| Mike's
Pith & Wind - Skeletons
Catching
up with old friends and relations, as I have been fortunate enough
to do recently, can be a revelatory experience. Times have surely
changed over our lifetimes, but quite often it’s only after
a reflective discussion over a glass of wine with a relative you
haven’t seen for a while that memories of events and people,
some of whom we thought we knew intimately, are turned upside down
and pieces in a puzzle of which we were blissfully unaware, slot
into place with a resounding thunk.
As children we obligingly accepted every transparently flakey account
offered by our parents of who Uncle Waldo was in the scheme of things
and why cousin Otto lived on his own under a bridge etc. and it’s
amazing how long these fictions can survive without the torch of
adult reason being shone on them.
When you’re young, the family construct seems so secure and
predictable. Mum’s mum and dad’s dad, and your brothers
and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandparents are all exactly
as they’re described in the family brochure. Even minor shifts
in the reassuring panoply of relations can be quite disturbing to
the young mind and the entire fabric of the cosmos can dissolve
into a confusing jelly. Our father, which art in Rotorua, left the
nest quite early on in our proceedings, and every plumber or electrician
that ventured into our world for the next few years I wanted so
much to be daddy coming home that I had to be forcibly detached
from their King Gees before they left the building. read
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