was haunted by that statue for many months, and when I knew we would be leaving, I decided to go back and see if the carvers working at the university could make me something similar – out of all the PNG artefacts I had ever seen, this one had really captivated me.
When I returned to the campus, I was amazed to find that the half-finished statue was still in exactly the same place. Talking to the men working there, I was told that the student who had been carving it had died midway through the process and out of respect for him and his wife it had been left as it was.
‘It’s Jesus and his mother Mary,’ one of them said. ‘If you want us to finish it we will have to speak to his widow.’
So began several weeks of protracted negotiations as the carver’s widow, Elizabeth, decided how much she wanted us to pay and, more importantly, who should finish her late husband’s work.
The arrival of Mary and Jesus a few days before the removalists came felt like the completion of a circle. Standing on a round plinth, soaked with oil, her wooden hair slightly blackened with a pig’s tooth, Mary gazed down adoringly at a rather odd-looking Jesus with a long neck and an old man’s face.
There was something in her lowered gaze that immediately drew me in, a quiet sense of strength and endurance, the deep confidence of a mother’s devotion. From the moment it arrived, this statue was never just an object; for me it was the face of unconditional love and perseverance, an embodiment of Nina which meant her presence would always be with us.
COMING HOME
That brighter field, lit by an unseen sun
Draws my soul like breath floating
From my lips in the soft morning light.
Above me, the bending, naked trees
Yearn towards the darkening skies.
A dark bird hovers, and is gone.
Still the bright field remains
Bathed in a glowing light,
An illumined space,
Graced in its own being.
This moment will surely pass.
It cannot hold against
Life’s tightrope.
13
I surrender into the day’s embrace and let
it teach me what I need to learn.
By the time we moved into a rented house outside Bowral about nine months after his diagnosis, Julian was still in good health. Though determined, myeloma was a relatively slow-moving cancer – medical advice suggested that, with some intervention, Julian could live for many years. He immediately began to look for legal work to immerse himself in.
As we settled into our community, I watched Julian throw himself into his new life with typical relish. His energy amazed me – even with such a cloud hanging over his future and not always feeling his best, he was nevertheless enthused and excited about what each new day might bring. He took up horseriding again, joined a weekly cooking school for men, started a course in agriculture and learned how to fix fences.
My desire for another child remained strong, yet the obvious questions that hung over Julian’s future raised major issues for us both. Having more children in such circumstances was clearly an enormous gamble.
We had been discussing this somewhat fraught issue for several months, taking it in turns to play devil’s advocate. If we decided against having more children, to me that would be a tacit acceptance that he was not going to survive. To say no would be to give up on him, to begin to live with the thought, ‘What’s the point? He’s going to die anyway.’ In the end, it was this prospect that I could not accept, a choice that seemed so utterly bleak and depressing. I simply could not allow myself to think that Julian would not triumph in the end.
After months of difficult conversations, we chose hope. And then we waited.
•••
Julian began to talk to a lovely lawyer friend, Philip Boyce, in Bowral as he thought the impending Goods and Services Tax being introduced by the government of John Howard might yield future work for him.
‘I went to university with Howard,’ he said.
‘He’s so unimaginative and
When I returned to the campus, I was amazed to find that the half-finished statue was still in exactly the same place. Talking to the men working there, I was told that the student who had been carving it had died midway through the process and out of respect for him and his wife it had been left as it was.
‘It’s Jesus and his mother Mary,’ one of them said. ‘If you want us to finish it we will have to speak to his widow.’
So began several weeks of protracted negotiations as the carver’s widow, Elizabeth, decided how much she wanted us to pay and, more importantly, who should finish her late husband’s work.
The arrival of Mary and Jesus a few days before the removalists came felt like the completion of a circle. Standing on a round plinth, soaked with oil, her wooden hair slightly blackened with a pig’s tooth, Mary gazed down adoringly at a rather odd-looking Jesus with a long neck and an old man’s face.
There was something in her lowered gaze that immediately drew me in, a quiet sense of strength and endurance, the deep confidence of a mother’s devotion. From the moment it arrived, this statue was never just an object; for me it was the face of unconditional love and perseverance, an embodiment of Nina which meant her presence would always be with us.
COMING HOME
That brighter field, lit by an unseen sun
Draws my soul like breath floating
From my lips in the soft morning light.
Above me, the bending, naked trees
Yearn towards the darkening skies.
A dark bird hovers, and is gone.
Still the bright field remains
Bathed in a glowing light,
An illumined space,
Graced in its own being.
This moment will surely pass.
It cannot hold against
Life’s tightrope.
13
I surrender into the day’s embrace and let
it teach me what I need to learn.
By the time we moved into a rented house outside Bowral about nine months after his diagnosis, Julian was still in good health. Though determined, myeloma was a relatively slow-moving cancer – medical advice suggested that, with some intervention, Julian could live for many years. He immediately began to look for legal work to immerse himself in.
As we settled into our community, I watched Julian throw himself into his new life with typical relish. His energy amazed me – even with such a cloud hanging over his future and not always feeling his best, he was nevertheless enthused and excited about what each new day might bring. He took up horseriding again, joined a weekly cooking school for men, started a course in agriculture and learned how to fix fences.
My desire for another child remained strong, yet the obvious questions that hung over Julian’s future raised major issues for us both. Having more children in such circumstances was clearly an enormous gamble.
We had been discussing this somewhat fraught issue for several months, taking it in turns to play devil’s advocate. If we decided against having more children, to me that would be a tacit acceptance that he was not going to survive. To say no would be to give up on him, to begin to live with the thought, ‘What’s the point? He’s going to die anyway.’ In the end, it was this prospect that I could not accept, a choice that seemed so utterly bleak and depressing. I simply could not allow myself to think that Julian would not triumph in the end.
After months of difficult conversations, we chose hope. And then we waited.
•••
Julian began to talk to a lovely lawyer friend, Philip Boyce, in Bowral as he thought the impending Goods and Services Tax being introduced by the government of John Howard might yield future work for him.
‘I went to university with Howard,’ he said.
‘He’s so unimaginative and
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