The grief comes in waves, and it’s always triggered by the small stuff – the things that ought to not be upsetting – not in the wake of something as enormous as this. But there it is. Today I am missing a potato peeler, as I struggled to peel potatoes and it took me 10 minutes longer than it normally would to peel potatoes for dinner.
Amidst everything, it’s that stupid white potato peeler which was consistently good and sharp for more than ten years. It’s my knives, some of which I’d had for more than twenty years, my hands worn into their handles. My space, my life, my rhythms.
I organised two new foster kittens last week, and they arrived yesterday. My husband worries I am doing too much, have too much on my plate, that I’m not resting enough. And he’s right, of course (don’t tell him) but it’s kittens or a nervous breakdown, and at least now I have hissy babies to kiss on their little heads, and something else to keep my hands and brain busy.
++++++
I can feel the seasons changing, in the bite of the wind despite the sunshine. Autumn is here, and Winter is coming and I still don’t have mains electricity. It’s been twenty one days since insurance rang and said “we will probably have an answer for you early next week”. More days than it probably should have been since TasNetworks said “within five business days”. But hey, people are BUSY you know.
++++++
We spent last week moving my mother in law into her dementia unit – early onset dementia is a bitch of a thing, and it’s breaking my husband’s heart. The transition went relatively well, considering, and some judicial application of sedatives helped a lot, but it meant no one else saw her at worst. That was a special kind of hell, saved for Nathan and I, as she begged not to be left, demanded to be taken home, told us she wasn’t staying, no thank you she was done now. And our hearts broke, but we did it anyway, because sometimes life is a bitter pill to swallow.
Sometimes you just have to do the shit things, even when you don’t want to.
But no, “she’s settled so well!” and “she’s so calm and relaxed” is all anyone else saw (not the nurses, never the nurses and doctors and the helpers and hand holders, not them). Thank god for transitional medications.
And we’re not dead yet, no one is dead yet, so onwards we go.
Edited to add: I’ve just mashed potatoes with the worst potato masher ever and now I’m mad about my burned potato masher too.
It storms. The wind howls and we say things like, “let’s hope we don’t lose power” while smirking, because there is no losing power right now – there’s either fuel for the generator or there isn’t. And maybe that’s one nice thing about this whole mess – not being beholden to a grid we cannot control. Maybe.
It’s been 15 weeks now, and I know I said a week ago I was hoping Insurance was ready to settle, but apparently “you’ll hear from us early next week” means: You’ll get a text update, saying we need to do four different things still, and get quotes and sign offs from three different people, and oh, yeah, it’s definitely normal to string things out this long…
Early on, when we were still in the airbnb, with twitchy fingers and bored brains, we started cleaning up the fire mess. Pulling down burned studio shed ceiling, and ripping out the burned insulation. This was after the asbestos clean was done, and we had a bare patch of dirt left where the house once stood, but the damaged shed was still standing.
People asked us, “but aren’t you insured? Insurance is the one who fixes everything! Why are you cleaning it up yourselves?” as we hired a skip, and sought out an electrician, and weighed our tiny budget against our needs.
and FIFTEEN weeks later, we know that nothing would have been done if we waited; our spaces would still be full of ash and debris and water damaged mess, growing mould and getting gross. Because absolutely nothing happens fast when you’re dealing with insurance. I wouldn’t be back able to work – to make and ship soap and fulfil wholesale orders. It’s just exhausting, and frustrating, and really fucking annoying to have everything move so slowly.
And yes of course we know this is a “major loss” and we’re all “doing our due diligence” but omfg. How are people meant to return to normal life?
I keep dreaming I’m home, in my own bed. Half awake in the half light of dawn, imagining a solid murky pink wall to my right, the perfect cool temperature to press warm legs against at 2am. A solid bed, and a solid floor and a solid life wrapped around me.
And then I wake, a little further, and there are windows surrounding me, and I’m high up, and there’s no comforting hum of electricity running through the walls, or the glow of a nightlight through the hallway. No one likes a pitch black house. Or a pitch black bus, temporary living, are you going to rebuild…
Life really can change in an instant, and we say this, as a prayer, as a psalm, mostly in hope of good things coming for us (a lottery win, a new baby, a good decision) but here we are, our lives changed in slightly more than an instant, a long hot burn through the dawn light, coals, embers, fire retardant in my hair, my elderly dog trying to hide in the coals, waiting to see if we could find the bodies of foster kittens.
And then thrust into real life still – trying to talk to insurance at 7am, but there’s no phone numbers, why are there no phone numbers? An online application, but I can’t find my ABN, and the grass is wet, and my feet are wet, and my heels are bleeding and my daughter can’t breathe – but what do we DO? What do you even DO.
Watching everything burn in the half light, when the unreality hasn’t fully set in, when you might still be dreaming, hope you’re still dreaming, except you’ve got covid – you’ve all got covid and surely no one dreams of ash in their mouth, ash in their eyes, covid filling their lungs along with smoke and desperation.
(what do you even DO)
And then three months later, trying to process everything, keep the family together, keep the teenagers brains functional, move us forwards forwards forwards, because there’s no going back.
Maybe insurance is ready to settle, but we’re in that half-light/half-life of waiting for them to call me, because there’s a notification saying “your claim has progressed!” all cheerful, but this is still merely the beginning. Three months later and we’re still at the beginning
(what do you DO)
Day to day, minute to minute sometimes, and people count the costs, count the dollars, like that’s what matters. Like I can’t still taste the ash in my mouth, the frozen horror in my heart.
“but at least you get…”
no thank you. i do not want it. i just want my life back.
…
(with apologies to Jen Buxton, Linc LeFevre, and probably Deb Talens)
I’m learning to use a new oven. Again. And sure, it’s better than cooking everything on a gas BBQ and in a pizza oven (although the pizza oven absolutely has my heart for bread baking), but I hate learning a new oven. It’s gas, and the preheat light doesn’t work, so I never know if I’m at temp or not.
It’s been a long time since I cooked on gas, and I’m remembering how, slowly. I haven’t burned too many things.
The bus is nice. It would be amazing if we were travelling, and still had a house to come home to. If it were insulated. If I weren’t uncomfortable and always too hot or too cold. If I had somewhere to sit that didn’t make my bones fall out of place.
But hey, at least I have a tiny kitchen.
The oven in the Airbnb was tricky – it ran hot, and one hot plate only worked on the highest temp, and you could see where previous people had put overheated pots onto the Formica counters. Five weeks in an Airbnb and I hated cooking, hated trying to feed us all, hated losing something I normally enjoy. The pans were all second hand and terrible, saved as “good enough” but not really. No sharp knives, no knife sharpener, two tea towels in the entire house.
The view was great though. I mean, the water, the river, the swans. $350 a night view.
The whole Airbnb felt dreamlike. It also felt like an abomination that a house that size wasn’t filled with a family permanently. The insurance company paid more than 12k for us to stay there for five weeks and that feels like some sort of legal scam, but there you go.
And now we’re home again. It’s been three months since we lost everything, and gained a bus. At least there’s a bus. And a kitchen, and a new oven to learn how to use.
Tomorrow we get the cables laid for the start of electricity reconnection. We have to apply for an entirely new connection again, because everything is bullshit when your house burns down. We won’t have (non-generator) power for a bit yet, but all progress is good progress. Expensive progress.
Darren* showed up at my house, one frosty Saturday morning a few years ago. He’d answered my ad on Gumtree – Wyandotte Rooster, Giveaway, Excess to Needs. We’d messaged back and forwards a few times, set up a time and day, and there I was, locking my dogs inside and heading out to hand off a rooster.
A rooster, I might add, who had been VERY unhappy about being caught the night before, and screamed as he was unceremoniously dumped into a nice large box, lined with pine shavings, and nicely poked air holes. How DARE I lay hands on the VERY ROOSTERIEST ROOSTER WHO EVER EXISTED.
He had high opinions of himself, despite being smaller and lower down the pecking order than the rooster I was keeping. But that’s chickens – they all have very high opinions of themself.
Normally rooster handovers are a quick and simple affair – someone shows up, I hand them a squawking box, they thank me and leave. I’ve done it plenty, and I wasn’t expecting Darren to be any different.
“Hi, how are you, here’s your rooster, all boxed up.”
“Oh, he’s in a box?” Darren says, and starts trying to open the (taped shut) box.
“Um – he’s not tame? Like, he’ll come up for a bucket of food, but you can’t just pick him up.”
I’m watching nervously as Darren’s hand starts diving into the box, hunting, as the rooster frantically scurries around the corners and screeches at us a little bit.
“Mate.” I am firm now. “If you let him out, I will not be able to catch him again today, and you will have wasted a trip.”
“Ah” says Darren. “I guess I’ll just leave him in there then.”
“Yeah, please? I gave him a preventative treatment for mites and lice last night, just in case, so he’s all good to go!”
I am chirpy here – my rooster handoff is almost done. I can go and have a cup of tea and get out of this freezing air.
Darren has other ideas. “Are you the quail lady? You’ve got quail, right? Can I see?”
Sure thing. We leave the rooster in his box, and head out to the paddock to have a look at some of my young quail. It’s about now I notice the thongs which have been duct taped to Darren’s feet, as he walks through my ankle high frosted grass, bare toes showing. Don’t get me wrong, who among us has not duct taped a pair of shoes back together in order to make it to payday, get a little further, stretch a little longer? I’m not judging, but it’s definitely an interesting choice on this winter morning.
We chat quail for a bit, and chickens, and Tasmania. Darren’s face is marked in the way that poverty, and hard living, and Tasmanian Bush Life leaves its mark on the faces of people who spend their time cutting wood and making a living from their hands.
And then, his phone rings, and I’m pretty sure I’m watching a drug deal get organised for later on in the day.
“Mate, mate! Where are you!” the man on the other end of the phone is a bit frantic. “I thought you’d be home!”
“Nah man, I’m just picking up some chickens. Later, yeah? Later. I’ll be home later.”
“But MATE, I need you now? Now. Fucken hell, I thought you’d be home.”
I’m trying not to look judgey, or Very Middle Class, or upset – all things I am very much not – although I am DEEPLY AMUSED by the conversation. Like, dying inside, because COME ON.
“Man, just calm down. I’ll be there by lunch. I’m just up Oatlands**. You can wait, yeah? Fucking hell man.”
Darren hangs up and looks at me, like he’s just realised I am still standing there, holding a quail, waiting for him to be done, so I can be done.
“Just a mate, yeah? I uh, promised I’d do something for him…” Darren trails off.
“Yeah, I know how that goes. I guess… rooster? Time? Yeah?”
Yes. Yes. We head back to my BBQ area to grab the rooster and I am freezing cold and so so close to a hot cup of tea when Darren asks if I want to see the other chickens in his car.
And Internet, it feels so dodgy, but we are in my own yard, with my big barky dogs just inside the door, and two children in the bedroom RIGHT THERE ready to grab my husband if I need to scream or make a fuss, so I make what feels like a terrible decision and walk out to the driveway, to see the other chickens in Darren’s car.
No word of a lie, Darren has five very nice purebred Rhode Island Red chickens in the car. He proudly tells me he just paid $150 for the four hens and a rooster, who are just standing free. Looking stressed. In the back seat. Shitting EVERYWHERE.
“Yeah, I was gonna just let your boy out in there with them…”
“NO! Please. Leave him in the box! I can’t risk… god. I do NOT want to have to catch him again, please.”
So Darren, who it turns out thinks boxes and cages and any form of safe animal transportation device are cruel, finally agrees, and quickly opens the back door, shoves my rooster onto the back seat (still safely boxed, thank god), and slams the door shut.
But not before the smell of chicken coops and stressed bird shit wafts over me. It is An Experience.
Apparently Darren is not worried about roosters jumping on him while he’s driving. I can barely keep my mouth shut and this time I am absolutely judging, because what kind of person just lets five chooks roam free in their car, shitting everywhere and trying to jump at the windows?
Darren does.
I expect my rooster ended up living a decent life – he was used to free ranging and Darren didn’t believe in pens, or coops, or locking chickens up. He was buying and selling chooks to make a bit of extra money, and my wyandotte rooster was going to be introduced to some nice wyandotte hens. I’m not sure how Darren planned on keeping them all purebred, considering the lack of fences, and the other roosters hanging around, but hey, better than soup, right?
*not his real name **not where I actually live
(Not the rooster I was giving away. Also not wyandottes.)
