You wanted to know why I didn’t call.
By Jacob Mills
The sun breaks through the wild apple tree and she’s kneeling, glowing, with her basket and gloves ready. She smiles that smile only a mother’s love for a still innocent boy can give – though she still smiles at me like that, unconditionally. And she beckons me. I move over to her and she hands me a trowel. This is one of my earliest memories. She showed me many gentle things. But she wasn’t afraid to be tough, though always within reason.
I remember eating sour-sobs that were above my knees in the bike shed with my sisters, and the three of us sleeping on a foam mattress in the tray of the old Sierra while dad was spotlighting for rabbits – it was well past bedtime, but we always wanted to go.
My dad worked hard, five-‘til-five. There’s always something to be done when you’re living on the land and some jobs don’t even make the ‘jobs list’. But at the end of the day he’d come and play cricket with me. He’d bowl generously and I’d slog them all over the paddock, and he’d chase them while I ran between the wickets. He was always asleep by eight.
I didn’t grow up with the mod-cons. Every night we cooked our food and heated our water with fire, winter nights around the wood-stove. On the hot summer days, we’d sit in the concrete passageway and play cards to cool off, or swim in the dam and squish the clay mud between our toes. We were so alive and I always felt like we had the riches. I was loved.
But we were just a family of five in 170-odd square kilometres. There was a lot of time spent alone, and time in a dusty place like that drips like molasses, dreamy and slow.
Poco played soccer with me and I’d share my sandwiches with her. When we were both really young, we’d gnaw on each other’s legs and roll around on the red earth. She was a brown kelpie, a working dog. And when she worked or slept, I often played alone. I spent a lot of time alone. Hours and hours a day, for days and weeks on end. Not neglected, but somewhat predisposed to it while in an environment that demanded it. I was growing up introverted in an introverts paradise; out the door after breakfast and back for dinner before bed. I was alone, not lonely.
Poco was my best friend for those early years. Years that instilled in me a deep solace in solitude. I befriended the wide-open spaces between myself and spoken words. Deep solitude is now high on my list of needs, I’m easily saturated and I need to get away – a lot.
Once I started school and sports, I learned about embracing the fun of others, and it came easily. And now I need them both, my loves and my empty spaces.
I deeply enjoy catching up with you – camping, learning, playing, arguing, breaking bread and enjoying beers on a sunny roof somewhere. But when I’m out on the land, I’m with the land, my first and most magnetic love, getting what I need.
That’s why I didn’t call.
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