Outer Space / Carry On | Michael Clifford AU

10.

On Wednesday night, we thought Joan went into labour. She started having contractions, calmly delegating tasks to my panicked Dad in between: Can you get the baby bag? Yes dear, I'm sure the carseat is properly installed in the car. Could you please get me a glass of water?

Dad thundered around, his face a painting of pure terror, meanwhile I stood there about as useful as a potato because I had no freaking idea what to do. "Is there anything I can get you?"

Joan was silent, breathing through her current contraction. Eventually, I guess when the contraction had passed, she smiled. "Just try to calm your father down."

Dad was just as inexperienced with this as Joan was. I was the product of a one night stand. Dad had tried to coat it with sugar, and called it a fling, but I knew what it was. He tried his best to be around for Mum but he was at law school when she got pregnant. He wasn't there a lot. Maybe one day he'd stop blaming himself for her getting sick.

As Joan's contractions become more regular - 8 minutes apart (I did the timing. Dad was still running around like a headless giant) - they decided they should get to the hospital. Joan was a little bit younger than Dad but still in that age group that seemed to bump your pregnancy up to a higher risk.

Dad was already in the minivan, but Joan seemed stuck in the doorway. "Are you going to be okay here by yourself?"

I nodded, hating that she was worrying about me right now. I was also slightly nervous her water would break and I'd have amniotic fluid all over my feet. "I'll be fine. There's nothing I can do at the hospital anyway."

"I'll get your Dad to text you Mum and Dad's number. Call them if you need them." Joan's parents lived about an hour out of town. If you met them, you'd understand why Joan was so calm and patient. It was obviously genetic.

"I will," I promised, watching Joan's face twist in pain as she started to breath through another contraction. "Now get in the car before we have a baby born in the doorway."

The quiet house seemed to swallow me up. There was just so much house, and so little me. Our two story home was pretty much identical to the others in this street which Joan hated, hence the constant renovating of garden beds and repainting of walls and paying a ridiculous amount of money to have the roof spray-painted from brick red to steel grey.

I went upstairs to my room, peering my head inside the baby's room on the way. It was so surreal to think that there'd be a tiny baby in there soon.

My desk had been cleared from all unfinished paintings. I'd put them in a box which was now tucked away in my built in wardrobe so that I wasn't constantly haunted by them. Now my desk was a complete blank space, minus the wad of blank paper and half a dozen pencils.

I slipped into the chair carefully, pretending the blank paper wasn't staring at me. Above the desk was three shelves. The top two were filled with books (most of them notebooks or sketchpads), an iPhone charger and a bottle of perfume which I'd politely accepted from Joan but had never actually used. 

On the bottom shelf, closest to the desk, sat an empty jar, with Air of The Best Day Ever written across it in 9 year old Alice's handwriting.

I didn't know why I still had it. It was a stupid empty jar. The afternoon I scooped up the air with it, I thought I could see glittering particles of the remnant of what I thought was Best Day Ever. It was the first warm day of Spring. I'd just turned nine and thought I had the whole world figured out.

Mum was going through a good patch, which meant she was out of bed in the mornings and actually able to get dressed. She brought scones from the bakery and we sat outside, lathering them with jam and cream, and afterwards she showed me how to make a crown out of clover. I'd wanted to make a flower crown but we didn't have any flowers in our yard. 'We'll plant some seeds so that we have flowers for next Spring," she promised. That never happened.

As the sun set on that perfect day, I knew I wanted to hold onto it forever. Mum swung on my old swing set, looking up at the sky that looked like a watercolour painting of blushing roses, dusty pinks and periwinkle blues, while I ran inside to grab the empty glass jar I'd been saving to put something special in.

When I came back outside, I spin in a circle, collecting every last bit of the Best Day Ever. Mum helped me screw on the lid tight. "It's been a good day," she said, wrapping her arm around me.

As I got older and the good days become further apart, I kept a hold of the jar, telling myself that there'd be better days ahead.

I probably would have gotten rid of it ages ago except it was one of the few things I had that reminded me of her. Mum wasn't big on being photos, though she took plenty of me before her sickness completely overtook her. The last photo I'd seen her in was one at my third birthday.

Down on the blank paper was now a bunch of words I'd drawn while my memory wandered: stupid empty jar, best day ever, blushing roses. It didn't feel like progress at all, and my handwriting was practically as messy as it was when I was 9.

This was Michael's first piece of advice: write everything down. I was curious about what it was he wrote down. He still hadn't show me a single piece of his artwork which felt a bit unfair given that he'd see The Girl with The Lion Head in the art studio at school. She was one of my favourite (unfinished) pieces to date.

Then a text message came through from Dad: False alarm. No baby yet. On our way home.

So I added a few more words to the paper: false alarm, research baby names, learn more nursery rhymes.