Winter’s fine layer of suffocating allergens, which coated our house for nearly five months each year, danced about in gusts of brown wind, colliding with raindrops that ran together in fine muddy rivulets down the corrugated iron roof and onto the skeleton grass below. This first rain was always dirty and cold, but the steadily warming temperatures over the past few weeks had once again coaxed little green shoots from our slumbering man-made forest, and with the help of the rains, soon The Jacaranda City would be clothed in its lavender spring finery. We had just a few weeks to bask in this mauve magic before the trees would throw off their garments, creating avenues of sweet, sticky flowers for summer to breeze in on her floral carpet.
I had witnessed this cycle for twenty years, but never before had I felt so much a part of it. Just a few days before, on Wednesday 4 September 1968, the sun had risen in my heart and the cleansing rains had come, bringing an end to the drought inside me and causing previously unknown senses to come to life and blossom, like the Jacarandas down our street. The only difference between my spring and the one happening outside was that it had come unexpectedly silently. It was beyond my understanding of beautiful.
I was holding onto my glorious Secret, revelling in the way it woke me up in the mornings and coloured the days in clean fresh hues that must have always been there, but that for some reason my eyes had never really seen. I feared that sharing my secret would somehow diminish it, that it would be scorned and explained away. I wanted to savour it and make it a part of me I could never lose.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet for long though. Pa had been pressing me for an answer as to what I was going to do with my life now that my schooling and military conscription were over. After much consideration, I had given an answer that seemed to satisfy him, but now those plans didn’t seem to fit with what was happening inside me. I had met Someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and I needed to find out what He had in mind for our future together.
I had witnessed this cycle for twenty years, but never before had I felt so much a part of it. Just a few days before, on Wednesday 4 September 1968, the sun had risen in my heart and the cleansing rains had come, bringing an end to the drought inside me and causing previously unknown senses to come to life and blossom, like the Jacarandas down our street. The only difference between my spring and the one happening outside was that it had come unexpectedly silently. It was beyond my understanding of beautiful.
I was holding onto my glorious Secret, revelling in the way it woke me up in the mornings and coloured the days in clean fresh hues that must have always been there, but that for some reason my eyes had never really seen. I feared that sharing my secret would somehow diminish it, that it would be scorned and explained away. I wanted to savour it and make it a part of me I could never lose.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet for long though. Pa had been pressing me for an answer as to what I was going to do with my life now that my schooling and military conscription were over. After much consideration, I had given an answer that seemed to satisfy him, but now those plans didn’t seem to fit with what was happening inside me. I had met Someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and I needed to find out what He had in mind for our future together.
