One of the most delicious things I do is watch my mother share treasures from her grandchildren with my children.

These treasures are simply remembered moments that took her breath away or made her heart swell or simply brought a smile that marked a place in time.

And she wrote them down, in her beautiful hand, practiced with pothooks, softly up and strongly down when she was in their place in time long ago.

She pulls out the writing and reads aloud “I love a good gumtree” as said by a small boy of 4 on the walk to school hand in hand with the biographer.

‘I don’t like boys, they are ugly and hungry” declared his littlest sister when she held the kindergarten place card. 

3 years before that her older sister marked this place with an ineffable ability to know where all things were. “Where is the sunscreen?” would have it magically appear clasped in finespun 5y.o fingers. 

In these moments children who are disparate in age appear altogether in the same place and we experience them as if they were triplets.

My good and great grandmothers held this space for us though it was never diarised and the memories fade. Evoked unexpectedly by a smell, or a teacup or the taste of date and walnut loaf, the script has long since evaporated. 

The illusory time of family