Chapter 2

I remember the kitchen in my uncle's house.

I had rented a room from a crotchety old woman my first two months in Sydney. It was the first time she'd let out a room and had too rules on what I could and could not do, too many things to say, too many idiosyncrasies for me to bear. So I moved out and stayed with an uncle for a couple more months. The next session, I moved into the apartment and stayed there.

The house itself looked shabby and small from the outside. But inside, it was comfortable and felt lived-in. The living room was perpetually dark because of the heavy curtains but the kitchen and the rooms facing the downward slope behind the house were full of light. The kitchen was my favourite part of the house (the bathroom, with its heat lights and angular bath, came a close second, especially when it got colder). It had wooden floor planks and a large blonde wood table in the center. I spent my Saturday mornings at that table, poring over the weekend edition of the SMH in a quiet house. My uncle was hardly around, which suited me well, and Saturday mornings were no exception.

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My first morning in Sydney after a 4 month absence was sunny-beautiful. I woke up early that morning with a not-quite heavy heart, but a rather weighted one nevertheless. The strange feeling I had the night before still lingered and even now I can't quite describe it. It was slightly surreal, but then everything remembered takes on that quality. Possibly a cross between deja vu and jamais vu, although that doesn't at first glance make sense. It was that feeling of familiarity and comfort mingled with displacement and dispossession. This sensation never really went away during the trip, but it was the strongest those first few days living in the old flat.

Stepping out into the morning sun dispersed the sensation. It was only 10am but already the light was intensely bright (that rhymes!) without the suffocating humidity and heat that envelopes the tropics. How orientalist that sounded. It was exceptionally warm for mid-autumn, something I realized a few days later when the weather returned to normal. But that day was perfect.

It had rained early in the morning and the ground was still slightly damp. I remember smiling at the warmth on my legs from the sun, practically glowing at just being there and walking the familiar path to uni. The thing about being absent from a place is how much you forget in the interim, both the good and the bad. I had forgotten so much: the way those fig-like fruit crushed on the walkway perfume the air with their sweet, pungent scent, how bracingly crisp the air is there, the smell of cut grass drifting in from the racecourse. Sensory overload.