Waltzing the Magpies: A Year in Australia

Sweeping Days

Sweeping Days ~ Vicki spent seventy-three days in the United States, most of the time in New Jersey cleaning her mother's house. Getting rid of possessions was hard, and she carted mounds of furniture and bric-a-brac to Connecticut, piling them into a storage cubicle in Willington. In Perth life was neater. In the university library I thumbed books. "My tastes are with the aristocrats, my principles with the mob," the Reverend F. W. Robertson wrote in the nineteenth century. "I know how the recoil from vulgarity and mobocracy , with thin-skinned and over fastidious sensitiveness, has stood in the way of my doing the good I might do. My own sympathies and principles in this matter are in constant antagonism, and until these can be harmonized, true Christianity is impossible ." "Exactly," I thought, closing Robertson's Life and Letters, saving the book for Connecticut, for nights following afternoons spent sorting in Willington. On March 4 Edward, Eliza, and I spent an afternoon at Perry Lakes watching a track meet sponsored by a telephone company. Members of the Australian Olympic team participated. When I was a boy in Nashville, Father took me to track meets at Vanderbilt . In Perth proximity to the past, not celebrity, created enjoyment . Sitting between Eliza and Edward, I imagined myself my father. When I said I looked forward to the 800- and 400-meter races, I spoke more to a younger me than to Edward or Eliza. For a decade I ran road races in Connecticut. One year I ran nineteen 172 races. My goal was to finish in the lower 50 percent of runners. I was successful seventeen times. In 1985 my neck grew painful with bone spurs, and I stopped racing and began swimming. Because Kalgoorlie Street wasn't close to a pool, I started jogging in Perth. Twice a week I shuffled through Mosman Park and Peppermint Grove. When I noticed gardens, I stopped, not to catch breath but beauty. After the track meet I increased the jogs to three times a week, each run covering 5.37 kilometers. On April 8 I ran my first race in sixteen years, the twenty-fifth Bridges Fun Run, ten kilometers beginning at Langley Park, going west along Riverside Drive then crossing the Swan River at the Narrows Bridge. The course circled Perth Water. After crossing the Narrows, runners turned east along the South Perth Esplanade. At the Causeway Bridge the course crossed back over the Swan and turning west again returned to Langley Park. I wore a baggy blue bathing suit, high gray socks, and a white T-shirt, printed on the front ofwhich was a husky dog, the mascot of the University of Connecticut. Beneath the dog I pinned my number, 1833. Six years old, the shirt was ready for first grade. My shoes were old enough for middle school. I plucked them off the reduced rack at Nassiffs Sports Store in Willimantic twelve years ago. Because I wore them when I mowed grass in Connecticut, they were green. Eliza stood by me at the start. Once the race was underway, I didn't see her until the finish where she sat on the ground and cheered me across the line. The race took sixty-two minutes and fourteen seconds. I started at the rear of the pack and during the race passed several barrelshaped people. I also chatted with runners who trotted beside me. Few wanted to talk. People who ran my pace were either aged or unfit and had to concentrate energies in order to finish. After five kilometers my left hip began to hurt, and I worried that the bone might warp into shards, a thought that helped me ignore the tick of distance. For me the run was the high point of Vicki's absence. For Eliza the race was so flat that it didn't smack of event. At home Edward waited to hear from colleges. In November Edward behaved willfully . Instead of taking three Scholastic Achievement Tests, as Sweeping Days ~ 173 most colleges required, he took two, saying, ''I'm tired oftests." At Christ Church he quarreled with an art teacher and received a C. "Not my first," he said. Still he made an Soo on the SAT II in writing . Vicki and I didn't know what to expect. "He'll get in somewhere ," she said before leaving Perth. "If worrying about...