Massage

When I went for my massage at 3pm on Wednesday, Tom greeted me with just about all the English words he knows, "Baby, sleep, Wednesday 3 o'clock". I understood. He has a wall of photos and I've watched as his baby granddaughter grew. His daughter and granddaughter were up from Sydney on a visit and I had suggested that he might bring the little one to the massage room so that I could meet her. It was quite understandable that the baby was napping in the afternoon.

Tom kept repeating, "Thursday, 11 o'clock." Ah, he wants me to come in on Thursday and he'll have the baby there at 11am, I thought. He handed me a piece of paper and a pen and asked me to write ........ what? So I wrote my mobile phone number. Although I couldn't see why he would want that!! At that point, Steve left, believing that he understood all that was happening!

Tom made it clear that the phone number wasn't what he wanted.
Eventually, after much pantomiming and the repetition of, "Thursday, 11am", I got it! Or I presumed that I did. So, I wrote down the address of the caravan park and our site number.

Right on the dot of 11, their car pulled up. What a nice surprise! I had hopefully set up tables and chairs outside in the dappled sun but I wasn't totally certain that I had understood the arrangements correctly!!

Tom's wife Annie and her daughter, whose name we never discovered, hurried across, carrying little Belinda, pointing at me and repeating the Chinese word for Grandmother, which sounds very much like Nana. (Pronounced Nanay.) Eventually, the little one, about 18 months, was calling me by that name! I felt quite honoured!

Annie speaks a little English and Tom speaks very little. We thought that their daughter, being young, would be very fluent. Wrong! Inexplicably, after 15 years here, she speaks none. Bang went my plans for asking some of the questions I hadn't been able to get through to Tom or Annie.

Despite the language difficulties, we had a lovely hour or so together. They were thrilled to look through the caravan, darting here and there with sudden expressions of delight, like excited kids. Maybe they had never been inside a caravan before.

I had got some Textas and paper to entertain Belinda and was a bit worried about her getting the colors on her skin and clothes. I stopped worrying when Annie drew a watch on Belinda's arm!! She is a really lovely, relaxed Grandmother.

It's hard for me to imagine being forced to have just one child, with the possibility of having only one Grandchild.

Tom had handed Steve a bag on his way in. After they left, I investigated the contents. It was 2 packets of Chinese cigarettes, named Eighth Happiness!!!!!! Oh my!

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