A Day in the Country: Chris Ferguson talks about the power of a childhood friendship.
MOTHER, DAUGHTER AND NOW GRANDAUGHTER — CHRIS FERGUSON ON A VERY SPECIAL CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP FORGED MANY YEARS AGO IN A SMALL NSW COUNTRY TOWN.
“I DON’T THINK I would want to go on without her.” My mother says of her best friend, Noelie. “It just wouldn’t be the same.” They’ve been friends for nearly 60 years, since they both moved with their new husbands to a little country town where they waited their turn to use the only public telephone.
For nearly 60 years they’ve permed each other’s hair and confided in each other over cups of coffee; not your fancy frothy kind, but good old instant made with powdered milk in a kitchen equally as humble. Theirs is a relationship built on trust, faith and family.
For nearly 60 years they’ve been each other’s unwavering support. Mum recalls Noelie ringing and joking that she was going to dig a hole to bury the ironing because she would never get the laundry from nine children done. Mum packed up her iron and board and drove to town and together they made that pile of ironing smaller. Their friendship not only enriched their lives, it made them manageable.
Sometimes friends become family. Both Mum and Noelie each lost a baby; they are buried together.
When babysitters were needed, they had each other. When one of them was sick, they cared for each other’s children. And us kids? Well, we had each other too.
Trishie is Noelie’s youngest daughter and my closest childhood friend. People would joke that we were joined at the hip. I would take Trishie horseriding and she would take me swimming in the lime dumps from the cement works where we would emerge white, playing monsters. It didn’t hurt us but it probably should have.
Two became three in our teen years with our mate Jenny, then four when I became a Rotary Twin-match Exchange Student and Kiwi Rachel came to live with us. We got our driver’s licences, found boyfriends, then married and had kids of our own. Trishie moved east and I went west. Jenny said that she wasn’t going anywhere.
Last year when my kids and I decided to go hiking in New Zealand, I messaged Kiwi Rachel for advice. She said, “Do the Kepler Track in Fiordland, I’ll come too and bring my girls.” I contacted Trishie and Jenny and said, “Come with us.” Jenny was up for it straight away but Trishie had other plans. It turns out that we are not too old to use peer pressure, Trishie gave in and the Trans Tasman Tramping Troupe was formed.
Over the Easter and Anzac Day holidays we walked our way back into our old friendships. The new experience lay gently over the rich landscape of our history. I listened as my friends told my children stories of the child and teenage me, it seems that I may have forgotten more than I have remembered.
Late in each day’s walking I would linger back on the trail, listening to the laughter and voices of my friends and family ahead of me, like music guiding me home. I saw my daughter turn her face up to the sunlight flickering through the trees, eyes closed, listening, feeling, being. I wondered; will this heart just keep expanding?
I was reminded of my mother telling me as a child that in order to have good friends I’d need to be a good friend. I know with full certainty that the friends I have are leagues above the friend I have been.
On our last evening on the Kepler Track I sat quietly with Trishie looking out across the valley below us and said, “There has never been a time in my life that you have not been my friend and I am so grateful.”
“Yeah,” she says, and gives me that heart stirringly familiar impish grin,“well,we had our Mums to follow.”