I’m sure it’s not just me. Even though I’m so far into adulthood that I’m in danger of bursting out the other side, it’s fair to say that I’m yet to move out of my parents’ house. Not completely. Instead, my old bedroom in Tyabb remains a repository of items that I have deemed both too important to throw away and yet not nearly important enough to take with me. They sit on shelves and are stuffed in cupboards, silently waiting for the day when I finally decide their collective fate. As a result, these items have languished for decades.
I’m sure it’s not just me. Even though I’m so far into adulthood that I’m in danger of bursting out the other side, it’s fair to say that I’m yet to move out of my parents’ house. Not completely. Instead, my old bedroom in Tyabb remains a repository of items that I have deemed both too important to throw away and yet not nearly important enough to take with me. They sit on shelves and are stuffed in cupboards, silently waiting for the day when I finally decide their collective fate. As a result, these items have languished for decades.
Physically, I left that house in my teens. Since then, I’ve lived at various addresses in a variety of circumstances; and each one of them was home for a time. But there’s nothing quite like the house you grew up in. Whether it’s a lack of organization on my part or an attempt to keep one foot in a distinctly distant camp, I can’t say. All I know is that, after more than twenty years, the excuses are starting to wear a little thin.
There are books, lots of them. These include activity workbooks from French class that may well contain homework I ought to have submitted in about 1986. If I were to attempt to hand these in now, chances are I’d be escorted from the premises rather than congratulated. Tempting as it may be to make one final appeal to have my mark reviewed in the hope of being bumped up from a ‘B’ to an ‘A’, it’s time to let that dream go. Besides, were I to attempt to submit my homework now, the teacher might ask me a question in French, thereby revealing that I have failed to retain anything more than a few stray Serge Gainsbourg lyrics and the chorus of Plastic Bertrand’s ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’.
There are prizes too. These I largely accumulated in the early part of my high school career before they dramatically petered out. Mostly they’re in the form of novels but there are a couple of trophies too, denoting improbable sporting prowess. Without exception these are suitably miniscule. The sports trophies are located not in my old bedroom but my father’s study, together with the assembled product of his own athletic career which, to date, consists of a medallion (I’m not sure for what. Probably car-pooling) and a plaster figurine of a bloke with his leg raised in a pose I’d describe as ‘post torpedo punt’. By congregating the awards won by the entire family, my father hoped it would look impressive. It doesn’t. Even less so since one of my nephews started to over-achieve and collect trophies that tower like skyscrapers over our meager statuettes.
As for the books, they were items I’d chosen at Robinson’s Book Store. In a sense, they were the worst kind of gift. I was charged with the awesome responsibility of selecting the present that the school would then give back to me. Accordingly, I felt an overwhelming responsibility to choose something that was suitably intellectual rather than anything that might trigger a recount. There was a volume of Dickens so large that it required a forklift. Despite the fact that it was beautiful, it was impractical. In fact, so many of Charles’s works were contained in a single book it meant the print was so necessarily small that even an ant would have struggled to read it.
Then there are the souvenirs. These are last remains of various family outings purchased with significant budgetary limits and a looming time constraint. It was common for us to be informed that we had five dollars and just as many minutes in which to select an item from the gift shop by which to remember the moment for the rest of our lives. The results were predictably uneven. In Tasmania I bought a sculpture of an old lady’s face carved into an old apple. The years saw it plunge further into a state of decrepitude until it collapsed. There was also the snow-globe that I bought at Mount Buffalo (money, incidentally, I should have spent on a hot chocolate). The intervening years have seen the water evaporate and the snow vanish. I blame climate change.
Often I received a book for Christmas. Each of these has a message from my father in handwriting that is not so much messy as it is encrypted. I’m not sure what these messages mean, but I’m not yet prepared to give them up. Some books are about subjects I have long since abandoned including cricket, rock collecting and gunfighters of the Wild West. Beside these tomes is a rabbit’s foot. It too was a gift, intended to bring good luck, although presumably not for the rabbit.
Soon, the hour will come. The umbilical connection that has so long ensured that part of me remains in Tyabb will be severed. Some things I will keep. Others will be sent to the great hard-rubbish night in the sky, never to be seen again. So long drought-affected snow globe. Farewell rabbit’s foot. I’ll be sure to leave something behind, though. Perhaps a book tucked discretely on a shelf or my ‘most improved’ football trophy. A sense of place is a powerful thing. There will, I think, always be part of me in Tyabb.