DIARY – LOVE AT CUMBERSOME CORNER – A Cumbersome Christmas – PT 15

By Bruce Williams

Fifty years ago, when Eliisabet and Peeter moved to Cumbersome to be closer to the Spiritualist Church on Disraeli Street, this was a respectable neighbourhood down on its luck. Estonian Theosophists weren’t exactly considered part of that respectability, but if you kept to yourself, and grew your vegetables out in the backyard, and not the front like those Greeks do, the locals were polite enough.

Then came the slum years. Soon, Churches and the TAB were the only game in town, and the Viceroy fed off the crumbs. Bigger houses were divided into two for the rent. Smaller ones added lean-to extensions when children overflowed or grandparents came to stay.

In this way, while the population grew, nothing new got built. The parks were lucky to get a spring mow, so kids would run around in knee-high grass, slide down metal slippery-dips with a concrete slab for a landing pad, and return home with grazed knees and itchy legs. It seemed like every house had a cat and an incinerator.

Then the older houses began to collapse out of sheer indifference. And when the roof caved-in of the house next door to Eliisabet and Peeter, and the house further up burnt down shortly afterwards, the two blocks where combined, and the first of many red-brick four-storeyed blocks of flats were raised. A sign of good times returning.

Today, in flat number 7, childhood sweethearts Frank and Michelle are celebrating the fifth Christmas of their marriage.

It was Christmas number 4 that the penny finally dropped for Michelle. Having been sacked from this third job that year (not bad for Frank actually), he decided to make the most of his spare time by doing something special for their Estonian neighbours who had been so welcoming, especially over past Christmases, offering the newly-weds jars of yellow kõrvitsasalat pickle, and sweet piparkoogid neatly packed into an old Arnott’s tin.

So one night he climbed over the wonky grey fence, waded through pumpkin vines and reached the collapsed remains of the outhouse, from where he removed the dirt-encrusted porcelain toilet, before escaping through the back gate and into the lane behind.

Many weeks later, on Christmas Day, Frank and Michelle re-presented this to them. Frank had wanted to create something to remind the old couple of home. He’d hogged Michelle’s laptop for the past month looking at Estonian tourist sites and Wikipedia pages to come up with this design. He purchased shiny blue glass tiles, 2-cm square, which he fixed neatly to the inside and outside surfaces of the toilet’s lid. Then, onto the seat, terracotta of the same size, while the bowl itself was painted in diagonal stripes of green and grey enamel – inside and out.

Michelle observed the presentation wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole – rather like the outhouse pit of old might do to the unwary. And, at first, it did seem as if the presentation was going to be the disaster she feared, as Peeter and Eliisabet examined in silence the strange object that Frank had carried into and unveiled in their living room.

Then Frank lifted the seat. And, seeing that terracotta curve rise against the shiny blue of the lid behind, vividly, even violently, recalled the onion-domed churches of Tartu, Põlva, and grand, sea-side Tallinn. And the old couple wept in each other’s arms and shook Franks hands, repeating over and over – kodumaa, and ilus, ülikena – homeland, beautiful, wonderful. And aituma! – thank you!

All that work, all that time, all that success – for the people next door.

This last December, Frank had been working on another project that required Michelle’s laptop.

Last year it just irritated her that Frank could spend so much time and energy on something that did not result in money. This year carried the added irritation that he was keeping her from keeping up to date on rsvp.com.au.

And on Christmas Day, Frank unveiled something for her – a screen-printed design from scans from their wedding. Not images of themselves, but of their dearest friends taken with the disposable cameras they’d had placed on each table at the reception. And, once again, it was Frank’s success.

Michelle cried in his arms – it was beautiful, it was wonderful, it was home. And it was over.

What’s so disturbing about Christmas’ It’s like falling in love again. Each Christmas is the same as last Christmas – only different.