Joint winner - Senior section
Scotch Oakburn College
My earliest memory is of my parents’ wedding. Mum says I can only remember it because of photos and maybe she’s right. But some of it I know is my own: walking barefoot across the gravel driveway of the coastal venue, ballet flats rejected, little lavender cupcakes arranged in the shape of a cake, my grandfather dancing with my eldest cousin, the dark green satin of my mother’s dress, her auburn ringlets flowing behind her like she belonged in Eastwick. Dad, shoulder length brown hair, cheeks tanned a deep brown from the summer which had just passed, uncomfortable in a suit he would never wear again. The way they looked at each other like they were two people alone under that willow tree, oblivious to the crowd they had gathered to witness their ceremony. Their connection was palpable, vibrant against everything that surrounded them. They still look at each other like that. I think even then I felt that there was hardly any room for me.
But I’ve never felt unloved. I was a miracle, the single product of a divorced woman who had lost all hope for love and a man who thought he would never settle down. Two wayward singletons brought together by a broken washing machine and a few bottles of wine. I was made from the most intense kind of love, the kind that creeps up behind you when you’re least looking for it.
I’ve never had a best friend. Growing up in small-town in Tasmania, my friends’ surnames matched those of the men my dad played football with. We grew up in each other’s pockets, bound together by surf club, birthdays and our mothers’ Body Shop parties. But then I moved to the city before high school, and I ended up missing all their firsts: boyfriends, kisses, drunken mistakes. In the city, I was out of place because I hadn’t grown up with these people. Wherever I thought I had a best friend, someone else always had the upper hand.
The closest I think I’ve come to having a best friend was my Nan Ben, my mother’s mother. Apparently I met her before I was born, in a dream she had. She said once that the moment she held me in her arms, she knew we shared a soul. In the early hours of the morning I would cram into her tiny single bed and we would whisper fairy tales to each other about princesses who rode in pink sports cars, gracefully eschewed eligible men and adored their fathers. After a fight with mum, I would stand in Nan’s bedroom doorway until she invited me in with a comforting flick of her quilt. She would hold me tightly in her arms and softly stroke my wrist until I fell asleep. In the summer, we would pick raspberries from her garden and turn them into jam or eat them with cream after dinner. When I was twelve, she showed me the scar on her eyelid and told me, never love a man any more than you would love yourself. She loved it when I sang.
I stopped when she died. I quit everything. I hardly opened my mouth for months. I didn’t want to share anything with anyone again. I felt sick with abandonment. I hated her for leaving me alone, and I hated everyone who told me it would be okay.
My parents and I spent the Christmas after Nanny Ben’s death in New York. It was here that my mother spent a lot of time on my shoulder or curled up next to me in bed. I was there when she cried, when she needed warmth. My dad spent his time resenting the city, and the pain within my mother that he couldn’t fix.
In my seventeenth year, just before my first exams, another void was launched into our family, unprecedented and painful. My Dad’s brother, dead in a road accident. My grandparents’ first son. The day after his funeral my parents had to fly to the mainland for two weeks, leaving me to grieve alone. For three days, I closed all the curtains in my home and wept. A few months had passed before I stopped resenting my parents for leaving me.
In this past, pandemic year, I’ve spent more time on my own than I ever have before. During Isolation, I spent nine hours every day alone in our shack, where the river meets the sea. I walked every street in that little town, watched every sunset, observed every tide. In my solitude, I thought about all of those little moments – from my parents’ wedding to those three days at home. I analysed each of those events, desperately trying to figure out what they meant to each other and why my brain has kept them on replay. I spent countless hours trying to pigeon-hole myself, trying desperately to reach a finale of self-discovery. But what kind of tale would this be if it had a conclusion? Surely a tale in which I die.
What I mean by this is that my life is not over. All of these moments, these turning points, are but only a small portion of my existence. This is not to say they are insignificant – I doubt I will ever stop running the reel of those past memories through my mind, for the rest of my life. But I am, at least for now, the sum of all of these experiences. I know the value of home, but I know the importance of distance. I know the warmth of deep love, but I know the still horror of heartbreak. I know the difference between self-care and self-gratitude. I know how to function on my own. I have stopped hating my aloneness.
Forty South Publishing and the Tasmanian Association for the Teaching of English (TATE) congratulate everyone who entered our short story competition in this challenging coronavirus-affected year. We would also like to recognise the extra work put in by teachers and parents to support these young writers and to maintain the general education of young Tasmanian school students.
The themes this year echoed the world-wide pandemic. For the Juniors (Years 7-9) the themes were ‘Connection’ or ‘Community’ and for the Seniors (Years 10-12) they were ‘Isolation’ or ‘Island’. Students were free to interpret their chosen theme in any way they wanted.
Chris Gallagher judged both sections and was impressed with the overall standard of entries. She could not split her two top stories in the Senior Section and so the senior prize has been shared by Tabitha Glanville (Scotch Oakburn College) and Tara Sharman (Hobart College). In a first for Clarence High School, Oenone Schofield took out the Junior Section with her story, ‘Home’.
