Spring Past

An apartment we rented for a year in Vermont was one of the first spaces we had that was ours. It was the top floor of a simple house built in the 1920’s. I used to stomp through the snow, leaving a dirty path round the side of the house, to our door at the back. It was just the door, perhaps there was a small raised area, to bang the snow off, and then the stairs going up to our two rooms. The kitchen was galley style, something we were used to, squashed against the top of the stairs, and there was one door to our unheated bathroom. We smoked our pale blue Drum then and drank jugs of Carlo Rossi red wine in squarish wine glasses my mum had sent from Australia. Rugged up we would blow our smoke out the open window into the white night. Still invincible enough not to care. Enough ourselves still unknown to spend nights revealing.

There was an inlet for a bed and two closets on either side of the sloping roof with a long oil heater between them. As we unpacked that first day, the space for our meagre collection of belongings overwhelmed us even in that tiny apartment, ‘a closet each!?’. Andrew decided to hang a shirt of his in my space, and a skirt of mine in his, keeping our close lives with us.

That winter I went skiing for the first time which terrified me to the extent that I tore a ligament in my knee and spent six weeks confined in that apartment with a cat named Steve. We watched the winter out the window, the cat blinking beside me. 

We had a tv, but no aerial so we just watched videos from our mattress on the floor. Andrew would hire ten movies for me at a time, obscure French ones called ‘Clare’s Knee’, that he thought I would like. I considered sabotaging my life as I knew it by smoking cigarettes in bed while I ate greasy chips and wiped my hands on the sheets. I ended up losing 3 kilos and knitting a beautiful, long, purple scarf that wore for years until I left it at a cafe in Northcote.

The spring made me and the birds happy. The rain fell and Steve and I watched the robins and blackbirds peck long worms out of the soft ground. They flew through the rain, seeking no shelter, relishing the change of season. My knee healed and I went back to work at the bookshop.