Danielle Catherine

Sydney is expecting a ‘rain bomb/cyclone’ today. This poem and photo inspired by the 2024 Hawkesbury floods is for anyone who lives near a waterway and, like me, hopes this is mere hyperbole.

Natural wonders arise after extreme weather event
Waterfall trickles over footpath as the swollen river recedes
Egrets poke their beaks at exciting washed-up lunch smorgasbord in waterfall
Out-of-town gawkers juggling pram and leashed dogs take opportune selfies with egrets on waterfall
Helicopter photographer sees the forest from the underwater trees, peering down at waterfall, egrets and gawkers.

This poem was published in Pop Up Zine 2024 (online), NEW Writers’ Group inc., a Western Sydney publication.

As a hopeless (and hapless) INFJ romantic, I embraced the challenge of writing a Valentine’s Day poem for my writer’s group’s open mic competition. This departure from my memoir comfort zone earlier this year became the harbinger for a biblical-scale flood of creative fertility, informing a long form autobiographical project. Expect darker subject matter, with love, laughter and music at its core. Watch this space.

Daily symphony

Secret musical companion, let’s converse.
Fill my abstract gap, my autobiographical urge.
Laughter, sigh, question, answer: a bass and treble harmony
With gentle jocular repartee
We transcend the changing of light bulbs
The routine restocking of sustenance
The mundane stream of ‘friendly reminders’ in our inboxes.

The doorbell rings.
Another Amazon delivery
Disrupts the disruptive while I’m
Scrawling ‘Apples’ then ‘Bananas’ on a shopping list.

A version of this work was published in ZineWest: Western Sydney poetry art prose, 2022. Awarded First Prize and Best Prose.

Haircut 1: the bob

Mum helps me to slide the glass door open because it always gets stuck.

‘Chin-length bob with a fringe, the usual,’ she says.

First, a shampoo. The basin is cold and hard against my neck. I squirm trying to find a comfortable position but there’s no such thing. He senses my discomfort and pulls out the grey neck-rest. It’s damp and smelly. I don’t care. The foam padding hugs my neck in its neat curve.

Then, to the swivel chair where my feet dangle under the long black gown. A black-and-white model looks at me through the mirror. Wearing black lace underwear and silk dressing gown, her long curly hair drapes over one shoulder and cascades in waves to her hip.

Phillip Street is more theatre than thoroughfare. One hears an engine before seeing the car. I turn my head at the screeching display of mechanical machismo.

‘Keep your head straight or soon you’ll have a mullet.’

He holds the scissors against my forehead, the cold silver jolt a reminder that I need to stay especially still.

‘Close your eyes.’

I peek one eye open to watch how he does it, a careful straight line above my eyebrows. Not one strand out of place.

Our family get our hair cut here and always have. Later, in high school, I’ll find myself ashamed to go here. On route to the train station, my friend will say, ‘You always get the same boring haircut, you should go somewhere different,’ shaking her long black emo fringe out of her eyes.

Haircut 2: the pixie

I’m hugging my friend who is similarly cling-wrapped, our teeth clenched in the same ‘what did I just do?’ smile.

I calculate the timing of my rebellion perfectly: before Schoolies, after the formal. Long brown parcels falling on to white tiles. A tickling breeze blows the back of my neck and I shiver. I look in the mirror, behind me an emo girl has a similar haircut of spiky layers to the chin at the front and a shaved nape.

Oh wait, that’s me.

In a Port Macquarie hotel with walls lined with bottles of vodka, gin and whisky, a paintbrush of cold red dye glides over Haircut 2. She covers my head in cling wrap, the pressure a little too tight. I feel like myself for the first time, until I look in the mirror and realise I feel like an alien.

A photo is taken which will later appear on MySpace. I’m hugging my friend who is similarly cling-wrapped, our teeth clenched in the same ‘what did I just do?’ smile.

Haircut 3: the mullet

‘This is how you get rock ‘n’ roll layers,’ she says. I wonder how she knows my record collection without even asking.

She holds clumps of hair and runs scissors at an angle down each strand. The result is very ‘70s punk, boundary-pushing. Dad will be annoyed so I love it.

‘You look like Pat Benatar,’ says my uncle as he carves generous slices of Christmas ham.
But who is Pat Benatar? After the day of heady eating and unsolicited comments draws to a close, I type the name into a search engine. She is outside of the time frame of acceptable music (‘50s to ‘70s) and therefore not in my CD collection.

Oh no. I have an ‘80s mullet.

After weeks of wearing beanies in summer, I take Haircut 3 to Macquarie Uni orientation day with three high school friends. Two out of the three friends aren’t even enrolled but come for the adventure. Eschewing any academic events, we climb on steel sculptures in green parklands, taking photos of ourselves with silly faces. We walk to the shopping centre, across a dirt path that will later become the glass archway of a monolithic metro.

‘Your hair looks amazing,’ says the friend who used to walk with me to the station.

I reach for my headphones as we roll across the tarmac. Not the wireless Bluetooth kind endorsed by the likes of Will-I-Am; the cheaper option with string perennially tangled. I’m ready to listen to a meditation podcast called ‘Fear to Fun: gently guiding you from the state of fear into creating more fun and excitement in your life’. With Frankie magazine and reusable pink water bottle jammed into the seat pocket, I press the button on the armrest to recline my seat, fully prepared to enter a state of repose on this flight. I’m wearing a cotton mandala-print scarf, floral harem pants and yellow cross-trainers; a trusted ensemble for traversing airport terminals with the utmost efficiency while ensuring I am stylish and comfortable. Aware that I’m giving off serious mum vibes, I feel a strange urge to ask someone else’s kids if they packed sunscreen.

Due to an unforeseen cancellation last night (budget airline, two-minute thunderstorm, nothing they can do), I find myself on the Saturday Morning Schoolies Flight from Sydney to the Gold Coast. Surfers Paradise: the number one destination every November for Year 12 students who have finished their final exams. As a rite of passage and acceptable social norm, Schoolie teenagers feel the need to consume more alcohol than a seasoned LA rock star, wear tank-tops with arm holes cut out into half-moons, and dance on sandy beaches like confused lobsters struck by the disorienting midday sun.

Although her head is bowed over the tray table in deep concentration, there aren’t many numbers in her squares.

‘Why are you being such a nerd?’

There are no visual cues that mark her as the popular one. Like everyone else in the group, she’s wearing Adidas slides, singlet with half-moon arm holes, and shorts that could be classified as underwear (now I really feel like a mum). Status is therefore established through actions alone. She turns to the row behind her. Her similarly attired friend pulls out a sudoku book, then waves her hand in the aisle to flag down the flight attendant.

‘Hey, do you have a spare pencil? I just really want to finish my sudoku, I’m going so well.’

Although her head is bowed over the tray table in deep concentration, there aren’t many numbers in her squares. One minute into my mindfulness podcast, the two girls decide to hark back to their unresolved conflict from Miss Baxter’s class in Term 3.

‘I didn’t want you out of the group, I never said that.’
‘Yes you did. I heard the words come out of your f***ing mouth.’
‘Don’t swear. There are other people here.’
‘I don’t give a shit.’
The flight attendant runs down the aisle. ‘Could you ladies please be quiet? Everyone needs to hear the in-flight emergency procedure.’

I curl up my headphones and scrunch them into my backpack. Perhaps I can learn more about fun and excitement from these Schoolies than from a soft-spoken meditation expert based in Boca Raton (living there, of course she would be chilled). Pretending to fall asleep, I eavesdrop on vivid conversations: twilight beach parties, theme parks, how to meet hot guys. I’m transported into a world more spontaneous than mine, wilder than my current dilemma of whether to have more than two coffees today.

Halfway to the Gold Coast, the long-suffering steward softens like a square of butter on a hot bread roll (a menu item one would pay $11.95 for on this flight).

An audible cheer as the drinks trolley clinks up the aisle. The flight attendant rolls her eyes, asks for ID, sighs as she shovels ice into plastic cups.

‘Three Coronas please.’
‘Do you have Jack Daniels?’
‘We’ll have four VBs.’

It’s just past 10am. I didn’t think the song lyric ‘It’s five-o-clock somewhere’ applied to a domestic flight with total duration of one hour ten minutes, but here we are.

Halfway to the Gold Coast, the long-suffering steward softens like a square of butter on a hot bread roll (a menu item one would pay $11.95 for on this flight). I wonder if, like me, she’s overcome with nostalgia.

‘Wow, youse are the most well-behaved Schoolies I’ve ever seen,’ she says, addressing the row of boys behind me.
‘Ah…thanks.’

Longest pause ever known to humanity.

‘Can I get another Corona?’

My own Schoolies experience was, well, interesting. Not because we could only afford to go to Port Macquarie, or because I was still seventeen and most of my friends were eighteen. At a friend’s pre-formal drinks, a platter of food gravitated in my direction: tiny parcels of gleaming orange salmon atop sticky white rice. I had no time for lunch that day, preparing for the formal with back-to-back hair styling and Napoleon make-up appointments. I consumed several portions of sushi.

Big mistake.

I vomited throughout my entire formal. My parents, seemingly in denial that anything bad was happening, danced to the music while steering my fellow classmates away from the toilet I was in (which didn’t lock, and happened to be in full view of the dance floor).

In the days that followed, food poisoning mutated into an unexplained virus. My friend’s mother, who drove some of us to Port Macquarie, prescribed every remedy in her arsenal to cure my mystery affliction: ginger beer, Eno, Nurofen. Nothing worked.

We arrived at our Port Macquarie hotel and realised we were on our own. Freedom. Photos of the time show me smiling, with a new pixie haircut and no outward sign of how I felt. I tried to join in the festivities as best I could. Buying nachos ingredients to cook together for dinner, riding back to the hotel cross-legged in the shopping trolley, drinking vodka and soda, sticky-taping each other to chairs. Although it defies medical science, these things made me feel better, not worse. Sitting on the beach at night with my best friend, watching the lights from the RSL on the headland beam over crashing waves: I felt free for the first time. Back when I didn’t need a podcast to remind myself how to have fun.

‘Cabin crew, be seated for landing.’

My stomach leaps. I tighten my seatbelt, an illusion of control over unexpected turbulence. The girl attempting to play sudoku screams and curls into a ball.

‘Why are you stroking my leg?’ she asks the popular girl.
‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to help.’
‘Well stop. It’s f***ing weird.’
‘I told you to stop swearing. There are people around.’
‘No-one cares. Look. They’re not even listening to us.’

A version of this work was published in ZineWest: Western Sydney poetry art prose, 2019. Awarded Highly Commended.

Ingredients

4 Aunties in the kitchen

4 Large McCafe coffees

Big silver bowl

Conversation

Also: burghul, lentils, lemon and garlic. Only one auntie knows the exact quantities of each. It’s a secret recipe written on a scrap of paper, lodged in a recipe book in someone’s house somewhere.

The McCafe coffee tradition merged with the burghul and lentil soup tradition a few years back, when Taita was still with us. The only drink we were allowed on Good Friday was water, because Taita believed we needed to suffer like Jesus did. My family is afflicted by a horrible genetic condition known as ‘Early Morning Intolerance’, so this truly was suffering of the worst kind. But one year, Mum cracked like a lentil in boiling water. She did the naughtiest thing she’s ever done before or since: swerve into the McCafe drive-thru and order four large lattes, fearing the wrath of Taita more than God. I remember holding the flimsy cardboard tray for the rest of the car ride, only to endure the divine reckoning of coffee overflowing and scalding my tiny hands.

Method

Step One: There is no method

Auntie is responsible for kneading the burghul in the big silver bowl. She presses her fingers between the grains to measure the texture, asks me to add more water, sprinkles more salt, tastes a spoonful, asks me to add more water, asks me to add more flour, pounds the burghul a little more, tastes a spoonful.

Perfect.

We are ready to roll.

The traditional Lebanese dish, Kibbit healeh, has been altered beyond recognition in our household. Once, I tried to feverishly transcribe the recipe, but gave up after realising it was an assortment of vague, subjective commands rather than any measurable methodology.

Taita is also credited with inventing a unique deviation from the original recipe: the fried burghul nugget. In a completely different process to the soup ball, to create the fried nugget we use three fingers to flatten the ball into a disc shape, leaving a jagged imprint. Then we fry the nuggets in a saucepan sizzling with crispy brown onions. This spin-off originated when a soup ball accidentally fell into the onion pan. The rest is history.

Auntie is the nicest person you’ll ever meet. However, she’ll quickly turn into Lebanese Gordon Ramsay the moment you roll an unsatisfactory burghul ball.

Step Two: A round ball is a good ball

Auntie is the nicest person you’ll ever meet. However, she’ll quickly turn into Lebanese Gordon Ramsay the moment you roll an unsatisfactory burghul ball. It was cute when our cousins were babies, throwing squares and hexagons into the broth willy-nilly. But if you’re an adult and are still unable to form a perfect sphere, Auntie will evict you from the kitchen faster than an MKR contestant plating up undercooked chicken. Case in point: Good Friday 2018, when she ordered my brother to cease all rolling immediately and fix the TV instead.

Step Three: Like something out of The Sixth Sense

One minute the kids are watching music videos; next minute, the TV is glowing white. I comment that music video technology has really come a long way, before realising there is actually something wrong. My brother fiddles with some dials at the back of the monitor, unplugs and plugs in various cables. But the screen remains white.

Then, this. Mum reminds us of a chilling fact.

Taita never let us watch TV on Good Friday.

Shudder.

Step Four: Mass exodus

When I was young, my whole family were compelled to go to Our Lady of Lebanon church for 3pm mass. Most of the congregation had also cooked and consumed burghul balls for lunch, so the air in the church was a thick and suffocating infusion of garlic, onion, and surges of incense. If a vampire happened to walk within a two-kilometre radius of Harris Park, our collective breath would have exterminated their soul within seconds.

This year I decide to stay home with my siblings, because Mum and Dad’s Foxtel subscription is our Easter miracle. While they endure two hours of morbid reflection, kneeling in prayer for their children’s sins, we resurrect old episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and worship the awkward situational faux-pas of life on earth.

Garnish with a small sprig of guilt.

Serves 18-20 people, give or take, with some leftovers for lunch tomorrow and a little extra if the neighbours visit.