going back

There is a saying that you can never go back again. As a historian and as a writer I whole-heartedly disagree. The beauty of living in the world that we live in today is that we can go back. Whether we want to stroll down memory lane with school pals on Facebook, or research into a past complete with pictures, documentaries via Youtube, university notes and online books, or even shut the computer and go back to writing a letter. With pen and paper. In fact there is very little these days that is stopping us from going back.

I am particularly comforted by this fact at the moment. My 85 year old grandfather is quite sick. He has recently had a couple of falls which have resulted in a broken shoulder (now healed) and a broken hip (operated on but which has left him weak and unable to walk). He is in a public hospital undergoing serious rehabilitation.

I always had a very close relationship with my grandfather, who was born on the Greek island of Syros. Growing up I adored him and loved that fact that he came from somewhere so exotic. I memorised the Greek words and numbers that he would teach me and my sisters and I held tightly to his promises that one day he would take me back there with him. We never got there but the stories certainly remained with me.

They promised them a working paradise, they delivered hell.

One hot, summer day when the Captain and I were driving back home from a trip to Wollongong a new idea for a story came to me. One that revolved around his life. When he was barely eighteen his island was attacked by Nazis and he ended up in a ball-bearings factory in Austria. After the war ended he, like so many other displaced young men, joined the French Foreign Legion. After fighting in Vietnam he finally caught a boat to Australia where he jumped shipped and lived as an illegal immigrant before finally becoming an Australian citizen.

I love my grandfather and I love his story. A couple of years ago I sat down with him and got as many details as I could from him, writing them all down on scraps of paper that came to hand. I collated them all and brought them home to put together in my story. It is these scraps that led to the development of the character Tommaso in Pepper Ridge Lane.

Then I went back to work, had another baby, got re-focused on writing Orpheus and poor old Pepper Ridge got put in the dusty folder on my desktop. After speaking with my grandmother this morning and hearing the mixed news about my grandfather's transfer to a much nicer hosptial with better rehab facilities, and the fact that he has lost ten kilos because he isn't eating I felt the need to be close to him again. So I opened Pepper Ridge Lane. The file told me that it had been almost a year.

And as I read over it again I remembered just how much I loved it. I realise now that it is because it is real to me. I can picture Tommaso, just as I can picture the black and white photo of my handsome grandfather, twenty one years of age in his FFL uniform, one of my favourite photos of all time. I know Tommaso' story, because my grandfather already told it to me. Sure, there are fictional elements, quite a few that I've added in actually (Tommaso is Italian after all), but the bones, the heart of it are real. I've just fleshed it out with make believe.

I guess I'm just trying to say that I am so grateful that I was able to get the story from my grandfather when he was well (he is now also suffering from dementia and according to my mum gets quite confused and muddled at times) and that I can write it down. That day when we were talking and I was taking notes he pointed at my papers and asked me what I was going to do with it. I told him I was writing it down in a story. And he smiled. I think he would really like the story. Although not as much as I am enjoying writing it.