Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
I am two and in my father’s arms. He holds me up above the smells and cacophony of Paddy’s Market in Sydney. In the photograph, I am smiling. I am safe and I am happy.
I am still the only child, six months away from welcoming my brother. The photographic record shows a little girl perched on a chair in her full-skirted dress; on a too-big bike practically dressed in corduroy overalls and blouse her favourite ‘teahat’ on her head; digging in the dirt with a little shovel. Always smiling.
What isn’t seen is the music that fills my world and makes me happy. The songs that drift from the radiogram; mostly the 78 records my father collects and plays. The deep resonance of Paul Robeson through to the warm tones of Vera Lynn, and the riffs and finger- clicking of the original Ink Spots.
And there is my father’s voice as he sings Lanza, Crosby and in the year my brother arrives Mancini and Mercer’s, Moon River, and I wonder if it is this that has given me my love for all things Audrey Hepburn.
I hear that song now. It wraps around me lightly but as warmly as my father’s arms when he held me safe. And I am happy.
Robyne Young is an author, nanna, mother and aims never to contain the child within. Her new anthology, The Only Constant, can be bought from Albury Dymocks.