands in love and frustration and fear. My mother, way back then — is this what she might have done to one of her friends?

If I could talk to my mother then, what would I say to her? I wish the old her could see me now to save years of worry. Of course, she’d worry regardless. It’s what you do if you have something to lose. As a mother, I’d be a wreck. To love something that much again - to have something from which the loss of I might never recover from…

I put my hand on Nancy’s arm. I wanted to say something reassuring about the future, but there’s nothing reassuring about the unknown as a doctor. So I told her the best thing my parents ever gave me was a happy childhood. Something to cling onto in the darkest, coldest days. That the internal life, when it was caging, would calm by the thought of that. That mythical thing called love, when things are forgotten or there appears no reason to believe it’s possible. It’s possible. We carry on.

Before she got out of the car, she hugged me - a long, relieved hug. 12 years difference - we were both born in the year of the dragon and we were very similar. She often told me that I was a lot like her, at least in terms of early career events.

She is flying back today. I hadn’t seen her since that night. Despite repeated assurances to visit if possible, I have a feeling that we’ll never see each other again. It’s strange, the people who walk in and out of our lives, and what they leave there. It makes me wonder if I’ve left deep imprints in others’ lives I’ve never been in.



II.

It’s later in the week. The night’s gotten colder, though this time no longer blamed on sea air. Outside the tea lights are blurred behind the glass.

I’m curled up in a chair, happy. Overwhelmingly so, really, at how well the day’s gone. Number one: Brighton had been lovely. A calm, peaceful few hours and I was surprisingly cheered up about it. Number two: someone else had driven, so I could have drinks (something I’ve not done for ages, having driven everywhere possible in recent memory).

I’d been to Brighton earlier that day, just as the sun set. C, a friend of S’s from school whom I’d met once at her house in New Zealand, had invited me to a beach property for a BBQ co hosted by S’s ex (Also an S), whom S had left me for. Athena’s a mutual friend of ours, and in the recent months Athena had been here I’d seen this girl a handful of times. I hadn’t seen C for a long time, and had always been meaning to catch up. She is doing 4th year now, in the same course as me. It’s the hardest year in the curriculum, and I wanted to ask her if she had any questions. More people fail 4th year than every other year, and averages get dragged down constantly.

I’d clearly moved on in life, but a stubborn part of me just wanted to segregate the past from the future.

Athena’s boyfriend, would later say when I explained that Athena had been watching the rugby with me the same night that she was meant to be at S’s place, with great confusion, “Have the two worlds collided?” He knew both S and S together through Athena, because they’d worked together for a long time, and were close. For a long time there was some kind of unwritten rule that made Athena feel the need to warn me whenever S would be at the same event as me, even though I never let it stop me going to things for friends. I actually had nothing to do with the rule itself, it was just something Athena seemed to invent for herself.

“I should go,” I’d said for the nth time that morning, while icing ninja-bread men (not a typo) at Renny’s place.

“Just go,” she’d said.

“It starts off with a BBQ,” I’d said. “It might be an off gathering next. But then you just passively absorb details about someone’s life over time and suddenly you’re just..in their lives. Or they’re in yours. Whatever.” I thought about all the details of S’s life that I’d known from mutual friends and S over the years. How she wanted to move to Melbourne two years before she did it. How her dream had been to study English at the university of Melbourne here. Some of her relationships after S (back when she was rooming with Gaayathri, a good friend of mine). All details that just happened to crop up in passing, not all of it intentionally told to me. It was ridiculous.

But all my whining was just whining about something I had already made up my mind about.

I’m at a cafe in Glen Waverley, and it’s freezing outside. The day had turned on itself, bitter winds coming inland - at first I thought it had been Brighton but even here it’s frosty. Jason, the kid from the respiratory lab, is with me. I shouldn’t say kid - he’s only two years younger than me - but it feels like it. Two years difference is an eon. Does time accelerate/decelerate at will? It makes me feel old.

He reminds me of a strange combination of people I’ve known in the past, including myself. Or perhaps his current situations just reminds me of something that happened to me once, that I wish had had a better outcome. We’re incredibly different in personality after all - in fact probably the exact opposite. Our moral compasses are way off.

It did make me acknowledge that I’m drawn to people with familiar sounding stories though. Recently at work I’ve been finding myself struggling with people who have been in similar situations as me. I feel myself wanting to wrench them by the collar, shake them, and tell them how stupid they are. Nicely. “He won’t ever love you.” or, “Have some self respect!”.

Probably an inappropriate way to feel about other people’s lives sometimes, but there you go.

I seem to be having similar conversations to this one with many people over my life. In fact, I feel extremely good at these kinds of conversations and cheering people up after break ups.

Then I realised: I’m a good at helping people through transitions because that’s pretty much how others have treated me in relationships. Someone transitioning them through parts of their life before they find someone they really want. Inadvertantly, obviously, because nobody does that kind of thing on purpose, but it’s what ended up happening nonetheless. 

Argh.

Epiphanies are few and far between these days. Why are they never good ones, like they used to be?