The storytellers
Michele M. Gierck
The rain, like the temperature, has descended dramatically. That must be a sign for ants: like the saints, they’ve come marching in.
I have an arrangement with the ants. If they stay within the perimeters of my apartment window ledge, I shall acknowledge their presence, respect them as sentient beings and leave them alone. If on the other hand they cross the sink, meddle around my bench tops or venture into cupboards, they’re ‘goners’. The sink is the point from which my crusading blood takes over.
As I squash a few ants, I reflect upon the latest death in the family. The funeral was only a few days ago. Uncle Chas, uncle of the three children next door I grew up with, died suddenly last week. The neighbours and my own family were as entwined as the two families in Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet. It was often hard to tell where one family ended and the other one began—especially at meal times.
What amazes me, however, about funerals, is that once the ceremony is over and people gather, the old stories pour out. Often they are innocent childhood stories, day-to-day happenings, and yet somehow, they take on a life of their own.
At one such gathering we were laughing about my mother’s antics. A woman born between two world wars and the great Depression, stern discipline seemed as natural to her as fun and pranks to children.
One summer holiday, Simon the boy next door and I were playing with our prized possessions—Lego blocks. As mealtime approached, Simon dutifully packed up and headed home, shoe box full of Lego in hand. Next morning, reports came filtering though that some of his blocks were missing. While I wouldn’t say I was the accused, the inquisitional tone in my mother’s voice left no doubt that ‘culprit’ was not a word, needless to say a person, she would stand for in our home. I can’t remember stealing anything, but this particular day, tired of bowing to disciplinary forces, I jacked up. At eight years of age, with the temerity of innocence and much to my own surprise, I spat out the words, ‘I didn’t steal his bloody blocks’.
Within seconds I was standing over the laundry sink, braced in a headlock, having a cake of Velvet soap rubbed and scrubbed into my teeth—chunks almost choking me. Is it any wonder that 30 years later I ended up working with the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture! ‘Just remember’, my mother intoned, ‘this was for swearing, not for stealing.’
These days the trio from next-door, my brother and I are hitting mid life and getting together can be an escape from age. Besides, we all agree, my mother, or Aunty Jean, as the trio affectionately called her, was a force to be reckoned with.
One night, Aunty Lee (the trio’s mother) sat her brood down, pointed the finger and warned, ‘Now be good for the baby-sitter while we’re out or she’ll go next door and get Aunty Jean’. Thirty years later they can laugh, but they have never forgotten the fear.
As we gather together and tell stories, the next generation listens eagerly. They seem to thrive on the tales as much as we did. I remember my father and my uncle sitting around telling us stories. I had a favourite. Uncle Alan, Dad’s older brother was a great storyteller. He enthralled us. In his earthy working class Australian voice he would begin:
"We used ta go up the street ta get the bread of a Saturday afternoon.
They used ta put ‘em in a sugar bag an’ tie the one end of it
up and put it across ya shoulder. I’d go up on Dad’s pushbike.
I liked ta go up there ‘cause all the older chaps sat in the corner
and told yarns. An’ anyway, later this particular day I
thought I’d betta go home.
"Then this Kevin Dalton decided ta go home too. Just as he started to walk down the street, he lit a cigarette. When I saw it I said, "I’ll ‘ave wona those too". So he gave me a cigarette and I’d just lit it as we walked past a house. We didn’t know Dad was inside. I’d taken a couple of puffs and out he strides saying, "Whadaya got there?" So I stuck it in me pocket and I said, "Nothin." An’ while I was tellin ‘im the smoke must have been comin outa me pocket, and he asked me again, "Whadaya got there?" He was pushin it up against me side, and I said, "Nothin." An’ it burnt a hole in me pocket. "There’s nothin there," I said. When I got home he give me a beltin, not for smokin but for tellin a lie."
My father died some years ago and Uncle Alan lives interstate, so I don’t
get to hear those stories any more, although they are etched in my memory,
into my sense of who I am. I’ve also realised, as the older generation
begins to fade, the generation I grew up with are taking over the role
as family storytellers. We tell tales of the old days, the morals and
the lessons we learnt the hard way, and of how difficult it is for kids
to bring up their parents!
At funerals we find ourselves laughing through the tears. It seems in
a culture which is almost devoid of rites of passage, funerals might be
one rite as pertinent to the living as to the deceased. I wouldn’t
miss one for quids.
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