Tennyson pulled his lichen stained Holden into the spot that he and Ava had shared so many times before. He was alone, alone from actual human contact, although he felt today as if he had the company of time for the first time in many years. Age and slowness in the marrow of his bones often made him feel like the morning gave birth to a stillborn. Tennyson could of course amuse himself but the fire of life’s burning sun didn’t seem to burn as bright anymore without her and without his youthful marrow.
He looked up the hill that overlooked the Pacific Ocean and Terrigal Beach. A magpie was aggressively eyeing some bystanders walking behind his vehicle and poking fun at the late model Holden that was moldy and unclean with the codependent algae fungi blend. Tennyson chuckled, the beauty of age being a welcome mockery of self and others perceptions. He got out of the car and tried to kick the magpie. The bird popped away before getting punted and he laughed at the time Ava nearly lost an eye from a blisteringly upset Magpie who wanted some of her Lamington, or was it Pavlova? She loved the creamy texture of Pav in her mouth so much and he the coconut sponge of the Lam. They ate both so often that the two desserts couldn’t be separated from one another.
The slope had recently received a sand stone walkway and steps, which Tennyson happily utilized. The arthritis in his joints burned and he gritted his gums on the glued in dentures to bring the pain from his knees and hip into his head. Here, in the head, the pain was meaningless and weak on its knees to the power of his resolve to climb and make remembrance a reality. His pace was steady and the occasional group of round brimmed children laughed their way up and down the hill past his turtoiselike pace.
The Australian mothers, bronzen, clad in hiking thongs, laughing about life, and using the sun and hill to exercise their children, gave Tennyson a gentle smile and perhaps a small look of surprise at his prowess in climbing the stairs at such a climatic age. He nodded and tried to suppress his panting in the Fall 15 degree air. Tennyson was also battling a cold that made him resort to the bright red polka dotted handkerchief he kept in his back pocket. It had an aboriginal sort of look to it and he thought it looked much like Gurrumal’s dress during the 2017 World Music Awards, which he would have attended, if it weren’t for the birth of Heath, his first son, and third child.
Pain wasn’t something that he got rid of, ignored, defeated, or changed. It was endured. Tennyson rolled back the sleeves of his white shirt and wiped some sweat from his forehead, as he got closer to the lookout point. Some students were taking leaf samples from the stringy bark gums near the edge of the path. He stopped and looked back down the hill. The Christ like tops of the Norfolk pines by the Terrigal Trojan Rugby Club stretched up to the heavens. The limbs arched imperiously into the sky, stretching, driving, yearning, to be closer to the giver of chemical energy for mother earth’s mother’s milk, photosynthesis, her ultimate green machine fuel for all of life, the bottom of the food change, the foundation, and here in this tree Tennyson loved how unabashedly the life form curled itself into the sky to be a part of it all.
He reached the summit where a blue steel fence boxed in the lookout area. No one else was there. Australian blue skies as far as his eye could see. “I need a Boag’s,” Tennyson grumbled as his parched lips thirsted for the effervescent spirits of the south. He looked out onto the horizon looking for the breaching of the ocean’s surface by a school of humpback whales. It was early in the whale watching season and he kept his eyes out just in case he caught some early travelers heading north to the warmer equator waters for the releasing of their calves.
Terrigal’s beach was fairly empty, tourist season over, some young men surfing near the breakwaters by large outcroppings of bone crunching rock, some people walking their dogs on the beach, but mostly just squeaky sand and ocean. Tennyson had convinced his daughters early in life that the sand was full of little spirits that let out a squeak when you stepped on them. Ava disapproved of the indigenous like sand spirits but she allowed it because the children loved running around and seeing how the clamoring of their feet strung the cords of the sand spirits into a cacophony of petty squeaks.
Tennyson looked out over the ocean , beyond his sight toward where Killcare beach lay, and recalled his lies about the mighty Bombora that lay in the Killcare bay. He had brought the kids there often to show them where the waves broke in random directions in the middle of the bay. Tennyson led them to believe that a giant sea turtle lay just underneath the water. The turtle was so large that it couldn’t move anymore and his great great great great great great great children were tasked each day with bringing the Bombora turtle food. His shell was so massive that the waves would be forced to break around him and he shifted his weight slightly because of his amphibian arthritis, which caused the infinitely complex and seemingly chaotic pattern of wave breaks. The kids listened, sometimes not, picked up red rocks and sand stone, looked for fire burned tree trunks, and wondered if the giant sea turtle needed a doctor for his ouches.
Tennyson closed his eyes, sat down, and listened. He heard the waves, the children, the drone of a plane in the sky, the bristling of birds in the eucalyptus infants next to the sandstone pathway, and the murmuring of his heart. He continued to listen until it all quieted and he stayed still in case he could here the ping of bellbirds in the distance. Tennyson liked the bellbirds because they were so easily heard and almost never seen by the average passerby.
