I have thought of writing a story about my mother for many years.

When I was nine I was home alone, sorta like the movie. In fact a lot like the movie as it was two days before Christmas and very dark and cold. It gets that way in Canada in winter. At Christmas.

I was making sand candles for presents. Melt coloured wax on the stove in an old juice tin. Dig out holes in the wet sand in a cardboard box, poke fingers in for feet, then put in a wick.

After the wax is melted you pour it into the sand pod where it cools and hardens quickly. Then you can add another layer of a different coloured wax when the first layer has set. What you end up with is a candle, layered in colours with a fine sand coating. Very hippie. Very 1970.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas was on the telly. I got distracted and then Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special came on. No parents around to tell me what to do, or to interfere with my lovely, golden Christmas handgiftmaking that will put me at the top of everyone’s prized child list. I’ve had plenty of practice with the stove and oven. Expert grilled cheese making skills. Lived off from age 8 to 16.

I was aware of flames in the alley outside the house.

But as I neared the window I realized that the flames were a reflection in the window and were coming from the kitchen.

The wax on the stove.

Holy shit.

Ran to the phone to ring Mummy, but remembered that I didn’t know where she lived or if she even had a phone. She had been living in a place above a grocery so I could have rung the payphone, but I didn’t know if she was still there, or if the grocer would be able to get her to the phone.

The neighbours had also seen the flames and quite correctly rang the fire brigade.

I, on the other hand, was nine years old. I tried very hard to blow the flames out as if they were a massive birthday candle. Uhhhh phooooooooooo.

No luck.

It was getting very warm when the firemen came in. I was trying desperately to put the flames out. PUT THE FLAMES OUT. I was a moth to the flame. Blowing.

One of the firemen carried me outside and put me down on the sidewalk.

By then the kids in the neighbourhood had all gathered to see whose house was on fire. Renata, the Czechoslovakian girl from my class, asked me why I was shaking. I never trusted her as she also told her mother in Czech, the reason I was so fat was because I lived off grilled cheese sandwiches. Who doesn’t eat grilled cheese?  I was annoyed she spoke to her mother in a code, aka Czech and I felt even fatter and less a part of a normal family where mothers prepare kid’s meals.

I told her my house was on fire. That was my house. On fire.

The firemen started to smash the leaded glass windows. I though for sure my father would be angry with me because the landlord wouldn’t appreciate that the windows were broken.

I watched. I was scared of the blame. That the windows would not be replaceable. I knew it was a special house with amazing windows. My bedroom had an enourmous walk-in closet with a little window with a domed top that could be opened outward. I had my bed in the closet for a spell and my father had a darkroom in another walk-in closet off the bathroom that he blocked the light out of to do his film development.

They were very special windows.

The house was special.

Annie soon showed up with Wendy. She said she heard the firetrucks and hoped it wasn’t her house on fire.

– Sorry sister, yeah I burned down the house.

– Weren’t you supposed to be at home with me? No. I was home alone.

Daddy showed up later and the crowd was still standing around staring at the firemen doing their job as the fire gutted the kitchen. Clearly he had too much Christmas Cheer in his belly as he staggered toward me. I was scared shitless of what he would do to me.

I truly ruined Christmas that year. We had to find somewhere to stay.

I still do not know where Mummy was or where she lived. I never talked to her about it. I thank the firefighters for telling Daddy it was the stove shorting out, and not that I was making sand candles for gifts for the family. Neither Mummy or Daddy will ever know the truth.

Night mother, like a moth to a flame. I run heated, toward the flame.

The first time I saw Malaysian money I was 18 years old and on my first overseas trip.  I had landed in Malaysia with only US dollars on me and didn’t know how I was going to change it for Malaysian money. I wouldn’t have worried but already I’d learnt that no-one wanted my US dollars and I was hungry.  How was I going to buy food if I didn’t have the right money? At this point I’d been travelling for a few weeks and thought I had it all worked out and knew what I was doing. Clearly not. I was completely stumped. I went to the backpacker’s where I was staying and tried to talk to a guy I found there. He was from Japan and didn’t speak English – I can’t speak Japanese.  I tried using hand signals and showing him the money but he didn’t understand me. So I left the backpacker’s and walked the streets for a while, cursing my decision to not bring my phone with me. I’d decided that I’d use my holiday as a chance to have a digital detox and told my parents that I’d stay in touch by sending a postcard every now and then.

Someone’s been sitting in my chair. Where did that thought come from? I guess it could have something to do with why I was overseas on holiday by myself. I broke up with Lisa just before I left – she said she had feelings for someone else. Maybe my mind is trying to grapple with the break up by saying random things to me like ‘someone’s been sitting in my chair’? Could be I guess.  This was not the plan. Lisa and I were going to travel together. We hadn’t made any definite plans but we’d certainly talked about it, as if we were going to be together for ages – like we had all the time in the world. Now here I am, by myself in Malaysia, starving, with no way that I can see of getting the money I need to buy food or of convincing someone to take the money I did have. I was enjoying the walk though.

Is it human? I saw something out of the corner of my eye – it looked like a blanket but it was moving. I went over to it and had a look – it was a baby! I looked around but couldn’t see anyone it might belong to. Next minute this guy appears next to me and says “what’ve you got there? A baby? I’ve heard that unwanted babies get dropped down the dunny in Malaysia.” I looked at him, stunned. Stunned that he’d just appeared like that, stunned that he was speaking English and stunned that he would say something like that. Dropping a baby down the dunny? Who would do something like that? All thoughts of food left me as I looked at this tiny baby and this stranger. Now it seemed I had even bigger problems. I turned to him to ask what we should do, only to find that he had run off. I wondered if I’d been dreaming but no, the baby was still here. Was it possible to start hallucinating due to lack of food? I thought I’d better pick up the baby and try and take it to a hospital or something. I picked it up and it started crying – just like any baby I’d ever held. I looked into its scrunched up, red face and felt completely helpless.

Wheeling along the bitumen path dodging uneven surfaces, fallen branches, runners, prams.  Pale sunshine, little breezes, lap-lap of water.  Smiling with contentment.  Approach a fork in the path – see young woman with her arm across her grandmothers shoulder gently shepherding her towards the fork.  She catches my eye and smiles. Our paths cross – timing perfect.  Warmth of a fleeting moment lingering.

A day out bus trip for seniors. Lunch is to be provided at a garden venue.  A list is duly completed regarding dietary requirements and is as follows:-

Stan Wilcox cannot eat ham, coconut or mandarins

Julian Bradbury and Sheila Snelling are diabetic

Steven Payne is on Warfarin medication

Gail Smith can only tolerate soy milk and is peanut allergic

Shirley Porter is lactose intolerant; she cannot have any food containing milk, butter or ice cream

Please have decaf coffee and organic teas available

As for the rest of the bus it would seem that they will have to be happy with whatever is left for them to eat after the dietary requirements sorted

And as for the caterers – what a nightmare.

The first time Bolivar died, he died hanging upside down, strapped to a telephone pole, on a Thursday afternoon.

It was cloudy that day. A hot wind blew with maddening persistence from the south-east. A ‘murder wind’, the local gauchos called it, because on days like this and with a wind like this, fights tended to break out over small things, and they tended to escalate quickly to violence.

Bolivar had been sweating as he climbed up the wooden telephone pole that held it’s piece of the 70km of wire that was connected the small town of Domingo and the rest of the world. “What’s wrong with it?” he’d asked the foreman as they’d both looked up at where the wire met the pole. The wire buzzed and whined strangely as it swayed back and forth in the hot wind. He’d never head a telephone wire make a noise like that.

Bolivar’s foreman, known to his crew as El Serpiente, had once mutilated another man’s face with a bottle opener for the crime of sitting on his favourite barstool. El Serpiente was a big man, with a mixture of fat and muscle that made him look like a bear – bulky and dangerous. His face was a tree bark of scars, and his hands were short one pinky.

El Serpiente surveyed the wire, his face frowning and blustery. “How should I know?” he spat. “Climb the damn pole and find out.” He stomped off, while Bolivar dipped his head to hide a scowl.

Two minutes later, Bolivar was being electrocuted at the top of the telephone pole. The part of his mind that was not being flayed by voltage thought regretfully, “This was not the plan. I was supposed to be playing soccer today-“ And then, hanging upside-down on the pole by his safety leash, Bolivar died.

A minute later, Bolivar was alive again. Eduardo, one of the other crew members, was giving him CPR on the ground by the pole. Bolivar’s eyes flickered open. Eduardo shouted, “Boli, Boli, you’re alive!”

Boliver mumbled something.

“What, Boli? I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

“Is it…is it human?” Eduardo’s eyebrows raised in puzzlement. Before he could respond to Bolivar, the rest of the repair crew picked the electrocuted man up and carried him to their truck, while El Serpiente watched impassively, his hands on his hips, face hovering between amusement and annoyance. As he was being carried, Bolivar stared into the scrubby bushes on the side of the road. “It’s watching me, Eduardo,” he whispered, with a fear in his voice so intense that Eduardo felt a shiver work its way down his spine. “It’s watching me.”

Eduardo followed Bolivar’s gaze. For a moment, he thought he saw something. Something thin, dark, shaped like a man but as tall as three men, crouching in the bushes in a way that a human spine would make impossible. And then the vision was gone, and Eduardo saw only bushes and the desert. Bolivar began to sob.

Soon, the truck roared and dusted and drove away, and the only sound was the murder wind and the strange whining and buzzing of the wires as they swung, ceaselessly, back and forth.