ON THE WEEKEND OF MY daughter’s birthday last year, we came here to the farm. There had been so many birthdays when I’d felt nothing, but suddenly I was feeling everything.
With me, I brought half a brick, part of a ritual I was going through to unburden myself of a symbolic load I’d been carrying. All that grief was weighing me down, Stace said. I should find something heavy, put it in a bag and carry it around, let it go when I felt ready. It made sense at the time.
The week before, I’d filled a knapsack with two-and-a-half bricks from our backyard. I’d walked with the bricks up the hill to Birdwood Terrace. They seemed to get heavier with each step. I found myself in Toowong cemetery, where I left the bricks under a tree. But I hadn’t felt relieved. I’d felt bereft.
Not to anthropomorphise beyond what’s reasonable for bricks, I’d gone back the next day and retrieved the half-brick and that’s the one I took to the bay. The other two are in the cemetery still, as far as I know.
I walked along the beach with the half-brick in a calico bag, around my neck at first, and then against my chest, in my arms. I cried as I walked. It feels like a long time since I cared when people see me cry. I used to be quite self-conscious about it.
I walked from Main Beach to The Pass, meaning to swim with the half-brick and let it go some time in my swim, although I wasn’t sure when. In the event, I swam out but the sea was rougher than it had first looked. I found myself being pushed towards the rocks on the seaward side of The Pass.
I heard my mother’s voice calling out to the child me. ‘Stick to the shallows or you’ll be dashed against the rocks!’ I felt I had to let go of the half-brick or myself, so I let go of the half-brick.
Yesterday afternoon as the light faded on the hill across from our cabin, I watched the cows that gathered on the grass. Otis bent down to the grass and chewed the way they chewed to show me what they were doing. Both of us could hear the munch of grass in their teeth. They seemed so contented.
Later, I heard them crying, those cows. They cried all night, deep throaty bellows nothing like the satisfied lowing I’d believed should come from creatures that had consumed so much grass. Their cries were more than sad; they were desperate. I thought perhaps it was the full moon.
When I asked the farm manager this morning, he told me the cows were crying for the calves that had been taken away from them. They were on their way to market to be veals.
I told Otis a bold-faced lie about why the cows cried. I said their calves would come back soon. Tonight I put my headphones on and listened to music. I couldn’t bear to hear the noise.
You have had another birthday since we were last here. I wrote you a letter in which I said, If we don’t meet again in our lifetimes, I have said what I needed to say.
In the first draft I wrote, If we don’t meet in our lifetimes, but I added ‘again’ because of course we did meet. You were in my body. My body gave birth to you.
I often think of that sentence: If we don’t meet again, I have said what I needed to say. It has a way of calming me.