On my way to the biennial ANZUUA conference in Melbourne
last week, I stopped off to catch up with my youngest daughter, Rosie. She moved
there earlier this year to prepare for study at RMIT. In the intervening months
she’s managed to get plenty of paid work in the lively nightlife of the St.
Kilda area, established a thriving social circle, landed a boyfriend (whom I
tried hard to find fault with, but couldn’t), and moved into a funky share
house across the road from St. Kilda beach.
This house is in the shadow of the Luna Park rollercoaster,
so now Rosie’s grown-up lullabies
involve the blood-curdling screams of strangers hurtling toward an eye-popping adrenaline
rush. “You can get used to anything daddy”, she says…
But here’s the thing: I thought I was the only person I knew who grew up in this uniquely odd
fix--in the shadow of a rattling rollercoaster and summer nights of screaming
mayhem. My family home in West Baltimore was in the shadow of the Gwynn Oak
Park rollercoaster. So Rosie’s 'lifestyle choice' officially makes this unlikeliest
of home-sweet-home settings a family
tradition!
I’m told that anomalies like this run in families.
Coincidence or epigenetics? Or a shared something deeper?
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| Basically, living near this means 20,000 noisy neighbours |
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| Our old house is just out of shot to the right |
It’s tempting to say that Rosie’s whole life has been a
rollercoaster ride, and that my life
choices bought her a ticket on that ride. International move, family break-up, changes
of address, new step-parents, and a major shift in Dad’s career and income
level just when she most needed the ride
to stop for a while. She fell in a heap for a couple years, and during that
time, we orbited the gravitational pull of her collapsing self, the way even
light is sucked towards a collapsing star. (This is how ‘black holes’ are
formed.)
Down and down into herself she plunged, and we thought Rosie
might never come back. But she (ahem)…rose
again. And Rose in fact blooms again, rather like the roses that are blooming everywhere,
now it’s Spring. It’s easy to forget that just a few weeks ago, these breath-taking sprays
of fragrant roses were barren stems, fracturing and scoring the sky like the rickety limbs of old wooden rollercoasters in the
off-season.
(Query: Would a silent, un-ridden rollercoaster be better? Or
worse? Why?)
The scarlet blush of roses that nestle among thorns.
The screams from a ride that’s both scary and fun.
Falling down to rise up again.
Such paradox is the sign of things that are deeply, enduringly, alive. Whatever God may be, paradox is how it reveals itself to us.
The screams from a ride that’s both scary and fun.
Falling down to rise up again.
Such paradox is the sign of things that are deeply, enduringly, alive. Whatever God may be, paradox is how it reveals itself to us.
In the Amusement Park that is this world of time and space
and movement and change, the rollercoaster contrasts nicely with the carousel.
The spills and hills that thrill, versus the round and round, that never leaves
the ground.
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| Sedate, but not stimulating... |
(Query: which ride would YOU prefer? Why? Answer carefully!)
Maybe the rollercoaster is just the Macpherson way. But
maybe also the rollercoaster can teach you (even at my age), that the ups-and-downs
are never as life-threatening as your amygdala thinks they are. Comes a steep
hill’s crest, and the screaming ramps up, and you feel your guts churning and
falling away, and your amygdala begins to squirt out survival chemicals by the
quart, and suddenly every cell in our bodies is yelling: “Fight or flee! Fight or flee!” And moments later you clatter
to a stop, breathless but intact. And most are ready to
go again.
There’ll be other ups and downs coming for her, I know, and some of
them may be terrifying. But I thought I saw, as I took leave of her, the look that
people have when the ride stops: a kind of startled happiness that says: “Oh wow, let’s do
that again!”
"You can get used to anything, daddy."
Du courage, mon petit.
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