Week 06/2025: Planes and boats . . . and a whale
Planes and boats . . . and a whale
Week of 3 February 2025
A hard week. Perhaps the hardest one yet. But also some light.
The final week
And not even a full week. The week leading into the day I’d been dreading since I found out Kramstable was going to university, not even two months ago.
His last full day at home was on Monday, and he spent a lot of that day continuing to sort out his room and pack his bags. I had tried to convince him maybe to not work right up to the day before he left in case there was last minute stuff he needed to sort out (or, you know, spend some time with his very sad mother . . .). But he’s responsible for his own choices and I need to deal with that.
Too many thoughts
So. We got to Saturday and I’d spent many moments during the week thinking things like “this time next week . . .” and “in 48 hours . . .” and “this time tomorrow . . .”.
I think we all do this when Big Things are about to happen. I know I definitely do it in the days leading up to gong on holidays.
This is okay, as long as it’s a fleeting thought and not something you get hooked into.
I mean, thinking about “this time tomorrow I will be saying goodbye to him at the airport” and imagining the last hug with your face buried in his (amazing) hair, knowing that this will be the last moment he’ll be your living-at-home child, not knowing when you’ll see him again, and not wanting to let him go but you have to . . . and it’s a bigger deal than the first day you left him at school, and the biggest shock to your system since the moment he exited your body.
Well.
They say your brain doesn’t know the difference between you thinking the thing and between the thing happening, and it reacts in the same way to the thought as it does to the actual event.
I believe this is true.
There’s probably nothing wrong with having the thought “this time tomorrow” as long as it’s just a thought that you notice and let go, and get on with what you’re doing. If you hook into the thought and let the spiral of thoughts that inevitably follow, many of which are thoughts about things which either (a) will never happen or (b) you have no control over whether they will happen, you’re robbing yourself of your experience of whatever you’re doing and whoever you’re with right now.
Doing this doesn’t help anyone.
Breathe.
Departure day
The day arrived and it was like any other Saturday morning. I went for a walk and had a coffee. It was so normal, it didn’t feel like anything momentous was about to happen.
Kramstable was still packing and he said he was having trouble fitting everything in.
Little known fact about my mother. She refused to accept that things wouldn’t fit. I remember at least one time, when people told her she could never fit all that stuff into her little car, she’d say “ohhh yes I can”, and would perform some kind of Tetris-like miracle to do exactly what they said couldn’t be done.
Perhaps I have inherited some of this skill, perhaps not, but I achieved what he couldn’t, and both bags came in just under the weight limit for the plane. (You want your dishwasher packed? I am the Scandinavian architect in a family of raccoons. Google it.)
It all happened rather too quickly and rather too normally after that.
It always strikes me when I’m going through a massive change or am struck by a massive event how little of a ripple it causes in the world. Everyone else is just going about their day like any other day. Nothing has changed, but my whole world has been ripped apart and turned upside down.
And so too today.
Planes
I must thank TheHobartAviationFan and DorkyMum for advice on the best place to watch planes take off from if you’ve been banned* from the departure lounge. (This is a great post btw.) Kramstable went through security and we . . . didn’t.
Watching him leave was a difficult thing to do, but it was important that we did it.
And so, farewell to the person who has had the biggest impact on my life.
I really don’t know how to end this.
A door has closed on a chapter. A new chapter awaits all of us.
* Banned in the same way I was banned from entering school grounds some time in grade 5 or 6.
Boats . . . and a whale
From planes to boats, this weekend was the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, a biennial festival held on Hobart’s waterfront. I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of boats. I don’t like going on them, I get seasick, and it was hard enough setting foot on the Lady Nelson when she was docked, let along being on a moving boat.
12 years ago, when Kramstable was in Grade 1, his class had an excursion to the festival. That’s probably why I always associate this event with him and with that teacher, who has sadly now passed away.
However, that year, 2013, was the only year I ever paid it much attention. The boating community wasn’t my thing. They had a completely different language, they wore weird clothes and yacht shoes, and the men all had salty sea dog beards. I could leave them to their boats and seafaring lives while I did my thing. Which was probably spending most of my time with a small boy who loved yoga, Shrek, his new chickens, and ABC News Breakfast.
I don’t know what attracted me this year.
Maybe knowing that after Kramstable left I wouldn’t want to be at home and there would be things to distract me on the waterfront.
Maybe seeing other photographers’ photos of the boats.
Or maybe getting lost in the fantastic poster.
And maybe it was the printed program that I had sitting on my desk to flip through randomly.
In the belly of the whale
In among all that flipping, I was excited to see a new show by Mikelangelo (aka Michael Simic) called In the Belly of the Whale, which was premiering at the festival. I’d seen Mikelangelo performing with Van Diemen’s Band in Songs of the Sea in 2024, which itself had debuted at the 2023 Wooden Boat Festival (on an actual boat). Thankfully this show was on dry land, in the wonderful Peacock Theatre . . . and it went in quite a different direction to the way I thought it would go.
The show wove Michael meeting Mikelangelo and their ongoing relationship, together with stories of Michael’s relationships with his father, his family and his Black Sea Gentlemen band mates.
And, of course, there was a whale!
It was especially touching when Michael spoke about his struggle with trying to balance being a father of young children, a husband, and a colleague. I remember the same struggle when Kramstable was younger, feeling like I was failing at everything, and experiencing guilt about not doing enough in any part of my life. I think this is something women are okay to talk about (sometimes) but we don’t often hear men expressing these feelings, and I really appreciated the Michael’s vulnerability in telling this part of his story.
At the same time, it felt bittersweet because that time of my life is long gone, and now my child has gone too . . . And some of the old doubts (they never really went away) about whether I did enough for him, whether I was there enough, have I prepared him for the world enough . . . they made themselves known to me.
But they are just thoughts, and they weren’t thoughts I wanted to think right then.
From the darkest depths of the ocean
So, focusing on the show and the story. It was a wild ride! (Is ride the right word? We went on a boat trip with Michael/Mikelangeko. That’s a voyage, right? See, I told you I don’t know boat language.)
On the way, we met Rita the accordion. According to Mikelangelo, the reason ship people play accordions rather than guitars is you can’t hear the guitar when you’re out on the ocean on a boat. Makes sense. But in the theatre, you can hear the guitar, and some of those songs had the most lovely, captivating guitar work that I long to hear again.
The show was called In the Belly of the Whale, and you’d better believe that’s what we got. And once encountered, the whale (and its belly) will not easily be forgotten.
Wonderful show! Still, I have no desire to go on a boat or to encounter a whale. I’ll just stay on shore and listen to the songs.
(I did hang out with the boats more than I thought I would, and have rather more photos than I expected to have, and I’m a bit interested in boats now. (Squirrel!) So here’s a photoblog post about them.)
Summary of the week
Habit tracker
- Go outside & exercise first thing (7 days): 7/7
- 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 3/7
- Hip exercises (5 days): 3/5
- 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 6/6
- Long walk (1 day): 1/1
- Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 6/7 (though to be fair, I missed that one day by 462 steps. There were three days this week I did over 20,000 steps, so I don’t care!)
- 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (7 days): 1/7
- Evening routine (7 days): 6/7
What did I learn this week?
Parkinson’s
I signed up for the Wicking Centre’s Parkinson’s MOOC, which they launched this week.
The Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre operates out of the University of Tasmania, where it undertakes research into dementia, as well as providing support for people with dementia and their carers. This includes work on Parkinson’s, which is a cause close to my heart because my father lived with this condition for 13 years.
Up-front in the course, I learned that we should use the term ‘Parkinson’s’ instead of ‘Parkinson’s disease’ as this better reflects the wishes of people with Parkinson’s.
D-Class
Derwent Class (D-Class) yachts were designed in 1927, following a national competition to design a yacht that would sit between cadet dinghies and A-Division yachts for racing on the River Derwent. There were 26 (or 27) built, all with names of a mythical nature such as Imp, Undine and Goblin. D-Class yachts were very popular up until the 1970s, but since then many have disappeared, including the very first one, Imp (1927).
Another early example is Pixie (1928), which is currently being restored.
She was on display at the Wooden Boat Festival.
What did I notice this week?
Walking down Collins Street, I noticed this ghost sign.
Does anyone know what it is?
What was the best thing this week?
What was really lovely this week (and in the last few weeks) has been the kind words and thoughts from people from all different parts of my life during what has been an intense time of big emotions.
Thank you.
I can’t express how much this means. But thank you.
What am I reading this week?
Coriolanus, Act 3, Scene 1 (yes, it’s pronounced how you think) from Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year edited by Allie Esiri.
It’s funny how every time I open Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, there’s something about the passage for that day that’s relevant to right now.
February 4’s entry tells us that in the late 15th century England, malt hoarding was a major offence. There was a national shortage of malt, markets were understocked, and beer was watered down. In Coriolanus, written in about 1607, Shakespeare tells of an “autocratic general facing a mob uprising against unfair grain prices” in ancient Rome. The rich people hoarded grain while the poor people starved. In her commentary on the piece Allie Esisri says this “holds an unflattering class to Elizabethan England”.
Indeed.
What am I watching this week?
Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical.
What am I listening to this week?
Mikelangelo: In the Belly of the Whale
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