A bit of Friday night sentimentality

I'm not one to discuss my innermost thoughts.  That is, of course, unless I've had a couple of glasses of wine.  Then it can be hard to get me to be quiet.  But on this blog I generally avoid discussing my personal thoughts and feelings.  I'm conscious the Internet is a public forum.  Hence the use of initials in this blog rather than names.  And the only photos you'll ever see of me on here are from a great distance or from behind.  I don't want to become one of those statistics - the people who blog or use the Internet to tell funny stories about their employers and colleagues only to be found out, to lose their jobs and to end up in the "quirky story of the week" column in the newspapers.

This post is therefore going to be something of an anomaly.  Perhaps it's because it's late on a Friday night and I'm home alone on the sofa, having injured my back, feeling sorry for myself.  Or maybe it's just because of all the prescription painkillers I've taken for my injured back.  Either way, I've decided, for once, to give in to the desire to be sentimental.

Tonight I've been thinking of my maternal grandfather, "P".  This isn't uncommon - I often think of him.  But tonight I have been thinking of him a lot. 

It started when I noticed my "learning to drive" pack in the bookshelf, still in its clingfilm.   That's right - I'm one of that small minority of Australians over the age of 20 who still doesn't have a driver's license.  I ordered the pack on amazon a couple of months ago, but still haven't even unwrapped it.

I did learn to drive, once, back when I was 18.  I was actually pretty good at it.  But when it came to the driving test, I spectacularly failed. I had a bit of a panic behind the wheel.  Particularly unfortunate was the fact I had that panic before I'd even started the car.  I shut the door of the car and sat down next to the examiner.  She told me to start the car but I just sat there at the wheel, already convinced I was going to fail the test and unable to even get the car to start.  I don't think the fact I kept saying to the examiner (and remember I was only 18) "oh my god, oh my god.  I know how to drive, I promise!" helped the situation.   Once I finally turned the key in the ignition and started the car, the panic rose again, and rather than smoothly drive it out of the car park, I almost crashed it into a chicken wire fence.  After that, I became convinced I couldn't drive.  And I didn't want to go through the humiliation of another failed test.  So I gave up.

There are lots of things I can't do because they absolutely freak me out or because they just seem so hard I give up.  I can't dive into water.  Not properly.  The idea of going into the water, essentially head-first, always struck me as mad and terrifying and no amount of cajoling on the part of my swimming teachers or mother could make me do it.

According to my mother, my fear of doing things started pretty young, and I was a slow and tentative walker.  But as I grew up, I had people around me who managed to bully me into overcoming these fears to a point where I could blend into society and seem like a reasonably normal human being.  One of those people was P.

Sadly, P died from cancer when I was only 12.  I've now been alive for longer without him than I was with him.  But he was a huge presence when he was around, and I don't think that such a personality can ever really dissipate, even when they are no longer physically here.

P taught me how to put my head under water.  I don't remember this - I was too young to remember it.  But my mother has told me that he spent hours in our backyard, in the pool, forcing me to overcome my paranoid fear of putting my head under water.  As someone who loves swimming now, it's a fear that seems particularly hard for me to comprehend.

I do remember P teaching me to overcome my fear of swimming in the ocean.  Again, it's one of my favourite activities now, but when I was a child I found it terrifying.  I was convinced that the waves would suck me in and carry me out to the depths of the ocean.  P lived near the sea, and I remember well one particular day when he insisted we go to the beach.  In my mind the waves that day were enormous, but I suspect that in fact they were tiny.  P got me to go into the water with him, "just a little", up to our knees.  He held my hand tightly and tried to convince me to go out further.  Finally, when I refused, he decided to do it the hard way.  He took hold of my wrist and started to pull me out into the sea.  In defiance I refused to walk or swim, just flopping down in the shallows and refusing to move my legs.  Stupidly, I didn't realise that would only make it easier for P to drag me deeper into the ocean, which he promptly did.  As each wave came towards us, he lifted me up over it, until we got out past where the waves were breaking and, sure enough, it was calm.  There, he proved his point, that I shouldn't be terrified of the waves.  Strangely, despite the passage of about two decades, I can still remember the strength of P's grip on my wrist.  A strong and unmovable pressure, but a gentle one nonetheless.  The incident didn't miraculously erase my fear of the ocean's waves (I am still scared of the big ones) but it was the beginning of the end of my general fear of the ocean. 

Another of P's successes with me was teaching me to ride a bike without training wheels.  I can't remember now how old I was, but I remember that I was adament I didn't need to learn this skill.  P obviously had a better understanding than I did of the ridicule I'd receive from my school friends if I didn't learn to ride without training wheels, and so insisted I learn.  After he took the training wheels off my bike, he pulled the wooden handle off a broom and taped it to my bike, so that the handle stood vertical.  He then used this to hold me and the bike upright and to stop me from falling as I "rode" the bike and gradually learned to balance on it.  Childhood memories are, of course, unreliable.  So I don't know how many times P dragged me out on that bike, but I remember there being a great many lessons.  And I remember throwing tantrums, insisting I was happy using training wheels, and inevitably being dragged out against my will to practise riding the bike.  We went around and around the block, with P holding the broom stick and promising me I wouldn't fall. When P wasn't around, my mother would take up the mantle.  But P was by the far more effective teacher.  Nonetheless,  I was convinced I couldn't ride the damn bike, even when P told me that I was effectively riding on my own.  I insisted he keep his grip on the handle, so he spent many an afternoon running alongside me on my bike, loosely holding the "handle" to reassure me.   I made him run with me for some time before finally accepting that I could do it on my own. If it hadn't been for P and his patience, I suspect I would still be using training wheels.

I have so many more memories like that.  Memories of P cajoling and forcing me to do things I was convinced I couldn't.  And memories of P being so proud even of my most minor achievement.  My mother briefly forced me to go to ballroom dancing classes (at the height of her competitiveness with her sister whose son was a champion ballroom dancer).  When I got a chocolate bar one night for being the dancer who made the "best effort", when P collected me from the class he was incredibly proud.  He tried to convince me not to eat the chocolate bar straight away, so I could show it to my mother when I got home.  That was one of the rare occasions when I didn't listen to him.

Tonight when I saw my cling filmed driver's pack, I thought of P.  I still miss him.  And if he was still here, I have no doubt I would have learned to drive a decade ago.  I would probably also be able to dive, speak another language, play a musical instrument and do all the other things I've given up on.  Instead, I'm going to have to start forcing myself to do a bit more.  So I've promised myself to organise my learner's permit.  And because I've declared it publicly, to all of the 3 or so people who read this blog, I'm going to have to do it now.

And don't worry, the next post I do I'll go back to my holiday blogging.  Now, at midnight, it's time for me to pop my prescription Valium (for my back, I promise) and to get to bed.