Hibiscus
For a brief time it seemed like we might raise our daughter beachside. We lived there when I was pregnant and when she was born; we left before she turned one.
The streets there were dotted with typical beachside shrubbery; there were succulents and spiky grasses and banksia. Dense Norfolk Island hibiscus on every corner with their small, frosty pink flowers and furry buds. And the colours of the classic hibiscus: deep reds, candy pinks, gradients like tequila sunrise.
In photos from the first time walking our baby in the carrier, I’m standing in front of an orange hibiscus. Its apricot trumpets become dark, deep and bloody, towards the centre. I’m awkward, with the bulky carrier straps making an X over my back. My hands hover beneath her bottom, in case those straps fail and she slips through. Those first walks were cautious and revelatory; everything ordinary was rendered thrilling and new.
There were good reasons to leave the beach – I was lonely and that slowly drove me mad – but it probably didn’t help that I’m often thinking we should go somewhere else, no matter where we are.
We may have left the coast behind but hibiscuses still dot the streets of our new place. I’ve even grown familiar with particular shrubs, and expect them now like landmarks, on the routes we most often walk: to the station, to the coffee shop near daycare. There’s the round pink ruffles like flamenco dresses. One shrub has been shaped into a tall column and her flowers are a flat, lemon yellow. Some pop in contrast against graffitied walls.
We walk to the library or the pool, serenaded by cicadas. We walk beneath trains clanging, navigating uneven streets like an obstacle course of wheelie bins and dropped flowers turning brown.
A couple of weeks ago, on the way to a small corner playground, we stopped to count and smell the flowers spilling over a neighbour’s fence. It’s incredible what they have brought to life in the tiny garden beds of this little townhouse. Tall lilies reach high, fat roses bend to us on the street. Green creeps through the fence cracks and onto the ground. On this particular afternoon, my daughter knelt to sniff something and suddenly began to wail.
She pawed at her eye while redness bloomed from her temple, spreading rapidly down her cheek like wine soaking into a napkin. I dropped to the footpath, checking for swelling in her mouth and throat. Our bags were splayed on the street, tissues and keys had tumbled out. I poured water from her drink bottle into my cupped hand and washed her eye while she squirmed and fought me.
Three sets of people walked past, each of them going to the trouble of stepping around us, not looking down. Eventually I gathered our things and carried her home for antihistamines, fuming the whole way. I guess the beach doesn’t have a monopoly on making you feel lonely.
Walking with a two-year-old is slow in a different way to the gingerness of those newborn carrier expeditions. Things still feel new when considered through her eyes, but the tiredness has settled in and made itself at home. That can dull things.
I tell myself she’s offering a precious lesson in this slowness: an opportunity to be present with her. When I remember this, I put my phone back in my bag and feel very smug. Other times, I hear myself through gritted teeth: you have to keep walking, come on, let’s go, come ON. I hear myself, insane and boring and bored.
Sometimes on our slow walks I stop feeling anything at all because the presence has become genuine. It sneaks up on me, as though I’ve tricked myself into being present by pretending to be so. When that happens, my daughter and I exist together completely outside of time. We hold hands and we squat to peer closer at a flower bed. In these moments, there is no pull to any other place. No other place exists! ‘What is this one?’ she asks and I tell her, over and over, ‘Flower! Another flower.’