Stories of Change and Place

~ Margaret McCaffrey

The interconnection between change and place became more apparent to me once I’d finalised my piece for Tim McQueen’s program on Vision Australia Radio (VAR). In preparing with Elwood Writers for Cover to Cover, I better understood that change happens all the time – no matter our resistance – but that it always occurs in place, even if that emotional space is not visible to the naked eye.

My short memoir ‘Ellinbank Revisited’ is a different take on a piece I’d originally written for Tim’s 2016 program when the theme was ‘Mothers’. This new version incorporates a two-fold look at change. First is the change my mother went through in early marriage when, post-war, she and Dad realised they had to swap life on the dairy farm for the confines of a city. The second ‘enfoldment’ that involves change unlocks a deeper relationship developing with my mother when, many years later, she and I returned to the site of her first marital home. The trip allowed me the supreme gift of being able to delve more deeply into the facets of a woman, who — even in my young adulthood — I’d merely thought of as ‘Mum’.

This story accompanies an array of poetry and stories by Helen McDonald and Barry Lee Thompson, all of which are available on the VAR podcast HERE, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Published by Margaret McCaffrey

Margaret is a Melbourne/Naarm-based writer currently writing about the relationship she had with her father, a veteran of World War II, who was injured in Greece and a prisoner of war in Germany for four years. Excerpts from her manuscript can be found in American Writers Review, Jewels of San Fedele and Clairitage Press. Margaret was awarded a scholarship to the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in the US to develop her memoir. In 2015, she received her MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, PA. She writes non-fiction, memoir and the occasional short story.

4 thoughts on “Stories of Change and Place”

  2. What a marvelous trip, Margaret. Yes, your mother sounds a bit Zen.

    The Taoist of Ellinbank

    I wish my Father had agreed to a trip like this around Melbourne to document the many places he lived as a child. Nevermind.

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  4. I realised too Margaret, when preparing for the programme, that Place and Change are intertwined, whether physically, mentally or emotionally. I’m glad you were able to see your mother in a new light once you and she retraced her footsteps in the early days of her marriage. That really is a gift. And of course this changed you too.

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