My humanity is as defined by my willingness to wash the clothes as it is by my poetry. It’s a strange thought. There’s so much love in sharing the load of life, it’s so unromantic and yet so profound. Nightingale jokes that I buy the flowers and she buys the underwear. I love giving thoughtful gifts and being romantic. I am terrible at managing many daily life tasks such as updating elderly underwear or getting letters out into the mail. Nightingale is quite the reverse. Many years ago I’ve been romanced, even seduced. There’s something odd, yet intensely loving about doing the life things together. Our relationship was born out of that, in a way. Both single parents, both essential workers, both needed during covid lockdowns. We shared the load and reeled in shock at getting home to find dinner cooked, dishes washed, or children in bed. Flowers and poetry are lovely of course, but so is a clean kitchen sink.

We are opposites in some ways, outsiders of very different cultures, complimentary and also bewildered by each other. I’m the mad creative intellectual from poverty-ridden Elizabeth who borrowed Hamlet from the lending library so often that they eventually just sold it to me. She’s the wild defiant muso from respectable and educated Blackwood wearing black lipstick to musical theatre and getting drunk at karaoke. Oh, Elizabeth stop being such a scruffy grot! She laughs at me. Oh Blackwood, stop being so snobby! I laugh at her. She’s city, I’m country. She’s international, I’ve barely left my state. She’s private, I’ve spent years being raw in public. We weave it together with our shared love of culture and arts and family and our deep respect for each other’s skills and capabilities.

This year she buys me chocolates for my birthday. I buy her mobility aids when her back goes out. It all goes around in a circle. I think to myself how fortunate I am to have someone who somehow doesn’t lose me, despite the whirlwind of tasks, housing issues, work stresses, sickness, children, projects, and worries. Someone who will drop everything for an hour together with me, will move the earth to get us a night away. However far apart, is facing me, reaching for me. Buys me flowers. Puts on a load of dishes. How much stranger love looks than I used to think it did. How lucky I am.