Grandmother Moon - Alone Australia Episode 4

This morning I woke full of her. She was right there in the bed like she never left, arms and legs akimbo, head burrowed into my armpit like a forest creature. It’s years since her ghost has been this solid when I wake. Usually she arrives later, randomly, flitting around the corners of my vision in a waft of wild titian curls and some delightful concoction of tulle and stripes, handbag and feather headband, sunglasses to complete the ensemble. Clomping around in someone’s shoes, probably one of the abandoned pairs in my closet, those I never wear but hang onto in case there’s a wedding.

Alone Australia episode four screened last night. It began with her. Blaise. My one perfect cub. It was her birthday, you see, when I was out there in the mud and those vast, inky, icy nights.

I can’t remember when I realised her birthday would land out there. As the drop date crept closer her birthday sang through the hectic rollercoaster of preparation, loud and true, a pure note ringing through an empty hall, calling me to her. I knew she’d turn up on her birthday, because she does, every year, wherever I am.

lutruwita. I crawl into what serves as a bed the night before her birthday, quite early. It’s a laborious process. Strewn detritus explodes everywhere, boots and gear, loops of paracord ready for my shelter build, dry tinder and firewood stacked in haphazard piles, a bed of heaped wattle sprigs barely keeping my possum coat off the wet ground, and uncomfortable as fuck to sleep on. This is familiar chaos. I’m not super organised like Mike and Kate, I don’t naturally file and sort to feel safe. I’m more of a wild creature, burrowing into the earth, nesting with my nose to my tail, smelling the earth. 

The moon sings me awake, or maybe Blaise does. Miraculously, there is no rain, the night is clear as spun glass. Stars tumble faintly where the moon can’t reach. Perhaps one of them falls into my shelter. However it happens, I’m awake in the deepest sigh of night with my heart is full of her.

Of course I shuffle out of the possum coat, pull on the dreaded boots to keep my socks dry, lay out my poncho and craft a fire. The landscape is eerie under the soft blue kiss of the moon. Dead trees surge from the lake in soft shapes against cold mist. Tonight’s fire catches easily. Did you blow on it for me, little chicken? Are you helping your mama, again?

Bodies remember anniversaries. We are animals like this. Wise old parts of us track fragile scents of flowers, lengths of days, the bitter taste of winter. My body remembers birthing her. Now, here, in the flickering gaze of this fire, all the years collapse and she’s dancing inside me, calling herself into the world to change my life with every breath she takes, and all the years afterwards, once that breath is long, long gone.

It’s strange watching myself grieve on TV. I’m proud of myself for telling the truth out there in the wild places. I made a vow of veracity, vowed that no matter what, I’d film my journey, let my masks fall, allow my vulnerability to show. I don’t hold back on her birthday, give myself the gift of this night around the embers with my little one, a beautiful vigil, fire and light and love, just her and I under that huge pale moon. 

‘Grandmother Moon,’ she calls it, snuggling into my belly like she used to when she was warm and vital. It feels so good to cry. My insides and my outsides get to meet and I’m all the way here, all the way to the centre of myself. The moon reaches in to cup my heart, murmuring some nameless song of belonging.

And now there are photos of her on the telly. My voice telling the story of her to people I have never met but are now friends, how strange. How beautiful. All these humans meeting her for the first time, funny critter she was, dressing herself every morning without any help, phenomenal sartorial ensembles, never smiling for the pic, she didn’t perform, she was just herself. Enormous dark eyes to forever, a laugh that could stop a room and stillness so deep it’s no wonder she loved the moon, she was woven from that silver light and half of her lived in the silence between notes. Until one day, all of her lived there, except for the parts I carry in my heart.

Everything I am now is because of her. This has me shaking my head in wonder at the perfection of life. I have dived to to very core of my being and am not afraid of any feeling, because I know there is nothing that cannot be borne. Journeys into inner and outer wilderness, touching the void, listening to Mama Gaia, all make sense because those elements have held me through the darkest days. I know that every single living thing is part of the same thing, we all are. This is home. Not as a new age concept, but as a visceral, lived truth.

This is her gift to me. Over and over I keep dying to myself. She is scalpel and scythe cutting away dead wood. She is cool rain, balm on a burning heart. She is the joy of singing birds serenading another dawn, how wonderful we get a body for another day, and breath to know we’re alive, and eyes to see and a voice to sing and bones with which to grip the earth and dance.

Now I’m in a comfy bed far from the dream of lutruwita. Rain drums on a tin roof, my hair is clean, my hands also. This morning I woke with her next to me, her breath rising in those soft snoring whuffles of small creatures at rest. It’s nine and a half years since she flew away. Once again I marvel at the myriad gifts of her presence, and her absence. Then I stir, the air moves and her ghost fades until it’s just me again, silver feathers in my hair, creases in my face to mark the years she’s been gone. It’s ok she’s flitted off to wherever she goes, I don’t even wonder at her adventures any more.

I’m just grateful she comes back to visit her mama every now and then.