16 June 2024

16 June 2023

“…by morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.”

from Mary Oliver

Justin was over today, working on the bathroom so it’s serviceable for Penny’s birthday and Salv’s memorial in a couple of weeks.

So something came out of the bathroom.

Could it be?

Indeed it could. Later, MaryAnne will report that it was made in Scotland.

Thanks a lot, toilet. You’ve taken a lot from us over the years.

You’ve taken a lot of our shit.

Hi.

So I really couldn’t find any reference to dad’s Ipana Girl.  And no other Ipana image I saw came close to the beauty of the girl above the door in the ‘rage.  Ipana was a toothpaste brand by the Bristol-Myers Company released in 1901, and reached its height of popularity in the 50s with a Disney-created mascot, Bucky Beaver, who sang a particularly annoying song.  Ipana toothpaste declined over time with a combination of excluding men from their marketing, competition from Colgate, and recalling the product after finding out that an ingredient called hexachlorophene was actually quite dangerous.  I also read on several sites that Ipana used asbestos fibres in the toothpaste for their abrasive quality.  SO there’s that.

Farewell Ipana Lady.  All through my childhood, I truly believed that you were dad’s girlfriend – even though I sort of knew it also wasn’t true.

Tim and I share a pistachio, fresh from the tree.

Am I on

?

Nah, not really.

Salvatore was an inveterate note taker – was this one written in the dispensary as he listened to a program on ABC 774 do you reckon? Though “front fence” (Teucrium fruiticans) implies maybe that he was here in the garden, listening to someone tell him what the plants are?

Anyway on this day 21 months after he died, the pinky flowered camphor laurel (“30”? What does that 30 mean, Salv? Or maybe it’s a face (no mouth) with a black eye?) outside his and MaryAnne’s room is putting out its last clumps of flowers for the season. It’s been a pretty big summer for camphor laurels here in Melbourne, did anyone else observe that?

(by the by, camphor laurels and camellias get shout-outs in the animated film Miss Hokusai (Keiichi Hara, 2015), about the daughter of the great Japanese printmaker Hokusai. Recommended.)

I also like that dad has noted that Eucalyptus maculata has “nice broad leaves”.

(if he had been a woman, that’s one way we’d be able to refer to his death)

Thus we celebrate the day that Salv was born …..

Albeit 85 years ago……..

On a First Friday in March

In the little town of Sea Lake

In the Mallee

For which he never lost his love.

This was a man greatly loved

Who loved greatly

And died graciously 

No one expected this to happen

But happen it did 

As Covid was taking hold of us

Two years back

Absent he is from our lives

And as we persevere with the loss

The constant loss

The day after day loss

We/I remember today

With a lonely gratitude 

That I shared many of his birthdays 

Over the years 

Pharmacy was what he knew

And although he did not love it,

It loved him

And many customers spoke of him

As My Chemist long before

That phrase was a commercial logo.

He was interested in helping and healing people

He spent his life fixing and helping

And the only exception to that

was his beloved four wheel driving trips 

in Australia which he enjoyed with a deep enthusiasm 

He remained a country boy at heart 

Even though his parents moved he and his

seven sisters and three brothers

to a suburban shop premises in Essendon

To be out of the city was his best dream

To be ‘at home’ in his home or garden or garage

was another place of comfort for him

And as l look back at all his years upon the earth

from my position of on-going privilege 

now on extended holiday in France 

I begin to understand

the fragile brevity each one of us faces

Salv faced the sudden last 86 days of his life

with gentility and nobility

as the cancer dwarfed and stamped on his usually active life

But it had no egress over his smile…

That remained constant until the last few days 

And then it morphed into a soft compliance

as death approached. 

I believe that death and Salv did a last gentle dance

of spirits before Salv finally gave way to what had to happen

And I salute both his life and his death

And I am eternally grateful that we stood beside each other

For as long as we did.

And several days later

I realise that I am here in France

For three months…..

An equivalent time of Salv’s illness and death.

We did always have an implicit- if not spoken

Understanding of values….

And this time, it is time itself

That soft powdery substance which dissolves in our fingers….

Like fairy floss…. It melts in our mouths.

And disappears before we know it.

This time in France is the first time I have been here without 

going home to Salv to be again with him. 

So already that hurts.

There was the exception when we came together……

And indeed he did plant flowers with Justin on the terrace.

The flowers did not survive either.

And that is why Justin bought and planted a new crop of flowers

In the very same planter boxes on the terrace on Salv’s birthday day.

Grow flowers grow and delight each passer by. 

May it be you.

Luke took this snap yesterday, Thursday 3/3/22, quite the symmetrical date, as we head towards what would have been Salvatore’s 85th birthday tomorrow 5/3/22.

Last month 16/2/22 marked 20 months of life on earth without him on it as a living being. To my mind he is both not here and here.

MaryAnne got on a plane out at Tullamarine on Tuesday 1/3/22 and is currently in Barcelona with Cleo and Justin and the Twingo. This departure followed a month of her welcoming the sunrise from the ‘Viewing Platform’ where the Walker Street Flats once stood, the demolition of which Salv protested.

The guys in the roof – Daniel and Chris (?I think) reported to MaryAnne, pre-departure, that Salv’s fixes and patches have worked very well in keeping the rain off our heads.

It actually look like quite a nice room. Shall I call Daniel and Chris and tell them to install transparent tiles?

Lots of Caleos in the mud in the December of 2021, 2 days after the 18 month anniversary of dad’s death.

Photo by Zebedee Michelangelo Bamford Caleo.

Our reading was supplied by mum:

“Thy sea, O God, so great,

My boat so small

It cannot be that any happy fate

Will me befall

Save as Thy Goodness opens paths for me

Through the consuming vastness of the sea.”

Winfred Ernest Garrison

Above, people wade through some pretty sticky stuff (or ‘quag’, as it’s referred to by Joseph and Zebedee) for the second annual throw of ashes of Salvatore Michelangelo Caleo into the Barwon River. Was this our fourth year of a pre-Christmas camp there, which has taken over from the previous multi-year tradition of camping and water sports at Fraser National Park at Lake Eildon? Whatever the numbers, it’s been a pre-emptive tented getaway from the pre-Christmas maelstrom for a good few years.

Also, campsites are cheaper before the 25th.

Salv was the core of these trips, of course. From bringing a full-size fridge and plugging it into the on-site power, to the bottomless pot of tea, he was the core.

Wherever you are, dad, I bet the weather is great and the kettle’s on the boil.

Luke’s ‘Gabriel Baby Centre’ book features quotes from Rudolf the Red Nosed Steiner alongside a smattering of some from his siblings.