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A Season for Everything
When I was small, we lived in New Zealand and the smell of cool,
damp forest always brings me back to my earliest memories. I was four when
we returned to Adelaide. I was shocked to find I did not actually belong
to nice, green New Zealand and my parents told me my real home was this
dry place of yellow grass.
My son’s first memories will come when he smells rain on hot, dry
earth. We moved to Alice Springs just before his second birthday as the
spring rains were beginning. We would stand under the eaves during the
downpour and enjoy the privilege of not having to get out of the rain. I
learnt that the rain came most often if there was a tropical smell in the
early morning. It was a surer guide than trusting the weather people, who
didn’t seem to have a clue. I also learnt that to be considered local in
this town, you had to have seen the Todd River flow three times, a score
which I notched up in my first two months. The Greenhouse Effect was
arriving, the experts said, and that wet spring was hardly normal. It took
until early December before the place started to dry out again.
As well as leaving my forebears in Adelaide, I had left a lover
behind in La Paz, Bolivia. He was the father of my son. We were trying to
get our act together as a couple but as week after scorching week went by,
I heard nothing from him. Through January and February, the top
temperatures stuck at around 40C. I remember noticing that it was slightly
cooler one afternoon as I hung out the washing and saw on the news that it
had only reached 37C that day.
The heat continued until the end of March without relent, high
thirties every day. I would find it strange to see fashion pages with
winter clothing in the Woman’s Day. Apparently, it was autumn
elsewhere, although there was no evidence of it here. The locals commented
that by now, Alice Springs was supposed to have experienced a few cooler
days of around 30C. Yeah, right, I thought.
Then one day it happened. I stepped outside in the morning to a
breeze so cool it almost chilled and walked in the garden, letting it wrap
around me. I found something warmer to put on and paced up and down some
more. I had not heard from my man for six months when, just like the
first, cool wind, an unexpected envelope appeared in the letter box. |