That Big Important Kind of Love

I used to collect leaves and bark and flowers and feathers. I didn’t need a reason. I didn’t need a mug of hot chocolate or a chance to share it on Twitter or Instagram or money or fame to enjoy this little hobby of mine. I didn’t need for anyone to be there either at first. Sometimes there was peace in the bush and me, well me and the beautiful world of plants and wild animals. I was a child. I kept journals to remember. It’s remembering the beauty of it all that made it all worth trying for I suppose. I met a boy I called Jurro-Jurro and a girl named Suzie. A lot of the memories are faded and then like a brilliant sunrise they jump out from the blindness into laughter or tears. I found it annoying at first to share my journals with Suzie and Jurro-Jurro. We were very small, not even yet at school. I let them in eventually. We would walk and feel the trees with our bare hands. We would smell the leaves and crush eucalyptus between tiny fingers and the smell wasn’t tiny. It was strong and brave like. We kept the memories. Delicate flowers petals seemed so fragile. We would nurse them in stories and paste them into paint and crayon pictures. Sometimes we annoyed each other. Jurro jurro once said; ‘It’s hard to be big in other people’s eyes so let’s do little things and little things until it adds up to something big. I think there weren’t any little things about what we were or what we were collecting. All of it was beautiful in its own up and down kind of way. Later I shared the books with someone who said he’d only got into bark books because he got a hot chocolate out of it at night when we went through them together. I’m ok with that reason. Sometimes people teach you how you see the world or how others do. I didn’t feel like hot chocolate after that so much. I don’t have bark books either but I still run my hands down the bark trees when given the chance. Jurro- Jurro said; ‘If I die I’m gonna be a tree spirit so you can still be near.” Suzie said; ‘I’ll be the water nearby. Take a photo and paint the ocean or a river then you can be near me even when the water isn’t right there. It will be on the page.” Suzie was blind. So was Jurro-Jurro. People treated Suzie poorly at school. It wasn’t a school for blind people. That’s something small that can feel big. It’s so small to bully, troll or congregate in the name of hatred or persecution. You might call someone a wobbly jelly fish, a cross eyed thingamagig or whatever words you use; faggot, homo, leso, nigger, boong, too fat, too skinny, too tall and on it goes but it’s so small compared to the opposite. The opposite is like freedom, it’s like a flock of wild birds or the brilliant sun or the textures of bark that never seem to end up exactly the same. The trouble is the feeling is so big and so deep in the hurt that’s left over. You can wrap trolling in the idea of a joke, you can wrap bullying in the idea of resilience but it’s just wrapping that’s old and flimsy and boring and outdated. I’m not trying to prove Jurro-Jurro wrong. It’s to say we are all more than little in the first place. Jurro-Jurro said; “If I die, can you tell people about me so I’m not really dead.” I said; “I won’t have to. You’ll be more than just me, you’ll see.” Suzie said; “If I die, no need. I just want you and Jurro-Jurro. That’s big enough for me.” Jurro-Jurro was a bit cranky then; “Now I look like the dickhead Suzie. “ And she said; “I want you to be big. Everyone’s different. Maybe I’ll change my mind too, one step at a time cowboy.” Sometimes I do keep journals now. There’s sometimes pieces of nature on there but I keep the bark in tact. I asked Jurro-Jurro to make me an “I Love you” letter on the driveway with bark and he didn’t end up doing it. It’s when he left from visiting in Coffs when we were on holidays. Someone else made me a letter on the driveway with bark because I was upset about it. I never found out who it was, but it wasn’t a little thing in life, it was something I needed to read right then. We still shared some loving moments, myself Jurro-Jurro and Suzie. He asked me to retell the story where he didn’t forget the I Love You sign. I’m not going to lie but just to say, nobody is perfect and that I honour my promises as best as possible. Someone at school once asked me; “Why are you the only one who talks to blind Suzie, Mother Teresa?” I said something that wasn’t good enough, brave enough or completely true; “She’s sad and alone. And I’m not Mother Teresa.” The truth is I sometimes played board games with Suzie because she loved me a long time ago, because she was a weird funny girl with a strange but brave way about her, because she was sometimes sad and sometimes incredibly annoying but sometimes happy and mischievious and because no child should ever sit alone or be sidelined socially or make someone feel bad for stepping out of the norm to shake up the rules about who is who or what is cool. I painted the ocean lots of times, even entered one in a competition so I could say; you’re more than me and Jurro-Jurro. I didn’t’ win that competition though I thought of her words while I tried. I also wanted that competition to make me feel bigger too. I didn’t win that feeling. I got over it especially remembering what she had said all those years ago. Thinking about the great outdoors, there were some children I loved who were very important. They got right into nature when I was more of an adult. They started to learn about Yabbies. It was a little farm and the yabbies became a little cottage industry. I’d forgotten this time and how I’m not entirely sure. It came back to me recently. When one of them learnt the yabbies weren’t just going off for a little play to someone’s house but were going to be eaten he was distraught. The children had beautiful big hearts in that way. Wanting to keep nature alive is so lovely, especially in children. They would learn about keeping water life alive, even without a hot chocolate. Sometimes it was urgent; “Let’s read the farming books first, then we can have a drink.” I hope they feel like breathing that life into themselves and out again to the wide beautiful world because it could make all of the difference. One little step at a time might be bigger than you think. Xx