Roy and Timothy

Hey Sam,

I’m leaving the balcony door open as I write this because it’s nice to feel a breeze and to be connected to the outside world, even though the sounds coming in are not what I’m used to. In the last 2 years I haven’t really travelled, and when I did it was for family holidays, but now I’m alone, in another state, another city, and what I hear across the road isn’t the ocean anymore.

I’m self isolating for 2 weeks in this hotel. I’ve paced the room out, 5 metres across and at least 7 from door to balcony. It’s a bit grimy out there to be honest, dirty from the street, with a couple of fake cane chairs and a fake cane table that has a cigarette burn on its vinyl top. When I sit out there and look over the adjacent rooftop, I can see a back lane, an automatic gate, the street and a train line that passes into a tunnel to my left. Beyond that there’s a view that expands to a few taller buildings and a lot of sky.

Time is getting difficult to pin down. It feels strange to be away now, without you and your Mum. She’s here as well, but because she travelled a few days after I did, she’s in a separate room on the other side of the building. She has a much bigger balcony than me and a bath (I’ve only got a shower) but I’m not complaining. My room is a good size and I have a kitchen. I’ve heard of worse situations than this.

I keep trying to imagine myself into the future, into the day I walk out of here, but that’s difficult to do. I have to deal with the here and now, so I’ve created clear routines to keep me sane. I’ve set these routines to make use of every area in the apartment, creating specific tasks for specific spaces.

For instance at the moment I’m sitting at the writing desk so of course what I’m doing here is writing.

My phone is at hand with Uber Eats ever ready to deliver whatever I want; like I said I’m not complaining. I have been ordering in quite a bit so far. I’m currently waiting on a laksa and as I write my stomach gives a discontented growl, rumbling in concert with the sound of a passing bus. When my food arrives I think I will leave the writing area and make a bold move to the dining room, which is not a separate room but just a table next to the kitchen (also part of the same room). These three locations comprise the overall living area. 

In the northern corner of the living area are two doors, one of which leads to my sleeping area, which is large and well maintained, and the other to the cleaning area. After I eat I think I will retire to the entertainment precinct (or couch) and watch Netflix. As previously stated, it’s good to have routines.

They glad wrapped the remotes!

I’m not quite sure of the logic of this. I get the need for sanitation but if you’re going to start wrapping everything in plastic why only the remotes? Why not the phone as well? Or the microwave? Or just be done with it and wrap me…

That’s not me, that’s your Uncle Grayson. It’s from a show we made before you were born. Don’t worry, he’s fine now.

On the day I was leaving to catch my plane, I took you walking up Tallebudgera creek We’ve had pretty constant rain on the coast this summer so the creek was really full. Water seemed to pour out of the ground in every direction, little rivulets joining larger and larger ones and spilling down over rocks into the main channel of the creek, which tumbled down the valley on its way to the ocean.

The day before I left we dropped your Mum at the train station because she was heading into Brisbane for work. The train sat on the tracks and your Mum stood in the doorway, triggering the doors and performing small, idiotic, slapstick routines for our amusement as we stood, side by side, up the hill and behind the chainlink fence. Your hands grasped the fence and your face pressed into the gaps. We kept waving until the train left and I think it triggered something in you because suddenly you were crying.

Afterwards, up the creek, we plodded through thick reams of mud, squeezing it into the soles of our matching Keen sandals, and listening to the rub of cicadas that rang through the trees over our heads.

During the first creek crossing I looked back to check you were ok. You weren’t. You were managing the creek well enough, up to your ankles in it, picking up your feet and placing them down again in your oversized sandals like a tired giraffe, but your efforts were made more difficult because at the same time you were wiping tears out of your eyes with the back of your hand. I hoisted you up over the last few metres and plopped you down on the bank of the creek, watching your sandals drain out onto the rocks.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. You wiped at your eyes again.

“I’m just afraid you’re going to die.” you said.

Ok, I thought, this is because I’m going away.

“And when you die,” you continued, your voice hiccupping in little sobs, “I’m really going to miss the elves.”

Ok, time for a bit of back story…

At Christmas, on a family holiday, we visited Adelaide where my Mum and sister Kelly live. When we arrived Kelly gave you an elf on the shelf as an early Christmas present and it’s fair to say you got pretty obsessed by the whole idea. ‘Elfie’ got up to a lot of mischief each night after you went to bed, spurred on by the antics of Kelly’s three elves which were doing increasingly complex manoeuvres like photocopying their own butts (see picture above).

Once we returned home and Christmas passed, Elfie fell back into his deep slumber, hibernating until the moment when we’ll sprinkle cinnamon on his face to bring him back to life, something that presumably will happen each December, up until the point you tell us you know he’s (spoiler alert!) not actually alive.

Once Elfie was hibernating, I was inspired by your fascination with all things elf related and I started making up stories about two other elves, not Christmas elves but creek elves, who didn’t have to wait for significant moments in the Christian calendar to do their stuff. They were named Roy and Timothy.

Now for some reason apparent to no-one, not even myself, I gave Roy and Timothy both Cockney accents. I don’t claim that I can do a good Cockney accent. In fact I’m pretty sure I can’t, especially because I got inspiration for Roy’s accent from Keith Urban’s character Billy Butcher, from the TV show The Boys, and I’ve since read a number of less than flattering reviews of that accent. But, “wha’eva”, on the day I started doing Roy and “Timofy” there weren’t any critics from the British Isles present.

And I think it’s fair to say that despite the possible bad reviews of my accent, Roy and Timofy were a hit with their intended audience.

I’ve been doing elf voices just about every day since. Do the elves! That has been a constant refrain and they’ve often replaced bedtime stories, breakfast reads and general holiday downtime entertainment. So I knew they would be called upon sooner or later when we took our walk up the creek together and I wasn’t caught completely off guard when you told me my death would be sad, not so much because of me, but because it will signify the end of Roy and Timofy.

When you’re a parent you start to hear about children’s developmental stages and attachments. What’s often said is that for the first 7 years it’s all about the mother, then there’s a shift for the next 7, towards the father. I’ve felt you shift your attention to me and I know that sometimes that’s hard for your Mum. Although, to be fair, you still turn to her for certain things like unconditional emotional support. With me it’s more about the elves but I’m not complaining. At least I have your attention. I’m holding onto the elves because the next phase, when you’re a teen, is that you’ll start looking beyond both of us, and I’m not convinced I’m ready for that.

I’m away for 6 weeks, which feels like a lot at this stage of your life. I’m conscious of you changing. When we FaceTime each other I’m looking and listening for the subtle shifts happening in you while I’m away because I’m aware that what we have right now is finite. 6 weeks is a mass of time that we won’t get back, a measurable amount, tumbling down the rocks through the valley of our family, and flowing out to sea, never to come back.

I know your bond with the elves is your bond with me, a recognition of me taking the time to be silly, both of us engaging in the kind of stupid jokes that we find funny. Like when Roy is trying to explain the limitlessness of the universe and Timofy keeps thinking he’s talking about a car.

Where’s the steering wheel Roy?

It’s the universe Timofy, it’s boundless, impossibly big. It’s not a car!

What you’re really crying about is our time together, disappearing because we’re going away. That’s what you’re really missing, but it’s coming out through something else, like water bubbling up through rock, flowing out of random places because the water table is so saturated.

I put you down on the banks of the creek. It’s higher than I’ve ever seen it before. Rocks I’m used to seeing dry, are submerged, the creek running fast over them and refracting sunlight that filters down through the trees. I suggest quietly that I could make recordings of Roy and Timofy, so you can listen to them whenever you want to, even after I’m gone.

You suggest that one day you could do the voices yourself maybe, for your own kids. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say anything like that and I decide to take the pressure off you by saying that’s a great idea but having kids is a decision for you to make a bit later on, when you’re ready. Not everyone wants to have kids or can have kids. You don’t need to choose now, when you’re 8.

I add that I think you’d be really good at doing the voices.

You nod. Wipe your eyes again.

I decide to tell you that, anyway, I’m doing everything I can to stick around as long as possible. That way you won’t have to do the voices on your own, we can do a double act! I let you know that’s why I do yoga, why I meditate, why I gave up my deeply uncommitted relationship with cigarettes when I turned 50. It’s why I hardly drink alcohol anymore. Because I want to be here for you as long as I can. For you. For me. For your Mum. I feel guilty because I’m older than I should be and for the first time, as I’m saying all this, I think that maybe it was a selfish act on my part, to wait so long, to be the age I am now, while you’re still just a boy, dealing with an absence of elves.

Sometimes I imagine a past where I am born later. I meet your Mum when I’m closer to her age. We have you and I’m still busting out moves in a Belgian dance company. We tour the world together. I know there are complications to this scenario because maybe if I’m touring with the Belgian company, you and your Mum are stuck in Belgium. Or your Mum gets work in Germany, like she did, but can’t take the job because she’s pregnant. Each scenario I make fractals out into other scenarios and I dismiss them all and bring myself back to the present we’re in. The one that I’m finding impossibly hard to imagine the future of.

I tell you again I’ll record the elves for you. I promise to do it every day I’m away, so you have something to enjoy and connect with, something silly. Roy and Timofy discuss the cosmos. Roy and Timofy discuss their farts. Roy and Timofy discuss what families are.

They’re not a car, Timofy!

That way you can store them somewhere and have them with you always.

I look at you on the wet rocks next to the fast running creek. Again I tell you I’m not going anywhere. I’m planning to stick around because I love you. As much as you love me.

You wipe at your eyes. You gasp in a little breath and say, “Maybe even a little bit more?”

Yes Sam, maybe even a little bit more.

Love, Ragnar