For Nanny.

11.05.2026

Her name was Myrtle. She hated it. She changed it to Kathy before I was born. When I found out she had a different name I was entranced - you could do that? You could not like your name and choose a new one? There was hope for me yet.

She was softly spoken and gentle, hair as red as anything. No one else in our family got red hair. It was something she kept for herself, and took with her. Her house was near the beach, a terrace shrouded in palms and other leafy greens that thrived in the Darwin humidity. The big fan on the roof was the soundtrack to every Friday night, Pizza Friday, to our glee - mum never let us have anything like that. Grandpa eventually had a Pizza Friday induced heart attack, he was fine and I don’t think his doctor loved that he would go on eating BBQ Meatlovers regardless.

We would go to the beach, often. I have an immense scar on my knee from falling in a hole while chasing Goldie, Nanny’s wheezy little dog along the shore. Hair snarled from fingers of salty air raking it into knots, itching head to toe from sand fleas biting at our bare skin. The smell of Wet Season Rain on sand is unlike anything else on earth. We would go hunting for sea glass - the deep sapphire blue was prized in Grandpa’s eyes, he wanted to make a tabletop with it. Their strange, organically shaped bathroom with a shower built into the wall like a heart chamber was tiled with the same colour.

Nanny worked as a nurse, she took me to visit the old people on a few occasions and I bonded with an elderly woman named Ruby who was all alone, her Mob were up in Arnhem Land. I wanted to make her something special - hand sewing a little heart shaped pillow. I lay on Nanny’s bed and got to work, stitching mine & Ruby’s name into the little piece. I was so engrossed with my work, I didn’t notice I had picked up a piece of duvet with it and was sewing it directly into the duvet cover. Nanny didn’t skip a beat and cut the little trinket out of the cover for safe delivery to Ruby. She just loved her grandkids like that.

Grandpa used to wind me up on the phone when we lived far away. He would tell me he was going to mail me a “crocodile in a box” and I would get near on hysterical debating whether or not mum and dad said it was okay. Nanny would always calm me down, and I would warily wait for a large, reptile sized parcel to arrive. One year, they bought me a little portable DVD player for Christmas, when my OCD was at its worst and I was suffering from agoraphobia. I fell asleep every night with the same “safe” movie playing. I don’t think they ever knew how much it saved my life. She would always sound surprised at whatever update that mum and dad had definitely already told her. “Oh truuuuly!” It became a vocal stim amongst me and my siblings. She was so gentle, so soothing, we looked forward to telling her something that would earn that response.

As she aged, her voice became softer, her little mannerisms in her little northern accent became more worn. Grandpa passed away a few years ago, he was a tough old guy - when we got the news of throat cancer, after surviving war, strokes and heart attacks he simply said “something’s gotta kill me”. Nanny was softer than that, I know losing Jim was losing her anchor. She slowly forgot things, as one does while the tides of time dull our edges. I know she wondered where he was in the same way she wondered who we were.

I like to think they’re together now, no longer weary with the passage of time. Two young lovers, sitting in their chairs under the fan, watching the wall of rain come in over the ocean.

I write often about the other of being chronically ill, my ten years in the adult industry, the eldest daughter thought experiment and attempts at scraps of poetry and fiction. It would be lovely to have you here <3

~Z