Cold Open
Your son’s repertoire is changing. He’s repeatedly practicing an opening riff which seems to go on for bars and bars, the finger work complicated but the vibe, undoubtedly, Metallica.
The teen years are upon us.
You read about the German practice of house-burping, or lüften, and decide to give it a try. After all, the nights are getting cold enough that by morning, the old sash windows in your house are often steamed over, and speckles of mould are dusting the sills.
Lüften means throwing wide every window for five minutes a day, all year long and however bitter outside, to ventilate the house. This evaporates trapped moisture and releases contaminants like pet dander and carbon dioxide. Apparently, this short burst of cold is enough to flush stale air without letting all the latent heat escape.
It takes you about ten minutes to visit each room and wrestle open every window, some of which are stubborn, swollen by rain. Ribbons of cool air unfurl into the house. It’s a crisp morning at barely ten degrees but with fingers of early sun in the garden, it’s not a bad day to house-burp. You sit outside on the bricks with coffee and wonder if you can keep up this habit during winter, when it’ll be pitch-dark and freezing.
The Germans have been right about many things (meat and cheese at breakfast, Stollen, the airbag), while also very wrong (National Socialism, the accordion). But when you go back inside, it feels like the atmosphere is charged. Each room almost spangles with electricity, lending the house a party atmosphere. The ions seem — happier?
Then your nose goes cold, so you pull down each window with a bang.
“BREAKING NEWS,” you text Usha. “My Marks & Spencer egg rack has cleared Customs.”
In the dog park you meet a happy pair of mixes. Something crossed with Maltese, and something crossed with Bichon Frise. Their names are Biscuit and Potato.
Potato is kind of a lunatic.
You need a Sherlock Holmes costume. You contact S, the unflappable proprietor of Creative Show-Off Costume Hire, who has befitted and bewigged you and your children at Halloween for eight years. She’s often said things to you like, “Do you want a rubber nose?” and “Pick a broomstick,” occasionally with pins in her mouth, often from behind the long counter while she’s ironing a doublet or flapper dress in clouds of steam.
“Something like a deerstalker, a cape and maybe a pocket watch?” you’ve suggested, imagining a pipe might be a prop too far. Noses that have been on other people’s noses are somehow fine, but a prop you suck on isn’t the kind of thing one passes around.
She tells you, as she always does, that you’re welcome just to come on in. When you do, she’ll solve every problem. But she startles you with her next remark: she’s sold the business and will only be there for one more week.
This will mark a turning point in the life of your family. You think about the parade of costumes you’ve hired from her shop. Cat ears and a tiny tail, perfect for a seven-year-old. A little dirndl, with hair-ribbons. A boy lizard. Dracula, many witches, a Lurex disco dress for a 40th birthday party. A Louvre jewel thief. A blue tie, blazer and a rubber bald cap for an 11-year-old, determined to trick or treat as the Prime Minister.
When you call in, the shop is joyful as always. A drag artist bursts from a dressing room in a crinoline. A long blonde wig is laid along the counter, waiting to be brushed. Obama, King Charles and Trump gaze from a high shelf of rubber masks. You run your hand along the racks — sequinned sleeves, pirate shirts, striped blazers, the quilted arms of astronaut suits.
The store will live on, with its endless rows of outfits (MEDIEVAL; GANGSTERS; FRUIT AND VEG) but S, who’s seen it all, who knows better than anyone the partying ways of Wellingtonians, whose washing machines never stop tumbling, whose measuring tape is slung around her neck and who can fix anything with a tacking stitch, won’t be there any longer to drawl, “So, what’s it going to be?”
You’re bringing in the towels, which are a bit stiff for your liking, when a fantail bursts from the bay tree and dances around your face. You must have dislodged some insects; you expect it to catch them mid-air and flitter away, but it doesn’t.
It swoops so close and hovers so casually that you can look into its glittering eyes. Then it lands on the washing line and trills so passionately, for so long, that its head feathers puff out in a fuzz.
Even the dog can’t believe it. His tail weakly swishes as you gaze in wonder at this tiny, insistent, beautiful creature.
“Hello, little one,” you say. It’s a bit stupid, but what’s the harm? There’s nobody else in the garden. You stick out your finger and the pīwakawaka seriously thinks about it. It’ll flit from branch to branch, making a racket, crossing between gardens and coming back, for the next several minutes. To the point, really, where you feel you have a relationship.
Fantails carry all sorts of lore concerning death and luck, but it’s not the first time you wonder if your Dad’s trying to tell you something, by sending you a bird.
The Artemis lunar rocket has surged into the sky and is heading for space at full throttle. It’s a shimmering white dot in the middle of the TV, shedding its solid rocket boosters in a moment of beautiful symmetry and vanishing into gossamer, where Earth ends and space begins.
The lift-off was sudden and breathtaking and audacious. You felt a twist of something: awe? Pride in human endeavour? Whatever it was felt retro, somehow — an emotional return to a happier, more naive time.
At the moment of main engine cut-off, you relax. The astronauts must somehow be safer, now they’re not sitting at the pointy end of a tube packed with millions of litres of burning liquid propellant. The main rocket body unlocks and detaches and its capsule glides into orbit, bound for the dark side of the moon.
There are several articles reporting that the four will evacuate into a special floor-mounted space toilet during their ten-day mission. You watch a YouTube tour of the training replica. It features a hand-held urine tube and foot restraints to keep a squatting astronaut in place. Their solid waste, you’re informed, will be sucked into a canister and stored for return to Earth.
The radio tells you one of them is taking a Bible. Another, a journal and pen.
But it’s the hour when they’re due to lose all contact with ground control that intrigues you the most. Like a tiny moon orbiting the moon, they’ll pass behind it into infinite blackness, reaching the most distant point of their circuit. You imagine an old-time carousel ride, the fairground music stopping suddenly and the gaudy bulbs flashing dead, while the glazed horses keep gently revolving.
A velvet hour, an hour of nothingness, with everyone aboard and below waiting for the connection to crackle back into life. Will it? Won’t it?
This will surely be the quietest hour ever known by a human being, far from sun and warmth and air, from maths and telemetry and technical chatter, out in the vast cold open.
Your son is playing something mournful and touching. You feel your heart get heavier and fill your chest.
“It’s The Beatles, Mum,” he says.
Blackbird.
Karori Road is splashed in autumn sun as you stop at the crossing beside St Mary’s. A teacher waves her hand in thanks and leads across a queue of small girls in long bottle-green chapel cloaks. These have little hoods that rest on their shoulders.
One girl is holding aloft a golden cross with pretty filigree edges. The girls are in pairs, more or less, and their cloaks flutter in excitement as they leave the service and go back to school.
Easter, you concede, has begun.
I wish everyone a restful and gorgeous Easter weekend! I’ve got in a stack of books, and a range of ritzy chocolate goods from Gamboni’s Deli here in the K-Roar, which will be open today for heathens with sophisticated tastes.
Thank you to everyone who liked and commented on last week’s piece – especially to fellow softies who’ve likewise experienced an unexpected feeling of love at the college gates, when hundreds of young ones spill out of school, fanning out towards the city, and the future.
Just loved that read with my Good Friday tea-in-bed. You know Stairway to Heaven is next after Blackbird… Thanks Leah and Happy Easter 🐣.
I feel ionised for reading that. Happy Easter Leah x