It Is Beautiful To Be Alive

9781483552309

CHAPTER 1

It is January 2014: January has always been winter for me, but for the last 25 years I have lived in Australia. Our January is high summer, the hottest time of the year. This summer is beautiful and, till now, not too hot.

Small frogs in the pond in front of my kitchen window are making clicking noises, other insects can also be heard through the open windows. I have the celling fans on slow; it is a comforting night.

Bats, which love to eat the ripe seeds from the palm-trees in the yard, can be heard. These fruit bats are big with a wingspan of three quarters of a metre. In the evening you can see dozens flying around before they settle on a tree.

I sit at my kitchen table and start to write the story, a story I like to tell.

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Perhaps, I should introduce myself to begin with. I was born 53 years ago in Austria on an Easter Sunday. My mother’s name is Maria, my father’s Johann and my brother’s Hans Peter. I was given the name Katharine. I can only remember a little about my early childhood, just a few things like the flat we were living in, high up on a mountain in a town called Mariazell. In the front yard there were lots of rosebushes - the deer loved to eat the young flowers of these bushes. The flat was small, just a kitchen and a bedroom. When I was three years old we moved to another town, Klosterneuburg. I lived there most of my life until I moved to Australia.

I had a speaking disorder as a small child and only started to speak at the age of four. At age six I started school. I had great difficulty at school, I couldn’t understand what the teacher wanted from me. She was an old, fat, mean, ugly person. A few weeks into school my mother came with me to see a school physiologist recommended by the school. A big man asked me to come into his office. He looked terrifying to me and asked me many questions. I had to fill in forms and complete pictures, it was very difficult for me. My class teacher was always very mean to me. I never could do anything right for her. She was always angry at me. When I got my first report card I couldn’t read. Written across over the card was – unable to learn.

In the second class I had a nicer teacher who sometimes tried to help me and was much friendlier. At the beginning of the second school year I heard that the teacher from the previous year had died. I was not sad about it.

In time, I understood a little bit more about school and tried the best I could. My mother took a second job to earn more money to be able to send me to private lessons for riding, writing and speech therapy. I think I learned much more there than at school. In time, I liked to go to school, especially in the years after grade five when a greater variety of subjects were taught. I had lost my speech disorder by then and was keen to learn more about the different subjects.

Many years later I tried to understand what dyslexia is. Dyslexia is when the brain is not able to see the difference between a e i o u. It can’t tell them apart. I also can’t tell apart some of the consonants: s c; b p; j y; f v; d t; n m. Learning to read and write becomes incredibly difficult. Many children have different levels of dyslexia. Matching the correct letter to the sound, which your brain cannot differentiate, is a big task. Even as an adult, it does not change, telling apart sounds which you can’t hear, remains very difficult.

It might sound unusual but I can’t remember much about my father when I was a child. Before my mother got divorced when I was 13, we lived together with my father in the same house. My father worked as a head waiter in a big restaurant which belonged to the Church in the town where we lived. He went to work in the morning about 11 o’clock, long after my brother and I had left for school, and he didn’t come home before midnight. Often we didn’t see him for weeks. I can’t remember ever having one meal together or ever being out with him, or playing with him as children. It just didn’t happen. When we saw him he was usually drunk and he didn’t want to play with us and we didn’t want to be with him and listen to his drunken talk. Later my mother told me that he had never been faithful to her but she decided to wait until my brother and I were older to divorce him. After my mother was divorced, we never missed him.

As a child I often spent time with my friend Karin. She lived across the road from us. She was a year younger then I am and lived with her grandmother most of the time. She went to her parents place some weekends. She was a little bit concerned about how she looked and felt she was a bit too chubby - which she was but only a little. She wasn’t big just a little bigger. Without her I would have been alone a lot as my mother worked all day. I went to Karin’s place after school most of the time. Her grandmother always made afternoon tea for us, and I often stayed at her place till the evening. When she went to her parents place for a weekend, she often took me with her, not always, but often. Her parents had a very nice flat in Vienna and a house at Vienna Woods, which is a bit outside the city. In the summer holidays we went there for one or two weeks and we loved it.

Karin’s father was a policeman and sometimes played with us. Once he had caught a crayfish and chased us around the house with it. We ran off screaming. Karin’s mother had a hairdressing salon in Vienna. Sometimes she was also there and then she spoiled us with lollies, cake, ice cream, biscuits and toys.

Sadly, a few years later Karin was killed in a car accident. We had met in the coffee shop where my mother worked. Karin, I and a few other friends met there sometimes. It was evening and raining outside. Karin, Bette, Hans and Willie wanted to go somewhere in the car. Willie had only had his driver’s licence for three weeks and had recently bought his car. I was too tired and helped my mother to lock up the shop and went home with her.

The next morning, an old friend of my mother’s came round very early in the morning. He was a policeman and asked her if I was at home. My mother asked him why he wanted to know. He told her just to look and make sure. My mother said I know she is still in bed. Then he told her that there had been a horrible car accident with two people dead and two injured who were my friends. The accident was just a few kilometres a way.

I saw Karin’s parents only once more at the funeral and never after that. I saw her grandmother a couple of times and asked her if she thought I should go and see Karin’s parents. She said that it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Karin was 15 years old and Hans was 18 years old when they died.

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When I was about sixteen I met my future husband. He and his family lived not far from us. I saw him sometimes, walking his dog. One day we met in the coffee shop where my mother worked. It was not a big, all-consuming love, Our relationship was having a good time together, having fun, shared interests and enjoying seeing each other. Michael was always nice, entertaining, generous and handsome. He was tall and slim and always worked and he had a driver’s licence and car. He also had a lot of friends, but I wasn’t so happy, about them. He often went out drinking with them which I didn’t like at all. He gave up most of his friends after I complained strongly. I knew he was in love with me and wanted to share his life with me. When I was 18 years old we got married at the council office, not in church - which was not about the church just that I didn’t want to spend so much money on a white wedding. I just wasn’t interested in that.

At that time I was working in the inner city of Vienna as an interior decorator for which I had been training for three years. I loved my work. I loved to decorate houses and flats and see happy customers who looked at their new furnishings with such enthusiasm. I also made good money with my commission often being more than my monthly wage.

Michael trained for a few years in upholstery and worked in different businesses over the years. He never worked for long in the same business. He often changed from one job to the other, which wasn’t a problem: usually he ended one job on Friday and started the next on Monday.

One day, not long after we were married, an established carpenter in Klosterneuburg, the town in which we were living, asked us if we would be interested in joining him in a furniture shop business which he wanted to open on the main street. A tiler, plumber and electrician would also be involved. We decided, through this, to start our own business. It was not difficult for me to get the licence to open a shop. I had learnt my profession and done all the necessary exams. Michael was also able to get his licence but was not allowed to take on an apprentice for three years. It was a lot of money and work to establish and decorate the entire shop. It had areas for wallpapers, wall paint, curtains, floor coverings, lounge suites and upholstered chairs. We had to take a loan from the bank and we needed a newer car.

The shop didn’t have as much work as we had hoped for: sometimes we had a lot of work and sometimes it was quiet for weeks. Before Christmas was always very busy but after Christmas it was quiet for weeks. There was not much work in January, February and even March and even the sale was quiet.

When I was a bit older, at age 20, I fell pregnant, but the pregnancy only lasted 18 weeks and I lost the child. I was sad but was told that being so young, I would be able to have many more children.

About three years later we closed the shop and Michael took up a job with the Austrian Government. His job was to restore old furniture and make it look like new. He liked to work there. His work colleagues were friendly and the working hours suited him.

After the furniture store closed, those involved went back to their original shops and workshops. I looked after my regular costumers with home visits. I had lots of collections of wallpapers, carpets, curtains, net curtains, upholstery fabric, decorative cords and a few other things in my car and if I needed more, I could borrow different collections from the wholesaler and when I didn’t need them any more, I could give them back again. My regular customers told my mother years later, when she told them that I had gone to Australia, that they would miss me when they purchased new furniture for their houses and flats. I found the remarks rather lovely.

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From my childhood I had thought I would like to go to Australia. My real father, from whom my mother had been divorced for many years, had lived in England and Ireland and worked as a butler before they were married. He told my brother and me he would have liked to go to Australia but came back to marry our mother instead. Sometimes he showed off his English skills so we couldn’t understand what he was saying.

The thought about going to Australia grew stronger. One day I thought I would go to the Australian Embassy in Vienna and try to get some information. It was not difficult to get into the embassy: I just asked and was taken to a room resembling a living room. There was a young man with whom I could talk about my idea of going to live in Australia. He asked about my family circumstances and education. He wanted to know everything about my and my husband’s school and professional education. Later a woman also came to see us. I could see they both missed Australia and asked them if this was the case. They said Yes, a little, particularly the weather! They gave me different brochures and small handbooks to read. but also said that the papers were a few years old and the prices weren’t correct any more. I left my name and filled in a small form before I went.

When Michael came home that evening, I told him that I had been to the Australian Embassy and had had quite a long conversation with two staff and my idea about going to live there had grown even stronger. Michael was also interested. He said that if I wanted, I could try to do it. A week later I took our personal documents and drove back to the embassy. I got a form for permanent residency. It was a long form with pages and pages of questions. I had also been told that all forms and documents had to be in English. I asked if they could recommend a translation office. They gave me a list with lots of translation offices.

A few weeks later, I returned the completed form with all the documents translated into English. I had to pay about a thousand dollars and we were to get an answer in a couple of months by mail. A few months later a letter came from the embassy with another big form to be filled in. To begin with I had difficulty in understanding what was being asked for. It was very complicated and I had to read the form and the explanations provided a few times, until I slowly started to understand what I had to do. Everything that I had filled in on the previous form had to be proven without using the documents as proof. I had to prove I was born in Mariazell, without using the birth certificate: I had to write to the council and ask for proof from the birth registrar. It couldn’t be a copy, it had to be an original stamped document. Usually Austrian government employees are not very friendly, but they were helpful with my unusual requests and sent me the documents quickly and correctly.

With help of the Austrian authorities, I was able to return all the required forms and documents to the Australian embassy. Now, I had just to wait for a letter back from the embassy.

The next thing we had to do was to get a police report to show we weren’t involved in any legal or court matters.

At that time, I was far into my first daughter’s pregnancy. I had been very happy about it and hoped everything would be okay. The birth was very hard work and took well over 24 hours. The midwife was really good - no, she was excellent. She stayed with me the whole time. The only time she left the room was to get herself a cup coffee and a bite to eat, otherwise she was with me in the birthing room. I didn’t want my husband or my mother to be with me. For me the midwife was the only person I wanted. She was really nice and explained everything about the birth. Later she decided to get a doctor for the actual birth. She said he would help. I couldn’t understand what she meant but I thought she would know. The doctor came a little later and placed both his hands on my tummy and pushed at the right time. The birth itself was over so fast that I didn’t feel anything and my daughter was born. Later I heard he was the best obstetrician in our town hospital and surrounding ones – which was quite true.

A couple of weeks later we had the christening for our daughter in the big church in the town where we were living. We called her Gertrude. She was a completely healthy baby. My husband, my mother and I were very happy.

A couple of weeks later I drove to the Australian embassy to hand in the translated version of Gertrude’s new birth certificate. Since my last visit, the Australian embassy had been completely changed. The internal room resembling a living room had become a big hall and a waiting area with a counter with a person behind a window, like at a bank. The waiting room had chairs along the walls and a table with some brochures and booklets. A few people were already waiting there. I waited for my turn. I showed my papers and asked if perhaps the lady I had seen before would be available. The lady behind the counter said she would have a look and see if she could find her and disappeared through a door in the back of the room. She came back with the lady I knew from before who explained she would be responsible for my case in future. We spoke next to the counter for a short time and then she said she would get some more forms and a list. When she came back she explained Michael and I had to go for a medical examination with one of the medical practitioners on the list which she handed to me. I tried to find out if there was a chance we would be granted permanent residency or not, but I couldn’t get the smallest hint. She said that a qualified upholsterer would be sought after in Australia at that time. This wasn’t new, I knew that from previous conversations. Otherwise I couldn’t get any hint, for or against.

In the next couple of weeks I made an appointment with one of the medical practitioners on the list. The doctor had a form from the Australian embassy to fill in after he had examined us. A blood test was also required. The completed form was sent back to the embassy directly by the doctor. After that we were told there would be a longer waiting period, at least 6 months, because the papers would all go to Canberra, the capital of Australia.

About six months later we