It’s 11am on a glowing Perth day and I’m walking Molly, my black labrador, by the Canning River. As she sniffs the neat grass edging the footpath, I’m transfixed by gulls, pelicans and black swans floating on the shimmering water. A glimpse of the bottlenose dolphins that call this river home would make my day.
The tranquillity is broken by my ringtone. It’s a FaceTime call from my son, Alex. He’s aiming his camera towards something in the gloom and asking if I can see it.
It’s nearly midnight in New York City – I can barely see anything.
I make out a heap of black rubbish bags. I hear the wind in Alex’s EarPods and a siren howling in the background.
“It’s the rats,” he says. My stomach lurches.
Alex is wearing a black puffer jacket that has seen him through six US east coast winters. He’s hovering near the garbage bags, asking if I can see them moving.
He tells me about squashing a dead rat while cycling down Union Avenue, and about the rat corpse he found one morning outside his apartment.
Alex had already emailed me news stories about New York’s new director of rodent mitigation. I’d squirmed at my desk thinking about the millions of rats that share his home. They’d been popping up in toilets and confronting commuters on subway platforms.
When Alex moved to New York, it left a hole in my heart. But I wasn’t surprised he’d wanted to try living there – he was a traveller and enthusiast for life.
When I’d tuck him in as a three-year-old, he’d always ask about all the things we’d do the next day.
He loved it when his grandfather played Frank Sinatra on the car stereo. New York, New York was his favourite song.
Now he’s a Brooklynite, surrounded by concrete and glass, living in a fifth-floor apartment that’s a sweatbox in summer and a freezer in winter.
I’m always excited by these precious calls. They give me a peek into his life. He’s at a Trader Joe’s checkout. Crammed on the L train. Cycling across the Williamsburg Bridge. Flitting past the Flatiron Building. Grabbing a kombucha at the bodega.
The cute photos he’s shown me of the black and white cat that lives at his local bodega make sense now. He’d told me to follow the cat on Instagram.
Sure enough, there’s a lot to make me smile. A cat cuddled by customers. A cat perched on products. A cat crammed in an Oreo box. But the cat is the bodega’s way of warding off rats.
But my worries about rats feel small-scale compared with my other concerns over the past few years. I remember my fears back in April 2020, when Alex contracted Covid for the first time and I was so far away.
I watched from afar in horror at those early months of the pandemic. In New York case numbers surged, gatherings were banned, emergency departments were overwhelmed and trucks stored bodies outside hospitals.
Being in Western Australia, behind a closed border, only added to my separation sorrow.
Now, as we’re chatting on FaceTime, I turn my phone so that he can see the gentle river we used to visit together. Suddenly the connection drops out and Alex is gone.
Eyes brimming, I remove my sunglasses and scan the river again for dolphins. They’re not surfacing today.
Mother dolphins nurture their calves. They pass on life lessons like socialising and foraging. I’ve done the same. Alex has the confidence and freedom to explore life on his own.
As I pull Molly closer towards me and turn to head for home, my sadness is mixed with pride. Alex’s life is full of possibilities – working, walking, park picnics and concerts. Seeing his adventures gives me hope, even if he’s having them alongside all those rats.
