volume one hundred and sixty-eight

that’s where i’ll go

📍Written from Naarm (Melbourne) partly in my mind on a walk, partly in my nature journal with sketches, and partly here in this document. It is all thanks to

Lindsey Trout Hughes

’ Nature Journalling for Writers course with the

London Writers' Salon

.

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It was littered on the footpath. My brain caught up with acknowledging it amongst all the others after my eyes already had. I turned, having taken two steps past it, came back and whispered “Wow!” and picked it up, gently, like I would a puppy or kitten, in fear of hurting it and awe of its perfection.

The red at its tip and stem was as bright as a ripe strawberry and washed down its body into a deep green at the centre. The green was the shade that we saw as far as our childhood eyes could see when we’d look out the back window towards the mountains after a good rainfall.

After a few days of leaving it sitting on the desk, it resembled those hills still, but when we were desperate for rain and they looked like clay. Dry, brown, thirsty, hanging on. It reminded me of the times we were running out of water and relied on an unreliable pump to take it from the creek below the house. I never saw the pump in action, but I heard it and I heard the stories of how it was touch and go if it would ever start.

Its two ends had begun to curl towards each other, attempting to meet in the middle, hugging itself. They hadn’t quite been able to meet, so instead the tip pointed towards the heavens searching for the sun the same way we do. We will always choose the sunny side of the street over the shady one.

Its surface is covered in forty-nine pimples. They look and feel like sprinkles on an Arnott’s 100s and 1000s biscuit. To be more accurate to our childhood, a Black and Gold Milk Arrowroot biscuit, with a thick smear of margarine and a healthy pour of rainbow sprinkles, then shaken off onto a plate to re-use the extras. Our DIY version that cost a lot less but produced the same amount of joy.

Did you ever go to a birthday party where they had the real thing? The biscuits were sweeter, softer, and crumblier, with a vanilla wave that engulfed the roof of my mouth as it melted there. Instead of margarine, there was pink icing that sent my sugar levels soaring and turned to magic liquid while it married with my saliva, leaving me able to run around with my friends for hours before crashing, grumpily when it was time to go home.

If I could have either right now, I would have the margarine version. Its oily-attempt-to-be-buttery taste that made the arrowroot less dry stayed thick on my tongue and crackling, the small bursts of rainbow mingled and popped in the weight of my back teeth. 

I felt the bumps of the leaf in my fingers, and couldn’t help thinking of the biscuits and summertime pool parties and chlorine-bleached hair that brought tears to my eyes as the knots were brushed out. I couldn’t help but think of the playdate with the Baker sisters and how we all knew the older one took an extra biscuit. We all got two, our older sister got one, the plate was empty and one person looked guilty.

Would the leaf keep on curling? Would it keep cuddling into itself until it was all it had? Or would it break and snap with its brittleness before then? When would it lose its last sign of red? The stem was already yellowing but the tip teased ruby if I held it up to the sunlight.

The slowness of thinking about this leaf, the calmness of putting it in writing, the pace of my breath that has returned to normal, the rate of my heart that beats in time with my words as they hit the page in quiet contemplation... I am nowhere else but here, telling you about the leaf I found.

It reminds me of warm rooms despite the inevitable draft, where the kettle stays hot, fluorescent lights welcome me in, folding chairs drag on old floorboards and strangers' faces smile like I am an old friend. The corner table displays stained mismatched coffee cups and old Tupperware containers filled with tea bags, instant coffee and an array of stale biscuits, our treat for getting through another day. Hope for the first-timer.

I am only there and nowhere else. That is until the sight of an Arnotts 100s and 1000s biscuit lets me wander to the small kitchen, with peeling beige laminate floors and a fridge that always looked like it was falling backwards. I am there with a butter knife overflowing with margarine, the tub full of craters as I scooped rather than spread, trying my best to prepare a treat for us with the accuracy that my older sister would. I am grown up too. I can also prepare them for a younger sister. Just watch me. 

There is a peace in these words, in the rooms, in the memory of spilling sprinkles across the kitchen bench and onto the floor, in the leaf in my hand… it’s a calm I have longed and searched for in meditation, in prayer, in surrender. Here it is in nature’s litter. That’s where I’ll go.

Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me about something you spotted in nature recently.

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something i struggled with this week:

❤️‍🩹 Missing you and knowing this story all too well. I know I made the right choice to take this space to take care of myself. Praying for you.

a blessing from this week:

😻 Cats that cuddle. Like really cuddle. Like wrap their arms onto your shoulders and do not let you go cuddle. Like you go to put them down and your shirt comes with them cuddle. They’re the best.

a goal for the coming week:

🧁 Bake treats for Gordy (and Nanny, Dad and me) to enjoy.

pics or it didn’t happen:

whenever i wonder if a series of events were your doing, a sign appears that they absolutely were

I love you and I appreciate you reading my letters because I really enjoy writing them to you.

🧡, LD (lauren deborah | they/she)