Author Koh Lin â—¦
I often think of my father… catching fragments of memories from my youth and the times that have indelibly kept a place in that space called memories…
Yet it is strange, how sometimes just a simple photo can bring back a memory where I was not even present, but my father made sure he gave me these photos… and the excitement I expressed on seeing what he had photographed… made us both happy…
So now I think back and recall some of those other animal encounters that shaped my youth… from living next-door to a neighbour in England who owned a Golden Pheasant… and another time in a place called Larkhill… which was only a stone throw from Stonehenge and we as children could get up close and touch Stonehenge (this was before it was fenced off from the tourists).
The place we lived called Larkhill was an important memory, as I can recall bringing back a wounded crow (not sure what my dad did with it), and the neighbour who killed the snake that was on the path between our houses. Then there was Micky the yellow canary… and a weird fragment of memory that the cage he was in was knocked over in the lounge room… Micky survived.
Then our dad got posted to Germany with the whole family, and we found a tortoise with a hole in it’s shell (obviously used to secure it and prevent it from wandering off)… it still managed to escape. Whilst the memory of the tortoise is there, the name isn’t, although I think we might have named it Speedy.
Then there was the biggest guinea pig we have ever seen, that we found in the fields out the back of all the houses. Her name was Jackie (don’t ask me why), but she did answer to that name, always putting her head up when we called out… Jackie!
In the same house, we adopted a dog named Mitzi. I remember her being small and very hairy… having been given to our family by someone my parents knew, who couldn’t take her with them. I have sometimes wondered where she went, as my parents passed her on to another family when we left.
My dad had retired from that life and brought us all to Australia, as my dad’s brother and his family lived here. Australia was the start of a new life.
Of course that was not the end of our animal family, as I recall getting a puppy to give to my parents as an anniversary present. A friend at the time helped me collect the puppy in her car, and the embarrassment I felt when the puppy did a mess in the back seat. My parents called her Bonnie. It wasn’t long after, we adopted Clyde… a spotted handful of a dog, a Dalmatian mix… all this was before I left home to make a life of my own.
I see now, that I had a childhood filled with animals… but back to the memory in hand… my father talking to the Rainbow Lorikeet at the top of the steps into the backyard… it makes me happy and I want to cry…
Check out other blogs by Koh Lin.