Did your cousins lead you astray?
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Did your cousins lead you astray?
Is it just me or does everyone think true love lasts forever?
I went home to WA last week. I had a great time, catching up with family and swimming in the beaches of my childhood.
One of the people I saw is my cousin Lee. In 1986, fresh out of high school, I moved to Sydney to live with Lee’s family and go to radio school. I turned 18 that year, Lee turned 15.
Last Friday, Lee and I shared a late night glass of wine on my sister’s front steps. The next day Lee wrote me a letter about love that can’t be dulled by time or distance.
She wrote, I can picture myself sitting in your bedroom in Killara, being educated to the likes of Carole King and Lloyd Cole. I felt so grown up. When you would sit on the floor in front of Play School about 20cm from the TV and eat scrambled eggs with cheese – I would try to play it cool and not seem like I was hanging around just to be with you.
What about when you took me to ‘The Orchard’ in Chatswood (the most tragic pub in Sydney) for my first under-aged pub experience? You suggested vodka and orange (probably because it didn’t taste like alcohol) and can still picture the sign on the door as we entered saying that drinking under age was illegal. I had Dad’s voice ringing in my ears that a criminal record would stay with you for life – hilarious!
Or the night you bought us cigarettes and took me to the golf course to try them. I mostly remember Mum’s headlights coming towards us (never did retrieve the cushions).
Stuart Membery sunglasses. Stuart Membery everything actually.
Watching ‘About Last Night’ and confessing to you my fear that I might one day be a lesbian because I was more fascinated by Demi Moore than with Rob Lowe.
Or that night on holidays in Perth, going with you to source a couple of joints (for my benefit – again as a first) from what felt like the back of Dodgyville and then having Lip Sip Sucks in Kings Park from McDonalds Cups while you marvelled at the configuration of the stars and I secretly felt nothing. And later that year, sitting, talking on your front step after your Dad died.
I remember when you went to Macquarie Radio School and I met John for the first time. It was so awkward for me and I think it was the day that I realised nothing would be the same again. You had grown up and I hadn’t, yet.
Lee’s letter made me laugh and cry. I can only imagine how much her mum and dad wanted to kill me, but outside my immediate family she was my first true love. I think that’s what cousins are for.
Caroline xx
