Jabberwocky

Spot the empowered role model

2010-01-14T15:31:00.019+11:00

‘I eat quite healthily. I'll have oats in the morning, or rye toast with avocado; a wrap for lunch; and maybe a chicken salad for dinner. If you eat a balanced diet, you're so much happier ... but I couldn't not eat, I don't know how.’

'I'm not a stick figure.'

'I like to delude myself that I'm in the old-Hollywood mode. I just tailor my clothes well and try to keep my skin clear. While it would be great to work out an hour a day, there is something inherently sort of selfish about it. I can't do it.'

Having always enjoyed sport, Jen runs three times a week and does the odd session of yoga and pilates; she keeps her skin glowing by diligently cleansing and moisturising every day.

'I did it for the experience ... it felt quite sensual and sexy. I felt empowered.'

She has thought about yoga, even done it a couple times. 'But,' she notes, 'even yoga classes go on 80 or 90 minutes.' Not for Tina the ethos of Gwyneth Paltrow or Madonna, with their two hours plus of bendiness a day. 'You will still die,' she observes. 'I'll do grave yoga. Someone can come and stretch me in my grave.'

What she'd really love is a lifestyle show – 'everything that incorporates my lifestyle now'.

Also on Tina's plate is an upcoming humor book for which she signed a rumored $5 million-plus deal with Little, Brown last year. 'It's full of incredibly angry ranting,' she says. 'Actually, it's recipes, photographs of doors. And then, more recipes.'

And did boyfriend Jake Wall, a fellow model, like the idea, too? Definitely, says Jen, adding that during the shoot, she was texting pictures of herself to him between takes. 'He's excited.'

'That is why L.A. is so bad, because they can take your picture from any side. That is why people in L.A. maintain 360-degree fitness. I don't have that kind of time.'

Main claims to fame: Miss Universe, hosting spots on The Great Outdoors and Make Me a Supermodel

Main claims to fame: Writes, produces, stars in, created 49-times-Emmy-nominated TV show, 30 Rock, former head writer on Saturday Night Live, where she guested during 2008 presidential election doing a killer Sarah Palin imitation

Hmmm ... which of these women on a magazine cover would send the message to women and girls that, in the words of The Butterfly Foundation: 'Have fun with the way that you look, but don’t let it rule your life. Putting your energy into living & doing fun things is much more important.'

I have nothing against Jennifer Hawkins. (And nothing particularly for her either.) But honestly, to put her naked on the cover of a magazine in order to promote a healthy body image and for women to feel good about themselves ... spare me. And talking about how brave she is? She's not brave: she's a model doing her job. For which she was handsomely paid, I imagine. Her fee for the shoot didn't go to The Butterfly Foundation. Marie Claire isn't donating a percentage of magazines sold to The Butterfly Foundation. The photo is being auctioned off and proceeds from that will go to the foundation. Very nice; but nobody is sacrificing anything.

And I am going to scream the next time I hear a woman talking about how empowered she felt when she took her clothes off for the camera. If being naked on the cover of a magazine makes you empowered, I guess all those women on the covers of porn magazines must be the most empowered examples of womankind there are.

Sunday Age journalist Michael Bachelard stripped off last weekend to make a tongue-in-cheek point about 'real' men ('We're hairier than you might expect, except on the head'). I found it pretty funny, as readers were supposed to.

But it also made a beautifully clear point - intentional or not - about how empowering it's NOT for women to strip off to show their 'real' bodies and the very real and enduring gender gap between the expectations of men's and women's bodies. Because the first thing that sprang to my mind when I read the line about men being 'hairier than you might expect' was: 'so are we'. Or, at least, we would be if we didn't pour hot wax on our bodies and rip it off to remove any skerrick of body hair that might see the sun (or even, these days, parts that definitely won't).

Women, even those who will never be on a magazine cover, are held to standards that men simply aren't. The sad thing is that instead of those standards on women easing off, the same standards are slowly, slowly being opposed on men too. And no professional woman could get away with posing nude in the way Bachelard did - without first having her body, face and hair groomed to the best possible standard.

Which way forward?

What do I think the Butterfly Foundation could have done if they wanted to use a magazine cover to promote a healthy body image for girls?

De-emphasise the body, for a start. Our culture's obsession with and fetishisation of the body - particularly the female body - is surely a massive contributor to the rise in eating disorders.

I think the US Harper's Bazaar cover story (from November 2009) featuring Tina Fey is far more likely to empower women - and to do good for women with eating disorders - than the Marie Claire cover story. Both being fashion magazines, both discuss health, diet and looks. Tina Fey talks about these things as being secondary to all the other things she has to do and wants to achieve in her life; Jennifer Hawkins solemnly shares her diet (which made me hungry, just reading about it) and exercise routine and says that these are 'the things I love to talk about'.

There is much less chance of a girl developing an eating disorder if she has other things to do and to think about than how she looks.

I know The Butterfly Foundation has said that this was intended to be about highlighting the issue of airbrushing photos, as Hawkins had agreed to go naked and unbrushed. But really, as some have pointed out, drawing attention to 'flaws' like the crease in her skin near her thigh has the opposite of the intended effect. Seeing tiny details like that described as 'flaws' is only likely to make girls and women more critical of themselves. And to make them look longer and harder at their bodies.

If we're serious about using women's magazines to influence healthy self-image (which I doubt), let's have more covers featuring women who DO things, women who are funny and smart, who channel their hard work (and Hawkins doubtlessy works hard) into something other than carrying off a swimsuit. I'd rather see a glamourised Tina Fey than an equally glamourised, though unclothed, Jennifer Hawkins as a stated role model for a healthy body image any day.

AFTERNOTE:

Oh ... and slightly off-point, I have to ask, if this is a role model exercise aimed at teenage and twentysomething girls, is it a good idea to include the role model sexting nude pictures of herself to her boyfriend? I thought that was the sort of potentially fraught behaviour we were supposed to be discouraging.

Shock revelation! Single man has sex! Sack him!

2009-11-23T15:38:00.000+11:00

Okay, it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not far off either. South Australian Premier Mike Rann, before he was engaged to his current wife – and many years after his divorce from his first wife – had, it seems, a racy affair with a foxy blonde Parliament House waitress. Michelle Chantelois was married at the time.

About six weeks ago, her estranged husband hit Mike Rann in the head with a rolled-up magazine at an ALP fundraiser in Adelaide. Since then, gossip has been rife as to his motives. And today, an interview with Chantelois was published in New Idea, following an interview on Channel Seven’s Today Tonight last night. In the interviews, she goes into great detail about where and when they had sex, how many times, what he did and said to her. I won’t repeat it here because I wish I’d never read it. I just don’t need to know – and neither does anyone else.

Rann seems to have gone into Clintonesque lawyer mode. He has admitted a ‘friendship’ with Chantelois, yet has not said what that means. Interestingly, he has not outright denied a sexual relationship with her, though he has said that the television program contained false allegations. (Presumably, not the basic fact of the relationship.)

Richard Phillips, the cuckolded husband, is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the matter. He said: ‘Based upon what's been said, it is my opinion that Mr Rann has taken advantage of my wife's youthful naivety and vulnerability during a very difficult time for our marriage and our family and has shown that he lacks the personal qualities and character to remain in the office of the Premier.’

I hope – and suspect – that we have learned from the American experience. Bill Clinton’s ‘bimbo eruptions’, most notably the one involving a blue dress, DNA testing and Kenneth Starr, didn’t kill his presidency, but wounded it badly. When his anointed successor, Al Gore, ran against a reformed alcoholic and failed businessman with far, far more money than sense, the public humiliation of the Clinton era contributed to his only just failing to win the vote.

Because they were was sick of listening to descriptions of the president’s penis and semen-stained dresses, Americans chose a man now known for mangling the English language, starting the most ill-conceived and ill-starred war since Vietnam, and widening the gap between rich and poor to an extent that triggered the next world depression, over a man who has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to fight climate change. (Which the man who beat him for the top job doesn’t even believe in, incidentally.)

Mike Rann’s sex life has no bearing whatsoever on his performance as Premier. And at any rate, having sex with a married woman while single himself – while not the best behaviour – is more a reflection on the person betraying their partner than on him.

‘I knew it was wrong but I was attracted to him,’ she has said. ‘I don’t want people to feel sorry for me because I have made my bed and I have to lie in it. But Mike Rann used me to stroke his own ego and pride and unlike me he has suffered no consequences … ‘I don’t think he should be premier, it’s time he took responsibility for his actions.’

Generally I would agree that it’s unfair that the woman has to bear the brunt of the misbehaviour of two people. But in this case, she has suffered the consequences because she’s the one who was married and thus had more to lose. That’s the way it goes, surely. She says she lost her administration job at an Adelaide high school over the incident. The SA Education Department says that had nothing to do with it – her contract wasn’t renewed, as many contract workers’ jobs aren’t. In a time of economic crisis – a crisis that has been particularly pronounced in SA – this sounds plausible.

And I find it interesting that a woman who has detailed her sex life in excruciating detail in exchange for a great deal of money from the media can talk about using someone to stroke their ego. It sounds like revenge for a relationship gone wrong to me.

Both the public and Rann himself can learn from Bill Clinton. The public should judge their politicians on their politics. And Rann should take note of the fact that Bill Clinton’s real trouble was his dissembling – the tricky definitions of what ‘sexual relations’ meant, for instance. If Rann admits the truth and moves on, hopefully the public will, too.

Moving up in the world

2009-10-20T22:13:00.007+11:00

Overheard on the Swanston Street tram, passing the corner of Queensberry Street on the way to Melbourne Uni: “I’ve had enough of this winter. We’ve been wearing ski jackets inside to stay warm. Ski jackets!” He was a student type, in his very early twenties, sporting fashionably skinny jeans, artfully scruffy haircut and Converse sneakers, drawling his woes into his mobile phone with a complete lack of self-consciousness. “We’ve been wearing scarves around the house. That’s not right.” Pause. “But I guess that’s what you pay for character. Character! Huh.” A wry, defeated laugh. “I fucking hate character. When you move down here, let’s get a two bedroom place. I mean, I like share houses and all, but ... it’s time to move up in the world.”

I generally hate it when people broadcast their lives to train- or tram-loads of trapped fellow passengers, but when they’re as entertaining as this guy was, I kind of like it. I was on a Saturday morning run to work, having briefly stopped at the State Library cafe for a rushed meeting first. I was armed with a laptop backpack, a shoulder bag stuffed with books I should be reading, and the Saturday newspapers. At the end of a long work week, I was snatching a few hours while my son was being dressed by his stepfather, then dropped at a birthday party, to flee to the office and finish a job.

Glancing surreptitiously at ski-jacket-guy as he talked, images of his student life flashed through my brain – a crumbling Victorian two-storey terrace in North Carlton with couches on the balcony and rust in the bathtub. Literally surrounded by the baggage of my thirty-something life, I looked at him and was hit by two conflicting waves: envy and relief.

***

Almost exactly ten years ago, I lived in a two-storey share house on Elgin Street, Carlton. There was no rust in the bathtub, though the taps didn’t work. And while there was no couch on the balcony, there was a tapestry-covered armchair on the roof.

I had recently moved from Adelaide and shared with a houseful of backpackers who’d followed me from the hostel that had been my home for my first two weeks in Melbourne. Two English boys shared a bedroom, sleeping on mattresses on the floor and living out of their enormous rucksacks. Another English boy, who had a one-year job contract and was sharing the lease with me, had somehow snaffled the double bedroom with a balcony overlooking the Housing Commission flats. Oh, and there was a fourth, interchangeable English-backpacker-boy who slept on the sofa bed downstairs. Every time one moved on, a new one from the hostel would replace him. I had a boxy room with chipboard walls that barely contained my double bed, wardrobe and Apple Mac (which sat on a kitchen chair at the foot of my bed).

There was one really cool thing about my bedroom, though. If you lost your keys and had to break in (which I often did), the only way of letting yourself into the house was to scale the corrugated iron fence into our courtyard from the back alley, heave yourself up onto the water heater, make the calculated jump-and-wriggle onto the roof, and climb through my bedroom window. This was how I discovered the armchair on the roof, and occasionally I’d climb out of my window to sit in it and smoke a cigarette, looking over the rooftops of Carlton towards the city towers in the near distance.

I had a melodramatic crush on one of my flatmates, who’d had a fleeting crush on me until we slept together (back in the hostel, days after we met), but he'd then explained to me that he couldn’t have a girlfriend because he was “on holidays, you know”. Then he fell for a girl from the Housing Commission flats, who we met during Happy Hour at the Tankerville. But she was seduced by the charms of one of our other flatmates – the one who shared his bedroom. Then, after I fell into a relationship, my flatmate started speaking of me in wistful tones when I wasn’t around (bless those chipboard walls – I could hear them talking in the kitchen when I was in bed) and offering to paint my nails while we watched television.

Brunswick Street was a block away in one direction; Lygon Street was a block away in the other. I would walk to work in North Melbourne past Readings and once a week, on the way home, I would allow myself to buy a book from my paltry junior-publishing-person salary and thrill to any titbits of conversation with the bookseller who handed me my paper bag. It was the mid-90s. Grunge literature was impossibly hip, and living in my own grungy share house within walking distance of the Punter’s Club, wearing black and buying The Virgin Suicides at Readings, was my version of a storybook life. (Hey, I’d come from Adelaide.)

Then the backpacker boys moved off, one by one, and I ended up with the one who shared my lease; the one I liked least, to tell the truth. We advertised in the Readings window for a replacement when we no longer knew anyone at the hostel, and the crop-haired girl who answered the ad sat in the courtyard with us for half an hour, making conversation and drinking beer. She seemed nice enough. While I was in Adelaide for a week, she took my one good piece of furniture (my bookshelf) from the lounge room and moved it into her bedroom, moving my books onto hers instead. She also replaced the light bulb in our front room with a red one, meaning that from the Elgin Street footpath, our house resembled a brothel, and from the couch, it was impossible to read through the angry red haze. She once explained to me with the solemnity of a Nobel candidate that it’s really, really hard to get a job at Dangerfield because “it takes a lot of skill to assemble those outfits”.

Soon, it was time to move up in the world. I moved out with my boyfriend, into a two-bedroom flat. (It took a month and multiple threats to get my fridge back from Dangerfield Girl.) A year later, I had a child.

And now, I’m living a pretty sensible life nowhere near Carlton. I would love to walk down the road to Readings and Brunswick Street; to have nothing to do on a Saturday than plan my night at the pub. These days, catch-ups with friends are planned in a series of emails or texts, days (sometimes weeks) in advance. Back then, they were as inevitable and regular – and necessary – as brushing your teeth, and required as little thought or planning.

But ... I also have work that I find absorbing, a long-term relationship that requires no melodrama (and no games!) and a child who amuses and delights (and yes, often annoys) me every day. I am very attached to all the baggage symbolised by my busy Saturday and litter of bags and books – and I’ve worked hard to amass it.

So. Envy and relief.

I wish ski-jacket-guy the best of luck with his move up in the world. Although I feel nostalgic for the mess and excitement of my early twenties, when the simplest things were new and special, I wouldn’t give up what I have for it. And the mere thought of doing it all again is exhausting.

***

I’m typing this on my verandah, at my laptop, my bare feet and presence on the wrong side of my study window testament to the first burst of summer. Children from the school a few doors down from me straggle past as I type; daisy chains of fluorescent blue and navy uniforms, sunhats on heads. Eventually, the small boy glimpsed through the screen of trees and bushes is my own.

“Hello!” I call and watch as he spins wildly, looking for me on the footpath.
“Mum?”
“I’m here! On the verandah!”
“Oh!” He laughs and runs to meet me, backpack trailing at his feet and falling at the front steps as he moves to peer at my laptop screen and hug me hello. “Look at you, outside! Ha! Are you enjoying the weather, Mum?”
“I am. I thought we could go for an ice cream. What do you think?”
“Yes!” he squeals and throws his arms around me again, squeezing me tight this time. He lets go and throws his arms open, embracing the afternoon. “You are the best Mum in the world! Ice cream!”

Simple things. New and special.

Wild Thing! I think I love you ... (after all)

2009-10-15T23:25:00.006+11:00

I am, my husband tells me, a contrary person. (In fact, his phrase is, 'The most contrary person I've ever met'. Surely untrue.) Maybe it's contrariness that makes me instantly wary of any project - book, film, TV - that is ridiculously hyped. Or, seeing as I'm obsessed with The Wire and love True Blood, perhaps I should say, any project that is ridiculously hyped before I discover it.

So, I was wary of the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers outing Wild Things, the film of Maurice Sendak's gloriously tempestuous picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. But I've been doing some online reading over the past couple of days, and I have to say I've warmed to it, mostly due to Sendak's warm endorsement of the project and cranky comments on contemporary portrayals of childhood, the enormous attention garnered by Where the Wild Things Are over the decades, and ruminations on what Max would be doing now.

If you'd like a sneak peek at Eggers' novelised version of the book, there's an extract at The New Yorker.

The Newsweek interview with Sendak, Jonze and Eggers is where I first fell for the project - and Sendak. Asked what makes a good book for children, he said:

"How would I know? I just write the books. But I do know that my parents were immigrants and they didn't know that they should clean the stories up for us. So we heard horrible, horrible stories, and we loved them, we absolutely loved them. But the three of us — my sister, my brother, and myself — grew up very depressed people."

I was a lover of fairy tales as a child (what 'children's' genre is darker?) and I'm a great believer in the power and attraction of 'horrible stories'. It depends on how those stories are told, what the outcomes are, and how and why the characters meet their fates, but scary stories for children can be cathartic, not to mention instructional. My brothers and I also loved Where the Wild Things Are. It was a bedtime favourite, along with Bears in the Night (where the small Berenstain Bears sneak out of bed in the middle of the night, tiptoe through the woods and UP SPOOK HILL, where they are frightened by an owl and run home to bed).

We enjoyed being scared, just like kids enjoy gravity-defying rides at the Show. These books take you to the emotional brink and deliver you safely back on the ground, to get on with your life. Catharsis.

In Where the Wild Things Are, Max, dressed in his 'wolf suit', has a naughty temper tantrum, is sent to his room, and retreats deep within his imagination, where he roams and roars and lets all his anger and mischief out, in the company of the primal Wild Things. It was, these interviews remind me, a revolutionary book for its time (1963) in its honest depiction of childhood, as opposed to the whimsical depictions popular at the time. The film could well break similar ground - in fact, Sendak told Jonze: "You have to just make something bold and not pander to children and make something that's as dangerous for its time as the book was in its time."

Talking about the difference between the European and American approaches to making art for children, Sendak says: "We are squeamish. We are Disneyfied. We don't want children to suffer. But what do we do about the fact that they do? The trick is to turn that into art. Not scare children, that's never our intention." Asked if he thinks Disney is bad for kids, he says, "I think it's terrible." And what would he say to parents who say the film is too scary? "I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate."

Jonze told MovieRetriever.com that he was attracted to Sendak's book because it "doesn't talk down to kids". He compared the experience of Where the Wild Things Are to the the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film, starring Gene Wilder. "He's compelling and I want him to like me but I'm also scared of him. I want to be Charlie and I want him to give me the factory but I'm also really scared of him and charmed by him and he's mysterious." An intriguing comparison.

So, I still don't know what I'll think of the film, but I do like the idea of it a lot. And it's already reminded me how much I loved the original book. Which can only be a good thing.

Look over here!

2009-10-02T11:38:00.004+10:00

I wanted to be at the Newcastle Young Writers Festival and the Ubud Writers' Festival in Bali, but instead I'm in my lounge room, juggling deadlines and drinking plunger coffee from my trusty Great Gatsby mug.

If you'd rather hear from people who did make it out of their lounge rooms this week, look here at the lovely Estelle Tang, 3000 books blogger, who is interviewing authors and generally soaking up the atmosphere in Newcastle right now. I really like her pithy little Q&As. Recently she started interviewing APA publishing interns about their jobs. Now she's cutting a swathe through the cream of the young writers and editors at Newcastle.

I quite like this exchange with comedian Lawrence Leung:

ET: Hi Lawrence. I hear you're appearing on the NYWF 'Funny Business' panel. So you think you're pretty funny, do you?

LL: You run a blog called 3000 BOOKS. So you think you can read, do you?

She also interviews Ben Law by putting titles of his own articles to him as questions, inspired by an interview he once did with Tori Amos in which he put her song titles as questions. And asks editor Dion Kagan, 'Do you, Dion Kagan, feel irritated, as I do, that the National Young Writers' Festival is not called the National Young Extremely Good-looking Editors' Festival?' (And yes, the photographic evidence proves that Mr Kagan is not unattractive.) I like her sense of cheekiness and fun, and her passionate enthusiasm for books and bookish things.

Of course Angela Meyer, Australia's equivalent of Bookslut, is the name that springs to mind when you think of tireless enthusiasm and passion for books. In her first post from Newcastle, she confirms my suspicion that the girl doesn't sleep (how else can she do everything?) by declaring three hours' sleep the night before. That's one hour less than Kevin Rudd! (Who apparently sleeps four hours a night, in case you can't be bothered doing the maths.) She's also going to Ubud, so watch Literary Minded if you're interested in following that festival.

Me, I'll be at my laptop looking out at the seemingly neverending Melbourne gloom, plugging away at those deadlines. With little detours online ...

Poor little child rapist: the trials and tribulations of Roman Polanski

2009-09-28T23:12:00.007+10:00

‘Government ministers, movie directors, writers and intellectuals have expressed shock and outrage after the detention of Oscar winning director Roman Polanski in Switzerland on three-decade-old child sex charges,’ begins an AFP article run by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Herald Sun.

Three-decade-old charges? How dare they! Just because he raped a child doesn’t mean he should be persecuted for it, should he? I mean, it’s yesterday’s news. The victim (or according to some reports, ‘victim’ - note the quotation marks) has moved on with her life, so why shouldn’t we? And he’s an Oscar winning director – isn’t that what’s really important here, not some past misbehaviour back in the hedonistic free love 1970s?

Of course, the official charge is statutory rape – that he unlawfully had sex with a 13-year-old aspiring actress in Jack Nicholson’s Mullholland Canyon mansion. What happened, according to the girl’s 1977 grand jury testimony, is that he took topless photos of her, ostensibly for French Vogue, followed by naked photos in a hot tub. He then stripped off and followed her into the hot tub. ‘That’s when I realised something was wrong,’ she later said. When she got out, inventing an asthma attack and asking to go home, he followed her into the bathroom, where she was wrapped in a towel, lured her into the master bedroom (where she told him she didn’t want to go), performed oral sex on her (while she repeatedly asked him to stop and asked to go home), had vaginal sex with her (while she asked him to stop and asked to go home), then anally raped her (while she – that’s right – asked him to stop and asked to go home). When asked why she followed him into the bedroom, why she went with him, why she didn’t call for help or more forcefully resist, she said ‘Because I was afraid of him’.

He was a 43-year-old world famous film director who was guest editing French Vogue. He’d shot some of the most celebrated films of the 1970s – Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown – and had taken her to the mansion of the star of one of those films. As she pointed out in her testimony, he had the car and was her only way of getting back home. He had plied her with alcohol and Quaaludes. (She was drinking champagne during the photo shoot.) She was 13 years old. The gap in this power relationship was an unbridgeable chasm.

In court, where he was charged with rape, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of statutory rape in order to save himself jail time. When it seemed that the judge might not honour the deal, he decided not to come home from Europe, thus becoming a fugitive from justice and a citizen of France, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand has called Polanski’s arrest “absolutely horrifying” and calls the case “an old story which doesn’t really make any sense”. British writer Robert Harris, who is collaborating with Polanski on a film version of his thriller The Ghost, says “I'm amazed this should happen now, and I cannot begin to fathom what reason lies behind it.”

Well, the answer may partly lie in fresh appeals by Polanski’s lawyers to have his original case overturned, based on evidence from the 2008 documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired that the original judge improperly colluded with prosecutors. In May, a Los Angeles judge refused his bid to have the charges dismissed, after he failed to appear in court. Hmmm ... perhaps he might have prompted the renewed focus on his long-outstanding arrest himself?

Reviewing the documentary for Salon.com in February this year, Bill Wyman made an excellent point: “The issue here isn't Polanski being left alone; he's the one trying to get his case dismissed. The movie tries to drum up sympathy for Polanski by playing up the media firestorm he was at the center of; but that's Polanski's fault, too. (Before they rape children, celebrities should consider how the media attention sure to result will have adverse consequences for their victims, as well as themselves.)”

Which brings us back to the victim and her much-trumpeted wish for Polanski’s case to be dismissed – for the judicial system to forgive him as she has. I understand her wish, which is about her desire to avoid the publicity that has long followed her (and destroyed the dream of being an actress that had led her to the disastrous photo shoot in the first place). In a written statement to the court this January, she said: “Every time this case is brought to the attention of the Court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case.” In other words, her main reason for wanting the case dismissed is so that she can move on with her life – not, as some media reports seem to suggest, because it wasn’t such a big deal, or he didn’t do the wrong thing.

Geimer told CNN’s Larry King in 2003 that ‘I tried to take a girlfriend along because I was feeling uncomfortable. But he kind of at the last minute asked her not to go. So actually when I left, my mom didn't realize I was going alone.’ After the rape, she went straight to the car, and was crying by the time he joined her there. She says, ‘So he asked that, you know, you shouldn't tell your mom. We should keep this secret.’ A week before the King appearance, she authored an LA Times opinion piece in response to all the journalists calling asking her if she thought Polanski should get an Oscar (her answer: judge it on his film, not on what he did to me). She summed up the experience: ‘It was not consensual sex by any means. I said no, repeatedly, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I was alone and I didn't know what to do. It was scary and, looking back, very creepy.’

Her attorney explained the decision-making process behind his plea-bargaining, allowing Polanski to plead guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor and commute the more serious charge of rape, to Larry King. ‘This was - this courthouse, with cross examination about these sort of delicate events was not the place for a recovering young girl ... My job, I thought, was to try to keep her out of the courtroom, try to keep her to getting back to her life.’

Much has been made of Polanski’s tragic past – his childhood as a Holocaust survivor, the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate by Charles Manson. This is juxtaposed with the achievements of his career as a director – Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, his Oscar for The Pianist – to paint a portrait of a tragic, tortured genius. ‘This is somebody who could not be a rapist!’ exclaimed one or his friends and supports in the 2008 documentary. He sure sounds like one. And neither his tragic past nor his artistic achievements excuse his behaviour.

Whether Polanski should be brought to trial when the victim would prefer the case dismissed is a valid – and thorny – issue for debate. Why should she be made to suffer more than she already has? But to suggest he deserves a presidential pardon from Barack Obama, as Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski plans to request, ‘for his services to Polish culture’, is not just ridiculous, but deeply insulting – to the victim, to all victims of rape, and to the basic tenets of our culture. Have we gone so far as to suggest that celebrity and high achievement are more important than the most basic laws of behaviour that govern our society? And let’s not fool ourselves that we’re debating the issue of sex with a minor – it’s plainly obvious from the victim’s testimony that we’re dealing with rape.

In the final analysis, I can’t help but think that the legal process should be followed – that Polanski should return to the US to face trial. It’s very likely that his sentence will be commuted to time served (he was in jail for 45 days for psychiatric assessment back in 1977), or serve an extra term to bring it to 90 days, as was negotiated in his initial plea bargain. (A plea that the judge – who is now dead - had threatened to overturn, causing his flight.) Not that that’s the point.

I think he should be tried as would anyone facing such a charge because a clear message needs to be sent that power and privilege are not a force field that allows those who possess it to behave with impunity. Powerful men need to know that it’s not okay for them to sexually abuse or intimidate women – particularly underage girls, who are even more vulnerable to abuse – because of their positions. Letting Polanski go or ignoring the international warrant for his arrest sends the opposite message – that there’s one rule for ordinary people, and another for the elite. And that’s a dangerous message.

Anxiety and (self) R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

2009-09-27T15:44:00.002+10:00

The crickets chirping in the emptiness over here at Jabberwocky has been the flipside of an incredibly busy life lately. Deadlines piling up – and, mortifyingly, sometimes shooting past. New projects taking up too much space in my head, let alone hours in the day. Too many nights sleeping on the couch – because I can’t turn down the volume on my brain enough to allow sleep in bed, but I can trick my body into dozing off if it thinks it should be awake.

I’ve had some wins in the work sphere, which is great. But every win seems to make me more anxious about the next task or goal, the potential for failure more loaded. Which makes it harder to concentrate on that task. Which makes it less likely I’ll complete it well. And I keep taking on too much work because I’m afraid to say no, afraid to miss out. Worse, I’ve been chasing work when I should be planning a rest, because I need to have done it. Because I need the adrenaline rush of a 'yes'. Each commission is another cotton-bud balm on my anxiety.

And the less I sleep, the harder it is to think and work efficiently; thus the more frantically my brain whirs through its to-do list at night. Depriving me of sleep. Making me more anxious.

Yes, perversity rules.

Over-concentration on every detail is obliterating the big picture. The pinpricks of every task and every associated worry dance before my eyes and merge into a gauze of anxiety, blocking my internal access to the machinery of analysis and action. An afternoon is wasted fixating on an imagined slight. An evening passes with a tape of a recent social occasion running in the background of my brain, scanning for slip-ups. I am poised to take offence, my skin dangerously thin, nerves pulsing too close to the surface.

I need to press control-alt-delete. I need to reboot. I can’t.

I reached for a self-help book this morning. We all have our own version of self-help, I guess – the Bible, the Koran, Oprah Winfrey, psychotherapy. Different horses for different courses.

Something about my manic vulnerability today reminded me of an essay in Joan Didion’s Slouching to Bethlehem, ‘On Self Respect’. It provided the right kind of salve for me – a mixture of comfort and admonition, understanding and rebuke. The symptoms she described seemed to fit, so perhaps the definition did, too?

She writes:

To do without self-respect ... is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.

So, I thought, re-reading it. There’s my symptoms, pretty much. Or some of them. Maybe that’s my problem; maybe I should snap out of it, like Joan Didion would. Do what I can do, accept my failings and my achievements equally as my due, and move on from both. Rely on my own opinion instead of worrying over others’. Let my vision of myself be based on what I know I'm capable of, rather than how I'm performing in the outside world.

People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things ... In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of mortal nerve; they display what was once called character ... Character, the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.

So I turned off all the internet-based social networking I was mechanically, joylessly surfing, put on a CD, cooked myself breakfast, then sat down to do some serious work. I thought about everything Joan Didion has achieved and how much more I could achieve if I was disciplined and focused and self-contained and able to block out the outside world. I did a very reasonable and thoughtful few hundred words before the anxiety kicked back in. And then I fled back to Didion's words for comfort, followed by writing this, in an effort to purge my anxiety by putting it on paper (or on screen).

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us.

... It is the phenomenon sometimes called 'alienation from self'. In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

I’m going back to work now; internet off. Really. I believe in my ability, if not to immediately move on, at least to lock my neuroses away for an afternoon - and an evening - and get on with life, meeting it and my deadlines head-on.

Snacking on story: Wells Tower at MWF

2009-08-30T00:42:00.004+10:00

Wells Tower is a name that sounds like it should belong to an Ivy League educated stockbroker, or perhaps a bored, cocaine-snorting rich kid in a Bret Easton Ellis novel. In fact, as short story aficionados and surfers of the literary zeitgeist know, he’s one of the hottest new names in American literature, with his debut short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, garnering rave reviews from critics and impressive word-of-mouth among readers. All the people I know who whispered excitedly about Nam Le’s The Boat last year, in the months preceding its publication, have spent this year enthusing about Tower – with good reason.

The first thing that strikes you about the collection is how finely turned its stories are, with prose that sings with every sentence. It is packed with accidental revelations, with flawed characters who give themselves away, allowing the reader to know them better than they knew themselves. Fractured lives navigate fraught territory. A footprint on a car windshield gives away a husband’s infidelity, and sees him banished from his home. A first date comes to an abrupt end when a child is hurt. “I like people who are in trouble,” Tower said. “People who are experiencing some kind of extremes in life.”

Tower has been publishing short stories since 2001, when The Paris Review published ‘Down Through the Valley’, a story about a man whose wife has left him for her meditation instructor, a California hippie named Barry.

But his public success began a year earlier, when he went undercover as a “carny” (or, a ride operator at a carnival) for The Washington Post. He meant to do it for three months, but lasted five days, he told the packed Melbourne Writers’ Festival audience at The Festival Club. “Participatory stories are a lot of fun,” he said. “Doing that story was fun, though I was terrified the whole time I was doing it. There wasn’t a single person working there who hadn’t done prison time.”

He described the process of writing the story – that he’d be composing paragraphs in his head while working and would run out to the toilet and scribble them down when he could, then later piece them together.

Following the publication of the Washington Post story, Tower started to be approached to write more. He got an agent. She didn’t last long. He gave her two short stories. “She said, ‘they suck, I’m not sending them out’,” he recounts. He’d already given them to The Paris Review, who – much to his shock – picked them out of the slush pile and published them. That was the end of the agent. The Paris Review publication was especially heartening because its then-editor, George Plimpton, was a hero of Tower’s. “His participatory journalism inspired me to do the carny story.”

Over the next several years, Tower continued to write and publish his short stories and journalism in publications like Harpers, McSweeneys and The New York Times. After a couple of years of publishing stories, he started to get queries from publishers about putting out a collection, but – unlike most writers in his position would – Tower kept saying no. “I knew the stories sucked,” he said. “There’s no point in sending out stories you don’t think are good. If you don’t think they’re good, no one else will.”

Of course, these stories that “sucked” by Tower’s high standards (but were published by the likes of The Paris Review) are in Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – but, in most cases, in a much altered form. When it came time to revise the stories for the book, he reports being “kind of disgusted” by most of them. One story (in my opinion, one of the best in the book), ‘Retreat’, was entirely rewritten from the point of view of another character. It’s a story about two ultra-competitive, very different brothers who have never quite got along but are the only family each other have, set over a couple of days together at one brother’s rural mountainside retreat, which he plans to commercially develop. The fulcrum of the story is the intense rivalry between the brothers and the strange yet prosaic way it plays out. “I thought it would be more interesting to rewrite it from the point of view of the more morally compromised brother,” Tower reflected.

Moderator extraordinaire Chris Flynn, the Melbourne-based editor of Torpedo magazine, asked at what point Tower would stop revising a story. “I think when it gets to that point where someone says to me, ‘you’re upsetting me, it’s FINE’. I do think it’s important, when revising, to get back to the point of what the emotional thread of it is. It’s about trying to install a bleeding heart into the story and not just a bunch of clever lines.”

While Tower said that his magazine reportage often inspired or informed his stories, he was adamant about avoiding autobiographical storytelling. The story he wrote about a carnival, inspired by his virgin assignment as an undercover reporter, “wasn’t about a young journalist working undercover at a carnival”, he pointed out. What he did take from his experience was the feeling of the carnival, the kinds of characters who worked there and situations that might arise. “I think any time I do write about my own life I try to abstract the things I’ve gone through, to find the cold machinery of it.” Otherwise, he said, there’s the risk that he’d write “treacly self-confession”.

“It’s about getting to a place where your characters are real to you, where you know them and you’re not dressing up a whole bunch of statistics and research to pretend they’re real people.”

Who does Tower read and recommend? Among the names he passionately recalled were Lorrie Moore (a newish favourite of mine), Deborah Eisenberg, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor and Richard Yates – one of my own all-time favourites. “I think he’s about the best short story writer you could find,” he said, describing the novels that followed his revived classic Revolutionary Road as “really depressing”. (A fair assessment.) “But in a short story, he doesn’t have the time to build up to an apocalypse.” He especially recommended the story ‘A Really Good Jazz Piano’.

“I try to snack on a short story every day when I’m writing,” he said.

Asked for advice for aspiring writers, Tower underlined the importance of a revision and a trusted reader, “two really important tools”. He said that it’s taking him longer and longer to write a story. (“I used to be happy with a story after three months.”) On revision, he said: “People think that revision is like cleaning up after the party, but you come to realise that revision is the party. For me, I’ve realised there is no party.”

Tower comes across as charming, ever-curious and possessed of a dry wit, peppering his conversation with wry observations and deprecating one-liners. But more than anything, you come away from hearing him talk with the conviction that he is a serious writer, passionately dedicated to his craft, and to the exhausting, never-ending pursuit of getting it right.

“I’m a believer in literature. I’m not a church-goer or anything, but I have a tremendous belief in literature and its power to transform.”

Colour me green

2009-08-26T09:34:00.005+10:00

I can't stop thinking about a comment Kalinda Ashton - short story writer, playwright and now novelist - made at during a MWF panel on the weekend.

Talking about the transition from writing plays and short stories to writing novels, she said:

"With short stories, I begin with the most fleeting ideas. I generally write them in an afternoon - or maybe in two sittings, for the longer ones, the ones that are five or six thousand words."

As someone who has been working on one short story on and off for two years and has just submitted another after six months, I was amazed and stupidly jealous. When I read that Nick Cave dashed off his novel in two or three months (and then presumably had an editor clean it up), I'm unimpressed. Fast work is just as often laziness as genius. But Kalinda's stories are fantastically polished. Colour me green.

I identify more with the method (though not the talent, obvs) of virtuosic short fiction talent Wells Tower, who reportedly drafts his stories 30 times. Looking forward to seeing him at the festival this weekend, too ...

Guilt about the Past: Bernhard Schlink at MWF

2009-08-23T18:13:00.002+10:00

Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader, spoke to a sold-out opening night crowd at Melbourne’s Town Hall. In person, he is almost precariously tall and thin, walking with a slight stoop, as if apologising for taking up so much space. His voice is soft, low, polite. Heavy with the weight of the subjects he speaks and writes about.

Schlink spoke about the topic of his new (non-fiction) book, Guilt About the Past. Of course, it’s a topic that has informed his novels, too. The Reader was about a 15-year-old boy who had an affair with a much older woman, who he encountered years later in a courtroom, being tried for war crimes. Homecoming explored the experience of a man whose supposedly long-dead father turns out to be alive, living in the US – a Nazi collaborator.

Both novels explore the idea of coming to terms with a younger generation being intimately (often unknowingly) involved with someone implicated in Nazi war crimes and their attempts to come to terms with that.

Schlink spoke about “guilt through solidarity” – guilt suffered by people who didn’t perpetrate war crimes, nor were in a position to offer resistance or opposition, but suffer a kind of guilt through their association with the perpetrators. Some of these people are children or grandchildren of perpetrators; others are simply Germans who identify with the culture and the nation that perpetrated these crimes.

It’s a guilt associated with not renouncing the guilty members of their society or family, even though they know they are guilty. And it’s something that, I presume, affects huge numbers of everyday Germans. (Not to mention the application of that principle here in Australia, to non-indigenous Australians and their relationship to those who dispossessed or oppressed Australia’s indigenous people.)

“To distance oneself from grandparents who were perpetrators is not actually a choice for most children.”

There is a correspondence, Schlink said, between the trauma inherited by the children of victims and the guilt inherited by the children of perpetrators. They are united by the same crime. These groups can’t ask for or give forgiveness, though reconciliation between these two groups is possible.

“While forgiveness lifts the burden of guilt fromt he guilty party, reconciliation makes the burden lighter.”

Referring back to the Australian experience, Schlink concluded that Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations seemed problematic, “because it doesn’t come from the perpetrators themselves”.

Bernard Schlink commanded respect from his audience, but he didn’t necessarily command our attention. What he had to say was extremely worthy and interesting and made good sense, but I came away feeling that I would have got those messages better by reading his book. The general buzz in the Town Hall lobby afterwards, and at the festival over the weekend, agreed with my observations. Still, he sold out the space and I dare say that most of the people there went away pleased to have been in the presence of a great writer and thinker.

What I was left with, I think, was the gravitas with which he carried himself – modest but not falsely so, dignified and understated. There was the sense that he was there to serve his material, to deliver his message. And a sadness, too. A sense of shame at being German, a carefulness about him as a result of all the cultural baggage that carries in the post-Nazi era.

One audience member questioned him about Jewish activities in Palestine, asking what he thought the pathology was connecting Jewish survivors to Palestinians.

"I don’t think it is for a German to judge what Israel is doing in Palestine," he said. "Israelis will listen to what Canadians, Americans and Australians say to them, but the definitely will not listen to what a German would say to them."

David Sedaris on Daylesford, the Kookaburra song and his family

2009-08-19T12:27:00.003+10:00

Our destination that afternoon was a place called Daylesford, which looked, when we arrived, more like a movie set than like an actual working town. The buildings on the main street were two stories tall, and made of wood, like buildings in the Old West, but brightly painted. Here was the shop selling handmade soaps shaped like petit fours. Here was the fudgery, the jammery, your source for moisturizer. If Dodge City had been founded and maintained by homosexuals, this is what it might have looked like.

Read the New Yorker article in its entirety here.

Sending them out

2009-08-18T02:35:00.002+10:00

Every Monday, F has a friend over to play after school. I know to expect them 15 minutes later than necessary. They dawdle home, picking up bits of rubbish from the footpaths – impressively long sticks, interesting shaped fragments of metal – which they hand over distractedly at the door. (‘Look what we found!’)

They shed their schoolbags, shoes, socks and jumpers in a trail between the hallway, the kitchen and F’s room. Every Monday, I call them back to clean up after themselves and they loop back obediently as I unfurl slices of bread at the counter and insert them into the toaster, four at a time. We talk about their day as I slice green apples into eight methodical wedges and pile them on plates with BBQ Shapes, hearing about mean kids and footy triumphs and what they did on the way home. I butter the toast, slice it in halves, serve the plates and – more often than not – retreat to my home office while they amuse themselves.

Two weeks ago, they had lingered at the creek and gone on an imaginary quest there.
They were five minutes later than usual, arriving home at 4.20pm. Their navy school pants were streaked with mud, their nails and palms dark with embedded grit. I made them wash their hands before they ate, wondering whether to tell them off and scold them to come straight home next time. Instead, I told them to make sure they don’t ever linger longer than they did or that I’d punish them.
‘I was just about to come looking for you. You were just in time,’ I said.
‘What would you do?’ asked L, F’s Monday companion. ‘How would you punish us?’
‘There’d be no toast and no BBQ Shapes. Only apple.’
The boys gasped theatrically; half appalled, half playing at being appalled.

Last week, I had a mountain of work to do. I cut up the apple and set out the BBQ Shapes and told them apologetically that they’d need to make their own toast, because I had a deadline. (‘Nahhhh,’ said L. ‘We’ll be okay.’) I don’t let F watch television or play computers during the week, but was so desperate not to be disturbed that I handed over the Foxtel remote on my way to my office and told them to go for it. As I hunched over InDesign, the boys bickered loudly about what to watch, eventually calling me in to referee. Decision forced, I retreated to my study again. Ten minutes later, they crashed through my door. I swallowed a scream.

‘Can we climb the tree out the front?’ asked F breathlessly.
‘Sure,’ I said, and they ran out, slamming the screen door behind them. From my window, I watched them barrel through the picket fence and onto the strip of grass on the other side of the footpath, where they scaled the tree and settled happily in its branches. For the next half hour, I worked to the muted sound of chatter on the other side of the windowpane, glancing up at intervals to check on them. They sat in the tree, chirping strangely polite greetings at surprised passers-by on their way from the train station, followed by cascades of giggles. (‘Good afternoon!’ ‘Hel-lo!’ ‘Have a nice day!’)

And then, the tone altered, relaxing into familiarity.
‘Hello G!’
I looked up to see our next-door neighbour in his fluorescent work vest; his son, F’s best friend, bouncing delightedly at his side. G was frowning into the tree. I knew what was going on immediately.
‘Come up here!’ the boys shouted to Boy Next Door. ‘Come on!’
He flashed towards them. His Dad stopped him with a hand on his arm and low words, too low to hear. They stayed a moment longer, conferring with my son and his friend up the tree, and turned towards home, passing the wall of my study on their way to their front door. I heard Boy Next Door wailing and stamping.

Boy Next Door is, more often than not, my third young visitor on a Monday afternoon.

My boys resumed their greetings, their chatter, their darting up and around the branches. I thought of Boy Next Door, alone in his bedroom. I sighed and left my computer.

‘Hi Mum!’
‘Hey Ariel!’
‘Hi boys. Is BND coming to play?’
‘Um ... yes. Later,’ said F.
‘When?’
‘We don’t know.’
I left the warmth of the doorway and stood under the tree, speaking softly overhead.
‘Is he allowed to come over, but not allowed to play up the tree?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said F.
‘Or out the front?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Ah,’ I said, and turned to go inside.
‘It’s okay,’ called F, giving in to guilt. ‘I think we’ll come in now.’ He dropped to the lowest branch. ‘HEY BND!’ he shouted. ‘WE’RE ...’
‘F! Don’t shout, go OVER there,’ I scolded. I lowered my voice. ‘And,’ I added, ‘can you tell G that I was watching you out the window the whole time? Please.’
‘Sure,’ said F, in a way that made me sure he’d forget my request by the time his feet hit the ground, if he’d ever listened to it at all.

Before I’d shut the front door behind me, G and BND were on the footpath.
‘Can he come and play?’ asked G, reverting to our polite Monday ritual.
‘Of course,’ I said, completing it.
He looked at me, wondering how to say it.
‘They’ll be playing inside,’ I said. ‘Or out the back.’
‘Oh, good.’ His whole body sagged in relief. He looked up at L, who was squatting on the lowest branch of the tree, readying to jump. ‘Are you okay, son? Do you want some help getting down, there?’
‘Nah,’ scoffed L. ‘I’m right.’ He sprang clumsily from his perch, landing heavily, jerkily on his feet.
‘Are you okay?’ G repeated. ‘You right there?’
‘Course,’ said L, straightening with shaky aplomb and running past him, through the front door, into the lounge room, where the television still blared from earlier. I was proud of him – L is a renowned sook and would normally explode into false sobs at an adult enquiry after his wellbeing. G followed him to the front door. He peered in at the boys, sitting three across on the couch, bodies slumped, eyes on Spongebob Squarepants. He smiled, waved goodbye to his son, and ambled back home.

Boy Next Door turned nine this Monday. His parents let him walk from his house to ours alone for the first time this year. Last year, I had to escort him home and back again if he went to collect a ball they’d kicked over the fence, or to get his footy cards. ‘It’s a dangerous world out there,’ his parents told me, more than once. ‘It’s not like when we were kids. Someone could just snatch him off the street.’

I strongly believe that this is media-fuelled nonsense. That children are just as safe, if not safer, than they ever were. I also believe that allowing children freedom to play and explore free of adults, and gradually extending that freedom as they grow older, is essential to creating a strong sense of self.

In a fabulous article for The New York Review of Books that had me shouting ‘yes!’ and ‘ex-actly!’, Michael Chabon makes the point better than I ever could:

The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past ... The primary reason for this curtailing of adventure, this closing off of Wilderness, is the increased anxiety we all feel over the abduction of children by strangers; we fear the wolves in the Wilderness. This is not a rational fear; in 1999, for example, according to the Justice Department, the number of abductions by strangers in the United States was 115. Such crimes have always occurred at about the same rate; being a child is exactly no more and no less dangerous than it ever was. What has changed is that the horror is so much better known.

He also offers a cogent, insightful explanation for this shift, going deeper into the issue:

The endangerment of children—that persistent theme of our lives, arts, and literature over the past twenty years—resonates so strongly because, as parents, as members of preceding generations, we look at the poisoned legacy of modern industrial society and its ills, at the world of strife and radioactivity, climatological disaster, overpopulation, and commodification, and feel guilty. As the national feeling of guilt over the extermination of the Indians led to the creation of a kind of cult of the Indian, so our children have become cult objects to us, too precious to be risked. At the same time they have become fetishes, the objects of an unhealthy and diseased fixation. And once something is fetishized, capitalism steps in and finds a way to sell it.

And makes an excellent point about just why this freedom is so important, for reasons beyond the obvious (the pleasure of it, the valuable sense of independence and self-confidence it brings):

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible ... Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted—not taught—to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?

Obviously, I'm not advocating flinging open the doors and giving children free rein. (And neither is Chabon.) But letting children gradually off the leash in a responsible, age-appropriate way while keeping a surreptitious eye on them as they ease into each new stage of independence is surely part of the job of parenting.

'If I do send them out,' Chabon wonders plantitively, writing from suburban California, 'will there be anyone to play with?' Luckily, I don't think things are quite that bad here yet.

If I send F out, he just won't be able to play with the boy next door.

Do good blog posts come in small packages?

2009-07-27T14:43:00.006+10:00

Today I had a (very civil) altercation with a Gen Y blogger who argued that people won't read blog posts of more than a paragraph, or a few paragraphs at most.
'You can write more than that if you want,' he shrugged. 'If you want to waste your time. But people won't read it.'

I admit that I was pretty passive in this discussion. Most of my comebacks consisted of skeptical looks and a lack of enthusiasm in my agreement to write blog reports of a paragraph or so for him. This was partly because I'm an anonymous blogger and thus couldn't argue using my own experience; partly because this guy does online communication for a living, so I couldn't help wondering if he was right and I was wrong. (And yes, I admit that I have a tendency to go on for too long in my posts, one that nobody calls me on because I am - dangerously - my own editor.)

But still ... I couldn't help thinking about the Meanjin blog, Spike, the ever-prolific Angela Meyer's Literary Minded, James Bradley's fantastic blog, City of Tongues, and Mark Sarvas's The Elegant Variation. All of these blogs combine short posts with longer, in-depth thought pieces or examinations of writers, writing or other topics - and they're all highly successful blogs. And writers like Penni Russon and Rachel Power use their blogs to explore thoughts and issues or to share snippets of their lives, in a very readable and engaging way. I feel lucky and privileged to be able to follow sites like these free of charge, often accessing writing I'd be happy to discover in the print media.

And writer/bloggers Krissy Kneen and Christopher Currie, both from fabulous independent bookshop Avid Reader in Brisbane, have both recently won publishing contracts from Text for books that began life as stories on their blogs.

I don't know if I agree that form necessarily dictates content. It's true that it's nicer and easier to read long pieces in print; but one of the huge benefits of new technology is that it provides a forum for intelligent discussion and exploration of all kinds of topics, without the writer needing funding to create a platform for communication, or to place their story with the right editor at the right time, with the right angle and style for the chosen publication. I think there's a place for snappy news blogs and websites - like Genevieve Tucker's Reeling and Writhing, Jessa Crispin's Bookslut and Canada's Bookninja. But there's also a place for longer writing that takes advantage of the free and easy platform the internet provides.

That's what I wish I'd said to my Gen Y friend today, instead of just looking unhappy.

But I'm really, really curious to hear what other people think. Is shorter better online? For certain kinds of online writing, or certain audiences? Or does it depend on the writer and the topic and the day?

Afterword

I've just come across this argument for my side from the denizen of litblogging, Jessa Crispin of Bookslut, interviewed by Hackpacker:

"For a while, the only writing about literature you could find online was short, highly opinionated blogs. I remember being told that people don't want to read things of length online, you can never publish quality original content online. I thought, bullshit. I went ahead with publishing 5,000 word interviews with authors, 15-minute videos, etc. I've been proven right, because more lengthy content gets posted online all the time: podcasts, videos, long form essays. Even from the same people who said no one would care."

Still, please do tell me if you have another opinion. I'm genuinely curious to see what people think on this.

Not getting away with anything

2009-07-26T22:37:00.005+10:00

Last night, I called F at his Dad's house to wish him luck for today's Footy Fun Day. He came to the phone sniffling.
'Hey, F.'
'Hi Mum.' Soggily.
'What's up?'
'I didn't get any ice cream.' His voice descended into sobs. 'And I didn't get any last night either. And it's because I had lemonade, but I didn't KNOW lemonade meant I wouldn't have ice cream. And I'm so stupid, I hate myself. And I'm so ANGRY.'
I tried to calm him down, reminding him he always has fruit for dessert at Dad's house anyway and that crying won't change anything.
'Can I come to your house?'
'What? When?'
'Tonight.'
'Right now?'
"Yes. I've had enough here.'
I told him, gently but firmly, that while he's always very welcome, he can't come to one parent's house when the other is annoying him or has punished him. I promised him that if he felt the same in the morning and it was okay with Dad, he could come back early.
'Anyway,' I said, 'We were calling to wish you luck for tomorrow.'
'Aren't you coming?'
'Um ... no. You don't need me to come. Your Dad's coming. He hasn't seen you play for two weeks.'
'I want you to come too. Please come.'

I know it's selfish, but I'm exhausted after three weeks of mostly having F while his Dad has been overseas and interstate and has had visitors (and while I've had absolute mountains of work to do). Three weeks that have been relatively eventful, as far as football goes. Weeks in which we've had tears and tantrums and bullying and misbehaviour and F throwing himself face down in dirt and rubbing it on his face as self-punishment. In which I've wanted to punch another parent for overstepping boundaries and have been rigid with anger and frustration about miscommunication with his coach. I needed a break from football. And Footy Fun Day, which I would have to attend without The Husband, was scheduled to stretch over most of the Sunday, and would involve me hanging out with F's Dad all day. F's Dad, who rang me on Friday to tell me various things F had said about me. ('You can't get away with anything you know! He tells me everything!') My misdemeanours had included buying him honey-flavoured Weetbix and offering him a packet of M&Ms to get his hair cut at my hairdresser's instead of his Dad's barber's. (His Dad's barber gives him biscuits.)

'Sorry, hon, but I can't come. I'll be at the Footy BBQ next weekend, though.' Momentary silence on the other end of the phone, broken by dark muttering. 'Anyway,' I continued, 'Did you tell your Dad this week that I don't care about head lice?'
'Oh. Yeah.'
'What was that?'
'I dunno.'
'Of course I care. I just didn't notice you had it.'
'Yeah, well, Dad says you're rubbish at noticing things.'
'WHAT? He said WHAT?'
In the background, I heard F's Dad shouting 'I did not! I did NOT say that! You tell your Mum I didn't say that!'
F sighed.
'Yeah, well, actually Dad didn't ACTUALLY say that. But I reckon he thinks you're rubbish at noticing things, cos he said to me, Oh, you're at Mum's for two weeks and she doesn't notice you've got lice and you're with me for two days and I notice.'
'Really?'
'Yep.'
'F, I think I have to go. I think I should not say anything to that.'
'Okay Mum. Bye.'

And he hung up, leaving me gaping at the phone and looking meaningfully at The Husband.
'Did you HEAR that?'
'Yeah. Don't worry about it. It's just stupid.'
'Okay.'

His Dad's barber cuts his hair to look like his Dad's. His Dad was brought up by a military family and went to an English boarding school and you can still tell when you look at him. His Dad's barber is likely losing his eyesight too: after a haircut, random long strands unexpectedly wisp across his forehead or brush his cheek. The Husband usually fixes Dad's barber's haircuts by evening them out with a razor, giving him a number three buzzcut.

'His hair was too long,' his Dad had told me. 'That's why he had lice.'
'It wasn't long at all! That's not why he had lice.'
'Well, why did he?'
'Because kids get lice.'
'When his hair is longer, it's harder to get the lice out and he was uncomfortable.'
'Okay,' I sighed. 'Fine.' Pause. 'When he's a teenager he'll choose my hairdresser anyway.'
F's Dad snorted.
'What kind of teenager do you expect him to be?!'
'I don't know.'
'I think you're going to try to make him into some scruffy-haired Nirvana look-alike.'
'He can express himself however he chooses,' I replied primly, not admitting that a long-haired Nirvana look-alike would be fine with me.
'Oh, is that right? Any way he chooses? So he can have tattoos and piercings?'
'Well, within reason. Not tattoos and piercings. But if he wants long hair, yes.'
F's Dad snorted and sighed in quick succession.
'You know,' he said, 'You've become quite conservative, really.'

Letter from Sydney (Writers' Festival)

2009-05-25T13:59:00.011+10:00

Greetings from Sydney!

I’ve been here to attend the Sydney Writers’ Festival. In between getting horribly lost, catching cabs in the wrong direction, having my hostel room flooded (torrential rain flushing leaves, mud and 2cm of water across my floor) and sweltering in my Melbourne winter clothes ... it’s been fun.

This morning I discovered that former model and crime writer Tara Moss has been blogging the festival for the local ABC (702) and really done a pretty terrific job. The last time I read something of Tara’s at length was an article she wrote in a now-defunct magazine (The Eye, I think) about preparing for a book launch, in which she described picking out the perfect LBD and borrowing diamond jewellery. As a young publishing apparatchik at the time, I snorted and eye-rolled at the ridiculousness of it, and the distance from most authors’ reality, and vowed never to pay attention to anything she did again. (Though later, when I was working at a bookshop, Tara once again gave me cause for amusement when she dropped in for a signing and the male staff and owners all flocked to have their photo taken with her, unsuccessfully trying not to openly drool.)

It’s a good, engaging blog that gives you a good overview of the festival and has some nice short, snappy interviews. Hooray for a novelist who knows how to blog! (And no, she’s not the only one, but many don’t.) For the first time, I am prepared to admit that Tara is not just a pretty face.

My festival highlights were:

Being part of the large crowd for Christos Tsiolkas’s discussion of The Slap. There was a real warmth in the room, a definite sense of community, thanks in no small part to the graciousness of the author, in particular his dignified and admirably modest response to criticism (which, in turn, was quite politely put) and his seeming enthusiasm for engaging with his readers. It was like one big book club. And the extended, vigorous applause at the end was wonderful to hear and see – it felt like a kind of ‘thank you’, and I think Christos felt it as such. His face glowed with pleasure as the clapping rolled on. "I wanted to write a book about the middle-class. What we saw as the middle-class in Australia had changed dramatically over the past 20 years. I wasn't seeing that in the books we were writing or the films I was seeing and that was what fired me to write the book."

Not that I’m measuring my experience by ecstatic applause, but ... Richard Flanagan’s closing address on the dangers to our book industry, and Australian culture as a whole (not to mention jobs during an economic crisis) posed by the proposed changes to the parallel importation rules. He was so eloquent, so passionate, so engaging, so lyrical and breathtakingly logical in his argument. And the packed audience in the Sydney Theatre Company applauded so hard and so long that he left the stage and came back, and people began stamping their feet in approval. Of course, he was playing to a captive audience ... (the publishing industry’s version of ‘true believers’). “There will be a dying back of Australian literature as sad in its way as the dying of the Murray or the Great Barrier Reef.” You can download the speech in full here. (And, while we're on the subject ... YA author and Penni Russon also gives an excellent, logical, passionate argument against the so-called Coalition for Cheaper Books (Dymocks, Big W & Coles) here.)

The charismatic, deeply talented Philipp Meyer talking about his novel American Rust, growing up in Baltimore (and yes, this prompted questions about The Wire from both the interviewer and the audience), being a Wall Street trader and dropping out to write a novel, going to New Orleans to help out following Hurricane Katrina (he has worked as an emergency medical technician) and the writing process. The Australian’s chief literary critic Geordie Williamson officiated beautifully, though he gave away too much of the plot. Note to all chairs: DON’T GIVE AWAY THE PLOT! Of the impetus for American Rust, set in a former steel town in Pennsylvania devastated by the collapse of American manufacturing, he says, “I wanted to show what life was like in those places, good and bad.”

Some fascinating industry sessions with visiting international publishers.

Seeing Bob Ellis wander about the place, pillow in a plastic bag, looking suitably dishevelled, as befits his 'sad clown' persona, and as if he might lay down and take a kip in a corner at any moment. He did seem to slip out rather mournfully from Richard Flanagan's session in which he took a knife to Ellis's mate "Macquarie banker" Bob Carr (who famously told the crowd at last year's SWF that he doesn't read Australian fiction). I dearly wanted to stop him and ask what he thought of Carr's behaviour, but resisted the temptation.

Walking in the descending darkness along Sydney Harbour, between venues, watching the Opera House lights come on and listening to Fleet Foxes on my headphones.

UPDATE: You can read about Meanjin's (aka Sophie Cunningham's) SWF experience here. Includes excellent gossipy anecdote about Good Weekend journalist Mark Dapin (who I think writes always-interesting feature articles) inviting a publicist to punch him and ending up with a black eye.

Stranger danger

2009-04-23T00:51:00.004+10:00

"If a parent from school, someone you don't really know, pulled up while you were walking home from the oval and asked if you wanted a lift home, what would you say?" I ask F as we walk to school, feeling confident of his answer.
"I'd say yes please," he says, equally confident that he is right.
"No! No, that's not what you do. You say no thank you."
"Really? Why?"

And I wonder if perhaps the parents up at the school who say 'it's so nice that he's independent, he seems to really enjoy walking home alone' with immovable smiles and disapproving eyes are, after all, right.

"Well, you don't know those people and they might kidnap you," I say, in what I hope are wise tones.
"Why would they do THAT?" He looks up at me with wide eyes, bewildered.

And I remember that I don't want him to be afraid of the world, that I want him to feel confident and to take risks and make friends.

"Well, they probably wouldn't. It's not likely that you'd be kidnapped of course. It's not something that happens very often AT ALL. Hardly ever. But you need to be careful, because you just don't know. You have to be careful when you don't know people."
"Okay."

And I think that he does walk a long way and I would like him to be able to accept a lift if someone is driving into Yarraville village, especially if it's raining.

"You can accept a lift from M or T or S's dad, and THAT'S ALL. Only them."
"What about D's mum?"
I think about it.
"No."
"But she wouldn't kidnap me. I've been to her HOUSE."
"I know. Of course she wouldn't. But I don't know her very well."

I am trying to keep it as simple as I can.

"What about A's mum?"
"Yes, that would be fine. But that's ALL."
"Okay."
"And anyone in our family."
"Okay."

We keep walking. He pats the dog. We talk about how much we love the dog. He decides that he and The Husband love the dog up to the moon and back and I only love her to the tree at the end of the road and back. I tell him this sounds about right.

"If you were kicking a footy at the oval with a friend and B came over and said he was playing cricket at the park near our house and asked you to come with him, what would you do?"
"I'd go with him!"
"You'd just go?"
"Yep."
"Straight there?"
"Uh huh." Worry clouds his face. "I'm allowed to go to the park with B, aren't I?"
"Well, yes. But only if I know you're there. If you went with him, if I went looking for you to tell you it's time to come home - which I definitely would - you would be gone and I would be terrified and I'd have no way to find you."
"Oh. I see."
"So, you would come home and ask me if you could go to the park with B, and I would probably say yes."
"Okay."

We are nearly at school now.

"So, what if a kid you know came to the oval and said he's at a house down the road and he has chocolate cake and would you like to come over and get a piece?"
"I go?"
"No. You don't. If you are at the oval, you must stay there and not go anywhere except home."
"Oh. Okay."

I remember that Asperger's kids don't make connections between scenarios as easily as others do, and need the rules for different situations spelled out individually and specifically. I realise I have many, many more conversations like this to come ...

**

My mum arrives from Adelaide that day. I tell her the story. She gives me another one to try. Foolishly, I am confident.

"F, what if you are walking home or at the park or the oval and someone pulls up in a car and they say, quick, you mum's hurt and she's sent me to get you and take you home?"
"I go with them!"
"No. Only if it is The Husband or family or N or K or M or T. That's it. They are the only people I would ever send to get you. Okay?"
"Okay."

**

I have a long way to go ...

Unwritten rules: and why they should be written down

2009-04-18T17:34:00.003+10:00

Why is it wrong to put your feet up on the train, but perfectly okay to blast the whole train carriage with inane soft rock, throbbing techno, or even - though it's never happened in my experience - really good music?

It might be a sign of ageing, but I am so sick of people (mostly teenagers) sitting on the train and using their mobile phones as if they were ghetto blasters. Recently, F and I had caught a train to the city, and on the way home, between Footscray and Yarraville, a mild-looking thirtysomething passenger filled the carriage with loud, tinny Bollywood music. F and I looked up from our newspaper (me) and Mad magazine (him) to glare at her, and muttered to each other about the interruption to our peaceful reading, previously broken only when F decided to read me lengthy excerpts from Mad.
"I really wanted to take her phone and throw it out the window," I growled once we got off the train and stood waiting at the Anderson Street level crossing.
"Yeah, I reckon," said F.
"I was ready to punch her."
"Yeah!"
"I mean ... obviously, I would never punch someone. I was just that angry."
"Yeah, of course Mum."
"But I shouldn't have said that."
"No, you shouldn't."
"It was a bad example."
"Yes, it was. A TERRIBLE example." We looked briefly, unexpectedly, into each other's eyes, both caught staring at our reflections in the Chinese takeaway window as we moved down the street towards home.
"Why can't people wear headphones?" I grumbled.
"That's why iPods were invented!" said F, rather cannily, I thought.
"YES! You're so RIGHT! It's why Walkmans were invented before that, anyway. Walkmans, followed by iPods. I'm going to say that next time I see someone doing that. Thanks F."

Back home, I continued my rave, now aimed at The Husband.
"I am going to start taking those free earphones they offer you on the plane," I said, "and I'm going to carry a supply with me, and when I see people doing that again, I will just go up to them and give them a pair of earphones and tell them to use them. That's what I'll do!"
The Husband glanced up from the football on television, bemused. "You would go to all that trouble?"
"Yes. Yes I would."

I am kind of ashamed that the one time I did tell someone off about this it was a 12-year-old kid, who actually had a ghetto blaster (the size of his skinny torso) balanced across his knees. In my (lame) defence of only targetting the harmless, this was only the second time I'd encountered this trend of imposing your music on everyone, the first being the time I was so engrossed in my book that I accidentally caught the train to Altona instead of Williamstown, where a gang of shirtless tattooed boys, and girls in neon halter tops and alarmingly white hair, were playing a hip-hop version of Richard Marx as we rolled past a flame-topped oil refinery in the midst of a sheaf of bare paddocks. I was too freaked out wondering where this undeveloped space had sprung from and worried that the teenagers might beat me up to ask them to turn Richard Marx off.

Anyway ...

Yesterday it was four teenage girls, squealing and 'oh-mi-GOD-ing' about boys and getting pissed, playing 'More Than Words', a hideous bit of 1990s soft-rock (or 'soft metal ballad'), singing it at the top of their lungs and looking insanely smug and satisfied at successfully dominating the carriage. I may well have done the same thing at their age - I do remember singing 'American Pie' on the back of a few buses with my friends (no musical accompaniment) and thinking we were pretty damn special. I sat there and swore under my breath and glared and looked around the carriage, tryng to gauge my support if I shouted across for them to "shut the fuck up". I tried not to think about taking the phone and throwing it, or smashing it underfoot. I grew a little disturbed about just how violently angry I was about this admittedly trivial matter. I said nothing. And when one of the girls met my glare, I looked away. Damn.

And got irrationally, disproportionately angry again when I went up the Flinders Street Station escalators and nobody moved so I could walk up. Just as I am sure there is an unwritten rule that you use headphones on public transport, there is another that on escalators - especially at the train station - the people on the left stand still and on the right they walk. Like a fast and slow lane. It must be a rule, as so many people obey it unthinkingly so much of the time. Right? But because it's unwritten, it's hard to get mad or say anything when people don't obey.

If Connex wasn't so plagued by more serious problems, I would lobby them to write these rules.

Oh - and the other rule that made me mad when it was broken, as I got off the train - that you wait for the passengers on the train to get off before you get on. That's a rule, right?

Bloody unwritten rules.

Next time someone blasts their mobile phone music down the train carriage, I shall sit or stand next to the offender and proceed to read very loudly from my book at them. Yeah right.

Easter Saturday

2009-04-11T22:10:00.005+10:00

I picked up F from the V-Line platforms at Spencer Street Station this morning. He saw me before I saw him.

I had turned to watch another platform, unsure of where his train from Geelong would arrive, when I heard a raucous chorus of my name and “MUM!” There he was in his new striped hoodie, leaning under the weight of his bursting school backpack, flanked by his cousin J and my mother-in-law’s partner E, all of them smiling and waving – the boys beaming, E looking weary.

F had been staying with them at Aireys Inlet for the past few days. The night before, when my mother-in-law rang me to make arrangements for today’s pick-up, I’d heard the boys in the background. They were telling horror stories in the dark, she told me, with neon glow-sticks instead of a campfire. They had planned a rock disco.

E and J caught the train back to Geelong, fortified by fried rice and sushi from the station food court. We caught a tram down Collins Street to the CAE Library, to take back the DVDs we’d had borrowed the week before.

F has recently developed a passionate love of a fast food outlet in a Collins Street food court called Wrapz. When I took him and the boy next door to CAE library last week, I’d popped in there on a desperate impulse on our way home, when I realised it was 3pm and F hadn’t had lunch. F had a beef supreme wrap – basically, a tortilla wrap with bacon, beef, lettuce, tomato and barbecue sauce. Boy next door and I munched through hot chips with chicken salt as F rhapsodised about his wrap and the boys watched the football on a television screen playing silently overhead.

Today, F was ecstatic when I took him back to the food court for another hit. They were giving out mini Easter eggs at the counter, which he gleefully pounced on. He was just as eager about filling out a form to join the Wrapz Club. He asked for a pen and I watched as he carefully filled in his birthday and email address in biro. (“I’m not giving them my phone number though!” he said, a little scornfully, with a teenager’s cynicism.) The woman behind the counter gave a little start when he handed over his form in exchange for his meal.
“Would you like an Easter egg?” she said.
“I’ve already had one,” he admitted, a little sadly.
“You can have more if you like.”
He delicately picked another shiny foil egg from the plastic tub, thanking her immaculately, his face glowing with awe.
“I don’t think they get many people joining their Wrapz club,” he whispered as we sat down at one of the white plastic squares beneath the television. I think he was right.

“Can we go to Haighs?” he asked as we ascended the escalators back to the street. Last week, I’d taken him and Boy Next Door to Haighs and bought them each a small white chocolate Easter Duck. As we strolled back through the arcade towards Collins Street, each of us nibbling on our chocolate, Boy Next Door had ruminated, “When I grow up, I want to be a chocolate taster.”
“I know someone who’s a chocolate reviewer,” I said.
“Wowwwww,” they breathed in unison. “Cooooool.”
“You know, my mum worked at Haighs in Adelaide when she was a girl. And so did her mum, my nana. They got to eat as much chocolate as they wanted while they were in the shop.”
This was even more impressive.

I’d actually been planning to take him back to Haighs, to get him a small something as an Easter present, as he went to his dad’s house tonight.
“Mum, you go look around,” he said. “I’ll look at the bars, I think.”
He lined up behind the considerable queue at the counter, with its glass display case of finger-sized bars and delicate dollops of filled chocolates, while I mooched around the edges deciding what I would buy myself for Easter. (The Husband doesn’t eat chocolate, and doesn’t do Easter presents, but it’s a great excuse for eating chocolate guilt-free and I refuse to miss out.)
“Mum, do you mind if I do this alone?” F asked firmly but politely as I crept up on him in the line. A two dollar coin shone in his open palm.
“Of course. I’ll go to the back of the line.” I figured he was spending his pocket money and wanted to do it independently.
“I’ll have a dark chocolate peppermint frog,” I heard him say. He doesn’t eat dark chocolate. I realised that he had a plan, and what it was. The small paper bag passed seamlessly from his hand to me, leaning past the people between us in the line. “Happy Easter Mum,” he said solemnly. “I know it’s your favourite.”
“Thank you so much darling.” I hugged him tight, and he let me. “I am so surprised. Hey, you’ve got a dollar left.”
“I do too!”
“Will you get yourself something? You could buy yourself a frog.”
“Oh! I can too!”
And he bought himself a milk chocolate peppermint frog. Outside in the arcade, I showed him the egg and the palm-sized bilby I’d bought as his Easter present.
“For later.”
We unwrapped our chocolate frogs and ate them walking back down Collins Street.
“This is pretty good, Mum. You’re right.”
“I know.” And I thanked him again, enthusing carefully (and genuinely) over how wonderful my frog was and how it’s my absolute favourite.
“I wanted to get you something,” he said. “Because you won’t be with your family over Easter.” I was so pleased that I took a detour by tram to Carlton to pick up a special order book that had come in for him. (A book which he had announced he planned to take out from the school library and keep until it was marked lost, so he could read it whenever he wanted. I ordered it instead, telling him this was a better way to keep the book.)

When we got home, some hours later, he trotted down the hallway to deposit his things and stopped dead in the doorway of his bedroom, gaping at his bare mattress, the bedclothes piled on the floor, and the stale whiff of urine.
“Are you wondering what’s going on with your room?” I asked.
“Yes. I am.” He had spent a whole morning cleaning it up before he last left it.
“Um ... I’m really sorry but ... J wet your bed and we couldn’t get rid of the smell.”
There had been an overlap where my mother-in-law, J and E had stayed at our house while we stayed at theirs in Aireys Inlet, then we’d all met up there before The Husband and I came home, leaving F behind. During their stay, the accident had happened.
“It was an accident,” said The Husband, appearing behind us.
“He didn’t mean it,” I echoed.
F sighed. “I know,” he said. “He has a problem with that.” He seemed to accept it. The Husband and I looked at each other, relieved.
“We’re buying you a new mattress before you come back next week,” I assured him.
“Yeah, when I was there he had an accident,” F continued.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, he pooed in the bath.”
“What?” J’s problems, as far as we know, only happen at night. He’s school age.
“While you were in there?” asked The Husband.
“Yeah. I just looked and there was this big brown thing floating in the bath.”
“Oh. Did M and E know?”
“Yeah. They weren’t impressed.”
“Oh.”
“It was pretty big.”
“That was a bit naughty.”
“I know.” And he sat down on the couch to watch the football. The Husband clutched my arm as I moved to follow him into the lounge.
“You know, I did that when I was his age,” he whispered, giggling.
“Don’t tell him that.”
“Of course not.”

It’s household legend that on F’s fifth birthday, The Husband (then The Boyfriend) told him a story about how he had pooed in the backyard when he was four years old. We were out to dinner at the time and I was not amused. Later on, when he got home, The Husband came back from a visit to the outside toilet, doubled over with laughter, to find an example of the saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. (I was still not amused. Then again, I have told F some pretty stupid stories about my own childhood, and was just lucky enough not to be flattered with imitation.)

**

During the brief period at Aireys Inlet when we were all there together, a motley jumble of family in a two-bedroom house, I reversed tradition by taking the boys to play football in the park while The Husband read on the couch inside. I'd been reading with him when I'd got the call to help get the football out of the tree.
"She'll never get it," I heard F say as I followed J down the hall and out the back door. "It's hopeless."
Of course, this made me determined to get it down. I had to climb halfway up the tree while one boy passed me the tallest household object they could find (a mop) and the other shouted directions at me from the middle of the lawn. Eventually, the ball spilled down the branches in jerky stages, to much cheering, and the boys began to kick again while I extracted myself and jumped down. At the laundry door, after I put the mop away, I looked back.
"Come play with us!" said J.
"Maybe later. I'm reading, you see."
"Come ON, Mum!"
"See you guys. Later." I watched the ball soar across the yard and just escape the clutches of the tree. I winced.
"Okay," I relented, figuring I'd be back climbing the tree again soon anyway. "Why don't I take you to the park for a kick?"
"Yaaaayyyyyy!"
"Put something warm on first."

"Really? YOU'RE taking them for a kick?" said my mother-in-law as I explained the plan and the boys yelled and yanked jumpers over their heads.
"Yup."
"Wow," said The Husband.
"Have fun!" said E, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

I held the ball as we ambled down the dirt road, past the playground and along the inlet, past the beach. The boys directed the game.
"Markers up! Markers up!" they shouted. It's a game The Husband invented, I think, where one player kicks the ball into the middle of two others, who fight to mark it and kick it back. Once a player marks the ball without dropping it, they become the kicker. I started off as the kicker, and then each of the boys roundly beat me, each in their own way. F and I tackled fiercely - he's one of those kids who doesn't feel a thing when he's in the thick of a game, and loves to plunge himself into it. (Though I yelled to him "Be careful of my kidney! You know I'm not SUPPOSED to tackle!" - I have one kidney and was in fact told by my doctor aged five that I'm not allowed to play football. This made me very happy in years to come.) J, who is tiny for his age, surprised me by simply outrunning me, ducking and weaving with an admirable nimbleness. And each of them conspired to kick to each other rather than me when it was their turn to be kicker.

I surprised myself by having fun - though I was the first to quit, pleading exhaustion. We'd played doggedly through a gauze of grey rain, oddly shimmering in the sunlight that bled from the clouds. After the pinprick haze faded, a great rainbow stretched overhead, seeming to rise out of the sea to arch over the tiny J on his carpet of green and the murky inlet with its leggy white birds and driftwood.
"Look!" I said, and we all stopped to marvel at it before playing on.
Then I hunched into my damp hoodie while the boys ran up and down the skate ramp, squeaking and sliding on the metal in their wet sneakers. They shouted and took turns at being Wrestlemania heroes until the cold took over and I rounded them up for home. We took turns at telling horror stories on the way back to the house, and got so engrossed in them that instead of going inside for baths and showers as planned, we crouched in a corner of the garden in a circle and kept going. My mother-in-law leisurely circled the clothesline, taking down the washing, as I reached into the depths of my memory to retrieve the threads of a gruesome story I'd once told F that he'd asked me to tell over breakfast a few days earlier. I'd sleepily refused, telling him I was too tired to remember it. Now, F graciously steered me back the many times I veered off track. Next it was J's turn to tell another story.
"You tell good stories," he breathed, his blue eyes shining Disney-big in the descending darkness. "You tell another one."
"I think we all tell good stories," I said. "But maybe we should finish them inside."

My mother-in-law followed at our backs, the last of the washing in her basket. Inside, the small house was wreathed in the aroma of E's roast chicken. That night, the three of us football players and storytellers sat at the dinner table in our flanelette pyjamas, while a fire crackled and spit in the corner of the room (courtesy of The Husband) and the floor rocked gently below us with the sea winds.

Post-9/11, pre-GFC

2009-04-02T14:39:00.003+11:00

Re-reading Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, a post-9/11 novel about cricket and migration in New York (with self-conscious echoes of The Great Gatsby), I came across this passage, a reflection by stock analyst narrator Hans:

Perhaps as a result of my work, corporations - even those with electrified screens flaming over Times Square - strike me as vulnerable, needy creatures, entitled to their displays of vigour. Then again, as Rachel has pointed out, I'm liable to misplace my sensitivities.

I lingered on that passage when the book was first published, mid-last year, and I admired its elegance, but it has a new resonance now.

The ick factor: panties

2009-03-31T14:07:00.004+11:00

Is it wrong to decide against perservering with a book when you come across the term 'panties', used without irony?

As in: 'As he seized me by the waist, and whispered in my ear how much he loved me, I creamed the lacy panties I had bought for the occasion.'

When it's the author speaking - about herself - on page 11, it kind of makes me think that I can't keep going in her company.

Grown women don't buy 'panties' for themselves. They buy underwear. Or knickers. If they buy panties AT ALL, they buy them for their pre-teen daughters.

And don't get me started on the anti-eroticism of grown-ups talking about creaming their pants ...

Am I a prude, or is this entirely reasonable?

On writing fiction

2009-03-27T15:52:00.003+11:00

I have been a Bad Blogger. For so many reasons, which I won't bother to go into. But right now, it's because I'm trying my hand at writing fiction. It's something I used to do all the time as a child - from the ages of four to about 19. When I turned 20, and got a job with a publisher, it all dried up.

I know there's a connection there, but not sure exactly what it is. Seeing other people's good work and feeling inadequate? Seeing other people's bad work that they think is good and feeling worried I could be one of them? Distracted by being in a job I was passionate about, which took up all my headspace? Seeing more clearly what was not good about my own work, and being disillusioned? A bit of all these things, I think.

I can't say I'm a big fan of the 'you're only a writer if you feel you must write, if it all pours out of you' school. (Charles Bukowksi, I'm talking to you.) That concept is one thing that has put me off, I think. The subconscious (and quite ridiculous, I think) notion that if it's hard, you're not doing it right.

I still don't know if this is something I can do, or just something I've always thought I could do if I tried. But I figure that I can only find that out by giving it a proper go. So, I've been forcing myself to sit down with a notebook, or on the laptop, and just have a go. 'Write through the crap,' is my mantra. I'm not naturally good at that, because I do't like to produce bad work.

I'm really pleased so far, not because I'm producing great work, but because I've produced some work that I don't hate. That seems like a good start.

And I've decided, after much prevarication, to (probably) enrol in a creative writing course. Just for the discipline of it. And the workshopping. And because even while I do write professionally (and some have said I'm crazy, that I know how to write so why pay to be taught), I haven't written fiction for a really long time and I like the idea of regular feedback, of having someone to steer me as I go. I know how to write, but do I know creative writing? I'm not so sure.

Anyway, I do hope to get back to the blog too, because I miss the conversations with other bloggers. And blog-writing does 'pour out'. It is pure fun. And it's good practice: putting words down in print, playing with their sequence, and trying to make meaning out of them.

Summer

2009-01-06T16:58:00.000+11:00

Normal

2008-12-24T00:23:00.006+11:00

Adelaide. It's weird how it makes me feel completely at home, yet completely alienated as well.

My dad now lives in the suburb where I grew up, where we lived until I was 14. Since he moved there, earlier this year, I feel a deeper connection to the place. Walking the streets, I feel like I belong. Memories I can often sense more than shape, embedded deep under my skin, tweak at my consciousness as I tread old paths. Like it or not, this is my foundation.

Yet I don't fit.

People ask what I do and I keep my answer as brief as possible, watching their gaze skip away. Books and bookshops are not, generally, seen as very interesting. Freelance work sounds flighty. They are a bit embarrassed for me. It's as if I haven't grown up and got a real job. Or, I'm a bit of a nerd.

Last year, my sister offered to pick me and F up on her way to my mum's house. We were at the library, opposite the local Westfield shopping centre. It was late December.
"Oh," she said when I told her where we were.
"So, we'll wait out the front and you can drive past and pick us up."
"Oh."
"Is that a problem?"
"We-ell ... can you go across the road and we'll meet you at the Plaza?"
It seemed odd - choosing a full carpark over a half-empty one. Later, she confirmed the suspicion I’d thought far-fetched when she told mum, "I couldn't be SEEN at the LIBRARY."

My sister is a cheerleader. She schedules regular appointments for applications of spray tans and squared plastic fingernails adorned with diamantes. She was a professional nightclub dancer, but her fiancé has asked her to stop - even though they met working at the same nightclub, her as a door bitch/dancer, him as the bouncer. These days, she is back working as a retail manager. We're all pleased, as she and her fiancé were the only two staff at the nightclub (which was owned by bikies) without a drug problem.

My brother lives around the corner from dad, opposite the same creek we lived opposite as children. His baby daughter will probably go to our old primary school, eventually. I can't get over these facts. And I can't decide if I'm envious, or horrified at the smallness of it. To be honest, I have both (conflicting) emotions - though they are both overridden by feeling pleased for him. It's what he wants, and I can see that it suits him.

He loves Coopers beer and Nirvana and AC/DC and Smashing Pumpkins. He loves his boat and his cars (the new 4WD and the old one he's hotting up) and his motorbike and his Foxtel, which plays all day as background noise on his big screen LCD television. More than these things, he loves his partner and his new baby, three months old. And he works astonishingly hard in a bank to pay for all their toys. He is paid astonishingly well and is set for a promotion and a pay rise, which will enable him to fulfil his dream of doubling his house in size.

We (my siblings and I) are almost used to the bank job. It still makes all of us - and him - smile, at odds with the preceding decade that he spent ingesting colossal quantities of drugs and drifting from odd job (Hungry Jacks), to Centrelink, to odder job (door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman).

**

I moved to Melbourne when I was 21. Not because I was dying to escape. My flatmate, who had recently split with his girlfriend (my former best friend) said to me one day, "I'm really sorry Ariel, but I'm thinking of moving to Melbourne. Just for a change of scene, you know."

"I'd love to do that!" I sighed. We'd visited Melbourne for a couple of long weekends and I had been captivated by its possibilities. The bohemian splendour of Fitzroy: its elegant Victorian terraces and the throngs of interesting-looking people crowding its pubs and cafes. The sticky floors and cavernous interiors of the Punter's Club. An array of multi-storied city nightclubs with gothic upper floors, tucked away in laneways. The way the buildings cast a shadow over the city streets. A choice of publishers to aspire to, instead of one adult's and one children's.

My flatmate invited me to come, so I did. I found a job first, pulling a sick day to attend my job interview in Melbourne. He was a chef, and assured me he'd get a job when he arrived. ("It'll be too easy," he assured me. "It'll take me a couple of days. Best wait ‘til I get there, or I'll have to leave early.") His dad, a truck driver, drove all our furniture and meagre belongings over, free of charge. My flatmate and I followed him by bus. On the long twelve-hour ride, too excited to sleep, we talked all night. He told me about all the female friends of mine he'd had a crush on (most of them). "I'd never feel that like about you though," he said. "No offence, but you're just not my type. You're like my sister." I wasn't offended, or so I thought - though I remembered it. I think it was partly because I was so surprised at some of his selections. They were girls he'd always played at being wearily repulsed by.

We stayed in a caravan park in the inner west while we looked for somewhere to live. It was on a main road that throbbed dully with trucks and cars, next door to a 7/11 and opposite a McDonalds. He had the double bed; I slept under a quilt on one of the padded bench seats that bordered the laminate table where we ate our meals. At the end of a fortnight, in which he didn't find a job and we didn't find a house, he told me that he was moving back to Adelaide. The next day. He drove me to a backpackers' hostel first - on Nicholson Street, opposite the Exhibition Gardens. I started work at my publishing job using the hostel as my base, sharing a dorm with mostly English backpackers, who I got smashed with each evening. I swore never to live in the area where the hated caravan park had been. An ugly suburb, entirely without merit, just a thoroughfare for traffic with a sad string of drab Vietnamese-run shops nearby. (It was Yarraville, where I’ve now lived for five years. And the shopping strip that had so horrified me was Footscray.)

**

Twelve years later, my experience of Adelaide can be as disjointed as my first encounter with the Melbourne suburb I now call home. It's a patchwork of the familiar and the alien. On Rundle Street, Big Star, where I bought CDs in the period of my life when I was obsessed with music, is a familiar beacon amidst garish clothing and outdoor shops. Alfresco's, the first place where I discovered the joys of lingering with a coffee and people-watching with friends, is still there, comfortingly dowdy, though many of the cafes are new - and have nothing to do with me or my memories.

**

Shopping in the city with F this week, we are twice hailed by admirers of his AC/DC tee shirt. This doesn't tend to happen in Melbourne - certainly not twice in two hours. The first is a father who stands companionably beside me as we watch our sons bond over the Ben 10 toys in Target.
"I've got this one," says the boy.
"Me too!" says F, proudly. "I've got the Ominatrix, too."
The man chuckles and shakes his head fondly. He is wearing a black tee shirt and jeans; he has a ruddy face and a thick goatee. As he takes his son's hand and moves ahead, F's top catches his eye.
"Hey!" he waves broadly over his shoulder. "Great tee shirt!"
F beams. The man nudges his son and points back. "Look!" The boy grins and gives F the thumbs-up. He looks four or five years old.
"Thanks!" says F.
"Start 'em young, hey?" I say. I find myself saying things like that in Adelaide, even altering my voice to sound less polished, drawing out my words in a laconic half-drawl. The Husband (who, incidentally, went to one of Melbourne's leading private schools) has commented on it. It's something I know I did in my high school days. Then it was conscious. Now, it's a habit I slip into, like walking a worn path.

**

One of my sisters lives in my dad's granny flat, saving money to buy a house. She is the identical twin of the cheerleader and she is studying to be a primary school teacher. She is forever destined by people who know both my sisters to be "the quiet one". Like me, she doesn't drive and has no wish to. This means she has to walk 20 minutes to the Westfield to do her grocery shopping. I buy a black shopping cart from Coles and tell her that she can use it whenever she wants. Her eyes brush over me.
"I don't think so."
We've talked about this before. She says it would be too embarrassing and everyone would stare at her. “Who cares what people think?” I tell her. Surely it's not that strange. I have figured that she'll look at this nondescript black cart (which they sell at the local Coles - someone here must be buying them) and agree it's not so bad after all. But her disdainful expression says otherwise. For some reason, I am hurt and annoyed. Generally, these days, I take a kind of pride in inspiring eye rolls at my zaniness (shopping carts! buying interstate newspapers! Birkenstocks!), but for some reason not today.
"You know why I moved to Melbourne?" I sigh, trying to sound amused. "Here, you think I'm odd. In Melbourne, I'm normal."
"Ha!" says my sister, actually rolling her eyes now, hand on diminutive hip. "You ARE odd. You just are."

**

In Coles, earlier that evening, I'd noticed an old school acquaintance a few aisles over, paying at a checkout parallel to mine. I ducked my head quickly to avoid eye contact, glancing back to take in her white blond hair, pulled back in a puffy ear-level ponytail. Her face was puffy, too: pink and white and oddly swollen, as if she'd been recently stung. I remembered that she’d always looked like this, if perhaps a bit thinner. That she’d always talked down to me, always flirted ridiculously with the boys in our group - none of whom were very attractive, all of whom were slightly infatuated with her, as she'd intended. I did a snap assessment and decided I've survived the years better. Acting on impulse, I took off my glasses and shoved them hurriedly into my bag. The world softened, blurred at the edges. Even as I did it, I felt ashamed at my competitiveness with a girl I don't even like and don't particularly care about, someone I haven't thought about for years.

After I'd paid and left, I put my glasses back on. And reflected that if any of the boys we once knew were with us, at that very moment, they would have chosen her again, without even thinking about it.

When the bee stings

2008-12-10T11:34:00.004+11:00

I don't run into people I work with very often, living in Yarraville. Which is probably why I frequently walk F to school wearing the trackies and tee shirt I slept in. And why I developed the disturbing habit, last winter, of doing my grocery shopping or picking up the post wearing my ugh boots. With tracksuit pants.

When I go to Fitzroy or Carlton or St Kilda, I wear make-up and real shoes. Sometimes I even brush my hair. On Saturday morning, in Brunswick Street Bookstore, I ran into someone I freelance for. And when she called my name, I looked up to see not just her, but someone else I used to work with long ago, looking askance at me over a stack of biographies. Amusement and dislike twitching at her lip. Which was fair enough, as the last time I saw her, about three years ago, I:

a) skulled several glasses of wine in order to deal with being unexpectedly seated beside her at a work function. Both of us were freelancers and neither were expecting to see the other.
b) apologised for having slept with her boyfriend a year earlier, which she forgave me for, and we agreed he was an asshole
c) threw up the wine
d) ordered another glass of wine alongside her at the bar we all moved on to, as she eyed me critically and slurred, 'you know what, I DON'T forgive you at all'
e) excused myself to the toilet, where I locked myself in a cubicle and rang my friend I was due to meet later at a club, telling him I was too drunk to move (true)
f) left said toilet cubicle two-and a-half hours later, expecting everyone to have gone home, but instead ran into, outside the toilet door, the four people left - the girl I'd wronged, the editor of the publication whose party it was, and another freelancer. They all said 'is THAT where you were all night?' and the editor tried to get me to have a drink with them. I declined and ran for a cab, nuttering lame excuses.

Yes, it's a tawdry, awful tale. For so many reasons. (In my defence, I don't make a habit of sleeping with people's boyfriends, and I was madly in love with him, and he'd told me he was dumping her, though he in fact didn't.) You know how you say you'll never drink again? Well, I didn't have more than two drinks at a time for a year after that incident. And have never had more than three at a work function ever since. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times I've been drunk since.

I am now a grown-up.

So, I pretended I didn't see the girl from the past look at me, instead effusively greeting the person I freelance for, remembering that when you live on that side of town, you run into people you know everywhere.

"What are you doing today?" she asked F.
"I'm going to the soccer."
"Who's playing?"
"Australia and Zimbabwe."
"Oh. Wow."
"It's the Homeless World Cup," I explained. "My husband is taking him, and I'm going to the pub for the afternoon."
"And my mum's not wearing her wedding ring!" F sang.
There was a long, quiet moment as we all thought our separate thoughts. Chief among mine, both amusement and horror that F had inexplicably implied that I was plotting an afternoon of random adultery.
"A bee stung my finger," I explained. "It's swollen and I can't get my rings over it."

**

Cricket. Friday night games. F's new sporting hobby. I loathe it and admire it and am relieved by it, all at once. One of his friends plays football and cricket with this club, in this team, and had suggested that F join. His mother kindly takes them to practice on Tuesdays after school; I feel that I really must come to watch his Friday games. Even if they are three hours long.

I felt sick when F first told me he was going to do this. After a year of him not coping very well emotionally with Auskick, I was expecting more of the same. More crying in frustration and genuine despair when he didn't get the ball, or wasn't winning. More throwing himself to the grass in wanton tears as the game ran on around him. More fierce, edgy, unforgiving competitiveness. Instead, he seems to be going just fine.

He is the smallest boy in the team - a good year younger than most of the kids. His cricket shirt billows about his knees; his kneepads rise stiffly towards his thighs, rendering his running wooden and clumsy. In his first game, he threw the bat towards the wickets in a misguided attempt to stop from getting out. Unsurprisingly, the boys on his team shouted at him that he can't throw the bat. But then, they patiently explained why he can't do that, and that it would only count if he threw himself, still attached to the bat, at the wicket. When he did just that later in the game, they cheered, and he stood as upright and proud as I've seen him: chin held high, face glowing. The fact that the other boys are older, with an insouciant calm about them that makes it clear that tantrums would be, well, babyish, seems to have guided his behaviour. And cricket is a much more structured game. It's a benchmark for fairness. ('That's just not cricket.') And he is not as passionate about it as he is about football. Football is a heady, dangerous affair. Cricket is a pleasant relationship.

"It's very social," said his friend's mum, E, selling the attractions of the game to me. "The parents all have a few drinks as they watch and stay and have a chat afterwards. It's really fun."
I like E. She is earthy and no-bullshit; a single mother to two rambunctious boys. Their father lives in New Zealand, on his family land in a small town near the sea. One of the boys, F's friend B, has ADHD. He is called to the school office over the PA twice a day to take his Ritalin.
"He's a danger to himself if he doesn't take it," E tells me. "The other day, he didn't take it in the morning and in the afternoon I caught him about to jump off the roof."

We've talked about how annoying it is when well-meaning people say that they don't believe in labelling children, in THAT tone, the one that means that those labels don't exist. The ones who say, 'yes, don't all the kids have that nowadays?' and laugh, in a dismissive way. It's not helpful at all and it doesn't make you feel better. It makes you feel worse. It's suggesting that a problem or challenge someone lives with is not authentic. Suggesting they are a fraud making up excuses for their own poor parenting. There is a difference between over-diagnosis (which is an issue, I'm sure) and making up a syndrome. So, we commiserate. And when E's child, B, overheard me telling her that F has Asperger's Syndrome, his face lit up with a kind of relief that connected in the pit of my stomach. As if he'd stumbled upon a kind of belonging. Someone else who is different.

B is not one of those kids you see on A Current Affair, jumping on furniture and screaming in their mother's face and upending jars on the carpet. He's a nice kid. Polite, friendly. A bit jumpy sometimes, likes to touch things. Yes, he can be mouthy. But he always greets us with a smile and a wave; he has mentored F with his cricket as gently and kindly as we could wish for; and he is interested and considerate with F's younger brother, two years old. He takes medication to make him calm and centred during the day and medication to help him sleep at night. And it seems that he needs it and it's doing him good. It's not drugging him into submission; it's helping him.

**

Cricket. Friday. I was sprawled across a patchwork quilt that F had over his cot as a baby, eating crackers from a box. F's brother was seated on his dad's knee as he read to him from a picture book. E was stately on her canvas chair behind us, her sunglasses a headband for her long red hair, a beer comfortably in her hand. Relatives were taking her boys for the weekend and she was planning a big night out. I was facing her, chatting about the weekend, when I was stabbed in the hand. Or so I thought.

"FUCK!" I bellowed, involuntarily. "Je-sus."
A bee was disappearing from view; in the direction it was fleeing, a long spike stuck through my finger. I tweezed it out with my fingernails and leapt to my feet, jumping about the lawn in pain. I apologised to the parents and their young children as one of the mums took the lid off her esky and gestured for me to plunge my hand in, batting away my apologies. I wiggled my wedding and engagement rings over my expanding finger and slipped them away in my purse. Across the field, a sprinkle of small white figures squatted and ran and stood solemnly against a backdrop of fading grass and rainbow-splashed graffiti.

Ten minutes later, I was helping F's brother climb a tree, following B's younger brother, who watched, laughing, from the branches.

**

F wants to join B's football team next year. I had said no. His Auskick coaches said he has the skills, but perhaps not the emotional maturity, to play competition next year. It's all the same boys, the same club, as this cricket team. After his first exemplary performance, in last week's game, I told him that if he can keep his temper and emotions under control for cricket, he can join the football team.

He was changing his muddy, grass-strained cricket whites, peeling them off in the hallway, stepping out of them and into his bedroom, when he asked me again.
"Yes," I said. "If you keep going like this. It's looking good."
"Thank you Mum, THANK you!" He squealed in delight and threw himself at my waist in an enveloping hug. We left the house to get fish and chips for dinner in the ebbing light. Walking back towards home, he put his hand in mine.
"Mum," he said. "I haven't got a care in the world right now."
"Really?"
"Yep. I'm just really happy."
I bent and squeezed him tight, carefully negotiating the fragrant paper parcel in his arms, translucent grease spots spreading across its surface. "Well, that makes ME really happy."
He thought. "I suppose I DO have a COUPLE of cares. I care about global warming, of course. And wars and people not having enough to eat and running out of water. But EVERYONE cares about that."
"True. Well, at least, everyone should."
"But I don't have any PERSONAL cares."
"Oh good. That's great."

**

Saturday, I got home from my pub afternoon - a blogmeet - feeling slightly tipsy, my finger throbbing dully beneath the alcohol haze. (Two gin and tonics. That's all it takes these days!) It was The Husband's turn to cook. He suggested we go to a local pub for $5 chicken parmas. All I wanted was to sleep on the couch in front of the television, but I agreed.

It's a pub unfortunately located on a major truck route, with a view of shipping containers and a smelly, diesel-choked streetscape. That could be why, despite having a great, artfully dingy atmosphere (lolly-coloured laminate tables and chairs, red velvet curtains, old brocade couches), it doesn't seem to be much of a success. It changes hands approximately yearly. In that time, it's gone from good gastropub fare to lacklustre parmas and pasta, going more downmarket and less attractive with each change.

We ate our meal to the soundtrack of, among other gems: Eye of the Tiger, Jessie's Girl, Heaven is a Place on Earth, Dancin' in the Dark, Karma Chameleon, Money for Nothing. The menus now proclaim 'Bazza's Menu' and signs on the wall shout 'BAZZA'S BACK!' On the menu, there is a fat man in a chef's jacket and baggy pants with the adage, 'never trust a thin chef!' Love hearts on the menu denote vegetarian meals. And the atmosphere - the one thing I always liked - is WRECKED. There is a mirrored wall and harsh fluorescent droplights. An enormous wooden fork and spoon hang over the serving window. A vending machine bursting with chips and lollies proudly greets you as you enter the dining room.

"I don't like this place anymore at all," I whispered petulantly to F as we sipped our water and grimly awaited our food.
"Neither do I," he hissed back, to my surprise, not taking his eyes off the Ripleys Believe It or Not book I'd bought him from Brunswick Street Bookstore.
"It looks horrible," I said. He nodded sagely. "And the music is terrible."
"Well, not ALL of it," frowned F, turning to look at me. "Not Eye of the Tiger."
"Of course not. Not your music performance song. That's okay."

The food turned out to be no worse than usual. And cheap. Fine, really.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Mum?" F asked through an open mouthful of chips.
"I doubt it," I muttered, glaring around at the lights and the mirrors, Karma Chameleon trilling overhead. "I have no idea, darling. I doubt it."
"Guess."
"I don't know."
"I don't like this place AT ALL anymore," he whispered. We smiled at each other over our plates.
"Yes," I laughed. "I was thinking what you were thinking."

**

On the couch at last, greedily devouring the last episode of The Wire, my finger began to throb and itch in unison, a purple bruise protruding from my hand. Puffy white knuckles attempting to escape, like the insides of a sausage oozing from its casing. At first, it was almost interesting, watching it change colour; by the time The Husband went to bed, leaving me to watch the AFIs and then Lantana (great film), my hand wrapped in a packet of frozen peas, it was just plain painful. By the time I went to bed, the stale smell of increasingly soggy peas was in my nostrils.

At 4am, I woke up, stumbled out of bed, and stuck my hand in the freezer for a while.

At 7am, I awoke to a Coles catalogue in my face; F mysteriously trumpeting, "WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THIS?"
"What?"
"THIS. What should I do with it?"
Groan. "I don't know. I don't care. Do whatever you want with it. Please go away."
Ten minutes or so later:
"LOOK, Mum. Look what I found! What should I do with it? Should I give it to Pretend Cousin?"
I opened my eyes. F was beaming at the end of our bed, a bike helmet emblazoned with superheroes almost balancing on his head. Hands on hips.

"Huh? I don't know. What are you DO-i..."
An image of last night flashed into my brain, an image of that bike helmet under a heap of discarded clothing, on the floor at the end of his bed. The Husband's grim tones, telling him that he'd need to clean it all up the next day before he did anything else. It's the next day. He's cleaning it up.

"Are you cleaning your room, F?"
"Yes! I am!"
"GOOD boy."
The Husband turns to smile blearily at me and then at him.
"SO, can I give this to my brother?"
"Yes, of course."
And he was gone. I realised I was obsessively scratching my finger.
"F!!"
"Yes?" Looking worried, tentative.
"Can you please go get Mum the peas from the freezer and the hand-towel from the bathroom?"
"Of course."
Moments later, my hand was cradled amidst the peas, still soggy and smelly from the night before. As the numbness crept over my hand, the cold snapped me wide awake.

At the pharmacy, the woman at the counter called over her colleague to inspect me.
"Look at THIS!"
"Wow."
"You've had a really bad reaction. Wow. That looks painful."
I bought every medication she suggested and, once home, applied hydrocortisone cream, took an antihistamine and some Panedeine. Sat slumped over the weekend newspapers at the kitchen table until midday. Time to take F to the cricket club Christmas party. There, I had to sit down in the clubroom while F played on the jumping castle outside, trying my best to make smalltalk with The Husband through the fog in my head. It was clear that if I couldn't even talk to my husband, I wasn't going to cut it with the other parents, so went home, leaving F behind.

I barely remember the rest of the day - only that The Husband cooked, I slept a lot, and woke up the next morning with a normal-coloured finger.

Monday morning, I had coffee with a friend and told her about my bee sting. She told me about her friend who is arriving from doing aid work in the Sudan on Friday.
"I hope they let her through the airport," she frowned over her flat white. "They might put her into quarantine. She thinks she's got typhoid."
"She THINKS she's got typhoid? She doesn't know?"
"There are probably no doctors where she's been, I guess." She shrugged. "She told me in an email: I think I have typhoid."
"Wow."
"Do you think it's contagious?"
"I don't know. I think so."
"Yeah. Me too." Pause. "Is there a CURE?"
"I think."
We are quiet for a moment.
"So," I muse. "Your friend has typhoid, and I have a bee sting."
"Yep." We laugh. "I guess I don't have much to complain about."

F has a friend over to play on Monday nights. His mum is a nurse. I tell her, briefly, disparagingly, about my bee sting.
"OH," she says, sympathetically. "Lucky you had that treated. You had the first stages of [some technical term for a skin infection]. And those antihistamines can really knock you out, too."

I feel a little less pathetic.

Munchies

2008-10-14T09:45:00.003+11:00

I'm a little scared about what I'll find at 3.30pm.

The Husband - who was responsible for the morning school run - rang from work this morning to tell me he'd given F some money for today's Munchie Stall.

'I thought it was for lunch,' he told me. 'So I gave him $7.'
Cue speechless laughter.
'Then he said, don't worry about packing lunch, then. And that's when I realised my mistake. It was too late to take it back.'
Luckily, I was too tired and relieved that he'd remembered the money I'd forgotten about when I got up at 5.30am to say anything much.
'But it's okay,' said The Husband. 'It's a healthy Munchie Stall.'
I glanced at the honey-streaked notice wedged under a half-eaten crumpet on the dining room table. I read the words 'Healthy Muchie Stall'.
'Ah,' I sighed. 'You see, what they MEAN by healthy is no lollies. There WILL, however, be cakes and cookies.'
'Oh.'
There is momentary silence while we both picture F gorging on a small mountain of $1 cakes and 50 cent cookies.
'It doesn't matter,' I laughed. 'He'll live.'

And that's the kind of parent I am this week.

* And yes, I have been an amazingly slack blogger and this is a woeful return to blogging. All I can say is that life is very busy indeed lately and that I am reading the blogs on my blogroll(though not generally having the leftover mental energy to comment). Back soon. Sooner or later, anyway.

Neighbours

2008-09-08T00:18:00.002+10:00

Our neighbour has been loping up and down Anderson Street all morning, mostly empty-handed, though once he was purposefully clutching a carton of milk. He’s a retired accountant – and with his solemn moustache, square wire-framed glasses and a revolving wardrobe of collared shirts and slacks, he looks like one. Only his impossibly wide eyes and alarmingly arched eyebrows signal his impassioned second career, as a dogged community activist. He goes to council meetings and makes speeches; sets private appointments with our local MP and other politicians; has the local paper on speed dial. He regularly crosses the city to Camberwell, where a lady types up his petitions and letters of protest for $30 each. (“She’s very good,” he tells me. “If you ever need some typing done ...”) It’s not unusual that I’ll be walking past and he’ll shout “I spoke to Wade Noonan today!” or “they’re starting to listen!” from behind his roses and geraniums.

**

Two weeks ago, I was walking to the train station when I noticed Keith (not his real name) striding towards me from the railway lines ahead. His face was set, sharply focused in my direction. He crossed the road and opened his mouth, raising an arm to flag me down. Or so I thought. The power walker at my side, in his lycra shorts and gleaming white sneakers, iPod at his waist, audibly sighed as Keith blocked his path.
“We’ve got em now! I’ve ...”
“Not now, Keith.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I have to tell you ...”
“Keith, no. I’ve got my pulse up. Got to keep going.”
“That’s fine. I’ll walk with you.”
“NO, Keith.”
With the beatific inner smile of the newly reprieved, I watched them round the corner just ahead of me, Keith just centimetres from the power walker’s side, his moustachioed face leaning into the man’s grimace as he waved him off angrily. Their disjointed symphony of furious monologue and equally emphatic dismissal faded to a hum as I passed the hairdresser’s.

**

Keith spends much of his time these days crusading on two causes: reinstating the underpass at Yarraville train station and cutting back the buses that cruise up and down Anderson Street. He’s not the only one campaigning for an underpass – there’s a community group headed up by a local trader, too. There have been two accidents at the level crossing on Anderson Street in the past year: a cyclist and a council worker driving a truck have both been hit by trains. (Admittedly, both times the security barriers have been firmly up, and the unfortunate victims have dodged or broken through them.) During peak hour, it’s not uncommon for crowds of commuters and locals to be stranded at the railway crossing for a solid five minutes or more. An underpass would be handy. I’m all for it. I’ve even signed Keith’s petition, which is sticky-taped to the counter at the local fish and chip shop.

I’m very much not on his side when it comes to the bus issue. Yes, many of those buses are empty. But it takes time to attract users to a new service, and until recently, the buses were scheduled so haphazardly (not linking with trains, no buses for two hours at lunch time, no buses after 6pm-ish, barely running on weekends) that they were only useful to pensioners with time on their hands and shopping to do. Or, occasionally, before I moved from the far side of Yarraville: me. I have no car and a lazy streak which sometimes compelled me to skip the 20-minute walk from the shopping strip, in favour of a bus ride that took exactly the same length of time.

I was always amazed at the fortitude of my elderly fellow passengers, as the bus lurched along the back streets and over speed humps, jolting me from my seat as I clung to the steel poles and braced my jarred back. Tree branches were often clipped as the bus spun around corners. There were so few passengers that, instead of abiding by the scheduled stops, you were encouraged to call out when the bus passed nearest your house. At your shout, it would crunch to a sudden halt, sending shopping bags and any standing passengers skidding along the aisle.

Two years ago, when I was working full-time, I got sick. The kind of sick where you don’t really get better after a week at home, and you force yourself to return to work because it’s obvious that this is going to last a while, and you can’t very well not work for weeks. I couldn’t walk very far without pain – and certainly not the distance to the train station – so I was forced to rely on the bus to get to work. I would cross Cruikshank Park in the morning dark, my breath melting into the surrounding mist as I powered through the gloom towards the lights of Somerville Road. There, I would huddle outside the Hungry Jacks and make small talk with the teenage boy who caught my bus every day at the same stop. (“Don’t walk through the park,” he warned me. “Girls have been raped in there after dark. And my sister has friends who’ve been followed by guys who’ve exposed themselves.”) The bus was inconvenient and irregular, and the drivers were mostly terrible, but it meant that I got to work each day, through the six weeks that I was ill. And every time Keith starts growling about the buses, I wonder how I would have continued to work without them.

I don’t have the courage to tell Keith what I think about the buses, though I do politely decline to sign the petitions he brings to our door. I nod and I listen and I purse my lips, but he knows I’m not with the program. I think that’s why he brings up the waste of fuel caused by the empty buses, fixing me with an challenging stare. How can I argue with that? Not long ago, he handed me a photocopied printout with the names, addresses and email contacts for our local member, council members and the transport minister. There was also an example letter that I could write, calling for the bus times to be limited. When I shut the front door and returned to serving up spaghetti bolognaise, F was watching me closely. “Did you tell him he’s wrong?” I don’t think I did, not really. I think I chose good neighbourly relations over my ideals. Who knows when we’ll next need to fetch a football, or when the dog will burrow under the fence into his backyard? And even though I disagree with him, I do like him.

**

This morning, at 7am, there were footsteps at our window, the dull thud of something hitting the verandah, the metal creak of the front gate being latched, then a slow fade of steps, now on the footpath.

Some hours later, at 9.30am, The Husband slapped the Sunday Herald Sun on the kitchen table, on top of yesterday’s Age.
“What is THAT?”
“I’ve got you the Herald Sun.”
“WHY?”
He dropped the charade.
“It was on the doormat when I opened the front door.”
“WHY?”
“I don’t know.”

**

Rewind to January this year: F’s first day back at school. One of his friends was over. The friend’s mother, M, and I sat companionably on my front porch, sipping gin and tonics and ignoring the squeals and shouts from the backyard. My bare legs rested on the wooden railing, the dark green paint peeling beneath my toes.

“I was on The Price is Right today.”

We looked up, startled, towards the open front gate. Keith was halfway up the front path, wearing a navy suit and striped tie – looking unusually formal.
“He-llo,” sang my companion. I heard the alcohol in her voice before I felt it tilting inside my head.
“Hi. I was on The Price is Right today, that’s where I’ve been this afternoon and it’ll be on TV this Wednesday. You should watch.”
“Wow, that’s great. I’ll ... I’ll certainly try.”
He said something about picking suitcases and that he picked one that won him $500.
“I can’t complain about that,” he grinned. “$500, hey? Well, make sure you watch.”
“Okay. Thanks for telling us. That’s great.” We both waved at him as he fastened the gate behind him and moved on, briefcase in hand, to the next house. We heard the gate open, footsteps, and a surprised voice at the front door.

My friend and I looked at each other.
“Is he a sandwich short of a picnic?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I giggled, pouring a trickle of gin into each of our glasses as two small boys crashed through the screen door and spilled at our feet. “I think he is.”

**

At our dining room table this morning, as The Husband spooned rice porridge into his mouth and I chewed a muesli bar, I spotted Keith lingering outside on the footpath. He put a hand on the front gate, stepped towards the house, then changed his mind and moved away.

“Maybe it was Keith,” I suggested. “Maybe he’s in the Herald Sun today and that’s why he put it there.”
“Could be.”
“Should we check?”
“If you want to.”

We couldn’t find him. But it’s still the best explanation I’ve got for why someone went to the trouble of carefully delivering us a Sunday Herald Sun.

Birthday (1)

2008-09-01T01:07:00.001+10:00

The birthday begins on Thursday afternoon at 4pm, when The Ex informs me that F wants cupcakes to bring into class the next day, and can I bake some that evening?
“No,” I say. “I can’t.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I can make them, then, and bring them to you when I drop him off.”
“Sure, fine.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought I’d give you the chance to do it, you know, because you do it every year.”
“He’s in Year Three now. They don’t do that anymore. I’m not baking him cakes to take to school on every birthday for his whole life.”
“Okay. It’s just ... he wants them. He’s asked about it.”
“Well, he should have asked earlier. He can’t just ask for things the night before. I have work to do tonight. I can’t do it.”
“It’s fine. I’ll bring them in.”
“Okay.”

F is dropped off on Swanston Street, below the blue fairy lights of the Arts Centre, at 7.30pm. He slithers out of the car, feet first, as his father passes two bulging supermarket bags through the open door; each tied in a filmy white bow.
“Here are the cakes and the icing. It’s all there. All you have to do is ice them!”
“But I don’t have time! I told you that.”
“The icing is made! It’ll take you no time at all.”
“Well, I can’t. I have work to do.”
We glare at each other as I close the door and back onto the footpath, pulling F with me. He chases the car along Swanston Street at a leisurely jog, easily keeping pace with the sluggish traffic. He skips off the kerb and onto the road to tap at the window of the crawling car. I scold him and pull him back again. (“You could get yourself run over!”)
“Bye Dad! Bye Dad!” he sings, dancing along the footpath now, against the tide of slickly suited office workers and carefully groomed theatregoers.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” I tell him, throwing out my words in cross little bites. I explain that I have to prepare and practice for a big talk I have to give tomorrow, that he can’t ask things at the last moment, that I told Dad I couldn’t do it. My thoughts whirl furiously as I talk, an undertow of resentment: I’m already here picking F up from the city so that The Ex, whose car is at the mechanic’s, won’t have to catch public transport from the inner south to Yarraville tomorrow morning. This is one favour too many. As F accepts his fate, that he will bring naked cakes to school tomorrow, I realise with a twist of the stomach that I will, of course, ice the bloody things.

**

“You are a good mother,” hums The Husband, watching from the couch as I untie the bags and wrestle with the plastic containers of icing. One is gluey-white; the other iridescent blue. I dip a tentative finger into the blue and lick it, recoiling at the chemical assault on my tongue. It must have been just as vile when I made blue-and-yellow cupcakes last year, when he barracked for the West Coast Eagles. Maybe it tastes worse when someone else makes it. I cross the room and extend a blue-tipped finger to The Husband. He squints at it.
“What?”
“Taste it.”
“No.”
“Just a little bit?”
“No.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, I know it will be. It’s bloody bright blue, for god’s sake.”
I scrape the knife across each cake as quickly as I can, working my way through the bag and arranging them on a plastic tray. Do I have to do all of them? There’s not going to be enough icing anyway. There are 30 cakes.

“F?” I’m at the doorway of his darkened bedroom.
“Yes?”
“How many kids in your class?”
“30.”
I’m pretty sure he is making it up, to make sure I ice all the cakes. I’m pretty sure there are 24 kids in his class. Or is that 26? The icing runs out at 26.

It’s 9pm when the plastic-wrapped tray of blue and white circles is finished, and I can start work.

**

It’s Crazy Hair Day today. The pharmacy at Flinders Street station was closed last night, and by the time I finished the cakes, the last local one was, too. It’s an early start, so we can take a slightly different route to school and buy the obligatory coloured hairspray on the way. First, I smother F’s hair in surf wax and tease his hair upright. He looks like a sandy-haired Robert Smith from The Cure, in school uniform.
“I look SO crazy!” he shouts at his reflection. “I will DEFINITELY win the prize for craziest hair! Yeah!”
He poses, perched on the rim of the bath, plucking at the strings of his imaginary air guitar.

On the footpath outside our house, he bends to waggle his head at his shadow, a miniature Narcissus at his bitumen looking-glass.
“I’m a PUNK, Mum!”
“You certainly are.”

At the pharmacy, we tie Snuffy to a yellow pole in the carpark, away from the glass shards that stud the gravel. There is only one can of coloured hairspray left: orange.
“There must be a school sports day or something,” apologises the bemused sales assistant.
“It’s Crazy Hair Day!” beams F.
“Ahhh,” she smiles. “Well, your hair certainly is crazy.”
“I know! It’s my birthday, too.”
She nods at the tray of cakes as she hands me my change and says something complimentary about them.
“Yes! All the kids always LOVE my Mum’s cakes. She makes the BEST cakes!”
Weirdly, I am touched even as I remind him that his dad actually made them. Snuffy watches, wide-eyed, as F dips and twists his head and I attack it with a sticky, hissing mist of fluorescent orange. His ear is streaked orange, as are my hands. I spit into a crumbling tissue from my jeans pocket and clean his ear. My hands remain stubbornly bright.

F bounds alongside Somerville Road and its growling chorus of trucks and cars. He practices leaping, in a kind of flying crouch, landing with his feet wide apart, his tongue firmly protruding in a defiant pink arrow. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!” It’s a sort of unconscious perversion of the Maori haka. He is especially delighted when the first uniformed kids emerge from a cross-street, their longish hair defying gravity with the help of tightly woven pipe cleaners. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
“Oh, hello F!” laughs their Dad. He looks at the cakes. “Is it your birthday?”
“Yes! It is!” He turns to me, suddenly serious. “Can you come to assembly today?”
“Sorry darling, I can’t. I have work to do. My talk today.”
“Please? They’ll give me my birthday card. I’m going to achieve my dream today – to get up on a stage in front of people looking like this.”
“It might not be until next week.”
“No. My name was in the newsletter this week.”
“I’m so sorry, darling, but I just can’t. I have to be in the city to give this talk at 12.30pm and before that I have to have a shower and wash my hair and get dressed and practice again.” I appeal to his finely developed sense of logic and justice. Then I appeal to his sense of humour, for good measure. “I can’t get up in front of people like this, can I?” I am wearing jeans and sneakers, with a hooded tracksuit top. My hair is scraped back in a greasy ponytail.
“Sure you could.”
We’re at the school gate now. I hug him tight and wave him off as he leaps into the schoolyard, tongue flickering, tray of cakes held before him. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”

At least it's a bit different

2008-07-28T16:46:00.002+10:00

I wonder how many mothers spent about ten minutes positioned awkwardly up a tree this afternoon, as if playing Twister, shouting mournfully, at intervals, for their son to hurry up and emerge from the toilet to help them. At which point, having been handed the garden rake from below, they managed, after much manoevuring, to snooker the football from its perch in the uppermost branches and jump back down onto the muddy lawn.

And if they did, I wonder if that was after meticulously delousing their child (and themselves), explaining as they combed still-squirming giant bugs from fine boyish hair how The Simpsons reinvented a movie called Pulp Fiction in a recent episdoe they watched: leaving out The Gimp, of course.

And if they then decided, at midday, to keep their son home from school for the whole day, as so much time had passed in the process of delousing.

If the morning had stretched out partly due to one of their dogs digging under next-door's fence and having to be fetched home. If they had to finish serving up cheesy scrambled eggs for their son's breakfast VERY carefully, their fingernails embedded with damp black mud from having to fill in the hole their dog had dug, before returning to the kitchen to warm up the eggs and serve them.

I wonder.

Not so bad after all

2008-07-27T21:54:00.002+10:00

I wouldn't say I'm a football convert, but I did have a great time at the MCG this afternoon, I did cheer and shout for F's team, and I have agreed to do it again some time.

It wasn't, of course, about the game. It was about the delightful company of F and Boy Next Door and the fact that, once we sat down on our raindrop-streaked plastic seats behind the goal posts, F caught me in a surprise hug and said 'I really do appreciate you taking us, Mum', in a voice that really meant it. And that BND leaned across and echoed his sentiments. I am so lucky to have such a lovely boy, with such a lovely friend.

And the book I'd brought along stayed firmly in my bag all day long ... though I did read the Sunday Age at half time.

My worst nightmare

2008-07-27T11:37:00.002+10:00

I have been coerced into taking F to the football today. I can't think of anything I'd like to do LESS on a rainy Sunday afternoon (or any afternoon, really), but if I don't do it, I'm a Slack Mum. So, off I go. Feeling very sorry for myself indeed.

The only other time I have ever been to a professional football match is when my brother was about F's age and I took him to see Port Adelaide play a game for his birthday. I remember being grossed out by the bogan girls offering to eat one player's shorts, and not in a Bart Simpson kind of way. There were shouts of 'show us your DICK, Scotty!' and much stamping of ugh boots and clicking of synthetic nails. Of course, these days it's not just bogan girls who wear ugh boots and horrible plastic nails. And it's postively un-Australian not to like football (or un-Victorian, anyway).

When I was a starting drinker, aged 17 (of course), I remember being told by a horrified male friend, an afficionado of footy and Nintendo and dope and the arcade machine at the local milk bar, that I was 'un-Australian' because I don't drink beer.

Still don't.

I'm very, very un-Australian.

And I really, really hate football.

Maybe there will be some kind of natural disaster on our way to the MCG and I will get out of it.

The morning after

2008-07-20T15:16:00.002+10:00

It’s the kind of awakening that makes you realise you did get to sleep after all. You gradually realise that you’re conscious, which in turn makes you realise you must have been unconscious at some point, even though your memories of the previous night are full of staring at the red eye of the digital clock: 1am (you’re wide awake, might as well get up), 3am (back in bed, surely you can fall asleep now), 5am (please, please let me get to sleep).

It’s 7.10am, so you – I – close my eyes again, squeeze them shut, and try to eke out another half hour of sleep before I get up for Auskick.

My thoughts are full of work undone, deadlines looming, interview subjects not returning calls, work submitted ... and a dog biting a child on the face. A child who is coming over soon, to go to Auskick.

Once again, those thoughts stubbornly push aside the fog of sleep that hovers tantalisingly close. This means that I when I get up at last, at 8am on the clock (which means 7.45am), I am awake.

Mum is buried under a quilt on the couch, only her hair visible: light golden brown with a bolt of silver at her hairline. The Husband and F are at the breakfast table, eating rice porridge and crumpets respectively. The dogs are pattering around the room, their toenails clicking on the wooden boards.

I am in the hallway when the doorbell rings, and duck into the bathroom, pulling the sliding door behind me. The Husband is in there too, peering into the mirror. He looks at me for a moment before leaving to answer the door. I hear murmured conversation, lowered voices, excited small boy yelps.

How was he? I whisper, as The Husband rejoins me in the bathroom. BND’s father is still quietly angry, but affable enough, he reports.
“He’s here,” he calls over his shoulder, as he moves into the hallway. “That’s a good start.”
“Who’s here?” asks F, bouncing on the carpet outside the closed door.

**

The wind grows colder as we walk down the road towards the oval, climbing the path past the skate ramp and towards the hole in the wire fence. I duck and stand, holding up the wire that runs horizontally across the hole to make more room for Mum.
“I hope you remember soon that I am getting older,” she says, as she straightens her back.
“Nah, you’ve got at least another ten years. Or more. Look at your mother!” Her mother was still tap dancing, performing in travelling revues at nursing homes in fishnet tights, when she was sixtysomething. HER mother, when the show stopped at her own nursing home, would stand in the aisle, holding tight to her walking frame, to shout and wolf whistle.
“Hmmph,” says Mum.

We queue for coffee and carry our stryofoam cups to the edge of the oval, where we sit on a bench side by side and squint across the grey expanse of sky to where the boys – The Husband, F and BND – are forming lines and starting their drills. The wind assails us, sending a spreading chill through my body that settles in my toes and marbles my hands, even as the coffee warms my palms through the Styrofoam.

We move onto the grass, where it is even colder, and I shrug into my (fake) fur-lined gloves and hunch into my scarf. BND’s father appears behind the goal-posts, drinking from a silver column and sucking on a cigarette. I try to catch his eye, then try not to. Mum demonstrates how penguins take turns shielding each other from the wind as I think about the mark on BND’s cheek and watch warily, intently, as F frowns and pushes his shoulders out in the first sulk of the match: disturbingly early.

Needless to say, my early, unwanted hunch is correct. Mum tries to distract me with stories about football matches on the oval at the high school where she teaches as F’s behaviour descends from bad to worse. I watch him throw himself onto his stomach on the grass; wander the oval crying; limp behind the ball, crippled by tears; punch an opposing team-mate in the arm; wave his arms in the air, giving himself up to the rhythm of his wailing. Finally, he drags himself towards us, his face red and eyes swimming, shouting that he doesn’t want to do Auskick anymore, not ever again, that he wants to go home.

I am glaring into the wind and the grey day that I have unwillingly emerged into after a sleep I don’t remember having. I am thinking that I have a dog who bites children in the face and a child who has tantrums on the football field and punches people and that this is the first day of Auskick for Boy Next Door and that his father is there watching, watching our family’s atrocious, antisocial behaviour once again.

“I don’t want to EXIST,’ wails F and I snap back at him, like a rubber band suddenly let go:
“Neither do I.”

Mum, on holiday from Adelaide, on the second real day of her long service leave, looks at us both as I grab him by the arm and pull him after me under the rails surrounding the oval, hissing at him that I am ashamed of his behaviour and that he is a bad sport and that I will be very happy to take him home.

Tears and snot run into his mouth.

The Husband calls from the oval as we stand by the hole in the fence: me on the street side, F on the football ground: just. He beckons F back, and I let him go, on the provision that he doesn’t let him back into the game. As The Husband holds him by the shoulders and talks him out of his hysteria, the team begin shedding their red and black bibs, dispersing to kick a shower of footballs towards the goals in a celebratory frenzy.

The Father who has told his children not to play with F because he has a bad attitude climbs through the hole, his two sons behind him. He smiles at me, too brightly, as he passes.
“Terrible weather we’re having.”
“Yes,” I say, as his sons look at me with interest. “Yes, it is.”

I wave at the mother whose son plays at my house every Monday, standing by the canteen at the bottom of the hill, but she doesn’t see, or pretends not to. When I climb down to join my boys – and the next door boys – she is gone. Through the grey haze in my head, I impute dark motives to her disappearance.
Our next door neighbour chats about the football game and his son’s enjoyment of it before his tone drops an octave, and he addresses the elephant (or dog) in the room.
“I was angry as all hell yesterday,” he says. “When I saw how close it got to his eye. But, as I was saying to The Husband, we don’t want to make you get rid of your dog. Maybe you should get him a muzzle?”
“Oh no! We want to get rid of him. I can’t have the risk of ... I feel sick about what happened ...” Tears enter my voice. “I’m so sorry.”
We change the subject quickly, as he gives his son money for a second hotdog.

The coach pulls me aside after The Husband kisses me goodbye and escapes to his scheduled Chi Gung session in South Melbourne.
“Are you alright?” he begins, his hand comfortingly on my arm. I nod. We talk about what he said to F, and what I’ll say to F, and how I lost it a bit, too. I tell him that we’re getting F emotional management therapy, which might help, and he reiterates that he has good football skills, if only he can manage his emotions.
“I told him that he’s my star player, and that I rely on him. That when he gets down, he’s letting down the team. Because they rely on him for morale.”
There are no words for my appreciation, but I do my best.

We all walk home together – Mum, me, F and the next-door crew, the boys running and skipping ahead, stomping their spiked football boots into the cement pavement. As we reach home, F is invited over to play. He comes home first, to change his shoes and socks, and I apologise a bit, explaining that although I was disappointed and his behaviour was bad; I’m tired, too, and I might have overreacted.
“I only slept a couple of hours last night.”
His warm body is a soft blanket around my chest and shoulders.
“Mum, you should go inside and have a nap, Really!”
And he is running to the gate and across the footpath, leaving Mum and I alone on the porch.

Thought of the day

2008-07-19T01:40:00.002+10:00

Sitting in the floral armchair in the corner of the study, F is bent over a 'Healthy Eating' find-a-word in his North Melbourne Football Club Activity Book. I am checking my emails and carrying on a half-assed, half-to-myself monologue.

"Mum," he says matter-of factly, temporarily abandoning his search for the word 'lettuce', "You worry too much."
"About what?"
"About everything."

I take him by the hand and lead him back to the lounge room, where we huddle over the activity book together on the couch, looking for various fruits and vegetables together until we have circled them all.

**

Less than an hour earlier, the Evil dog bit our next-door neighbour on the face while he gently stroked his fur, sitting cross-legged by the heater. Evil barked frenetically as I leapt from the couch to stand between them, then chased him into the laundry. When I got back, blood was spilling down Boy Next Door's cheek in a bright stream as he sat, stunned, where I had left him. It was 10 long minutes before he could remove the red spotted tissue I'd handed him and follow me to the bathroom for a band-aid. His cheek was pink with smeared blood and had to be wiped clean with a face washer.

The Husband was the one who had to explain to his mother what had happened, including the assurance that we will get rid of the dog.

We will pick up Boy Next Door for Auskick in the morning and I am dreading looking her in the face.

I wonder if she, like me now, is awake at 2am, trying not to think about how much worse things could have been if BND had turned his head and the dog had bitten his eye.

Hypothetical bad mother story

2008-07-15T09:53:00.003+10:00

Imagine you gleefully told your son that you were going to mention him on the radio the next morning. Imagine you told him exactly how you were going to do it and then together you giggled at the thought and looked forward to his moment of glory.

When you put him to bed and kissed him goodnight, you smiled at the thought.

Imagine you walk out of the radio station this morning and realise, as if someone jumped from around the corner and splashed a bucket of water in your face, that you FORGOT TO MENTION HIM. You forgot the whole delightful anecdote that centred around him, without seeming out of place in the context of what you were there to talk about.

Imagine you then call him from the street on your mobile as you wait for your tram home, hoping against hope that he slept in this morning. You can't hear much over the morning traffic, but you do hear that he is hurt and disappointed. You can only decipher every tenth word, but you can tell he is reciting, word for word, exactly what you had planned to say this morning, followed up with 'that was what you were supposed to say, why didn't you say that?' All you can say is 'I can't really hear you darling, but I'm really really sorry. I was just really tired.' It's a crap excuse.

Imagine you then spend the whole tram ride going over and over it in your head, unwillingly replaying the dawning disappointment on his face when he realises it's not going to happen, cuddling up next to your husband under the quilt in his mismatched flanelette pyjamas with the stuffed dog he still takes to bed. You wonder how you can make it up to him. Can you mention him on air next time? Not really. This was a one-off chance to do it without sounding like you're appearing on a game show ('Can I say hello to my son F at home? Hi, F!'). Can you buy him a present to make up for it? Let him eat chocolate after school, despite his sugar restricted diet? No. You can't buy his forgiveness. You don't want him to think money excuses thoughtless behaviour. Okay, you need to be thoughtful. What if you go to school and pick him up and spend the day with him?

You know that you're going over the top, but you can't help it. You try to talk yourself out of feeling bad, but it doesn't work. You call your husband, in his car on the way to work, hoping he'll talk you out of it, but - unsurprisingly - you only succeed in annoying him.

Imagine you stop off at the CAE Library on the way home and borrow an armful of manga graphic novels, a Simpsons graphic novel, a Pokemon he hasn't read. You are making up for it with a thoughtful gesture.

On the train, you still feel sick with guilt, but you move on to wondering how this happened in the first place.

Why did you promise your son you'd mention him on air, when you know it's difficult for you to prepare anyway, let alone with a random obligation like this thrown in? Why did you put the extra pressure on yourself? Why did you feel the need to bring him into your work life, make him the centre of that, too? Especially when you started feeling tired just after lunch yesterday and were nearly comatose by the time his two friends went home after 6pm. (The main reason you forgot was due to being very, very tired and forgetting to write down that you would mention him last night - thus, forgetting this morning.)

You realise, with the click of recognition that you get when you hit on the right answer, that you did it to impress him. You wanted him to think you were cool and interesting and that you could provide him with benefits like 15 seconds of fame. You were feeling a bit insecure after not seeing him for a week. The easy camaraderie you shared at the end of last week, when you were finishing each other's sentences and laughing at each other's jokes before you even said the punchline, had dissipated on his return, and you are once again feeling your way towards that easy intimacy, and you cheated and thought this might be a nice shortcut.

You write a blog pretty much all about him and most of your writing ends up about him and you think about him all the time. But sometimes it doesn't feel like enough, because he only spends half his time at your house.

But this is all hypothetical, of course ...

A hairy situation

2008-07-14T10:02:00.003+10:00

It's very strange indeed to send your child away for a week and have him returned with a new haircut. A haircut that is exactly the same as his father's, that makes him look exactly like his father, so every time you speak to him, as you're getting used to it, you have to concentrate hard not to hear his father in his voice.

You don't speak about it, but when your husband nonchalantly offers to give your son a buzz cut, you know that he is thinking the same thing.

And a couple of weeks ago, when your friends and your mother-in-law were remarking admiringly on his shaggy mane, you received an email from his father that said 'Time for a haircut!' When you replied that he looks fantastic, you were informed that there was no way he was sending him up to his parents on the Gold Coast 'looking like that' and had to have an argument behind the closed door of your study that afternoon while your son and his little brother kicked the footy around the lounge room.

Your son's father said 'no son of mine is walking around looking like a rock star!' and you said ' ' in such a way that he laughed at you and called you a child, because he knew what you were thinking. And what you were thinking was that you LIKE him looking like a rock star. And you said that he always gets his way, because he always gets all your son's hair chopped off when he's got him safely at his house, and you never get to have him looking the way you would choose. And you argued like this for far longer than was sensible. Secretly, you reflected that you will let your son get his ear pierced and have tattoos when he is a teenager and his father will not be able to do anything about it. (Well, maybe not tattoos.)

Life's hard enough for him as it is, you thought, without stupid haircuts. 'Life's hard enough for him as it is,' said your son's father, 'without stupid haircuts.' And he meant something quite different, even if you were thinking in the same words. You meant that kids already judge him as a bit odd anyway, with the Asperger's, and that a faintly cool haircut couldn't hurt in evening up the stakes. He meant that teachers already judge him as a bit odd anyway, with the Asperger's, and a nerdboy haircut couldn't hurt in evening up the stakes.

You were also thinking of your own childhood, when your mum plaited your hair in two braids and made you wear a skivvy and a navy pinafore to school, with white knee socks and navy Mary Janes. While the other kids wore tight denim jeans or skirts and striped polo shirts and sneakers. And that it really would have helped if, instead of sending you to school as Nerd Barbie, she'd given you sneakers and jeans and bought you an AC/DC album. (You wrote 'I love AC/DC' on your pencilcase because everyone else did, but you didn't even know what it meant.)

'You're just thinking of your own childhood and your mum making you wear those crazy outfits,' said your son's father, and because it was true you couldn't help laughing, and then you both sighed and agreed to a compromise - that you would take him to get a haircut before it was time for your son's father to take send him to the Gold Coast to stay with his parents. And that it would be neater, but still long.

On the way home from the barber's, you realised that the haircut you'd kind of instructed him on hadn't quite worked out. That it was a bit bizarre. That he looked like he had stepped out of a 1970s clothing catalogue (if you didn't look at his clothes) or run away from The Partridge Family. And your son's father, who had just pulled up at the kerb, fell about laughing as he assured you he would get it fixed up.

So, a week later, your son came back to you looking like he always does after a haircut - exactly like a smaller version of his dad, not at all what you would choose. And you feel disconcertingly like the balance has been tipped and that he's his dad's son, and you are borrowing him. The feeling doesn't last long, and you know it's irrational. But it's the cost of compromise, of co-parenting, along with the impossible dreams to move to New York, or to live in a coastal town, or send your son to an alternative hippy school, or to go back to Adelaide and live near your family.

And you have to admit that the result of your attempt at getting his hair cut was almost as anachronistic as your mum's dressing you up in a pinafore and Mary Janes.

Still. When he had long hair, they said that he looked more like you.

The man date

2008-07-09T12:29:00.005+10:00

“I met a Colombian guy today,” says The Husband.
“Oh yeah?” I am at the kitchen table, working my way through my inbox.
“Yeah. We’re going to meet for coffee next week.”
“That’s nice.” Typing away.
“Yeah. I was working on my report when the doorbell rang. It was this guy fundraising for the Asthma Foundation. He had this big card around his neck with his name on it. It was [The Colombian]. So I said, hola, com est as? And he just stared at me. And I thought ... oh no, I’ve made a mistake. So I said, sorry, do you speak Spanish? And he just starts talking to me in Spanish, doing his whole fundraising spiel – in Spanish. I think he thought I was Spanish-speaking. You know, that it was my native language.”

I have stopped typing.

I am staring at my husband in a kind of awestruck amusement. What I like best about this bizarre story is the fact that he’s telling me about it as if this is a perfectly normal way to behave. I don’t want to interrupt or alter the flow, so I just watch and nod, acting as if this is the most ordinary story in the world. All the while, I’m thinking this is shaping up to be the kind of thing I might pay to hear at a comedy club. I congratulate myself on having married such an interesting man.

“Anyway, he’s from Colombia, he’s a student here, and he wants to stay. He’s actually an engineer.”
“Wow, really? And he’s knocking on doors fundraising?”
“Yep.” He shakes his head. “So I gave him some money, and he was leaving, going out through the gate and onto the street, and I thought ... hang on ... so I chased him onto the footpath and stopped him and said do you want to meet up for coffee?”

“You DID?”
“Yeah.”
“REALLY?”
“Sure.”

I have broken the spell. He is starting to ponder the strangeness of his behaviour. I watch his expression flicker and regret my reaction. I was really enjoying this.

“So, what did he say?”
“He said okay. We’re meeting at 11am on Thursday.”
“Wow. Was he surprised?”

He considers.

“Actually, he was a little.” He seems on the cusp of crestfallen.
“I think that’s fine,” I assure him. “There’s nothing WRONG with it. It’s really nice. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

My husband is a softly spoken man, friendly but reserved. I don’t think of him as the type to befriend strangers on a whim. Although, come to think of it, in Mexico he once followed a man in a Socceroos tee shirt while he worked up the nerve to approach him. “Are you Australian?” And he was. And my husband earned the blessed relief of a conversation in English, amid the waves of sped-up Spanish that crashed over him daily, along with the breakers of homesickness.

He must have been driven by empathy – and, maybe, a rare moment of reverse homesickness, for Mexico.

**

I am daydreaming in the shower the next Thursday morning when The Husband arrives unexpectedly through the steam, making me jump in fright.

“You’re back early. What happened?”
“I got stood up,” he says glumly. “He didn’t show.”
“Oh darling, I’m sorry.”
“I waited until 11.30am, thinking ... maybe he’s working on Colombian time. Maybe it’s like Mexico. But ...”
I pat his sleeve sympathetically with a wet hand.
“I guess it WAS all a bit weird,” he sighs.

It turns out that the Colombian was operating on a misunderstanding, a cultural mistranslation. He assumed they were meeting at 11pm at night.

“Really?” I laugh. “For COFFEE?”
“Well, I guess that’s probably common in Colombia.”
“Mmm, I guess so. So, are you going tonight?”
“No, next week.”

**

Thursday morning. I am due in the city at midday to meet friends for lunch. At 10:30am, I peel myself away from my laptop and shuffle into the bathroom in my flannelette pyjamas, holding my unwashed hair from my face in one fist. My nose is thick, my eyes prickle and my ears swim. I feel as though there is a clothes peg pinching the bridge of my nose. It will be an effort for this Cinderella to crawl out of the ashes.

The Husband is at the bathroom mirror, meticulously attacking his beard with an electric razor, centimetre by agonising centimetre. For the first time in days, his tracksuit pants are replaced by jeans and a collared shirt.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks, as I watch him silently in the mirror, the doorway propping me up.
“A shower. I don’t want to fog up the mirror and disturb your work.”
“Well, I still need to have MY shower after this.”
“Bloody hell ... what are you ... ohhhh, that’s right. You have your DATE.”
He makes a face at me in the mirror.
“Where are YOU going anyway?”
“Lunch. With The Godmother and Old Friend.”
“Where?”
“Vue Du Monde.”
“WHAT?”
“The cafe part. It’s $15 for lunch.”
“That’s still expensive, for lunch.”
“A bit.” I sigh and return to the study, where I wearily click send/receive on my Outlook over and over, killing time in the most useless way I know how.

Shit. I was planning to get an early train at 11.16am, to make lunch at midday.

The Husband examines himself in the disappearing glass as I step into the shower, wiping a porthole for his reflection.
“Have fun,” he sings.
“Yeah, enjoy your date. Don’t put out.”
“Even with a man?”
“No.”
“Really? You’d be mad if I had sex with another man?”
“Yes.”
“That would count?”
“Yep.”
“But I wouldn’t mind if you had sex with another woman.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a man. You’d LIKE me to have sex with another woman.”
“Of course.”
“So, the idea of you having sex with another man doesn’t do it for me.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”

And he’s off, looking very neat and handsome.

I get out of the shower and check the time. 11.20am. Loads of time to catch the 11.56am or the 12.16am and be at Cafe Vue in loads of time for midday.

I actually think that. These are the words that run through my brain.

I fuss with my clothes and linger with make-up, bothering with eyeliner and mascara. I am too tired to wear anything fancier than jeans, though I do wear my nicest cardigan. I check my email again.

And then I wander down the road just before 12 midday, feeling relaxed despite the dragging weight in my head.

At the train tracks, I see The Husband across the road, with a dark-haired man in jeans and glasses. He squints at me, as if concerned. I wave back at him.
“HI!”
“HI!” His friend looks at me, then back at The Husband, who shouts over the stream of cars running between us. “COLOMBIAN, THIS IS MY WIFE, ARIEL. ARIEL, THIS IS COLOMBIAN!”
“HI!” I shout back. “NICE TO MEET YOU!”
The Colombian smiles slightly, looking a little perplexed, and waves back, his movement as tentative as mine is energetic.
“WHAT’S THE TIME?’”
“JUST GONE 12!” The Husband points at his wrist and gives me a strange, concerned look.
“THANKS! THAT’S GREAT! BETTER GO!”
There is a flurry of waving, then I wander on to the newsagent to buy a new pen.

Plenty of time, I think. I can catch the 12.16am and be there at 12, not a worry. I choose my pen, testing it on the scribble pad on the counter. As I hand over my money, a switch flicks in my head.
“Um ... what’s the time?”
“It’s 12.10.”

Oh shit. Finally, I think: 12.10, and I was supposed to be there ten minutes ago.

I go home and leave a message on my friends’ work phone, explaining the whole sorry affair and that I will see them another time. And I return to work in my study, much better dressed than usual.

My date is over before it’s begun.

Away

2008-07-04T21:17:00.006+10:00

The ocean sings its siren song in a stage whisper that carries from the shore to our house, a few streets away. It sucks and spits, sighs and roars, sends the salt water rippling out in shimmering curtains that are quickly dragged back again, leaving pearly beads of foam to sputter out on the sand. The dogs chase each other in snarling, joyful circles, kicking up gritty clouds in their wake.

F peels off his clothes impatiently, tossing his hooded jacket and balled-up socks into the wind. A citrus orange beanie keeps his shaggy hair covered; tendrils escape as he runs: chasing the tide in and out, skimming his toes in the shallows, planting his feet in the sinking sand as the ocean forms sucking corridors on either side of them.

We are in our bathers at the edge of the world, the sea and the sky stretching out forever. We hold hands and run into the waves at the lick of the ocean, shrieking and dashing back to the sand dunes and the dogs. We run back again, metres apart this time, venturing further, until the waves slap at my knees (his thighs). More shrieking. More running. And again and again. We mirror the rolling, repetitive rhythm of the sea.

“My thighs are hurting!” F shouts into the descending darkness, as I rub a towel over his mauve marbled legs. “Ow! Ow! It’s like knives! Be gentle!”
His trackies are pulled on, with difficulty, over damp, sand encrusted legs. His bare toes shuffle through the sand, chasing The Husband over the rising inlet and up the hill towards home. I know how he feels, though I don’t tell him that. My thighs are tingling too. Numb toes, numb feet, prickling calves, stinging thighs. A thousand tiny needles dance over my legs with every step up the beach; pricking especially deep as I reach the sandy gravel of the road. I am The Little Mermaid, suffering for her sea legs. Only I’m being punished for dipping into the sea, not for venturing onto land.

**

It’s only 6pm when we venture out to collect our fish and chips dinner, but it’s already dark outside. F plays with a torch in the hallway, flicking it on and off like a disco ball. He shines it into my eyes and laughs when I flinch away. He shines it into his own eyes. And into mine again. I snatch the torch away and set it down firmly on the washing machine.
“But it’s dark outside.”
“We don’t need a torch. There are street lamps.”
There are, in fact, no street lamps. As we leave the lights of the house and step into the driveway, we’re entering an eerie blackness. True darkness. We walk with our arms outstretched, feeling our way forward.
“Keep to the right!” I warn. “Away from the dirt pile!”
I hear F veering to the left. The dirt pile in the driveway holds an inexorable attraction for him. In the daylight, when we’re watching him, he creeps around the edge of it, his sneakers half-touching its muddy plains. I yank his arm.

As we reach the road, it’s still dark, but we can see again. Our way is lit by the windows of the houses we pass. I tip my head idly back and gasp at the view.
“F, look!”
“Wow.”
It’s like static fireworks. Trails of glittering dust streak the ceiling of the enveloping darkness. These are real stars, not the isolated, faint pinpricks of light we see at home. I explain to F that normally we can’t see these stars, because they’re drowned out by the streetlights.
“I know, Mum.”
We walk to the main road with our heads tipped to the heavens.

At the fish and chip shop, F marvels at the ice creams on display in the freezer while I graze on a Who Weekly. We walk home from the bright lights of the shops, passing through a stretch of darkness on our way to the main road. There is a squelch as my foot sinks into an invisible puddle.
“Oh Mum,” wails F. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because I didn’t save you from the puddle.”
“That’s okay.”
There is a long pause as we continue towards the main road.
“We really should have brought the torch,” says F.
“Yes. I know.”
“I could have saved you from the puddle then.”
“I know. I am very silly.”

At home, we dry our ugh boots by the fire and munch our way through mountains of chips.

**

We watch four episodes of Round the Twist in a row. It’s an old ABC TV series that used to screen after school when I was a kid, based on Paul Jennings’ surreal short stories. There’s a haunted lighthouse, an evil real estate magnate who wants to sell the lighthouse to developers, a close-knit coastal community, green babies who grow in the cabbage patch, a little brother with feet so stinky they’re a secret weapon that makes people pass out, and a spaghetti pig-out that ends in lots of vomited-up spaghetti ... that’s eaten again thanks to the rewind button of a magic remote control. F loves it because he loves Paul Jennings. I love it because it reminds me of being a kid. I love the 1980s puffed-up fringes and rolled-up jeans with white socks and lace-up black shoes. I can taste the Milo (three heaped spoons, half-stirred, half eaten) and hear my brothers and sisters squabbling beside me on the couch.

The series was filmed here. The lighthouse where the Twist family live is the one we can see from the lounge room window. You can buy the whole series on DVD at the video store next to the fish and chip shop.

When we hike up to the lighthouse, F stands and looks longingly at it, itching to go in. You can take a tour for $20 per head, but so far I’ve resisted forking out for it. He points at the cottage nearest the lighthouse.
“Is that Nell’s cottage?”
“Yep. We stayed there when you were little, you know.”
“I know, Mum.”
I told him last time we were here, when he and his ‘cousin’ discovered the joys of Round the Twist.

I’m amused by the fact that Round the Twist gazumped Sea Change by a decade with the crazed, shifty real estate developer and kooky, but loveable, community thing. (And the romance between Dad and the teacher Miss James was surely a forerunner to Laura and Diver Dan.) But more than anything, I can’t help reflecting on how Aireys seems to have changed since the series was filmed – certainly, since my mother-in-law bought her beach house here about six years ago. House prices rival those in the city. Tour buses are commonly sighted not just during summer, not just on weekends, but even mid-week in winter – and the lighthouse is a key attraction. And tourists (yeah, like us) are seen everywhere.

**

The whole of Aireys Inlet smells of smoke. It is the aroma of wood fires burning in every house.

**

I am sitting on the balcony, eating vegemite toast and sipping plunger coffee. I am wearing my mother-in-law’s robe, which swims about my ankles and threatens to swallow up my arms. The pants leg of my purple polka-dot pyjamas protrudes from the hem. I am basking in the sunlight that flashes on and off all day here, alternating with shrouded grey skies and light curtains of rain. F stands at my side and we look out at the lighthouse in the distance, the postcard-perfect view marred only by the blocky mansion that seems, from this angle, to climb from its base.

A trio of rainbow birds pass overhead in a shock of primary-coloured feathers, alighting on the balcony rail, barely a metre from where we stand. F runs inside to get my camera. He leaves the door open, and Snuffy rushes the balcony, sending the birds fleeing to the electrical wire nearby. F arrives with the camera and shoves it into my hand.
“Quick, Mum, quick!”
I point the lens and focus. There’s only one bird left. I lean in. And they’re all gone, streaking across the yard and disappearing into the uppermost branches of a nearby tree.
“You were too slow, Mum.”
“Well, I had to set it up first!”
“Whatever.”

I return to my toast. F decides to fish out his own camera and do some nature photography, inspired by my failure.

**

We play Indiana Jones on the paths winding through the scrub and down the sandstone cliffs, past the lighthouse and down to the beach and the inlet. A stone monument is an “icon” that Indy is hunting. F chants the Indiana theme song as he leaps and runs down the path, occasionally veering into the scrub to look for “relics”, which he solemnly tucks away in his cloth library bag, embroidered with his name and a red-and-white gingham star.
“We’re on a search for the opal shell!” he announces. “Chase me! You’re that French baddie!”
I halfheartedly run down the cliff, pausing every few jogged steps to photograph the view.
“Hey! Come on! You’re meant to be chasing me!”
“I’m documenting our journey,” I ad-lib. “I’m recording evidence. Explorers need evidence.”
He considers this, hands on hips, peering up at me from down the hill.
“Okay! Good thinking! Now, take a photo of this bush. I reckon there’s evidence here.”

**

It is just hours before we leave for home. We are squatting on the edge of the beach in the rain, the dogs wandering at our feet, sniffing around the toilet block just metres away. The Evil One's lead dangles from his collar. I am distracted, helping F wedge his wet, sandy feet into his sneakers. No one is around. And then there is.

A tall man in a navy beanie. Broad shoulders, blonde hair just visible, an outdoors tan even in winter. He nods at us, and I nod back, bending back to urge F's heel into his shoe. An eruption of barking and scuffling rends the air, just over my shoulder. I jump up to see the man kicking the dogs off his leg. The Evil One tumbles in one direction, the Good One, who never bites, or even growls, only jumps on any human being nearby as if she can't believe her luck to have this chance for attention, goes flying in the other direction. He's not just kicking them off; he's aiming at and kicking them. Hard. There are terrible, piercing squeals, like they've been hit by a car.

F and I gape as the man strides over and leans into us, shouting and swearing. The dogs run to us and sit still, barking. I am mortified, but I don't know what to think. As I gather my jumbled thoughts, he draws back his leg and delivers a hard kick to the guts of the Evil One, with the force of a footballer aiming for the other end of the field. There is a sickening thud as his foot connects with the dog's underside and it flies across the sand, literally twisting in the air before it lands, dazed, on the grass.

"You could apologise," he yells. "Your f*ing dog f*ing bit me!"
"Well, I would have," I find myself saying. "I am sorry, but you shouldn't have done that. I would say sorry if you hadn’t just kicked the dog like that. You can't do that."
"Well, he can't bite me! You're going to pay for this. You're going to get an $800 fine for this. I could report you!"
"Fine, do it," I say.

F dissolves into tears as he runs for the Good Dog, burying his face in her damp, gritty fur.
"She's a good dog!" he shouts. "She didn't deserve that! How could you kick her? She's a good dog!"
The man stalks off. F sobs into her neck as he strokes her.
"She doesn't deserve it," he cries. "She loves everyone! She just doesn't deserve it."
I hug him and hug the dog, pulling the Evil One back towards us. I pat him, too. I can understand the first kick – a reaction to shock. But the second, calculated revenge kick was just wrong. And it could have seriously hurt the dog.

When F is composed enough to keep going, we get up and head for home. The man suddenly appears again, beside a glossy four-wheel drive. A woman and a teenage girl are shutting the doors behind them.
"Their dog bit me!" he is yelling. "I got bitten!" More swearing.
“Right! I want your name and phone number,” he says, and I see that he is holding a scrap of paper and a pen.
“No.” I keep walking, holding F’s hand.
“So you know you’re wrong!”
“I could report you to the RSPCA for kicking the dog like that.”
“Fine, give me your name and I’ll see you in court. We’ll see who wins!”
F turns to look at him and clenches his fists.
“Well, it won’t be YOU!” he yells. I squeeze his hand.

I know what happened: the Evil One barked at his heels, the Good One joined him – barking with excitement – he kicked at them, the Evil One bit him, the Good One barked, he kicked them both properly. I know I was wrong for not having Evil at my side, but the truth is I’m just too shaken by the big kick and the aggression to know what to do – and my instincts are to just get out of there. So I do.

“I wonder just what happened back there.” I muse, half to myself.
“You know how they say dogs know if someone is a nice person or not?” says F.
“Mmmm?”
“Well ...”

Their sister has been carried away by giant wasps

2008-06-29T10:43:00.003+10:00

On our way back from the supermarket yesterday, at the end of a long and enjoyable day in the city, we passed a couple of buskers: vaguely shaggy twentysomething guys set up on a bench in the dwindling triangle of park next to the train station.

F gripped my arm, urgently.
"Mum! We have to give them some money!"
This wasn't unusual. He likes to give money to buskers, especially the ones who seem to be down and out, or play one of his favourite songs. I encourage it: it's nice.
"Their sister has been carried away by giant wasps!" he continued.
"WHAT?"
"Their sister has bee carried away by giant wasps and they need money to buy fly spray!"
"WHAT? Where did you get THAT from?"
"They've got a sign."

He was utterly earnest. I looked down at his small, solemn face, his hair brushing over his eyebrows and stroking his cheeks.
"And you think that's true?"
Of course, Mum."
"I'll tell you what. You can give them some money if you ask them if it's true."
"Okay!" He ran back through the dark, his shopping bag banging against his leg, while I waited in the pool of train passengers who had spilled off the platform, and were waiting for the gates at the level crossing to let them over the road. I watched him bend to drop his money into the open guitar case; the boys smiling their thanks over their instruments.

"Sorry Mum," he said, rejoining me. "I couldn't do it. If it is true they're probably really sad about it. They probably don't want to talk about it."
"Hmmmm. Yes. And you really think it's true?"
"Why wouldn't it be true?"
I consider this. All the many, many reasons.
"Well ... they're being funny."
"Is that FUNNY?"
"Well ... giant wasps ... it's not very likely. Have you ever heard of someone being carried off by a giant wasp? And the wasp would have to be pretty big. And if it was that big, I don't think fly spray would kill it."
"Maybe." He was unconvinced.
"Do you believe it now?"
"Maybe."

"If you found out they were making it up, would you be sorry we gave them money?"
"No."
"What if it was your money? Then would you be sorry?"
"No."
"Really? Because they're good at making music?"
"Yep."
"So if I told you that the money, that the $1.50, was actually your pocket money this week - all that you have left after paying for the train ticket you lost - that's fine with you?"
"Uh huh."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Oh." I looked at his perfectly serene countenance, puzzling over how children can surprise you. "Well ... it's not your pocket money. You still have your $1.50."
"Okay."

And we changed the subject, to football (sigh) and continued on down Anderson Street towards home.

The shuddering wouldn't stop ...

2008-06-26T11:34:00.002+10:00

No, that's not a description of my life right now, it's the beginning of my results from a random page meme Mark Lawrence has just tagged me for (and that he got from Galaxy).

You grab the nearest book, turn to page 123 and post the fifth sentence.

So, from page 123 of Novel About My Wife (Emily Perkins):

The shuddering wouldn't stop, even at home, even in bed through that cold, cold night.

The one that's more like my life (from under a cold) on the same page:

My meagre productivity slowed to a trickle, nothing more than surrounding myself with pages of redrafts and spending hallucinatory afternoons watching the telly at the foot of the bed.

I'm really not that sick though. Productivity has slowed to a trickle, but I only dream of abandoning myself to telly at the foot of the bed.

Okay, and a really GOOD sentence (or clutch of sentences) on the facing page, page 122:

I despised myself for the nervous middle-class grandad routine, getting down with the kids, but was aware of having no alternative. This was me: this was all I could do. For at least the last decade I'd been under the illusion that I was invisible to male aggressors, whether they were my own age or younger. It was the one decent thing about getting older: guys with something to prove didn't give a shit about you any more. Unless, like now, you were trapped on the other side of some bars like a monkey in the zoo, an early evening entertainment.

I tag ... anyone who wants to do this! Otherwise I'm just going to tag all the usual suspects AGAIN. Come back here and tell me if you've done it.

A good little five minute procrastination meme, this one.

Yarraville eatery reviews: 2

2008-06-22T11:35:00.002+10:00

Midday yesterday, we did the trawl of Yarraville eateries, looking for somewhere to have lunch: my mother-in-law, her partner, their six-year-old foster child, The Husband and me.

I’m a big one for eating out – especially lunch. As I work from home, I figure that eating lunch in a cafe most days is really exactly what I’d do if I worked in an office, so it’s allowed. And Saturday breakfasts with the newspapers is a ritual I’ve had since I moved to Melbourne 11 years ago.

We had a horrible experience at one place, a great one at another, which inspired me to start this free-form, very amateur, completely self-absorbed review of the three cafes I go to most in Yarraville.

Cafe Urbano (Anderson Street):
okay for grown-ups, bad for kids, patchy service

Coffee: 9/10
Kid friendly: 6/10 (it has chips)
Ave price of meal: $10
Service: 5/10 (inconsistent – can be terrible)
Setting/atmosphere: 7/10 (you can sit in the window and people-watch on Anderson Street)
Flexibility/adaptability: 0 (eg. they charge $2-$3 for extra bread with soup!)

First we headed for Cafe Urbano. I get take-away coffee from here most mornings to kickstart my day. (Once again, if I worked from an office ...) And it’s a good Saturday spot – they do a traditional big breakfast with poached eggs, sautéed potatoes and roast tomatoes on crusty toast. I like to sit in the window and watch the world go by as I graze on the arts sections of the newspapers.

Yesterday, they pushed two tables together to accommodate the six of us: good start. But the waitress was pretty belligerent about not being able to adapt to accommodate the kids. We didn’t want to feed them a bowl of chips. They’d had crumpets at home for breakfast.

Toasted cheese sandwiches?
“Sorry, we can’t do that. We have a griller.”
Okay, no problem. Grilled cheese on toast?
“No, sorry. We can’t.”
But, you have a griller ... you do toast ... you have cheese ...
“No, we can’t. We can’t do that under our griller.”
Bullshit. Sigh. Try again. Okay, we choose the burger and chips, without the egg or onion jam.
“It’s very big,” she warns.
Oh, okay. Split it.
She frowns.
“Can you please cut it in half for us?” I ask.
“Oh no, we can’t really do that.”
Why?
“It’s a kind of open burger.”
So, it’s not two hunks of bread with stuff in between?
“Yes, it is. It’s on a roll. It’s kind of a big roll.”
So, can you cut the roll in half?
“No. It won’t work.” And she looks at us dumbly.

All through this tortuous negotiation, there’s no suggestions, no attempt at all to try to help. It’s as if she takes a kind of mute pleasure in popping up these obstacles. I’ve worked in powerless jobs. They suck. There’s a biggish turnover here. Maybe this is her power trip. Maybe she’s bored and tired and can’t be bothered helping. Maybe she’s stupid.

But we’ve had enough. I glance back at the menu and up again. We exchange looks around the table.
“Shall we just go?”
“Yes!”
I look back at the waitress. “I’m sorry, I think we’d better leave it. This is too hard.”

And we all get up, grab our football cards spread over the table, jackets and bags, and file out the door, leaving out two pushed-together tables behind us. The chairs have been left out. I realise I will want to come back here for take-away coffee and – let’s face it – another breakfast, so I walk around the table and push them back in as I follow the others.

“Goodbye,” says the owner, and I smile and wave. Both of us are speaking through gritted teeth.

Hausfrau (Ballarat Street, off Anderson St):
fantastic food and service, good for kids

Coffee: 9/10
Kid friendly: 8/10 (it has sausage rolls)
Ave price of meal: $6
Service: 10/10
Setting/atmosphere: 9/10
Flexibility/adaptability: n/a (never tried it out)

I come to Hausfrau often. Nearly every day, in fact. It’s an upmarket bakery cafe: stylish, cheerful and cosy; decked out with brightly coloured cushions on the window bench seat; jaunty 1950s aprons as decorations; and beautiful big floral lampshades on the ceiling lights. Much like the famous cake shops of Acland Street, St Kilda, the food is a decoration, too: especially the window of cakes behind the counter, ranging from old-fashioned treats (lemon meringue pie) to more exotic fare (chocolate torte ganache, pear and almond chocolate tart).

We sit by the door, me and the two kids along the powder-blue vinyl bench seat, the other grown-ups ranged around us. We all find something to eat easily. Sausage rolls with tomato relish for the boys, who squint suspiciously at the carrot embedded in the meat (vegetables by stealth!), but eat them anyway. Pumpkin and leek tarts for me and the mother-in-laws. A beef and mushroom pie for The Husband. And then cakes for everyone, the best part of the meal. Our meals are about $5 each, plus another $5.50 for the cakes.

So, we spend less than we would have at Urbano, get dessert, and benefit from the cheerful (and patient, I must say) good service of the staff. After we’ve eaten, the two boys push their bottoms up to the window ledge immediately and sit, hunched over comics on their lap, their feet resting on the seat. (And yes, I peel off their shoes immediately and wipe the dirt off from the milliseconds of contact F’s muddy shoes made when we leave).

While I’m reviewing it ... the daily vegetable soup (revolving flavours) is really good, and well priced. And if you get it to take away, it’s $4 for a small cup and $6 for a large. If you buy a loaf of bread to take home and cut your own to eat with it, it’s a good lunch and a good deal.

The coffee is excellent – and the owner, Christian, is nearly always at the helm of the coffee machine, making sure it’s consistently good.

And the service ... the people here are friendly, accommodating, nice to kids, and when I, bleary-eyed, do things like forget my purse and have to come back for it, they very kindly don’t blink an eyelid. And one of the women there signed F’s petition against the dredging of the bay and has chatted to him about it since, finding out what happened with it. So, Hausfrau has my heart forever, of course.

My favourite thing here is the lemon meringue pie. My mum makes the best lemon meringue pie evey year, at Christmas. Every year, we all hang out for it. Twice now, I have convinced her to make me one for my birthday. Which my whole family has appreciated: TWO chances a year to eat pie!

I took Mum here a few months ago. She tried a forkful of my pie.
"Well ... what do you think?"
"Hmmm," she said, cocking her head to think. "Mine has a bit more of a kick to it."

A month later, Dad came to stay. (He and Mum are separated - have been for about four years.) I took him to Hausfrau. He ordered the pie. I asked him what he thought.
"It's great!"
"Mum said hers' is better. She said hers' has more of a kick to it."
"Well," he said. "She is right."

Feedback (Ballarat St, off Anderson St):
great atmosphere, great service, great food

Coffee: 6.5/10
Kid friendly: 8/10 (they’ll make grilled cheese on toast)
Ave price of meal: $10
Service: 10/10
Setting/atmosphere: 10/10
Flexibility/adaptability: 10/10

I like to alternate Feedback with Hausfrau for lunch. I didn’t so much as pop my head in there on Saturday, but I can’t do a casual review of Yarraville eateries without mentioning it.

Feedback has the atmosphere of a Fitzroy or Brunswick cafe, transplanted to Yarraville. It’s mellow, laid-back and effortlessly hip. (Well, I’m sure there’s effort, but it’s subtle.) My latte can sometimes come with a third of a glass of froth, but the cosy setting, my favourite people-watching seat on a stool by the window and the chicken and leek pie make up for my frothy coffee. And the people here are great: really friendly and effusive but also give you your space. If you want to chat, they’ll chat. If you want to sit and look out the window or write in a notebook, they’ll take away your empty latte glass with a nod and a smile. (I’m generally a sitter, but I hear the chatters in the background.)

One really cool thing about Feedback that I just love: the walls are lined with books and magazines. Kids’ books and grown-ups’ magazines, from Vogue to Famous to SPIN to Time. And they have The Age. F has always been able to come here and pluck a book from a shelf and start reading. How often does a place provide for kids to do that? It’s special.

They do scrambled eggs. They have home-made salsa. I’ve asked them to make me scrambled eggs with salsa (hey, they do it in Mexico) and even though they laughed, they did it – and told me to tell them what I thought of it, because they were really curious. (It’s good.)

I had a lunch meeting here once with a colleague I like and mostly speak to via email. It was our day off. We were talking for three hours and didn’t notice. And nobody made us feel unwelcome. When we apologised (we’d only bought two coffees in that time), they just laughed and waved us off.

Here’s some notes I took at Feedback one day. That might be the best way to describe why I like it, because it’s less any one thing than the whole picture:

Bob Dylan is on the stereo, then some sixties crooner: a scratchy old recording. The retro laminated tables and counter are lipstick red and marbled grey. A pink-and-orange painted phoenix squats halfway up one of the buttercup yellow walls, lined with magazines and children’s books. The hiss of the coffee machine, the squirt of foaming milk, the hum of a blender punctuate the staccato symphony of conversation over food and drinks, much of it unhurried, unfurling in the warmth and calm. Outside, a youngish man in a suit opens the Age wide over his table, his pages spilling over the barrier into the street. His suit is neat, his hair deliberately messy, stiff with product. Tan trainers are on his feet. A local activist I remember seeing at a recent protest is kissing her companions goodbye on the footpath. Her hot pink t-shirt complements her spiked hair and fluorescent toenails. Garish flowers run riot up and down her legs. The dreadlocked waitress chats about dance and drumming workshops behind me. She seems, in my long, hazy experience of her, one of those socially talented people: effortlessly charming and at ease with all comers; manages to seem as if she loves her job here – something not many in the service industry manage. I turn back and my suited slacker is gone, his empty latte glass pinning his folded newspaper to the table.

F Ramsay reviews Yarraville

2008-06-18T10:50:00.007+10:00

I don't know about anyone else, but since we became hooked on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, The Husband and I can't help approaching local eateries with the thought 'what would Gordon Ramsay say?'

The local pub is a faux Irish affair that adheres to the old 'charge double for the same food as you get in the front bar in the dining room' rule. Business seems to have picked up considerably in the last couple of years, but I strongly suspect it's due more to the rocketing fortunes of Yarraville itself than anything to do with the pub. It's the kind of place where they manage to stuff up chips and a parma. Quite a skill, really.(The Husband was once served a chicken parma with a large round hole in the middle of it, and when he complained, was told it just came like that. It cost $18.50.)

Last night, I took the family out to a celebratory dinner at the pub. I had just achieved my (rather modest) stated career ambition by finally getting publication in a place I've been chasing for some years. And The Husband officially finished uni last week.

"I'm buying," I rather grandly stated. "It's locals night at the pub." Big spenders, us. "We're celebrating!"
"What are we celebrating?" asked F, without lifting his eyes from his comic.
"Oh, well, I'm going to be published in ***."
To my surprise, he jumped up and threw his arms around me.
"Well DONE, Mum! That's great!"
"And The Husband has finsihed uni."
"For good?"
"Yep."
"WOW!" He turned to The Husband, who lifted his arm for a high five. F leaned past his outstretched hand to envelop him in a long hug. "That's brilliant."
He sat back on the couch and picked up his comic again. "And I have a guitar concert, too."
"Yes, that's right. Excellent."

We told F he could bring three comics if he promised he would talk to us over dinner.
"Of COURSE I will."

At the pub, The Husband and I chatted wearily about our respective days under a sepia frieze of nineteenth-century Ireland, while Today Tonight flickered on a suspended television overhead. (This was the setting of the dining room, the classy double-cost area of the pub. No seats left in the front bar.)

F sat, head down, absorbed in his comic. We tried to draw him out, to no avail.
"You promised to talk to us," I reminded him. Heavy sigh. Eyes flicker up and back again.
"F ..."
I swept the comic from under him and put it on the chair. He glared at us.
"When you go out for dinner, you need to talk to the people you go with. If I go out for dinner with my friends, I can't just sit there and read a book. I have to talk to them."
"FINE. What do you want to TALK about?"
"I don't know."

We all sat in silence a moment. Then, for lack of imagination, we grilled him about school and friends. It had been a week since we last saw him. The social landscape had, as we suspected, shifted a little. One friend has disappeared; a longstanding enemy has become a friend.

"REALLY?" We were hooked. (At least, I know I was.) "What HAPPENED?"
"Well, I don't know. He's just nice now. We play footy together. The only thing that's still annoying is that during tests, he always asks for the answers. I'm one of three people he always asks for the answers."
"Is he at your table?"
"Yes."
"Are the others he asks for answers?"
"One of them. The other one, he gets up and goes over to his table and asks for the answers."
"During the test?"
"Yeah."
"Huh."

The food arrived. F stabbed into his chicken nuggets hungrily.
"They look good," said The Husband. The chicken parma on his plate did not look good. It looked slightly shrivelled. And soggy.
F chews thoughtfully.
"They're not."
"I thought you liked them last time?"
"Last time, yes. They must have a new chef. This one sucks."
"Wow."
F has never not liked chicken nuggets.
"And the chips, are they good?"
"No." He gives a thumbs down.
"Can I try one?
"Yep."
They must be bad, I thought. He never lets me try one, not without stern warnings and carefully picking the chip himself. I bit into one and put it back on the plate.
"Yeah, they're bad," I winced. "They're COLD." And chalky, as if they've been microwaved rather than oven-fried.
"And GREASY. It's all very GREASY."

"So, F, pretend you're Gordon Ramsay. What would you say about the food?"
"Greasy."
"Right. Well, what would you do to make it better? What would be your advice?"
He considered a moment, then looked up from his plate, where he was swirling wilted chips in sauce.
"Get a new chef."

Madness at the MCG

2008-06-14T19:23:00.003+10:00

8.20am

Haul self out of bed, where I planted myself in a sulk last night after The Husband and I had a minor squabble that felt bigger than it was. The Husband is up already, stirring his rice porridge on the stove, ready for Auskick’s guest spot at the MCG.
“Hello!” he chirps. “I love you. Do we love each other today?”
“Yes,” I grunt. Back in the bedroom, I flinch as I pull on my jeans from the bedroom floor, where they seem to have absorbed the morning cold. A glance in the mirror, a brush of eye-shadow, fingers through my hair, and I’m out the door for take-away coffee. The Husband and I rendezvous at the train station, hunched into our black parkas.

8.56am

Train arrives. Sit backwards. Feel queasy. Determinedly sulk out the window.
“Sitting backwards makes me feel ill.”
“Oh, is that why you’re so grumpy?”
“NO.”
“Oh. Okay.”
The Husband resumes his serene gaze over the industrial straits of Kensington and North Melbourne.

9.15am(ish)

We walk from Flinders Street station to the MCG, along the river. The scenery is beautiful: bare-limbed European trees stark against the bleak sky; the Yarra a serene sheet of grey glass. Old-fashioned brick buildings, once sky-scrapers, squatting far below the cold modern columns of the CBD in the distance: the old Herald Sun building, with its block white letters silhouetted in the smoggy air, the gloomy post-splendour of the Forum. A Ferris wheel with pink-and-blue-and green seats stands by the river, beside a gelati and donut van and a roundabout, all of them empty. We cross the bridge over the tennis centre to the MCG and breathy voices whisper and chant by our knees, didgeridoo music swirling behind the song. The disembodied voices, indigenous storytellers, are emanating from loudspeakers built into the bridge. My head spins with the paradox of it: the expelled original inhabitants of the land singing over the sodden green lawns of the tennis courts below. The bridge feels quite literally haunted by those who came before us. In my bleary discontent, I am thrown off balance by it. I stop in the middle of the bridge and catch my breath.
“I don’t like this.”
The Husband laughs.

9.35am(ish)

As we round the concrete stadium of the MCG, the conquerors’ playground, I feel that time to clear the air is running out. Any minute now, we will be deep in a sea of parents and kids.
“I was angry with you,” I blurt out.
The Husband looks at me.
I tell him my side of last night's argument.
“Okay, fair enough.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just sharing my opinions.”
“Okay then.”
I fear I have overreacted, and wasted a good 12 hours on misdirected sulking.

9.40am

The Husband is crushed when he’s told that the game plan has changed, and the AFL honchos running the day have decided parent helpers aren’t allowed on the ground today. He’s not a registered Auskick coach, so he’s stuck on the sidelines with us. He was looking forward to getting out on the lawn almost as much as F was. He’s been talking about this all week.

F bowls us over with a flying hug.
“MUM! THE HUSBAND!”
I look at his legs, pale and purple-tinged. He is wearing navy cotton school shorts with a khaki padded parka.
“Have you got my lucky skivvy?! Look at my footy shorts!”
“They’re ... great.”
I have a thing about F wearing shorts in the cold. He has no sense of the weather at all, only what he wants to wear. It’s part Asperger’s, part small boy. His dad, who is English, likes to argue that at his boarding school in Scotland, boys wore ‘short pants’ all year round and it never did them any harm. We have had shouting-over-the-phone fights about our differing views on appropriate winter clothing. I let this one go through to the keeper. After all, there are other boys in footy shorts. And he’s going to be running around anyway.
The Husband pulls F’s lucky skivvy out of the plastic bag we’ve brought with us, along with his prized footy boots. The lucky skivvy is yolk-coloured, close-fitting, with a number one drawn on the back with a black permanent texta and a picture of grass and a leg kicking a footy drawn on the chest. Artwork courtesy of F, of course. The mythic game where F kicked seven goals, he was wearing that skivvy, he told The Husband on the phone this morning, so it’s lucky, and must be worn to the G.

I watch him, in his yellow skivvy and navy knee-length shorts and long white socks, playing a ferocious game of handball with The Husband at the outside wall of the stadium. His hair brushes his eyebrows in its grown-out mop-top. I realise, ironically, that he looks like a little autistic boy*, surrounded as he is by kids in top-of-the range official AFL gear and smart, camera-ready combed hair. He doesn’t care. Neither do I, not really.

A beatific carrot-topped marshmallow totters past, throwing a small red ball at the MCG wall. He barrels into the concrete and turns back again, as if on auto-pilot. A blonde woman snatches his ball and puts it in her pocket. I am appalled. How dare she steal a strange baby’s ball? The blonde woman looks up. It is The Stepmother. I’m impressed. We exchange wary smiles and she looks away again, following Baby Brother’s trajectory into the crowd, as he heads for the yellow Auskick ball passing between F and The Husband. The Ex ambles over with his own ball, just for Baby Brother. The Stepmother appears at my shoulder.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m going to get coffee from the van. You want one?”
I don’t really, but appreciate the gesture so much that I decide to have one anyway.
“Sure. Thanks.” I fumble in my over-stuffed bag.
“Nah, I’ll get it. Don’t worry about it.” And the crowd swallows her up.

10am

Kids and parents enter the MCG via different lines. F squirms with excitement in the line beside us. We offer parting encouragements.
“Have fun!”
“You’ll be great!”
“Remember to have a positive attitude!”
We don’t want it to be like last year, when the game ended with him wandering a corner of the vast oval, blinded by howling tears, snot running into his open mouth. Punching himself repeatedly in the head, growling “I suck at this! I’m no good! I hate myself!”. Last year we didn’t know he had Asperger’s, or at least we didn’t yet believe it. Last year, we hadn’t briefed the coaches on his condition, or convinced them of the fact that his tantrums were due to something other than over-indulgent parenting.

10.05am

We sit in at the bottom of the stands, just metres away from where F is training. There is The Husband, me, the Ex, The Stepmother and Baby Brother. The Husband stands up in his seat, his eyes hopefully on the oval.
“What are you doing?” I hiss. “Sit down next to me.”
“I’m looking to see if the security guards disappear so I can get onto the ground.”
“Right.”
I leave him to it and look around glumly, unable to get into it. I don’t really know most of the parents here.
“I don’t think we can have another child.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I can bear the idea of starting again with having to make friends with parents. You know, starting at the beginning again.”
The Husband doesn’t reply. He is intent on the fun he’s missing out on.

10.15am

The Husband and I have moved closer to the action, away from The Ex and The Stepmother. The drills are going well. F is joking around with the kids on his line. They take turns jumping on each other’s backs, grabbing for imaginary balls. They shout excitedly to each other. It looks like there is real interaction going on, not like last year when it was F crash-landing endless jokes against a blank wall of bemused indifference.
‘This is going great,” I say. “Much better than last year.”
“Yeah, it is.”

Baby Brother appears in the row of seats in front of us, propelled by unsteady legs. He is like a jagged game of Tetris: zooming back and forth in one direction, then another, seemingly automatically, often for the sake of movement itself. A shiny red football gleams atop an open bag: a patent leather apple. Baby Brother moves towards it as if hypnotised. He stretches out a small hand to stroke it. The owner of the ball laughs as he pulls it away onto his lap.
“You can’t blame him,” I say. “It’s a great ball.”
He grins back with an edge of forbearance. Baby Brother’s face crumples for no longer than a beat, then he turns and waddles back along the row of seats, into the arms of his mum.

I move to the edge of the seating and take photos. Through the lens, the small figure that is F stops, looks straight at me and waves proudly. They are handing out black and red bibs. The game is starting.

**

And it is sadly, predictably, awful. The four parental figures and one toddler negotiate the maze of seating together to follow the leaping figures on the field to the twinned goal posts where the game is being played. We lean over the pooled water on the ledge of the oval fence and shout encouragement across the ground.
“You can do it!”
“Get in there!”
“Good on you, F!”
“Remember your attitude!”

We marvel at his doggedness, the way he throws himself in front of the ball, under the scrum, his arms clutching for it at every chance, however slim. He is a rag doll, forever flung to the ground, picked back up and flung forward again. Physically, he is remarkably hardy. But it doesn’t take too many setbacks before the first tears come, and once he cracks, he is soon broken.

Normally, they’re not allowed to tackle. The referee, who isn’t usually with this group of kids and doesn’t really know them, shouts for F to get in there and tackle. So he launches himself at the kid and takes him down like a ten-pin bowl. And gets a penalty. Because the coach didn’t literally mean ‘tackle’, he meant ‘knock the ball out of his hands’. And F doesn’t know the difference. He passes the ball to a team-mate near the goal and the team-mate kicks a goal. F was trying a manoeuvre where the kid was meant to kick it back to him once he repositioned himself. So, he was inconsolable over that. There were other moments, including one where he charged a team-mate who had kicked a wide ball to him, stopping just short of thumping him. Once, he listened to me when I said “F! NO! DON’T DO IT!” The other times, I was shouting into a vacuum. Making a fool of myself, I’m sure, but I couldn’t help it.
“You can’t get upset,” says The Husband. “It won’t help him.”
I nod despairingly, watching him drag his feet across the field, pinned by the weight of his melancholy.

11am

At the end of the game, he bleeds towards us, howling his frustration.
“This is the worst game ever! It’s the worst day of my life! My team-mates wouldn’t pass to me! No one would pass to me!”
His coach tries to comfort him, as he has throughout the game, but now that there’s no next step to hurry him onto, no game to pull him back to for a moment, he has come completely undone.
“Come for your team photo mate,” urges the coach.
“No, I don’t want to.”
“It’s to remember the day by.”
“I don’t want to remember this day. I never want to remember this day.”
“Come on, mate.”

F stops to the side of the gathered crowd, the whole of Yarraville/Footscray Auskick, smiling for the cameras crowded on the other side of the oval fence.
“My feet are pinned to the ground,” he wails, holding his whole body determinedly still, his arms rigid by his side, his fists balled. The coach scoops him up in his big arms and carries him over to the group, where he stands him back on his feet. The Husband, the Ex, The Stepmother and I cheer and whoop. We call out that he’s played a good game. Last year, we greeted this kind of behaviour with stern admonitions. I’m still not sure which approach we should be taking.

F plants himself apart from the group, to the side. Separated by a good metre or two from the rest. His arms crossed, he scowls at the cameras.

The Husband and The Ex leap up the maze to meet him as he leaves the oval. The Stepmother and I stand looking at each other. For a moment, we don’t talk; but it’s not awkward, not really. We are joined in this moment. Despair, frustration, confusion, melancholy, embarrassment.

“He said he doesn’t want to remember this day, but he'll remember it now,” she says. “And the pictures will tell the story.”
“Yep. I wish I could pay the psychologist to come here, watch a game, and give me notes afterwards on how to handle this.”
We both laugh.
“I wonder what it must be like for you ...” begins The Stepmother, a little uncertainly. “Do you understand what’s going through his head, what he’s thinking ... you know ... You must understand the way he thinks.”
It’s the first time that she has ever acknowledged that I have Asperger’s, too, and one of the most personal conversations we’ve ever had. Or that I’ve had with anyone outside my family, really.
“Yes,” I say, after a pause. “I do, to some extent. I understand the thinking behind it. But I don’t know what to do about it or what to say or how to help him.”
“I hate team sports myself, I’m terrible at them,” she says. “So, I would never be in a situation like that anyway.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We slowly ascend the stadium, together, bonded by caring about what just happened, by having to deal with the fallout, and by hating team sports.

At the top of the steps, we pause and talk about dealing with F, how much of his behaviour is about Asperger’s and how much it’s kid stuff, and she talks about the division of labour in the house – how she’s mostly with Baby Brother so The Ex can spend time with F. Which I knew, but seems more benign, more practically driven, the way she outlines it. Even as we’re talking, I’m moved by the boundaries that seem to have dissolved between us, maybe not entirely, but certainly a little. And the emotion and interest in her voice heartens me, reassures me that even if she doesn’t ‘get’ F, she does want to.

**

The boys rejoin us and we leave the MCG together, F's family, The Stepmother and I ambling behind the four men.

They pause at the ice-cream van.
“I think one of those would make me feel better,” F tells his dad, with a weariness that is only part affected, and he buys him a chocolate-coated soft serve with coloured sprinkles. I watch him bite into the surface.
“Hmmm, I’m glad it’s you and not me today.”

And we peel off in separate directions, F lost in his sugary consolation as we call out our farewells.

* by this I mean that autistic (or Asperger's) kids/adults often don't care much about what they wear, or about wearing clothes to fit in with what everyone else is wearing.

Love Our Way

2008-06-09T18:01:00.002+10:00

It’s a special day at Auskick. F’s father is overseas and he hasn’t seen his little brother for just over a fortnight. He asked me on Friday night if I would invite his stepmother and brother to come to Auskick.
“No offence Mum. I really like this house and it’s really fun ... but I miss Baby Brother.”

His stepmother has never been to Auskick before, though Baby Brother usually comes once a fortnight, with his dad. They live on the Other Side of the Westgate Bridge. I doubt that she’ll come.

To my surprise, she emails back to say that she’ll be there if the weather is fine. (Baby Brother has a cold.) Saturday morning is crisp but radiant: a golden haze bathes the world in a cold glow.

I like the fantasy of a Love My Way kind of blended family. You know: they have dinner at each other’s houses and joint family celebrations, they babysit for each other, the stepmother and real mother occasionally meet for coffee. Sure, there’s the occasional barbed comment, but generally they’re one big family, where all the people who have to see each other on a regular basis all feel comfortable with each other, and invested in each other’s happiness.

We’re pretty good, as these things go, but we’re certainly not the fantasy. F lives with his dad and I on a weekly rotating basis. His dad and I talk on the phone a fair bit about how he’s going at school and how much sugar he’s having and who needs to put in what forms to school. We do run joint birthday parties for F, though we draw the line at Christmas. And we swap days a lot – when his dad goes overseas, when either of us has an after-school-hours meeting or an evening engagement. (And, for those who watch LMW – I’m a slightly dishevelled dark-haired arty type; the stepmother is a cool, organised blonde with a real job.)

Anyway, it’s well known that The Stepmother and F are not the best of friends, which is why I’m surprised that she decides to come to Auskick. He says she’s “cranky”. She says she “doesn’t understand him”. F was almost the deal-breaker in their relationship, but somehow they got past it: bought a house in a blue-chip suburb, got engaged the same day, then married and had a baby. Just add water for an instant happy family. Except it’s not.

It’s a segregated household. When F is there, The Stepmother looks after Baby Brother and The Ex takes care of F. Sometimes they meet in the middle for family time. Until The Ex quit his job three weeks ago, I picked F up from school every day. Every second week, when he finished work, the Ex would drive across the Westgate to pick F up at 5.30pm or 6pm and bring him home for dinner and bed. The Stepmother works from her lounge room at home, often with Baby Brother in the background. But F is not part of her equation, or her responsibility, unless specifically called upon.

**

F’s godmother is also coming to watch him play this morning. She emailed last night to ask me what his team colours are. “There are no team colours,” I write back. “They do wear black or red bibs, though. And his team is North Melbourne. They’re blue and white.”
I spot her as I climb through the hole in the cyclone wire fence separating the skate ramp and the football oval. Her neck is swaddled in an enormous blue and white scarf over a navy knit top. She is buttoned into a 1960s style knitted coat, white with navy pin stripes. It skirts her hips in a jaunty A-line. She is scanning the field from behind large prescription sunglasses. She is a vision of childlessness in a sea of tracksuits, padded parkas and misshapen woollies. She is even wearing lipstick. When she sees me, she responds with the energetic wave of a morning person.

“Nice colours,” is the first thing I say. “I’m impressed.”
She gives a little half-twirl.
“Coffee?” I ask, after pointing out The Husband and F on the oval.
“Any good?”
“We-ell ... it’s okay. It’s not BAD. It’s pretty good for coffee you can get at a kids’ football game.”
“I can only do one coffee a day.”
“Skip it.”
She follows me across the bitumen fringe of the oval and past the huddle of parents standing around the card table where they will later sell $2 hot dogs and alarmingly coloured ‘fruit’ drinks. There is no line in front of the small van parked in the oval’s driveway: a coffee machine, some jars of marshmallows and cartons of milk, and stacks of Styrofoam cups. A small boy takes my money as I place my order for a latte with his apron-clad mother.
“Wow,” says The Godmother.
“I know.”

We sit on a bench facing the oval, within (far) sight of F and The Husband, deep in footy drills. I unwrap a muesli bar from my bag. The Godmother and I exhale gossip in heady clouds: people we work with, people we used to work with, our partners. We talk in the uninterrupted flow of freelancers on day release – which we are. It’s exhilarating, having real world conversations like this at a kids’ event. Worlds are colliding, and I like it. F spots us and sprints across the oval, his face urgent.
“Hi, Godmother! Water, mum! I need water!”
I pull out the Auskick drink bottle he left by the front door this morning and hand it over. He gulps at it, hands it back, and disappears.

The Godmother and I jump the fence and follow him across the oval to stand at the edge of the training drills: rows of small figures, most of them in official AFL jumpers and shorts, stand facing each other across the grass. The coaches and their helpers – The Husband among them – stand in the centre. The lines wriggle back and forth, side to side, as the boys push and shove and wrestle each other. Headlocks, grabbing at torsos, skipping and dodging. I see F. He is a wrestler, his face intent. It’s just fun right now, but my stomach twists with the possibilities of it all.
“I hate the way boys do this,” I tell The Godmother. “I can’t watch him. By the way, The Stepmother is coming today. She’s bringing Baby Brother.”
“REALLY?”

That’s when we see her, standing just outside the fence of the oval, head darting about in search of a familiar face. She is easy to spot: a smooth blonde curtain of hair falling over a sensible black woollen coat; a marshmallow blob of puffy parka and oversized beanie wobbling at knee-height.
“We should wave, right?” I say. “We should go and bring her over here?”
“Yes,” says Godmother. “We should.”

**

The marshmallow is clutching a fist-sized green ball. He is beaming from beneath wisps of orange hair that have escaped over his forehead. He staggers determinedly across the oval, towards the boys and their balls. More specifically, he staggers towards the nearest bright yellow football and bends to pick it up. It is bigger than his head; the size of his torso. He drops it and kicks it along the ground, then follows it with a beatific smile. I have seen him do this before, but it still staggers me. F at his age had no more interest in a football than he did in a bug or a leaf – that is, some, but not much. And he certainly had no idea what to do with it.
“I remember when F was five, his teacher told me we needed to teach him ball skills. I used to kick the footy with him in the driveway after school, and he’d be practically in tears. I used to bribe him, saying that after one more kick he could go back inside to his books and comics.”
The Godmother laughs. I look over at F now, chasing the ball with the fierce, unyielding devotion that usually drives him to tears of frustration at least once a game.

The Stepmother and The Godmother and I settle into a rhythm of small talk, mostly about working from home, which we all do.
“How’s it going with The Ex working from home now?” I ask.
“Well, he hasn’t been here much.” Pause. “But he’s ... I guess you MUST have heard about the new MacAir laptop?”
“Yup.”
“He loves his toys. Anyway, the week before he left he spent all this time playing with the computer and trying to get the Macs to talk to each other and I was in the lounge room, working, and the network was going down because he was playing with it.” She sighs. “So, I’m getting more work done now he’s gone. But a week’s long enough. I’m ready for him to come back now.” Baby Brother is snuggling into her chest, his little arms diving into her armpits.
“Muuummy!” he wails. She holds him close.
“It’s his cold. He’s a bit clingy,” she says. “I had to take him to the toilet with me this morning. I had to sit him on my lap.”
“Wow. That sounds awful.”
It’s conversations like this that convince me I don’t want to have another child.
This is alright, I think. This is really going well.

Baby Brother totters across the oval again as we talk. He stands, transfixed, between the goalposts. A flock of boys swoops back and forth in his direction, following the ball sideways towards him. The Stepmother runs to rescue him. While she’s gone, I start telling The Godmother about my fights with Australia Post this week, and the fact that I’m not getting my mail. The Stepmother comes back for the end of it.
“You should get a PO Box,” she suggests.
“I did. That’s the problem. The redirection isn’t working. Parcels are going to my house. Or they’re just going missing.”
“Oh, I hate that,” says The Stepmother. “I’m always having to chase missing parcels for work.
“The Husband won’t let me talk to Australia Post anymore,” I admit. “After I swore at them the other day.”
“You swore at them?”
“Yeah. I ... it was after a couple of weeks of phone calls, and they’d been really stuffing me around. They kept saying that everything should be working, and then this woman realises that the parcel redirection has never been activated at all. And that she couldn’t do anything about the missing parcels. She suggested I ask everyone to send everything registered mail.”
“You can’t do that.” The Godmother.
“I know.”
“Yeah, I get that at Christmas. Parcels going missing and they tell me that nobody took them. Yeah right! I bet lots of people would like a new tent for Christmas!” The Stepmother manages a camping supplies business.

“So, what did you say?” The Godmother asks me.
“Oh, I told them to go fuck themselves.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I said fuck you. She was going to hang up on me. She said ‘goodbye, Ariel’. And I said ‘Oh, fuck you.’ I know.”
We’re all laughing now. I am emboldened.
“Yeah, that’s right, before I said that, the thing that made her decide to hang up on me, I said ‘if you weren’t owned by the government, you’d have to be accountable. I pay for a service, you wouldn’t be allowed to not deliver it’. So she said ‘goodbye Ariel’ and then ... then I said ‘do I have to call A Current Affair on you to get a result?’ And then she said ‘goodbye Ariel’ again. And THEN I said fuck you.”
The Godmother and the Stepmother are looking at me in disbelief.
“I know ... I know ... I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why I threatened to call A Current Affair on someone.”
I decide not to tell them that, after I swore, a small voice piped up from across the room and a small head bobbed above the couch and said “MUM!”
And that I said: “I know darling, that was so naughty of me. I said it after they hung up, but it was so naughty of me.”
“You said it after they hung up, huh?”
“Yep.”
“That’s $2 in the swear jar.”

I’ve revealed bad behaviour to the other side of the family, though only part of it. But we’re all laughing, we all hate Australia Post, and we’re all exclaiming over Baby Brother’s ball skills and cheering for F when he gets the ball. This is going just fine.

**

At an Auskick earlier this year, the second of the season, things between The Stepmother and I didn’t seem to be going so fine. She wasn’t there, of course. She’d been a bit short with me on the phone lately, and I asked The Ex if she had a problem with me.
“Oh, no more than usual,” he replied distractedly. “You know, no more than she usually does.”
“What do you mean by THAT?”
“You know, nothing more than the usual.” His eyes glanced off me and skittered over the field.
“What problem does she USUALLY have?” I asked.
He turned and looked at me blankly, deliberately, stretching out the moment.
I walked off and took a seat by the goalposts alone, too irritated to follow the conversation further. I sat and glared into the game.

About ten minutes later, The Ex came to squat beside me, Baby Brother following some metres behind him on precariously steady legs.
“He-eyyy, what’s GOING ON between you two?” asked The Ex. Nothing much, I’d thought before this. I told him that it was just her tone on the phone lately, and that last time we’d come to pick F up, instead of inviting me in, she shut the door in my face and went inside to get him.
“Oh dear,” said The Ex mildly, and drifted off again, drifting back a minute or two later. Just standing there.
“I mean, I’m always nice to her. The Husband is always nice to you. And it’s not like she’s the best stepmother in the world either. F isn’t dumb. He knows she doesn’t like him and he reacts to it. I guess it’s not her fault if she doesn’t like him. But still.”
I didn’t mean to say any of this. But after I had, I was shocked at The Ex’s reaction. He didn’t deny it; he didn’t try to spin it. He just stood there, accepting it. Which chilled me to the bone, because I’d hoped I was imagining - or at least exaggerating - the situation between F and The Stepmother.

I’d nursed a subterranean, complicated anger at The Stepmother ever since.

**

The Stepmother and The Godmother and I are chatting. I mention that I am doing something mundane, like taxes or cooking meals more often. Something too boring for me to remember what it was.
“Why?” asks The Godmother.
“She’s becoming a GROWN UP!” says The Stepmother, gleefully. I look at her. Did she really say that? Has she forgotten who she’s with? Does she think she’s in the kitchen with The Ex?
“I wouldn’t want to be a grown up if it means being like you,” I think, cattily. “So what if I don’t own a house and I don’t earn a lot of money? At least I’m interesting. At least my work is interesting. At least I’M NOT LIVING WITH YOUR HUSBAND!”
We move on, quickly.

**

It’s the final moments of the game. F gets the ball in a daring semi-tackle. He runs towards the goal posts, aims and kicks. It’s a goal! The three of us cheer and call his name. He runs in a circle on the field, his grin visible from the sidelines. He directs princely nods at his team mates, acknowledging their admiration even before they give it. The boys gather in a tight circle, then scatter. F runs towards us. The game is over. He runs, smiling, in a straight line. He is going to hug someone. He bends and embraces his brother in a running tackle, picking him up and running him towards us. Baby Brother’s arms flail at right angles from under his embrace; his legs dangle as if bracing for a fall. His orange head nestles in F’s chest. Happy (muffled) squeals emerge from his resting place. F puts him down and smiles into his face, their eyes just centimetres apart.
“Did you see me kick a goal at the siren?” he asks us.
“Yeah!” says Godmother. “We all cheered your name. Didn’t you hear us?”
“No! Did you? Thanks for coming, Godmother. Thanks for bringing Baby Brother, Stepmother.”
And the brothers are off, following The Husband across the oval to kick the footy one last time.

The Stepmother, Godmother and I continue to chat. We talk about the boy next door, who I love.
“Oh ... he’s so difficult,” says the Stepmother.
“REALLY?” I say.
“Oh, well he used to be.”
“I never have any problems with him. Though if he ever spoke to me the way he speaks to his father, I’d be giving him a good smack! But he’s fine with me.”
“Oh, YES!” says The Stepmother. “And where do you think he gets THAT from?”
“His mother?”
“OH yes. She’s AMAZING.” Said in a tone that implies she’s not really amazing at all, not in a good way.
I actually really like Boy Next Door’s mother, who is almost the age of my own mother, but is also practical, sensible, and has child-rearing ideas that are surprisingly similar to my own. She’s a bit of a drill sergeant in manner, but she’s got the proverbial heart of gold. She does nag her laid-back husband to death, but he’s the kind of old-fashioned bloke who stops at the pub and has a beer and a smoke while he’s waiting for his fish and chips to be ready to pick up. (At 5pm in the afternoon.) Their whole dynamic is based on her being the in-control nag and him being the put-upon husband who gets to roll his eyes when he’s told to do things. They seem to like it that way.

“I like to listen in on their conversations,” I admit. “F and Boy Next Door, I mean. The other day I heard BND imitating his mum. It was hilarious. ‘HUS-BAND, do the dishes! HUS-BAND, fix the dishwasher!’ He said that he reckons women do all the work because his mum’s always telling his dad what to do. I told him that his mum’s the one who makes sure the work gets done, and that I’m sure she actually does plenty.”
We all laugh at the imitations, united in judging someone other than each other.

It’s in this spirit that we get a bit carried away.

“I have to be at work soon,” says The Godmother. “If we’re going to get that coffee ...”
“Yeah, I’m going to get a coffee, too,” says The Stepmother.
The Godmother and I look at each other.
“Why don’t you join us?” says Godmother.
“Yes, go on.”
“Um ... okay, sure.”

And so we all end the morning squeezed around a 1950s laminated table built for four (The Godmother, The Stepmother, Baby Brother, F, The Husband and me), eating muffins and sipping lattes/hot chocolates/babycinos and continuing a polite conversation that is beginning to strain at the seams, but manages not to tear.

Maybe we’re not quite so far from Love My Way after all.

Even if The Husband and I do get home and exclaim over the way The Stepmother talks about how F “comes to stay” with them. (“He LIVES there half his life!” we exclaim, a little self-righteously.) And I’m sure I saw her file away the fact that I gave F a hot chocolate, even though the two families have agreed to minimise his sugar intake.

Ah well. The road to blended family heaven is paved with barbed comments. But at least we’re all trying.

* btw, this all happened a week ago, but I'm a slow writer

Sex and the City and the Big Screen

2008-06-07T22:15:00.005+10:00

As I sat at my laptop at my kitchen table, dressed in my pyjamas, I couldn't help but wonder ... why are women flocking to the Sex and the City movie in such numbers? Why did I line up for a ticket, just this afternoon? And why did both papers I read – The Australian and The Age – choose male film reviewers who admit they never watched the series to review a movie whose audience is made up almost entirely of female fans of the series?

I’ll try to answer the first question first ... Female fans of the series are lining up to see the movie for a reason that has been around as long as stories themselves. It’s the same reason that the king in Arabian Nights stayed wily Scheherezade’s execution over 1001 nights: to find out what happens next.

That’s the answer to the second question, too: it’s why I lined up outside Yarraville’s Sun Cinema to see the movie this afternoon, after missing out last night and heading dejectedly home to eat chocolate and watch a DVD. (I arrived at 8pm and the 8.20pm and 9.20pm sessions were both sold out. As I walked home down Anderson Street, towards the railway line, I passed squads of girls dressed in their best skinny jeans and heels squealing about Carrie and Miranda and co., on their way to get the same bad news as I had.)

And why did we all want to watch the movie so much? I’ve read – with interest – a series of articles in the past month debating this issue. And, love it as I do, I know that, in many ways, the show is shallow and materialistic. And, of course, supremely unrealistic. As if a once-a-week columnist could afford Carrie’s clothes, shoes, party lifestyle and Upper West Side apartment. The best article I’ve read (fittingly, from New York magazine) claims that the appeal of the four feisty women is that they are the female equivalent of superheroes. No, not superheroes with capes and nifty gadgets, but women who can do the impossible. Women living fantasy lives.

“Superheroes exist outside the laws and boundaries the rest of us have to abide by; while men want to see themselves flying and fighting, women are more interested in pushing other limits. How old can you be and still be hot? How many times can you break up and still be in love with someone? How many hours of the day can four working women conceivably spend together? Pointing out that Carrie could never afford her apartment, let alone her wardrobe, is about as useful as questioning Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to create cold fusion in a cave in Afghanistan — it misses the point of the movie entirely. Why is it okay for Iron Man to collect expensive cars but materialistic for Carrie to collect shoes? Surely her carbon footprint is the smaller of the two.”

Genius, I think. Carrie’s gadgets are her wardrobe, apartment, shoes and lifestyle. And the relationships – between the four women and their men – are what make the show so appealing, for me anyway. Personally, I couldn’t give a toss about Manolo Blahnik (I can’t wear heels and prefer to wear my zippered Doc Marten boots everywhere). I like clothes, to some extent, but have no desire to ever attend a fashion show. I’d read Vogue at the hairdresser’s, but that’s about it. But I think I would like to live in a New York apartment and eat out for every meal, be witty and attractive, write a well-known column about pretty much anything I like for a living, have a publishing contract and successful books ... And I tend to analyse relationships as relentlessly as a Carrie Bradshaw.

To drill down still further, the core appeal of the show is that it presents four different but attractive female archetypes, all different in personality and looks. Most fans will identify with at least one of the women. The four have an ideal friendship, one that holds through all manner of crises, one where they can always rely on each other. Is it feminist? Obviously not, in all kinds of ways, but it is in the sense that the central tenet has always been that, while a man is a good thing to have, it’s not necessary. The women can always fall back on each other. With or without a relationship, they will never be alone.

The Age’s Jake Wilson (who I often like) says: “Too bad for those of us who never caught a single episode of Sex and the City on TV, and now find ourselves enduring a round of hasty introductions to a group of people less amusing than reputation would suggest.” At which alarm bells start ringing loudly, for me as a reader. Why would you like a movie that is basically a continuation of a TV series if you have never seen the show? Then he describes Mr Big as “a bland Victor Mature lookalike whose eyes dance ironically without giving any hint of his thoughts”. Again: if you don’t like Mr Big, you probably won’t like the show, or the movie. He makes some good observations, and, as I don’t think it was the best movie in the world either, but that’s not THE POINT. The point is, you should at least start with an appreciation of where the movie is coming from to review it.

Evan Williams (who I also often like) was the lucky male novice to the series who reviewed the movie this weekend for The Australian. “I watched a couple of episodes of SATC on pay TV in preparation for writing this review, which of course makes me an expert.” And yes, I do sense a tongue firmly in cheek there. But he makes some pretty irrelevant criticism as a result of his scant knowledge of the series. “Here is an unashamed celebration of materialist values, an orgy of labels, brands and product placements as sinful, by implication, as the behaviour of the characters.” Bloody hell. It’s a series where the main character once figured out she had spent $40,000 (the equivalent, apparently, of a deposit on an apartment) on shoes. Where she announced that a Vogue fashion column was her equivalent of poetry. The materialism is not new.

He says that “the film has more depictions of sex, in its many athletic variations, than were permissible on the small screen”. Just not true. Remember Samantha on the swing? Or maybe just Samantha in general. It seems to me to be business as usual as far as that’s concerned. Not that it’s a big deal.

And – last criticism here: “Carrie is something of a celebrity and her writings are largely based (to no one’s apparent objection) on the sexual experiences of her friends”. Once again ... it’s the basis of the whole show. Why bother to poke holes in it?

Basically, I would have liked to have read the opinions of women who liked the show, instead of men who were dipping into it. I’m now waiting for when they ask Sam Brett to review Indiana Jones. (A bit unfair – the woman is an idiot and these men are not. But still. In terms of suitability for the material, it fits.)

So ... my opinion ... as someone who loved the show. SPOILER ALERT (I think).

Yes, the materialism did get on my nerves, perhaps because I haven’t seen the show in so long. Perhaps it always did. Yawn, yawn, get on with it. And there was a New York fashion show scene that felt redundant. In the show, there were fashion shows that were relevant to the plot, and funny (remember Carrie stumbling down the runway in tall, tall heels and sequinned undies?). This was just THERE.

I don’t think the film was funny enough: it lacked the sharp wit and observational humour that the show had.

The Jennifer Hudson character – Carrie’s personal assistant – felt embarassingly tokenistic (‘ooh, let’s have a black character’) and had too much of a touch of Mammy to Miss Scarlett about her. Though, to be fair, I guess that the job of personal assistant to a writer with connections would be sought after. Still, as she was the only black character, the dynamic made me uncomfortable.

I thought Carrie over-reacted to Big’s mistake at the altar. I wouldn’t even call it a ‘dumping’. He got nervous about the spectacle of the thing (which he’d warned her about the night before) and took a turn around the block, before coming back to say, as she whacked him over the head with the bouquet, that he was ready now. He was bad, but not THAT bad.

I thought Miranda made a mistake ... but then, so did the other characters, so I guess that’s not a criticism, that’s a comment.

But, criticisms aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Don’t know that I’d see it a second time, but it was immensely satisfying to re-enter that world and follow what happened to the characters. I confess to getting a tear in my eye a couple of times about the fates of the couples I liked most (Carrie & Big, Miranda & Steve).

I liked the play on fairy tales. Carrie reads Charlotte’s daughter Cinderella and then turns to her and gives her a solemn lecture about how things don’t always turn out happily ever after in real life and she should know that now. The little girl watches with big eyes, then asks for the story “again”. Carries smiles to herself and opens the book at the start. It’s a nice wink to feminism and to the fact that sometimes women know the whole palaver is a fairy tale, but they want it anyway, as much as they try to tell themselves they don’t. (Not all women – but certainly Carrie.) There’s a nice ongoing Cinderella reference, too.

So, in conclusion: a couple of smart moments, but mostly fairly standard chick-flick stuff that will be satisfying if you like the characters and want to spend a bit of time with them, but not otherwise.

It’s superhero escapism, for women.

Some facts about me! meme (or: procrastination)

2008-06-07T15:07:00.003+10:00

Some facts about me! meme

Courtesy of Elsewhere. Thanks for the procrastination material!

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

I had recently moved to Melbourne and I didn't yet have a child. I was living in a flat in Elwood with a view of the sea with the man who was to become the father of my child. He was very bossy. We had a big stand-up fight outside the local supermarket once because he said no girlfriend of his was going to buy two-minute noodles and I said I wanted it, it was MY comfort food, and no one was going to tell me what to do. Wow, how surprising that we broke up. I worked as a marketing manager at an academic publishing company and I was secretly terrified they had given me the job by mistake, not realising how incompetent I was. This turned out to be partly true: I was very good at one part of my job and didn't have a great grip on the other. My boss at the time was too busy shagging a girl from customer service behind his fiancee's back to notice. My best friend from Adelaide decided on a whim to move to Melbourne and crashed on my couch until my partner kicked him out. Then he invited my 17 year old brother to come live with him in a share house near Southlands with the head chef from his work, who turned out to be a gambling addict and stole all their money. The two chefs ignored my brother (their kitchenhand) for a while because they were both in love with the 21 year old head waitress, a blonde from the Gold Coast, who was in love with my brother.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. Magnum Envy (chocolate coated with mint ice cream)

2. Chocolate coated raspberry bullets

3. Haigh's chocolate almonds

4. Lindt orange filled chocolate

5. Gelati from Al Fresco's in Adelaide. Preferably mint choc-chip, hazelnut or chocolate. Banana and mango are also good.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world: (or really my favorite snacks 6-10)

6. Um ... all of the above when I'm being bad. When I'm being good, almonds and Carman's muesli bars, cut-up Granny Smith's apples and barbecue rice crackers.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Stop working and travel the world, writing immersion type journalism stories and other stuff. (What Elsewhere said. But probably would have to wait ten years, due to nearly-nine-year-old. Or maybe I could bring him.)

2. Buy two houses. A Victorian terrace in North Fitzroy (with a pool if I can find room in the backyard) and a beach house at Airey's Inlet.

3. Buy houses for my family. Big family, so a lot of money eaten up there.

4. Start my own publishing company. And hire good staff to do all the things I can't.

5. Make a fat donation to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. marketing manager (publishing)

2. deputy editor (magazine)

3. bookseller

4. public relations consultant (this one felt a bit too formal and poncy as a job title, I'm not sure why)

5. deli counter at Coles (worst. job. ever.)

Three of my habits:

1. over analysis (self and others)

2. general domestic slovenliness

3. judging other people's parenting and then feeling guilty about it

Five places I have lived:

1. Norwood, Adelaide

2. Golden Grove, Adelaide (actually Wynn Vale, but nobody really knows the difference - and it WASN'T MY CHOICE)

3. Carlton, Melbourne

4. North Fitzroy, Melbourne

5. Yarraville, Melbourne

Five people I want to get to know better: (A nice way of saying TAG!)

1. http://castironbalcony.media2.org/

2. http://halfheartedhack.blogspot.com/ (maybe it will lure her back onto the blogging wagon?)

3. http://eglantinescake.blogspot.com/

4. http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/

5. http://blakkatruminations.blogspot.com/

Diabetes

2008-05-28T11:22:00.003+10:00

They say that medical students go through a stage of thinking they have every disease in the textbook. Reading through lists of symptoms, they mentally tick them off and imagine they have all kinds of diseases and syndrome, however rare. They learn to discount them.

It’s a Saturday afternoon. Rain is sputtering outside my window. I’m curled up on the couch in front of the heater, reading The Good Weekend. In the article, a woman recounts having a dry mouth and unexplained fatigue, going to the doctor, and discovering that she has diabetes. I mentally freeze in my tracks. I’ve had a mysteriously dry mouth for a week or so, and had toyed with the idea of Googling the symptom. (It worked when I was trying to figure out why F had a sore bottom: worms. I even Googled handy hints on how to capture a sample for the doctor.) And I’ve been tired lately. Very tired. For no reason. I’d thought it must have been work, but now that I think about it, I haven’t been working that hard.

I put down the magazine, untangle myself from the blanket over my knees, and practically dive for my laptop. I key in ‘dry mouth symptoms’ to Google. Guess what comes up? Diabetes, and not much else. Tired? Check. Lost weight lately? Check. I’d thought it was because I was eating better, but maybe not. Loss of appetite? Well, maybe. After all, I am eating less, so I must have less of an appetite. Going to the toilet a lot? I’m not sure. But I probably am, because I always seem to be getting out of bed early in the morning to go to the toilet.

I try to settle myself back on the couch with the paper, but now I am convinced. The doctor’s office is closed on the weekend. The next two days stretch before me. My dry mouth situation escalates from an annoying feeling to a searing desert in my throat. I pour myself a tall glass of water and ring my mother on her mobile.

My sister answers. She and mum and my nana are all having a girl’s day out, lunching and shopping. We chat about her job for a while before she asks why I’m calling.
‘I had to ask mum a medical question.’
‘Again?’
‘Mmm.’ Mum wanted to be a doctor when she was a teenager (and got the marks for medical school – she just lacked the self-esteem to apply). She had five kids, who all survived various ailments. Those two factors - and her innate practical nature - qualify her to be my doctor when there are no doctors around. In fact, I usually call her for medical advice before I go to the doctor. ‘I think I have diabetes.’
My sister laughs. When she has finished laughing, she asks me where I got the idea from. I tell her. She laughs some more. Mum takes the phone.
‘Do you have a dry mouth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you tired? Do you feel flu-y?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Do you go to the toilet a lot?’
‘I think so.’
‘Hmmm. Gerta had all those symptoms.’ One of her best friends has adult onset diabetes.
I hear a voice in the background, faint but clearly audible.
‘GO TO THE DOCTOR!’
‘Nana says go to the doctor.’
‘I hear her.’
‘So, Gerta had those symptoms huh? I feel a bit faint.’
‘You could fall into a diabetic coma if you don’t get it checked out.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s what happened to Gerta. She had a really dry mouth, she said she was climbing the stairs at work and practically foaming at the mouth ... and she fell into a coma and had to be taken to hospital. That’s how she found out.’
‘Oh my god.’

‘Guess who’s here now? Wait, I’m putting you on speaker phone.’
‘HI ARIEL!’
It’s my other sister. They’ve just stopped the car and picked her up. Now they’re on their way to the local shopping centre, for more shopping. They are dedicated shoppers, my Adelaide family. It’s practically a mandatory Saturday activity.
‘GO TO THE DOCTOR!’
‘Hi, Nana.’
‘Hello!’
‘Is F there? What’s he doing?’ It’s the sister who just climbed into the car.
‘He’s watching TV. And reading a Digimon comic.’
‘What’s Digimon?’
‘It’s like Pokemon. Only not.’
‘Oh. HI F!’
I turn away from the mouthpiece and repeat the message for him. He lifts his head from the comic, just the slightest movement, and nods.
‘Uh huh.’
‘He says hi!’ I report. There is a satisfied chorus of adoring sighs.
‘So, what’s up?’ says the newly arrived sister.
‘She thinks she has diabetes,’ says Sister 1, sounding faintly amused.
‘Oh. Right.’
‘GO TO ...’
‘I’ll go to the doctor on Monday, Nana.’
‘Good.’

‘Anyway, why are you calling me?’ asks Mum, the thought only just occurring to her. ‘What can I do? I’m not a doctor.’
‘Mum, I always call you for medical questions. You know that.’
‘She does,’ says Sister 1.
‘But why?’
‘Because you always wanted to BE a doctor.’
‘But I’m not.’
‘Yeah, but you have the NATURAL INTEREST in medical matters.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Mum,’ I say, ‘I have to go in a minute. This call is costing me a lot of money. But ... if anything happens to me, and they call you, can you tell them that I might have diabetes? You know, if I fall into a coma.’
‘GO TO THE DOCTOR!’ says Nana.
‘Ariel ...’ says Mum. I hear my sisters laughing.
We say our goodbyes.

I look over at F, sprawled, seemingly comfortably, across the hard wooden floor, his head bowed over his comic. My heart floods with affection for him. Then I wonder: what would he do if I fell into a diabetic coma and no one was here? What if it happened this afternoon?
‘F, darling,’ I say, trying to seem as casual as I can so as not to frighten him.
‘Mmmm?’
‘If anything ever happens to me ... and, you know, no one is here ... can you just call Nana and tell her? You know her number.’
‘Sure.’ He doesn’t look up. I feel pleased at having successfully not frightened him. I am satisfied that if he called mum, she could tell the hospital or whoever about my diabetes. I am covered. But what if she’s not home? What if she doesn’t pick up? What if the hospital just calls The Husband first?

I dial the bookshop where he works and chirp a friendly hello at the person who answers. The Husband's voice comes on the line.
‘Hey there.’
‘Hi darling. I’ve got something I need to tell you. It’s going to sound a bit odd. I don’t want to scare you.’
‘What?’
I look at F and sidle out into the hallway, shutting the door behind me. I lower my voice and stage whisper into the phone.
‘I think I have diabetes.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
He doesn’t sound scared. He sounds annoyed.
‘I read this article ... and it says that the symptoms of diabetes are a dry mouth and fatigue and I have both! Remember when I told you that I’ve had a dry mouth and I wonder what it is?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Well ... I Googled ‘dry mouth’ and it confirmed it. Practically the ONLY THING that came up was diabetes.’
‘You don’t have diabetes.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to go the doctor on Monday and have it checked out.’
‘Maybe you’re drinking too much coffee. Maybe that’s why you have a dry mouth. The caffeine.’
‘I hardly drink any coffee. Maybe two cups a day. And I’ve been drinking water ALL DAY and it’s making NO DIFFERENCE.’
‘Right. Do you have headaches?’
‘Um ... no. But that’s not a symptom.’
‘It would be. You’d have headaches from the high blood sugar. And you don’t.’
I don’t know what to say to that.
‘I really have to go,’ he says.
‘Okay. But ... if anyone calls and anything happens to me ... can you tell them that I might have diabetes?
‘You don’t have diabetes.’

He’ll be sorry if I DO have diabetes! I think as I hang up and return to the lounge room. Maybe he just doesn’t want to think about bad news. Maybe he is trying to be positive. I look at F across the lounge room.
‘Do you want grilled cheese and cut-up apple for lunch?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Do you know THe Husband’s phone numbers at work?’
‘No.’ He looks up and frowns a little. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ I say. ‘Why don’t I write down The Husband’s phone numbers – work and mobile – and put them up on the pin-up board? Just in case you ever need them .. you know, if anything ever happens to me. Not that I think it will.’
‘Okay. Good idea, Mum.’ He goes back to his comic. Success! I now feel fully prepared in case I fall into a diabetic coma.

When The Husband comes home, I am still safely ensconced on the couch. No coma. But I have developed a massive headache. And, now I think about it, I have had headaches on and off for a while.
‘Sorry about calling you at work to tell you I think I have diabetes,’ I say. ‘I guess it must have seemed a bit weird?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It was. Very. And you don’t have diabetes.’
‘But I have a headache! In fact, I’ve remembered that I HAVE been having headaches.’
‘Not drinking enough water.’
‘Remember? I’ve been drinking loads of water. At least, today I have. And I still have a headache.’
The Husband lets out a deep sigh and fixes me with a straight-talking gaze.
‘Ariel. Every time you have PMT you are fatigued and you have headaches or feel light-headed or whatever and you think you are pregnant. And you never are. Do you have PMT right now?’
‘Um ... yes.’
‘There you go.’

After dinner, F I sit side by side on the couch, sipping hot chocolates and prodding gooey marshmallows with our spoons. We are wearing flannelette pyjamas and reading books. We are warm and content. The Husband clears our dinner plates from the coffee table and takes them to the kitchen. He pauses at the doorway on his way back to the couch.
‘Why are my phone numbers up on the pin-up board? I’ve never noticed them before.’
‘Ask F,’ I tell him. He looks at F, his eyebrows doing the questioning.
‘Well ...’ F thinks hard, pausing before his face lights up with the answer. ‘It’s in case anything ever happens to Mum! So I can call you!’
‘Ah.’ The Husband looks at me, hard, his face teetering between amusement and annoyance. ‘Like a diabetic coma?’
‘Exactly!’
‘But you don’t have diabetes.’

Yo! Mama’s Day

2008-05-11T19:26:00.002+10:00

F told me last Saturday, rather grandly, that he was going to treat me “like a queen” for Mother’s Day. “You deserve it!” he continued.
“Why thank you,” I responded, also rather grandly, tossing my hair with smug entitlement.
We were passing through the Myer cosmetics department at the time, and I think the phrase made me think of all those snarmy ads with the models assuring you that ‘you’re worth’ expensive face cream and nice shampoo. I was getting into the spirit of things.

Cycling home from school on Thursday, he called back along the footpath through the wind and the traffic: “For Mother’s Day, mum, I’m not going to get you anything. I’m going to donate money for breast cancer instead.”
Something about his tone made me suspicious. I’d just shut down a request to make his own lunches from now on ... which, I’d quickly surmised, was so that he could stack them with banned substances (mainly sugar). Though his professed sentiment was noble, his high-handed tone teetered between generosity and punishment.

“That’s lovely, how nice,” I said.
Silence from the bike ahead.
“We-eellll ... actually, I’m going to pretend Mother’s Day doesn’t even EXIST.”
“That’s fine,” I called smoothly. “Because I was planning to do exactly the same thing about your birthday.”
“My BIRTHDAY?”
“Yup.”
“This year?”
“Uh huh.”
“Oh. I’m only joking, you know.”
“How interesting.”

That night, watching Gordon Ramsay and eating takeaway noodles, I told The Husband about F’s breast cancer plan.
“He TOLD you?” he asked.
“What do you mean? You mean he didn’t make it up to piss me off?”
“No. Something about donating to breast cancer came on TV the other night, you were here, we looked at each other and nodded.”
“Oh. So he was doing it to be nice. At least, at first. Good.”

This morning I was woken by a hug.
“Good morning, your majesty.”
“Hey!”
“Happy Mother’s Day, my queen. Would you like breakfast?”
It was very early.
“Um, maybe later.”
“Can I play the computer?”
“Absolutely.”

Some hours later, I was instructed to sit in the study while he put the finishing touches on my presents. I got chocolate almonds (my favourite vice) and cupcakes (also a hit), both from the school Mother’s Day stall. He made me a handmade book about Ben 10, his latest cartoon craze. And I got a card with a Mother’s Day poem:

Mother’s Day is like, a day for ya mama,
So don’t give her no drama,
Let her wear pajamas
while this day is a mama o’rama

YO!
MAMA’S DAY

Lovely. My favourite present.

Then we went out for breakfast in a cafe down the road, where I ate poached eggs, sautéed potatoes and roast tomato, and F ate crumpets with honey. I read my way through the weekend papers and F read the latest AFL kids’ comic and excitedly opened his new packet of footy cards. I probably got three sentences out of him.

I ran into a friend, eating at a table across the room, his laptop on a chair beside him. (A business meeting on a Sunday? Life of a freelancer!) F barely looked up from his mag as my friend tried to make conversation with him. He got about three sentences, too, though. My friend and I had been at the same party the night before. And I only realised when I left the cafe that this meant he would realise I was still wearing the same dress I had on last night. The dress I was wearing when he DROPPED ME AT MY DOOR at 1am. Embarassing.

In the old days, being seen in the same dress from last night’s party meant I’d got ‘lucky’. Or got so trashed, I’d crashed on someone else’s couch. Today, it meant that after he dropped me home, I’d fallen asleep in front of my laptop under a quilt on the couch, watching successive episodes of Veronica Mars on my laptop until 3.30am. And that I was so tired when I woke up that I decided – what the hell – I’d keep the dress on for breakfast.

My, how life changes ...

This afternoon, The Husband, F and I went to the Sun cinema to see Iron Man as our Mother’s Day outing. We took the boy next door, and the kids were so exciting that they ran down Anderson Street shouting. I loftily reminded them that this was a MOTHER’S DAY trip, so they should make it pleasant for me. At the cinema, they’d run out of Choc Tops and the ATM had run out of money. No EFTPOS. The Mother’s Day crowd was not pleased. My particular little crowd included. We ended up with popcorn and soft drinks. I was so disgruntled to miss out on my Choc Top sugar rush that I went for raspberry lemonade instead. The ultimate non-alcoholic headrush.

In front of us in the line for tickets, is the parent who thoroughly disapproves of F and periodically asks his kids not to play with him because he doesn’t like “his attitude”. (As I type, F is shouting and screaming in the backyard over football, so I do sort of get it, even while I despise him for it.) The boys are thrilled to see each other. They grab each other’s arms and squeal. In the theatre, we sit directly behind F’s mates. They are eating pieces of fruit their father pulls from a backpack. He slowly, methodically peels a banana and bites into it just as F and Boy Next Door burst into their first bout of squabbling over the chips and soft drink that I – foolishly – bought them to share. To SHARE. In the dark. While they are also supposed to be quiet.

The movie is great, for the sort of movie you can see with a couple of primary school boys. Two hours with Robert Downey Jr is an excellent Mother’s Day present. F’s verdict: a bit gory (he hid his face quite a few times, with me telling him when he could look again), but good. And he gave the soundtrack 10/10. I was impressed when he spotted Marvel comic guru Stan Lee in a cameo (playing Hugh Hefner for three seconds). A nerd in training.

I have a brilliant son who loves me and thinks I deserve to be treated like a queen for a day, and a husband who spent half his day kicking the footy in the backyard with my son and his mate, and babysat for me last night while I went out to a party. I’m doing pretty good.

Peace out, y’all ...

... and happy mama’s day ...

Mean mummy: My war on boredom

2008-05-08T14:40:00.001+10:00

I am waging war against the words “I’m bored”.

I’ve never been very tolerant of that complaint. I believe that kids need to be bored sometimes, and to develop the ability to find something to do. Which is what my mother always said to us if we complained we were bored. What came next was the ominous or I’ll find you something to do.

Thanks to a chance encounter with a cousin in Adelaide a few months ago, I have a new and lethal weapon against boredom.

My cousin and I ran into each other during a session at Adelaide Writer’s Week. We hadn’t seen each other for about three years – since her brother’s funeral, actually, which made for a charged atmosphere as we sat through the session, a panel discussion on death. Afterwards, we withdrew from the crowds assembled by the tents and sat under a tree high on the hill, overlooking it all. Voices drifted up to us, strangely disembodied, channelled through the speaker systems. In the shadows of this very public conversation, we talked intimately – for four hours straight – about our families.

Among the heavy issues, we laughed about how my approach to parenting often echoes my own upbringing. Our mothers, sisters-in-law, have always been close. We realised, unsurprised, that they also shared a lot of the same mantras. (“I’m hungry.”/ “Eat an apple.” / “I don’t want that.” / “Well, you’re not that hungry then, are you?”)

We got onto “I’m bored”. My cousin was surprised at my mother’s punchline.
“We NEVER said we were bored,” she laughed. “Because my mum would give us a chore to do!”
“Really?”
“Yep!”
“I might borrow that ...”

**

A few weeks ago, F and his best friend, the boy next door, were asking if they could play the computer. “No.” Could they watch a DVD? “No.” Deep sighs. They stretched out on the dining room floor.
“But we’re booooored,” they moaned. "There's nothing to doooo."
“Right!” I said. “Clean your room, then.”
“WHAT?!”
Their mouths literally fell open, their eyes wide. I wanted to laugh.
“I warned you a month ago about this.”
“We’re sorry! We didn’t mean it! Can this be a warning? We won’t do it again.”
“Nope. You had your warning.”

F had been absolutely charming all weekend. Polite, affectionate, fun. Now, from the bedroom, there came banging. Stomping. A low-level growl (the best friend) and a louder, black-toned barking (F).
“I HATE my mother! I wish someone else was my mother!”
Stomp, stomp. Shuffle, shuffle. Bang, bang.
“This is SO UNFAIR.”
I stifled giggles. Despite the anger, things were obviously getting done.
“Whose STUPID idea was this anyway?” called F.
“It was my cousin.”
“Well, I HATE your cousin. I wish you didn’t HAVE a cousin!”
“Maybe she’d hate you, too,” I replied serenely, and returned to my keyboard.

Twenty minutes later, the boys had called me in to inspect the room, and had eagerly bounded outside to find something to do. Success.

**

This morning, as F shelved his toothbrush and toothpaste, he sang out from the bathroom, apropos of nothing “I’m bored”. Pause.
“Okay, you can clean your room then.”
“But I’ll be late for school! I’m not really bored!”
“I know.” I looked up from cling-wrapping a sticky clump of frankfurters for his lunchbox. “You just wanted to see what I’d do, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
I let him off, in the spirit of healthy curiosity and – more importantly – getting to school on time. But this is one weapon in my parenting arsenary that I’m holding onto.

Thank you, cousin.

A lady is smoking

2008-04-30T12:54:00.003+10:00

"Ladies can smoke?" The small voice behind me rings with disbelief.
"Hmmm."
Pause.
"Ladies can smoke." Wondering, amazed. "Men can smoke, too!"
"If they're silly enough."
"Ladies can smoke. Men can smoke. EVERYONE can smoke!"
"Mmmm."
"If they're SILLY enough."

Outside the cafe window, beneath a cobalt April sky, a lady is smoking at her footpath table. She is fashionably draped in black, caramel hair twisted in an artfully messy ponytail. Black sunglasses swim over her eyes. The smoke from her roll-your-own cigarette snakes over her head, over the empty table next to her. One table over, an immaculate baby sits on her mother's knee, barefoot. She examines a pale green lettuce leaf, turning it over in the sunlight. Slowly, languidly, a banner of smoke unfurls above her wispy head.

Across the road, in front of an empty cafe (closed for Monday), a man is smoking. It's the waiter who brought me my felafel, now discarded, half-eaten, at my elbow. He leans against a pole and watches across the road, measuring out his break by the dwindling cigarette.

"It's time for us to go."
I glance over my shoulder. Behind me, the Peter Rabbit books are returned to the shelves and the bill is paid.

Hungry for the ball

2008-04-12T12:35:00.005+10:00

F and The Husband have been in training for the new football season for some weeks. Most afternoons after school, they retreat to the backyard or a local park to practise their kicking and marking.

'I'm so proud of you,' said The Husband after this Monday's session. 'You were hungry for the ball. You were in there, all the time, and that's why you did so well. Good on you.'
F beamed back at him over the dining room table, his forkful of chicken parma (perfect food for footballers) momentarily forgotten.
'If you can do that on Saturday, you'll be set.'

**

Last night, F was curled up over my feet on the couch, his head resting on The Husband's shoulder as they followed the progress of the Bulldogs/Essendon game on the screen. His Japanese manga novel lay forgotten on his lap.

Before The Husband arrived home 40 minutes earlier, we had been reading together: me with a manuscript balanced on my knees over a fleecy red blanket, him furled under the same blanket at the opposite end of the couch, his eyes fixed on his graphic novel. The kitchen was dark behind us; so was the sky behind the cheerful striped curtains at the lounge room window. The evening was quiet, broken only by the drone of the dogs' snoring and F's occasional giggle as he read. 'Mum! Listen! He says absolutely after everything, this guy. Listen, it's hilarious!'
'Ha!' I forced a distracted laugh (hey, I'm being truthful, here), and we returned to our mutual silence.

A symphony of barks broke the mood, followed by footsteps on the boards of the verandah and a fumbling in the lock. The Husband stood in the doorway, dogs leaping at his knees, F exclaiming his greetings, the aroma of grilled meat filling the room. He sat down, unwrapped his burger, kissed us hello, and turned on the TV.

Footy season.

'I'm going for the Dogs!' said F.
'Why?'
'Because I want to win my footy tipping and they're number two.'
'Oh. You're betraying Essendon for that?' He shook his head. Essendon is number three in F's hierachy of teams. (After West Coast and the Demons.)

Later, F's head was on my knee, his hair soft under my touch. I stroked him like a beloved pet. He didn't object.
'Can I have something to eat?'
'You can have an apple.'
'Okay.'

I stood to get it.
'But do you want to go to bed? You've got Auskick in the morning, maybe you should be fresh for that.'
'Okay.'

He stood and trotted obediently across the lounge and dining room and disappeared into the hallway. The Husband and I exchanged looks, impressed. In the bedroom, I sat beside him, kissed his forehead and hugged him tight. His arms closed around me, then dropped away as he rolled to face the wall and closed his eyes. There was none of the usual attempt to string out a conversation as long as possible.
'Good night, darling.'
'Good night mum.'

'Wow, that was very mature,' observed The Husband as I resumed my spot on the couch.
'It was.'

**

This morning, he was up early for Auskick. I could feel his presence beside the bed early. I looked at the bedside clock. 6am. Reached out and pulled him into bed for a morning cuddle.

Up at 8am. He'd served himself a bowl of Orangutangos, the sugary organic cereal that donates money to saving orangutans with every box. He'd convinced me to buy it after much pleading at the organic store yesterday, on the proviso that it was for weekends only.

I don't know if it was the cereal, adrenaline or both, but he was bouncing off the walls with excitement. I set him up to practice singing Green Day at the computer (music homework), lyric sheet in hand, as I showered and dressed.

The Husband and F went ahead while I found my shoes. At the gate, I encountered them coming back towards the house. The football had moved - from about six houses down the street to Yarraville Gardens, a 15 minute walk away. Now late instead of a bit early, we piled into the car.

At the oval at last, dosed up with a latte from the travelling coffee van in the carpark, I was relieved to see other parents dribbling in late, all of them coming via the usual venue.

F bounced and yowled in the line for the drills. He pulled faces, chanted, tackled his friends around the waist, and exchanged menacing shoves with a kid he was briefly friends with in Prep, but has been enemies with ever since. I play tennis (or used to) with the kid's mum, who I like. The kid is tall and blandly handsome - but, more importantly, confident and matter-of-factly competent at everything. And a dynamo at sport. He effortlessly attracts friends and pigtailed admirers in swarms, and has the strut that accompanies his exalted playground position. From the sidelines, I caught taunts every time F flubbed the ball (which was often, he was more caught up in clowning than the drills). The shoves and scowls escalated in intensity, but their lightning spats appeared to burn out quickly enough, even as I smouldered at the sidelines, hands clenched.

Nearer the kids, the Father who doesn't like F has taken up position, arms folded and gaze focused. His kids have told us that he doesn't want them playing with F because their dad doesn't like his attitude. Their mother (yes, The Mother) told me the other day that her throat was hoarse with all the shouting she'd done over the holidays because her kids DON'T LISTEN. ('Really?' I'd said. 'Oh. Well, I don't shout at them. I just have to tell them, you know, loudly, all the time, to do what they're told,' she'd croaked. 'Has it happened before?' I'd asked. 'Oh, yeah. Every holidays.')

'Shall we go closer and stand near The Father?' asked The Husband.
'No! I might say something I'd regret.'
'Yeah, me too.'
I hugged him. It's so great to have someone on your team.
'Those two are the kind of parents who think they're perfect and everyone else is wrong,' he continued.
'Yes. Yes they are.'

L's mum joined us, her coffee in hand now. ('It's crap,' she grimaced.) She caught the end of our conversation and snorted in agreement.
'There's a word for that,' she said darkly.
'What is it?'
'Oh, it'll come to me.'
We watched the boys and commented on what they were doing, on F's shoving, on the hugging and tackling that seems impossible to tell from actual fighting.
'I've got it!'
'What is it?'
'WHOLESOME. You know, those parents who think they have it all worked out. I know someone like that. We're friends, but we have opposite values.'
'Like what?'
'Like ... like, she didn't want to send her kids to [our school] because she didn't want them mixing with all the African children.'
'WHAT? Are you JOKING?'
'No. And I went over there the other day and she had all these private school catalogues on the kitchen table and she was writing down the pros and cons of them all. Private PRIMARY schools. She told me one day: You know, I always thought I'd be a Toorak mum.'
'REALLY?' This was hilarious. It distracted me from the boys. A welcome distraction, really.
'Yup. I didn't tell her that that's how we all think of her anyway. A Toorak mum stuck in little old Yarraville.'

Before the game was played, there was time for questions and a pep talk with a couple of Bulldogs players. F, typically, asked two questions. ('What's Akka like?' and 'Who is your Brownlow pick?') Then there were free team photos handed out and autographs for the kids. Lots of them were wearing Bulldogs team caps and jerseys, so they crowded around to get their clothes signed.
'I'm going to cut this autograph out and stick it on his football card!' F declared triumphantly, waving his team photo at us.
'Mmm, that sounds a bit tricky.'
The Husband said his goodbyes. He had to get to work. F's dad arrived to pick him up. (This was all running well over time by now.) Instead, he was just in time for the show.

**

Game time.

Sigh.

What can I say?

F was, indeed, hungry for the ball. He chased it all over the field. He managed to get it quite a few times.

He also wrestled players to the ground in too-rough tackles and screamed in frustration when those players were awarded free kicks as a result. He yelled and cried when L, one of his best friends, kicked a goal f(he was on the opposing team). In fact, he ran off the field and shouted and cried on the far end of the oval. The Father led him back to the game. (The shame of it.)

And he shoved the kid who'd been needling him all morning to the ground with a flash of intensity and viciously kicked him as he lay on the grass, leaving the kid bawling, moaning and clutching his knee.

Which is where I intervened to tell him off, along with the coach.

At the end of the game, the coach approached me to ask what F's deal was. I explained that he has Asperger's and has trouble controlling his emotions and also knowing the line when it comes to tackling. I explained that he has trouble coping with losing or not doing things perfectly. That he and The Kid had been having issues all moring and that there was a story to why he lost it like that, though it was of course totally unacceptable. That I would talk to him about his attitude.

The coach had a talk to F, and I think he handled it well. We both told him he needs to tell the coaches if there is a problem, not resort to violence.
'Right. So I should be a dobber?' F sobbed.
'If someone was bothering you in the classroom, would you push them to the ground and kick them or tell the teacher?'
'Tell the teacher.'
'Okay, then. The coach is your teacher.'

There were more chats in the car ... about attitude and positivity and teams and sportsmanship. About me being embarassed and ashamed about the day's behaviour, though I am generally very proud of him and he is the best thing in my life.

'F, I'll tell you one thing,' I said, twisting around to face him in the back seat. 'Aren't you glad your coach [The Husband] wasn't there and had to go to work? That he didn't have to see that.'
His face was stricken, the defiance slipping from his eyes, replaced by shame.
'Don't tell him! Please!'
'I'll see. But you have a chance to make a fresh start next week. It's the first game he'll see. Yeah? Does he need to coach you on attitude instead of footy skills this week?'
'Maybe I need both.'

**

God I hate Auskick. And I doubt that football is really a good thing for an Asperger's child. BUT football gives him a much-needed social glue and he seems to enjoy playing it at school. And he and The Husband have so much fun playing it and watching it together. Sigh. I guess anything worth having needs to be worked for. Maybe that includes this.

What (not) to wear ... or do to your hair

2008-04-06T15:59:00.005+10:00

WARNING: Slightly exhausted narcissism ahead

This week I've decided, without really deciding, that I suddenly care about my looks, after not really caring for a while. I must have glimpsed my self in a mirror and got a shock. Actually, no, it's two things. Three things. One: saw photos of myself and hated them. Two: F told me: 'no offence, but the bottom of your hair really doesn't match the top of your hair. It needs to be darker.' Three: I put on outfits in the morning - winter clothes, for the first time in ages - and The Husband looks at me askance, like I'm all wrong.

When your child is commenting on your regrowth, it must be pretty bad. Even if it IS a typically blunt Asperger's child.

So, I got a garbage bag and filled it to the brim with clothes from my cupboards and drawers. Including a lot of long-sleeved tops that I wear underneath things that have shrunken with countless washes and need singlets underneath them to protect my torso from the elements.

Shopping. One flattering cardigan (to replace about four unflattering ones I ditched) and a long-sleeved black top that fits.

Hairdresser. Chopped off about half the length and asked for a colour that would spawn minimal regrowth. One shade darker than my natural colour (which I haven't seen in, oh, 15 odd years). Almost black.

Reactions? F thinks I need to grow my hair back and that it's TOO dark now. And that my new cardigan looks 'weird'.

The Husband approves of both.

F's father looked at me, paused, then said 'you look very gothic'. To which I sarcastically responded 'I don't think I can take any more compliments today' and walked off. Very teenage behaviour I know, but this week I feel like a teenager.

I feel like maybe I look like I made an effort with my appearance at some point over the past year. But I did prefer not thinking about my appearance too much and plan to return to that happy state soon, which is usually broken only when I see my younger (twin) sisters (a few times a year), which always makes me think I should lose weight. They are very slender, with concave stomachs, and look vaguely like me - which is what makes the comparison so disconcerting. Ah well. They haven't had a child. And they have seven years on me.

Last night, dressing to go out, I walked through the lounge room and The Husband said 'F, look at your mum'. F looked at me and smirked, then started laughing.
'What?' I said and he shook his head. 'No, what?'
'It's just that your bum looks REALLY big in that dress.'
I turned around and returned to the bedroom. I could hear The Husband saying 'F, NEVER do that, really,' in awed tones. 'You should never say that to a woman.'
'Why?'
'They don't like it.'

It was an hour later that his dad made the gothic comment.

Luckily, this week, I don't need to go further than school or the local cafe to buy my chicken pie and latte. That should give me time to get used to not caring again ...

Rebel without a clue: A true story from long ago

2008-03-29T13:22:00.003+11:00

It’s not every day that that your flatmate moves their furniture out while you’re at work, disappearing for good. But it happened to me.

I don’t know what it would have been like to arrive home and be surprised by the empty room. As it was, I discovered her disappearance when I rang home to check my messages during the day.

This was my goodbye note, as delivered by Telstra Message Bank:

“Hi, it’s Rebel here. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve had to move out to go live with my sister because her boyfriend has just been arrested in London and she’s had to go over there to be with him, so I have to look after her house while she’s gone. She’s having to spend her savings on getting over there, so she doesn’t have enough money to pay her rent. So, I’ll have to stay living with her even after she gets back, to help her out. I’m really sorry about running out on you like this, but she is my sister and she needs me. And I had to move out suddenly like this, because it was the only time that Tom could help me move my stuff. I’ll call you again later and leave some money for the bills. Sorry. Bye.”

I hung up needing a cigarette. I needed to go outside and think. I definitely needed to get away from customers. How can you think about whether the new Tara Moss is out yet and avoid answering the question about whether it’s any good, when all you can really think about is what you’ll do to pay the gaping hole in next month’s rent?

Sitting in the alleyway behind Little Collins Street, I felt oddly relieved. I didn’t really like Rebel anyway.

She had been better than Bob, the sixty-something retired tradesman who told me he watched TV all day and had two girlfriends, one of them my age. (“Nice big screen,” he had said approvingly of the wooden 1970s box that Jason had bought through the Trading Post and left behind.) She had been better than the truck driver who had asked if he could park his rig in the street. And better than the (really quite sweet) student from the country who said the only problem was that she might have to move back there in a few months. When Rebel turned up at the door, sister in tow, twenty-something, chatty without being irritating and with only a bike to park, I’d been ecstatic to install her in the big front bedroom.

But Rebel was weird. Or maybe she just thought I was weird. I don’t know. The first thing that went wrong was on the day she moved in.

*********************

The room was empty, except for a freestanding six-door cupboard that almost entirely covered one wall. It was a truly monstrous thing, another relic of Jason’s hurried departure. Honey-coloured wooden panelling with mirrors plastered across its breadth, so that your reflection seemed to follow you around the room. Rebel loved it. So, even though I’d been planning to somehow get rid of it once someone took the room, I left it for her. While she was moving her stuff in, there was a splintering crash that drew me running from the kitchen, where I’d been deliberately staying out of their way. Three accusing heads (Rebel, her sister, their friend Tom) turned to look at me as I approached the mess that had been Jason’s cupboard.

“I just opened the doors,” said Rebel.

It was like it had torn itself apart at her touch. The flimsy chipboard backing had sprung free from the nails holding it to the frame and flung itself backwards. And worse, the body had tipped perilously forward, throwing open its outer doors and spewing out glass shards onto the carpet.

“It fell on me,” she said.

Luckily, she had caught it. Together the four of us tipped the whole mess backward and leaned it against the wall. I went to get the vacuum and a rubbish bag for the glass. It was easy to take the cupboard apart after that. Piece by piece, we moved it down the passage and stacked it in a corner of the shed. Tom and Rebel’s sister went home to get a wire hanging rack for Rebel. Exhausted, Rebel made chicken two-minute noodles in the microwave and took her dinner into her room.

She ate her dinner there every night after that, for the whole of the six weeks she spent living in Jason’s old room.

**

This is, as you'll probably realise, something I found while browsing forgotten folders on my computer. All true, even the names. Really, who names their daughter Rebel? What do they expect? I never got any money for the bills. And a trucker and his fiancee moved in after that. One night they saw me reading a book on the couch and responded with dumbfounded awe. ('You gonna read that whole THING?') I was glad to move out of there.

Another meme: 5 things

2008-03-29T12:48:00.003+11:00

Helen tagged me for this meme - sharing facts about yourself, random and weird.

The rules of this meme are:
Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names, and links to their blogs.
Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So, here goes ...

1. I don't like cooking or housework. I wish I did. So many people say they love to cook these days, including a lot of my friends. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a freak that I can't say 'me too' and join in with a recipe tip involving seasonal market produce, or mention the cuisine I'm currently hooked on. But I'm not like that, and I've decided I'm too old to pretend to like things I don't. I cook to eat, and sometimes I put in an effort, sometimes I'm really quite lazy. F thinks I'm a great cook, though, based on my pita bread pizzas with ham, cheese and tomato paste, my family pancake recipe that I copied from my parents, and the salad wraps I make him for lunch (pita bread again). Oh, and cheesy scrambled eggs - yes, scrambled eggs with cheese added. Genius. And there you go ... I have shared recipes, after all.

2. I have Asperger's Syndrome. After F was diagnosed last year, and one too many things sounded awfully familiar, I sat through four sessions and got my own diagnosis. It seems that my dad, my brother and probably my dad's dad (long since dead) have it, too, though they haven't been offficially diagnosed. How I feel about this depends very much on the day/week/month you ask me about it. Most of the time I'm not particularly bothered.

3. I am 32 years old and I don't have a driver's licence and will probably never get one. I don't know why, really, but I'm not mechanically minded, and that's part of it.

4. I got together with my husband at a work Christmas party over seven years ago. He worked in a bookshop down the road from mine, owned by the same people, and he used to volunteer to take the store transfers down so that he could talk to me. Later, he, his sister, me and my flatmate all worked together in the same bookshop at the same time. It was fun. A bit like high school, really. (Only fun.)

5. When I was young, I think about ten or so, I remember wanting to have a house by the sea with a tin roof and an open fire, so that I could sit inside on winter's days and listen to the rain. I'd still like that.

I tag Cristy, Redcap, Audrey, Eleanor Bloom and ThirdCat.

Easter break

2008-03-29T12:41:00.004+11:00

The price of fame

2008-03-16T18:59:00.002+11:00

'I'm a bit tired of being famous,' he sighed, over an after-school apple at the kitchen table.
'Oh?'
'I had someone ask me for my autograph today.'
'Really?'
'Well, they came up and told me they'd seen me in the paper. And I said,do you want my autograph? And they said yes. I was joking, but they were serious. I signed their hand with my pen.'

I try not to laugh.

'And people keep on coming up and telling me they've seen me in the paper. Some of them have even done it twice. And I'm like, I know!'
'Do you say that?'
'No. I think it.'
'Ah.'
'I'm getting a bit sick of it.'

There is a moment's silence.

'I'm sorry,' I say. 'I tell you what, if the chance ever comes up again for you to be in the paper, I'll say no.'
'NO!'
'So, you'd WANT to be in the paper?'
'Yes.'

'Well,' I say. 'I guess that's the price of fame. If you're in the paper, people will come up and tell you they've seen you. You can't switch it off when you want to. You either want the attention, or you don't. It's up to you.'
'I'll be in the paper. Definitely.'

Overheard at Flinders Street station

2008-03-16T18:55:00.002+11:00

'I like movies about real heroes. Because that's what I aspire to be - heroic.'

Does it seem interesting to anyone else that she had an American accent?

Coming home

2008-03-07T14:17:00.003+11:00

Do you think I was happy to wake up this morning to a gentle drumming overhead? To peer through the curtains at a grey day, spitting raindrops onto the street outside? To pedal madly through the rain, my thin summer jacket moistening to match my shower-damp hair? To wheeze a little as I went, cursing the way my limbs and lungs had grown lazy in just a week of under-use?

Yesterday, I was ambling across the lawns over the road from the River Torrens, a notebook and dictaphone in my bag, a straw cowboy hat on my head. The grass was dry under my bare feet, so dry it crackled under me as I lowered myself to sit under a palm tree on the hill. The sun caressed my exposed arms and legs, stung my eyes as I lifted my sunglasses to peer into the white tent at the base of the hill and the sea of people that spread from it in licks and waves; a tide rising up the hill and across the lawns. After a while, sweat bred under the crevasses of my knees and trickled to my feet in languid rivulets. I basked in the warm glow: the dry, enveloping heat a memory of childhood summers, a feeling like home.

This morning, just 45 minutes away on a plane, eight hours by road; I covered my body to leave the house, sheltering it from the elements. The grey sky overhead seemed to stretch forever, promising an end to summer, not just this summer, but the season, at least as long as I live here – as I have for 12 years now. I felt exiled.

Panting my way up a hill (its slope invisible to the naked eye, only felt by unfit cyclists running late for the end of school assembly), I spotted a snake of red and navy children following a tall brown leader across the asphalt. The tall brown leader was headed for F’s classroom. It was him!

I parked my bike and began struggling with the lock, wrestling it through the loops of the chickenwire fence. A figure broke off from the back of the line and came running towards me.
‘Mum, mum! It’s mum! Can I help you, mum?’
‘Hi darling.’ I blew a kiss through the fence, in front of all these curious spectators, and he caught it in his palm, clutched it tight, and drew it to his chest.
‘Sure, you can help,’ I said, knowing he couldn’t at all, but wanting to say yes. He drew closer, and stretched his arm towards the wire.
The lock was stuck; it wasn’t budging. The class was drifting away, only F now, standing expectant under an incontinent sky. ‘I’ll leave it, it’ll be fine.’
I had an urge, a compulsion, to touch him, to hug him, as soon as I could. He moved towards the gate as I did, his movements mirroring mine on the other side of the fence.
‘I’ll help!’ he shouted as I moved to open the lock.

As the gate swung open, he threw himself into my arms with a look of pure joy, a smile that radiated from his eyes and lit up his being. We held each other tight, kissed, and hugged again. He took my hand and we walked into the classroom together.
‘I brought ALL my book club books mum, for your house,’ he said. ‘And the Pokemon book you let me take to dad’s.’
‘Good lad.’
I sat on the miniature chair at the back of the classroom, towards the edge of his table – my chair. One of the girls from the reading group I work with, the ones who are still having trouble getting the hang of this reading thing, turned and beamed at me. F’s friend, L, waved a navy clipboard.
‘Hi Ariel! I’ve got a clipboard, too, now. See? For my petition.’
‘I did TWO lots of homework, mum.’ F came around the table and hugged me again. Reluctantly, he stood back, ready to return to his seat.
‘I do hope you had a nice time in Adelaide?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘Good. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I thought was: Mum’s coming home! Mum’s coming home! And I got up and got dressed and ready for school STRAIGHT AWAY.’

He’s right. I’m home. Of course.

Quirky kid meme

2008-03-04T02:32:00.002+11:00

For once, I'm being quick on the meme uptake (thanks, Cristy).

First, here are 'The Rules':

1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share 6 non-important things/quirks about your kid
4. Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs
5. Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the fun begin!

1. F bought me a stuffed dog for Valentine’s Day this year. The Husband bought me a dog for Valentine’s Day two years ago, and when he was in Mexico, F became very attached to it and started taking it to bed at night and carrying it about the house everywhere – to eat dinner, read stories, watch telly. So, it became his. About a week before Valentine’s Day, I was putting him to bed and kissing him goodnight, and I gave the dog (Puppy) a hug too, saying ‘it’s my only to cuddle him since you stole him’. Ten minutes later, he was up, saying ‘I’m really sorry, mum. You’re right. I did steal him from you. I’m going to save up my pocket money and buy you another dog’. I insisted that I was only joking and there was no need to spend his money, but a day before Valentine’s Day, he asked the Husband to take him to buy me a dog. His name is Sidney and F is very pleased that I like him. He likes to check in the morning to see if I slept with him. I brought Sidney to Adelaide with me for company.

2. F has an imaginary friend named Dexter. He’s eight years old and he’s a scientist. One day, a few months ago in fact, he told me that Dexter had been alive for a million years, and he had been eight years old for nearly all that time. He found a crystal that was cursed and it killed his parents but gave him everlasting life so that he had to live on without them. There was an elaborate story that went with it about Dexter’s adventures through the ages. A few days later, he told me that Dexter had admitted it was all ‘a myth’ – he really was just eight years old; no everlasting life. He said he’d made it up to tell his teacher as part of a school assignment and had just trialled it on F. Dexter has come and gone over the past few years. Sometimes he rides with us to school, or eats breakfast with us. At one point, Dexter had an evil twin brother named Bexter. He used to follow us, or suddenly the Dexter eating breakfast with us would be revealed to be the evil Bexter instead. I wonder how long he will last.

3. Last week, F very solemnly came up to me as I was getting him ready for school and asked if I would put Surf Wax in his hair and spike it up and then put eyeliner on him, so that he’d look like Billie Joe from Green Day. I compromised and just did the hair. I didn’t think his teacher would appreciate the eyeliner. After school, I put the eyeliner on him after dinner. He posed with his electric guitar we bought him for Christmas (lucky child, I know!) as we enthused over him and then I washed it off and tucked him into bed with some books.

4. F loves doing homework. He’s in Grade Three and it’s new to him. They get the homework on Monday and hand it in on Friday. After the first week of school, he wrote a note on the back of his homework paper saying ‘Dear [Teacher], Please give me homework every day. Sincerely, F.’ I watched him give it to his teacher and point it out. His teacher laughed. He doesn’t give him homework every day.

5. F doesn’t like sandwiches. I make him bread-and butter sandwiches (which are acceptable) with sliced carrot sticks, cucumber and cheese on the side, or said sliced items with seaweed rice crackers and BBQ shapes for school lunches. His dad makes him wholemeal bread sandwiches with cheese or ham, often with ziplock bags with sliced tomato and cucumber on the side. He NEVER eats them. Ever. He brings them home in his lunchbox or in his bag, whole and perfect and untouched. I asked him why he doesn’t tell his dad he doesn’t like them. He said that he did tell him - and told him what I give him - and his dad said ‘FORGET it. I will never make you something like that for lunch.’ I guess I remember that I wouldn’t eat sandwiches either, and threw them under the transportable classrooms every day for a year, until someone found all my mouldy sandwiches and called my parents up to the school. My mum started making me crackers and salad for lunch. The circle turns ...

6. F gave us all verbal report cards for parenting the other day: me, the Husband, his dad, his stepmother. We were marked in categories: healthy eating, active, general parenting, and book learning. We all scored well. Me, the Husband and his dad all got five out of five as parents. This was done in the schoolyard before the bell went. The Husband’s Active report began: ‘He’s very active. T is very agile at football. He flies through the air to catch the ball and he usually gets it ...’ I don’t know why he decided to do this. But it was really interesting.

I tag ... ThirdCat, Helen and Penni.

Boasting

2008-02-26T21:57:00.007+11:00

F is on the front page of this week's local paper with a big fat photo and his name in the headline.

It's a story about the petition he's written and is collecting signatures for against the dredging of Port Phillip Bay.

I'm so proud ... and chuffed ... my boy, eight and a half years old.

UPDATE: Here's the online version, which is slightly shorter, but I'm too lazy to retype and I can't cut-and-paste the full version. (Not too lazy to edit out our names though - though if you live locally, you only need to look at your paper to see the real deal. Hello Helen!)

Headline: 'F'S PLEA'

F, 8, is one of many Yarraville residents angry about the dredging.

AN eight-year-old has taken aim at John Brumby over the Premier's support for the dredging of Port Phillip Bay.

In a show of passion, K Primary School student F was involved in a verbal stoush in his school playground over the dredging.

"I feel strongly about it because I have this friend and he told me about the dredging and how it would make us richer," F said with much aplomb.

"He's for it and really happy about it so I was feeling so angry with him."

Instead of forgetting about the conversation, F decided he wanted to take action.

He wrote the petition himself and started collecting signatures after his mother, Ariel, suggested it,

"I decided to ask mum for advice so she came up with the petition idea," he said.

F has visited shops in Anderson St and attended the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group protest against the dredging last Wednesday.

The Yarraville boy said he was against dredging because it would damage the bay and force more trucks down Yarraville streets.

His petition says "John Brumby should know better" and "The environment is way more important than money!".

Western Metropolitan MLC Colleen Hartland was so impressed with F's petition, she has agreed to table it to Parliament.

F was happy to hear Ms Hartland would table his petition.

"That makes me feel very proud of myself for listening to my mum," he said. "I did the right thing and it makes me feel a bit happy with (my friend) for telling me about the dredging."

As for the playground rivalry, Ms Ariel said F's friend had started his own petition in favour of the dredging and they were both vying for their other friends' signatures.

"It's funny, I hadn't thought too hard about the dredging before F started talking about it," Ms Ariel said.

"But this has inspired my husband and me to find out more about it, which is great. And it's fantastic to see kids getting politically involved in something they believe in."

Mr Brumby said last month Melbourne would become a "backwater" if the dredging did not occur.

He said the State Government had spent two years putting in place the most stringent environmental safeguards to dredge in a way that caused the least damage.

Mr Brumby said channel deepening was about jobs and economic security for the future of Melbourne and Victoria.

Hypothetical trauma

2008-02-17T12:37:00.002+11:00

F: Mum, what do you think would be worse? If you fell onto the train tracks and hit your head BUT there were no trains coming for two hours ... OR ... If you were hit by a car but it didn't squash you?

Me: Well, which would hurt more? How badly would I be hit?

F: You wouldn't get hit AT ALL! The car would just sort of roll right OVER YOU.

Me: Oh. Well I guess I'd take the car.

F: Oh no, for me that's easy. It's THE TRAIN! I mean, there's no other one coming for TWO HOURS. So there's no way you'll get hit.

Me: Well, I thought, if you hit your head on the tracks, what if that knocks you unconscious and you're unconscious for the next two hours and then the train hits you anyway?

F pauses, thinking it over. 'I hadn't thought of THAT,' he says. 'You're right, I'd rather get hit by the car.'

Back to school

2008-02-01T13:16:00.000+11:00

Wednesday morning began with a face-splitting grin by my bedside.
'Mum, can I make my lunch?'
'I made it. It's on the counter.'
'Wow! You're so good.'
Seconds later: running feet. A small voice interrupting my half-sleep.
'Mum! I can't find it! It's GONE.'
'I think it's under a tea towel.'
I close my eyes. It's 7am.
A few minutes pass before the voice materialises again, bursting with excitement.
'Maybe I should be the Mum, huh?'

My eyes snap open. He's holding a transparent microwave container: a bread roll, crackers, an apple and a carrot inside. The Husband stirs at my side.
'No!' he mutters. 'That's my container.'
I drag myself out of bed as F disappears again, his dejected voice floating back down the hallway.
'Well, I CAN'T take my lunch in a plastic bag. What if I get teased?'

It's The Husband who finds a spare lunchbox on the top shelf of the cupboard (F lost the lid of his old one last year and somehow I haven't thought to replace it until now). F eats his Nutri Grain quickly, perfunctorily. His schoolbag is packed with the diary I've bought him and a few exercise books he has used to write stories and draw cartoons in the holidays.
'I have schoolbooks already! See?'
The Husband pumps up F's Christmas footy, still in its plastic wrapper, for playtime. (The good one, the Sherrin, is for home, he reminds us.)

On our bikes, out on the footpath, F's excitement dissolves a little.
'I'm nervous' he tells me. He elaborates on the ride down the main road, over the crossing and through the park. 'It's a new teacher. I don't know how far I can go.'
'What do you mean?'
'I don't know with rules of the classroom yet. What if I break one without knowing it?'
'I think you'll be fine. The teacher will tell you the rules. And you pretty much know them anyway. Don't talk while the teacher is talking. Don't get up and walk around the classroom when you're supposed to be doing your work. Don't be a smart-mouth. Don't talk back. Do what you're asked. Do those things and you'll be fine.'

At the end of the park, the bottom of the street the school is on, he dismounts to walk his bike up the hill. He leans close to me and murmurs more misgivings, softly, so no one passing can hear.
'I have to fit in. I have to blend in. I have Asperger's, you know?'
My heart breaks a little, just a hairline crack.
'I might be too smart.'
I laugh.
'Asperger's isn't just about being smart, you know. It's also about learning the rules of how to behave. The way your mind works. You just have to think about it a litle more. But you're doing that. You should be fine.'
He thinks about this.
'Think of it this way. You're not alone, you know. You have a silent partner at school with you. If you're unsure of anything, if you have any problems, if you have any worries about your teacher or the other kids, come talk to me and we can sort it out together. I'm your silent partner.'
I don't think about this in advance; it just comes out. To my surprise, it works.
'You know,' he says, 'that makes me feel a bit better.'
And he gets back on the bike and cycles across the road to our final stretch of footpath.

At school, we wander the schoolyard a little after putting our bikes away. Familiar kids pass by and F greets them lustily: 'WHOSE CLASS ARE YOU IN?' One of them, a new and tenuous friend from the end of last year, is in his class. He forgot. The boys beam at each other before moving on, each rushing in separate directions.

He shows me his classroom before the bell goes for morning assembly. The door is open and F strides right in. The teacher is standing at the whiteboard.
'Hello!' he greets us. I apologise for intruding and he smiles back at us, waving away my apology. He watches benevolently as F circles the room, scouting for the best desk, then waves us goodbye as I lure F back into the courtyard. It's a good sign. Last year's teacher would have shooed us away in record time.

F is one of the last kids into the assembly hall. He looks about anxiously, clutching my hand tight in his. 'Where's my teacher? I can't find him!' Last year's teacher's aide approaches us and bends to talk to F.
'Hi F! I think you're going to have a great year.' I wonder if she is alluding to his change of teacher. F frowns back at her.
'I haven't made a very good start,' he mutters, his voice wobbling, just a micro-amount.
'You've made an excellent start! You're here. Who's your teacher? Okay, he's over here. See? Fine.'
I step back, relieved. I am still holding F's library bag, with last year's overdue books. I'll have to wait out te assembly and catch him on hi way to his classroom.

Ten minutes later, F is second in line when his class troops out of the hall and past me, where I stand, banished, on the fringe of the other parents. His buddy L sees me first and waves.
'Mum!' He reaches out and hugs me tight, surprising me. Last year, he was past the stage of public affection. I am both delighted and slightly afraid for him. I pass him the library bag, squeeze him back and urge him to march on with the others. He holds onto my hand for a few seconds that seem more like hours, a beseeching look in his eyes, then turns and carries on. I watch his retreating back with tears in my eyes.

And he's eight years old. My eyes were dry on his first day ever. What's happening to me?

**

At the end of the day, he runs into my arms, but he is smiling and full of news of his fantastic new teacher and what he did in the playground.

Two weeks on, I'm still getting my hugs. And I'm still both pleased and wary.

Australia Day 2008

2008-01-27T10:07:00.000+11:00

Williamstown beach. There are no waves, not even a lick, as far as the naked eye can see.

The only movement in the water, apart from the thrashing and splashing of humans, is a veil of ripples on the surface, shimmying endlessly under the sun.

The bay is busy with swimmers, paddlers and loafers of all ages and races; all sizes, too.

Teenage girls in bikinis wander in clusters, waist-deep. They don't swim or wet their hair, but stand and talk, surveying the crowd. I'm not sure if they're watching or beng watched. They're probably not sure, either.

Small children play in the shallows. They wear brightly coloured bathers and caps to match. They kick and squeal and revel in the water.

Surf boats patrol the deeper waters, their humming motors providing a backdrop to the soundtrack of squeals and shouts.

Women in patterned headscarves and long sleeves hover at the water's edge. They peel clothes off small children as if shelling peanuts and watch them disappera into the sea. One of the women bunches her ankle-length skirt above her calves and paddles in the sea, turning slow, thoughtful circles in the water. The other rolls up her trouser legs and pads away across the sand.

A surf patrol boat slows at the furthest edge of the swimmers. An Indian man swims towards them expectantly. A blonde lifesaver in long-sleeved red and yellow leans forward. She throws him a football. It bobs between them in the water.
'Can you get that?'
He nods and swims for it, giving a grateful wave first. His companions laugh.

A patchwork of umbrellas and tents spreads across the sand. Towels, eskies, bags.

A ponytailed brunette lies on her stomach, facing away from the sea. She wears lemon yellow bikini bottoms and enormous sunglasses. Her bikini top lies open beneath her.

A brown dumpling of a man, his skin leathery as a reptile's, sits perfectly still at the edge of the rock jetty. His legs dangle in the water below black Speedos and a bulbous belly. His hair is steely grey, his eyes closed, his sleeping gaze directed at the sun.

The headscarved woman in the trousers returns from across the sand, now wearing a sleek, black, head-to-toe swimsuit covered by a short skirt. It's kind of like a wetsuit with a built-in scarf, or Cathy Freeman's running outfit. She strides into the water with gusto.

Fair-haired twin boys teeter along the concrete pipe jutting into the sea. They jump off the edge into the water, one by triumphant one. Then they do it all over again. Their mother watches attentively, hands on hips, toes brushing the water's fringe. She is crisp and fresh in an apple-green floral dress, tied with a sash at the back.

A flash of lightning, quick and unexpected, pierces the clouds. The sky growls in response.

One of the twin boys starts to howl.

A blonde girl in short-shorts walks along the sand, trailing an Australian flag.

The headscarved woman in the skirt leads a naked child out of the water and towards a towel, holding her small hand tight.

A baby roars beneath its hooded black pram.

The clouds gather, dirty grey, high over the water. Charcoal mist streaks from the sky to the horizon, grey shadows against a fading blue sky and glowing white clouds.

'Oh my GOD, I saw LIGHTNING! I SWEAR I saw lightning!' The teenage girl, wrapped in a towel by the toilet black, is right.

'You know, I don't want to go here, because there's too many wogs,' comes a voice from the footpath. It's a well-muscled Maori man, stocky in his bottle-green football shorts and thongs with black socks. His spiral curls are held back from his face in a ponytail. His female companions argue and he eventually moves to the sand, frowning. The women carry a stroller between them, a toddler perched happily inside. Another toddler trails behind them in a nappy and beach sandals. 'There's too many wogs,' the man repeats, sullenly.

A blonde boy enveloped in a towel stands smilingly in the middle of a large Asian family arranged around an eskie. A birthday card is thrust into his hand.
'There is NO WAY you're taking a photo of me with my hair like this!' says one of the girls. A teenager, of course. Another girl passes around wedges of birthday cake.
'PLEASE let's sing Happy Birthday!'
'I don't think you UNDERSTAND about my hair. I CANNOT have a photo taken.'

More thunder crackles overhead.

On the street, a car drives up and down along the beach, blaring Hindi music from open windows.

On the other side of the road, away from the beach, men play a game of cricket in the park, dressed in regulation whites.

A girl in an Australian flag bikini and matching board shorts hovers by the ice cream stand.

It's time to go.

I cycle the long way into the centre of Williamstown, the part where the ferries go to St Kilda and the city. I follow the curve of the sea.

I pass two picknicking families as I leave the beach and pass the adjacent parks, on opposite sides of the road. They are each gathered around old-fashioned wooden benches and a table, a barbecue beside them. One is a Muslim family, the women in headscarves; the other is Indian.

Then, there is just the road and the sea. Black rocks border the road and the water, a rolling expanse of grey-blue under rumbling clouds. Another streak of lightning rends the sky; this one bright silver, a visible leak of electricity. It is thrilling.

A family is poking among the rocks. A man and woman, two children. They are laughing. They are alone.

A tattooed man cycles towards me, long hair straggling down his back. He is somehow eating fish and chips from a paper tray as he rides.
'Hey mate!' he shouts as we pass.
'Hi.'
'Sexy mate! Sexy babe!'
I am cured of giving strange men who shout greetings the benefit of the doubt.

I round another curve in the road and the city rises to meet me, tall buildings beckoning from across the bay. Here, an ice cream van is parked by the footpath, selling soft-serve and sprinkles, hot dogs and donuts. A small beach, no wider than a verandah, no longer than a few houses, appears. A bare-shirted man sits on the sand, staring out to sea. A few people are sitting on benches facing the water, eating ice creams. The only sound is the humming of the ice cream van's idling motor.

I stop the bike and sit with my notebook. Fat drops of rain melt into my open page. They are cool on my shoulders and as they soak through my dress. The sky flashes. To my left, the city looms. To my right, there is only sea and sky, fringed by black rocks.

Later, after I have eaten tacos and splurged on a gelati, as I shelter under the rotunda on Nelson Place, I watch a small girl in a peacock-blue headscarf and Converse sneakers moonwalk in the rain, the lawns and the playground and Port Philip Bay stretching out behind her.

Yarraville: January 2008

2008-01-26T11:42:00.000+11:00

I've just arrived home from the airport, from three weeks in Adelaide. I am newly entranced by my house full of books and the train station and supermarket down the road. I can walk five minutes and go out for dinner! At my choice of places! I am so lucky.

The Husband and I walk out of the front gate into the fading evening light. The street is bathed in a golden summer glow. All is well with the world.

My neighbour is polishing his car.
'Hi!' he says. 'Happy new year!'
I tell him that F is with his dad this week but will be back after that and will have plenty of time to play with Boy Next Door. I give him F's dad's mobile number and tell him that I know he's eager to get the boys together.
'Oh good,' says my neighbour. 'BND has been dying to see him. He's been taping episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh especially for him.'

There are deep dents in the roof of my neighbour's car. They are new. So is the car. Apparently, it happened just last night. Someone has been jumping on the car.
'Look, footprints.' And there are. Dusty white footprints. 'Apparently it's a new trend,' he says. 'Kids jumping on cars.'

**

I bought F walkie-talkies for Christmas and forgot to give them to him. They're on the top shelf of my bedroom cupboard; the one that's so high I can only reach it if I jump a little. In Adelaide, when I remembered that I'd forgotten them, I told him about them.

'Oh YEAH' he said. 'I know about them. Me and Boy Next Door [BND] saw them. Cool!'
'You saw them?'
'Yep.'

I did leave them on the couch for a few hours back when I bought them, but I thought I got away with it. Stupid me.

The boys were very excited when I installed batteries in the walkie-talkies and presented them to them. I had this vision of the boys chatting to each other in their bedrooms, like some eighties movie. (I don't know which one.) I thought it would be very cool and retro. (Of course, I would never give F a mobile phone, to pretty much do the same thing.)

'You'll have to make a time to call each other in the morning' I told F and BND.
'Why?'
'Well, you can't just call each other, because you won't know when each other have turned your walkie-talkies on. But, if you make a time to do it, you can both turn them on then.'
'Oh. Cool.'
'So, when do you wake up?' I ask. 'F wakes up around 7.30am.'
'Five! I'll call you at 5am!'
'OKAY!' says F.
'NO!' I say. 'You can't do that. He wakes up at 7.30am. Call him then.'
'Okay, I'll call him at 6. I'll be watching cartoons by then, definitely.'
'OKAY!'
'No. He won't be awake then.'
'I'll wake him up.'
'You can't,' I say, suddenly inspired. 'You see, you can't talk to him untl his walkie-talkie is turned on. And he can't turn it on until he wakes up. And he won't just wake up before 7.30am.'
'Oh.' BND thinks for a minute. 'I'll call you at 7.30am then.'

The next day, they forget to call each other at 7.30am. They plan to try again the next day. That day, after lunch, I am in my bedroom, they are in the lounge room. I hear them talking.

'Were you up at 7.30am?' asks BND.
'Yep.'
'Ahhh.' BND sounds thrown. 'Well, I guess you're wondering why I didn't call you.'
'Um ... ye-es, I was.'
'Well,' says BND. 'I didn't call you BECAUSE ... I didn't think you'd be up.'
'Oh, well, I was.'
'Okay. Well, we'll do it tomorrow.'
'Okay.'

**

We get home at about 11.30am. There is a police van parked outside our house. And a police car parked in front of it. We speculate on what they are doing there. Perhaps the van is keeping watch to see if teenage (we presume) hoons will trample the rooves of my neighbours' cars tonight? It seems an elaborate outlay of police resources.

We go straight to bed, where we lie awake, listening for clues. We hear our neighbour, the one whose child plays with F, talking to a couple of unknown male voices on the street. The Husband goes outside. He is gone for what seems like an eternity.

'Did they catch someone?' I ask.
'They've got one of them.'

But this time, it's not teenagers jumping on car rooves. Two burglars have been on the loose, running through backyards in the area. They seem to have robbed a house further down the street.

The police have asked The Husband to check our backyard. He does. No one is there. There's no sign anyone was there. Our notoriously yappy dogs probably kept them away.

As we turn out the lights, we hear the police vehicles drive away.

The next day, we hear that there were helicopters overhead and sniffer dogs on the ground, shortly before we arrived.

**

I'm walking down the street; my street. On my way to dinner and a movie with he Husband, who is back in the house finding the DVD we plan to return on the way. Our logic is that if I walk ahead and he runs to catch up with me when he's done; timing-wise, it's as if he left the house with me.

As I pass our front fence, my next-door neighbour unhooks his gate. There's no escaping the fact that our paths are about to intersect, so I wave. He squints, frowns, and raises an arm half-heartedly. Vaguely relieved, I quicken my pace.

'Hello!' comes a voice at my elbow. It's him.
'Oh. Hi.'
'I didn't recognise you at first. All in black.' He looks me up and down. 'On your way to A FUNERAL?'
'Um, no. Just dressing like a Melburnian.'
'So, where do you normally live?'
'Sorry?' I've lived next door to him for six months. As he well knows.
'You know. Where are you from, then?'
It's easier to reply to this than explain what I meant about dressing like a Melburnian. This is a man who changed his gym because of all the homosexuals who'd started coming to his. I guess wearing all-black is pretty out there and disturbing for him.
'I'm from Adelaide.'
'Ah, Adelaide. I was in the army there.'

We're talking about police helicopters when The Husband arrives at my side. He has, oddly, never met our neighbour. Maybe because he has never accompanied F next door to fetch the footy. He extends his hand and introduces himself.
'Hello' says my neighbour. 'You know, when you go out, you might want to get some of those automated lights that switch on and off. We've got them.'
This is the first thing my neighbour ever said to me when he first met me, six months ago. He has repeated it many times since. He's even told me where I can buy them.
'Oh' says The Husband. 'Really?'

**

We have 25 minutes between dropping off the DVD and our movie starting. We order rice paper rolls from our favourite take-away, a Cambodian restaurant with an eating space roughly the size of your average kitchen. The restaurant is packed, so we have to take them away.

'We'll eat in the cinema' says The Husband.
'We can't do that. We won't be able to dip them in the peanut sauce. We'll make a mess.'
'Okay, Let's eat on the bench over there.' He points towards Anderson Street, in front of the post office.
'We can't eat there. That's where the crazy lady usually sits. People will think we're crazy. Or what if she comes along and wants her seat?'
Instead, we eat at the end of Ballarat Street, a few doors down from the cinema, sitting on the street corner, on the concrete step of an abandoned restuarant. It's kind of pleasant, really.

A small boy in cricket whites springs past, a white paper package under his arm. He glances down and spots us at his ankles.
'Hey!' he yells. 'What are you eating? Fish and chips?'
'Nah' says The Husband. 'Rice paper rolls.'
He screws up his face as he crosses the road ahead of us, turning back to express his disgust.
'Euww. You should have fish and chips!'
'Is that what you've got?' asks The Husband. 'Did you play cricket today?'
The boy turns back and comes to join us. He chats about cricket and fish and chips and the match on next week. He asks The Husband if he plays. Then he gives us an appraising look.
'Are you boyfriend and girlfriend? Husband and wife?'
'Yeah, we're married' we say.
'Oh.' He screws up his face. 'But you don't match!'
'We don't match?'
'Nah. You don't!' He waves his arms at us, crouched over our paper buckets peanut sauce. I am wearing loose black linen pants with a looser (black) embroidered cheesecloth singlet and red Birkenstocks. The Husband is wearing jeans, a navy polo shirt and rubber thongs. Maybe that's it?

We chat a little more and, after telling us we should have a baby together, the boy turns back towards home, his fish and chips warming his armpit. He seems about twelve years old.

Inexplicably, what he has said bothers me. I think I have a superstitious belief that the spontaneous observations of a child spring from some kind of deep insight. Maybe I've read too may books, or seen too many films.

Later, in bed, lying awake, I content myself with the reflection that F has told us that we'll be together forever. My child trumps random child.

Don't fight the music

2008-01-04T09:41:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, F’s aunt (one of them) took him to the music shop where her friends work.

He had a blast.

He got to play all the guitars in the shop, one by one. He had a go on the electronic music mixer. He made friends with the girl behind the counter.

The boys all thought he was great. They were very impressed that he could play real songs.

F’s aunt bought him a CD single. It was ‘Apologise’ by Timbaland. A bit of a departure from his recent rock songs (ACDC, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple). But he’s been singing the song for days. He must be expanding his tastes.

Last night, I played him his single on my laptop a few times before bed. He sang along earnestly, eyes half-closed, intently watching the computer screen, as if staring into the eyes of the music.

He’d been in bed for just a few minutes when he got up and joined me at my desk.

‘Mum,’ he said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about music.’

I would usually tell him to go back to bed, that he hasn’t even tried to go to sleep yet. But instead, last night I decided to go with it.

‘Would you like to listen to your song in bed? Would you like me to make you a bedtime playlist on iTunes?’
‘Oh, yes PLEASE Mum!’
‘Come on, let’s see what Nana has in her CD collection.’

I took him by the hand, enjoying the sensation of his little fingers curled around mine as we climbed the stairs. I’m aware that he won’t want to hold my hand much longer. Do Grade Three boys hold hands with their mothers?

Upstairs, I made another discovery when F excitedly grabbed my mother’s CD by The Fray, who I’d never heard of. He made a note to listen to Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’, another favourite, tomorrow, as it was ‘too rock’ for bedtime.

It took me about ten minutes or so to load up the new songs and make a bedtime playlist, including The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’.

I was rewarded with a big hug as I left the room and returned to my desk, just outside his door, with my laptop plugged in by his bedside.

Another ten minutes later, faint snores rolled from F’s doorway to provide a soothing soundtrack to my typing.

I just might use that playlist again tonight.

Bionicles, martinis and mortgages

2008-01-03T16:22:00.000+11:00

F got two board games for Christmas, both from his nana (my mum): the Bionicles board game and Pixar Monopoly.

He loved the Bionicles board game the most. He asked someone to play it with him every day, at least once a day, from the moment he got it.

‘Later’ was the response, over and over.

If you’ve ever tried to get your head around the Bionicles universe – or indeed, any fantasy universe you don’t have an interest in, you’ll know why we kept putting it off.

If you haven’t tried such a thing, just the read the blurb on the back of a fantasy book. Any fantasy book. Chances are, it will read as if written in a foreign language.

Something like:

The Urf from the Kingdom of Larynx are in trouble. The invading Tonsilmonsters are slowly but surely approaching the Great Wall of Urfnan that surrounds the fabled city of Doogna. There is only one hope: the young Urfling Dooma, a member of the dwindling Noggin race. If Dooma can find the sacred crystal of Larynx, hidden deep within the caves of Inka, the Tonsilmonsters will be defeated. But the obstacles are many, and Dooma has not counted on the treachery of his closest companion, Igghanu.

Be honest. Did you even manage to finish reading that paragraph? That’s my relationship to Bionicles.

F and I were invited to a New Year’s Eve pool party. On New Year’s Eve day, my cousin rang to say that it wasn’t going to be a kid friendly party after all. F was very upset. It was 41 degrees Celsius and he was looking forward to the pool. (To be honest, so was I.)

So, in an effort to cheer him up, I ordered a pizza for dinner and suggested we play the Bionicles game.

I gave up halfway through reading the rules, letting F guide me. A bad mistake, because F, given half the chance, is a cheater. I could sense that he was bending the rules to his advantage, but I couldn’t quite tell how.

He won. I put the game away. And I ran him a bath and plonked him in there with goggles on. (We bucketed it out the next day to put on the garden.)

**

Two days later, after I submitted some work that was due, I joined a patient F upstairs and offered to play Pixar Monopoly.

We played from 10am til 2.30pm in the afternoon, and only stopped because it was time to go swimming in my aunt’s pool. I won, but only just – a bit of a triumph, since at midday, I’d had $5 left and had half my properties mortgaged.

F thought my mortgages were hilarious for some reason. He called them ‘martinis’ and every time I ran out of money again and put another ‘property’ up for ‘mortgage’, he’d laugh and laugh and shout ‘ANOTHER MARTINI! Oh, MUM!’

In life, I have no credit cards and no mortgage. I have no items bought on store credit. All I have is Centrelink debts. Other than that, I pay as I go. I find it peaceful. It allows me to sleep at night, and to make decisions with little regard for money, beyond rent and food provisions.

I decided to play Monopoly from the opposite perspective, as an experiment. At midday, I felt justified in the way I live. At 2.30pm, when I was $3800 ahead, I wondered if maybe I should have a go at a martini after all.

‘It’s a bit like gambling, isn’t it?’ observed F.

And it is, or so it seems. I think I’ll preserve my ability to sleep well at night and make decisions based on what I want to do rather than the money I need to earn. At least for now, while I don’t have the cash for even one tiny little martini anyway.

Lisa the Pest (20/12/07)

2007-12-23T11:37:00.000+11:00

I have not been a nice mother this morning.

I told F off and made him cry (okay, whimper unconvincingly), as much from my own frustration as legitimate rebuke.

In my defence, it was 6.30am this morning.

**

A few weeks ago, one lazy Sunday, F was reading in his room and complaining about being bored and I was going through old boxes and reminiscing, when I stumbled upon a story I had written when I was ten. I’d written it for my younger sisters, about their Cabbage Patch dolls Julie and Lisa (reborn as real live kids), and they loved it at the time. I was pleased with it enough to enter it into a kids’ story competition. It didn’t win, but it was highly commended and my name was printed in the paper.

My dad then typed it up for me (it was the days before computers) and printed it off for me at the school where he worked. I bound it into a book, and painstakingly illustrated it with pictures that now embarrass me with their tragic reflection of 1980s fashion sense. (Julie, Grade Three, wears an off-the-shoulders fitted top with a matching ra-ra skirt and dangly earrings on the last page, for instance.) Being a grown-up almost-prize-winner, I had given the book a professional edge with a dedication to my sisters on the back cover, along with an ‘acknowledgements’-style solemn thank you note to my father, ‘the typist’.

On this lazy Sunday, I asked F if he’d like to hear a story I wrote when I was a little girl. Being a seasoned story lover, he said yes. And so I pushed aside the clothes and toys I really should have been making him tidy up from the floor, and the two of us sprawled on our stomachs on the carpet, side by side.

As I read this story I hadn’t revisited in years, I cringed at my ten-year-old naivety and clumsy language. I persevered despite its faults: trying, in fact, to gloss over them by enthusiastically acting out the dialogue (mostly fights between the sophisticated Grade Three Julie and her spoilt pre-school sister). As I finished the story, I dared to really look up at F to gauge his reaction.

‘That was GREAT!’ he said. ‘Do you have any more?’

Actually, I did. There was a sequel in the same box, written in old-fashioned, practically illegible cursive, importantly marked ‘CONFERENCED’. It was called ‘Lisa Runs Away’. Flattered, I fetched it and read it aloud as F lay on his back beside me, squinting up at the ceiling in concentration.

‘Brilliant. Anything else?’

I had one more: a version of the original story that I’d rewritten when I was much older, probably eighteen. I was relieved to discover that it was much better. Not an undiscovered masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but not bad. When I finished reading it, I asked F what he thought.

‘Great.’
‘Better than the first one I read, huh?’
‘No. I liked the first one best,’ said F, emphatically.

**

For the record, the story is pretty much as follows:

Lisa is a pest. She annoys her big sister Julie all the time and does naughty things. But she never gets told off. Their mother tells Julie off, but excuses everything her favourite does. Lisa decides she wants to go to school and mum has to say no, not until she’s older. She doesn’t like being told no and is determined to go. The next day, Julie is at school when she hears a voice from the reader cupboard. Lisa has somehow snuck into her classroom and hidden there. Julie tries to conceal her presence, but naughty Lisa goes too far and makes a scene. When she is discovered, the teacher tells her off and they call mum to come and pick her up. Julie wonders ‘whether Lisa will ever stop being a pest’. (‘NO!’ says F gleefully, when we get to that point. ‘She WON’T, will she?’)

**

A few days later, F was having night frights about ‘straight lines’. (And no, it’s not supposed to make sense. At least, I don’t quite get it.) It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s so spooky-sounding – and, I have to admit, so classically autistic - that I tend to indulge him rather than tell him to go back to bed and not move, as I do when he just says he’s hungry/thirsty/wide awake.

‘I’ll read you something and then you can go to sleep,’ I told him with a sigh. ‘Pick something.’
‘Can you read me Lisa the Pest?’ he asked. I had put in back in the box in the cupboard, along with old diaries and letters.
‘Really?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Um, okay.’

I went into the hallway and opened the cupboard. I took down the vacuum cleaner and its parts, the big plastic box where I store F’s paintings and drawings and stories, and yanked out my box from underneath. I crept back to F’s bedroom with the story and lay my head on the pillow beside him, pulling out my travel torch.

‘You will close your eyes as I read, okay?’
‘But I won’t be able to see the pictures.’
‘Bad luck, I’m afraid.’

When I finished, he turned to give me a sleepy hug.
‘Mum, can you leave that on my bookshelf so I can read it whenever I like?’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I know it’s very special, so I’ll take extra good care of it.’
‘Um, okay.’

After school the next day, I came in from the kitchen with a plate of buttered toast and found him on his bed, hunched over something.
‘Look’ he said, turning around. ‘I’m reading your book.’
‘So you are!’

I have to admit, I was feeling pretty damn chuffed by now. But not just chuffed. I don’t know what the feeling was exactly, but to know that my son was getting so much enjoyment out of a story I had written for my sisters when we were young ... that something that was really special to us was now special to him, without my even trying ... It felt good.

‘I think,’ he declared, ‘that you should win a PRIZE for this.’ He paused, thinking hard. ‘You should win ... The Angus & Robertson Prize! You should be on the Angus & Robertson Top Ten Bestsellers!’
‘Um ... thank you.’

I’m still not sure how a child whose parents are avid supporters and frequenters of Melbourne’s best independent bookshops identifies with Angus & Robertson, but I took the accolade as seriously as it was meant and kissed him for it.

**

In the next few weeks, F took to carrying the book around with him – out to dinner (twice), on day-trips and train journeys, to the breakfast table. Every once in a while I would get another heartfelt appreciation of my writing talents, based on this book.

‘If I was your age when you were ten and I knew you and I read this book, I would think that you should be an author when you grew up!’

‘Can I photocopy this book and bring it to school? I’ve told [Crush] about it and she’s interested to read it.’

And then, on his last day of school ...

‘Can I bring it for show and tell? Please.’

Vanity got the better of me.

‘Do you want to photocopy it first?’ he asked.
‘No. I trust you. I know you will take very good care of it. Won’t you?’
He smiled at me, basking in the reflected confidence.
‘Yes. I certainly will. Don’t worry about it mum.’

**

Of course, he was right. I should have copied it.

Because last night, I rang his dad (who had picked him up) to check that the book came home okay. He hadn’t seen it. Frankly, he wasn’t interested. I tried to drum it into his head that the book had great sentimental value for me and I needed to know it was okay before he left for Queensland and Christmas the next day.

‘Please look,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait.’
‘It’s dark in his room and he’s assleep.’
‘Please do it in the morning and call me.’
‘Okay, I’ll call you if I find it.’
‘No. Call me. I need to know.’
‘Yep.’
‘You’ll do it?’
‘Yes, I need to go.’
‘So, you promise?’
‘YES.’

‘He won’t do it,’ said The Husband, as I hung up. ‘You’d better call him early tomorrow.’
I called him at 6.20am this morning. He was in the cab. He wasn’t going to call me. Did he find it?
‘Um, no.’ He sounded distracted.
‘You looked?’
‘Um, yes.’

I asked F what happened. He said that he definitely took it home, it had been in his bag, it was on a pile of schoolbooks. I talked to his dad. His dad said, absently, that he had checked the pile, yes, and it wasn’t there, no. I talked to F again. My voice was steely.

‘So. It’s gone.’
‘Noooo’ he wailed.
‘Yep. Gone. And I trusted you to take care of it.’
F started to whimper, a kind of simulated crying that generally demonstrates he is upset, but would like the listener to think he is more upset than he is.
‘Well.’
‘Can you write it again?’ he asked.
‘No. I cannot write it again.’

**

By then, I’d already spent the past few bemused-but-proud weeks reflecting on why F loved the story so much, even as I couldn’t help cringing at it.

And what I’d figured out was that it’s a story no adult could write: it reflects a child’s experience of the world. As a grown-up, I just couldn’t create a mother so obviously and unfairly biased towards one child over the other. I don’t know that I’d write dialogue between two sisters who say ‘SHUT UP’, ‘No, YOU shut up’, ‘No, you shut up’, ‘Stop copying me’, ‘Stop copying me’, ‘I SAID stop ...’ etc. I wouldn’t open with the two girls buying loads of lollies at the corner shop, or have Lisa throw a cat out of the window. But that’s what makes F love it so much.

**

When I got off the phone to F and his dad, I went back to bed and threw myself face-down on the pillow. Aware that the Husband was listening, if not exactly watching (6.30am!), I had a little whimper. Kinda like F’s I-am-upset-I-swear-I-am whimper.

I boarded the train to Adelaide feeling like something had been scooped out of my chest. I was grieving, I realised.

Grieving what? My story. A little. It was a lovely memory of my early relationship with my sisters. But it was more than that.

I was – am – grieving the loss of something special that F and I shared, something that I can’t recreate by writing another story. It’s a bit like when he lost his Care Bear in Prep and I cried as much as he did, knowing that I’d lost forever the little boy he was with that beloved bear.

Ah well. I guess there will be another special thing.

For now, I need to call my son and say sorry for making him cry. Okay, whimper.

* POSTSCRIPT: F rang The Husband while I was writing this, on the train from Melbourne to Adelaide, and told him that he had found the book in his bag. All of us are very, very pleased. But hell, I wrote this bloody post on the train, in the dining car, the keyboard wobbling as I typed, and I'm not consigning it to the virtual bin just because its whole premise has collapsed.

Hell is other people: Carols in the Park (2006)

2007-12-15T16:36:00.000+11:00

The first inkling I have that Carols in the Park will not be fun comes before I even manage to park my bike. F jumps off his cushion on the back and runs excitedly towards the playground and back.

‘Wow!’ he says. ‘This looks great!’

The park is lined with card tables covered in home-made cakes and biscuits, glitter glue, stickers and Christmas ornaments, and racks of tee shirts. A stage is set up in the middle, with a loudspeaker blaring 80s pop into the rapidly cooling evening air. There is a caravan selling Mars Bars beside the sausage sizzle. And a baby animal farm with lambs, guinea pigs, goats and puppies.

Clusters of grown-ups sit on rugs and deck chairs gathered around the play equipment and in front of the stage. Some of them attend to small children, but most of them are chatting among themselves, waving plastic wineglasses or stubbies.

Children are darting excitedly about everywhere, scrambling on the monkey bars, jostling at the stalls, running from one activity to the next. One small boy wears a Santa hat. Sisters wear matching Christmas dresses, red and green and gold, trimmed with red tulle and teamed with Blundstones. They have tinsel in their hair.

I walk up and down the playground, looking for somewhere to chain my bike. I pause at several likely looking wooden posts, but they all prove too thick. F darts to the slide and back, to the cake stall and back.
‘Mum! Mum! What are you doing?!’
‘Wait here,’ I manage, through gritted teeth, wheeling the bike further down the road, where I find a plant tethered to a conveniently sized wooden stake.

‘Can I have a sausage? A cupcake? I want to play!’
I spread the rug near the stage and take him to the sausage van. We eat what will pass for dinner and watch the crowd, then F runs off to play.

I am painfully self-conscious, as I always am at these occasions. I am not part of the Mother’s Club. I can carry on a conversation with some of the parents some of the time. There are two mothers who sometimes invite F to play and me inside for a coffee; one of regularly. There is another who often stops me in the schoolyard to say ‘We MUST catch up. We will.’ We never do. This embarrassing charade has lasted a year. Her son approaches me at the school gate and asks ‘when can I play at your house?’ ‘Any time’ I say, but his mother always hurries him off with apologies. This mum was standing beside us as F and I applied sauce to our sausages, but didn’t look at us. Now I notice that she had inadvertently set up camp behind us. Our eyes don’t meet.

I sprawl on my stomach on our quilt, facing away from the mum and my other ‘neighbours’, with their wine and conversations, and pull The Monthly from my bag.

Small feet run across the corner of my quilt, kicking dirt over my pages. I brush it off and keep reading. Now is the perfect time, I tell myself, as I swing my bare feet behind me, to catch those articles I missed on the first read.
F’s sneakers skid into view. I close the magazine and shoulder my bag.
‘Should we look around?’

We visit the baby animals. F sits on a hay bale, hardly daring to breathe, as a guinea pig is placed in his lap. He strokes it tentatively at first, then with confidence. His face is intense with pleasure. He pats a sleeping dog, an indifferent lamb and passing goat.
‘You try’ he says as I watch him marvel at the lamb. ‘Wouldn’t you like a jumper like this?’ he enthuses.
He sits with the dog, watching to see if it will wake. I take a photo. At the gate to the enclosure, he pats a girl on the arm.
‘Excuse me’ he says solemnly. ‘I recommend that you pat the lamb.’

‘S and A said this would be boring! Boy, were they wrong!’

After we make a Christmas ornament, he returns to the playground, I to my quilt and magazine. The wind is cold, and I wrap myself in a scarf. The wind whips at the gap between my jeans and my flimsy Indian shirt. I tug on my jacket, but it rides up again.

F leaps over my legs and lands hard beside my head. He pulls an Andy Griffiths novel from his backpack and settles companionably by my feet.
‘Don’t you want to go play?’
‘Nah. Can you read to me?’
I wriggle around to face him and we lie on our stomachs together. We suck on candy canes as I read. Raindrops fall on the page: lightly, gradually at first; then steady, hard drops.

F has brought a smaller patchwork quilt, a Christmas quilt my mother made for him. He helped to choose the material and lay out the pattern. I pull it over our heads as I shelter, just as the PA crackles, Duran Duran stops mid-lyric, and the mayor introduces himself.

‘Wow,’ breathes F. ‘He’s famous.’
The school choir are on stage. A teacher with a guitar starts the first song. Around us, none of the kids or parents are singing. F scowls through the rain.
‘I want to sing too.’
‘You can.’
‘Up there?’
‘Here, you can.’ Under the quilt, I start to sing. F is not mollified, though he half-heartedly joins in. My jeans are sticky with wet. F and I are waging a war over the quilt.

Santa is coming, with presents, in one hour.

I gloomily reflect on my crappy performance as a mother tonight. One of the two friendly mothers walks past. I am too fed up to say hello. I’m afraid of what else I might say. Inwardly, I am furious. With myself, with the parents who don’t speak to me and with this whole stupid school where nobody is like me, not at all ... and of course, yes, with myself.

And even though I know it’s NOT about me, it’s about F, I am ready to go home. He sneezes.
‘Okay, we need to go.’ I jump to my feet.
‘Nooooo.’
‘You’ll get sick. You’re getting a cold.’
As I shake dirt from the quilt and roll it under my arm, the mother camped beside me looks over and smiles. She rolls her eyes, complicitly, and I smile back and wave.
Bitch. NOW she can see me. Oh well.

F mumbles and whines all the way to the bike. As I pad the back bike rack with the quilt, the PA dies. Two latecomers head our way.
‘It’s all off’ someone tells me. ‘We’re going home.’
‘M just arrived as everyone was going home!’ says F, TOO gleefully. ‘He’s too late, isn’t he?’
I mount the bike and squint into the rain as I glide past the queue of parked cars.

‘When we get home’ I shout over the traffic, ‘our Christmas tree will be waiting for us to decorate it. I’ll run you a hot bath and get the decorations from the garage and then you can have hot Milo with marshmallows.’
F sighs contentedly. His whine adjusts.
‘Oh, mum’ he says. ‘You’ve just cheered me up by saying that.’

Ten minutes later, as I turn into our street, I do something I know I should not.
‘F’ I call. ‘Do you wish I was more like the other mums, that I hung out with the other mums?’
It’s actually something I think about a lot.
‘No mum’ he says. ‘I like you just the way you are.’
Pause.
‘There is ONE thing I’d change ...’
Pause.
‘... but it’s really something I’D have to change.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Punishments.’

And we’re home, The Husband opening the front door to greet us, and a pine tree on the verandah.

* NOTE: I found this written out in an old notebook, and it just seemed to me to illustrate how much things have changed (for the better) in a year, and I'd never posted it, so decided I would now.