I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
-Plath

I have less than one week left in Australia.

Currently I'm in Perth, staying with dad. This weekend we went to the Margaret River area, a few hours south of the city. It was a bit damp, but a lovely area brimming with vineyards, breweries, chocolate factories, cheese makers and, further out of the valley, bordering the divinely ultramarine waters of the Indian ocean.

The week feels like it's being let down a bathtub drain. Very slowly, but you have the low gurgling to remind you that soon it will be empty and you'll soon be uncovered and chilled. While it's nice to see dad after such a long time he always makes the experience so basic. To him, it seems as if I'm returning after a school term or holiday. As if I come and go often and not, as it is, that we see each other hardly ever. He has been uncovering information about his father, who died when Dad was five. He was fifteen when he sailed into Australian territory as crew of a German merchant ship. He was captured as a Prisoner of War, though the ship was unaware WWI had even begun. He was held in Australia, first near Perth on Rottnest Island and then near Sydney. Until recently I hadn't even known my grandfather's name. Not because it was hidden or kept as a secret, but only because his side of the family doesn't discuss the past. My father's family is darkly veiled for no particular reason. Losing your father so young must make it difficult to understand the true role a father plays to a child. How does your small mind piece together the equation of family when only half the puzzle exists?

Also, I wonder if parents who have separated see their children as the glimmers or blatent characters of their former partners. And because they have lost the love for one another does seeing that similarity in their children make them lose pieces of that love? I wonder if this happens, though no thoughtful parent would admit. I wonder if this happened with my parents.