Cygnus cygnus

When Alexandra turned four, her mother gave her a thumb-sized ceramic swan. Alexandra’s mother had found it folded within a pink chenille bedspread whilst cleaning out her own mother’s linen cupboard. The swan – Cygnus cygnus, the common swan – had a long, snaking neck and wings held aloft as though in mid-flight. Its glazed flank shone pearlescent when tilted toward the light. 

Picture by Drazen Nesic

‘I remember this. A useless object,’ her mother sniffed. ‘Modelled after a useless bird. Could barely sit straight on the mantel. You keep it, Alexandra.’ 

And so, Alexandra kept the useless object close. It sat on her bedside table, then her bookshelf. She brought it with her to school, feeling its swan-shaped weight knock against her hip from within her dress pocket. She ran her thumb along its ridges daily. 

She brought it with her to camp, tucked into the bottom of her sleeping bag. It accompanied her to piano exams, to high-school exams, to the bar entrance exam. It sat atop her grand mahogany desk when she became a barrister, turned outwards in proud display. 

It followed her to Bali in summer and to Japan during cherry blossom season. It scaled a glacial Kilimanjaro and punted through the choppy waters of the Mekong. It was lost in an old rental property once, only to reappear months later, miraculously, in the letterbox of her new home. 

She tucked it into her bridal bouquet as her Something Old. 

She held it in a balled, desperate fist during the first throes of labour pain. 

At age forty, Alexandra decided to gift the swan to her own four-year-old daughter. The swan was no longer a useless object, as Alexandra’s mother decreed, but totemic of a young life well lived. 

‘This swan followed Mummy everywhere,’ Alexandra told her daughter. ‘It took good care of me. I want it to take good care of you, too.’ 

Her daughter plucked the swan from Alexandra’s hand. With a feverish squeal, she hurled it at the wall. Alexandra blinked – once, twice, mouth agape – as the broken swan’s head bounced across the solid, unyielding parquet floor.