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When I was five
You’re fragile as a bee
And skinny as a steeple
And all these memories
Are they mine or other peoples?
‘WHEN I WAS FIVE’
(What Was Left, 2005)
My sister Rowena had a crooked smile and a husky voice that made playful adults laugh.
In her prep photo, in her blue-and-white-checked uniform, she appears small and pale. Her hair, long and brown, hangs in looped plaits on either side of her head, blue ribbons in bows on the end. This photo used to sit on a sideboard in our TV room, near our family photo albums, which were lined up in chronological order. Mum has taken to each of their spines with a thin gold pen, her beautiful spindly handwriting documenting the year or years they cover. For the most part, the ratio is two years per album. Some bumper years—like 1993, when Anna gave birth to the first glorious grandchild, India—even warrant their own standalone album. There’s 1989–1990 and1991–1992. But if you look closely, you will see something telling in the chronology. There are only two albums covering 1974–1983. And it’s in the second of those two albums that you will find photos of my sister Rowena on her hospital beanbag; a huge toothy grin shining out from inside her First Holy Communion dress, a gorgeous doll bride swallowed up in white.
One day, while looking through the albums, I noticed there weren’t very many photos of me as a child. For fun, I ribbed Mum about it. I thought it would make her laugh.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘I thought you said you loved me. Why are there so few photos of me as a kid?’
Mum didn’t laugh, she apologised. Said that she was sorry—there was just so much going on. Taking photos used to mean putting film in a camera, focusing the lens, developing the print. But Mum says the real reason she couldn’t take photos is because it was just too hard, felt almost like a betrayal, taking photos without Rowena being home. The only ones that exist from this time are of special occasions, like her Holy Communion. There she is in the photos, Rowie, six years old, with two teeth missing, just like other children her age. Our parents stand beside her, Dad on the left with his hand on her shoulder, and Mum on the right, with me on her hip as usual, smiling. Big sisters Anna and Lisa in matching floral vests and white lacy high-necked shirts are on either side, and there’s big brother James, posing like an angel, leaning over to rest his head on Rowie’s white, sheet-covered beanbag. Although the photo is black and white, I think I remember now that her fingernails were painted bright red that day. Rowena could no longer see colours by then, only light and shade. But she still loved the idea of wearing red—such a grown-up colour. Mum never painted her own nails; it was just one of the little things she and the nurses could do to make Rowena feel special. They would paint her nails, and do her hair with clips, and put little butterfly rings and other sparkly trinkets on her fingers and wrists. I think she may even have been wearing red lipstick, although it’s hard to tell. Maybe I’ve made that bit up.
My eyes return to Mum in the photo, hair tied back, a long dark fringe brushing her brow, crosses and holy medals on a chain around her neck, cheekbones protruding, skin sallow from grief, but still smiling, still a beauty. She must have been so scared. I can imagine it now that I am a mother myself. When I think about it too much, I want to throw up. At the time, I must confess, I did not notice at all. Not consciously, anyway. At three and four and five years of age, I was too busy learning to talk, learning to sing, learning to get what I wanted in ways that made people laugh. In this photo my dad smiles too from behind his original-hipster beard, his curiously broken glasses, his smart three-piece Sunday suit—the suit that served to hold us all together in moments like these. Surely that is the only reason people wear things as uncomfortable as suits and shoulder pads: because of what they symbolise, because symbols matter, because they make us feel strong. What we don’t see in this photo, what is covered by Rowena’s tulle dress, is the black tube travelling from her throat to the life-support machine that beeps next to her bed, the sound a code for: She is alive. She is alive. She is alive.
I think about us sometimes, how right everything had been. Two adults, five kids, one dog. I’m not exactly sure what ‘normal’ means, except we were pretty much it; just a normal family. And then, little by little, we just weren’t, and we never would be again. To this day, the Sandy Bowditches are notoriously bad at saying goodbyes. At the end of every family gathering, we hug each other, say ‘I love you’ to everyone, and then, more often than not, we do it all over again, just for good luck. Mum is the worst. She doesn’t let us or our kids leave without putting her right thumb to our foreheads in a sign of the cross; a blessing, just in case. What harm can it do, she says. Then, as we drive off in our cars, she stands out on the balcony waving. We roll down our windows and wave back, and we do that until the moment we lose sight of each other. I’ve got a sore neck just thinking about it.
My sister Rowie was five and in prep when she first began having trouble with her appetite. For some unknown reason she couldn’t seem to keep food down. This left her fatigued, and
