You, Clara Eliza, five-foot legendary grandmother, battling wood fires in a freezing daw

Edmond, Lauris

English

Research Online

Kunapipi Volume 13 Issue 3 Article 14 1991 SQUARE-DANCE THEME 1 & 2 Lauris Edmond Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi  Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Edmond, Lauris, SQUARE-DANCE THEME 1 & 2, Kunapipi, 13(3), 1991. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol13/iss3/14 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au SQUARE-DANCE THEME 1 & 2 Abstract You, Clara Eliza, five-foot legendary grandmother, battling wood fires in a freezing dawn This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol13/iss3/14 Square-Dance Theme Lauris Edmond SQUARE-DANCE THEME 1 You, Clara Eliza, five-foot legendary grandmother, battling wood fires in a freezing dawn, riding to town with an empty purse, the old man blank with booze - I can see you, moving about in the dim grey weather where history lodges; it whirls like fog over the Poukawa farm -now it clears, and you're there in the gig reining in a bolting horse, three terrified children gripping your skirt ... I think I have always known you, from tales that had their first telling three years before I was born, when consumption at last devoured you. August little lady, you used every second of your dense half century creating a clan, taking for materials your doggedness, imagination, love. It's time, you know, that we met more exactly- if a generation's fifteen years, four lie already between us. I step forward, take your small calloused hand; the skin's weathered, quite dark, but your brown eyes are sharp and -no one had told me this - glinting with laughter. 63 64 II You, sudden tall woman looming up through the drift of the years, shaking my sleep; yes, they do matter, the stories, bolting horses, children learning to read by candlelight ... yet I'm surprised you know them. It's true then, the unnoticed accumulations of days in the end built a community, a tribe, connected still by blood, shared knowledge; and you are the grand-daughter I never saw, come to me out of the inscrutable future. What shall I tell you? Of Aunt Rose, writing from London, 1882, Why, Clara, you are blest, you are highly honoured, being a housewife' - and truly it was a high calling, the endurance, the shaping patience; let none misrepresent its homely splendour. But I see you know this already; perhaps it is my gift to you, and has seeped, safe and strong, down through the crowded years. And yours? Words, the winds that blow back the years' inertia. We give then, and receive. My blessing on you, on your children, and theirs. Lauris Edmond Square-Dance Theme SQUARE-DANCE THEME 2 I Now I tum to the clearer quotidian weather of morning and evening; no ambiguous mist here but streets, houses, a room festooned with the treasures of 13-year-old occupation -RUTH in extravagant colours, photos, plants, books, and you at the centre, dark-eyed girl, first grandchild, with the velvet bloom skin and already humorous smile. How can I tell you of long-dead Clara, how show you the silent peak of the mind on which I stand, looking back a whole century to her, forward to you, sweetly alive here, carrying like a lively germ the secrets of future time - including, I believe, outrageous machines humming away in houses of magic where you will easily come and go. But to family matters; that small long-skirted woman used all her wisdom, her staunchness, to nourish her children; you too, daughter of many daughters, latest inheritor, will likely give birth to a girl who in turn will depart for a later, stranger time. II We pick up and carry this baggage, each for a spell conceiving our labour as mothers with passion, and a fine and healing delight; we grow larger of heart as we learn to allow our pain. And each of us plucks from the present, as a new fruit, a variant, is added to earlier strains. 65 66 Kirsten Holst Petersen I cannot know yours, though I guess that the brilliant brushwork in this child's scrap-book will one day declare you the artist, the woman. Grandmamma Clara wrenched from her back country farm skill with horses and with medicines found in the bush; but you will mature among women with a larger pride in their powers; take what we offer, the learnt habits, the faith; respect them, and alter them. Hers was a raw land, yours knows itself older and darker; like us you will make new garments of old and durable threads. Take my hand now, as I took and held hers, feel the current, the tingle of courage she passes through me to you. Keep it and use it, through unimaginable beginnings. Kirsten Holst Petersen TRAVELL~G:AUSTRAL~STYLES For Anna and Mark As we drove into London she relived the excitement, thirty years ago of her first visit, the magic of names come true, Piccadilly and London Bridge, the real thing and her there with photos to prove it. 

SQUARE-DANCE THEME 1 & 2

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2062&context=kunapipi

SQUARE-DANCE THEME 1 & 2

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