I was lounging around the area one day, revelling in the conversations drifting around me and loving the accents. Just up from me an elderly lady began to dance. She wore a floaty frock with a bit of lace petticoat dipping below the hem, high heeled sandals, white gloves and a flower in her fading hair. She had her arms up in classic dancing pose and, without a partner, waltzed to music only she could hear. Occasionally she bowed towards the street when someone tooted her. She acknowledged any applause and sometimes drew an unsuspecting child into her dance. I was fascinated. She was totally engrossed in her activity, almost unconscious of her audience, and danced with a smile on her face as though she had been transported back to some magical occasion.
Ireland, I know, and England and Scotland too, really know how to 'do' eccentricity. There is no stigma to being different and no hesitation to flaunt that individuality. I sat there watching the dancer and thought how different it would be if I got up to dance in the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane. People would avoid my eye, I would be hustled away by some authoritarian figure explaining that I could fall and injure myself. I would probably feature in a quirky little bit on the evening news and my kids and grandkids would squirm with embarrassment.
About the time that I returned from working overseas, my daughter Krista and her husband Umar began discussing some sort of living arrangement for their poor decrepit mother. (I had foolishly sold my house before I left and now, five years later was out of a booming market.)They looked at houses that had granny flats and even talked about modifying the house. They could raise the roof and make an attic apartment for me. I think they considered that idea for a while and then stories of the mad woman in the attic began to lodge in their minds.
The mad woman in the attic features in literature, notably for me, in Jane Eyre. There is something sinister, unnerving, terrifying but somehow hypnotic in the situation. It is a bit like going to a horror movie. You know what is going to happen, you partially cover your eyes, but know that you must watch every moment unfold. Similarly, the mad woman in the attic may suddenly escape or her cackling laughter may drift down the stairway. With one part of your mind, you want it to happen, while the other part is paralysed by the thought.
Some of that no doubt went through Krista's mind and she thought about her planned children and wondered what damage would ensue if she added a deranged mother into the family mix. Not that I was actually deranged then but anyone who contemplates dancing solo in the Queen Street Mall needs to be carefully watched.
To avoid the possibilities of the attic, eventually they built a lovely little self-contained cottage in the back yard - close enough to keep an eye on me, but far enough away to shelter innocent children. I guess they decided than a nutty nana or a crazy lady next door was a better proposition than a mad woman in the attic.
My cottage is tiny but has everything I need, mostly neatly stored in cupboards. It may not have the glamour of some homes and mansions and doesn't have the Gothic horror of Victorian era literature but it is just fine for this mad woman.
