babushka

'i know because you came from me,' says mum. we're in the car outside a bakery in healesville about ten years ago. finely tuned to the key of manipulation, i'm about to strike out, tell her that i'm my own person, that she can't know what happens in my head.

but then ... i've been with her since the beginning. part of me, nestled inside mum inside nan. babushka.

i was with her on her first day of school, unenrolled because nan couldn't spell her name. i was there when mystery illness put her in bed for weeks. when she won that catholic beauty pageant and spent summer with the nuns in PNG, her ankles swelling as she hit the tarmac. when the head prefect opened the passenger door on his luminous green renault.

and nan, before she set about broiling meat in the kitchen, she carried my mum through her own cold tasmanian childhood. as her kin killed blackfellas and she lost two fingers in the butcher's shop and my grandfather came courting in the picture theatre where she sold tickets every night. 

all the women, tag teaming. reaching back as far back as women go.

ok ok, you know because i came from you. well then you should also know it's time for vanilla slice.