Every other Thursday, Irena got together with 40 like-minded people to beat a Taiko drum. As she stood over its body, as big and hollow as a wine barrel, the old woman often reflected that the ancient Japanese instrument was as therapeutic as any Yarra Valley Shiraz.
Each downward stroke of her drumsticks made Irena feel intimately connected to those beating in unison around her. The invisible veil of vibration only possible through their focused energy and rhythm.
What connected them was unseen, but as present and solid as the Taiko drum itself.
The ritual that bound the drumming group was steeped in history and yet of the moment. Wild and untamed, and yet equally disciplined. The cacophony of sound was occasionally interrupted by their kakegoe (pronounced kay-go). A Japanese word describing the short, sharp exclamations of her Taiko classmates during their performance.
Irena had never asked about the purpose of the kay-go. To her it felt like a cathartic expulsion of emotion that had accumulated within her body in the days between each drumming session.
A kay-go was as good as any enema. A symbolic purging of buried energies. A fresh start only possible once the hidden energy was articulated with force into the world.
After each session, the old lady marvelled at how an hour of intense drumming and sporadic kay-go calls somehow never exhausted her. Quite the opposite in fact. Despite its physicality and the screaming of her joints, Irena would leave her Taiko session feeling energised, calm, and in sync with the world.
Irena had often thought people would be a lot happier if they were issued a Taiko drum at birth.
One Thursday, Irena took a break from her Taiko class to visit her sister in Perth.
Once on the plane, she took her seat by the window. As people of all shapes and sizes trickled aboard, Irena wondered how many human dramas had been played out in the glossy, white fuselage of a plane in the decades since humans had first taken flight.
Plane travel had become common within her lifetime. Only appreciated when taken away.
Certainly, this had been the case during the pandemic. A good thing really. People didn’t take air travel for granted during those few, difficult years. Irena had dearly missed her regular trips to spend time with her sister. They shared an unusually close bond for siblings and, having lost their partners in recent years, only had each other left now.
As life returned to normal in a post pandemic world, Irena had renewed determination to make up for lost time.
The year after her husband died, Irena decided grief was not going to get easier to bear by sitting in her recliner. On a whim, she enrolled in a Japanese drumming class at her local Brisbane community centre.
Nothing like the vibration of an ancient drum to help an old woman regain her zest for life.
Fifty years earlier, and only a short skip across the Brisbane River from Irena’s modern day drumming group, a human drama was unfolding – this time in a hospital rather than a plane. A red-faced, flame-haired baby girl had taken her first breaths and was placed in the arms of her mother. The young woman was still reeling from the trauma of a complicated delivery and the shame of bringing an illegitimate child into the world.
On the other side of the continent, a two-year-old, male version of the baby girl sat jabbering happily on his mother’s lap at home, in a beachside Perth suburb. This woman who had wanted him so much, she did not need to share his blood or likeness to make him feel chosen, and nurtured, and safe.
A half century later, a similar instinct for connection had brought Irena and the flame haired girl together 30,000 feet above the vast, treeless expanse of the Nullarbor. Just two random passengers on a Qantas plane, carrying them ever closer to Perth and a story of reunion almost fifty years in the making.
It had taken three trips to the toilet and about 2,000 km between Brisbane and Perth before Irena finally had an opportunity to open conversation with the flame-haired stranger in the aisle seat. Irena cursed her decision to be seated next to the window for such a long flight.
After this latest toilet stop, the flame-haired woman seemed resigned to the old woman’s frequent interruptions, switching off her tablet, removing her earbuds and waiting politely in the aisle for Irena to return to her seat.
“I’m so sorry for asking you to get up so much,” Irena puffed as she padded back to their row. “I’m 74, and my bladder isn’t what it used to be.”
The flame-haired woman’s face softened in sympathy.
“I know the feeling,” she said, though Irena felt quite sure she didn’t. So far, the woman had downed multiple bottles of water and had not yet moved from her seat.
Still, she was relieved by the younger woman’s concessions and popped her glasses on to inspect her new conversation partner with more interest. She guessed her to be middle aged. Irena could sense the woman’s tension.
“Are you off to Perth for business, then?” she asked.
The woman gave a lopsided smile. “Not exactly,” she said. There was hesitation in her voice.
“Visiting family?” Irena was keen to keep the conversation flowing.
The woman gazed intensely at Irena. She seemed to be weighing up whether she should be trusted.
She must have decided Irena was well-intentioned.
“I suppose I am,” she blurted. “I’m visiting Perth to meet a brother I’ve only just discovered.”
Irena didn’t flinch. She’d heard stories like this before. Her late husband had been an obstetrician and had spent a lifetime tending to the needs of women – caring for their health, delivering their babies and helping them keep family secrets. He’d bundled many a new baby into the arms of men who weren’t biological fathers, and witnessed many a baby taken from the arms of biological mothers who couldn’t raise a baby without a ring on their finger.
Times were different now. But the flame haired woman was from an era where finding a brother late in life might be more common than expected.
“We’ve got hours until we touch down in Perth,” Irena said, tenderly resting her hand on the woman’s arm.
“I’d love to hear your story.”
The younger woman cried a few times as she relayed the circumstances that led her to finding her brother. Like a Taiko drum beat, the energy in her words was insistent and hard to ignore. The vibration in her voice gave her emotions away.
Betrayal. Sorrow. Joy. Delight. Irena could tell the woman didn’t quite believe her own life story yet.
“Last Christmas, I subscribed to a genealogy website and opted to take the DNA test as an optional extra,” the flame-haired woman said.
“I thought a family tree project would be a fun way to occupy my daughter during her holiday break.”
“Turns out my plastic DNA collection tube held so much more than just saliva.”
“Once the DNA results came back, it didn’t take long for the story to unravel.”
Irena listened patiently as the woman recounted the events.
A one-night stand. Her mother’s shame at finding herself unmarried and pregnant. The Dad she had always known, not her father. Her biological father now dead. Her closest friends, teachers, family – all burdened with a secret that must be withheld from the flame-haired little girl who never felt she quite fit.
Though she loved her family dearly, the little girl had often felt her drumbeats were out of sync with theirs, no matter how diligently she tried to learn their pattern.
Eventually the rhythm of the flame-haired woman’s words slowed and Irena took the opportunity to redirect the conversation.
“Your year might have been easier to bear if you’d taken up Taiko drumming,” she said, handing the younger woman a rumpled tissue.
“But now it’s time to wipe your tears and tell me about your brother.”
The flame-haired woman’s DNA test results had thrown up an unexpected close family match.
After exchanging messages with the unknown man, their sharing of information and photos revealed what geography and secrets had kept hidden for half a century.
She had an older half-brother, close in age, who lived on the other side of the country. He had been adopted at birth and did not know anything about his biological family.
She leaned across the seat and showed Irena the pictures, saved on her phone, in a folder marked with her brother’s name.
“As two-year-olds, we were peas in a pod,” the flame-haired woman said, her intense gaze seeking signs of confirmation from Irena.
There was little need. The likeness was remarkable.
Encouraged by Irena’s head nod, the woman added, “But if you think we look alike, you should check out the internal wiring. That’s been the biggest surprise to me,” she said.
“Sometimes the way people beat in rhythm with one another can tell us what DNA, photos and words can’t reveal,” Irena said. “It seems the two of you already share a strong connection.”
The flame-haired woman shrugged.
“I’d like to think so,” she said, “I guess I’m about to find out.”
Once the wheels hit the tarmac, Irena could feel the flame-haired woman’s nervous anticipation bouncing off the surrounding passengers and surfaces within the plane, like drumbeats.
As soon as the seatbelt sign was switched off, the woman leapt up, and helped retrieve Irena’s bag from the overhead locker.
“Thank you for making this trip much easier to bear Irena,” she said, hugging the old lady warmly.
In an instant, her flame-haired conversation partner was gone. Her steps drumming an insistent rhythm up the aerobridge to the airport.
Irena could not recall a quicker disembarkation in all her trips across the continent.
In the arrival hall, the little Perth boy, now a man, stood waiting and watching for his sister to arrive. As she descended the escalator, he recognised her hair first and then a familiar cast to her features as her face came into focus.
Shyly, the pair greeted each other for the first time in fifty years. Their mutual shock of recognition kept them from embrace.
“Hello Dave.”
“Hello Kate.”
Later, the Perth man would tell his sister he wished someone had filmed the moment they first met.
But no video could have captured the magnitude of that moment. The vibration between them palpable in person, invisible to any camera. What connected them was unseen, but as present and solid as a Taiko drum.
As Irena descended the escalator, the old woman caught a satisfying glimpse of the newly united pair chatting easily as they bustled out of the airport and into the stark light of a Perth day.
Once she was in her sister’s warm embrace, a tear rolled down Irena’s cheek.
“How was your flight, Irena?” her sister asked.
“For once, much better than my Taiko class,” Irena said.
