Baptism

No sermon at South Yarra tonight. Instead, following the reading from Luke 3:13-22, several people shared the story of their baptism. This was mine:

When I was baptised
   there was no River Jordan,
   just a dented tub in an ugly room.

There was no hairy prophet,
   but a smooth-skinned man
   who told me to read Tillich first.

God’s voice didn’t thunder.
The heavens stayed resolutely shut.
Not even a small bird floated down from the skies.

Coming up from the waters
   I felt silly, adolescent,
   awkward, strange.

No more sure of God’s love
   or my direction
   or my self.

Yet somehow, in all its smallness,
   it was enough.

Must I always remember my mother by my failures?

Here we go again: the anniversary of my mother’s death. This year, like every year, it has crept up on me and has been marked not with gentle ceremonies of remembrance, but by my failures.

Friday: I forgot my middle daughter’s athletics carnival. We arrived at school to find athletes buzzing – and my daughter in tight jeans. “Go home,” she said in panicky tears, “go home, and get me some shorts!” I ran to the office and checked when the bus was leaving: three minutes. I asked if they had anything she could wear. They found a pair of bike shorts in her size: brilliant. Eight dollars and two minutes later, my daughter was dressed and ready for the bus. Problem solved; but in the initial forgetting, I felt like a failure as a mother.

Saturday: “I have an itchy bottom,” said someone. “Me too,” said someone else. Worming tablets, eight loads of washing, a whole house cleaned, and five showers later, I was exhausted. And this inability to impress upon my children the importance of washing their hands felt like a reflection of my crappy parenting: yet again, failure.

Sunday: We went for a swim at the pool. Afterwards, my oldest daughter and I decided to stroll home separately from the others. I hadn't brought my bag, just some money in my pocket. I thought we could pop into an op shop and a café, and have a little mother-daughter time. But the bright low sun caught in my eyes, and the whirling sparkles of migraine began. Without my bag, I had no phone to call for help, and none of the pain medication that I usually carry. We staggered home with me on her arm, blind, and I collapsed into bed. So much for op shops, cafés, or mother-daughter time. These things happen; but what a failure.

Monday: We arrived at school. My youngest daughter’s friends were all holding books. Everyone had attained the required reading level, and their teacher had declared a class party. They were bringing in their favourite books and some food to share; we had forgotten. My usually calm daughter looked shocked, then began to weep. I lifted her seven-year-old self into my arms, and crooned and rocked. She wouldn’t come to the library and find another book; she wouldn’t borrow a book from a sister or a friend; she just clung onto me, and wept. The bell rang and I gently lowered her down. I left her in line, a fat tear rolling down her cheek. Fat tears rolled down mine, too. Three hugs from three friends later, and I’m still tear-y.

Yesterday a friend sent me a text: If only your mum could see what an amazing person you are. Weird, I thought. Almost everything I ever did was wrong, according to my mother. Just imagine how she would have ripped into me these last few days, as I failed and failed and failed.
And then I realised my friend had sent the text because it was the anniversary of her death: yet another thing that I had forgotten.

It’s been fifteen years since she died; and fifteen years of me trying to learn that I’m a good enough parent, and a good enough person, for this world. But at this time of year, every year, I forget these lessons along with everything else. All I do is fail, and notice and remember my failures.

Will there ever come a time when I mark this anniversary with the good things about our relationship, the things we held in common? The love of stories? The hours spent in galleries? The relishing of small jokes? When will I remember our joint passion for nooks and crannies and creaky old houses? For serious conversations held with small children? When will I rest in the pleasure we shared sucking the marrow out of lamb chops, and out of life?

My wolf, my warning bell

When I was a child, we lived in a house with a big backyard. At the end of the yard stood an old metal slide; the slide ended in a sandpit. To one side was a liquidambar; I could only climb into the first branch. To the other, a small jacaranda; I could climb a few branches higher.

But I was afraid. Sent out to play, I would run from the back door to the slide, scramble up the steps, then sit at the top and watch carefully. I was terrified of the wolf. I could picture its mangy fur, its sinuous muscles, its powerful jaw. It moved like wreathing mist, slinking around the corner of the house. I knew what it looked like, I knew it was coming for me, and I was terrified. So there I sat, waiting, scanning the garden, mouth dry with fear.

I lived in Australia. There are no wolves in Australia. I knew this, but the fear was not rational.

I would tell myself there is no wolf, there is no wolf, even as I watched. Finally, the tension would become unbearable. I’d gather my few shreds of courage, then shoot down the slide, sprint back to the house, slamming the door behind me in what I knew was the wolf’s gaping maw, ready to rip me to pieces. Another near miss.

More than thirty years later, there are still times when I see the wolf run past my peripheral vision. When I see it, I realise that I am feeling threatened, and that I need to stop, take a breath, and reflect on what is going on.

Who would have thought that a middle European mythic symbol could so thoroughly enter the psyche of a little Australian girl, who grew up under wide blue skies and white bright sun? Who would have known that it would continue to intimate danger to that girl thirty years later? And who would have guessed that, in its very threat, the girl now receives it as a gift, and takes it as an invitation to reflection?

A hot shower takes me right back to childhood

 

I love a hot shower; my husband likes it cool. Sometimes in the morning rush, my husband jumps in as I'm getting out. And every time he yelps, steps back, and reaches for the cold. 'How can you have it so hot?' he asks, looking at my bright pink skin.

Let me tell you, my dear. When I was a girl, we had an outdoor laundry; as well as the washing machine, it housed an ancient hot water system. My father would get up at six to light the boiler, and I, who had been mooching around since five, would often go with him and watch.

A brick bunker ran down the side of the laundry, full of hard black coal humped in hessian sacks from a Bedford truck. Mr Wright, the coalman, had twinkling eyes, a crinkly face, a snow white beard, and a big smile for me. Each morning, dad would fill the coal bucket from the bunker and I'd think of Mr Wright; then we'd go into the laundry.

There my father would kneel in front of the boiler, and open the metal door. His large brown hands would carefully lay the fire: first twists of paper, then firelighters, then a careful pile of coal briquettes. When it was built, he would strike a match, reach in, and gingerly touch it in several places. Very gently, cold breath wreathing, he would blow at the fire. Tentative flames would lick up once, twice, then, becoming more sure of themselves, take hold. We'd sit quietly and watch until we were sure the briquettes had caught. Then he'd close and latch the boiler door.

Hands black with cold dust, he'd run the water through a skinny folding spigot into the concrete laundry trough. The boiler was still heating up; the water was always freezing. My father would rinse his hands, then roll the yellow soap around and around. He'd rub his hands one inside the other, until his nails were clean and the ridges in his skin were clear; he'd send lather up to his elbows. Finally, he'd sluice his arms, and dry them on an old ragged towel.

More than anything, my father hated a cool shower. For all the care that he took, he was so anxious to ensure that his shower was hot that he'd sometimes overload the boiler. Twenty minutes later, it would boil over, rattling and shaking to waken the dead, shooting steam and scalding hot water all over the laundry roof, ready to take off like a rocket.

'Jooo-oooohn!' my mother would scream, a regular morning wail, 'you've done it again!'

On those days, the water was so hot that steam bumped through the pipes. Instead of warm water, we'd get jets of icy water interspersed with gusts of scalding steam. Impossible to wash in, we'd wait anxiously watching the clock, sniping at each other, until everything had cooled down a bit; then we'd rush through our showers and race out the door.

Whenever I remember this, my face cracks into a loopy grin – and there is my answer to my husband: a hot shower takes me right back to childhood.

Washing the dishes by hand

 

When my second daughter was almost a year old, we bought a dishwasher. I had chronic eczema on my hands, related to the many forms of washing that come with raising small children; using the dishwasher made a huge difference to my skin. I was pathetically grateful to be able to shove the baby bottles in and have them washed while I got on with other tasks. For five or six years, I sang its praises.

Now my kids are older, and we have moved to a house with a dodgy dishwasher. The machine fits relatively few dishes; then thunders away for an hour or so only to render the dishes less than half clean. We soon decided we had to replace it with an efficient, effective model. However, we haven’t had much spare cash this year; so until we can afford it, we have been washing up by hand.

To my surprise, we have discovered that it’s no big deal. Now we’re well past the stage of three little kids eating five meals a day, and the dreaded baby bottles, the washing up is no longer onerous. I’m beginning to realise that I don’t want to replace the dishwasher; instead, I just want to rip the faulty one out.

When we had the dishwasher, I used to spend a long time loading it, arranging and rearranging to fit the maximum in. It was like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Then I washed whatever didn’t fit. Now, I spend no time loading the dishwasher. The time I once used to load it is now spent just washing up. The things that went in the machine – cups, plates, bowls, cutlery – are quickly washed in the sink. The things that didn’t go in the machine – plastics, saucepans, knives, bread boards – I always washed by hand anyway. So rather than spend ten minutes loading the machine, then doing the leftover washing up, I now spend fifteen minutes doing the washing up, full stop. If anything, it’s quicker.

Our former machine was relatively quiet. Even so, you could hear it in the background for the hour or more it took to run through the cycles. Every evening was punctuated by swishes, gentle whirrs, and gurgles from the sink. Now, once the dishes are washed, the house is silent: no humming, no machine noise, no gurgles. I am enjoying the quiet.

We don’t have a dishes roster. Some nights, my husband and I do them after the kids are in bed. It’s not a bad thing, because of instead of going straight to our separate books or screens, we have a chat over sink and tea towels. It grounds us, and helps me feel like we are sharing the tasks of homemaking in a small, but not unimportant, way.

Other nights, we do them with the kids. We put on dance music and the kids wiggle their bums around as they dry. Sometimes, my nine-year-old washes. There are evenings when everyone grizzles about having to contribute, but they always step up in the end; ultimately, they can’t resist the music and the chance to dance with mum and dad in the kitchen!

Studies have shown that kids who have chores around the house tend to have good outcomes; it really is character-building. I reckon this makes sense: there’s nothing more demoralising than feeling useless. Yet we live in an age of labour-saving devices, compounded by a culture of perfection; and this seems to mean that many kids make no practical contribution to their households. At the extreme are the kids I know (aged 6, 7, even 8) who have looked at me blankly when I put out bread, butter and fixings; they have never been entrusted to make their own sandwich and don’t know how to start, let alone hold a knife.

My partner and I are too disorganised to assign formal chores to our kids. Occasionally, in a burst of good intentions, we give them specific tasks, but we rarely enforce them (and to those of you who have functioning rosters, I salute you!). However, the dishes have become something that the kids can do. It’s hardly the level of responsibility many children have, but it makes them feel useful, and communicates that they are contributors to family life.

The kids also set the table. With that job comes a privilege: to choose which plates we will eat from. I inherited a pile of old English crockery from various family members. The pile is constantly added to by my slight crockery addiction; I am forever picking up plates at op shops. But when we had the dishwasher, we rarely used the old stuff. It didn’t stack well in the machine; and I couldn’t bear to have the hand-painted designs worn off by the heat and powerful soaps. The crockery became a collection. However, since we began washing up by hand, we eat in vintage style. My kids prefer plates ringed with roses, or marigolds, or mixed bouquets - everything tastes better on a pretty plate!

The plates get me telling stories: about grandmothers, and families, and other houses I have known. Later, as we wash up, I keep remembering: the extended family and the meals we have shared; the view out the kitchen window of my childhood home; the sight of my father washing up every night; different group houses and their grotty kitchens; church kitchens and tea towel fights. And here am I, far down the great current of time yet still surrounded by a host of loved ones as I run water, squeeze soap, swish plates and scrub pans as has been done for time immemorial.

It may not be for everyone. But for me at this life stage, for the quiet, the ease, the opportunity for contemplation, the conversations I have with partner and kids, the dancing round the kitchen, the pretty plates, and the richness of the memories: well, I have fallen in love with washing the dishes by hand.

The State Library and the Great Unwashed

I'm sitting in the State Library reading about public health, but it's hard to concentrate. Something smells, really smells: it is the penetrating odour of the great unwashed.

Stomach-churning tendrils ease their way up my nose and I push my breathing high to bypass the olfactory nerves. I look around, but there is no homeless person to be seen. No dreadlocks, no stained old coats, no sleeper at a desk hinting at the origin of the smell.

Annoyed, I turn back to my book. I have a few hours without my kids, and I'm using the time to learn about health and its relationship to social status; but this stink makes it impossible. How can I concentrate when the room smells of urine and muck? And where is the smell coming from?

I keep reading, and breathing carefully, and furtively looking round. Finally I realise that the person is long gone; only the smell remains. It rises from my chair. As my thighs warm the padded seat, the unleashed odours float upwards.

Revolting.

There are no other seats, and I need to read. My jeans are thick and easily washed, so I curse and turn the page.

There I sit: nice jeans, styled hair, warm leather boots, ethically made t-shirt; my heavy winter jacket is draped over the back of the chair; and I am reading that a poor black man in Washington DC can expect to live 20 less years than a rich white man living a dozen miles up the railway line in suburban Maryland.

As I tut-tut over the dying men of DC, a few real DC faces flash before my eyes. Uri, the lean Russian man who slept on the steps of our church. Miss Rosa, the recipient of a food charity program with whom I often chatted in a putrid stairwell. Melvin, the security guard, shot in the shoulder while patrolling our church car park, an injury so common in his milieu he never thought to mention it to his employers.

What a hypocrite! Here am I with all the money, leisure and opportunity in the world, thinking I have compassion because I will read about the social factors of health; but the latent smell of homelessness makes me outraged. Yet until I recognise that the smell belongs to a real person as individual as Uri, Miss Rosa, or Marvin, and as precious in God's eyes as one of my own children, my readings in public health will be little more than a self-congratulatory exercise; very much worse than useless.

In shame I say a prayer for compassion, inhale deeply, and stay seated.

The Sun: Forgetting

The following piece appeared in the Readers Write section of The Sun last month. The Sun is my favourite magazine, jam-packed with strong writing. I recommend it very, very highly. You can read excerpts from each issue on the website, and also find subscription details there – yes, they do post to Australia. If you want to hear the piece below read as a podcast by the kind folk at the Audio Internet Reading Service of Los Angeles, click here; then click on 'The Internet Part 3 / Forgetting Part 1'. My piece begins at 10.33 – but why not listen to the whole thing!

***

At my mother's funeral, a family friend took me aside, gave me a hug, and said, "You'll soon forget all the illness and be left with just happy memories."

She's a good friend, but she was wrong.

When I was a teenager, my mother worked seventy- and eighty-hour weeks, and I went days on end without seeing her. At the age of seventeen I moved out, feeling I barely knew her at all. A year later I went home for my first visit. While I was there, my mother woke one morning to find she had no feeling in her left leg.

Within eight years she was dead from a particularly vicious form of multiple sclerosis: Eight years of burning pain, progressive numbness, and creeping paralysis. Five years of wheelchairs. Two years of quadriplegia. More than a year of hearing loss and vision impairment. And, at the end, nothing but a tiny voice squeezed out of lungs so weakened by paralysis that they finally stopped expanding.

I'm now thirty-six, and I can barely remember my mother when she was well. When I try to think of her walking, it's a blur; images of her standing are summoned from photographs. Instead I remember crooked hands, swollen feet in orthopedic shoes resting on the footplates of a wheelchair. Her skin was dry and sloughing off (a side effect of her medication). The bright-eyed, inquisitive mother of my childhood had become lethargic, heavy, and dulled by pain. I can't even remember her original voice. The illness was all-encompassing. In frustration and grief I have largely given up trying to remember; instead I look for her in me.

When I wash dishes, there are her hands, setting the dish rag out to dry. When I hang laundry, there are her fingers, clipping pins to the corners of my sheets. I sit at my desk and feel the resolute set of her jaw. I look in the mirror and see her eyes looking back at me, kinder now than they often were.

It's not quite remembering, these little glimpses of my mother in me, but it's enough. I think of it as a friendly haunting — painful at times but infinitely better than no memories of her at all.

Reaping the Inner Harvest

Gardens are bountiful places, and more things grow than just plants: gentleness, perhaps, and patience, and the bright green shoots of hope.

***

To read more, click on the embedded link below and flick to the back; or click here and follow the link to download the issue to your iPad.

Open publication - Free publishing

Mosquito Netting

 

Fifteen years ago I went to a thirtieth birthday party held in an old church hall. An abundance of green mosquito netting hung below the ceiling in arabesques piled high with balloons. A jukebox blared eighties music, heavy on The Police and U2; and at three o’clock in the morning, a group of us stood on the lawn and howled at the moon.

At the centre of the howling group was the birthday boy, a gentle bewildered and very unhappy man; safe inside, away from the lunatics, stood his confused and defensive wife. As the party drew to a close, the mosquito netting was pulled down and the balloons all popped; then the netting was bundled into a large green plastic garbage bag.

A couple of years later, the couple split; and soon after that, I moved in with the man who is sad and lonely no more. We have lived in half a dozen different houses together, and the mosquito netting has moved with us as we wait for a good use for it.

At last this week I stood and unpicked the staples which so long ago had held the netting in elegant swathes, and remembered the party, and the time of life when we were all so young and muddled and lonely. Then I drove some stakes into our planter boxes and draped netting over them, so the cabbage moths can no longer lay their eggs on our baby brassicas.

It feels a good use for the netting, falling in soft arabesques over veggies now. Instead of helium balloons, butterflies and cabbage moths float above it; and in place of eighties music, the voices of children drift through the air. We may not howl at the moon these days, but our kids always shout when they see it.

Just a glance at the netting is enough to remind me that this life of children and constant visitors is a daily party, as we welcome guests, play games, tell jokes, and share food and wine and stories. And even as I watch and remember, a little girl runs past in dress ups: red velvet, sparkly sandals, and red floppy hat; and her hair flies behind her like streamers.

Remembering Home

 

For months now I've been haunted by a house I haven't lived in for twenty years. How haunted? Haunted enough to google it, to drive forty minutes out of my way to sit out front in my car and stare at it, and to have it inhabit my dreams night after night. If it were for sale, I'd probably try to persuade my husband we need to buy it. It wasn't a particularly lovely house. It was oriented south into darkness; the kitchen was tiny and strikingly ugly, with bright green cupboards and burnt orange carpet tiles; the garden was nothing much at all. But for the first fourteen years of my life, it was the house we returned to each time my parents moved for work; it was our home.

I feel like my daughters should experience life in this house. I'm actually quite frantic that they do. I want them to know how ugly the kitchen was; to lock themselves out and remove the louvred windows and climb in the kitchen window past the recipe books; to open the preserves cupboard in the dark hall and gaze at the rows of jams and plum sauce, and inhale the scent of cloves. I want them to lie on the nubbly grass green carpet in the study and look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary there; and hide in the garage full of cobwebs and climb the jacaranda tree and race leaves down the concrete gutter which ran along the side of the house.

Of course, that house doesn't exist anymore. It looks like it always did from the facade, but a little while ago, during an especially acute fit of nostalgia, I dropped in. Incredibly generous people that they are, the current owners offered me a cup of tea and we sat and talked about the area, the way we remember things, and how everything has changed; and I admired what they'd done with the place.

But I can't have my house back. It's been renovated, and what I remember is largely gone. Instead, I'll have to tell my children stories.

Stories about my father, who got up at six every morning to fire up the coal hot water heater. My father hated a cold shower more than anything in the world, so day after day he would build an enormous coal fire in the boiler, then wash his sooty hands and forearms with yellow soap in the old laundry trough; day after day the hot water would boil over and shriek and spit jets of steaming water onto the garage roof and there would be steam in the pipes and no shower for anyone. 'Joooo-ohn!' my mother would yell as he sheepishly observed the overflow tank shaking and shuddering; and we'd all have to wait til it cooled down, anxious eyes on the clock, before we could bathe.

Stories about the freesias my parents removed from the side, hundreds of small sweetly scented flowers. One year, my mother held a campaign against environmental weeds, and freesias were suddenly taboo. So on hands and knees my parents dug up every little bulb, then mulched heavily and planted natives. The natives thrived in feathery loveliness, but how I missed the gentle fragrant flowers.

Stories about the neighbourhood kids, and the way we used to roam the street until dusk. We played cricket and catch and jump the chain; we played hide and seek and hit sticks and stones around the vacant lot behind the petrol station ; and when we weren't in the street itself, kids flowed between the houses.

Our lounge room had old wallpaper printed with weeping willows, and one year my parents scraped it off to reveal dark wood panelling instead. I preferred the weeping willows. The carpet was corrugated plum, and my sister once went for a run without her nappy and dropped little pellets all the way down the corridor; my mother ran behind her picking up each one with a tissue as I held my sides and shrieked with laughter.

Our bathroom door was the colour of pumpkin. I'd go in there just to gaze at the door and drink in colour.

I remember washing day, and hiding pegs in the sheets hanging from the old Hills Hoist; and afterwards, great piles of washing waiting to be folded or mended or ironed. What wasn't covered in washing was stacked high with books and papers and Things to Do; it was a messy crowded little place.

There is so much I want to tell my children. It's been over two decades since I last lived in that house, but for all the moves and changes in my life, it still feels like home.

But lately it occurs to me that the house we live in now is forming the same sorts of memories for my children as the house I grew up in formed for me. My kids don't need to live in the other house to experience home. They have a home, with its own quirks and hidden places and special trees and stories; and if I pull myself out of the past and take a slow look around, I can see that it is good.

Caffeine hits and sugar spikes

More than a year ago now, I wrote about how much I needed wine in the evening. I didn’t drink half a bottle, just a glass to settle my jangled nerves while the kids squabbled and I cooked. It was either that or shouting everyone to table and bed. I felt bad about the dependency, but there it was.

Nine months later, I was placed on a very restrictive diet: no sugar, gluten, dairy, fruit, alcohol, or caffeine. I was worried about how I’d manage without that glass of wine at the end of the day, but my health problems were sufficiently severe that I adopted the diet almost immediately.

To my surprise, I coped just fine. There’s been no real yelling, in fact less than usual, and, while I missed the social aspect of wine with friends – not to mention toast with butter and jam – I didn’t miss the daily glass one bit.

Had my personality suddenly changed from wound up spring to positively yogic? Or had I been deluded all this time into thinking that my jangled nerves couldn’t get through a full day without a glass? Well, neither, really.

Four months into the diet, it came time to reintroduce or experiment with the restricted foods. Like the good girl that I am, I started not with fresh fruit (it blows me up like a balloon), but alcohol. Last Thursday, an old friend came for dinner and, in for a penny in for a pound, I drank two thirds of a bottle of wine. I was on top of the world, and the next day felt fit as a fiddle. It was wonderful. And while I don’t intend to start drinking every night, it seems I can enjoy wine with friends from time to time – and I will. Wine restores me to my rightful place as the storyteller at the dinner table, a role that I don’t fill to the utmost when I am stone cold sober.

Next I tried caffeine. Within minutes my body filled with adrenalin, my heart started to race, my hands grew sweaty and I became highly anxious. A sense of foreboding swelled and bobbed like a threatening grey balloon just above my head; my chest constricted in fear. I wandered around for a few hours waiting for the axe to fall, but it never did. Instead, the caffeine gradually cleared out of my system and all was right with the world again. Hmm, not so good.

I had always assumed that being anxious and highly strung was just part of my neurotic and irritating personality – but was it since I started drinking coffee? I certainly had a lot to be anxious about at that time. I had recently moved countries; my mother was very ill; and a lot was going on. Perhaps the coffee only exacerbated how I was already feeling, back then. Now, however, there is little to be anxious about, yet my high levels of anxiety had faded away only when I went on the exclusion diet.

A few days later, I tried sugar: pure candy, which I never usually eat, and with nothing to slow its effects. Within fifteen minutes, I was screaming like a banshee at a child who had left her shoes in the hallway. When I had calmed down I apologised, and had a think.

I had previously suspected sugar to have a volcanic effect on my temper, which is why I rarely eat much of it. Having completely eliminated all sugar for four months and, during that time, never shouted unduly at the kids; and then, having eaten three test candies and positively erupted, this was proof enough for me.

I was seventeen when I began drinking coffee, which means I’ve had nineteen years of two to four coffees a day, sometimes more, with a small sweet treat to pick me up in the late afternoon.

Nineteen years of jangled nerves and pounding heart, with a sugar spike just before dinner time.

Add children to the mix and it’s no wonder I self-medicated with alcohol. Take away the caffeine and sugar, and dinnertime is fine; no wine required. I realised that it wasn’t the kids who were the problem at six o’clock; it was me and my bad habits.

It’s shocking to think that I have razzed myself up daily for almost twenty years and never really noticed. I wrote myself off as an anxious person who doesn’t cope with stress when, in fact, the things I don’t cope with are caffeine and sugar. In other words, all this time I have been causing the majority of my stress through the things I have chosen to eat and drink.

I don’t know whether to be frustrated that we have endured so many years of my carefully reined in bad temper, a temper that now appears not to be an intrinsic part of my personality, or just deeply relieved that I have found the key to letting the temper fade away. Mostly, however, I feel glad for my kids that I have found a way to be calm. I no longer have to use all my tricks – counting to ten, leaving the room, or transforming the shouting into an operatic aria – as I now rarely feel the surge of rage that leads to the urge to shout.

I also feel sad for my own history. My mother was far more highly strung than me. A wrong word could set off an explosion, and I was the expert in wrong words. Our relationship was always fiery, never calm. Now I wonder if she, too, was winding herself up every day with her dozen cups of tea and a sweet biscuit in the afternoon. Meanwhile, she tried to fit in a lot more than me, combining child rearing with demanding work. She was always tired, and always felt guilty because she never had enough time to do everything she wanted. If she was feeling as physically wound up and anxious as I have been feeling, then, combined with the stresses she placed on herself, it is no wonder that she exploded regularly; we just couldn’t seem to get along.

I have a fantasy that we could meet each other again, no caffeine, no sugar, no work pressures. No shouting, no surges of aggression, no adrenalin spikes, just two women on odd diets but otherwise quite ordinary going for a stroll along a riverbank. In quietness, we could listen to the water tumbling by. We never knew each other calm, but I wonder whether, in such a space, we might find a gentle peace.

Small Ghosts

Small ghosts trail behind so many families, invisible to the naked eye or the quick hello.

Rena bustles around her son's birthday party, passing food and welcoming guests. During a lull, we chat. 'Did you ever think of having a second child?' I ask. 'Oh, we did,' she says, 'but he died. He was eight weeks old. He got an infection, it entered his heart, and he died.' I place my hand on her shoulder; there are no words.

***

You can read more of this All Souls Day reflection published in Eureka Street here.

Guess Who?

I was poking round a traditional op shop, dark and tiny and located at the back of a shopping strip, when I found a Dutch version of Guess Who? – Wie is Het? – with the beguiling hand written label Improve your German! ‘Tee hee hee,’ I thought, and picked it up to give my kids. They can play Guess Who? just as well with Philippe and Lucas as they can with Richard and George, and with any luck they might even play it in German or Italian or any of the other languages in which they know half a dozen phrases – sadly, like whoever wrote the label, this doesn’t include Dutch.

Then I turned my attention to the stacks of linen, and there, carefully folded, was an Onkaparinga blanket. These gorgeous blankets, incredibly soft and warm, were once manufactured in the Adelaide Hills; they are the stuff of my childhood. This particular one was pink and green and absolutely perfect, so I snaffled it up. On the coldest nights, we sleep under a hodgepodge of picnic rugs and crocheted lap blankets; whenever we have a family stay, we are a blanket or two short; there was no question that we would use it.

Thrilled, I paid for the game and the blanket, then tottered around the corner to pick up something for dinner. At the grocery store, the assistant asked me if I had found the blanket at the op shop. ‘Oh yes,’ I gabbled, ‘I’m delighted – I have three girls and this will be perfect.’

‘I’d hope you’d give it to the homeless,’ she snapped as she totted up the bill.

I stood there gasping, my mind racing in frantic guilt overload – was I really such a thoughtless bitch? – and found myself right back in an argument with my mother, who has been dead these eleven years.

Op shops are for those who need them, she said, and you can afford to shop somewhere else. Stop being so selfish!

But there’s too much stuff in the world, I muttered, and anyway, far more is donated than the op shops can ever sell; the rest has to be shipped overseas or sent to the tip.

The homeless are freezing to death, she said. There are people on the streets who need that blanket!

My kids are cold too, I said, and anyway, the homeless wear their blankets until they are fetid and then throw them away. This is too beautiful to throw away!

So the homeless shouldn’t have beautiful things?, she asked.

And on and on it went. We debated whether op shops are fundraising stores for charities or opportunity shops for the poor; we agreed on the need to limit manufacturing waste and share resources but argued about what that really means.

I couldn’t win. Her voice runs round my head like a broken record.

On the other hand, she’s long dead; perhaps, I thought, I might have the last word on this one. So I tossed my head, stood up straight, and said rather briskly to the shop assistant, ‘We give thousands of dollars to charitable organisations every year; I feel quite good about taking this blanket home.’ Then I grabbed my change and the groceries, gathered up the blanket, and stalked off.

Later, when I unfolded it, I discovered to my delight that it was a double. I have been sleeping under it ever since, tucked in safely with the comforting heaviness I remember from childhood. My daughters are asking to nap under it, and in less than a week it has become a fixture of our household, one of those items that will be used for decades, an object of nurture and care.

And even I can now see that this a good enough use for my mother, their grandmother; she must be pleased. As for those voices in my head who masquerade as her, like the predictable characters in a game of Guess Who? they have yet again been unmasked as demons; they can just fly away.

Until it's time for the next round.

Armfuls of roses

There were many things my stubborn and self-righteous old grandfather did wrong. There's no doubt about that; even he admitted to and apologised for many of them. But I'd like to remember what he did very well indeed: he made a marriage last for 64 years; he saw himself as his wife's husband even when she was almost completely silenced by Alzheimer's; and he was faithful to the end.

There were many things this child never saw or understood, but these are the things that remain: he was surprised and delighted every time she brought out the violet crumbles, rubbing his hands together in anticipation before tucking in. He thanked his wife every night when he sat down to dinner, and always remarked on how delicious the food was. He patted her arm and called her 'pet', and meant it with great affection.

A person could do worse than to be grateful: for his sweet but vague wife, for the meals that appeared with clockwork regularity, for every shiny foil wrapped sweetie. A person could do worse than to plant a garden so his wife could have armfuls of roses whenever she did the church flowers.

A person could do a lot worse than to cherish someone for decades. As they aged, my grandfather seemed to became more affectionate towards my grandmother. He had always been thankful for her to some degree, but in later years, after a lifetime of gratitude, he expressed it in small ways every day. As she became more and more forgetful, I watched him wrestle with his frustration and choose to be protective, instead.

The choice ran deep, so that for the last couple of years, my grandfather sat with his wife at a nursing facility hour after hour, day after day, as she gradually lost all her faculties. He refused other options, seeing it as his duty to stay by her side, keeping his familiar face in sight, and acting as her protector and advocate. As her memory faded, her speech disappeared and her reflexes returned to those of an infant, still he sat, her husband to the end.

The man who had been angry and judgmental, even violent at times, the man who my parents' friends from student days, now grandparents themselves, still refer to as 'Father Abraham' in slightly awed tones, learned late in life to curb his temper and his tongue. At some stage he opted for patience and gentleness; and with regular practice, he mastered them.

A person could do an awful lot worse than to soften as they age. He gives me something to aim for.

Photo shows my grandmother: what a woman!

Keith Milne

A few words for a beloved family friend, Keith, who recently passed away.

***

Spirit
Seventy years could not hide
Eyes and grin like a little boy
Who stole a plum from the neighbour’s tree
And twinkles still with remembered joy.

Body
His gnarled hands, one nail snapped short,
turned an eggcup from huon pine
so fine it seems too good to use.
On tapering leg
it holds my egg
and memories of those hands,
that grin, the van the yellow of soft boiled yolk,
sparkling eyes that loved a joke,
a little boy in old man’s skin,
a loyal friend, one of those men
who loved and served and lived life well.
Finished now, like my eggshell.

Mind
What I will miss most
Is how he always turned his head,
Cupped his hand behind his ear,
And leaned near me
As if everything I said,
And you said and she said,
As if everything we all said
Was worth hearing.

Once was a schoolgirl

Recently I visited my old primary school, a place of great pain. It was where I learned to sit down and shut up; where I was bullied by a teacher or two; where I was routinely humiliated in front of the other students. It's a place I still can't talk about without my voice growing strident; I was so scared and lonely there.

For months I have thought to visit and lay a few demons to rest; and one funny Saturday, it felt like time. So we trekked out to the eastern suburbs; my lovely family dropped me off and waved goodbye; and I walked the old path to school. The gates were open, and I ducked in and discovered what a little place it is.

The looming platform where the vice principal used to lecture us has shrunk to the size of a few steps, just enough room for a portly gentleman with a red face to stand as he bawled out several hundred kids. The great banks of the oval, strictly out of bounds and where I used to hide with a book, are barely big enough for a child to stretch out and be invisible from the main schoolyard. The assembly point where I was spontaneously pulled out of line and marched down the hall to a younger grade for the year, thereby losing all my friends and the chance to learn anything, has been subsumed into a new building. The classroom of my most vindictive teacher was shut up, of course; but even from the outside it was clear just how insignificant it was; it even looked cheerful.

Hard to imagine, really. That teacher loathed me, and no day was complete until she made me cry. I used to wake at dawn, sick to my stomach, and sobbed every morning before I left home. That year I broke my writing arm in the first week of third term and so for the thirteen weeks I wore a plaster cast, I was detained at recess and lunch to rule lines on scrap paper; she wouldn't let me write messily in my books. Every piece of work I carefully scratched out was returned with a rebuke; my left handed writing was unacceptable. Most wonderfully, later that same year I caught mumps then measles, and spent the entire fourth term deliriously feverish, and safe at home in bed.

In the centre of the school between two lines of classrooms stands an old eucalypt. When I was a student, lorikeets nested in its hollow and we were forbidden from going near it. Thirty years later it's still there. As I looked at it, remembering, a sudden movement caught my eye. Jutting out of the tree at hip height was a rainbow lorikeet, the great great grandson perhaps of the birds I had known, lurid green and blue and red and yellow, one beady eye fixed on me. I stood still. The bird flicked its head this way and that, assessing the risk; then shot out of the tree like a bullet. I walked over quietly and peeked into the hole; I caught the flash of a bright red beak as a nesting lorikeet turned to look at me. Our eyes met; then it ducked out of view and I let it be.

I walked around the grounds and remembered the humiliations, once so enormous; I recalled the loneliness, and the pain. The school is on a rise, and catches the wind. As I peered into windows and checked out the shelter sheds, the cars on the main road bounding the school roared past. I realised that it has always felt like a school on a cliff. The traffic sounds like the incoming tide, and over the top sings the wind. On this particular Saturday, a gale from the south and the noise of the cars rose up and swept through the school and me, scouring away hurt and leaving a quiet woman washed up on a peeling old bench, a few toy buildings dotted around, and winged rainbows darting overhead.

Once a place to constrict my heart with fear, it is finally becoming ancient history: a setting for stories, nothing more. What happened, happened; what remains are just memories; and time, the great healer, has done its work again.

Report Card: 36

When do I get to be entirely comfortable in my own skin? I've just turned 36, and I've been awkward my whole life. In many older women I see a confidence that I long for, and I've always hoped that by the time I'm forty I might, like these women, have grown into myself. But from where I'm standing now it feels a long way off, certainly further than four years.

Like so many women, I don't love my body. I don't hate it, and don't want another. Yet somehow I always feel the wrong size. If I were thinner, my clothes would fit better and I wouldn't have this muffin top peeking out my jeans; if I were fatter I'd be more beautifully rounded. My skinny friends are always stylish; my large friends just gorgeous; but somehow my thin bits are scrawny and my big bits are lumpy and I never, ever feel just right.

The only time I've loved my body was when I was pregnant. That's when I began to swim, my enormous balloon of a belly wafting below me as I meandered up and down the lap lanes. Once I had the babies I stopped swimming, however; I can't stand being seen in bathers. I love the feeling of being suspended in water, but every time I look at the swim bag I feel sick. I've tried sidestepping this with tank tops and big shorts, but I hate wearing them more than regular bathers; they just make me more obvious.

Yet the discomfort doesn't seem to have much to do with my body, per se. I can't imagine I'd feel different if I were glamorously thin with perfect olive skin. I would still hate being looked at, or feeling scrutinised by strangers. Really, the discomfort is about being noticed; and the physical side is only one aspect. At times this aversion has dominated how I've felt in public. I never used to sing, or laugh; I'd get highly anxious in shops or on public transport; I'd become flustered and stammer in coffee shops when the waiter came to take my order. I've only danced under the influence of exactly the right dose of alcohol, and usually not even then. Much of the time, I hate being observed; and I struggle with this.

I long to grow out of this discomfort, this desire to be invisible which has, at times, crippled me; I get so frustrated that I haven't managed it yet. But I'm beginning to realise it's a thing to keep working it, a gradually dawning state that will come with effort and patience, for when I look back over the years, I see change.

Although I never sang for many many years, now I sing every day. A few years back, having spent several years at a small church where singing was paramount, I realised it was time to get over my fear. I stayed at the church, joined a community singing group, and began singing to my kids. I've learned to listen, and to modulate my timing and tone; my singing voice has shifted from a whisper to a bray to something moderately tuneful. Not only that, but where once I stood stiff as a board, these days I find myself swaying, sufficiently lost in the act of singing to be able to move with the sound.

I used to get wildly flustered in shops, and at times I still get anxious. But gone are the days when I avoided them altogether; now I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city streets. I used to get so panicky on public transport that I'd disembark early to avoid missing my stop; now, I stay seated til journey's end. For years I wore only black; but now I wear colour – lots of muted blues and greys, yes, but also pinks, reds and greens, impossible a decade ago. My black boots have been replaced by burgundy; my black Mary Janes by clogs sprinkled with flowers. Small things, perhaps, but indicators of change – though what slow change it is! At kindergarten, I smothered my pictures with thick black paint so no one would comment on their strangeness; they showed perspective and depth. At school, I found it easier to draw like everybody else, formulaic flowers and little girls in pink. Thirty years later, I am gradually unlearning the drawing, peeling back the paint, and depicting the world as I see it. I use words now instead of a brush, but it's the same game; and I'm finally doing it in public.

So at 36, looking back, I find things are progressing. Healing may be possible. It's taking a long time, quite literally decades, but I'm well on the way. No longer stuck in the desolate years of my teens, or that awful black hole of my early twenties, I feel like I've found good earth and am sinking down roots; I'm sending out new green shoots. And the more I unfurl in spirit, the more I unfold in public.

One day in my forties, perhaps I will blossom. I will put on a pretty dress without wincing; I will wear my bathers casually. I will write something long, and become one of those women I adore, big and bold and confidently present. When that day comes you will probably know; for not only will I be singing aloud, but you'll probably find me dancing.

Blame and Grief

Last week we were minding a baby, and from time to time she cried a little. It didn't bother me, except on Wednesday. On Wednesday, I felt angry; and when she cried, I wanted to blame somebody. I couldn't blame her; she's too little. So I blamed other things. For a while I blamed my own kids. If only they wouldn't play with the baby and make her so tired; if only they were a little more willing to walk another block or four while we settled her in the pram; if only they would just for five little minutes shut the hell up.

Then I blamed myself. Perhaps I took her out for too long; or held her upright when she wanted to lie flat; or lay her down when she wanted to sit up; or put her in the cot when she wanted a cuddle; or put her in the sling when she wanted to kick her legs on the floor. I blamed my floppy old body that is tired from hauling babies and toddlers around and resented carrying her in the sling all day. The previous day I had hauled her and a two year old and two backpacks for a mile; and on Wednesday I felt it, and I blamed my eco-pride that meant we walked not drove.

Meanwhile it's school holidays so my older two are home; and after a week of four kids at my side and a toddler with the runs and the baby in the house and cooking with my arms outstretched as she nestles in the sling, I also blamed my streak of perfectionism that drives me to make something nice for dinner and which makes caring for four children so difficult at times.

But late in the day, after all this angry blaming, I finally recognised my sadness.

Wednesday was my mother's birthday and because she died so long ago, nobody remembered. Tired or not, I waded through the day holding onto the baby like a life preserver. She cried for only a little while, but I was in such a hole that I played the blame game for hours; and still I held her close. As I breathed in her scent, hour after hour, slowly I realised I wasn't really angry. I just felt utterly bereft.

My mother and I fought constantly. We never really got along; even as a little girl I lived in opposition. Yet other children loved her. As I grew into adolescence and adulthood, I watched kids flock to her. They would crowd around her and tell her their secrets; they would nestle in and listen to stories; they would kneel beside her wheelchair, bumping against the footplates, and play with her shoelaces.

She died years before I had children of my own. She never met her grandchildren, and she never saw me become the adult I am now. A decade later, I find myself beginning to realise we are no longer in opposition, and I am no longer defined against her. I may not be her, but somehow I too have become one of those women children tell stories to, the sort of person who spends a party showing a four year old guest how the kitchen scales work, how to use the oven timer, how to make the apple machine spin. I know when a baby needs a feed or a sleep; and choose to spend days rocking a friend's little one who needs to snooze in this draughty old house that is not her own.

When this baby cried on Wednesday, instead of finding someone to blame perhaps instead I could admit the long-reaching tentacles of loss, and name them as the source of my anger. The baby, my kids, my own self: they didn't really bother me at all.

Instead, it was grief, pure and simple: my missing my mother's floppy grey cowl-necked jumpers and her tiny spotted hands; my remembering the way she used to run her fingers through her short thick hair; my yearning for her long-gone fisherman's smock, the pockets stuffed with crumpled tissues, the stub of a pencil and the little battered notebook in which she recorded the birds she saw; my recalling so many birthdays so long ago, and wondering which of her apple cakes she would have liked me to cook; and my slow realisation that perhaps the best present I could give her is this: to hold a friend's baby, to pat the baby's bottom, to pace the hall up and down, up and down, and to sing as she settles into sleep.

Babymoon

I'm enjoying a babymoon, dreamily in love with a little one. I'm drinking in the smell of the back of her neck, the sound of her trilling, the softness of her thighs. It's not my own, alas. But this fortnight, a friend is recovering from radioactive iodine treatment, which means she cannot spend time with her little one; and while her partner is at work I am caring for their girl. What a gift!

Every morning she is dropped off and has a cuddle in my arms. We go for a walk, and she sleeps in the pram; she wakes and chugs down her bottle, smiling all the while. Tummy full, she lies on her back and grabs her feet; she examines her toes, or chews something interesting. Later, I strap her into the sling and we hang out the washing, dust the house, or pick beans and figs from the garden.

This little one chuckles at every tickle and blurt. Lying in a pram under a shady tree, she stretches her arms to the dancing leaves and sings with happiness. In the sling, her body nestles into mine and my heart skips a beat in sheer delight.

I watch her and remember how much I have learned.

I struggled to love and make time for my first. I was the first of my friends to have children; I hadn't held a baby until I my own. I didn't understand that she needed to be near all day; she couldn't be left for hours while I did Important Things. Worse, I had no emotional capacity to offer what she needed; I was so drained that the very idea of holding her often made me cry.

But she taught me well. Slowly, I learned to hold her; slowly I learned to stay in eyesight and wait until she slept before hanging out the washing. With my second and third, I learned these lessons more perfectly; and my capacity for love grew vastly.

Paradoxically, it is only now I have three kids of my own that I have the time and energy to add a fourth. When I heard that friends were struggling to find a carer for their child, I offered at once. There is plenty of room in our lives for a little one – and the rewards are so abundant, as I knew they would be, that I feel almost selfish in offering.

So I want to say thank you, my sweet sparrows, for teaching me so well, and for showering me with gifts:-

The gift of baby time: I have learned that there is always time enough. We can watch a baby kick her legs, we can sit for hours and croon and sing. We are surrounded by great oceans of time, and all that needs to be done will be done; there is no need to rush. My children taught me to slow down and fall into the infinite universe of a baby's eyes; they taught me to savour it.

The gift of generosity: I have learned that love breeds love. Not one of my girls has uttered a word against this baby who has borrowed their mother's attention; instead, they have adored her and speak of her as their sister. Again and again they show me that love is expansive, generous, infectious; love generates love.

The gift of cuddles: I have learned to love with my body as well as my words; now I'll hold a baby close against me for hours at a time. For the most part, this is love enough for a little one; and their loving body close against mine feeds me no end.

The other morning, a friend and I took a walk with the baby. He held her up to little trees and ran her fingers through soft leaves; he paused under dappled light and talked about shadows. We stopped for coffee, and other patrons dropped by to admire and make eyes at the little one; she is neither of ours, but we took full credit and glowed with pride.

These two weeks have become a joyful holiday, a delightful break from the norm. And once again I find myself taking lessons from a baby, who reminds me that we have time in abundance; that love abounds; that everything is fascinating; and that babies need nothing but the world.

PS Years ago I read Annie Dillard's stunning autobiography, An American Childhood, in which she wrote that her mother referred to her children as 'my sweet sparrows'. The phrase must have stuck somewhere deep, because lately, perhaps a decade later, I find myself blurting it out at groups of children; it so perfectly describes a group of little people hopping around my ankles, cheeping frantically, and stealing the crumbs from my plate.

Sunday, 10pm

Above me,
the rustle of a bat
the soft thump of a falling pear.
Behind me,
chickens stir then settle,
crooning themselves to sleep.
Around me,
cool night air
the muffled voices of neighbours
the clink of a glass.
Below me,
my mother's wicker basket
a tangle of wet towels.
Before me,
a clothesline, some pegs,
my mother's hands at work
and peeking over the fence:
the moon.