I first met Peggy at the Cumberland Nursing home, in Wheelers Hill, almost three years ago. I was singing Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose with a small group in the loungeroom of the high-care residence when a beautifully dressed and uncannily birdlike woman wheeled herself in and quietly sat at the very periphery of the group. I noticed her immediately. She had a beautiful face and a clever gaze. Sometimes she closed her eyes, even still she seemed to be listening with her whole being.

The lifestyle ladies, responsible for arranging entertainment and activities for the residents, were startled by her presence.

‘Peggy never comes out to listen to anything,’ they clucked as I packed up the equipment after the show.

I felt somewhat bashful and honoured and made it my business to introduce myself before I left.

Peggy quietly confessed to me that she was mad about Piaf. She’d heard me singing Billie Holiday from her room at the end of the hall and was tempted but when La Vie en Rose made its way in her direction she couldn’t resist.

I went to visit Peggy not long ago to ask her a little more about Piaf and music and life. We’d met on many occasions throughout the course of my visits but it had been sometime since the last. I started by asking her a little about how she came to meet Piaf and without pause for thought she shared with me her story.

After chatting about everything from caravans to Collingwood football club we got onto the subject of children. She’d had three. David, her only son, dropped in for his regular visit part way through the conversation, his ears must have well and truly been burning. We’d been nattering about him for close to forty-five minutes. Peggy had proudly detailed his academic achievements, a few career highlights, his love affair with Indonesia and with one particular Indonesian, Tutti, his wife. David, a psychiatrist, had for some time actually worked in aged-care mental health. He had some pretty insightful things to say about the ‘industry’ but his approach he said had always been to simply listen. Listen to what they’re asking, suggesting, requesting, especially in the case of high-care residences such as Peggy’s. That’s all the patients wanted –just to be heard.

He unpacked a plastic bag of goodies and placed them on Peggy’s metal-framed single bed. I clocked the Butter Menthol, because I’m an addict, and the air freshener – Peggy told me in no uncertain terms that it was absolutely necessary – to mask the stench of the belches and gurgles issuing from Peggy’s very high-care roommate.

When Peggy, David and I got chatting about music and the this project and how Peggy and I crossed paths he whipped out his mobile phone and showed me a video of his son, a handsome young guy, leaning into the curve of a chocolate-brown grand piano in the corner of a busy loungeroom. An older woman was sitting at the keys belting out an accompaniment to ‘Blue Moon’. It felt to me a little like a set up. Here I was to speak with Peggy about music and stories of her generation in the hope that this blog might start an intergenerational conversation, and here was her twenty-something year-old grandson breaking his heart over an old 1940s melody – which just so happens to have been my own grandmother’s favourite song. How’s that for full circle?