My Othering Began Early: Notes from A Summer Afternoon

If I’m honest, my othering started when my daughter was two. I just didn’t realise it then.

One afternoon, I took her to the local pool. It was something we often did in the heat of Adelaide’s summer. I’d pack the esky with curried egg sandwiches wrapped up tight in tin foil to keep them fresh, raspberry cordial frozen solid in a large plastic bottle that melted as the day progressed and chunks of watermelon in an orange Tupperware container, found in a thrift shop for a song. All this was supplemented with icy poles from the pool’s canteen.

I’d find the shadiest gum tree, stake out my turf, and unfold the beach chairs on a tartan blanket near the toddler pool. My book would make an appearance, as would the odd friends eager for respite from the heat and my sister and niece, sometimes.

My daughter would splash around in the shallowest end of the toddlers’ pool in her coloured one piece swimsuit, hair hanging in damp ringlets around her plump face, playing with the other children, making lifetime friends that only lasted for a few hours.

This one day, late in the afternoon, when the orange sun was sinking gracefully into the skyline, job done baking the city, I called her to come out of the pool. She’d been playing with another toddler, a delicate girl with dark hair and pale skin and a man who, with the same dark hair and pale skin, was clearly her father. I had looked up from my book periodically, happy that my daughter was happy.

‘Come on, darling,’ I said, packing our things as I spoke. ‘It’s time to go home.’

She looked directly at me and said: ‘No. I want to go with them.’

I thought nothing of it at the time, and dismissed her comment, telling her again it was time to go home. Her words have haunted me for thirty years.

Because, thirty years later, my daughter has a new them who she has gone with: the family she married into.

Not for lack of trying, I haven’t seen her since her wedding in March 2021.

357 words.

About the #MicroMemoir2025 Challenge

After successfully completing my #12Essays2024 Challenge — by the skin of my teeth, mind you! — I’ve set myself another writing challenge for 2025. This time, my challenge is to write 62 micro memoir pieces this year because I’ll be 62. I’ve done the maths: it’s one piece every five days or so. I got the idea from Deborah Sosin’s post on Brevity, where she wrote about the 70 x 70 word micro memoir pieces she crafted to commemorate/celebrate her 70th birthday. She ended up publishing these pieces as a book. Like Deborah, I enjoy the creative constraints of writing short pieces (and I’ve had some success writing flash fiction). I’ve done a number of Craft Talks workshops on writing micro memoir, but haven’t really written any. So, self, let’s get to it. Challenge accepted, although my word count will be a tad more lenient.

Image credit: Pexels from Pixabay