30.vi.21
545
2.178
three flakes fell
(for a
book of mother)
mum always said
that in 1929, three
flakes of snow fell in Martin Place
(when I say ‘always
said’ I don’t mean that she was constantly saying it
but it was certainly
something she said often enough
– something she would say – if you know what I mean)
of course it has to
have been something she’d been told about
she would have been a
one year old at the time…
but I think it was
something she truly believed
(it must have come from
an authoritative source)
snow happens to be the
first thing my father remembered
I mean it was the
earliest thing dad could remember
looking up and seeing
snow flakes falling…
these are I believe
independent phenomena
though less remarkable
hardly-coincidences
have been known to
bring people together through time
of course dad wasn’t in
Australia yet, when the putative three flakes fell
still, later (late
thirties) dad was helped out (immigration wise)
by one Sir Sydney Snow,
who was a sports enthusiast
(and though more into
the gigis, obviously had a profound respect
for the celluloid ball
and the athletic tricks that went along with it)
… Sir Sydney just
happened to be in a passport queue dad was in,
docking in – where else
but – Sydney … I think he’d only just been knighted
… maybe he was coming
back from a meet with the king
… and which one, one
wonders? … ambiguous moment
time of the abdication
and all
I make nothing, mind
you, of these coincidences
(clearly they are no
more than that)
surely those three
flakes were an ill omen though?
it was before the Wall
Street Crash, that southern winter…
they must,
nevertheless, have later been taken for foreshadowing
and the way mum told it
you knew it couldn’t have been true
snow doesn’t fall in
Martin Place
it had the mythlight
telling about it
so long before social
media
if you think about it, a
trinity of snowflakes was near biblical
a quasi-religious
experience
statues might weep for
that kind of thing
with the woes of the
world run so deep
(or about to)
these things run in
families
the horse drawn snow
and a T-model putt putt
naturally, I felt the
need to look into all of this
and discovered that
there have been a number of reported snow events in Sydney
the most famous of
which fell on knowing convicts and amazed Eora people in 1836… much more
recently though, a snowdrift was reported
at Wynyard during a
cold snap in 1941
(when mum was thirteen
and should have known)
I have to admit to a
sense of relief no one else knew about my mum’s private snowfall of 1929,
something clearly passed down through the family
‘three flakes fell’ sounds
like a title of a song from those times
or more likely ‘the three
flakes fell’ (little family romance)
sheet music sixpence from
Palings or Nicholsons…
of course a piano score
but chords for ukulele and/or guitar
mum would have brought
that singing with her though
like the washing, as in
Monday’s washing – is everybody happy?
if there had indeed
been a song
she didn’t make that sort of thing up
even nonsense like
mares eat oats and does eat oats
and little lambs eat ivy
that code the Japs
could never break
and tangled that sub in
a shark net too
should have bought
harbourside then
but nobody had any
money
a kid’ll eat ivy too
wouldn’t you?
those three flakes,
harbingers of the watered milk
of the steaming dung
behind the cart
the washing lifted from
the line
the roaring twenties
turned to shit –
mum’s sense of where
she was from
