Like the clappers

Like the clappers
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 24, 2015

Rough landings test my nerves. Belted tightly into my window seat, I stared at the wing tip flexing violently. The rain sheeted in grey gusts. My bird’s eye view of the city was a blur. As the cabin jolted and jerked, the young woman next to me clutched our armrest. She caught my eye, searching for reassurance. I returned her a half-hearted smile and stiffened for the landing.

One set of wheels slammed onto the runway, then the other. I gasped as we lurched sideways and the overhead lockers groaned. The engines roared into reverse and the air brakes on the wing bit into the thick air.

Above the dying screech of the engines, I heard the sudden but unmistakeable sound of someone clapping a few rows ahead of me. My neighbour glanced sideways at me and began clapping too. I felt compelled to join her. A moment later, the cabin erupted into brief applause: we passengers united in our appreciation for our pilots’ skill.

It was still raining as I clambered into a cab. En route to the city, transfixed by the rhythmic arc of the windscreen wipers, I thought about clapping. Why do we clap? Why is it so infectious? What if that passenger had decided not to applaud our pilot? Would our landing have been met only with grateful silence?

I decided clapping is a social contagion – the more a crowd begins to clap, the more pressure there is to join in.

I learned about clapping protocols from my grandmother. We had season tickets to the Concert Hall, stalls, row G. Seat 16 belonged to me, aged nine. Nan, in her fox stole and smelling of lavender talc, squeezed her bottom into seat 17. Even better than the plush crimson seats was the packet of Allen’s Fantales that appeared from the depth of Nan’s handbag. As she turned to discuss the programme with the cognoscente in seat 18, I hastily unwrapped three Fantales and crammed them into my mouth.

My euphoria at having achieved this feat undetected was shortlived. Two toffees were a manageable deceit, but three cemented my jaw shut. I could feel my molars straining at the root as I tried to force top and bottom teeth apart. After a minute of lockjaw and unable to contain the toffee dribble, I tapped Nan’s arm in panic. She turned, frowned at my bulging cheeks and my stained dress and passed me her hanky: “Clean yourself up!” The conductor will be out in a minute. You’ll need to clap hard.”

The maestro, in suit and tails, swept onto the stage with his halo of wild hair and took a deep bow. I clapped furiously, but wondered why, seeing he hadn’t performed yet.

I thought those concerts would never end. I got tired of examining the orchestra so I rubber-necked my fellow concert-goers instead, daring them to return my stare.

And then the conductor let his baton rest, and the music stopped. People rustled and coughed. I started to clap but Nan pinned my hands firmly to my lap. “Not now,” she whispered, “it’s the height of rudeness to clap between movements.” Not clapping mid-symphony became my mark of sophistication.

Nearly an hour later, when Mahler was spent and the maestro rejoined us mortals, I was allowed to clap. I made as big a racket as I could, desperate to release the tension from sitting still for so long. My ears rang and my palms stung but I kept clapping, because everyone else was. Who decided when the applause should stop?

Since then, I have discovered several ways to clap: flat-palmed, hands cupped, thumbs locked, two-fingered (for smart-alecs). My favourite is the fingers of my right hand smacking the palm of my left. If I reverse hands, I feel awkward. (A limp clap is as gauche as a flaccid handshake.)

Historians say clapping descended from the Roman legionnaires who banged spears against shields to applaud a commander. Roman audiences added clapping to their repertoire of finger and thumb clicking, toga flapping and handkerchief waving to express degrees of approval. A disappointed crowd would stay conspicuously silent.

Now, I fear clapping has become rote and ritualised, often an expectation rather than a reward. I blame television for manufacturing applause the way it added canned laughter. In the late 50s, the clap-o-meter purported to measure the popularity of quiz-show contestants. It was a sham, given the producers had already pre-selected the winner. Now, floor managers and warm-up guys whip audiences into raining applause onto even mediocre performers. (Everyone else gets a standing ovation.)

I once went to a performance at a school for the hearing impaired where we were taught how to flap our hands above their heads to signal our approval. Clapping soundlessly took a bit of getting used to. But I’ve never forgotten the rapt silence that accompanied a hundred pairs of hands waving their congratulations. The most deserved applause is not always the noisiest.

Forget Me Not

Forget Me Not
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 15, 2014

Something about her was different. She looked smaller than I remembered. The hunch of her shoulders had become more pronounced. Gone was her trademark copper rinse, her hair now blowsy and grey. “Auntie G!” I called, spotting her several trolley lengths away in Coles. She was holding open a freezer door, studying a shelf of frozen peas, but didn’t react. I parallel parked my trolley and leaned over. “Auntie G!” I repeated, touching her lightly on the shoulder.

She jerked around and stared at me. “It’s Rosi,” I said, sensing her confusion. Perhaps I’d frightened her? She gave me a wan smile but no glimmer of recognition. I began to feel uncomfortable. What should I do next?

“Do you need a hand?”

“I can’t find the icecream.”

“Oh, that’s on the other side. I can never find it either.” She brightened and nodded when I said “I’ll show you where it is, shall I?”

Cupping her elbow, I gently steered her round the corner, stopping beside the icecream cabinet. She looked relieved.

I’d always had a soft spot for Auntie G because she’d produced my favourite girl cousin, Elizabeth, who was 36 days younger than me.

Sleeping over at Lizzie’s house, I found the noise of her riotous family overwhelming. As an only child, I was secretly thrilled (and occasionally terrified) to witness Auntie G berating her disobedient tribe.

Their house had a backyard swimming pool, a glamorous addition to any 1970s childhood. On a summer afternoon, we kids played Marco Polo and Pool Ponies and practiced our underwater handstands until our fingertips puckered and the soles of our feet pruned. Auntie G leant over the balcony and dropped down a couple of fraying towels. We lay on them, tummies down, dry-roasting on the hot bricks. She’d send out a plate of her coconut macaroons, left over from a dinner party the night before.

Now, aged 78, my Aunty G has dementia. She’s newly diagnosed and still in denial. Her family struggles to manage her decline. She defends her memory lapses with angry outbursts, slipping into the personality of someone else. But Auntie G is not yet in need of care. The good days still outnumber the bad.

Two years ago, I came across Auntie G in the centre of a busy road in West Leederville. She’d abandoned her cream Camry in the middle of an intersection and was standing aimlessly beside it. Drivers were dog-legging around her, windows wound down to sticky-beak at this surburban oddity. I pulled over and got out of my car.

“Oh! Thank goodness you found me!” she said anxiously. “I can’t seem to find Lizzie’s house.”

“You can see it from here,” I said, pointing back down the hill. I wondered how my aunt could have driven past it.

She thanked me and climbed back into her car, swung it around and coasted down the hill. I watched her park outside her daughter’s house. I drove home feeling alarmed.

It was not my first glimpse into mental frailty. My uncle Don, Mum’s only sibling, succumbed to dementia after a career as a concert pianist, academic and mathematician.

The tragedy of his retirement was the swift unravelling of his mind. First he lost the ability to pick left from right, distinguish between cup and kettle and recognise a dollar coin in his wallet. Then it erased his encyclopaedic memory of Schubert sonatas and Brahms concertos until he could no longer play two- finger Chopsticks or sing along to Three Blind Mice.

To watch him, at 76, regress to a childlike state was frightening, but there were lovely moments. His disease bonded him to my two youngest children. He never tired of their knock-knock jokes, cackling at their made-up punchlines. He gleefully joined in their games of hide and seek, bolting for the same empty wardrobe every time. Like them, he startled at loud noises and needed help cutting up his dinner.

The end came quickly and cruelly, four months after a traumatic move into a nursing home.

On occasion, I contemplate my own future. What if my genes, too, are predisposed to intellectual decay? I remind myself it’s normal to be constantly searching for your specs. As I stand in the laundry (what was it I came in here for?) I feel uneasy. Is this how it starts? The foggy brain? Conversations that falter as I try to force an elusive word to crystallise in my mind. The embarrassing pause as I yet again forget the new soccer coach’s name.

Last Monday, as I dashed around the supermarket, I spotted Auntie G again. She was filling a paper bag with potatoes. She waved at me across the fruit crates. “The mangos look nice!” she called. I bought two on her say-so.