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Don't Look Now

In one of my favourite films, "Don't Look Now", the protagonist, played by Donald Sutherland, sees his own death.

Today I decided to clean under the bed, and I saw my own life.

I started my cleaning by pulling out some plastic bags, stored there and untouched since my household furniture and personal belongings arrived in America. Plastic bags hurriedly packed over ten years ago, with photos, postcards, letters and documents from my past.

Photos inevitably record happy times. New babies, holidays, birthday parties. We don't see ourselves in our times of conflict and despair. A past marriage that ended sadly, will be shown in its photos as a time of bliss and celebration.

Do these found photos show my life as it was in its various stages? It must in part. Hundreds of photos, taken without thinking about who will see them in years ahead. Recording a life and times long gone.

We see ourselves and our children, ourselves as children. Events and places long forgotten are resurrected by an older and less innocent self.

As well as our personal life they show a world that is very different than the world of 2006.

My son in a Garuda cockpit for example. What ten year old boy and his mother, camera in hand, would be allowed in a cockpit now?

Life in the sixties. Here is a letter to my mother from 1962. Unfortunately the certificate it refers to is long gone. I'd forgotten the occasion. I now remember. O how times have changed, in this case for the better.

In those days, women - especially single women - were unable to get credit in their own name. My mother wanted a fridge. Till then we'd only been able to afford an ice chest. Shop after shop refused her credit applications, until at last, one accepted her after much argument. A diligent woman, she paid it promptly, and was sent this letter.

I remember she pinned the certificate to her chest when she went to work - just to annoy the men ... "This is how women are treated in Australia", she'd chide them when they stared.

And here is my daughter when she was a hippie feral. It looks like it was taken in Queensland. I remember getting a phone call when I was fairly new to New York. Reverse charges from Ebon.

"Muuum, muuum," in the pleading way one's children seem to retain no matter how old, when they want something.

My stone house burn down. I was out. The goat knocked over the candle". Yes, that'd be it. The photo must be from that stage of her life.

I kept my own hippie clothes for years. They were not so different from Ebon's in the early nineties. Did I influence her? I hope not. But before she took on that lifestyle herself, she used to find it a matter of much mirth, looking at my already-old photos and seventies memorabilia.

One night we all dressed up in an assortment of mum's old clothes. My son fetched an umbrella to add to the absurdity of the scene.

Times from before my children were born. Places now cut off from travellers. The last days of a mission station in the Northern Territory where I stayed. Before we married first husband had taught at Beswick - home of the Rembrranga tribe. He designed the school uniform that the children are wearing. I stayed at Beswick for a short time when I returned to Australia from London. A culture shock!

I remember that he had a girlfriend there - a Rembrranga girl. He was told in no uncertain terms by the authorities, that he'd be had up for carnal knowledge if he continued the relationship, although she was twenty six.

Another example of the dark Menzies era in Australia. Another example of things changing for the better.

And another "station" - this one in Afghanistan pre 911, pre the Taliban, pre the Russian invasion. A change not for the better.

Old school reports, school photos, photos of babies whose names I've long since forgotten. My own children's school compositions. Photos of my parents and long lost cousins.

And although most of the photos are of happy times, looking at them is tinged with the sadness of nostalgia.

I find a postcard I have never read.

It is an old postcard from Kraków from one of my cousins to my mother.

"Dear Chris,
Beautiful, sad and cold. Cold of body and cold of spirit. I hear the words from mouths of those who were there and here I stand; Mydanek, Auschwitz , Treblinka, Mila 18 and I still can't understand how man can be so inhuman and how little we have come."

My trip to the past was not all roses. The thorns managed to show through.

I should have known better, I tell myself.

The moral of my story - Do NOT look under the bed, you never know what you will find under it ....

Till next time,
Kate Juliff
New York
April 2006