Larela Circuit

The very early years.

As a young child I was never allowed many foods like cheese, milk, or eggs. Going fishing or camping was out of the question as I would end up a sneezing itchy wreck that would nearly always lead to being in bed for days producing what seemed like endless amounts of phlegm and enduring postural drainage from my mother - nebulisers that made me shake like a leaf, lots of sleep and repeated dreams for years of floating out of my body which felt so nice, but inevitably, getting trapped by the ceiling.

An indescribable sense in those dreams that I didn't fit into my own skin.

I have a vivid memory from around age three or four: after dinner, when everyone had ice cream cones, occasionally my father would break off about two centimetres from the bottom of his cone and place a small blob of ice cream - perhaps one centimetre across - on top so I could share it with him.

It was the biggest thing, carefully measured. I knew it wasn't what everyone else got, but I savoured what was possible for me.

Around the same age, I choked on bacon, possibly the first time I ever had it - a long piece of rind got caught in my throat that I managed to extract. It was alarmingly long. I didn't eat bacon again until I was a teenager.

When I was about five, I diligently organised and facilitated a brief family meeting in the bathroom with my brothers, then three and seven. I was concerned about making things better for our parents and for all of us. We needed a strategy, I thought. A plan to help. I wanted to create an opportunity for us all to play a part. Pretty much I was met with what I now recognise as incredulity and nothing changed, but the attempt mattered to me - recognising problems, proposing solutions, trying to improve things that were in our control. Making an effort. 

When we played hide and seek, I discovered that if I lay very still and flat under my doona, I wouldn't be found. I was skinny enough that the bed looked empty. It worked the first few times, so I kept using it. Stillness as camouflage. Disappearing in plain sight as strategy.

I can't be precise about when this was either, but likely around four or five my mother would disappear downstairs to the garage for what seemed like months. What could she be doing for all that time? Why was she doing this? Why was I not included? What was she hiding? My birthday arrived and I was given a very large doll's house. Mum immediately explained that she had been building it downstairs in secret. I am pretty sure it had a red roof. There is a photo of it somewhere where I have also set up a clothes line for the dolls' clothes between the bedposts of my bed and me busy at play. Stay tuned...

One summer day I remember demanding to be left home alone for the very first time when everyone went to the pool because a double episode of Batman was on. The station had advised two days before that tomorrow's episode “would not be aired” because of the cricket. However, a double episode would be played the following day. I wasn't going to miss two episodes just to go to the pool. Priorities needed defending.

These are the few memories that have stayed with me, vivid fragments that seemed unrelated for years. The careful cone, the secret doll's house, the family meeting that changed nothing, the stillness under the doona. I couldn’t understand then what connected them - the constant negotiation between what was dangerous and what was possible, between protection and participation, between being seen and staying safe. A childhood built around invisible boundaries I learned to navigate without comprehending their form or origin.

It wasn't until much later in life that I recognised what that tiny cone fragment represented - my father's love working within near impossible constraints, trying to give me belonging when the usual wasn't available. Protection disguised as participation. An attempt at normalcy that required precision, rationing, and constant vigilance against the invisible threats I was too young to fully comprehend.