Esther Daia Madden

To my most wonderful mother,

I have known you 9 months longer than anyone else on earth. 9 months and a day since refusing to be born until being induced the day after our water broke. Sorry about that. You know how I love to sleep in before a big event.

Not one day in my life has passed in my life when I didn't know without absolute certainty that you loved me. When I was clinically depressed and didn't see the point to anything, you told me explicitly that you were my tether to the world and you'd never let me down. It was true. You are my most consistent and genuine love and that means a lot to me.

Unfortunately, I don't build tangible things. My skills aren't in making a vase to hold flowers for you or publishing a book dedicated to you but I try my best to live a life that would make you proud.

When people say they love their Mums, I just snigger. I love you much much more than anyone ever did another person.

You are brave, adventurous, compassionate, strong, gentle, funny, brilliant, beautiful and most of the things that I kinda wish I had a clue how to be.

If I grow up to be an actual adult, I hope I am a tenth of who you are.

Happy Mother's Day to the absolute best mother in the world.

Love from the loud daughter who never stays in one place too long but always comes home to you, Damana

She eats the top of the watermelon

There are things that always make me think of my mother but nothing strikes me harder and brings a bigger smile than when I cut up a wedge of watermelon.

My mother is the most generous person I have ever known. I doubt I will meet anyone who gives more. Sometimes it frustrates me that she gives to her last drop and then some but that is I guess what makes her, her.

As a child, there was only ever one thing that my mother ever took for herself that she didn't sacrifice for others. Take in to account a story I was told as a child about my mum coming home from her first day at school and telling her father that a boy there didn't have a pencil. My very wise grandfather told her that next time she should break her pencil in half and give it to the person in need. I heard this story many times but what taught me generosity was my mother's ability to give and give and give and only feel happy as a result.

Now, my mother is known for being the best maker of fruit salad. She cooks many things but her tropical fruit salad is the perfect mix of everything. I've tried to imitate her but it always ends up with too much mango (I know, is that possible?) or skewed to one flavour. She gets it right.

Since I was a babe, I've watched her carefully and quite deliberately cut up each and every fruit that went in to the fruit salad. The right amount of kiwi fruit mixed with mango and a splash of passionfruit and then watermelon and berries and whatever was in season.

Usually, you buy a wedge of watermelon and not a whole melon as it is too much to consume before it goes to waste. The top of the wedge is the centre of the watermelon. It is the softest and sweetest part. The heart. The reward. No part of a watermelon tastes better.

My mother unwraps the thick shop style plastic from the wedge and cuts the thick green and white rind away. She then, with the flick of a wrist, cuts the top of the wedge out and slowly eats it. After she is done consuming the prize of the melon, she cuts up the rest and hands it to the bowl that holds the perfect salad.

She always smiles as she does this. Sometimes, my sister and I would ask for some and of course, she gave us some but it was the one thing she always took a part of for herself.

I can not remember one other thing or time that my mum ever took the best part for herself. She always happily gave the best to others. It was her culture and her upbringing. It is the best part of her.

Tonight as I cut up a slice of watermelon, I put the nicest parts aside for my mother. She is not here but those pieces are hers. In what is our culture, I will throw some of the best pieces off the balcony in honour of her not being here but being in my thoughts.

Maybe that makes no sense but it is how I will silently show I love her and know what it means for her to be here. It means she gets the top of the wedge of watermelon.

It was her one thing. That one thing she gave herself first. It is the part I will always throw a piece of away for her, forever.

How music soothes my savage beast

Tonight, my mother listened to my current Spotify Starred list. We danced to Pharrel Williams and bopped to Christina Aguilera. She even had to take in John Legend croning All of Me which I call his song. You know... "Love your curves and all your edges. All your perfect imperfections."

The point was that we connected through music.

I told her about what music does for me. Instead of being sad, she was happy that I have music. She understands.

To me, music is a state.
To me, music is the tempo of happiness.
To me, music is salvation.

In my moments of deepest loneliness and sadness, I have tunes. They rescue me. They pick me up off the couch and twirl me around the room.

There is so much that I wouldn't survive if there weren't sounds to get me through. So I constantly look backward, forward and to now for the words and beats to represent me. I keep finding them. That preserves me.

Sometimes, I dread the day when music ceases to sing to me. When it stops explaining me to others.

The moments when I share a kiss with a perfect man, to a woman proclaiming that she asks that god accepts her man in heaven when the day comes.

May there always be music.

An Angel

My mother is that best human being I know and ever will know. There are good people on this Earth but I see her first hand and I try to learn from her.

Like the Queen of England, my mum has two birthdays. Growing up, we always thought her birthday was on the 21st of July. That is the date of the first moon walk. She was 21 when she listened to that event on the radio, in Papua New Guinea. She was at teacher's college and her classmates went over to hang with the science students and hear about Armstrong stepping out. She was 21 years old.

Today is my my mother's official birthday. That is the day that she was actually born. She knows it even though she was born in her parent's home, in a village named Tufi in PNG. Her mother wrote the date on the back of a door. This is where she kept the dates of all her children. Mum copied these dates down and carried them with her, long after that door and that house were gone. Long after her wonderful mother Damana had passed away, we now celebrate today for mum.

The moon walk birthday is a date that was given to her by the Kiaps. Kiaps were Australian government officials who journeyed in to the villages and remote areas of Papua New Guinea and in this case issued birth certicifates and guessed children's ages. With those guesses went allocated birthdays.

My mother was told she was a certain age and born in July of 1948.

Don't even get me started on the kiaps and their ways, in PNG. If you ever need to suffer some condescension then find an ex-kiap and listen to them talk of civalising the little black people. What a load of cr@p.

Anyway, my mother is officially 63 years old today. She was born in a village in Papua New Guinea. She was orphaned at a very young age. As the second of seven sisters, she brought up the younger ones. She used to babysit to earn money to pay their school fees. Her whole life has been about looking after other people.

I would like to wish her a very happy official birthday. May the year to come be about you and enjoying the life you have made. There are so many people who love and cherish you. We appreciate all that you are and all that you have done.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful, brilliant and kind mother.

Sail Away Sail Away Sail Away

Life moves upwards and onwards as my friend Cathie always suggests it should. Alice tells me not to underestimate the difference I've made in the past year. Candace reminds me often that I am a good person and should stick around. Kellie says that I should be somewhere that I belong. Allison makes it clear that I am never alone as long as she is around.

My mother has always promised to be my tether to this world, no matter how lost I become. My sister's strength means I am safe from the horrors of my past. My father is always there, always.

I spent ten-ish days in Sydney, Melbourne and in-between the two on a road trip to visit a friend's future university campus. Seeing a campus with all the brilliant young minds and their hopeful eyes made me remember how much I knew the world was mine when I was their age. That hasn't been lost. There is still so much to do. Many things to try at and succeed or fail. It's all part of this journey. Turning 34 this year means I'm part way along that path but that comes with benefits of experience, knowledge and strengthening war wounds.

The recent holiday and time spent with friends in two cities that I love gave me a certainty. A knowledge that I will have to leave this safe sanctuary of Darwin and head back sooner or later.

So the plans have begun. I will be in this city for the rest of the dry season and then head off back to a semi-charmed kinda life. Until then, I'm unpacking and selling the stuff that once belonged to Giles and I. I don't need those possessions to own me anymore. He is gone. They will never be "ours" again. Holding on to them means nothing but holding on to the past.

It is time to move on. To sail away in to the sunset and await whatever life brings. Let it be love, work, friends, family and fun. I shall accept no less.

My Mum slams engineers

Me: Back off, I'm a scientist.
Mum: How are you a scientist?
Me: I did a science degree.
Mum: Oh, I thought you were an engineer.