so the wind won't blow it all away

When I was a child, my nana lived in lots of places. She even lived in the back of a Ford Escort panel van sometimes, when the travelling bug bit. She would sometimes come to visit us in the middle of one of these journeys, with her best friend Ben, a black labrador. Sometimes she came by train, and we would wait with barely contained excitement as she opened her exotic-smelling suitcase and bestowed the gifts she had brought for us. Her visits were special, but it was our annual pilgrimages to visit her that were the greatest gift. And as much as she seemed to love travelling, her homes were always like a paradise, filled with parts of herself and her life but always open and comforting.
The Lennox Head house was built of fibro and stood on stilts, literally stuck into the grey sand that turned into white just a few metres from the back steps, then became the ocean. There was a clump of bamboo and a bit of patchy grass dotted with faded lawn chairs, but ultimately the backyard was the beach. It was as close as it could possibly be without inundating the whole property, but in truth there was probably just as much ocean inside the house as out. Big chunks of pumice stone in the shower, seagrass matting gritty with sand, curtains faded from the sun but never really closed, like the windows, except on those summer afternoons when a tropical storm rolled in from the sea.
I don't remember Nana moving from Lennox, and when I think about it now I marvel that she could have ever left such a beautiful place. But a child's memory is forever, and an adult with foresight can clearly see that paradise is not. So she left while everything remained as it was, and these days that house is perfectly preserved as a memory and nothing more.
The next house was not far along that same coast, but a few streets from the beach. This time there was a backyard, and it was filled with flowers and trees, some of which had made the journey from the sandy beds at Lennox Head. There were tall pine trees hung with wind chimes and bird feeders and covered with sticky sap. There were always nasturtiums, and impatiens, and gazanias that opened and closed with the sun. The soil was still sandy, the lawn still patchy, and the ocean came in through the open windows just as it had done before. When I was 10 years old this house became my own home for a couple of years, and Nana left it to us for that time as she went on more travels and my family took a journey into cancer, and thankfully back again.
A long time has passed since then. Nana has not lived on the coast for more than 20 years. And just last month she moved into another home, packing up her one-bedroom unit and taking residence of one room in the nearby nursing home. She is 93, but in her boxes of belongings that she took with her there are still small reminders of her travels and her homes. She gave me a set of blue painted windchimes that I clearly remember hanging in a pine tree at her last house by the sea. I brought them home and hung them in my beautiful Robinia, and as soon as I heard their familiar melody I was 10 years old again. Now every time I hear them, I think about how strange and wonderful the memory is. That it can blow in on the wind and carry you back in time as though you weighed nothing at all.