Joey

Early 1980s:

 

I have been sick in bed for two days now, and it looks as though the whole week is a write-off as far as school is concerned. There are always consolations. My father brings home a haversack full of joey, a bottle and teats, and a formula for the milk. For the rest of the week, I take on the mentality of a mother kangaroo: solicitous, single-minded, ready to lash out at anything that might threaten my little loved one. The haversack is my pouch, and the alarm clock is set and re-set for every feeding-time.

 

It is late, and I have showered, and am in my pyjamas, ready for bed, drinking Sleepytime tea with leatherwood honey. The joey is wrapped in a jumper, inside the haversack, with just his legs sticking out. I mix and warm the milk, then bundle him out, and he stares up at me, the deep brown lozenges of its eyes radiating trust and dependence. And there we are, in suspended animation, feeling each other’s warmth.

 

Nearly three decades later, I swear that when I close my eyes, I can still smell the milk, and hear the stream of bubbles coursing into the bottle. Staring at the photograph, I suddenly realise that I have unconsciously folded my arms in the attitude of nurture.

 

He is silent and satisfied, and I wipe away a warm trickle of milk from the side of his mouth. The leathered pads of his hind feet are bundled up against his whiskered chin. He closes those believing eyes, and I cradle him to sleep.

 

Photograph tinted with watercolour by Leslie Watson, c. 1982.

 

Done