6 minute read
Tomorrow will be my paternal grandmother Irene’s 99th birthday. We lost her nearly nine years ago but her presence within our family still looms large. All these years later I am left wondering, when we lose a treasured loved one, what are we left with? Most certainly our memories of them and perhaps a few trinkets they owned? What things remind us of them? It could be a song, a place, an item or a smell. For me it is a smell. The smell of geraniums.
Irene or Rene, as she was most commonly known to her family and friends, celebrated her 51st birthday three days before I arrived into this world. Sharing a birthday week meant I felt very close to her growing up and as the eldest grandchild, I was extremely fortunate to be the one who had her in my life the longest. She was my grandmother on earth for 38 years and she continues to inspire me long after her passing. Most of my memories of her revolve around the place I saw her most often; her kitchen. From a young age, I would sit at the table in her kitchen, being fed and cared for. In 1982, I got a camera of my own and started taking photographs of everything around me. Nan was always very shy, didn’t like being the centre of attention and hated having her photo taken. However that summer I managed to convince her to smile for me for this now treasured photograph. It’s my favourite picture of her. She appears calm, as she always was, but she also seems happy and content. When I think back over her life now, and plot out each event and moment, I can see that there was a period of just a few years where she was not the primary carer for a loved one. This photo was taken during those years.
By 1982, all of Nan’s children were grown and had settled down in jobs or with families and were supporting themselves. Pop hadn’t yet had his series of strokes that meant Nan would have to care for him. It had only been a couple of years since her own mother had passed, a mother she at times throughout her life had to care for when she was ill. Her grandchildren were little and full of life and while she cared for us before or after school and enjoyed our company on weekends, Nan wasn’t fully responsible for us. She had just a short window of time that was hers and hers alone. I had no idea at the time, being only a young kid, that I was capturing my grandmother at a critical junction in her life. That’s not to say she wasn’t happy at other times in her life, but she did have many responsibilities and spent a lifetime caring for a large family, with never a complaint. It heartens me to know that perhaps she felt the heavy weight of responsibility lift off her shoulders for just a while.
This picture also captures so much of what Nan was about. With a husband, seven children and nine grandchildren to feed, she spent many hours a day in the kitchen. It’s where her family gathered and where she cared for them, nourishing them with hearty home cooked meals. In the photograph she is taking a well-earned break, sitting in a chair at the end of the long work bench. The bench contained the sink and had a large window to look out to the side of the house. The kitchen was big enough to fit a table in the centre which seated about six people, eight at a stretch. Many a meal or a cup of tea or coffee was had at this kitchen table, in Nan’s work room, in the housing commission house she called home for almost fifty years. As I became an adult and went to live in Sydney, I eagerly awaited each visit to Dubbo and I would rock up at Nan’s house and be enveloped in the biggest hug you could imagine. No small feat for a woman who was only short like me but wafer-thin. She may have looked fragile but the energy and strength she showed was incredible. She lived in her own home until she was 87 when her reduced lung capacity meant she was unable to continue without help. She was in her mid-80s when she came down to Sydney to have an eye operation and I took charge of making sure she got into the city and back safely. She spent a few days recovering at my home and I was amazed to see her sitting on the floor, cross-legged, folding her clothes. She was still that flexible and agile, due to a lifetime of physical labour keeping her fit. We spent many hours that week sitting on the couch chatting about lots of stuff; well mainly me interrogating her about her childhood and her time on Frogmore Park raising her children. She stopped me at one point, after having talked for quite a while, and blushed and said she had better stop talking because, ‘Look at me, talking my head off and you don’t want to hear all this!’ I said, ‘Oh yes I do and keep going please!’ She was incredibly humble and always acutely embarrassed whenever a fuss was made about her.
I am fortunate to have been left with many stories from her life that she shared with me. I have places and smells and items that remind me of her. One is face cream; I remember following Nan into her bedroom only very occasionally when younger but one time I sat fascinated as she applied her Oil of Ulan cream to her face. Smells also bring me back to memories of her. Geraniums were potted all over Nan’s garden and every time I come across one today, anywhere I go, I always have to rub the leaves to get that unique geranium smell, which instantly transports me back to Nan’s garden. Of course, we didn’t just rub the leaves back when we were kids, we also used to break the stems and pull off the flowers, much to the annoyance of my eldest uncle, who used to rouse on us kids, in place of Nan having to do it. I can’t remember her ever raising her voice to us kids; well at least not to me! I now have a potted geranium on my kitchen windowsill and it regularly blooms a beautiful light purple flower, Nan’s favourite colour. I can never go past hydrangeas either. Nan had them planted along the outside of the house and I vividly remember the blues and purples of the flowers. To Nan, her garden was her sanctuary and her place to have time to herself and think. It was a different kind of work to her work in the kitchen. In her garden she was surrounded by beautiful plants and she could nurture them, something she did best of all. I didn’t inherit her love of actually working in the garden, but I very much appreciate the beauty of a garden and I love capturing plants and flowers with my camera. It is indeed a wondrous thing to be able to walk through any park or garden and have that sense of her flood back to me. Happy birthday Nan xxx