Tuesday, December 12, 2017

A Hundred Small Lessons






A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay
     When we look back, or even when we look ahead we come to realize the small lessons we’ve learned are what shape(d) us. As with any lesson, there’s the expectation of having learned something from it.
     For Lucy  Kiss and her husband, Ben, the learning is in figuring out how to be completely new and different people with the birth of their son, Tom, and a move to a new city where they are dependent solely on each other.  Before Tom, Lucy and Ben were travelers, explorers, adventurers, but now they are homeowners and parents and Lucy is homebound.
     Lucy and Ben moved from Sydney to Brisbane when Tom was just a year old.  This move took Lucy away from her whole family support system.  The realization terrifies her.  They bought a house that had belonged to Elsie and Clem Gormley for sixty years.  But now Clem is dead and Elsie is very old and has fallen and her children found a place for her in a rest home.  This transition isn’t going down well for her. Lucy is convinced Elsie “is still there” in the house and talks to her presence, she finds small things left behind, a few photographs, a tea cup, and even the birds seem confused by the new inhabitants. 
     Between Elsie remembering her life in her home and Lucy adjusting to living in Elsie’s home, we come to believe the house has its own memory.  And why not?  Wouldn’t the house feel like an old shoe, molded to someone else’s foot and now must accommodate a different size being put into it?       As the past and the present are manifested in Lucy’s and Elsie’s lives, centered around the house, we can’t help think of our own hundred small lessons.

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