bathroom revelations

This morning I ran out of "carta igienica".

Now most of you would think "bad house-keeping, but where's the big deal?"

Those of you who know me well know that I NEVER run out of toilet paper. This is the girl who used to buy it wholesale, 52 rolls to a carton.

This is the girl who is old enough to remember long drops, the sun streaming in, the pile of newspaper neatly torn into squares, being able to leave the door open to see the animals because her grandparent's long drop faced the hill and no one but friendly animals ever came down that way.

This is the girl who used to spend forever sitting in that outhouse rubbing newspaper until it was soft enough for a "baby's bottom". This is the girl who knows that dock leaves are best in an emergency out in the hills.

This is the girl who remembers being carried out into the dark last thing at night by her Dad, who talked to her all the way, past the possums in the orchard, but can't remember whether that was to keep her feet clean because she was ready for bed or because she was afraid of possums. I was three, and apparently the first change my parents made when they bought that farm was to install the toilet. I don't remember that happening, but I do remember the long drop. Later that is where my cousins and I hid the things we didn't want our mothers to know we were reading. I learnt a lot, in that out-house.

But as usual, I digress.

I have always thought of myself as a "belts and braces" girl. Always have a back-up plan, never take risks, or if you must, make sure they are calculated risks. But my family also had another expression, "flying by the seat of your pants". Occasionally I guess I did that too. And my grandmother always said that when you went out from home, you must always wear your newest underwear just in case there was an accident and you ended up in hospital, and someone might just see the under layer.

I have thought a lot about my grandmother over the last few years. She was quite a girl. A really strong, capable woman, pillar of society, fantastic cook, could make a dress out of nothing, and in her day, "quite a gal". As a teenager she was dared to swim across the Wairoa River where it runs through the town. She did, in her underwear. She got cramp, and couldn't swim back to her clothes. She had to wait on the North Clyde side until it was dark, and sneak back across the bridge to retrieve her clothes and her dignity. Does make you wonder a little about her friends, really!

She had an argument with her father at 19, and walked out of home, getting as far as Napier where she found work and stayed. She didn't communicate with her parents or come back for two years, when her father finally went to look for her. Wairoa to Napier was not an easy trip back then, and maybe father and daughter were both strong willed. That part I am only guessing.

She never learned to use a washing machine, and her hand washed bed-linen was always snowy white. When she died we found drawers of immaculately mended, perfectly folded, snowy white underwear. Waste not, want not. I learned that lesson well. She also taught me how to make the lightest of pikelets. I was making some at the very time she died.

I think she was 86 when she died. Six weeks prior to her death she was out in her garden, still digging with a spade. I used to write to her on Sundays. For several years, on the odd Sunday, I would sit down to write to her, only to remember that she had died. I guess she is still with me.

But that was another digression.

I think, at the beginning of this, I set out to say that the rest of yesterday's question, "what took you so long?" was quite likely to have been "What took you so long to learn to fly?" Not perfect grammar, I will admit, but that's what we said, way back then.

And now that my wings are getting stronger I too wonder, as I begin to recognise the woman in the mirror, what took you so long?
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And, just in case you were worried, of course there was a box of tissues in the bathroom!
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