Brunswick, Melbourne,  2024

When my daughter Natasha was five months old, I put her into childcare one day a week so I could resume writing. Painful as it was, I wanted her to grow up knowing she was not responsible for my emotional wellbeing. I told myself I was a writer before I became a mother and that one day, my when daughter left home, I’d still be a writer.

Eighteen years later, those words come back to haunt me when Natasha announces within weeks of finishing high school that she’s moving interstate.

My daughter has always marched to the beat of her own drum. In Year 10, at her own volition, she successfully auditioned for a specialist arts school to study drama and theatre. In her final year, she set her sights on film directing and producing. Highly pragmatic with a strong work ethic, she worked out that the Gold Coast is the centre of filmmaking in Australia and applied for university in Brisbane.

I’d anticipated she’d take a gap year and travel overseas as I did at her age. I’d made plans, assuming we’d meet up in Europe, travel together as I’d done with my mother, making memories to last a lifetime. But Natasha can share a house with friends from Melbourne if she moves sooner rather than later. She’s thought it all through and I cannot fault her logic.

I’m torn, delighted to have raised a child with the courage and confidence to follow her dreams, saddened by the prospect of her moving 1,800 kilometres away.

A couple of weeks before the move, Natasha takes me to a movie that she’s already seen and thinks I will like. The movie is so-so, but there’s a song in it that I love, Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield.

I am unwritten
Can’t read my mind
I’m undefined
I’m just beginning
The pen’s in my hand
Ending unplanned

The song isn’t mere soundtrack: it’s like a character in and of itself, cropping up multiple times throughout the film, building to a finale where it’s sung by the entire cast in a montage.

‘I know it’s cheesy, but love a good singalong montage,’ I tell Natasha as we leave the cinema.

‘I know you do,’ she says. ‘That’s why I wanted you to see it.’

I love that she knows me so well. I try not to think about how much I will miss her company.

I play the song over and over in the days before she leaves, thinking how apt the ‘unwritten’ metaphor is at this point in her life.

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibition

She and her father leave toward the end of summer to drive to her new home. The car is so densely packed with stuff, there’s no room for me to tag along. I cry quietly as I kiss her goodbye, then wail in the wake of her departure. I feel like my heart is breaking.

The house feels unbearably empty. I go outside to the back garden. There’s an empty nest in a raised garden bed where we grow tomatoes. We’d discovered the nest a week before Natasha finished high school, when it contained four speckled-blue eggs. As Natasha graduated, finished exams and flew off to schoolies, we’d witnessed the eggs hatch and watched as the tiny nestlings grew feathers, tested their wings and finally fledged.

I have an idea. Taking up a notebook and pen, I start writing, drawing on the metaphor of the baby birds to describe how I feel about my daughter leaving home. I’ve found it hard to write since the Covid years, but now the words flow freely.

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips

Somehow, I write myself through the grief of Natasha’s departure, reaching a point where I’m focussed not on the empty nest, but on the beauty of the bird in flight.

Steeling myself, I submit the article for publication. To my delight, it is accepted.

Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

My daughter’s book is just beginning. Mine is nearing the third act. But the rest is still unwritten for both of us.

Daughter and mother; Natasha and Angela.

Stereo Story #828

Read Angela’s article Fledglings in The Monthly or listen on The Weekend Read podcast.

Angela Savage is an award winning Melbourne writer, who has lived and travelled extensively in Asia. Her debut novel, Behind the Night Bazaar, won the 2004 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. All three of her Jayne Keeney PI novels were shortlisted for Ned Kelly Awards. The Dying Beach was also shortlisted for the 2014 Davitt Award. She has taught writing throughout Australia and overseas. Angela holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Monash University, and is CEO of Public Libraries Victoria. Her new novel, Mother of Pearl, is published by Transit Lounge. Angela's story about her father, based around the song Rhythm of Life, has been part of two Stereo Stories concerts.