Early winter walks

The thing about living in a city that people like to visit is that inevitably, everyone who was ever anyone in your life drops by at some point. Neither the chilly wind of the Tasman gliding over the port in winter nor the melting heat in summer seems to stop them. There’s always a reason to be in Melbourne, if you want there to be.

Example: R.G., the primary school classmate from back in New Zealand I hadn’t seen for almost a decade. Imagine a conversation out of the blue with someone you weren’t that close with, but thought a lot of when you were ten years old.

There she was, brown coat, chocolate boots, turquoise scarf. Longer face, but the same mousy hair, sparce freckles, English looking nose. When I was little I thought she had the best hand writing in the world, the prettiest hair, and that she was good at everything. I’d memorise her signature, which was in cursive, and write it half unthinkingly over scraps of paper. She came to my birthday once. We went to the observatory because I had been going  through an astronomy phase. We weren’t particularly close.

“I told my room-mate that I was worried I wouldn’t recognise you,” she said. “It’s been, what, ten years?”

“Well you look exactly the same.”

She didn’t say the same about me.

Stray memories kept popping up out of the blue, like when she talked about her younger sister. “When we were little, she used to want to be a investigatory journalist,” R. said. “And now she is the top of her business school at UNSW. And I’m the one going to the US and India and spending my time surfing at the beach.”

“Is your sister’s name Felicity?” I asked.

“Yes! How do you remember that?”

How did I remember that? I have no idea either - it seemed so long ago that I was ten. Like harbouring the memories of another person, almost — is this what it’s like to have an alternate life, or a past life remembered? All these facts that come out of nowhere, like when I pick up a violin and can play parts of pieces I used to know.

Before we left to go to drinks with some of her embryology friends up the river, she asked me to take her to the beach the next morning. Sadly I couldn’t. Unsaid was how much I wanted to go too. Maybe I will this weekend, if the weather is alright. If I finish my cover letters.

“I hope it’s not ten years before we see each other again,” she said as she stepped off the tram.

How different we are now compared to who we were as kids. In your 20s, the distinction becomes a lot clearer than when you’re in your late teens.

It’s winter now, but it feels more like spring - bright sunlight, warmth in the air. The last few weeks before, there had been frost on my window every day of the morning but now it’s only fresh morning air on the glass. Sometimes I miss Aspendale, and tutoring there. Between trains, I’d wander down afterwards to the empty shore and trace the peninsula beneath my eyelashes.

Since leaving Surgery exactly one week ago, I’ve been thrust in the world of blood diseases. More specifically: bleeding and clotting disorders with the rove-around registrar. The ward teams seem less friendly, more intense and Dr V. and I have met before anyway, during my research. Until Paediatrics, Haematology had been my great love. Perhaps it still is — I’m not sure yet.

Being without a ward feels like being without a home. There are never any odd jobs to do - just climbing stairs up and down endlessly. There are 7 floors at this hospital. The other medical student on the unit (the one with the ward teams) told me how when she did Anaesthetics here they had to attend all the emergency ward calls and, due to the slowness of the lifts, dashed up flights of stairs to get to the patient every time.

I’ve been driving to South Yarra all week and it’s so expensive. Perhaps I should start walking, doing the cut through Faulkner Park that one should only do in good, sturdy gum boots. I used to walk across the wet lawns all the time last year on the way to meetings and turn up with leaves all over white flats, not caring at all. Now that it’s winter again, I miss them.

Prof R. works at this hospital. I past the old office all the time. Once, I came out of the stairwell just as he had walked past it but arrested, feeling like I’d dodged a bullet. I heard from his research assistant (a lovely woman from Ireland) that he’s only working 4 days a week now - what sounds like a slow weaning off from duties. When I was waiting for her in the corridor I saw a portrait that must have been taken over twenty years ago. There he was, still one of the team. Still with the network.

It feels like coming out of a bad relationship - when all the old antagonism isn’t so acute anymore and you can smile at some of the other person’s peculiarities. Retrospective appreciation. One day next week I will have to work up the nerve to go see him; I will need try and fight against being manipulated to do extraordinarily unfruitful amounts of work with no help and for no gain.

But that’s next week. For now, I have this glass of wine, this sourdough, this tomato soup and the rest of a beautiful day in June.

Salutations! :)

P.S. Been, I went to the post office last weekend and they couldn’t find a box correctly sized to fit this package thing in… so sorry about the delay! I have been looking all week and none of the post offices have it. I might give up and send it to you in a too-big box :(. It’ll be super weird, but.